Disclaimer: I own no one…especially not any of these people. But the story is mine…don't take it.
Note: I apologise for this taking so damn long, but I kept forgetting I had even written it. Hopefully the next part wont take nearly as long.
Part 3
Someone shook me, causing a tear to fall from my eye, but also getting me to look up to see who it was. It was Chakotay. I looked down at my lap, but nothing was there. Everything I has just witnessed hadn't actually happened.
"Kathryn, what's wrong?" Chakotay asked me. I couldn't respond, all I could do was sit there and stare up at him. How do you tell someone you are so close to that you just saw him die in your arms?
"Kathryn?" Chakotay said again. Again I didn't respond, except by shaking uncontrollably. "Chakotay to transporter room 2. Beam the Captain and I directly to sickbay."
The scenery around me changed and I was now in sickbay. The doctor rushed over. Chakotay picked me up and placed me on the bio bed.
"What happened?" The doctor asked.
"I'm not sure. One minute we were talking, the next minute she was stumbling backwards afraid of something. She collapsed on the ground, and when I went to see what was wrong she didn't respond, she just started shaking." Chakotay explained.
The doctor put the medical tricorder back on the tool cart. "It appears as if she's gone into shock" He said. "There are extra blankets on the other bio beds, we need to get her temperature back up."
"What do you think caused it?" Chakotay asked as he went and fetched the blankets.
"I'm not exactly sure. Her blood pressure and heart rate are dropping. Whatever it was it was extremely traumatic." The doctor prepared a hypo-spray. He gave it to me right before Chakotay wrapped the blankets around me. He sat next to me and held me close, which for some reason caused me to shake more.
"Doctor, she feels like she getting worse." Chakotay said panicking. The doctor examined me again with the tricorder.
"Her temperature is still dropping. We need to increase her heart rate." He said.
Chakotay stepped back as the doctor gave me another hypo-spray. This one seemed to calm me down a bit more, but the beeping on the tri-quarter made me believe that wasn't the best thing to happen.
"What's happening?" Chakotay asked worried. He rushed over to the doctor's side.
"Her body isn't responding to anything I give it. In fact, it's making it worse." The doctor explained.
Chakotay sat down on the bed next to me and held me as I continued to shake uncontrollably. I hated being this helpless. I tried my hardest to keep my self out of positions where I was this helpless.
"Commander, would you take it the wrong way if I told you not to move?" The doctor asked him.
"Why?" Chakotay questioned.
"Well for whatever reason, as soon as you got there, her heart rate picked up a little. Not much, but enough for me to say, stay right where you are."
"Do you know what caused it yet?" Chakotay asked. I closed my eyes. I didn't need to see the doctor run around looking for answers about my health. It was making me dizzy.
"I think it's safe to say she was hallucinating. What of I couldn't tell you, only she can, if she will." The doctor explained. Chakotay stroked my hair softly, and for the first time in the last 24 hours I felt safe.
"I'm sure she'd tell us if she thought it relevant." Chakotay said. I heard the doctor chuckle.
"Commander, with all due respect, I have never known the captain to disclose any type of personal information. I couldn't count the number of times she has kept injuries from me simply because she didn't think them 'relevant'. Never underestimate this woman's ability to be extremely stubborn." The doctor said sternly. Chakotay just chuckled slightly.
My body's shaking was beginning to die down considerably. I felt as though I could almost move if I wanted too. Almost, being the operative word. Mind you I was so exhausted. I felt myself drifting off to sleep.
"Commander, her vitals are finally returning to normal, but she'll need her rest. You can go for now." The doctor said
"I won't be gone long. I just want to brief the senor officers on what happened. I'll be gone an hour at most." Chakotay said getting up. He laid me down on the bed.
"Don't worry, I'll notify you the minute something changes." The doctor reassured him
"Thank you." Chakotay said softly. Then I heard the doors swish open and then closed again.
The doctor was still working about sickbay, making lots of noise. At least this way I still knew that he was there, and that I was alive, a fact that I had to keep reminding my self. The lack of energy that I felt was hard to contend with. It made me feel as though I was dying. It's hard when you have so little control over your own body and mind.
Over time, the doctor's continuous racket actually put me to sleep, which I quickly came to realize would not be a good thing. The dreams I had the night before returned once more. This time they were more violent and more vivid, if that was even possible. And this time, he was there.
