He Who Fights With Monsters
By Thalia Drogna
AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed. I don't usually reply to everyone but since the last chapter was a really important one with some great comments I thought I would.
Parisfan: even my beta didn't pick that up, but you're right. Rinne: nearly made me cry and I wrote it! Pookha: you have a point, but I think they've got a lot on their minds. Plumtuckered: it was a hard one to write, and we'll see. Tracy: Hmmm...wait and see. Tobie: I know it's a mean cliffie but I couldn't resist. Stage manager: thanks! Gabi: Your cliffhangers are just as evil, but so much fun! Not killing him, as ordered. At least not in this chapter. Jazri: Because it's fun! Ocean: sorry for the depressing bit, but that's where my plot bunny went, I just follow. Personally after writing this I went and read Cha Oseye Tempest Thrain's "The Great WaterGun War" and that cheered me up no end. GallyGee: Oh there's a fair few more chapters to come yet. Maraschino: depends on your definition of okay. Drakcir: As Archer would say: "I don't respond well to threats" but updating as ordered (well not yesterday but as near as possible without a time machine).
Phlox had been visiting Lieutenant Reed to administer further pain medication and returned to the brig to find the door to the holding cell shut. That worried him, but he had set up the monitors scanning Trip to let him know if there was any change in his condition. They had not alerted him to any problems so he approached the door not anticipating a problem. He looked through the mesh and noticed blood on the floor pooling at a worrying rate. He entered the code quickly, expecting the door to open immediately and became alarmed when it didn't.
"Phlox to Reed, I require your presence in the brig immediately, it's an emergency" he said into the com, he heard Reed hesitate for just second, trying to decide if he should ask what the problem was and then he told the doctor he was on his way. Phlox then contacted Captain Archer and Lieutenant Hess.
Reed arrived out of breath, looking dishevelled and tired. "What's the problem, Doctor?" he asked.
"I can't open the door and I believe Commander Tucker has been injured. I can see blood on the floor of the cell," said Phlox, urgently.
Reed immediately went to the keypad and tried the code. "It's been scrambled," he said, "well and truly." He keyed in his override sequence and when that didn't work he quickly detached the front of the keypad and began rewiring it. Hess arrived a few moments later, saw what Reed was doing and began helping. Finally they managed to get it open. Phlox dashed into the cell, assessed the scene and went to work.
"Lieutenant Reed, get my medical kit and as many bandages as you can find," shouted Phlox. "Lieutenant Hess I need you to apply pressure here and here," he said indicating Trip's slit wrists. Phlox applied pressure to the neck wound, but blood continued to well underneath his hands. Reed returned with the medical kit and took over from Phlox applying pressure to Trip's neck while the doctor rapidly applied bandages and injected a clotting agent into Trip's wounds. As Reed moved around the bed he realised something was under his foot, maintaining his pressure on Trip's neck he moved his foot and looked down. It was his knife, the one he'd buried in Sharien's leg on the Rel Sevanne. He had no idea how it came to be here, but the placing of Trip's injuries suggested only one thing.
"Is this what it looks like?" asked Reed, stress filling his voice. "Tell me he didn't..."
"Lieutenant, right now I need to stabilise his condition," said Phlox. "We'll worry about the how and why later."
"The Commander wouldn't..." said Hess, but suddenly she wasn't so sure, best to let the doctor work and not think too much about what had happened.
The Captain arrived to find Hess and Reed still applying pressure and bandages to Trip's wounds and Phlox loading another hypospray full of a drug to inject into Trip. It looked awful, Phlox, Reed and Hess were all bloodied to varying degrees and blood covered the floor. He couldn't believe that it had all come out of Trip and he was still bleeding. He didn't look good, even more pale than before, if that was possible.
"What the hell happened?" asked Archer.
"We don't know," said Reed. "Phlox came back to find the door locked and the code scrambled. Hess and I got it open but we found Trip in this state."
"He's lost a lot of blood, I need to begin a blood transfusion," said Phlox. Finally the bleeding was under control, but the wounds still might need stitches to close properly. The slash across the left wrist was particularly deep. Now that Phlox had the wounds bandaged, Reed and Hess stood to one side, in a corner of the cell, looking shocked, not sure how to understand what had happened.
