BABEL, PART TWO

Reed was beckoned from a daze always modestly shy of true sleep by the whistle of his communicator, invading his cautious rest. A part of his wakefulness was his energy and the myriad of seemingly isolated thoughts stitched by invisible threads he could not trace; but more than half was his own reluctance to descend too deep. To meet the Dark Man again, after his . . . indiscretion. To open his mind to any further intrusion. In the three hours since the captain unwillingly fastened the handcuffs and sealed him in this room, he had been held back from sleep with the Reed stubbornness he had been working all too hard to overcome, before today.

The call to duty, as he imagined this communication must be, was a much-appreciated wake up call. Also, in its way, an opportunity to take his stand for his ship by means of resuming active duty.

It was Hoshi's voice, blurred with sleepiness, but taut with unspoken nerves. The uncertain tone made his heart plummet into the pit of his stomach like a hurtling lift. Malcolm, are you awake?

he replied, to be contrary—but he was secretly heartened to hear a friendly voice breaking his boredom. Why are you awake, Ensign? he returned, slyly. Didn't the captain order you to get some rest?

There was a trace of static over the com line, but nothing else for a long minute. Reed smiled in spite of himself; he had the knack of making her nervous when he used the words Ensign' and order' in the same sentence. He had allowed himself the habit for the sake of being facetious from time to time.

I had something to do, she replied, evasively.

Yes, it's called Reed shot back.

Something else. Decrypting those nanobots you gave me, if you must know.

Reed sighed, hearing the tentative eagerness and . . . hope . . . in her voice, and feeling it stab at him like broken glass. Because, beneath that glimmer of wavering optimism, her weariness weighted her usually perfect diction into a grim stubbornness reminiscent of his own. And already he was filled with a sense of predestinate failure on her behalf, anticipating inevitable disappointment.

You've done enough already, Hoshi, he said, softly, closing his eyes as if to blot out the memory of the unfair order he had given her in engineering. He supposed he would never have the courage to ask her why she had cried for him, when he had made only perfunctory efforts to get to know her as a friend would.

I know, she replied, abruptly. That's why I had to do this.

I ordered you to shoot, Ensign. Don't blame yourself.

No, you didn't. You asked me, Lieutenant. I did it because you're my friend.

Reed laughed, not immune to her subtle retaliation. I seem to remember somebody telling me that friends don't shoot friends.

Sometimes they do.

All right. What have you found?

It's hard to say, sir. I thought I'd broken the encryption, but the moment the algorithm kicked in, the data . . . well, it rescrambled.

Rescrambled? Is that a technical term, or are you just preoccupied with breakfast? he teased, gently. His gaze wandered idly across the far wall, lingering at the heavily framed mirror where he always combed his wilful hair into submission; dismissing, as he looked, the flash of errant black he thought he saw there.

I'm serious, sir. The moment the encryption cleared it spontaneously re-encrypted itself using a completely different algorithm than the last one. It's happened three times, sir.'

So you're saying the encryption can't be broken? His suspicions concerning the nanobots and their mysterious owners sharpened vividly with each passing moment. What could those Vulcan impostors have to hide? Is it something they don't want us to see?

Well, every time it's asked for a pass code. I bypassed it. Maybe if we had the code the encryption sequence wouldn't begin a new cycle each time.

That's a big maybe', Ensign, Reed mused. But you did your best. Did you inform the captain?

I'm on my way now.

Reed sensed the imminent termination of the conversation, choosing, for the moment, to ignore the fact she had elected to tell him ahead of the captain—or perhaps gauge his reaction to it to report to the captain, more likely—and decided to take a calculated risk. If nothing else good had come from the previous night, then Hoshi had definitely proved herself trustworthy. Ensign, I have to say that what you've just told me doesn't come as much of a surprise. He hesitated, awaiting the silent hijack of a cough in his throat or a block in his windpipe . . . but the moment passed, the first words of confession dying on the still air, and nothing came to challenge his freedom of speech but his own reticence. Maybe his choking in the captain's ready room had been nothing more sinister than a coincidence, after all.

