Thank you all again for reviewing. I apologize if some of you found the first part confusing. You bring up a good point; I sometimes forget that while I know what I'm trying to say, no one else does, so I have to remember to write as if I'm reading it, too. I'll try harder not to be (too) confusing in the future.
JUST A DREAM
"Stop it, Malcolm," Trip said for the seventh time, having regained control of his own lips once more.
I can't help it. There isn't any other way for me to communicate.
"Are you going to be stuck in there forever?"
I most certainly hope not, Commander. Look on the bright side, at least you aren't pregnant again.
"This is worse than being pregnant by a long shot."
Malcolm laughed silently, knowing full well that Tucker could hear him even if no one else could. The doctor, Travis Mayweather, and the transporter tech, Roger Jamison, all gaped at the one-sided conversation. Of course, his laughter held a somewhat nervous tinge to it; what if Trip was right, and there was no way to get back into his own body? He didn't know if there was a way to even get OUT of Trip's body.
Don't think about that now, he said to himself, keeping the thought private from the commander. You'll only go mad.
Travis grunted as the shuttle lurched and scraped into place. "Home sweet home," he said. "We're the only ones on the ship, Commander...uh, and Lieutenant, too."
"Thank you, Ensign."
"STOP THAT RIGHT NOW."
Neither of them missed Travis' eyes rolling up towards the ceiling. "I wish I had a video recorder," said Jamison under his breath, obviously quite amused by the whole thing. "This is better than Gollum."
"If you don't mind," said Phlox tersely, "I could use some help getting my patients to Sickbay."
Malcolm's consciousness flared with such sudden fear and anger that Trip stumbled and nearly dropped Ensign Harris onto the walkway floor. "What? What's in Sickbay?" asked the commander, steadying himself.
I am.
"Oh. I forgot about that," said Trip.
You know, you can speak silently and I can still hear you.
"I like speaking out loud. Lets me know I'm not going crazy."
Going? How do you know you aren't? Maybe I am, and this is all just a dream. Nothing real at all here. Oh, God. Maybe I really am dead.
"Malcolm. Calm down," said Trip. The doors to Sickbay swooshed open, and neither man knew who made their shared body shudder. The Betweeners had not bothered to unhook Malcolm and Hoshi from the life-support.
"Why bother?" said a voice. Malcolm glanced around through Trip's eyes and saw Thetik standing at the head of his biobed, one hand poised just above Malcolm's slowly rising and falling chest. "You can't get back anyway. If you come back to the portal, you will have to bring these empty shells to inhabit. And we will be ready for you, Malcolm Reed, and when you leave your friend's body you will be cast into the void. And we will have two bodies instead of only one."
Go to hell, said Malcolm.
"I'm afraid hell is reserved for you, my dear child." Lazily Thetik stepped away from the pale wraith-Malcolm on the bed, and came towards Tucker. Until that moment Malcolm had not realized that he was controlling Trip's muscles, holding them stock-still and glaring at the Betweener.
"And I wouldn't stay too long in your friend there's mind, either. We've tried it, and the host always dies. You must take over to survive. You can leave it at any time, Malcolm Reed, but you cannot get back in."
Go away.
"Go away? We can wait. We are very good at that." Thetik flashed one more smile at them and turned away. "You may yet stop us from taking what is ours, Malcolm Reed, but you will not save yourself. You were doomed the moment you heard our voices in your head."
As the Betweener disappeared Malcolm unclenched Trip's fists and finally let the commander go. "WHAT IN BLAZES ARE YOU DOING!" exploded Trip. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD, MALCOLM!"
"Let me save Enterprise," whispered Malcolm through Trip's throat, marching them towards the transporter. "Then I'll leave you alone forever."
Tucker, fuming, didn't bother to ask what Malcolm meant by that, and Malcolm did not bother to tell him.
****************
"Okay," said Archer. "You're next." He nodded to Cook, who let go of the line of hands and stepped away, disappearing in a shimmer of sparkling dust. Hoshi breathed a sigh of relief through Archer's mouth. Only sixteen crew members to go. Six times already they had needed to forcibly restrain crewmen from heading back towards Falling Rocks.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pyrrih and several others standing, just waiting. "We should beam up two at a time. It's going to get easier for them to take us as there are less of us," she said, using Archer's mouth. They'd already figured out that the power of the Betweeners was rather limited; they couldn't strongly control more than a few people at a time. Hoshi thought that they'd probably had help from the Betweeners already in possession of a mind to bring the entire crew down before.
"Stop struggling, Hoshi," said Pyrrih. She did not reply, just made the captain's hands clench more tightly around T'Pol and Lieutenant Hess. Now there were fourteen.
Beside her, T'Pol stirred and tried to let go of Archer's hand. He gripped it as hard as he could and shook her sharply. She jumped and shook her head, looking more bemused than Hoshi had ever seen her.
"Don't let them do it, T'Pol," said Archer warningly. "Hess and Simons, you're up." The two stepped away from the line and glanced at each other as they shimmered off of the planet.
Eight remaining. "Four at a time," said Hoshi.
Archer did not like that idea, she could feel it, and truth to tell, neither did she, but she liked the idea of being possessed even less. Four of the crew, murmuring anxiously amongst themselves, stepped away. Then the last four dropped hands. Immediately they felt the Betweeners struggling to gain control, but the transporters were too quick. "Get us away from this planet," Archer ordered the moment he materialized inside the transport chamber. "I don't care where, just get us out of here."
