Chapter 9 - Inmates, Part 3

Graham had hold of the back of Kirk's uniform tunic, was pulling hard enough to cut into Kirk's neck. Kirk reached around behind him to take hold of Graham's arm. Her alert and calculating gaze covered each of the Vulcan faces in the cell. Zuram stepped closer. He had a slight wrinkle in the middle of his brow, a hint of curiosity, maybe.

"Not quite according to plan," Kirk said in Vulcan.

An older Vulcan stood up from a lower bunk at the back of the cell and came up as well. He stood with hands at his sides, but his movement made Graham's hold tighten again.

Kirk turned and pulled his uniform out of Graham's fingers, held onto her arm.

"What's the matter?" Kirk said.

She glared at him, straightened. "What do you mean asking me what the hell's the matter?"

"That's what I'm asking."

She put her hands at her sides, balled into fists. Her head tilted as if she were considering reprimanding him. She shook her head and stared at Zuram instead with a look of challenge.

Kirk surveyed the room. The faces were wan, drained. The prisoners stood apart from each other, heads turned away, but sideways gazes on the newcomers.

A younger adult male was crouched at the foot of one of the bunks, clinging to the post of it, rocking faintly.

Kirk stepped over, crouched before him. The young male didn't acknowledge Kirk was there. Zuram stepped up beside, loomed over Kirk.

"What happened to him?" Kirk asked in Vulcan.

"They came for him." Zuram struggled to say more, face working. "Too many times."

Kirk bent lower still to look into the young male's hidden face. The figure shivered, chewed his lips. Kirk looked up. Zuram's gaze was a thousand meters away.

"They came for you too," Kirk said.

Zuram's head rocked something like a nod.

"What happens when they take you away?"

Zuram opened his mouth. His head twitched.

"You can't say. I see that. It's okay. I get the idea." Kirk rose to his feet, paced along the forcefield.

Graham followed beside him, hands pumping as if she was striding fast a long way. "What'd you say to them?"

Kirk stopped. The situation had driven him off into his own strategic thoughts without regard to reporting to a superior. "He said someone comes and takes them away and they come back like that. When I ask for details he hits some kind of punishment block in his mind and can't speak."

She stood straighter, looked around the faces that continued to track them. "Wonderful." She relaxed finally, put her hands at her sides, relaxed. "We need options besides waiting for them to take the two of us away as well."

"Do you have any ideas, sir?" Kirk said, finding a teasing voice.

"Does anything shake you?" Graham asked. "Anything?" She gestured. "Look where we are. You're enjoying yourself."

"I'm not enjoying this. The Federation mistreated these beings. That's on us. We're complicit."

She lowered her voice. "They aren't exactly undeserving."

Kirk turned on her. "We've taken their liberty already." He wanted to pace, to throw his arms. He forced calm on himself knowing it wouldn't help to get emotionally distracted by this discussion. "We're not at war anymore, Commander, nor in battle. How we treat the most vulnerable defines us, I don't care who they started out as. This is us and only us that's at stake here. Who we are."

"Remind me again to complain about you. Officially."

Kirk hunched, paced the forcefield wall again, turned at the far corner post and stood there, surveying the entire cell.

Kirk said, "Commander Graham, I'll happily sit for a review panel for insubordination. Because as it looks right now. That would be a luxury."

Graham stared at him, mouth pinched. She jerked when Zuram stepped up to her, brow again wrinkled with something like curiosity. Kirk crossed his arms, leaned on the post beside where the force field emerged. The field generator made his thigh hum with energy.

Zuram looked Graham over. She took a small step back.

"You command him?" Zuram asked her in Standard.

"Kirk. Yeah. He's under me at the moment. As much as that's possible with him."

He tilted his head. "You are scared."

She swallowed hard. Pushed back her shoulders. "I've had braver moments than this one. Yes. This caught me off guard. I'm a planner. Once I have a plan, I do pretty well."

Zuram shook his head, looked her over in confusion. He fell distant, pulled himself to the present again with apparent effort. He spoke in Vulcan this time, haltingly.

"What'd he say?" Graham asked over her shoulder.

Kirk raised his chin. "He says he doesn't want your body as you seem to think. If he did anything at all, he'd cleanly break your neck. You wouldn't feel it."

Graham turned slowly to Kirk, fury in every line of her. She leaned toward Kirk like a cat, brows low. "The hell he said that."

