Disclaimer: See parts 1-5.


SIX

Silence played into shadows, and amazingly he slept; awkwardly, painfully, finding no rest in it. He accepted the darkness as it swept over him, oblivion melting the scars away. Even the silk touch of that black lake had not felt so much like death as this waiting.

Perhaps he wanted it that way; perhaps it was no coincidence that his dreams were of water, of sinking into silence, into darkness . . . at first caught up in Hoshi's arms, wrenched away at the last. A moment of promise, snatched away.

He could taste her still, could sense her in his head like a rushing wind . . . but there was nothing left of her to touch. He had lost his grip on her, and reality had flooded back in to fill the space she left.

He must be losing his mind.

Malcolm drifted, liking the emptiness, losing himself in it. He had slipped to the floor as he slept and his dreams were punctuated by the gnaw of a twisted neck, the sting of a numbed limb . . . but what did he care? Pain only gave him something else to focus on. It would fade. There were some things that never would.

It was sound which woke him, a sensation sorely missing in his quiet delirium and which struck like a hammer on the fragile bell of his skull. Every part of him felt cramped, a bruised, syrupy sluggishness orbiting him as he dragged himself upright and smudged a rough fist across his tired eyes. Across dry eyes.

that sound came again. He froze, a statue made of ice; wanting to thaw, but unable to accept the tiny flame turned on him. Despite the heat of the room, heat which had slowly built, airlessly crushing in on him, sending him into half-willing sleep, Malcolm shivered.

It was Hoshi's voice. Not a recording, a robot, a facsimile; but a living, breathing Hoshi.

he whimpered, tunefully. Then, with greater strength, with rising anger at this farce they still clung to like tattered seaweed to an old ship's hull, he demanded: What do you want now? More blood for medical research? How about all the codes to Enterprise? Whatever trick you're playing, it won't work. Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't know she's dead? You're not Hoshi, why pretend otherwise? Believe me when I say that you have nothing left to bargain with. Go ahead and kill me now because I'm about as much use to you as a corpse at this point in time anyway. Come on! I won't fight. Easiest kill you ever had. He hung his head at last, and his voice dropped to a husk of its former self, a shadow, a glimmer of pain beneath the bravado. Except for Hoshi, he whispered. She was no threat to you.



Malcolm closed his eyes, fists unconsciously fastening in the folds of his shirt, his slick back pressed to the wall, trembling softly. He didn't know when he had become this shivering wreck, but it had happened, it seemed, like the snap of a brittle piece of charcoaled firewood. Suddenly. It had begun with the slide of his hands from that console, and ended as they hit his lap. He felt untethered from the world.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and dropped his face into the dark cradle. It was only a voice, be it in his head or on a disc; it didn't mean anything but that he was hearing things, what he wanted to hear, what he wanted to be real. Maybe he was speaking to nobody but himself.

Malcolm, it's me. Whatever it was that said those words, it sounded frightened. It sounded like Hoshi, anxiety radiating through the unspoken spaces between. Talk to me. Please, Malcolm, I'm so scared.

You're dead, Ensign, he told his knees. So I can't be talking to you. He laughed breathily into the fabric of his combats. That would make me crazy. I'm not crazy.

There was a silence. Maybe the aliens were tired of torturing him. Or, maybe, his usefulness was not at its end, after all. He waited, unaware until the silence broke just how much he had been dreading that voice speaking again; he had been braced as if for a blow, but the expectation did nothing to ease its coming.

Malcolm Reed, I appreciate that you're the most paranoid guy ever to leave Earth, and I don't blame you for being so cautious. It's one of the things I . . . And there the voice dwindled, falling into a soft breath that echoed like a dark wind in the amplifiers. I know you probably don't believe it's me, but I swear if you don't talk to me soon, then you'll wish it wasn't. I mean . . . you have no idea how much I've wanted to hear your voice. Please, Lieutenant, talk to me. It's only your duty.

He wanted to laugh, but nothing came. There was nothing but a terrifying blankness where words should be, and he grasped for anything, whatever came, and blurted out: Now, now, Ensign. Don't you know it's an offence to threaten a superior officer?

She chuckled softly over the hidden speakers, and Malcolm found himself joining her, without mirth. It was a release. Nothing more.