Do you know something, Malcolm? Hoshi's voice was trembling; he could hear her stillness over the com. Her use of proper address dropped, and he noticed an odd pattern he had given little thought to, throughout the night; when their conversation had been casual, she used his name. His awful, stuffy, boring name. Only from Hoshi's lips, it didn't sound so bad. She used his name, something he had rarely heard her do before. He had never asked her to, perhaps shouldn't encourage her to; but she did, and he let her.

he admitted, cautiously.

Did you dream it?

Yes and no. That experience—he supposed he would eventually have to accept it as a breed of near-death experience, but the inaccuracy of the term grated—had been like a dream, partly lucid as before, partly arbitrary as any other dream . . . but still it had not been a dream.

He had been in the shadowlands. Perhaps, quite literally, where no man has gone before.

Malcolm, if you know something, then you should tell Captain Archer, Hoshi prodded, gently.

I tried, Hoshi. But . . . He had been going to say but the Dark Man stopped me' instead, only a spiked tickle came, his tongue attempting to form words from sounds his throat failed to make. The mirror that had caught his attention once already tonight flickered with a drifting thread of black, like a column of ash rising from a blazing fire, but he hastily turned his gaze away. He coughed, abandoning that line of thought, and found that the words flowed again fluidly. You see what happens? Every time I try to tell what I know I lose my voice. If I try again, I choke. I know . . . but I'm afraid, Ensign, that I can't divulge more than that.

Hoshi was speechless herself a moment, absorbing this unusual claim. So . . . she mused, if you come up with a plan to find out who those two at Devoli V were, and where the nanobots should go from here, then . . .

Then you're going to have to trust me. All of you. Although I'm not sure the captain's as convinced as you are that I'm not imagining things, Reed interceded ruefully, and sparing a glance for the handcuffs. Do you think I'm imagining things, Ensign?

No. No, I don't think you're imagining things. You're not the type.

He smiled, twisting a little coyly in his bunk. And are you the type that often talks to men handcuffed to the bed, Hoshi?

Wouldn't you like to know? she joked . . . and cut the link.

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Hoshi watched the captain pace, her face half-taken by a smile of familiarity. The whitened mark on the deck plates ran across the immediate patch of floor opposite the doorway—the strip he trod most often.

I don't like it, Hoshi, Archer said, sharply. Malcolm's obviously not himself, and now T'Pol's acting just as strange as he is. But I can't see the connection between them.

No, sir, Hoshi agreed, absently. She was unable to shake Reed's odd confession from her mind, and it inevitably tainted the discussion she entered into now. Whatever the connection was, she was sure that the lieutenant knew of it . . . and for reasons he had been unable to disclose, could not say. But he's not sleeping in there. And I'm only sitting up worrying anyway, now that the encryption's turned out to be impossible to break. I'm sure it would be all right, just for a couple of hours.

Usually I wouldn't hesitate, Hoshi. But I don't want you in any danger. Those Vulcans at VISAC—they warned me he might start hallucinating. That there may be side effects. Well, I don't like the side effects I've seen so far. He sighed, and his pacing slowed, and halted before her. Except that we don't even know they were Vulcans.

she agreed, eyeing the captain warily. Again, she felt certain that Reed knew as much, too . . . and may even have an idea who they really were. What the nanobots really were. After all . . . he had predicted this reaction in the captain easily enough. Captain, Malcolm told me that he . . . knew things. About what was happening to him. But he said that every time he tries to speak something stops him. The nanobots?

All of this started when they came aboard. I think I'd have to agree with you. But what he knows and what he thinks he knows are two different things. How do we know that he's not imagining things?

We don't, Hoshi murmured; but secretly, she did. She believed him. Lieutenant Reed wasn't the type to give in to flights of fancy. She had an advantage the captain did not have; she had witnessed Reed in command, when the three senior officers were away from the ship, and responsibility for Starfleet's finest had fallen on his shoulders. She had seen that fire in his eyes, that spring in his step . . . and most of all, she had heard the striking vibrato in his voice, stronger, bolder, and certain of himself to a fault. He was no dreamer. But . . . has he ever been wrong?