Kirk tilted his head. "That's what he said, Commander." Kirk sighed. "I couldn't possibly make that up. And I wouldn't do so, in any event." Kirk shifted to lean on his other hip against the wall, farther from the generator. "I honestly think he was trying to make you feel better."

Graham turned back to Zuram, stepped sideways away from him in Kirk's direction. But halted rather than retreat more. "Well, that's reassuring, in a way. That he might be trying, that is." She took another step, gaze hardening, becoming normal.

Kirk's lips crooked into a smile. "Commander Graham, sir. Now that we've come to a peaceful understanding with our roommates, can I humbly suggest we find a way out of this?"

"Damn straight we can." She stalked to his end of the cell and leaned on the wall beside him, arms crossed. She peered around their cage thoughtfully. "I need a plan. Any plan."

Kirk copied her, studied the emitters, the force field on the outer door. He wasn't getting any grand ideas, and he was trying not to rely on Nurse Noel, but she likely was their main hope. Even with more firepower, the shuttle wasn't going to make its way inside. At best they would make the lift inoperable for a time, which was the main way out. Although Kirk had seen indications of an escape tunnel on various facility labels during the tour, but not a map as to where that might be.

"Ideas?" Graham whispered.

"No."

Zuram stood beside the bunk bed staring down at the young adult male who had bent his head farther over, nearly upside down. Kirk pushed off the wall and approached.

"You can't help him?" Kirk asked.

"None of us have the Healer skill," Zuram said. "The body cannot live without the mind. The body rapidly becomes just as disarrayed, until it fails."

Kirk looked away.

Hours passed but there was no clock to know for certain. Kirk sat on the edge of a spare bunk. Graham sat at the end, leaning against the wall behind her, knees bent, jump boots on the bedcovers.

"You're supposed to be good at this," Graham said.

"You know Noel better than me. Thoughts?"

"Noel is an odd bird. I'm hopeful," she added in a very low voice.

Graham rubbed her brow. "What will they do when the shuttle returns? What's their game? They have to kill us don't they? Is that the plan, fake an accident with the shuttle?"

Kirk turned to Zuram. "Commander. Your associates that have been offloaded already. Were they ever taken away like yourself and the boy?"

"No."

"There's your answer, Commander Graham. I think you've nailed their plan."

"Have I?"

"Adams can't let any of these Vulcans get to Vulcan. A meld will give Adams away. He let the others go, since they are much less of a liability and it makes an accident seem more like one. We aren't going to be so lucky."

She put her arms around her knees. "And knowing this helps us. It has to."

"We know we have to fight like hell, sir, even if the odds look terrible."

"Agreed, Commander. You have my permission to fight like hell."

Kirk looked down at the dents her boots were leaving in the bed surface. He said, "Sorry I'm such an ass, sir. I'm slow to adapt to being under someone again. I do pretty well going the other way."

She snorted. "I have the same problem. I'm trying to not overreact to your poor performance because of that. You are good practice for not being a hypocrite, Kirk. I'll give you that."

Kirk looked up at her, smiled faintly. "I appreciate your candor, Commander. I'll try harder. Especially since it's clear you deserve it."

"I hadn't already earned it?"

"You did. I just need to be reminded. Maybe more than once. Helps me find my place." Kirk tugged on the bedcover to straighten out the dents. "For what it's worth, I'd have have switched places with you in that access tube on the Potemkin if there had been anyway to arrange to."

"That's because you're an egotistical idiot."

Kirk considered that a good long while. "I prefer to assume that I'm just being fair. I have to be willing to do anything I'd order another to do."

"I have to work a bit to think that way. Some people are clearly better at some things than others. Some people deserve some outcomes more than others."

Kirk shook his head. "We differ on that."

"I noticed."

Guards clomped by outside the cell suite as they had several times an hour. This time the footsteps stopped and the outer force field bars cut out. Two guards stepped in and one guard stayed outside, re-engaged the outer security. They'd been lax about that when they were brought in. Kirk frowned to see them following procedure this time.

The guards stood before the security field, stun guns raised. "At the wall."

The Vulcans arranged themselves. The young male clinging to the bunk post didn't respond, but he was close to the back wall already. Zuram stood over him, defiant looking, even though he couldn't hold his fierce gaze on any one spot for long.

