Chapter Six

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Malcolm turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. From this vantage point he could hear Hoshi screaming in Spanish. He winced at what she said.

¿Dónde es él, usted prostituta? ¡Estancia lejos de mí! No deseo quemarse le.

Malcolm entered the room, shoulders squared and ready to do battle. "That's enough," he stated calmly with enough warning in his voice that Hoshi stopped in mid rant.

She was panting - a wild look in her eyes.

The silence stretched, and Malcolm noticed the harangued look on Em Gomez's face. If looks could kill he would have a phase pistol burn smack between his eyes.

Hoshi jumped off the bed, closing the distance between her and Malcolm quickly. She started to run her hands over his head, neck and arms, checking for injuries.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked crossly as she ran her hands over his chest. He clamped his hands around her wrists and stopped her exploration before she got any lower.

"Did they hurt you? Are you bleeding?" she asked frantically.

"Who?" Malcolm asked calmly, hoping to glean some idea of who she was…where she was from. All searches still led to nothing. Sure, he had found a few Hoshi Sato's in the database, but none that were demographic matches to the Hoshi Sato who stood in front of him with a worried look on her face.

Realizing he was fine, she hugged him. "The overseers," she whispered.

Malcolm asked gently, "Who are the overseers?"

Hoshi didn't answer, continuing to take comfort in her silence.

Em cleared her throat, momentarily forgetting what a foul-mouthed pain the ass the young woman had been. "It's about time you got back… sir. If she made one more derogatory remark about my mother, I was going to stun her."

Malcolm pried Hoshi's arms from around his waist, needing to establish boundaries with his ward. She was already out of control and if they had to live together…well, there must be rules.

"Apologize to Lieutenant Gomez."

Hoshi looked from Malcolm to Em and back again, realizing Lieutenant Reed would not broker any argument, so she raised her head and looked directly into Em's dark brown eyes. "I apologize."

***

She was sleeping peacefully, curled into a ball. It had been a hectic day for both of them. For her, her life continued to get stranger and stranger. For him, his life was uprooted, turned inside out and tossed out the air lock. He sat staring at the PADD Dr. Phlox had given him. On it were socialization protocols for Hoshi - hygiene, nutrition, and academics.

Malcolm rolled his eyes. He hoped Phlox didn't want him to sit around and braid her hair. As far as the rest of the hygiene routine goes, he was going to have to pawn that off to a female. Feeding her wasn't going to be a problem. Academics? Would she really be here that long? Hopefully, she would be on her way back to Earth shortly and out of his hair, assuming she was from Earth.

What he knew about the young woman who softly snored above him could be counted on one hand - her name and she was tri-lingual. Malcolm sighed and pulled up Starfleet missing vehicles and wreckages, looking for any accidents in this sector of space fifteen years ago.

Since she was already asleep, he uncovered the vitamin supplements Phlox had given to him and injected her with them.

She flinched in her sleep murmuring. "They come for him in the night."

"Who?" Malcolm asked.

"The overseers," replied Hoshi's subconscious.

"Where are the overseers?" Malcolm coaxed.

His question went unanswered as she slipped into a new dream, so he sat back down at his desk and typed in overseers as a search word. Definitions of the word and works of literature including overseers flashed before his eyes. "This is hopeless! I need more to go on."

***