Chapter 53

Deanna emerged from her guest room holding a small bag. She tossed it onto the couch and immediately began rifling through it. She pulled two identical objects from the bag and handed one to Sarah Allen.

"What is it?" Sarah questioned.

"It's a phaser," Deanna said quickly.

"Deanna, I'm not trained to use one of these-"

"I am," Deanna responded.

Sarah eyed her skeptically. "Have you actually even shot anyone before?"

"I said I was trained," Deanna emphasized. She flicked a switch on the side of the weapon. "I'm not the same naive girl I was ten years ago, Sarah."

"I see that...so what the hell is the plan?"

"We find Rolani before something else terrible happens."

Picard continued to hold the dress in his hands with a perplexed expression on his face. "Doctor, what-"

She grabbed the dress from him and tossed it back on the ground. "You were right," she said again, her face still flushed with anger. "You were right, and I should have listened to you," she admitted firmly.

He just scratched the back of his head and watched her, so she continued just as heatedly. "I can't give in to Petral's sick games or his sick obsession with me...I need to do my duty like everyone else, and just go to the ceremony," she explained. "But it took this to make me understand," she pointed with disgust at the rumpled clothing on the floor.

He cleared his throat and glanced downward. "And what," he asked carefully, "is this?"

She looked at him with an exasperated sigh and put her hands on her hips. "Jean-Luc, it's a wedding dress. Petral left it for me. Now, do you get it?"

He shivered as a chill passed through his body, and a grainy image of Doctor Petral leaning down over him with a medical instrument invaded his psyche. Then in the next moment, he steeled himself. "Yes," he said quietly, as a swift rage began to spread through him, its heat displacing the initial chill. He looked at her. "This is unacceptable." He turned to go, but she grabbed his arm.

"Wait, where are you going?"

He looked back at her with silent determination.

She shook her head slowly and squeezed his arm. "Don't do it. Don't go and confront him. You said yourself we can't let him get to us. We just need to go through with everything today and find Geordi. We need to focus on what is important- for him." They continued to look at each other intensely until his arm gradually grew less tense beneath her hand, and she loosened her grip. He nodded slightly as though in agreement with her words, but he was finding it hard to say anything significant. However, she did not let go.

"Your safety is important to me," he said quietly. "Very much so," he added, trying to let go of his anger a bit.

She smiled softly at him. "It means the world to me that you care, Jean-Luc."

He frowned. "Of course I do."

She finally let go of his arm. "Did Nurse Ogawa deliver your second dose of medication yet?"

He shook his head. "No. But I feel fine."

Her eyes narrowed and she tapped her combadge. "Crusher to Ogawa...Alyssa, please report in... She looked up at him with alarm. "Damn it, she's not answering." She moved as if to leave, but it was his turn to take hold of her arm.

"Wait," he said and tapped his own communicator. "Picard to Riker."

"Riker here..."

"Commander, please try and locate Nurse Ogawa. She is not answering her communicator."

"Aye, sir."

Feeling her watching him intently, he let go of her arm. "Beverly...events are happening that are making me seriously question the basis for our mission here."

She moved closer. "What do you mean?"

"Nurse Ogawa is not the only member of this away team that may have gone missing this morning."

"What?"

He explained Yar and Worf's disappearance, as well as the news that the rest of the security team was also missing. She stared at him in stunned silence while he spoke. He paused before telling her that all of this had occurred after a supposed sighting of Lt. LaForge within the city limits.

She grabbed his hand. "Oh no! But...at least Geordi is still alive. We can find him now."

"I don't know," he said and didn't try to withdraw his hand from his grasp. Her touch was a comfort to him at that moment. It hit him at that moment that he should have been there to comfort her when Jack died. Instead, he had disappeared from her life. It was a wonder that she trusted him at all. He pushed aside his feelings of guilt and forced himself to look at her, even as his emotions threatened to overcome him. "Beverly...I am beginning to believe that Mr. LaForge is not alive...that the Ciapathians have used both their ability to clone individuals very quickly and our desire to find Geordi alive, to lure us into a trap here. The sudden disappearance of our colleagues and reappearance of LaForge in apparent custody has solidified this theory for me."

"So...you think they murdered Geordi and have simply been using the promise of him being alive to draw us here? Why?"

"It's complicated. But we have begun to gather evidence that Admiral Forrester has been covering up his own unethical, possibly criminal activities for decades now. I now believe that he had a partnership with the Ciapathains-possibly just with Dr. Petral." He explained the information Data had uncovered.

By the time he had finished, Beverly felt sickened. "Forrester abandoned his own children to Petral's experiments...spawning generation of clones to be used as slaves by the Ciapathians. It all makes sense now.," she trailed off, growing angrier the more she considered the fate of Rolani and Li. "And now our own crew has been drawn into this."

"Yes. And we must bring attention to their wrongdoing by stopping Petral."

"What about Li?"

"I don't know." He shook his head and then closed his eyes slowly. "I need to focus...I'm having trouble focusing," he murmured.

