TATTOO

He knew this place. It was a discordant memory, a note out of place in the melody, but it was real enough; elusive, refusing to fully rise to the surface, but real. Like the night of the storm, like the night in the park back home when the apple trees were brimming with juice and ready for harvest, it was a place pulled kicking and screaming from the depths of his memory . . . and made flesh in his dream. And like that previous time, he was alone, and adopting the part of his child self, speaking the lines and making the moves he had made back then, eyes and ears open and awaiting that ambiguous presence he knew would come when night fell.

Reed searched the sky above him, observing the day's end, watching the evening trailing away in the west to night, indigo bleeding out into the peach and violet like ink spilt on the sky. Rain threatened in the cold, acidic air. The Dark Man always came, in all his available memories, at night, earning the name Reed had unwittingly given him; while these final threads of light remained, he could rest easy, and observe.

A good security officer always looks about him before he does anything else. He always knows the terrain, he reminded himself, holding onto the assertion of self the thought gave him like a drowning man holding a life preserver. That he used a naval illustration, ironically, did not escape him.

The wind whispered in the trees as he strolled past them, and in the distance, he heard the faint, rhythmic squeak of a rusty swing swaying in the breeze. Leaves rattled along the ground, litter fluttering out of a nearby recycling bin and tumbling away down the concrete path. Malcolm's eyes hawkishly devoured the lay of the land about him, the empty park and the light draining from this starkly tangible dreamworld, the flat silver quality of the colorless grass and trees and path, and the striking flares of vibrant color in the western horizon. Dark stealing the day away. Black taking the light. It was refreshing, after so many months on a starship where artificial daylight ruled his waking hours and artificial moonlight his night, to be suddenly brought into the glowing halo of an earth sunset, even if it was only a dream.

The memory he had been transported to was dim, but growing brighter with each moment as the air grew darker. He had come to this part of the park alone, once; he remembered it now the way a line of a song will bring back the events of a day long forgotten. He remembered walking here as a small boy, knowing he shouldn't be out alone, knowing he should be at home studying. He remembered things, quite suddenly, that he never had before.

He had just wanted to see the pond. That was all.

He had seen it from a distance, only a few days before the incident in question, on his way home through the park with Madeline and his mum. It had lie still and silent beyond the stretch of grass they walked along, a brooding blue-black beyond his mother's obscuring form, beckoning his curiosity sweetly. His primary interest may have been with the stars, but he was a Reed—a love of water would always be in his blood, coursing through his veins.

Reed stood now listening to the trees, remembering the last time the park had been so eerily silent as this. The only time it had been so eerily silent as this. Away to his right, the dark eye of the pond called him, its voice as cold and black as the water itself, its whisper soothing in the calm. He knew it was foolish, against every instinct Starfleet had ever bred into him, but he wanted to go to it. Maybe he was supposed to go to it . . . the way he had unquestioningly gone to it back then.

His feet moved almost without his consent, carrying him down the darkening path to the even darker water. Its edge looked unsafe, sunbaked mud crumbling into the deep, and in his waking day his innate caution would have held him back from it; but here, he could feel his resolve melting like ice cream on a hot day, and the trusting, blind instinct of the boy he had been burrowed quietly up from its grave. He knelt by its edge, knelt as he had once before, and peered into the ebony disc, looking for the milky-faint ghost of himself in the rippling water. He expected to look older, older than he had ever felt possible, but it was the unworn face of a child that looked back.

But I am older, he thought, his palm fluttering across the surface in a butterfly kiss . . . testing the coldness after the burning fever of his last disastrous attempts at sleep. A single raindrop struck his outstretched hand, stunning him from the spell . . . but not breaking it. He was afraid he had regressed too far for that. A little bit of him wished that Hoshi could have shared this dream with him, made sense of a situation he was still too close to; her presence had been pacifying, out there in the real world. But even T'Pol, with her often secret abilities, had apparently been unable to do that.

Rain struck tiny chips from the stillness, breaking the deep, ringing hollowly into the earth around him. Malcolm did not even notice. His reflection was there, still unbroken, its image protected from the shattering rain by the line of his body over it, his back absorbing the raindrops as they fell. He was going to get soaked—if one could get soaked in a dream—but he no longer cared. Hoshi was right; they needed to know.

It was then that the image changed.

It was his face, all right; it was him, his clear blue eyes, his thick brown hair, his high, strong cheekbones; it was him, but it was not him. A shadow lingered beneath the surface, a face within a face, a face with nothing in its features but emptiness. Reed watched, captivated—only vaguely aware, somewhere in the rafters of his mind, that he ought to be afraid.

And then, it spoke.

Hello again, the image whispered.

His heart in his mouth, Reed made himself look again; the image was there, a ghostly imprint behind his own, but when he tried to focus through his own face to it, it blurred maddeningly. When his eyes relaxed again, it swam back like a broken cloud reforming in the sky.

A magic eye picture, he thought, absently. I was always terrible at those. Too much the stickler for detail.

I agree, the image said. The Dark Man, for there was no doubt in Reed's mind that it was he, said.

Reed started, rearing back a little in surprise and instinctive revulsion.

You . . . you can read my mind? he demanded.

This is your mind, the voice replied. But you're not in control of it. Not when you're asleep.

These days I'm starting to wonder if I'm in control of it when I'm awake, Reed muttered. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to dwell on the next logical question; if he was not in control of his own mind in his dreams, who was? Who are you? he asked the flickering phantom.

I said I would tell you when you needed to know. The voice lilted, simmered, a breath on the wind, a rattle in the dark.

