A/N: Some of the characters contained in this story are the property of Parmount Pictures, I'm only borrowing them for my own amusement. Also if you are not a fan of stories featuring characters that are not regulars on the show as romantic interests you will probably not want to read this story. The movie The Bourne Identity is also the property of its creators.
Dinner the night before had gone quite well, so well in fact that they had agreed to go to the Friday night movie together. For once the movie was actually going to be a good one: The Bourne Identity. They had agreed to meet at Sam's quarters at 7:30. Little did they know that that evening would turn out to be the date from hell.
The horrors started just before the end of Malcolm's shift when his consol decided to blow itself up, thus causing him to have to stay after his shift to fix the problem. Then he had to rush to his quarters, get a quick shower to wash all the soot off, and get dressed in a matter of about 5 minutes. Needless to say, despite his best efforts, he ended up being 10 minutes late to pick up Samantha. Luckily she had heard about the explosion. When they finally made it to the mess hall, they found out that chef had, in a freak accident, failed to prepare enough food, and that they were stuck with a green salad and some bread sticks. In what would be one of the only mercy's of the evening, the bottle of wine Malcolm had requested was still there, unfortunately it was far from chilled after sitting in the kitchen most of the day not on ice. Earlier in the day one of Phlox's Bennitian spiders had gotten loose and had managed to crawl into the kitchen and onto an empty plate. It had then been buried by a pile of lettuce and set out to be eaten. Of course, Samantha had picked up that particular plate. Upon finding the spider crawling up her fork toward her arm they both went off the salads and decided to feast solely on breadsticks, figuring that these would be safe. Unbeknownst to Malcolm however, chef had used a certain type of flour in the breadsticks, which made him itch. After eating about 10 sticks each they headed over to get good seats for the movie. Unfortunately the crewman behind them couldn't take the sight of blood and promptly hurled at the first sight of it on the screen. Surprisingly it missed them. Having moved further up to avoid the mess, Malcolm and Sam enjoyed the movie in peace for only about 20 minutes more, until the person at the end of their row got startled and knocked over a folding chair, thus creating a domino reaction among the chairs. About 10 minutes later the flour kicked in. Malcolm, who had been sitting with his arm discreetly draped over Sam's shoulders, suddenly felt like his skin was on fire. When he went to extract his arm from its position, he accidentally hit Sam in the back of the head in his haste to scratch his thigh. As Malcolm sat scratching every part of his body that he could reach, the film projector chose that moment to go up in smoke. The lights went up to reveal a very embarrassed Malcolm hunched over scratching between his toes, emitting a slight sigh of relief.
"Are you okay?" Samantha whispered, quite concerned.
"I will be, there must have been something in the breadsticks that I was allergic to. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to visit the infirmary for an injection." Malcolm explained.
"Its not a problem, we can head down there now." Samantha consoled. Of course, at that moment Trip, Hoshi, and Travis made their way over to say hello. Can this evening get any worse? Malcolm thought, as his friends each made inquiries about his health.
"I'm fine." He said in an effort to retain his dignity. Unfortunately, forces that be would not let him do that. Just as he proclaimed that he was fine, the Doctor happened to walk into the mess hall. Phlox immediately spotted Reed's reddened skin and drug him off to sickbay, saying that he must look at 'that horrible rash at once'. Samantha followed the two to sickbay.
As she entered the room, she heard the Doctor arguing with Malcolm. "Look Doctor, I am sure that is just a reaction to something I ate, do I really have go through a full bio scan?"
"I insist, now take of your shirt." Reed did so, "And your pants too."
"Are you sure you couldn't do the scan with them on."
"Quite, now off with them." Sam, who had gone unnoticed by the Doc, was standing in the door. She quietly turned around giving Malcolm some privacy. After finishing the scan, Reed was finally allowed to put his clothes back on and was given an injection to counter act the effects of the allergy.
Malcolm met Sam at the door and the quietly wandered the halls of Enterprise. Eventually they had managed to make their way to Sam's quarters. They stood outside her door talking for a few minutes. "I'm very sorry that the evening didn't go better."
"That's okay it was certainly interesting, besides it was no fault of ours." Sam said. They were leaning in to kiss goodnight, when Malcolm abruptly saw something out of the corner of his eye. As he went to look, all he saw was the outline of being, then a bright light that enveloped both of them. Instinctively, Malcolm tried to shield Samantha from the light, however he was not quick enough.
After the evening's events, Trip returned to his quarters, still chuckling over Malcolm's face when the Doctor had drug him off to sickbay. Trip quickly got undressed and crawled into bed. He then picked up the book that he had been reading for the last week. He had intended to finish it tonight. He was just about to the last page when he became aware of a presence in his room. He reached for the comm. as he looked for the intruder in his room. What he saw was an alien of a race he had never even seen before. "Tucker to the Bridge, Intr…." Was all Trip managed to say before a bright light enveloped him completely.
Elsewhere on the ship Travis lay in his bed sound asleep. He had turned in early because he had an early shift the next morning. He never knew what hit him as the same bright light swallowed him whole, whisking his body away from Enterprise without a sound.