Reed was back on Enterprise, not that it mattered anymore. Commander Tucker hadn't followed through on his earlier threats, but Captain Archer had taken Reed's assault of Phlox rather personally and had seen to it that Reed was locked up in the Brig… as if he had the capacity to be a threat to anyone at this point. Reed could hardly breathe, let alone stand. Surprise and gravity had done most of the work for him when he jumped Phlox, and even then it had been nearly more than he could manage.
The remaining question was whether or not the injection would work on the Denobulan. In fact, he wasn't even sure it had really worked on Commander Tucker. The Commander seemed more distraught and confused than usefully clear-headed. And who knew how long the suppressant would last anyway?
More than his own pain and physical weakness, Reed's injection of Phlox had been very nearly prevented by his own sense of indifference. Actually, more than indifference, he'd begun to sink into a kind of depression, becoming slowly convinced that he was the one who'd been wrong all along, making a big deal over nothing, getting in the way of the vitally important mission they were on. He didn't understand it, but he did know that the injection Phlox did eventually get into him (with the help of far more members of the security team Reed had put together than was strictly necessary) had served to clear some of that out, though he still had his doubts… and his migraine.
Finally, after some further roughing up by the security team, and Phlox's somewhat apathetically administered medical aid, Reed was left very much alone. Which, given the way things had gone of late, was actually something of a relief.
Things had deteriorated rapidly in the last day or so, spiraling out of control to such an extreme degree that Reed believed in the possibility of any one of the crew trying to kill him. And now of course he'd given them the perfect excuse by assaulting the chief engineer and chief medical officer. Meanwhile, Captain Archer had made it quite clear today that he wanted nothing further to do with Reed, and might even kill Reed himself given a little nudge in that direction.
In fact, Reed wasn't sure that Archer hadn't already made an attempt on his life when Commander Tucker had intervened. He just had the sense that the Captain wouldn't have stopped if no one had made him. And, in the moment, Reed had been willing to simply allow that to happen. Even now, he didn't think he'd try to put up much of a fight if someone came in to finish him off. There simply didn't seem to be a great deal of point, and he was tired of being alone in rooms full of people, of being the only one who seemed to see that there was a problem with going along with what everyone else was doing. It would be easier to just not exist than to watch Enterprise complete her refit as a mushroom farm and then fly off in search of another ship or civilization she could spread her affliction to.
Reed had no doubt but that the Vixlettes either hadn't always been traders or at least hadn't always been pushing those mushrooms. Knowing the Armory was even now being dismantled broke Reed's heart, but also put him in the frame of mind to believe that the Vixlettes had probably been more heavily armed at some prior time, rather than the minimal weaponry they'd had when Enterprise encountered them. And the Dolizet, though of a slightly different personality type than the Vixlettes, had that same vacuous look, and that same disinclination to use their technology for anything but mushrooms, despite clearly having it on their planet… somewhere. How many other ships and species had fallen victim to this… this plague of the mind?
Clearly, whatever was causing the behavioral shift had a sophisticated survival strategy. Infected people seemed to become passive and cooperative with other infected people, and were immediately trusting of one another. The Dolizet had demanded nothing in exchange for the mushrooms, or the technology and knowledge to farm them properly. That had to be because the Enterprise crew was actually furthering the mushrooms' goal of spreading. Confronted with a non-infected person, the behavior remained friendly and the urge was to infect, as the Vixlettes had done with Enterprise. But… at some point, a defensive response was activated. Maybe once a saturation point was reached, or if an infected person continued to behave as an individual rather than part of the hive… Reed didn't know. But, for some reason, his difference from the rest had caused them to turn on him, and look to destroy him as a threat. Probably this wasn't the first time it had happened.
It was hard to think that those seemingly peaceful Dolizet and overly zealously friendly Vixlettes had gone around killing each other, but it struck Reed as likely. With any disease or parasite, there were nearly always individuals who had some kind of resistance either in their genetics, diet or other living habits. Only rarely was a species as a whole wiped out by any natural plague. So there had probably been others like himself, who didn't convert to this mushroom cult, and as a consequence were identified as a threat and subsequently eliminated.
Reed shivered, feeling cold despite the perfectly adequate heat in the room.
He wondered why the hell he'd agreed to come out here. To space. Was there any real reason? Or had Star Fleet simply been the only thing far enough away from his father? And then Enterprise had been his chance to get away from certain mistakes he'd made earlier in his Star Fleet career? Had he come so far only to hide from the people he didn't want to face? All that running because he couldn't fit into the niches his family and then later his superiors thought he should… just to be killed because he couldn't find it in himself to accept a few mushrooms? Was all of that worth it? How could it be?
And so the night passed. The one after it went much the same way.
Jonathan Archer woke up with a splitting headache, and feeling like he'd been sleeping for a thousand years. Not only did he have that distinctly unstuck in time feeling, his muscles ached as if he hadn't used them in an age, his mouth was dry as Zobral's homeworld, his skin tickled and tingled at the feel of the sheets on his bed almost as though he'd forgotten what the physical sensation of touch was like. His eyes felt grainy and itchy like they had sand in them, and every sound was a torment to his ears.