Then tell me what I do need to know, Reed pressed, his voice dropping to a warning purr between gritted teeth. His authoritative voice, the one he pulled on Hoshi when she allowed her nerves to cloud her brilliant mind, the one he used to unnerve subordinates that wandered too far out of line. Then he paused, repeating the sentence to himself. Wait a minute; how is it I can talk to you? Why aren't I just repeating what I said, like last time?

I merely wanted to remind you last time. I wanted you to remember me. Now I want to talk to you. The shade shimmered with a brief semblance of light, striking sparks from the treacle-black water. Do you remember the last time we met at this pool?

Reed hesitated. He was never one to spill his thoughts at random, without the conscious decision to do so—but if this was his mind, if both of them existed in his mind, then what he did or didn't say made no difference. The Dark Man would know, whatever he did. I do now.

What happened? Tell me.

A sudden, bursting flash of memory rushed through Reed like a gale, assaulting him with sensations consciously lost; the awful cold wetness all around him, his clothes weighing him down, the flat, silty metal taste in his mouth like the air before a storm, struggling . . . silence.

I fell in, he murmured, to himself. His voice was a lifeless husk, collapsing to nothing on the fizzing air. He barely felt the rain his dream had brought him, barely smelled the bubbling citrus scent rising from the mud beneath his hands.



You saved me.

The image nodded, but only once, and only the barest dip. Look at your hand.

Reed glanced down at the bluish veins and pale skin he had scratched at so viciously only earlier tonight, where that bone-deep itch had begun, spread, and concentrated. There, where raw skin should be, a suggestion of a tattoo glimmered in the gloom. A black arrow, pointing upwards into the shadows of his sleeve.

Do you remember anything else?

Reed gulped, phantoms of an old wound and an old pain sizzling in the muscles of his left shoulder. He tensed against it, sinew hardening to stone in the space between collar and bicep. I hit a rock. Tore open my shoulder. You told me . . .

. . . that when the wound healed, it would be time for you to know.

But I never did know. It closed about a week later and you never told me a thing. I can't even remember you ever coming back.

You will. Look again.

Reed humored him, knowing that his dream-uniform would obscure his view . . . and then he stopped, his smugness evaporating. His uniform had gone; he was wearing the clothes he had worn the day he fell into the pond, replicas his adult size and shape, but identical in every other respect. Somehow, he hadn't expected that.

His fingers trembled as he reached up to his throat and unbuttoned the shirt, the cotton peeling wetly from his rain-soaked arm with a faint sucking sound. There, in stark white stitches like rows of crocodile teeth, was the scar he had carried all those years. Faint to an untrained eye, but it was all too bold to his.

When it's healed . . . then I'll tell you what you want to know, the Dark Man breathed. But until then, I have a task for you to do.

Reed froze at the shards of ice spiking the voice, the lulling calm veiling it only serving to intensify its bite. What if I refuse? he asked.

For an instant, just an instant and no more, the form that had fused into the shade beneath his own child's reflection sharpened, clarified to a brilliant, crystal-clear image of a face too fleeting to grasp, quicksilver in the depths. Then it was gone, melted back into the ripple and quiver of the rain-tapped surface.

It hit him, then; so forcefully, like a rock to the head, that he collapsed back on his heels in alarm. That tapping staccato on his shower door . . . the raindrops striking the water. They were the same.

Alone in his quarters, he had been hearing the rain through a barrier of three decades.

I said what if I refuse? he demanded, sickly.

You can't refuse. Now . . . come closer. And I'll tell you what to do.

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It was the rhythm that woke her, or perhaps, more accurately, its grating absence. In these past months Hoshi had not merely acclimatized to those sounds, nor stopped at deconstructing their accidental language; she had become one with it, allowing her sleep to regulate to Enterprise's pulse, realizing that to embrace it and ride those waves was the only way to overcome her initial apprehension of them. It was like trying to swim in a surging tide—it was futile to keep your own time. You just had to ride the waves, lean into the gravity of the riptide that carried you.

Those waves were breaking, now, the engine's logical song altering in pitch, in modulation . . . in character. The Enterprise, she realized, was slowing. And that was what had waked her.

Hoshi stretched experimentally where she lie, slumped, her cheek rested on a cold, smooth surface, her fingers splayed and her hand palm-down beside her face. Her hair had shaken loose and cascaded over her face in a sleek black waterfall, the dark net catching the light before it reached her eyes.

She explored the surface hesitantly, suspicion dawning but denied until it became irrefutable. Cold. Smooth.

Slumped.

She had fallen asleep at her desk, her so far unsuccessful work smothered beneath her weary body. Hoshi sat up, head cradled woozily in her hands. There was an invasive hum to the air which was new, and which clanked at intervals with a crunching, unhealthy snap.

Enterprise is calling for help, she thought, groggily. That's what that sound is. It shouldn't be happening and it sounds wrong because it is wrong. I should call Commander Tucker and tell him . . .

As Hoshi straightened her complaining spine, a siren shrilled through the ship, obliterating that whine and clunk she had heard and interpreted. A tactical alert siren.

It was then, in almost perfect synchronization with Enterprise's scream, that the ship came to a dead halt.

she ventured, sure that the siren would have waked him from even the deepest dream. She wanted the confirmation, the security if the pun could be excused, of hearing everything confirmed by a superior officer. Lieutenant, did you feel that?

There was no answer. Hoshi turned to her bed, already knowing, as she did so, what she would see.

He was gone.