"Where were you?" asked Archer, in a more accusing tone than he really meant.
"I was attending to Lieutenant Reed," said Phlox.
"Is Trip going to be alright?" asked Archer.
"I don't know at the moment. I'll be able to give you an update once I've given him the transfusion," said Phlox.
"Did he do this to himself, Doctor? I need to know," said Archer.
"Yes, I'm afraid so," said Phlox. "His injuries are consistent with a suicide attempt."
"How did he manage to do it?" asked Archer. "There can't have been anything sharp around for him to use."
"This," said Reed, holding up the bloody knife he had retrieved from the floor.
"Where did he get that from?" asked Archer.
"I don't know," said Reed, "but I intend to find out. It's my knife, but the last time I saw it, it was stuck in Sharien's leg."
"Then that's where we start," said Archer. "Sharien. What about the cameras?"
"We had to disconnect them all, the camera feeds directly into the network," said Reed. "But we can check the footage from the corridor cameras."
"Okay, that will have to do," said Archer.
Lieutenant Reed called one of his men who only took a few minutes to download the footage from the camera to a padd and bring it down to the brig. It clearly showed a tall, thin, blonde woman entering the brig and then leaving again. Both times she kept her head down so that the camera couldn't get a good view of her face. It could have been either Shar Jen or Sharien, the ridges on her face were not clear.
"Sorry, sir, I can't tell who it is and I doubt we'll be able to enhance the picture enough to pick out the ridges on her face," said Reed.
"Somehow I didn't think she'd make it that easy for us," said Archer. Neither of these women would have been foolish enough to let themselves be captured on film without there being an element of doubt about their identity.
"Sir, there's something else you should know," said Reed. "Trip scrambled the door code. No one else could have done it, it had to be interference by the nanites. He didn't want us to get to him in time."
"The medical monitors were also tampered with," said Phlox, "they did not alert me to his condition. I suspect that this was also due to interference by the nanites. It appears that they are able to project a field which interferes with my scans."
"This wasn't a cry for help, he really meant to die," said Archer in shocked tones.
Archer didn't knock he just barged into Sharien's quarters, Reed following him. Reed had taken a moment to clean the blood off his hands but he hadn't had time to change his bloodstained uniform.
"Tell me how did the Vor Devrees Patriarch die?" asked Archer, his face only centimetres away from Sharien's. "Tell me! I'm tired of playing your games!"
"Suicide, he committed suicide," said Sharien, quietly.
"Commander Tucker just attempted to take his own life, if you'd told us about this then perhaps we could have prevented it. Instead your games nearly cost me the life of one of my officers!" shouted Archer. He didn't ever remember feeling this angry, but then no one had ever withheld such vital information from him before. "Then there's the matter of the knife that he used. It belonged to Lieutenant Reed and was last seen sticking out of your leg."
"I remember," said Sharien. "I'm sorry about Commander Tucker, but I didn't give him the knife. I last saw it on the Rel Sevanne. Perhaps you should ask Shar Jen, it was her doctors who removed it."
"Why would Shar Jen want Commander Tucker to commit suicide?" asked Reed.
"Perhaps because he had access to all the Tien's secrets. She would kill to protect her people, you know that already. She took Commander Tucker, after all," said Sharien. "For all I know it could be some Tien rite that the Patriarch commits suicide after being removed from the computer."
"I suppose that you have been in these quarters the entire time," said Reed.
"Your guard is being much more cautious after my earlier escape," said Sharien.
"We can check the footage from the cameras in the corridor," said Reed.
"And you will find nothing, I was here," said Sharien.
"If I discover that you have been lying to me..." said Archer, leaving the sentence unfinished for Sharien to use her imagination to fill in the blanks. He turned and stormed out of her quarters, the Lieutenant in tow.
"You're going to accuse me of paranoia, but I'm pretty sure that she's lying," said Reed.
"I'm not so sure," said Archer. "Why would Sharien want Trip to commit suicide? It doesn't make sense."
