Thank you all for reviewing! Posts after this may be slightly farther apart because school is starting again...(anyone else feel impending doom approaching?) and I will be insanely busy come next week.
With that said, enjoy!
Catspaw
*************
His son Henri looked up sleepily from the book in his hands as Picard burst through the tent flap, the stranger over his shoulder. He swept piles of papers in a flurry away from the table.
"What's going on?" asked Henri, leaping up and helping his father lower the man to the table. Jean-Luc nodded toward the medkit in the corner. He found the dermal regenerator and flicked it on expertly. Henri watched, brow furrowed in confusion.
"I have no idea," replied Jean-Luc, examining the bruising on the man's chest. "I was studying the writing on the wall again...you know, the one that looks like it used to be a building but blew apart at some point...I think I translated some of those symbols, by the way..."
"Dad!"
"Anyway, there was a flash of light and he just appeared."
Henri snorted.
"It sounds silly, I know, but that's what happened." He sighed. "Would you kindly go and wake up the doctor? I don't know enough to treat broken ribs."
His son slipped out of the tent, casting a curious glance at the mysterious man as he went. Jean-Luc sighed and began to apply the dermal regenerator to the nasty cut on the man's shoulder. He shook his head, confused, as two different memories of how he had learned field medicine popped into his mind. Every researcher for the Vulcan Science Directorate was required to know field medicine. So was every Starfleet Academy cadet...
Henri slipped back through the flap, followed by T'Miya, the young Vulcan medic, doctor's case in hand.
"Who is he?" she asked coolly, opening the case and swiftly removing the tricorder. It beeped and she frowned at it.
"I don't know," Jean-Luc replied. "Once he wakes up he can tell us himself."
T'Miya nodded and rummaged through the hyposprays. "It will be necessary to determine if there is damage from the concussion. I will need him awake as it is."
Henri stood on tiptoe, looking over her shoulder, as the hypospray hissed against the man's neck. "Can you hear me?" he said as the man groaned softly.
Jean-Luc, with a dignity more suited to the starship captain than the dusty archaeologist, stepped forward as the man tried to rise from the table. He pressed him back down to the table and said forcefully, "Can you hear me?"
"Where...where am I?" he asked, wincing. He blinked and groaned again.
Jean-Luc shared a glance with Henri, both surprised to hear the pronounced
English accent. T'Miya held up three fingers.
"How many do you see?" she asked, eternallly calm.
The stranger's eyes widened. "Three," he replied, and looked over at the two humans. "Where am I?" he asked again, more forcefully this time.
"You are on Cadis, at the local VSD research camp," answered Jean-Luc. "I am Cap-" He stopped and swallowed, confused. "I am Jean-Luc Picard, head of this team. This is my son, Henri, and our medic, T'Miya."
"Are you human?" asked the stranger. Henri and Jean-Luc both cocked an eyebrow at each other. T'Miya looked almost amused. She moved her finger back and forth before the stranger's face, but his eyes didn't seem to be able to focus on it.
"Of course," said Jean-Luc. "Well, T'Miya is Vulcan, but we two are humans."
"I wasn't aware that there were research teams out here. Especially teams with humans on them." He closed his eyes and hissed in pain as T'Miya prodded the lump on the back of his head. "Thought we...thought we were the...only ones..." he added weakly.
"What is your name?" asked Jean-Luc hastily as the man's head lolled to the side. "Where did you come from?"
"Mal..Malcolm Reed," said the man with great effort. T'Miya grabbed for the hypospray, but he was unconscious again before she could do anything.
"Yes, that helps a lot," said Henri sarcastically.
"At least we know what to call him," said Jean-Luc wryly. "He did have something in his arms that fell when I picked him up. Perhaps that could have some answers." He motioned for Henri to follow him, and they went out into the darkness once more.
"How could he just appear?" said Henri emphatically, looking accusingly up at the stars above.
"I know how impossible it sounds, Henri, but that's what happened," said Jean-Luc wearily. Something niggled at the back of his mind, some important thing, but he did not know what it was.
"Maybe he pissed off the Vulcan Confederacy and got sent out here as punishment," said Henri. A bell rang in Picard's mind and he stopped dead, staring at his son. Henri kept on walking for a few paces, not noticing that his father was not next to him.