"Aye, sir," said Mayweather over the com, and Hoshi heard the warp engines purr as they sprang into life. Archer strode directly to Sickbay, directing anyone who asked him a question to T'Pol.
Do you have any idea how to get them out? he asked Hoshi silently.
No, sir. I don't know how.
He shook his head. "How are they, doctor?" he asked as he walked through the Sickbay doors.
"Still stunned," said Phlox. "But there is definitely evidence of the same brainwave patterns that I found in Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Sato three days ago, when they first complained to me of their nightmares."
"Do you have any idea how to get them out?" asked the captain, and Phlox shook his head.
"I have an idea," said Trip's voice in a British accent. Archer and the doctor turned around; Hoshi wondered how long he had been standing there.
"What's your idea, Com-- um, Lieutenant?" said Archer.
He stepped away from the wall, uncrossing Trip's arms. Hoshi saw in his eyes--Malcolm's eyes at the moment--that dead, haunted look once more. "Kill them." Hoshi and Archer both gasped at the same time. "Kill them and then revive them. That will force the Betweener out," he said.
"And if it doesn't?" asked Phlox, his usual cheerfulness completely absent.
"Then we try something else," said Malcolm. "You can revive them, can't you? Stop their hearts for a few moments and then start them again?"
"Can you do it?" asked Archer. Hoshi wondered how he could say it so coolly.
"I can do it," said Phlox. "I do not want to do it. But I can do it."
Archer nodded and the doctor, face grim, set about making preparations.
"Malcolm, where is Trip?" said the captain.
"He's fighting tooth and nail to get back up here," said Malcolm coldly. "But I need control right now."
"What makes you think this will work?"
"Something that one of them told me," said Malcolm. Hoshi shivered; she did not like hearing his voice come from Tucker's mouth one bit. Did Archer sound like her when she used his mouth? "They want to experience death. That makes me think that they die as well when their new hosts do. And they don't have a mind to hold on to when they die, so I think it is final."
Archer shook his head. "That's a pretty tenuous theory," he said. "But it's the only one we've got, I guess." He looked back at Malcolm/Trip. "Why did they want you two out of the way?"
"We would have warned you if they'd have let us stay," said Malcolm. "We would have seen them and thought that something odd was going on and told you not to go near that planet."
You didn't listen to us about the nightmares, though, Hoshi said to Archer. So I don't know why they bothered. Would you have listened to us about hallucinations?
Archer did not respond, but she could feel his anger. "I'm ready," said Phlox. "We will try with Ensign Harris first."
Phlox had stuck monitors and electrodes all over the young man's bare chest and face, with a mask and tube of oxygen over his mouth. With a grim face he nodded to the captain, and pressed one button on the display. The ensign jerked upwards, gave one long sigh, and stilled.
For a moment there was no sound except the long, flat whine of the heart monitor. "How long?" asked Phlox.
"Not long," said Malcolm. Hoshi noticed that his face contorted as he spoke. Trip must be fighting with him for control.
The doctor pressed the button again, and the electrodes lit up with sparks. Harris' chest rose suddenly as the oxygen mask inflated his lungs, and the heart monitor beeped again.
"Did it work?" Hoshi was not sure who had asked. She couldn't seem to hear anything properly anymore except the whine of the beeping monitors.
"C-Captain?" coughed Harris, sitting up slowly. "What happened?"
"It worked," said Archer jubilantly. "Good job, Lieutenant!" He slapped Trip's back and went up to speak to Harris. Hoshi could not help but go along, but she caught a glimpse of Malcolm out of the corner of her eye and wondered what else was troubling him.
Phlox moved to the other biobeds and began to attach the same electrodes to Crewman Sepanik and Ensign Vinich.
"So now you kill us," came Pyrrih's voice.
I'm sorry. What you're doing is just wrong. It's their lives you're taking!
"And do we not also deserve the chance to live?" he asked plaintively.
Don't they?
"We are just as sentient as they are," he said. "We are just as individual."
You are taking their lives away from them.
Like you took our lives away from us! spat Malcolm, suddenly interjecting himself into the conversation.
"We did. But it was necessary, don't you understand?"
Sepanik sat up in bed and coughed harshly, reaching out to Phlox as he clucked and fussed over his patient. "Another one," said Pyrrih, but in his voice there was awe rather than grief. "Another one." Hoshi heard it this time: envy.
You want to die, she said simply.
"I want to get out of this cursed existence!" cried Pyrrih so harshly that Hoshi wondered how it was that no one but Malcolm heard it.
Malcolm said, Put yourself in the void for a few thousand years. You'll go mad after a while and never know anything else. Then he swung Trip's body around and stared at the wall.
"That is what will be done to you, you snivelling little wretch!" cried the Betweener, puffing up with rage. "You think we are finished? They will return to try and save you. We know they will."
He disappeared. Hoshi felt around for Malcolm's mental signature and said silently, Malcolm, it will be okay, it will be okay.
But apparently she could only hear him when a Betweener spoke to them as well, because if he answered she did not hear it.
****************
Archer woke that night with a hammer pounding between his temples. When Hoshi's soft thought asked him what was wrong, he screamed at the pain and fell to the floor as Porthos whined.
He hardly even felt it when she wrested control away from him and rushed his body out the door and into the hallway. His mind burned and burned, and every time she reassured him, it only made things worse.
"Get out of my head," he whispered, and he could not tell if he had actually spoken the words aloud, not knowing and hardly caring where the ensign made his body go. "Get out get out get out get out get out get out..."
***************
Sorry, another cliffhanger. But doesn't that make you feel better knowing there's still more yet to come ?
