Chapter Fourteen –
"Are you sure?" a forceful voice asked.
"I'm positive," a soft-spoken voice replied.
"How did he get here?"
"Well, there's this Tellerite ship in the shuttlebay. I assumed it has similar propulsion technologies –"
"That's enough, Doctor," the forceful voice snapped.
"Well, you asked."
"I think your patient is awake."
Azure eyes fluttered open and stared up at the ceiling.
"Easy, Captain Reed. You're on Enterprise," stated the soft-spoken voice. "We found your ship in an anomaly field. We were unable to determine how long you were adrift, but you're making great progress."
Malcolm turned his head toward the voice. A young woman of obvious Denobulan ancestry stood beside his bed. He started to move, but found he couldn't. He was restrained.
Seeing the spark of panic flash in Reed's eyes, Doctor Nora Cole continued, "We had to restrain you when you came on board. You fought the orderlies and were delirious."
He barely recognized his own voice when he was able to form words. "What…day –"
"January 25, 2154," Nora replied, starting to undo the restraints.
"How did you get here, Captain Reed?" Lorian asked firmly.
Malcolm gazed past the doctor to the half human-half Vulcan captain of Enterprise. "You'll have to excuse my skepticism, Captain Reed, if that is who you really are. You're obviously not of this time. And the man I knew died almost seventy years ago."
"I'm…from the future," Malcolm announced cautiously.
"That's impossible," Lorian interjected decisively. "Temporal theory dictates matter would not survive through the gravitational –"
"It's just a theory," Malcolm replied softly. "Besides, you're talking about matter going forward, not backwards."
"Either way – "
"That's enough, Captain," Doctor Cole cautioned. "I won't have you badgering my patient."
Ignoring his CMO, Lorian continued questioning Malcolm. "Did the sphere builders send you?"
"That's enough, Captain!" The doctor warned, inserting her body between her captain and her patient. "Get out of my sickbay!"
Her face mere centimeters away from his startled him, and he backed away. "I need to ascertain the potential threat to –"
"Don't make me call Greer." The doctor's voice was low and threatening.
Lorian looked toward the sickbay doors where two security officers watched the heated exchange, their hands on their phase pistols unsure as to their course of action. "Stand down," he instructed, backing away from Nora.
Nora gave her captain a gentle push.
"Fine. Have it your way," Lorian growled, his emotions getting the better of him. He turned to the security detail. "As soon as he can walk, escort him to the brig."
--
Pacing the short length of the brig, Malcolm ran a hand through his hair. He knew better than to attempt an escape. After all, he had helped design the brig. He still had time – time to alter the outcome of Hoshi's future – his future.
The outer door opened. Malcolm stopped pacing and glanced at Lorian. Lorian's expression was anything but welcoming.
Holding up the PADD Malcolm had jury-rigged to the Tellarite ship, Lorian asked, "We've tried activating the database, but it turns off every time we try."
Malcolm turned around, leaned against the glass, and crossed his arms.
"It'd be a shame to ruin Doctor Cole's dedicated work," threatened Lorian pointedly.
Turning around, Malcolm smirked, "I'll only talk to your mother."
"Why?"
"You're too emotional to think logically about the possibilities I present," Malcolm countered.
Lorian's eyes flashed in anger. "You'll have to excuse me if I have a difficult time believing that a man who has been dead since I was a little boy suddenly returns unannounced. This is an obvious attempt by the sphere builders to undermine our attempts to find Enterprise."
"You'll find Enterprise," Malcolm stated solemnly, remembering T'Pol's theory as to what happened to the other Enterprise once they had come out of the vortex. Her theory had been spot on. The grandfather paradox was instantaneous and this Enterprise had ceased to exist. They existed only in a rare spatial phenomenon called a loop.
They had waited for Lorian to come out of the rift. They had waited longer than they should have. Once T'Pol's theory circulated, a subtle mourning period overcame the crew.
He had found Hoshi staring aimlessly out a window on the observation deck, debris still hanging from the bulkhead. It had been her favorite spot, her picture window she had called it.
Her tears had fallen unabashedly as she cried for the children she would never have.
"You'll find them and tell them not to take Enterprise through the sub-space corridor, offering them alien propulsion schematics to modify the injector assembly," Malcolm said, stumbling over the last bit as he remembered the first meeting between Lorian and Captain Archer.
The shocked look on Lorian's face told Malcolm he had remembered it correctly. Then it occurred to him – they had the same mission, and Lorian should have been able to find Enterprise as it entered the Expanse. A sudden anger suffused its way through him and he punched the glass. "You had access to crew logs. How can you stand there and tell me you can't find Enterprise? Do you realize how many crew died during the attack at Azati Prime?"
"Over sixty percent of the logs were lost during a confrontation with the Corinals," Lorian replied softly. "Being from the future, you should have known that."
"Being from the future doesn't make me omnipotent," Malcolm spat.
Lorain backed away with a smirk on his face. "It looks as though I'm not the only one with emotional problems."
The door hissed open and both men stared at the opening, waiting for whoever it was to enter. Finally a frail, elderly T'Pol entered, her shrewd eyes going from her son to the man behind the glass.
She eyed Malcolm wearily, then addressed her son. "Dr. Cole was worried about her patient. You should have told me we had a visitor."
Somehow he managed to rein in his anger. Nora always did have the annoying trait of running to his mother when she disagreed with one of his decisions. "He's not a guest, mother. He's a prisoner."