"Neither does Shar Jen helping him to commit suicide to protect Tien secrets," said Reed, he was fairly sure that Sharien had never actually answered his question about whether she was in her quarters. She'd dodged around it and said she "was here" but had never specified a time period. The Tien were very good at telling half truths and omitting important information, he expected the Kriel were the same. He knew that the empaths could detect lies and that would naturally mean that they tried not to lie if at all possible, but he wasn't exactly satisfied with Sharien's answers. "Should we go and talk to Shar Jen?" he asked.
"Yes, let's do that," replied Archer and headed off down the corridor at a fast walking pace.
Shar Jen was sleeping when they arrived at her quarters. Or perhaps, Reed thought, she had only intended it to look that way.
"Commander Tucker just tried to commit suicide," said Archer, not even attempting to break the news gently.
"By the goddess," said Shar Jen, her legs suddenly felt very weak. She allowed herself to sink slowly to sit on the bed. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Phlox doesn't know yet," said Archer, he told her about the knife and how Trip must have had help.
"And you want to know if I had anything to do with it," said Shar Jen. "I love him! I couldn't help him kill himself!"
"To be honest I have no idea what you're capable of," said Archer.
"I've been in my quarters, your guard can confirm it," said Shar Jen.
"We will be checking that," said Reed. He noted that Shar Jen didn't specify when she had been in her quarters, just that she had been in them. He was getting used to the Tien way of lying without lying. He wished he had picked that up earlier, it could have saved them a lot of trouble.
"I want to see him," said Shar Jen.
"So that you can finish the job?" asked Reed, angrily.
"I need to see that he's okay," said Shar Jen, pleadingly.
"No, you're not going to see him. We're taking care of him now. He's a member of this crew and under my protection, you're not coming anywhere near him ever again," said Archer. He turned and left Shar Jen's quarters heading back to the brig. Reed stopped a moment to question the Ensign on guard outside Shar Jen's quarters. He confirmed that she hadn't left, just as the guard outside Sharien's quarters had confirmed her whereabouts.
Reed caught up with the Captain. "Ensigns Prior and Kachru confirm it, neither of them left their quarters," said Reed.
"Well one of them did," said Archer, still angry. "And one of them is lying."
"Yes, but how did they do it?" asked Reed.
"Sharien got out once..." said Archer.
"She short circuited the door lock and rewired the com panel to send a fake message to Ensign Kachru to report back to the Armoury. That didn't happen this time, the door lock hadn't been tampered with," said Reed.
"They must have done it some way," said Archer.
"When the Suliban took control of Enterprise we used the space between the bulkheads to get Hoshi to my quarters," said Reed. "It had to be Hoshi because she was small. Sharien and Shar Jen are pretty thin, I expect they could have pulled the same trick."
"That assumes that they know the layout of the ship," said Archer.
"They must have performed scans of Enterprise, it would have been easy to detect the layout of the ship. They probably know their way around as well as we do," said Reed.
"Phlox to Archer," said the Com.
"Archer, go ahead Doctor," he answered.
"Commander Tucker is out of danger, Captain," said Phlox.
"Thanks doctor, we're on our way down," said Archer with relief. He turned to Reed. "So we know how they might have done it, but we still don't know which one it was."
"Finger prints on the knife?" asked Reed.
"No good, they're identical," said Archer, remembering the disabling of the inter-reality cannon. Shar Jen had been able to open the panels that were encoded to Sharien's finger prints.
"Perhaps we should ask Trip what happened," said Reed.
"I'm not sure that he'll be much help," said Archer. "I want a guard placed on him around the clock and I want someone with him at all times. I'm not giving him another opportunity to try this."
"You think he will?" asked Reed.
"Right now he's pretty mixed up," said Archer. "I really don't know how he's going to react when he finds out that he failed." They reached the Brig and entered. T'Pol stood beside the bed and Phlox worked on his patient. Trip lay, pale and fragile looking, blood running down a tube into his right arm. White bandages covered the gashes in his wrists and neck.
"The doctor called me and informed me of the situation," said T'Pol. She looked lost, thought Archer, something he had never expected the Vulcan to look.
