Part 2
Casting a glance back at his Captain, Tanner caught his eye before moving farther into the room and crouching beside the boys on the floor. Speaking quietly and trying not to startle them, Tanner said, "Hey, wake up."
The elder boys eyes flashed open instantly, and Tanner only had a moment to glimpse the terror filled green eyes half hidden behind the boy's hair before the child was on his feet, with the younger boy still wrapped in his arm, and running.
"Whoa, Pard, we ain't gonna hurt you," Tanner exclaimed when he caught the boy by the shoulders as he tried to get out the door and into the outer room. Tanner moved in front of the frightened child and squatted down to look in his eyes. "We just want to help, okay?" he said firmly as he gazed into the boy's troubled emerald eyes. For a few moments, Vin waited while the child searched his face, when he hesitantly nodded, Vin gave him a big smile. "Alright, now I got some friends out in the other room that want to meet you. Why don't I go introduce you?"
Again the boy nodded his assent, but when Vin reached to take the still unresponsive younger lad from his arms, he backed away with fear filling his face again. Vin immediately pulled his hands back and said, "That's alright, you can keep hold of him if'n you want to." Reassured the child allowed Vin to rest his hand lightly on his arm, even though he did tense slightly.
Once in the outer room, Vin lead him over to sit on the bed. Getting the child's attention, Vin said, "These are my friends, Chris Larabee, my Captain, Nathan Jackson, the ship's doctor, and Josiah Sanchez, our chief of security. I'm Vin Tanner, First officer. We are part of the crew of the USS Wild Card. What are your names?" Vin looked expectantly at the boy sitting on the edge of the bed, but received no answer. He simply sat there with his head down and his eyes closed.
Trying again, Vin squatted down so that he could catch the child's eye. "Hey," when the boy looked up, Vin continued, "We want to help, but you have to talk to us."
Again the child remained silent, looking from him to the men standing in a semicircle behind him. Slowly the child released one hand from the death grip he had on his younger charge, and reached for the ragged collar of his tunic. Pulling it back he revealed an electronic slave collar encircling his neck.
"Shit! Uh, sorry, I'm not angry at you," Tanner reassured the boy when he jumped at his exclamation. "Nate, you better come over here and look at this."
The doctor quickly joined him and examined the collar the boy wore. "Damn," he muttered quietly. Looking back at his Captain, he continued, "It's an obedience collar. If we don't take it off him correctly it'll kill him. We should have a master override on the ship." The collar used intense pain to force obedience in slaves, and judging by the child's actions speaking was forbidden.
When Chris turned away to request the necessary equipment, Nathan returned to his young patients and reached to check and see if the younger boy also wore the inhumane piece of technology that had been outlawed over five decades before. He was surprised when the elder child pull away while pushing at Nathan's hand.
"Easy, I just wanted to see if he is wearing a collar too," Nathan said as he again reached for the boy, but was met with resistance again.
Seeing the fear and panic building in the older boy, Vin lightly grabbed Nathan's hand and pulled it away. "Nate, hold on a second." Receiving a nod of understanding from his teammate, he turned his attention back to the forlorn waifs sitting in front of him. "Is he wearing a collar, too?" Vin asked, waving at the still insensate boy in his arms. Receiving a sad nod in reply, Vin grunt. Before he could frame another question, Tanner was interrupted by the arrival of Buck with the master chip to release the collars.
"Here you go, Capt'n," Buck said as he handed the small machine over, while curiously gazing at the children on the bed.
"Wilmington, you might as well head on back. We should be done here within the hour," Chris confirmed gruffly, taking the mechanism, striding toward the children and handing it off to Tanner. He did not attempt to remove the collars himself when he saw the fear rising in the elder boy's eyes.
"Alright, now, we're goin' ta get that collar off, so you can talk to us," Vin said as he reached to find the proper place to release the collar, but was surprised when his hand was stopped and drawn downward. The elder child slipped out from under his charge, settling the little one on the bed beside him, and using one hand to reveal the release spot for the younger child's collar. "You want me to take his off first?" Receiving a vigorous nod in reply, Vin quickly fit the control piece in place and activated it.
The effect was instantaneous.
The moment he engaged it, the collar on the small child's neck fell off, but the older boy suddenly threw back his head and screamed, his hands jumping to his throat to claw franticly at his collar. Vin released the older boy's collar as fast as he could, while the other men tried to corral the writhing child. When it was released, the horrible wail quieted immediately to a whimper as the boy collapsed into a sobbing heap.
Breathing deeply, Chris moved around the bed to sit near the boy's head. Laying his hand lightly on the child's shoulder, he waited until the child looked up at him before he spoke softly, "You knew that was going to happen, didn't you? If we had taken yours off first, would that have happened to him?"
Still gulping air to try to catch his breath, the boy whispered, "yes," in a rough, disused, and strangely accented voice.
Still shaken, but knowing he had a job to do, Nathan moved around to where he could reach both boys. "What are you names?" he asked as he slowly sat on the other side of the boy from his Captain.
The older boy looked blankly at him for a moment, but suddenly appeared realize what he wanted. Pushing himself up, he tenderly laid a hand on the younger boy's cheek before replying, "He was called Blair, before they took him."