The guard pointed at Kirk. "You. Here." He indicated a spot just inside the force field.

Kirk approached, keen for a chance to perpetrate violence in the name of escape. The field came down. Kirk was grabbed up and hauled out and the field rose again. The larger of the guards twisted Kirk's wrist and screwed it up his back. Kirk rose to his toes to get the tearing strain off his shoulder.

They walked Kirk out to the corridor and pushed him into the opposite wall, hard. His jaw and shoulder smacked the rough stone making his bones ring. He was released to slide to the floor, stunned.

He rubbed his jaw, looked up into the business end of three stun guns.

"Up."

Kirk rose up, pretending difficulty, lunged, and was shoved aside with the force of his own movement, into the wall beside the force bars. His head smashed his hand into the wall, which he'd put out to protect it. His head rang with the blow and his hand smarted enough to feel broken. He was dealing with professionals with a lot more practice in handling wildly violent people than Kirk was willing to accept in his desire for escape.

They grabbed him up and dragged him, feet scraping. He struggled to get his feet under him to relieve the strain on his arms. He was frog marched to the interlock and held there, suspended on his aching shoulders while the doors slid open.

The doors cycled. By the grip on his wrists behind his back, Kirk was forced into the reception area.

"Ah, Commander Kirk," Adams said, sounding as friendly as ever.

Kirk looked around for Noel. "Where's our nurse?"

"Oh, she's all right. She'll join us. Come."

Kirk's strained body was marched into a treatment room housing a bulky chair and a windowed control panel. He was forced back into the chair but not strapped down. A round glass fixture was mounted at eye level on the wall opposite him.

The guards took up a position beside the windowed partition, stun guns drawn. Kirk calculated poor odds of overcoming them, and in defiance, relaxed back into the chair.

"What are you going to do?" Kirk asked, trying not to sound too mocking since it would be clear his anger was the byproduct of alarm.

Adams chuckled. "I've already done some of it, James Kirk."

Kirk sat forward. The guards had retreated and he hadn't noticed. They now stood outside in the corridor. Kirk looked at the fixture in front of him, at the bumpy glass and ringed pattern lit from behind He looked down at the chair, which was ordinary beyond being indestructible.

"This isn't moral or ethical, Doctor. Whatever you are doing."

"Oh. I think I have a pretty good hold on ethics. I've turned countless hopelessly violent beings into quiescent productive drones. Society considers that highly ethical.

Kirk blinked, took hold of the chair arms with the intent to get up. He had the strangest sense that time had passed. He leaned forward. He came to awareness having fallen onto his own legs.

Kirk jerked upward. "What does this device do?" He looked through the control window. Noel was there now, eyes wide. Kirk's heart began throbbing, ratcheting up his alarm. "What is this?"

"Commander?" Noel said into the microphone, voice uncertain.

"Noel. Why?" Kirk felt a rush of desire, a font gushing up from his insides. "Helen, isn't it? I love you, what are you doing there so close to him?"

Kirk pushed out of the chair. He had to get to her, take her aside into his arms.

"Don't get up," Noel came around the partition shielding the controls, hands up.

Kirk rushed her, put her up against the side of the partition, their bodies full length pressed together. He had her lips inside his own, took possession of her mouth, would take possession of more as soon as they were alone.

Kirk felt Noel's fingers digging painfully into his arms, into the crux of his elbows. Confused he pulled back. "What's wrong?"

"You love me?" Noel grew strict sounding. "You think you love me?"

Kirk felt an awkward gap broaden in the center of his mind. He couldn't put the past and the present together correctly, but he heard himself say with full honesty, "I always have." He tried to stroke her face, but she grabbed his hand.

"So, what do you think, Nurse?" Adams said. He was leaning on the control panel, lips cocked into a smile.

"I'm sure I don't like this," Noel said. She put more pressure on the crux of Kirk's elbows. Kirk released her, fought against feeling distraught by her rejection.

"Why don't you love me?" Kirk asked.

"Sit in the chair, Commander," Noel urged. "If you love me, sit in the chair again." She pushed him backwards even though he resisted. She turned to Adams. "You'll put him back, right?"

Kirk relented because she wished it. He sat on the corner of the seat, staying as close to her as he could. He lifted an arm out to her, needing her to understand everything.

"Eli," Adams said to a staff member behind him. "Grab her."