They thought I could change your mind, she breathed, with a twist of bitter amusement as the laughter subsided. The intercom sizzled with static that leapfrogged across his nerves like live sparks. They decided to let me talk to you one last time, for real. I think they thought I could convince you. There was a sniff, amplified by the speakers, one tear swelling deceptively until it sounded like a river. And you know what? I don't think I have it in me to argue with them. I meant to tell you to stand your ground. To . . . to refuse. But I can't.

Malcolm's head snapped up at that, as if there was anything but these walls to look at, or this blind light to stare back at him. The real Hoshi would never say that, he spat. It was a good try, whoever you are. But you don't fool me so easily. You're right about one thing, though: I am paranoid.

It's me, Lieutenant, she whispered, cracks in her voice shooting outwards from the centre like breaking glass. It's me, and I'm saying it. I have to. Ask me a question, any question. Something I would know, something they couldn't know. I'll prove it to you.

He buried his face again, hiding from what his head knew and what his heart believed; that this was Hoshi, and that it wasn't. That he was imagining dreams and nightmares in one evil mess. That she might be alive . . . and that she might, despite all he wanted to believe, say exactly what she said now. What's my favourite food, Ensign? he said, weakly. You should know that one.

Pineapple. Next time ask me something easy. There was a strain to her voice that hadn't been there before, a strain so human and so very, very frightened that it, rather than her plaintive reply, convinced him. She was real. Alive.

But she was asking the impossible of him, and that, in the face of all the facts, felt as unreal as the rest of his stay in this coffin. Hoshi, please don't cry, he said, pathetically.

Is that your way of trying to play nice? Or doing your duty as my superior officer? Even now, there was a hint of a smile to the way she baited and teased him and cornered him. Only somebody that felt something for him could smile with their voice that way. He found it as hard to accept as accepting Hoshi's voice itself . . . but that didn't make it any less true.

It's my way of stopping myself from joining you, he chuckled, feebly. The fingers of his left hand twisted restlessly in his hair as if it were somehow responsible for all of this, but he barely noticed. Except that that was what she had done, in the rain. She had tangled her hands in his hair. I thought the worst was over, he said, blankly. Looks like I was wrong. What are we going to do, Hoshi?

I was hoping you could tell me, she tried to joke. You always seem to know what to do.

His face creased unwillingly, against the disquiet boiling inside of him or because of it, he didn't know. He didn't know very much of anything anymore. I wish they'd just tortured me, he said, out of the blue. His voice had returned to its usual, obliquely calm tone, but it had sunk now into a level of quietude and humility that felt quite alien coming from his mouth. Shock, it seemed, had rendered him docile. Why didn't they?

They're not like us, Lieutenant, her voice murmured in reply. I've spent some time with them; they needed me to translate their language. These beings . . . I don't think they feel physical pain, and they heal almost instantly. I've seen them. Although they've learned enough of humans to know that hitting us keeps us in line, they don't understand. They don't understand that pain is unpleasant for us or that sometimes we bargain to avoid it.

Malcolm smiled grimly to a cell without eyes to see the sadness in it. They might not know much about physical torture, he sighed, tightly. But they certainly mastered the psychological kind. He scuffed his feet carefully on the cell's floor, considering them uncomfortably hard. He found he could concentrate on her voice, on her words, looking down this way. How have they treated you?

Better than you, she said. Her voice, all he had of her here, was dry as windblown ashes. So you can stop worrying. I'm all right. Silence. Then, quietly: You must be starving.

With a taut smile and his hand tightened depreciatively at the nape of his neck, Malcolm confessed: I hadn't really noticed. Forgive me if I haven't noticed much of anything for the past few hours.

I'm sorry. I know my being stupid enough to get caught spoiled all your plans.

It did tread on my toes a bit. The ease of their conversation was a sham, deathly predicaments spoken as if they were nothing more than small talk over dinner; both knew it. It seemed that neither cared. How long do we have?

Long enough, I think.

Are they listening?

They might have bugged your cell. You know—to be sure. I'm pretty certain they're more advanced than us in a lot of ways, and they've been studying everything I say for hours now as if they almost understood it. I wouldn't be surprised if they were taking all of this down. She sighed. Pretty soon they won't need me to translate their messages to you anymore.

For a moment, Malcolm's curiosity overrode his apathy. But why record your voice?