He stared up at the ceiling in the dark, trying to remember what day it was. What month. What year. He was on Enterprise, that much he knew. Porthos was lying at the end of the bed, he could feel that slight slope of the mattress near his feet, consequence of the dog's weight. But where was Enterprise? How long had she been there? What was she currently doing? Why did his head feel so much like it had little men mining for dilithium in there? How long had he been asleep?
After a few minutes of relentless pecking questions, Jonathan decided to get up and find out. Maybe if he looked at his recent logs, he'd begin to piece it together. He had this feeling almost like he didn't want to remember, rather than that he couldn't. As if something so bad had happened, or he'd done something so awful, that it was easier just to forget. That wasn't how he liked to think of himself, as someone too weak to look at the things they'd done and accept those things for what they were… yet here he was, sick at heart and empty of mind.
Well… not entirely empty. He had this migraine, and about a thousand nagging questions rattling around looking for answers and finding nothing but a vast and unrelieved darkness that was almost as frightening as the questions themselves.
Porthos grumbled when Jonathan turned the light on. The dog lifted his head and squinted with slightly resentful curiosity at Jonathan's face, trying to read in it his master's reason for turning on the lights at this ungodly hour. Porthos preferred a good solid routine. He liked a grand adventure, but wanted it to be regulated, scheduled, anticipated. It didn't matter how unexpected things were when it was time for adventure, but those same challenges that were so bracing at the correct hour were wholly unwelcome during his sack time. Jonathan could hardly blame the dog, because he felt the same way.
Unfortunately, that wasn't how space exploration went most of the time.
Jonathan sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, then sat like that, elbows on knees, waiting for a sudden bout of dizziness to whirl its way by. At the same time, he felt a hollowness in his stomach, like he hadn't eaten in weeks. He thought about his stash of cheese with some longing… but decided to go for information instead of nutrition. Food could wait. He needed to know if there was a crisis underway that he should be worrying about.
In the meantime, Porthos got up and shambled over, trying to get on Jonathan's lap. If they were going to be awake right now, the least compensation Porthos could get was some petting. Jonathan absently stroked the dog's sleek, dense coat for a little while, but pretty soon he recognized the only too welcome distraction of the friendly Beagle and signaled Porthos to get off. The dog moved aside, and then hopped down onto his own bed on the floor, lay down and gazed up mournfully at Jonathan. To him, this being woken in the night business was the greatest of tragedies, especially if he wasn't going to get attention (or be slipped any cheese). Jonathan ignored him for the moment.
Jonathan slid into the chair at his desk, and turned on the view screen. He could listen to his logs, but somehow hearing his voice saying things he didn't remember seemed too difficult. He'd rather read them. It wouldn't be as disorienting. He punched up his logs, scrolled through them by date, searching for the last one he actually remembered, and then opening the one right after that to read.
But it turned out seeing the dates was enough. Reading the sequences of numbers that designated an hour of a certain day brought the memories to the surface, ghostly and incomplete at first, but gaining strength as he moved through the dates. Day by day, almost a month went by.
Jonathan got to the Dolizet, and found he had no clear picture of them in his mind, even though he'd been to their planet twice, and recently too. What he did remember, if only vaguely, was Phlox insisting some time after Jonathan's most recent return that he needed an injection to deal with a parasite he'd brought back with him, one that had managed to slip through the net in decon. Jonathan had barely given it a second thought. He wondered if he'd even noted it in his log.
And then he got to a point a little over forty-eight hours ago and-
"Malcolm," Jonathan spoke the name aloud.
Why? Why would Malcolm… Jonathan broke off the question before even finishing it, and instead of looking for an answer, he brought up a different query. What the hell had happened to Malcolm since?
The computer was only too happy to tell Jonathan that Malcolm could be found in the Brig. Which, Jonathan supposed, must make a certain kind of sense. That's where one usually wound up when they assaulted the ship's chief engineer and CMO. But… why the hell had Malcolm done it? What could possibly… Jonathan stopped himself from continuing along the list of questions, realizing he was asking them in order to avoid finding the answer. He knew exactly where to find his answers.
"I think it's time I paid a visit to the Brig," Jonathan said, pretending he was speaking to Porthos, but in reality he was just saying it to himself, trying to persuade himself to get up, get dressed and go down there. Malcolm had all the answers, Jonathan was certain of it.
How he could be so sure, Jonathan didn't know. His memory of the last weeks was spotty, dreamlike, uncertain and unclear at best. But it was coming back. Already he had a firm conviction that Malcolm knew exactly what had happened during that fuzzy time span, and would be only too glad to tell him. It was a strange thing to think that a man who'd assaulted his crew mates twice in as many days would be on Jonathan's side now… but perhaps no stranger than that the man in question was Malcolm Reed, whom Jonathan was quite certain had never raised a hand to another member of Star Fleet in his entire life. Why now? It was time to find out.