"You never give up do you?" He said to me
"It would be easier for me to speak with you if I knew a name." I stated angrily.
"You can call me Lothos for now." He smiled at me.
"Alright Lothos, what do you want?" I asked him.
"You already know what I want." Lothos said simply. The two of us were standing in my ready room, which was in ruins all around us.
"I'm actually not entirely clear on that." I said honestly. I sat down on what was left of my desk.
"I want you to suffer as much as I have. Fortunately for the rest of your crew, none of them has to be hurt for me to make you hurt." He smiled evilly.
"Is there nothing I can do to make you see that I am eternally sorry for what happened to your brother?" I said softly.
"Don't you dare speak of him!" Lothos yelled. "You are not worthy to even think of him!" He shoved me off the desk hard. I hit the ground, my head bouncing off one of the bulkheads that lay on the ground. He walked over to me, picked me up and threw me against the far wall. "You are not worthy of anything but pain, and I will keep you alive until you have felt the pain of many lifetimes." He walked over to me lifted my chin so I was looking into his eyes. "We'll see how long you are able to keep strong for your crew after that Kathy."
With that he turned and walked away. Or at least I thought he was. He turned once more to look at me. His eyes met with mine. They had an enormous amount of rage in them. A shot of pain so strong went through my body causing me to scream in pain. When I opened my eyes, I was back in sickbay.
Chakotay entered the room and rushed to my side. The doctor was already there.
"Kathryn can you hear me?" Chakotay asked me.
"Yes." I said softly. I tried to sit up, but got a shot of pain through my entire body that caused me to cry out.
"Captain take it easy, you're badly injured." The doctor said softly placing his hand on my shoulder to reassure me.
"How the hell could she be injured when she's been here the entire time?" Chakotay asked accusingly.
"I'm not entirely sure of anything that's going on anymore, commander. Nothing that has happened to this ship or it's captain, has made any sense." The doctor said sounding very annoyed and maybe even hurt that Chakotay suggested he would let harm come to me.
"My dream." I stated. "I was badly injured in my dream."
"Your dream?" The doctor asked, raising his eyebrows.
I nodded. "Lothos. He said it would be more fun to cause me pain than to just out right kill me to avenge his brother."
"You got a name from him?" Chakotay asked. He still looked horribly worried.
"I can't guaranty it's his real name but it works a bit better than 'him' doesn't it." I smiled at Chakotay.
"It is, and considering we know nothing else about him, a big start." Chakotay nodded. He had a look of worry in his eye.
"Would you care to tell us what happened earlier?" The Doctor stated more than asked.
Flashes of Chakotay covered in plasma burns returned to me and I flinched. "No." I stated softly. "It's not important."
"I would have to disagree with you captain. It was more than just a slight shock to your system, and it would help me to better understand what happened to it, if I knew what happened to you." The doctor said. He examined me again with a medical tricorder
"It's not important what I saw." I stated again. Adding a bit of authority to it.
"Captain I would have to agree with the doctor on this one. If there was something you saw that could send you into a state of shock like that, I think it very important that we know about it." Chakotay said. He had sensed my attempt to take authority over the situation and wasn't backing down that easily. He should have known me better than that.
"I thank you both for your concern, but the matter is closed." I stated raising my voice. Doing so caused a sharp pain to go though my back and me to gasp because of it.
"The matter is not closed Captain. This Lothos knows you well enough to know what kinds of sights would make you of no use to us. Maybe telling us what you saw would make it easier for us to help you fight him." Chakotay said his voice was softer this time. I sighed. He had a point. Lothos was too strong for me to fight on my own, whether it was my fight or not.
"You." I sighed looking at Chakotay.
"Me? You saw me, and that was enough to send you into shock?" He had a smirk on his face.
"For some women that's all it takes." The doctor remarked.
I took a deep breath, flinching at the pain in my back, but it was needed to ward away the visions that ran through my head.
"I was talking to Chakotay in my ready room when his face bust out into plasma burns. They continued to spread all over until he died in my arms." I said quietly and quickly. The concern on both of their faces only grew.
"What about the dream you had last night?" Chakotay asked.
