EIGHT A WISH


Each doorway was identical to the last, first drifting open like a body of water breaking in two then pooling together behind her. It was a maze with no turns, no forks, no corners; she merely took the exits presented to her. Every room was the same.

And then Hoshi came to a room that was not the same. In fact, it was barely a room at all.

She found herself baby stepping out onto a narrow ledge, the gaping doorway at her back and darkness in front, looking out over an abyss deeper than the foundations of mountains. To her left ran a sheer wall of sheet metal, climbing to impenetrable shadows and a ceiling shrouded from view in black mist, yawning down below into a chasm whose bottom she could not see.

Her path ended abruptly with that ledge no wider than the span of her stretched hand. Hoshi looked back over her shoulder into the maze she had left, then out over the chasm. There was no logical reason for this wake, no purpose for it she could see; but, she was learning, they needed no other reason than to lead her away from Malcolm. Whatever lie behind, she felt sure that he was that way, and she was helpless to go in any but this.

As she looked out into the vast underground cavern, Hoshi noticed a shimmer in the air like the quiver of a Bunsen flame, and a faint crackle shot through her. The hairs on the back of her neck began to tingle. Then, drawing itself from thin air, first a mist and then a translucent bubble and finally an opaque mass, a stepping-stone the shape and size of a dinner plate materialized at her feet. Then a second, a third, creating a bridge across the space, supported on nothing but air and stretching as far as the eye could see. She could not make out the far end; her light, powerful as it was, did not extend that far. The platforms floated, bobbing minutely like lilies on a pond, looking very much like something she didn't want to step onto.

Ah-uh, no way, forget it, Hoshi told the singing air firmly. She turned back the way she had come. The door had disappeared, leaving her stranded on the ledge with no way to go but forwards.

she muttered, eyeing the first of the disembodied stepping-stones with dislike. Okay, I'll do it. But if I break anything, you're paying my medical expenses.

She didn't even know for certain who she was talking to.

Hoshi raised her eyes skywards, and her shoulders shook with each breath she devoured in readiness; she had always been a little afraid of heights.

She stepped from the ledge onto the first stepping-stone. It sank with her weight, descending a few centimeters like a plastic bottle bobbing on water, then springing back again. She steadied herself with both palms flat against the wall at her left, though it afforded no handholds. She rested her forehead against its cold surface, waiting for her breath to steady as the plate steadied.

One for sorrow, she whispered, instinctively grasping at the first counting rhyme she could bring to mind. She raised her head, opened her eyes, and regarded the second a step away from her. With a quick, light leap, she threw herself forward onto it, thinking wistfully of the ease with which the lieutenant would fly across these buoys, eyes barely looking, toes barely making contact.

Two for joy, she said, defiantly.

And looked at the third.

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The rivets snagged the sleeve and thigh of his uniform, and the rubber soles of his boots wedged tight across the narrow pipe. Trip stopped his descent roughly two meters above the hacking blades, their chundering, spinning motion bouncing back along the metal, through the screeching soles of his boots, and through him.

Trip poised grimly in the downward tunnel, frightened to breathe, knowing that one wrong move could tear the hooks his clothes had made and send him plummeting down again. At every tiny ripping sound at his sleeve or leg he winced, and tried to haul himself back every available centimeter on his squeaking boots, batting at the sweat-soaked hair that whipped back from his face and struggling to force just one more breath from the onslaught of air. He ached all over from tumbling from wall to wall down the pipe; where there was not a sharp, numbing sting there was a dull, angry throb, but he forced the sensations away.

Clenching his flashlight in his teeth, Trip fumbled his scanner from his hip pocket; he had a chance, albeit a slim chance, of obstructing the blades with it and wedging them still long enough to climb between.

Hearing his own clipped breathing punctuating the roar, Trip lay the scanner flat on the wall of the tube, watching the blades' pattern as they spun. Two, three . . .

Now.

Obeying his own count, Trip released the scanner and watched it skid down the vent, ignoring the sting in his eyes as the air blasted into them and blurred his vision. He fought to see a little longer, but the wind got the better of him and he had to turn his head from the tornado, eyes slitted to watch the scanner's descent.

It sailed between the blades without contact, and on out of sight.

Trip cringed, and as the scanner's distant clatter rattled out of hearing, he heard his uniform wrench free by a few more popping threads.

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Three for girl, she chanted, shifting her weight from foot to foot as the stone wobbled. Four for boy.

A clattering echo up ahead broke her concentration. Faint in the dark and barely caught by her flashlight four steps on, a small metallic object was ejected from the wall and spun into the chasm below.

Hoshi hesitated, listening for anything more. A few moments passed, with nothing to say for them but the uncomfortable depth of the silence.

She leapt across to five, riding the initial dip and rise of the stepping-stone as a surfer rides a wave. She muttered the next line of the rhyme under her breath, still listening, but even so keeping grim count, one final stubborn assertion for control. She would not be the victim here.

There came a further clatter, heavier than the last, an object tumbling against metal with a greater velocity . . . and this time, alerted by the rattle, Hoshi fixed her flashlight ahead in readiness to see what emerged.

It was a phase pistol.

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Trip's sweaty hands would barely grasp the phase pistol, and he made himself wait, counting past the moments when his hands shook too badly to risk taking hold of his second chance only to drop it off cue. He closed his eyes, took a shuddering breath, and drew the phase pistol from its holster.

It missed, as the scanner had done.

He dropped his head against the shoulder of his uniform, and dragged in a shuddering, vocal breath that stank strongly of his own sweat, the air pulled sharply around the flashlight still clamped between his teeth. Anything was better than the nothing he smelled everywhere else.