Jean-Luc's entire mouth went dry. The starship captain could not remember having a son. Where, in all those myriad exploits of that ship, was Henri? He knew eighteen years of a person's life were not simply dismissed from one's mind. What on earth was happening to him? Schizophrenia...the word danced across his mind.
"Dad?" Henri was at his elbow, looking worried. "Dad, what's the matter?"
"Nothing," he said sharply, but he could not stop a shaky sigh from escaping his lips. Henri stared after him as he strode quickly over the dusty ground, and did not take his eyes from his father until they reached the bag of tools, laying forlornly on the dark ground.
"Here it is," said Jean-Luc, and picked up the object dropped by Reed. He examined it closely in the lamplight, wiping the dirt away with gentle fingers.
"What is it?"
"It looks like the temporal resequencer used by agents of the Cabal," said Jean-Luc. "But it's slightly different in design. I've never seen quite this configuration."
"Do you know how to use it?" asked Henri, although Jean-Luc could tell that his son was dying to know how his father knew it was a temporal resequencer used by the agents of the Cabal.
Jean-Luc looked sharply at his son. "Yes," he said. "But it isn't going to tell us where our mysterious Malcolm Reed came from." His tone warned Henri not to ask any more, and the boy didn't, although he kept glancing at the device as they returned to the tent.
T'Miya was packing up her tools as they slipped back through the flap. Malcolm Reed had been moved to Jean-Luc's cot, looking much better than when he'd first seen him. Henri slung the tools down and sat down, glaring at the device in Jean-Luc's hands.
"He should awaken again in about an hour," said T'Miya. "I have repaired the damage to his skull and cerebral cortex. Do not let him move about excessively. He should rest." She yawned slightly and nodded. "Call me when he wakes up, or if he does not within three hours."
Both humans nodded. Henri yawned as well. "Go to bed," said Jean-Luc, patting his son on the back. "I'll keep an eye on him." Henri nodded and lay down in his own cot, and was asleep within minutes. Jean-Luc waited until he was absolutely sure Henri was not faking, and then tapped at the keys of the Cabal device. A holographic display popped into view.
"Hmm," murmured Jean-Luc, scanning through the contents. A timeline ran along the bottom of the display, and he enlarged it absently, wondering just how far this one extended. It seemed to be a history of Earth, oddly enough. He'd never seen one with Earth before. Usually these dealt with the more influential players in the galaxy, like the Borg or the Cabal or the Vulcan Confederacy. World Wars, Zefram Cochrane, Vulcan landing, launching of Enterprise...all these were familiar events, and he let the timeline fly by more quickly.
Suddenly, he straightened in surprise and stopped the timeline. Starfleet? United Federation of Planets? What on earth...and yet he recognized the terms with the half of his mind that he'd been trying to suppress ever since he found the stranger.
And there, suddenly, was his own name, captain of the Enterprise NCC-1701 D, flagship of Starfleet, exploratory and military arm of the Federation.
Shaking, Jean-Luc scanned backwards until he found the point where it all began to diverge: late 2152, when the Enterprise NX-01 had been destroyed by the organization which would later become the Cabal. In this timeline, though, the Enterprise was not destroyed, although they did engage the Suliban. The mission continued for several years, and the captain, Jonathon Archer, played a great part in the formation of a new interstellar organization, the United Federation of Planets. No mention of the Cabal was again made, at least as far as Jean-Luc could see.
He shut off the holographic display and went to his own interface, typing in the name "Malcolm Reed." Only one entry popped up, linked to a crew manifest of the Enterprise NX-01.
"Disappeared from the surface of Cadis...2152...one week before the demise of the rest of the ship's crew," read Jean-Luc. The picture certainly looked like the stranger currently lying in his cot. He went back to the resequencer and performed the same search. This time, a myriad of articles surfaced. "Force fields...Red Alert..." read Jean-Luc. He found a crew manifest again, and went to "Reed, Malcolm."
"Lieutenant Malcolm Reed...commendation for valour and innovative thinking in a desperate battle against the Suliban, 2152. 'Without his actions we would certainly now be dead,'" he murmured, reading verbatim the words of Captain Archer.
Jean-Luc looked at the man lying in the cot, and back to the display. Perhaps these new memories were not simply the product of a crazy mind. Somehow, time itself had changed, because Malcolm Reed was not there.
It was all so simple, mused Jean-Luc.
Then why was he so confused?
************
Will post more soon, probably Saturday or Sunday. Hope you like it! Tell me what you think!