In other circumstances, Hoshi might have displayed an almost childlike excitement over the news she delivered next; but as it stood, she sounded only weary, and surprised that he had asked. They don't have vocal cords, Lieutenant. I think they must communicate among themselves by telepathy or some other device I haven't discovered yet. They have a written language I was able to translate some basic phrases from, but it's not much.

But why record you? Why not just let you talk to me? He knew he sounded almost desperate; the memory of that cold inhuman Hoshi, offering him the worst ultimatum of his life, echoed still in his ears. The idea that it had been some bizarre new form of psychological torture refused to leave him be . . . and the distant thought that he had been denied this contact with her, this brief but human contact, left him hollow with a voiceless black rage he had never felt before today.

They wanted to monitor me, she said, lifelessly. And they didn't want me to know what was being said. You know, that . . . that they intended to use me as the hostage. I figured it out anyway. For a moment, just a moment, she sounded terrifyingly close to that selfsame, twisted recording.

But he knew he would never tell her that.

Malcolm smashed his fist into the floor beside him. That's what they've been doing all along! he yelled, not caring if he startled her, or if she mistook his self-loathing for anger at her. Monitoring us, of course! The planet . . . they were watching.

He ran out of words as the full import of that brutal truth hit him; they had been watching. They had wanted the armoury officer, they had wanted the linguist, and had captured both; but by watching, by waiting, these aliens had learned far more of use than merely their identities. How could he have been so stupid as to play into their hands, feeding them incentives that would guarantee his attention?

They had seen he and Hoshi, among the trees, in the rain, stealing a moment thought to be secret. He had let his guard down, and it may yet cost them their lives. We're both dead anyway, Ensign, he said, far more coldly than he had intended. You know that, don't you?

No. And you can't, either. They told me . . . they told me they would let us both go, if we do as they say. We have no reason to believe they won't keep their word.

He laughed, bitterly. It was beginning to feel like a second voice, the pained smirk a second face, the one he showed when his real facade failed him. Now whose cheek's twitching? Wise up, Hoshi. If I refuse this time, they'll . . . they'll kill you. Then they'll torture me. Like you say, they know to hit us to keep us in line, even if they don't understand why. Believe me, they'll learn. And it will only be a matter of time before they track down Enterprise, and threaten me with all of their deaths the way they're threatening me with yours.

There was a silence. I wasn't suggesting you refuse, Lieutenant. You know I wasn't. And you know why, or you think you do. Just remember you're not the failure you think you are. Not with me, not with . . . anything. Her voice was unbreakably calm, perfectly even . . . and ready to crack like ice in water at any moment. I don't want to die without the chance to beg those chestnuts from Chef. She sniffed, and again the tiny sound thundered in the amplified speakers. Malcolm, listen, I don't have long, I can hear them coming back. Please, do this one thing for me.

You're asking me to fire on thousands of people, he murmured, his voice failing to come. He couldn't believe what he heard, what she asked of him, that she would be willing to trade this way. It went against everything he believed in . . . and everything he believed about her.

And maybe it was supposed to. Maybe he did know why she asked the impossible of him. You're not the failure you think you are. Nobody had ever said that to him before.

It's your decision, Ensign, he said, suddenly docile to her request. Conceding, in the turn of a second, to her wishes . . . and letting her know as much. For some reason he could not fathom, it was the ceiling he addressed. If it's what you think I should do.

It is, she breathed, a hush on a still air. Malcolm almost smiled, genuinely this time. It was what he had expected her to say, now that he understood. Remember how we played I-Spy, Lieutenant? Her voice was low with muted and darkened intimations.

How could I forget? he purred, a shiver tracing his spine with invisible fingers at the memory.

I think in the end you'll have to agree I won.

His mouth had gone dry as he teased her just this little bit further, warm with sudden peace, bouncing her bait back at her. If she was right, then she had won in almost every way he could imagine. Did you? I hadn't noticed.

I noticed you hadn't noticed. Listen, I have to go, I'm sorry. Remember what EM stands for, Malcolm. Remember. For me.

With a crackle of static and a hard pulse of feedback, she was silent. He was alone once more. And, alone, Malcolm turned and faced the console that had threatened to steal his life.

