Chapter 2: Anxiety and Awakenings
AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
SUMMARY: Trapped in the ruins of an ancient shipwreck, Malcolm struggles with demons in his subconscious, while Hoshi battles the very real specter of Fear.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine! If they were, we'd have had more "Malcolm Gives Hoshi Phaser Lessons" episodes. *firm nod!*
RATING: R
SPOILERS: Possible spoilers up to and including "The Catwalk."
CATEGORY: Drama, suspense, supernatural, friendship/romance
CODES: R/S, T'P, A, Tu, P, M
"What the hell is going on down there, Sub-Commander?" Captain Archer barked into the comm. "Did I just hear a scream?"
"Affirmative, Captain. Ensign Sato and Lieutenant Reed appear to have fallen down a turbo shaft."
"They WHAT!" Trip exclaimed, leaping across the bridge to stand beside the captain at the comm. "How!"
"I am unsure." The Vulcan's normally calm voice was tinged with something that could have been worry. "I will proceed to investigate."
"Watch yourself, T'Pol," Jonathan said firmly. "I don't want a third officer falling down the well, you understand?"
"Aye, Captain."
"We'll have a second away team down there with you as fast as we can." He nodded to Trip, who nodded back and bolted for the turbolift. "Just hang on."
"Captain, may I suggest sending Doctor Phlox."
"Why?" Archer shared a concerned look with Trip, who was half in, half out of the turbolift. He had intended on sending Ensign Cutler rather than the doctor himself.
"The fall is quite a long one, Captain," T'Pol informed him. "Furthermore, it appears that their fall triggered something of a structural collapse. A great deal of debris from levels both above and below the one I'm on fell into the turbo shaft behind them. They are in essence sealed in at the bottom. We have no way of knowing the extent of their injuries."
Dammit. This kept getting worse. "I'll send the Doctor with Trip and Ensign Mayweather, T'Pol." Travis looked relieved to be able to get out of his seat at the con, and leapt up to join Trip at the lift. "Keep me informed. We'll keep trying to reach their communicators. You try doing so, too."
"Aye, Captain. T'Pol out."
Archer heard the chime as her comm blinked out. Raising his eyes, he shared a grave look with his chief engineer. "Do whatever you have to do to get them out of there, Trip," he said solemnly. "That ship already claimed enough lives seven hundred years ago."
"Aye, aye, Cap," Trip said soberly. Clapping Mayweather on the arm, he stepped completely into the turbolift, and was whisked away into the body of the ship.
Archer fell heavily into his chair. It seemed silly now, the excitement he'd felt just a few hours earlier during T'Pol's briefing. Impressing the Vulcan Science Directorate was the least of his concerns now; he realized, with a heavy heart, that it should have been the least of his concerns all along.
He stabbed at the comm a second time. "Archer to Doctor Phlox."
"Phlox here, Captain." The Denobulan sounded particularly chipper. "What can I do for you?"
"Meet Commander Tucker at Shuttlepod One, Doctor. We've got wounded people on planet."
"Yes, Captain. Right away." The Doctor's amiable voice had gone from cheerful to somber in a matter of seconds.
Archer keyed off the comm, and let his eyes drift over the bridge. Hoshi's station - painfully empty. Malcolm's tactical console - barren.
"Find them, Trip," he said softly, before standing to cross the room and sit in Hoshi's vacant chair. He was rusty, but after a few minutes, he was using the console with a practiced hand.
Quietly, the captain began trying to find his missing crew.
Hoshi groaned. She wasn't sure why everything hurt so badly, nor why her mouth tasted like copper. All she understood was that something bad had happened, it had happened to her, and it was going to continue happening if she didn't try to figure out just what precisely IT was.
She sat up. Or rather, she tried to sit up. The most she could accomplish was a half-slouch, supported by the wall behind her. "Ow," she groaned, raising a hand to her temple and wincing. The gloves of her EV suit slipped in something wet. With a frown, she took one glove off and raised the hand back to her temple again. When she drew the hand away, something wet and sticky was on her fingers.
Blood.
"Great," she murmured. "Just what I needed."
The memory of what had happened came back to her in a torrent of flashes. She had as yet to open her eyes, but when she did, she wouldn't have known the difference. It was black as midnight; blacker, because there was no moon. No stars. No light at all.
Hoshi swallowed, and forced her hands to stop shaking as she felt around on the floor to find her flashlight. After a minute of frantic searching, she struggled to calm her breathing as her fingers closed around the familiar shape of her flashlight.
With trembling fingers, she turned it on.
"Oh God…" she breathed, eyes widening. "Malcolm!"
The armory officer was collapsed on the floor not two feet away from her. His eyes were closed, and a gash over his eyebrow had washed one whole side of his face in blood.
Hoshi scrambled towards him, ignoring her own aches and pains. "Malcolm…!" she squeaked, her fear at being alone outdistancing her fear of more injury. "Malcolm, please be all right. Please wake up!"
He appeared to have struck his head on a jagged piece of metal that had fallen out of the turboshaft with them. Hoshi laid her hand on the unbloodied side of his face, and was horrified to feel how clammy he was. With trembling fingers, she checked his pulse. It was still there, but thready.
"Malcolm, wake up," she begged quietly, wrapping her fingers around the shoulder of his EV suit as though it were a life rope. She knew she should be trying to help him, but she couldn't think; couldn't concentrate. Her mind seemed to be filled with static, making it impossible to form a cohesive thought, like how to make a tourniquet. Her eyes darted about, searching for movement in the constricting darkness that surrounded them. It was like being trapped in a box - an ever shrinking box.
