CHAPTER 17: "Her, Me - "
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
RATING: R, for violence and some language
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, Romance, Action, Deathfic
CODES: R/S (heavy on the R) with touches of everyone
//One.//
The turbolift whirred quietly as it winged Malcolm towards his destination. An eerie calm had settled in his gut, soothed further by his fingers as they stroked rhythmically over the casing of his modified phase pistol. He always felt calmer in the presence of weapons - they were the one thing in the universe he understood completely.
//Two.//
The tell-tale slowing of the turbolift signaled that it was about to stop. Silently, Malcolm crushed himself against the wall beside the door, keeping his elbows tucked in close to his body. The phase pistol was near his eye now, held up in one loosely clenched fist; it filled the corner of his vision. When the door swished open, he didn't even hear it. A breath of air against his cheek was all the indication he needed that he had arrived.
//Three.//
Without hesitation, he pitched the pistol through the door onto the bridge and pressed tighter into the rounded corner of the lift, covering his face with one arm.
A soundless explosion; a blinding flash; silence.
He waited a moment before uncurling from his protective posture and stepping onto the main bridge.
It looked like a forest felled by a meteorite. Members of the crew were stretched flat out on the floor throughout the bridge, knocked unconscious by his makeshift stun grenade. Some were slumped over consoles, others piled on top of each other. Their positions all had a uniform sameness, however. Judging by the way they had fallen, they had all been facing the turbolift at the time.
They'd been waiting for him.
"Sorry to disappoint," he muttered, stepping over the bodies in front of the turbolift and making a beeline for Travis' console.
The young pilot was crumpled by his station. Malcolm only allowed his gaze to linger briefly on the man before looking up at the blanket-wrapped bundle perched atop his console.
Her eyes were closed, but he knew his daughter like he knew himself. It had been difficult, altering the pistol to be powerful enough to knock out the crew, but weak enough not to damage his daughter. Difficult, but not impossible. Weapons were is forte; each challenge was a new chance to prove himself.
Calmly, he shook a hypospray down out of his sleeve and held it tightly. His hands were remarkably dry. Very slowly, he reached forward and pressed the hypospray gently - very, very gently - to his daughter's arm. Memories passed through his mind; of Doctor Phlox vaccinating Emma, and how worried Malcolm and Hoshi had been. "Never to fear, you two," the Denobulan had said with a broad smile. "A hypospray is as harmless as water to a baby, when used properly."
"Do you have any evidence to back that up?" Malcolm had responded. Water, after all, was far from safe.
"Certainly, certainly," Phlox had replied, and handed the nervous parents a PADD entitled So Your Baby's Being Vaccinated, by Phlox. He had obviously been expecting their worry. "Read that, and all your fears will be laid to rest, I assure you. See, I've even included a schematic of how I configure the hypospray specifically for small children of the human variety. I knew that would appeal to you, Mr. Reed. No worries, now. No worries at all."
//No worries at all,// Malcolm repeated silently to himself as he listened to the hiss of the hypo, then pulled his hand away.
After a moment, the little girl's eyes fluttered open, and Malcolm's world tilted on its axis.
The cherubic face was the same. And he recognized the soft, hand-crocheted afghan Hoshi's grandmother had sent them as a baby shower gift, complete with embroidered stars and a monogram that read Emma Sora. Malcolm remembered Hoshi joking that their daughter's name sounded like a cookie. "She IS awfully sweet," Malcolm had teased back, and Hoshi had laughed.
That was where the similarities stopped.
His daughter's almond-shaped eyes were placid as she studied him, in the same detached way T'Pol had stared at him in Engineering, and Hoshi in the storage bay. Only now, instead of the fractured flurry of thousands of souls, the baby's eyes shone - honestly glowed - with the awesome power of one collective mind. The warm brown irises Malcolm had cherished were replaced with violet ones, and as he watched, he saw a ripple of ice-white energy pass over them, before disappearing out the corner of her eye.
He had found The Center.
His body was running on auto-pilot as, slowly, he raised his phase rifle. Positioning the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, he calmly aimed the weapon at the baby's head. "I'm here to kill you," he said quietly. "I want you to understand that. I boarded that turbolift, built that grenade, came to this bridge, and aimed this rifle, with no other intention than to kill you."
She didn't even blink as she watched him. It was unnatural for his daughter to be this quiet for this long - she was usually such an animated child.
"I know all about you," he went on. "I know what you are. You're the middle of it all. You're their nexus - the North for their compass. Without you, they fall apart. Without you, they explode." He tightened his grip on the rifle. "That's why you didn't leave with the She'Lac. They - the Amorphia - can't spread themselves too thin, now can they? They have to cluster around YOU. T'Pol had already been taken - it was easiest to stay here. Isn't that the truth? Isn't it!"
Nothing.
Malcolm took a step closer and tilted his aim down, so that the rifle was almost touching Emma's chest. "I thought it would be easy," he continued, even softer than before. "I thought, if I could do it fast enough, it would be over and the end would come." He tilted his head, still keeping the eye contact between them. "I don't know why I woke you up. It would have been easier to do this if you had been asleep."
She blinked slowly, then continued staring at him.
Malcolm felt his will beginning to falter. Somewhere in that shell, hidden behind The Thing that was controlling his daughter, Emma was watching him. His daughter was watching her father threaten to kill her. She was smelling the gun grease and oil, and the ozone that lingered in the air from the stun grenade. Inside that body, his daughter was terrified. Of him.
He knew now why he had revived her.
The rifle slowly dropped away, until it dangled limply by his side, held in only the loosest of grips. A piece of his heart fractured, and he felt the pain lance through his body like a knife.
"I can't do it," he whispered, and stared into The Center's eyes. He took a shuddering breath, then continued. "I want to be with my family again."
Emma tilted her head a fraction of a degree.
Malcolm nodded slowly. "Take me," he murmured.
The seconds ticked by like centuries as he bent forward over his daughter and stared into her violet eyes. He could see The Thing watching him, weighting his intentions. It didn't matter now. They would take him, and finally all these decisions - these worries, these fears - would be out of his hands. Someone else could save the day. He let her see that in his eyes; let her see his broken soul.
Gently, as though he were wishing her good night and sweet dreams, he kissed his daughter lightly on the lips.
A freight train barreled through his head and roared in his ears. Blinding flashes of blue, white and violet mottled his vision. Every muscle and tendon in his body stood out in sharp relief. He wanted to scream with the pain, but he couldn't move, as The Center poured out of his daughter and filled his mind; leaving the weaker for the stronger. The defenseless for the defender. Malcolm could feel it shoving him mercilessly down into a gaping pit of oblivion.
The Void.
The transfer only took a few seconds, though it felt like millenia. With a cry, Malcolm was released, and he stumbled backwards, hand pressed to his temple as his body fought to adjust to its new inhabitants. "Oh! Oh… God!" he cried, pounding the heel of his hand against his forehead, as though to dislodge the creature that now held roost there. "I… God!"
The bridge was spinning beneath his feet. Everything was swimming before his eyes, twirling like a dervish. He struggled for breath as the action of his lungs was slowly taken from him, controlled by the creature that inhabited his body. The steady rhythm of his heart was also receding from his grasp. With what remained of his self-control, Malcolm swung his head up and stared at the ceiling of the bridge.
And he laughed.
"I GOT YOU!" he bellowed. "I GOT YOU, YOU BASTARD!"
And with a swift reflex action, he brought the barrel of his rifle to his temple and fired.