--------------------------------

This time his hands barely shook at all . . . as if running routine scans from his comfortable, familiar tactical station on the bridge after a good night's sleep and a satisfying breakfast, Hoshi only metres away at the comm with that barely-contained little half-smile she sometimes gave when she raised her head from her work to catch him quickly averting his eyes. His breathing had sunk into a low, patient rasp that he heard almost as if it came from someone else, and although the heat had swelled and the air had grown oppressively heavy, like molasses in January, his head was suddenly clear, the chill, crisp sensation he often felt after taking eucalpytus for a sore throat and then stepping out into a freezing winter breeze. The only sign of real unease was the thin sheen of sweat binding his uniform to his skin. Whatever else happened after, whatever came of what he was about to do, it was no longer solely his responsibility, his decision. Just knowing that he wasn't alone in this was enough, however insubstantial or transient a comfort it was, to make all the difference.

He wished he could say he felt calm—but it was neither serenity or assurity that cast the near-liquid cocoon of peace over him as he worked. There was a world of difference between true tranquility and the kind of forced, grim composure he lived his life by. Even T'Pol, with her placid Vulcan philosophies and her meditative tricks and protocols, couldn't attain to that. But still he wished, at this moment and in this situation, that he possessed her level of imperturbability and exactitude. Hoshi would tell him he needed to take a pill, probably. These days it seemed that Hoshi told him a lot of things.

Whatever else had been seamlessly woven into her message, never outright enough for an eavesdropper to decipher but clear enough, in the end, for him, she must have known something he didn't. She must have been trying, however obtusely, to Tell Him Something, long before her final cryptic clue was ever uttered. He didn't know how he knew when so little had been said; it was the kind of blind, unquestioning faith he had rarely felt towards anybody in his life before, the kind he had always seen as a mistake and a weakness in tactical affairs and had discouraged among his subordinates - he hadn't been joking when he said he was paranoid - but now he fell prey to it like a mouse to an owl. The smallest and most helpless of creatures falling to the wisest. Hoshi's was the brightest, the strongest, mind he had come across in years, and by far the warmest; he could trust her.

But the inherent pessimist in him didn't like it. Not one bit.

(You're not the failure you think you are). It rebounded, fading down into echoes that barely stirred dust, but its residue never receded very far from his mind; not only because of the clue it held, but because it had been praise. From her. She had been trying, it seemed, to tell him more than merely Something.

He had called himself a failure, in front of her, that very day, or as good as. The incident in the city, their one request of him unsuccessful and his efforts all but eclipsed by the luminous Ambassador Sato, as he had affectionately taken to calling her these past few days when she wasn't around, had branded him as such. He had stabilised an energy field before. He couldn't understand, to this very moment, why he had been unable to make it work a second time, when he had done nothing differently, when everything was in place. He had put it down to atmospheric interference of some kind . . . but maybe it had been nothing of the kind. He didn't know what Hoshi meant when she made that one very powerful statement, that he wasn't a failure—but he was beginning to guess as well as he needed to.

EM.

He knew what EM stood for, all right. And he knew, although he didn't know how, despite what he had witnessed and what he had been told these past few days, that his adjustments had worked.

At least, he hoped they had. He hoped and prayed she wasn't mistaken on this.

Because he was about to fire on the city, and if that barrier wasn't operational, then it, along with a good quarter of the bustling metropolis down there, would be gone.

The red dots he had seen before were much the same as the final targeting screen flashed up onto the console, moving red dots like ants, red dots he had known, had worked with, had nodded to in the streets and bought souvenirs from in the market. The scientists and engineers he had helped in their experiments. The little girl that had so innocently asked if he was Hoshi's boyfriend.

Maybe. All maybe, hinging on nothing more than blind faith that Hoshi was right. Maybe his shot would burst harmlessly into dispersed energy waves like UV striking an ozone layer. Maybe Hoshi would have the opportunity she wanted so much, to beg chestnuts from Chef when they returned.

Maybe he was Hoshi's boyfriend, if applying the term boy' to his weathered self wasn't being overly facetious. There was not a single one of those questions to which he could give a clear answer.

His hand hovered over the last of the controls, as it had done, it seemed, a hundred times or more before now. If he fired . . . if she was wrong . . . then what he did next may signal not only the end of five thousand lives, but the end of the warp 5 programme, the end of Starfleet, everything. The end of his own life, and Hoshi's. He hadn't let that thought crowd in on the immediate, pushing it aside, needing his head clear of distractions, but it came to him now, when it was too late to ask her, too late to offer her that decision, and now he was back where he had begun; making this decision, this fateful, final decision, alone.