Kirk saw a man in orderly blues come up behind Noel. Kirk lunged, but something knocked his senses away. He teetered, back arched, emptied of everything. He felt his body bending, arching backwards, slowly, slowly. He was going to fall and couldn't stop it. A frantic sense of nothing overcame him. He ached for something, anything.

Adams's voice penetrated his panic. Soothing, reassuring him that he was stronger than the others. That this was force eight which had reduced others to pleading and tears.

Kirk felt the chair arm against his back, felt it stab painfully into the soft tissue alongside his spine, felt his knees slowly bend farther, farther. He heard himself screaming, the echoes of it tried to fill up the space inside him that was being hollowed out wider and wider, but it failed to. He longed for the voice again, didn't care what it told him.


Kirk woke up with a mixed hot and cold wet puddle around his cheek and mouth. He lifted his head, dropped it again. The light hurt his eyes.

"James?"

A hand fell on Kirk's back.

"James? What happened to you?"

Kirk cracked his eyes open again. He was on a bunk in the cell. Graham was sitting on the bunk, leaning over him. He had drooled a pool under his own face and it stringily stuck to his lips. Horror stiffened every sinew in his limbs, prickled across his front where it came in contact with the bed. He whimpered, it was the best truth he could speak.

Graham's hand gripped his shoulder. "Oh hell."

Kirk closed his eyes, rested his head a little away from the puddle. He wanted to cease to be. But he didn't know how to say that.

Fingers slipped inside the hem of his tunic, stroked lightly over the skin of his lower back. It was a sensitive spot, distracting, and it helped more than it should have.

Kirk moaned, converted it into a grunt to save face. He put a hand under his head, his bruised hand. He flinched from the pain, which owned him for many moments until it faded to bearable. He rested his head on his forearm, contemplated the corner of the bunk, the bland color of the floor beyond.

"James," Graham said. "Commander Kirk, I'm talking to you. Can I get you to respond?"

Kirk nodded by rocking his chin on his arm. His neck ached abominably, but he managed to roll over, to sit up. If he remained hunched he avoided hitting his head on the upper bunk. But he liked the feeling of enclosure and didn't plan to stand up.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Zuram was standing three meters behind Graham, watching. Kirk dropped his arm.

"Can you talk?" Graham asked, growing more commanding.

Kirk tried. "Yes."

"Report."

Kirk was too aware of his own breathing, his aching body. "Adams has some kind of a device that makes your mind so empty that you long for nothing more than his voice to fill you up." He squinted, rubbed his eyes. "On low power I don't think you can even tell it's activated. He turned it up to eight, at least. Said that was higher than normal. Seemed to just want to know how much I could take."

"Did you see Noel?"

A jolt jerked Kirk forward. "Yes. She was . . . " Kirk halted, tried to sort out his feelings. "She was with him, but not entirely cooperating." He swallowed hard, felt desire rising up in himself at the thought of her. Clearly he'd been programmed to love her, but knowing that didn't stop the emotion.

Graham sat straight. "Shuttle should be returning in two hours, by my estimate. How do you think they'll rig an accident? Seems like it's got to look like one or the investigation will sink them."

"Programming you or me to make a pilot error on the way back. That's what I'd do."

"You think you were programmed?"

"I don't know. I don't have any trouble talking about what happened. Unlike our companions here." Kirk wrapped his arms around himself. "Maybe he's not finished yet. He was showing off to Noel."

Graham sighed, put her hands in her lap, glanced around the floor behind her as if checking how close others were standing. "Funny to be more at risk from the good doctor than this lot."

"That's an easy one," Kirk said. "They don't have any power. And Adams doesn't have any checks on his. He's too well-known for doing a few notable things, so he's above suspicion."

Kirk hunched over, rubbed his head, tried to force himself to feel normal again.

"Rest more," Graham said, standing up. "I'll keep an eye on things."

Kirk pulled the thin, spongy pillow closer, rested back staring up at the bunk above him. His mind resisted focussing on anything even though they badly needed a plan.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Kirk's arms and chest jerked. The footsteps faded as they moved on. Kirk bundled the pillow up around his ears until the hammering of his heart slowed. He opened his eyes. Graham was standing beside the bunk again, looking down. Kirk curled to sit up, swung his feet to the floor. He had to be ready. When they came for Graham they had to put up the fight of all fights.