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He could feel it, crawling on his skin like oil that would not be absorbed, could see it, a fine film trapping sparks of pale light like lines of fire. But most of all, he could smell it rising from his pores, stronger and deeper than ever; that sugary fizz, as if he was lying in a pool of spilt battery acid.

The Dark Man would visit him soon.

Reed lie back on his bunk, the fingers of his left hand curling idly around the manacles, waiting. Now that the rush of the night was over and he found himself alone with time to contemplate, he discovered a paradox he hadn't expected. A part of him wanted to sleep, yearning for the routine that would come from it. An anger too hot to extinguish and a curiosity too thirsty to quench made him want answers the Dark Man could give only in his dreams—but still a part of him wanted to take advantage of this energy, and stay awake to spite him.

The dimness cooled, and the steady hum of the engines sent gentle vibrations through the bunk beneath him, right hand splayed palm-down to absorb the thrum. Imaginary, of course; but the physical presence of the ship's living guts was a comforting one. Evidently, the damage he had done to engineering had only been superficial, and Lieutenant Hess had been busy since.

He let his gaze wander about the room, alighting first on the large bronze mirror on the facing wall, secondly on the smaller item beside it—a painting of the Enterprise. The position of the two had been deliberate, and yet not; a Freudian decision, in a sense. The mirror had been a present from his father, so many years ago that he had eventually lost count. An officer at his best, it was said, is always well groomed. As a boy he had been encouraged to stand and comb his wild hair in front of that mirror for hours, sweeping each wiry strand where it belonged, forcing submission to a precept set years before in the history of Reed men. He kept that mirror, he supposed, as a reminder—a reminder that space, and Starfleet, was his decision, and that the stars had held their own unique allure; that of a fresh start, the opportunity to carve his own future.

The painting was the reverse, a return strike against his father's distrust of Starfleet. A small gesture, and yet, perhaps, not so small.

A movement caught his eye, stark, darting, caught at the edge of his peripheral vision; a flash of black, in the mirror. So he hadn't imagined it. Some manifestation of his unwanted visitor, like the tapping sounds in his shower, like the words in the steam, was surfacing in the glass. Be it all in his mind, or out of it.

I can't say that you're scaring me, or whatever it is you hope to do this time, Reed said aloud, to the empty room. I fully intend to stay awake for as long as I can, and as I understand it, that will almost certainly damage your chances of holding a conversation with me.

Well, that's a shame, said a voice.

It came from the mirror.

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He trained hawkish eyes on the immaculate surface, searching for some disturbance in the room's dull reflections, waiting for an encore. It had been dark, that shape, fluttering like ravens' wings, an emptiness cut from normal space. Cut from the world as the shape in his most distant dreams had been, a nothing in familiar surroundings. A part of him did not want the Dark Man ever to contact him again, answers or no answers. Only a part of him did.

The touch-tone beeping of somebody entering the security code in the door startled him from his rapt guard, and the door glided open with a swish like silk over water. Like the whisper of a coat about the Dark Man's legs.

Malcolm twisted, yanking irritably at the cuff that prevented him from turning to see who entered. From where he lie, he could see nothing of the door.

It's me, came a voice he had heard often throughout the night. Reed's eyes flickered to the mirror opposite and the clear reflection of Hoshi there, standing pale and hesitant behind him. Her hair was fixed but her eyes burned darkly in a net of fatigued shadows and worry lines.

he breathed, in relief. Come in.

The sound of soft footfalls crept up behind him, and he watched her reflection approach his and halt at his shoulder. Her fingers tangled in the chain of the handcuffs, considering them a moment.

The captain said I could unlock these, she said, wistfully. He says if you have a guard sit up with you there's no need for them.

Reed smiled indulgently, just a hint of a curve to his lips. He would never admit as much, but he was relieved beyond words at this unexpected company. And just who might that be, Ensign? You?

She returned the smile, and as he watched it in his mirror it seemed to hide a thousand mysteries. Like he did. Why not? she said.