Cheering silently at the small victory, not to mention the evidence that the boy had suffered no permanent damage from the collar, Nate reached for the boy to examine him. It was beginning to worry him that the child had not awoke in all the commotion.
He jerked back when the older boy cried out, "No! You'll hurt him!" before grabbing the toddler back up in his arms and lunged away from him, right smack into Chris.
He struggled to get away, but Chris gently grasped the boy's shoulders to keep him from falling off the bed or running, but the boy was to afraid to understand. When speaking sopftly didn't get through the haze of panic, Chris shouted, "Stop!"
Firmly, but with compassion, Chris took held the boy's shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. "We are not going to hurt you or him if we can at all avoid it. If we had known what the collar would do to you, we would have found some way to get around it."
"You don't understand," the boy whispered in a pleading voice. "It hurts him when people touch him. I tried to tell them that, but they just punished me. Please, believe me, it hurts him badly."
Startled, Chris glanced over at his Chief Medical Officer and saw the thoughtful expression on his face, before Nate brightened and dived into his medical bag for something. "Okay, but why can you touch him?"
The boy looked even more trouble as he said, "I don't know, I just can. I've been trying to teach him to block it out. Really I have."
The desperate pleading the boy's eyes was painful to see. Each of the men found themselves wondering what the child had been through to feel so much pain. They were all wondering how long he had been held by the monsters that currently resided in the Wild Card's brig and why he was so special that they had no sold him.
Vin watched his Captain get the boy to open up a little with a slight smile on his face. For all Chris blustering and bad ass attitude, he was doing well with this boy.
"What have you been teaching him to block out?" Chris asked.
"The feelings," the boy stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "the echoes of their pain. He been here six months, but that's not long enough to get used to it yet."
An Empath! How in the world had the boy survived six months on this ship! Jackson stared at the boys in total shock, the item he had wanted from his bag totally forgotten for the moment. Shaking himself, he pulled what looked like old fashioned latex gloves from the bag. They were quarantine gloves for working with highly contagious patients, but they should work the same way for this situation.
"I can use these." Seeing that the older boy was giving him his full attention, albeit tinged with more than a little wariness, Nathan explained, "These gloves will let me examine him without actually touching him. Do you think that will work?"
Thoughtfully, the boy looked from Nathan to his hands, now encased in the special protection and held out for inspection, to the child in his arms. Cautiously, the boy reached out to touch Nathan's gloved hands, trailing his fingertips lightly up the fine fabric to his wrists. Unexpectedly the boy gave him a beautiful smile of pure joy. "It works!" he exclaimed, moving to rest his entire hand against Nathan's covered hand. "I can't feel anything! Please," suddenly the boy arranged Blair on the bed between himself and Nathan, still trying to shield him from everyone else in the room. "I helped him as much as I could…"
Nathan was startled by the boys immediately capitulation, but he knew he had to help Blair before he could stop to untangle why he was unsettled by what the elder boy had said.
It only took a few seconds to figure out the boy needed more treatment than he was going to be able to provide here. "Captain, I need to get Blair back to Sickbay immediately, sir," Nathan said urgently as he set the hypo and administered what medication he had with him.
"Go," Chris ordered, reaching out to hold on to the older boys arm as Nathan gathered the ill child and called for transport directly to sickbay.
The boy was confused at first, the gasp and shrank back as the transporter removed the doctor and his patient. "Where did they go?" the boy whispered after they were gone.
"The Doc took him back to our ship so he could help him better," Vin reassured him as he took the place on the bed that Nathan had vacated. "We'll be goin' soon too, but we need to talk to you some more first."
"Oh," he still sounded confused and suspicious, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.
Stepping up beside the older child, Josiah finally spoke, "You never told us you name, son."
Startled, Chris and Vin realized he was right. They had been so concerned about the younger boy Blair, that they never realized that he hadn't mention his name.
Looking over at the big, gray haired man, the older boy said, "I am the helper. I have no name."
Chris, Vin, and Josiah shared a sad glance. How long had this boy been on this ship that he didn't even know his own name?
Clearing his throat and throwing a bewildered glance at his Captain, Josiah tried again. "How long have you been aboard? Do you remember where you were when they took you?"
"I…" the boy seemed frustrated as he tried to remember what Sanchez was asking, but failed. Dropping his eyes, he shook his head, "I do not remember any where but here."
Carefully and slowly resting his hand on the boy's shoulder, Josiah replied, "It's alright, son. We'll figure something out." With a thoughtful expression on his face, Josiah considered the child before him. "We could call you Alexander maybe, it means helper." Seeing the displeased expression on the boy's face he hurried to come up with other suggestions, "or Isaiah, or maybe Ezra. They all mean helper."
With a thoughtful expression, the boy repeated, "Ezra?"
"Do you like it?" Vin asked.
"I re…remember," the boy screwed his face up tightly as he tried to grasp the ethereal ghost in his mind while three Starfleet officers waited. Finally he looked up at Josiah and said, "A man calling me Ezranok, but that wasn't all. He was frightened by something," Forlornly he looked over at Vin and continued, "I don't understand."
"I recognized the word, I think," Vin said. Looking casually at Chris to catch his eye, he broadcast his disquiet and nodded down at the frightened child. "It's a variant of a Vulcan word for helper."