"Are you alright T'Pol?" asked Archer.
"Vulcans have no concept of suicide," said T'Pol. "It is not logical."
"No, it's not," said Archer. "A senseless death never is."
"I am finding it very hard to adequately understand this action," said T'Pol, but then she seemed to pull herself together. "Did you ascertain who was responsible for giving the Commander the knife?"
"Not yet," said Archer.
"We questioned both Sharien and Shar Jen, they both claim that they were in their quarters," said Reed. "I'd question the doctors who removed the knife from Sharien's leg but they're in a life pod somewhere between here and the planet. They could be in any one of those hundred or so life pods out there and that's assuming that they managed to get off the Rel Sevanne at all. I think we've reached a dead end."
"There must be a way to work out which one of them it was. They're two different people, there must be something different about one of them," said Archer.
"I don't see what," said Reed. "They have identical fingerprints and appearance, I'd expect that they have identical DNA as well. Any evidence that we can collect will point to both of them."
"He's coming round," said Phlox.
"We need to ask him some questions," said Reed. "Do you think he's up to it?"
"He's still on strong pain medication so don't expect him to be too lucid and I can only allow you a few minutes to ask your questions. He's still very weak," replied Phlox.
"Maybe that's what we need," said Archer. "I'm not sure he'd tell us who helped him under normal circumstances."
Archer and Reed took up position beside T'Pol and watched as Trip struggled once more with the return to consciousness. Blue, glassy, eyes finally opened and looked up at the officers stood around his bed.
"It didn't work," Trip said, his voice rough and so quiet that they almost couldn't hear him. "Should be dead." He sounded very upset by that.
"No, you shouldn't," said Archer, placing a hand on Trip's shoulder. He spoke slowly and deliberately and hoped that Trip would understand. "We're all really glad you're still here. Please let us help you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Trip nodded. "So alone, Rel Sevanne...gone," he said.
"Trip, you're not alone," said Archer. "You understand? We're going to make sure someone is with you all the time from now on."
Trip nodded his understanding again, but tears were welling in his eyes. It was going to take more than a few assurances by Archer for Trip to understand that things were going to be okay. Archer knew that if they could just keep Trip alive then they could help him, but they would need time.
"Commander, we need to know who was here," said Reed.
Trip looked at Reed blankly, so the Lieutenant tried again more slowly. Trip still hadn't understood though and Reed could see the frustrated look in Trip's eyes.
"It's okay Trip," said Reed. He decided to take a different approach. "Was Shar Jen here?"
Trip nodded. "Shar Jen... she...," said Trip but didn't get any further.
"Did she give you the knife?" asked Reed.
"Yes," he breathed. "And...kissed."
"She kissed you?" asked Reed, not really believing what he was hearing. Shar Jen had given Trip a knife with which to kill himself and then kissed him goodbye. It was unbelievably cold and heartless.
Trip nodded once more and closed his eyes.
"That's quite enough for now," said Phlox. "He needs to rest. T'Pol has agreed to take the first watch and sit with him. Perhaps I can ask the Lieutenant to take the next shift?"
"Certainly, doctor," said Reed. "Captain I think we need to talk to Shar Jen again."
"Agreed," said Archer. "Let me know immediately if there is any change in his condition."
"Of course," said Phlox. "The good news is that Hoshi will be starting speech therapy tomorrow, the sooner we can begin helping him the better."
Archer and Reed stepped into the corridor.
"It was Shar Jen," said Reed.
"I'm not so sure," said Archer. "Trip has never met Sharien, he doesn't know that we have two identical women on board. Even if it was Sharien, Trip would assume that it was Shar Jen."
"But she kissed him," said Reed. "Only one of them is in love with Trip."
"Perhaps Sharien wanted us to think that it was Shar Jen. We need some evidence," said Archer.
"So we're back where we started," said Reed.
"I'm afraid so," said Archer, realising that he had just talked himself out of getting to throw Shar Jen in the brig. "Two identical suspects and no way to tell them apart."
"Except..." said Reed, an idea forming rapidly in his head.
"Except what?" asked Archer.
"Only one of them kissed Trip," said Reed.