She was suffocating.
"Oh…Oh God…" she whispered, and squeezed her eyes shut. Gripping Malcolm's EV suit with all her worth, she slowly leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. "Please don't die… I can't be alone here…" She hated how pitiful she sounded. "Please, Malcolm… Don't leave me alone…."
There was no answer from the unconscious man beneath her. She focused on listening to his weak heartbeat, and ignored the searing sensation of a hundred prying eyes watching them with creepy curiosity.
The first thing that struck Malcolm upon opening his eyes was how blue everything was.
He had expected it to be pitch black here, just as the rest of the ship had been dark as night. Instead, the corridor seemed to be bathed in a pleasant, robin's egg blue light. It tinged his skin pinkish-purple, and made his uniform look navy blue.
Wait a moment… Uniform? What had happened to his EV suit? And where was Hoshi?
"Hoshi?" he called out, pushing himself into a sitting position. He winced, and lay back down again. The world was spinning all of a sudden; he must have taken a good blow to the head to leave him this disoriented. A quick inventory of the rest of his body told him that his left ankle was sprained, possibly broken, and he certainly had some broken ribs down his right side.
"I hope Hoshi's all right," he said quietly, opening his eyes again. Thankfully, the spinning had stopped. He chose not to risk starting it up again, however, and remained stretched out on the floor, trying to decide what to do next. T'Pol would probably be trying to reach them, so the best plan would be to find Hoshi and then wait for rescue.
But where was Hoshi to be found?
"You should not be here."
Malcolm sat bolt upright, and swallowed down the nausea the movement caused. "Who are you?" he demanded sharply.
A very skinny man with wide, pale blue eyes - wide like tea saucers - was crouched against the opposite wall, a few feet further down the corridor. His limbs were long and gangly, even bent up as they were. He would be very tall when he stood. His skin looked powder blue, which meant it was probably ivory white. His thin hair, too, was white, turned blue by the ambient light that surrounded them. It hung down his back, reaching almost to the tailbone. The man's skin clung to his bones as though it had been vacuum-sealed; Malcolm could make out every detail of femurs, tibias, knuckles, shoulders… Only the man's clothing - a thin white tunic that appeared to reach to his knees - provided any loose cover. His skull stood out in harsh relief, with painfully sharp cheekbones and a razor-tight jaw line. His enormous eyes were sunken back into deep sockets, and blinked only occasionally, like an afterthought.
"Who are you?" Malcolm asked again, more cautiously this time. He didn't like the look in this… alien's eyes.
"Who are you?" the alien asked back.
"I am Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, of the starship Enterprise," Malcolm answered. "Now who are you?"
"I am Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, of the starship Enterprise," the albino alien parroted. "Now who are you?"
Malcolm glared at the creature. "Stop that!" he snapped. "Tell me your name!"
"Stop that! Tell me your name!"
"I said stop it!"
"I said stop it!"
"Right now, do you hear me?"
"Right now, do you hear me?"
"That's enough!"
"Fai'shal."
Malcolm blinked. "Fai… What?"
The alien tilted his head to the side. It made him resemble a heron, Malcolm thought. "My name is Fai'shal," the alien said. His voice was high pitched and a little squeaky, as if he hadn't used it in some time.
"Where did you come from?" Malcolm asked.
"From here," Fai'shal replied airily. Too airily, it seemed.
"This ship… it's been dead for centuries," Malcolm said. "You could not have come from here. Are you a native of this planet?" He did not recall anyone informing him of any sentient lifeforms on this planet.
Fai'shal shook his head. "I am from here," he said again, and as if to hammer home his point, he wrapped his bony knuckles three times - One! Two! Three! - on the floor of the corridor.
Malcolm furrowed his brow. "I don't understand. What are you?"
"I am Fai'shal of the Poyem."
Malcolm's eyes widened. "Come again?"
"Fai'shal of the Poyem."
"But…how?"
"Seven cycles of an age I have been here," Fai'shal continued, his wide blue eyes unblinking as he stared at Malcolm. "Seven cycles of an age, alone and waiting."
Malcolm shook his head slowly. "I… I'm afraid I don't understand."
Fai'shal laughed then, making Malcolm jump. "Understand!" the alien whooped, as if he couldn't believe the silliness of such a thought. "It is not to understand! It just is!"
"What?" Malcolm asked, recovering his wits. "What just is? What are you talking about?"
Fai'shal grinned at him, revealing uneven teeth that ended in sharp-looking points. "Silly alien creature," Fai'shal admonished with a clucking tongue. "Silly thing won't accept its fate."
"What fate?" Malcolm was beginning to get angry now. He was a man who appreciated straight answers.
"To join me here!"
"What?"
"Don't you see?" Fai'shal laughed again. "I'm dead! Long have I been dead today, since yesterday, and long will I be dead tomorrow!"
Malcolm swallowed. "I don't -"
The alien cut him off. "You'll get used to it soon. After a while, it feels like breathing."
"Get used…to what?"
"To being dead, of course."
Malcolm's eyes bugged out of his head. "What!"
Fai'shal gave him another grin of razor-sharp teeth. "Being dead. You're dead, you see. We're all dead here - just you, and me." He laughed. "That was a rhyme! You'll learn to love rhyme, you will. A rhyme, a rhyme, it passes the time!" He laughed again, and it echoed up and down the corridor like water rolling through a pipe.
Malcolm stared in horror at the alien singing to himself five feet away. He had come across many alien species since joining Starfleet, and he'd learned to accept personality quirks as they came.
But "barking mad loony" seemed to be universal. And he was stranded on an alien ship with a dead one.
TBC…