He had missed. Two chances and he had missed them both. He dearly didn't want to do what it appeared he would now be forced to, but there was nothing for it.

He would have to sacrifice his flashlight.

Shaking worse than ever but overtaken with a blissfully unstoppable calm, Trip took the sleek metallic cylinder from his mouth, and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand, judging its weight and its probable velocity on this curve. He could not afford for this tool to chase its own light down the vent, as his scanner and phase pistol had done before it. One chance. He would have this one chance, and if he failed, then he had no other solid item with which to attempt it again.

Trip smiled, grimly. Ya win some, ya lose some. But he didn't feel much like laughing. The slow thump-thump-thump of the blades as they revolved shaved the edges from his humor. He had taken the gamble; return for help, or become the help himself. He had played on a wing and a prayer, and he might have lost. Though there was still this chance for success, in his mind he had already failed.

Trip raised his head and narrowed his eyes determinedly into the roar of air washing over him and making the slack of his uniform billow like a sail. The fan turned, space and blade, space and blade, rotating endlessly at his feet.

His boots squealed and the frayed threads hitching him back began to pull alarmingly. Trip rested the flashlight beam downwards to better see what he did, and held his breath, waiting for the moment. With his light leveled the tube glowered with leering shadows, distorted by the curves around him. Two, three . . .

Now.

Trip couldn't watch the flashlight fall. He squeezed his eyes tight into the crook of his elbow, and waited, and hoped. For a moment, the reality that bombarded his ringing ears didn't quite click; something sounded different. There was a squealing whine, and he was sure that he felt a spark sting his ankle. He wanted to believe what he was hearing so much he couldn't allow himself to. Eventually, he had to.

The blades came to a standstill. The roar stopped dead. All was calm, quiet, and he could breathe again and see again.

Sucking in air in swift gulps, Trip let himself drop onto the blades' housing, thanked his lost flashlight on passing, and slipped through to the last stretch of the now still tube.

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It was on seven that she missed her footing. Her toes found purchase, slipped, and vanished into the space behind.

She hooked her knee beneath her and threw her weight forward, feeling her kneecap connect painfully with the step, and her elbows scrape the far edge. She landed sprawled across the stepping-stone on her stomach, feet kicking out into nothing, one hand clasping the edge. Her startled yelp rocketed away into the unseen distance.

That was what was wrong. Echoes. Suddenly, in place of muffled, underwater vibrations, she heard true echoes.

Hoshi scrambled to her feet, leaning heavily into the solid wall, and panting like a marathon runner in their last white heat. Thank goodness, thank everything, that she had not dropped the flashlight.

Seven for a secret never to be told, she gasped, tearfully. The stepping-stone shuddered beneath her.

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The silence was broken by a sudden sound as Hoshi stepped across the divide to eight. A wish. Eight a wish.

I wish I'd never come.

The sound she now heard was not the aggravated tumble of something falling, not this time; it was the familiar, blood-deep burr of a ventilation system, coming from just above her, and as she steadied on the eighth platform she felt a breeze coming down on her. She turned her flashlight upward and saw an open vent a meter or so above her. The thump-thump-thump of fan blades spinning far above vibrated through the tube to her.

She looked longingly at the opening, wondering if there was any way she could jump and catch the edge. She would rather sit there and wait to be rescued than play this game a moment longer.

But no. If she jumped, missed, and fell, there was little guarantee she would fall back onto this unstable stepping-stone, and not between it and the last. She glanced back along the path she had come, seven suspended plates buoyed gently in a non-existent current. Seven behind, when there may be any number ahead, an infinite number.

No—wait. Six. There were only six behind her. One had disappeared. As she watched, the one furthest from her popped out of existence, and then there were five.

You tricked me! she screamed into the chasm. Screamed to the beings manipulating this institute against her.

Eight a wish. She clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms, and wished for a miracle.

Hoshi was startled, once again, by a noise, a wrenching sound from up above, and the pounding, dull thud of the fan blades driving down air to her gradually slowing to a halt. The breeze died. Then so did the sound.

She closed her eyes, clamped her flashlight between her teeth, and braced herself to jump for the vent's edge. Behind her, the third stepping-stone blotted itself from the line.

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She missed.

Her nails scraped the vent's rim, setting her teeth on edge, but her fingertips failed to grab hold. She fell back heavily onto the stepping-stone, knocking every breath from her lungs on impact. The fourth and fifth stepping-stones had dematerialized since last she looked.

She pulled herself up at once, caught by sudden darts of pain in her bones as she straightened. With the speed they were disappearing, her own platform would be gone in less than a minute.

She had taken a nasty jolt as she fell back, and her hair hung shaken across her face. She swept the strands aside shakily, and was startled to encounter a damp heat on her cheeks. She had been crying and not even known it. She palmed these, too, from her face, angry with herself for being so afraid when her friends—no longer colleagues, but friends—so rarely let themselves be shaken. She thought, especially, of T'Pol—her calm, her control, unscathed by the threat of panic that lingered always at the back of her own mind. The captain, too, was so patient, so confident that he was greater than any situation he faced. She wished, desperately, that she could be like them.

Eight a wish.

Please, please let me get out of this.

The sixth disappeared.

Hoshi bent at the knees and set her sights on the vent above her, words of Reed's from one of her many self-defense lessons returning to her. Wherever you're looking, Hoshi, that's where you're going to fall.

She looked at the vent, only the vent, and jumped.

Something from above caught her outstretched hand, and wound warm fingers about her wrist.