"It was the entire crew. I walked through the ship and all I saw were dead bodies. They were just going through their daily routine, and they never knew what hit them. It was all silence. Just silence." I whispered. I had done enough talking.
"Thank you captain." The doctor said returning to the medical table. Chakotay rested his hand comfortingly on mine. "Commander you should brief the crew on what's happened. Let them know that the captain will be fine, although she'll be staying here until at least tomorrow. I don't wager I'd be able to hold her much longer than that anyway." Chakotay nodded and left sickbay for the bridge.
The doctor held a hypo spray in his hand when he walked back over to the bio bed. "I'm going to sedate you while I operate. No need to worry about dreams, this should put you right to a dreamless sleep." He pressed the hypo spray to my neck and almost instantly I was asleep.
I didn't believe the doctor when he said it would be a dreamless sleep, but I woke up and was unable to remember any of my dreams if there was any. I was also incredibly rested.
"Please be easy on your self." The doctor said as I was leaving sickbay.
First thing on the agenda for the day was a briefing. I wanted to know what was happening with the modifications and with the anomaly that Lothos had created.
"We were able to pull away captain, but this time it moved so it was still in front of us." B'Elanna reported. "I'm not sure there is a way to get away from it."
"The shield modifications went as planned, but we are still unsure if they will function as planned." Seven said.
"Well it's a good sign that he isn't attacking the ship;" I said. "Although I don't like waiting to find out what will happen next."
"You're not the only one who doesn't like the waiting." B'Elanna said shifting in her seat. "I don't see we can't just find a way to destroy the thing. There has got be some sort of gas we can ignite in there."
It was something that I hadn't actually thought of, and it almost seemed like a good idea. "I get the impression that Lothos is a smart being. Something like that he's probably already thought of, but I can't see any harm in looking. Harry?"
"I'll get a start on it right away captain." Ensign Kim said enthusiastically.
"Even if we find something, we're still going to need a way to protect you until then." Tom spoke up. "He has to have a weakness of some sort."
"I'm not sure that he does." Tuvok said, his eyes showed that he was deep in thought. "From what I've seen, the only weakness they have is mortality."
"Well he's not going to actually come on board the ship, he'd have to know we'd be waiting." B'Elanna commented.
"What if we somehow found a way to break the connection he has with the captain? That might force him to come aboard the ship to do the work himself." Neelix suggested. He seemed quite pleased with himself.
"These are both good options. Lets go over the sensor readings from the time of the last attack. There might be something in there that'll give us some help. B'Elanna, can you work with Harry and Tuvok? Three would be much better." Chakotay delegated. The staff just nodded.
"Dismissed." I said. The senior staff got up from their chairs and headed out of the room, with the exception of Seven and Chakotay who both stayed behind.
"Captain, I would like to do my own sensor analysis from astrometrics. There might be something we are missing about the area it's self." Seven said calmly. Something in her eyes looked unsettled, then again all of the crew did. Maybe I was just more surprised to see it in Seven's eyes. They were usually so calm.
"Alright. Report back to Commander Chakotay with you findings." I said. She gave a quick nod then turned and left.
"How are you?" Chakotay asked me when the doors hissed shut.
"I'm okay, still a bit sore, but okay." I sighed honestly.
"Did you want me to stay with you in your ready room? Just in case I mean."
"No. Someone needs to be out on the Bridge." I said shaking my head.
"What if something happens? Who's going to know?" There was more than a tinge of worry in his voice. I think I may have even detected some annoyance.
"Check on me every half hour then. I don't want someone hovering over my shoulder all the time."
"Kathryn, don't be like this. This isn't the time. Your life is in danger, it isn't time to go being independent and stubborn." He lectured.
I got up from my chair and looked out the window. He may have had a point, and part of me did want him near me at all times, but there was another part of me that just didn't want to show any weakness. That's what Lothos wanted. He wanted to tear me down. I took a deep breath and let it out. There was a small pain in my back reminding me that I hadn't completely healed from the last attack.
"Alright. You can stay in my ready room with me. Although I must point out that Tuvok will have preferred it to be him, being chief of security and all." I smiled at him coyly. He simply smiled back, but gave a small nod of approval.
We headed out of the conference room and into the bridge.
"Commander Chakotay and I will be in my ready room, Tuvok you have the bridge." I said to my chief of security as I passed him, but I never reached my ready room.