He was tired of always being alone.

If he fired and the EM field wasn't active, then Starfleet would have no choice but to recall the Enterprise, as they had done once before in similar circumstances. The Vulcans would have all the evidence they ever needed to slow, or to stop, the progression of the warp 5 programme for good. And the two of them . . .

Well, suffice it to say he couldn't share Hoshi's very real, but hopelessly unfounded, optimism. These aliens wouldn't let them go. They may keep them indefinitely, making further demands of his expertise and hers, pushing the limits until they were no longer of any use . . . and then, curtains. With the push of a button, he gambled not five thousand lives, not ten thousand, but millions. And if the EM field did work, their release was by no means certain. The chances that their invisible captors would merely try again, presenting new persuasions, new tasks, were by far the most likely to come about.

Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. Dead if he did, and dead if he didn't. An ideal scenario and a fate worse than any they had consciously spoken of stared him in the face, spelled out in the formations of dots on a screen like a magic-eye picture hideously deformed by a play of shadows.

Malcolm closed his eyes, every muscle in his body frozen and stilled down to the last beat of his heart . . . and fired.

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It only occurred to Malcolm, in the quietest reaches of the night which passed - because to his own internal body clock it felt like the beginnings of the next night, one full day after their agreed rendez-vous with the Enterprise had been and gone - that for some time after, he was braced like a death-row prisoner against the wall, facing the silent witness of the debtor's door. It was hard to say in just what form he expected the bullet to come, literal or figurative; whether he imagined he detected gas in the air, the temperature of the room rising, or the faint and far-away echo of those long-awaited boots, finally coming for him. He had entered that rare state of hyper-stimulated awareness he always kept at bay on board ship; he was far too volatile in this frame of mind to allow himself to indulge it when there were crew around that may inadvertently get hurt. He remembered, wryly, that one young ensign had crept up on him once in the armoury, and understandably hadn't done so again. It made him too dangerous when he had a team to command, but here . . . well, here, unless he was visited by a miracle, he had only himself and the wall to worry about.

Unable to pace, unable even to stand, and reluctant to lie on that board-hard bunk - too predictable - Malcolm settled himself in the centre of the floor, away from the walls, away from the console, clear of anything which may contain a sharp object or a contact toxin. The two things he could not protect against, and must resign himself to, was the possibility of their electrifying the floor or somehow stopping the flow of air through the unseen ventilation. So he sat, waiting for time to catch up with him, feeling trapped in an endless repeating hour which never altered, never drew to an end, but just went round and round like a carousel on stiff hinges. He wanted to allow himself to wonder about a great deal of things - where Hoshi may be, and if she were still alive; if his hosts would come up with a second request, and what it might be; if the captain had launched a search party for them yet. He wanted the luxury of thinking, if only to escape this ceaseless watching and waiting, but couldn't afford to . . . because he was fairly certain, even from this remote distance, that he wouldn't like all the answers he came up with.

The worst of his questions, though, couldn't be answered - at least, not for himself, and not in here. He had meant to check the sensors for biosigns after the launch, hoping to see that endless army of bullseyes marching about their business, oblivious of what had almost befallen them . . . or, perhaps, mourn the catastrophic loss of every single one of them for a wide radius. He had been able to satisfy himself of neither before the console blinked off, without his intervention, its taunting grin of lights more potent in its absence than ever it had been when lit. With no way to know if their plan had worked, he could do nothing to prepare for the inevitable consequences of each. But then, he didn't expect they would get out alive, either way, did he?

It may have been hours or minutes later when he thought he detected something different in the air, something sulphurous; it was little more than a crackle on the back of his tongue, and a slight prickling sensation in his eyes, but it made his spine straighten instinctively, coiled like a cat waiting to spring. So they had chosen the cowardly route, after all. He supposed he shouldn't have expected any better from creatures who felt no pain and seemingly knew no fear. He might have checked his lungs against it, holding out for the last; but where would the point be in that? There was no way out of this cell, and little oxygen to hold on to. It would be cleaner, less painful, to breathe deeply, to drink it in like water in a desert, and succumb to it willingly. Quickly.

It was better than drowning, at least.

Better than drowning.