Beverly crossed her arms and looked past him at the wall. "We need to shut down this so-called hospital, Captain. Even if that man isn't really Geordi, we can't just let him experiment with Geordi's DNA, which at the very least he has stolen. He's committed a horrible crime, and we have enough to charge him-at least you do." She looked over at the Captain, who was now sitting down on the floor with his back against the wall. She moved to him and put a hand on his upper back. "How are you feeling?"

He appeared somewhat dazed. "Whatever condition Petral has inflicted on me seems to be taking hold. I feel very ill...I just need a moment."

She felt the side of his neck. His skin felt feverish. "You need your medication," she insisted. "I'm going to get it."

"No!" He reached up and took her hand tightly. "Don't leave this room. It's not safe."

She crouched down next to him and tried to look into his eyes, but they were shut tightly. She rubbed his forearm. "Jean-Luc...Jean-Luc, please look at me."

He opened his eyes slowly and met her gaze.

"You need treatment. This is what Petral wants. He wants you compromised so that you can't focus on the mission at hand. You said yourself, we can't let him win. Your condition is manageable, but only with medication. Once we're back on the Enterprise, I can undo the damage he's inflicted."

He closed his eyes again and his grip on her fingers intensified.

"Ow! You're hurting me," she warned him.

"I can't let you go," he whispered, eyes still shut tightly.

"Yes. You can." She put her other hand on his shoulder for leverage and pulled her hand away, shaking it out. "Listen," she said, her heart beating fast now. "Let's be honest with each other. You know what this is about, right? Petral is obsessed with capturing people for what he characterizes as scientific study, and has a particular disregard for females, which is apparently a cross-species prejudice of his. He's captured that poor girl Hatha, and who knows how many other women, and now he wants me."

"It won't happen. I will kill him!" he suddenly shouted.

She kept her voice as steady as she could. "Don't you see? That's not you talking. This is not the rational, reasonable Jean-Luc Picard that I know. He's tampered with your adrenal cortex and boosted your hormone levels to a dangerous degree because he is trying to capitalize on the attraction between us."

"Is that what this is? An attraction?"

"At some point, you and I need to have a talk. But I don't think that now is the best time." She took a deep breath. "Petral is trying to keep you off-center so that he can just do what he wants. The best way to fight him right now is for you to get treated. Now, I'm going to leave this room, and Commander Riker and I will go and get your medication. You stay here and rest. Alright?"

He looked away but remained silent as she got up and headed for the door.

Deanna Troi and Sarah Allen didn't have to travel the corridors for long before they spotted trouble up ahead. "Rolani!" Deanna shouted. Rolani was wrestling with two of the hooded guides who were clearly trying to overpower her. Not one to go anywhere quietly since her introduction to humanity, Rolani fought fiercely, but hardly said a word, as she loosed herself from the grip of one of the guides and leaped on the back of the shorter one, ripping the hood away from its face. Deanna saw the other guide attack Rolani with a swiftness they had yet to see from the anonymous Ciapathians. "No!" Deanna and Sarah screamed at the same time and without thinking, Deanna fired her phaser. It all happened so quickly, yet then time seemed to slow down and the sound around her grew muted. She looked down at the phaser in shock, for the first time wondering if it had been set for stun as she had intended. Thankfully, she noted that it had.

Sarah Allen was shaking, the smooth composure now absent. "Damn," she whispered, looking at her old friend. "You really did it."

Coming back to her senses, Deanna rushed to Rolani's side, as the young woman rolled from underneath the smaller guide, who seemed unconscious. The taller guide made a range gesture and then backed away slowly, before walking away down the hallway silently.

"Hey," Sarah shouted. "Hey, you can't just leave! Who are you?" She screamed at the departing figure.

"Sarah," Troi called from where she was assisting Rolani, who appeared to be largely uninjured. Troi rose slowly to her feet, arm still clasped around Rolani's waist. She could not take her eyes off of the person she had stunned. "Goddess," she whispered, as a new kind of horrific realization set in. The guides hood had been pulled back to reveal a scarred but familiar face. It was unmistakably Dr. Selar. Selar, who like Geordi had disappeared from the Enterprise for hours only to reappear with little or no memory of what where she had been. And was this Doctor Selar, or her clone?

A few moments earlier...
"Commander ? Any sign of Nurse Ogawa?"
Commander Riker glanced up from his tricorder as Doctor Crusher approached. His typically suave expression was tense and drawn.
"No," he said, sounding almost ashamed. The truth is, he was. This was all happening on his watch and he couldn't stop it.
Everyone around them was disappearing. How, and more importantly, why was this happening? And the captain was clearly compromised. He hated to imagine things getting worse, but he knew that was not the right course of action. He needed to stay calm and in control.

"What's going on? Why aren't you with the Captain?"

Crusher looked up at him sharply. "I'm his doctor, Will. He needs medical treatment. Now I can go back to my room and gather the necessary medications myself, or--"

"I'll go with you," Riker offered, although it sounded more like an order.

Beverly nodded grimly. "Thanks."

And that is when they heard the screams. Riker's expression grew immediately pained. "Deanna's in trouble. Come on, let's go!"

Hey, thanks for continuing to hang with this story...--PP