"Unlock it," T'Pol instructed, ignoring Lorian's obvious distress.
When Lorian's Enterprise found Archer's, Malcolm never had the chance to meet with T'Pol. He watched openly as her decrepit form creeped closer to the brig's inner door.
"No," Lorian stated softly.
Crossing her arms over her chest in an un-Vulcan-like manner of irritability, she frowned. "Nora was right about you. You've become increasingly erratic ever since our first mission failed. Has Nora not confirmed his genetic profile?"
Lorian nodded.
"Yet you still believe this is some elaborate plot –"
"Your own theories dictate time travel to be impossible –"
"The Vulcan Science Directorate dictates time travel to be impossible," T'Pol corrected. "I've always thought it was improbable, yet here we are."
"I'll tell you anything you want to know," Malcolm interjected, staring at the woman who had been the first officer during his time on the Enterprise.
Realizing arguing with his mother was pointless, Lorian handed her the PADD. "See if you can get this to work."
T'Pol took the PADD and watched him walk out, worried for him, then turned her gaze to Malcolm. "Your mission has failed, Captain Reed. I've been instructed to inform you to return to your thread."
He stared at her, not really sure if her heard her correctly. He wasn't sure of anything anymore.
T'Pol turned the PADD in her hand and activated it, walking to the glass door and releasing the locking mechanism. "You are to return to these spatial coordinates and await further instructions."
Panic coursed through him as T'Pol's words repeated in his mind. Her ease accessing the temporal device made him seethe as betrayal loomed before him. She was obviously a sleeper agent.
"I trust your temporal displacement disorder has not rendered your detail to duty obsolete," T'Pol stated flatly and held the PADD out to him, her hand trembling with the effort.
Taking the PADD, Malcolm glanced at the coordinates and the orders. "I don't take orders from Daniels."
"You always did have a problem following orders," she huffed. "That's why the Suliban were sent after her."
Shocked, ice-blue eyes bored into her serene ones as realization dawned on him. Daniels had authorized the Suliban assassination attempt. "I'll kill him when I see him next."
T'Pol crept closer to him. "Before you declare revenge on Daniels, know this – I gave the order for the Suliban to assassinate Hoshi."
Fury raced through him and he clenched his fist. "Why?" Malcolm asked, feeling acid churn in his stomach.
"Jonathan's logic was flawed. You were too emotionally involved to carry out this mission," T'Pol reasoned. "Do you deny you love Hoshi?"
Malcolm said nothing, the betrayal slicing into his soul.
T'Pol smirked. "On this thread, Hoshi bore you two children after you died. Even in this reality, you never admitted how you felt about her. She knew though, petitioning Phlox to harvest your DNA so that she could have a piece of you."
"How could you order her death?" Malcolm's voice was filled with unrestrained anger.
"The Suliban were to poison Hoshi, making it appear she had died of natural causes. You had the UT, which you were supposed to place somewhere Starfleet could find it, yet you never did. Once her loved ones mourned her, Hoshi was to be brought into the future – to a theoretical, alternate thread – one where the Xindi attack never occurred."
Her words imbedded themselves inside him – the possibility of her strategy rendering a credibility he had never considered… a world where Hoshi would never know him…never know the pain she had suffered along with the rest of Enterprise's crew. The possibilities were overwhelming. "What happened?"
"Our mission failed. So did yours, along with the Suliban mission. The cascade effect has narrowed the cataclysmic window of opportunity to an unacceptable margin. You are to return to your thread." T'Pol placed a hand on the glass and leaned against it, the effort of her speech draining her.
Grabbing her arm, Malcolm helped her to the cot. "You've got to help me, T'Pol. In three weeks, you'll find Enterprise. I can use that time to talk to Hoshi, maybe convince her not to go with Captain Archer to the Xindi Council. If they never see her, they won't know about her ability."
T'Pol shook her head no. "It's too risky," she coughed.
"I'll abduct her if I have to," Malcolm concluded, his voice rasped.
The Vulcan held her hand out, motioning for his PADD.
Handing it to her, Malcolm paced and let the insanity carry him away. "We'll find a thread. She'll adjust," he reasoned, a sliver of his rationality knowing Hoshi would succumb to the temporal diseases which claimed so many who cheated fate.
"Here," T'Pol's voice called out softly. "This is the only viable alternative. It's risky, but you may be able to change the outcome…Hoshi's and the future's."
Kneeling in front of her, Malcolm took the PADD from her and started scanning it desperately. He immediately shook his head. "It's too risky."
"It's the only viable alternative," T'Pol repeated.
"I can't put her through that," he argued, his voice a low whisper.
"She'll never agree to what you propose. The damage has been done. There are events in place that cannot be stopped."
"This," Malcolm challenged. "This wouldn't work!"
"It's the logical choice, Captain, as it renders the highest success rate." T'Pol stood up. "Don't let your personal feelings cloud your judgment. This is the original thread. We can change it. Did you ever weigh the catalyst against the event? Even if the Reptillians don't abduct her and force her to decipher the Aquatic code, they will find another way. If we use her –"
"I won't use her as bait!" he yelled, arguing more with the logic of what T'Pol was proposing than with T'Pol herself.
"If we use her," T'Pol repeated, undeterred. "She may be able to disable the Xindi weapon from the inside."
Malcolm starred at the floor.
"There is even a possibility she could be retrieved," she stated firmly.
He shuddered as he contemplated her words. It wasn't just about Hoshi anymore.