Disclaimer: No people, places, or things are mine. Only a few plot elements here and there.

A/N: Parts of this chapter may be confusing to read, but hopefully you'll have a vague idea of what's happening. All of the parts that are unclear now should be explained in time.

Tucker stood by the airlock at which the Vulcan ship was currently docking. He felt stuffed and strange in his dress uniform. It had been so long since he'd worn it that he had almost forgotten how unpleasant it was in comparison with the pliable fabric of his normal duty uniform.

He wasn't sure why Archer had been so adamant about their little welcoming party being such a formal occasion. If it was out of feigned respect for Reed's 'remains,' which were to be transferred to the Vulcan ship, then Tucker thought that was an absurd bit of illogic. The body wasn't really Reed's, but even if it had been, the last thing the pragmatic Tactical Officer would have wanted was for the senior staff and crew to dress themselves up in ridiculous starched shirts that absolutely precluded the possibility of getting meaningful work done. More likely Archer's intent was to make a professional first impression for the benefit of the Vulcans and the new Tactical Officer. Tucker already disliked Reed's replacement, though he hadn't even met the man. He raised a hand to tug discontentedly at the edge of the overly-tight, itchy collar. Archer caught his eye disapprovingly and Tucker stared back unabashed, refusing to give into the sensation of being rebuked for fidgeting in church.

Hearing the seal of the airlock disengage, Tucker dropped his hand quickly as the whole party turned to watch. The door slid open to admit two Vulcans and an Andorian. As the captain exchanged pleasantries with the Vulcan captain – pleasantries which the Vulcans clearly considered unnecessary and which Archer had never been the type to enjoy either – Tucker studied the Andorian with open interest. He'd heard that the new crew member was not human. One of the first non-humans out of Starfleet Academy, in fact. Accustomed as Tucker was to having T'Pol working amongst the crew, and to seeing other aliens on the Enterprise for various sundry reasons, it was nonetheless strange to see an alien dressed in the familiar blue uniform of Starfleet, complete with maroon piping and Lieutenant pips on the collar.

The Andorian, like most of his species, was not particularly tall. His skin was a pleasing shade of light blue that carried the faintest hint of green where it was in shadow. Dark eyes looked calculatingly back at the welcoming party, so that Tucker felt obliged to continue his scrutiny more subtly. The Andorian's antennae, protruding from a head of neatly-kept white hair, were upright but relaxed, the tips curving slightly forward. One of the antennae was noticeably shorter than the other. Tucker wondered if it was growing back, as Shran's had, after some traumatic amputation. Tucker had heard that much of an Andorian's body language communication could be understood by looking at its antennae, but he would have to leave the nuances of such interpretation up to Sato.

At that moment, realizing that Archer's discussion with the Vulcans might last several minutes – they had turned to the topic of delivering Reed's 'remains' back to Earth, and Tucker noted Archer's pained expression with little sympathy: how much of that was a façade? – Sato herself took the initiative and greeted the Andorian Lieutenant in his own language. The newcomer looked startled, then his antennae curved slightly inward in apparent pleasure as he responded. The two spoke briefly in the alien tongue. Then, as if remembering the presence of others, the Andorian turned suddenly to Tucker, T'Pol, and Ensign Tanner.

"Forgive me," he said in barely-accented English, accentuating the words with an incline of the head almost like a tiny bow. Tucker felt an upwelling of resentment, because although he had never seen Reed do anything similar, it seemed such a Reed-like thing to do that he couldn't help the irrational sullenness. "It was rude of me not to speak so all could understand. I am Lieutenant Covan."

He shook hands with all of them. He had a firm grip, Tucker noticed distastefully. Ordinarily he liked people whose handshakes didn't feel like holding a dead fish, but in this case he was looking for reasons to dislike the Andorian and his inability to immediately find any was making him cross. Sato seemed pleased with the new addition.

"Welcome aboard the Enterprise, Lieutenant," T'Pol said. She had not greeted the Vulcans with Archer and evinced no desire to do so. "I am Sub-Commander T'Pol, First Officer of this vessel. This is Commander Tucker, our Chief Engineer; Ensign Sato, our Communications Officer; and Ensign Tanner, our acting Head of Security and Tactical Officer."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Covan said to Tanner. "I regret that it is not under better circumstances."

"It can't be helped, sir," Tanner answered unsmilingly. Tucker was pleased to see that Tanner, at least, seemed to share his reservations. The Andorian's antennae retreated slightly at the chilly reception.

"I look forward to meeting the rest of the team," he tried again. Tucker almost scowled. The team? Covan had been on the Enterprise only a few minutes, and already he felt comfortable enough to refer to his soon-to-be staff as 'the team'?

"I think you'll find the department staff very competent," Tanner responded coolly. Tucker made a mental note to buy the man a drink at the earliest convenience.

"I'm sure I will. I understand that Lieutenant Reed kept them very well trained."

As if sensing the slightly murderous resentment emanating from Tucker and Tanner, Sato hurried to intervene.

"How was your journey, Lieutenant? I trust it wasn't too long."

"Not at all." The Andorian lowered his voice confidentially. "I do hope, however, that the Enterprise has cuisine slightly more suited to my palette."

"You didn't enjoy the Plomeek broth?" Sato asked innocently. The two seemed to share an inside joke.

"I'm afraid it's not quite the same as the cabbage soup I'm used to."

"Not to worry," Sato assured him. "I'm sure we can find something suitable for you. And if not, Doctor Phlox is a connoisseur of some of the more exotic alien delicacies. He will surely have something that fits your tastes."

"I look forward to it, Ensign."

Finishing his conversation, Archer came over to the others, leaving the Vulcans waiting silently.

"Lieutenant Covan, I'm Captain Archer. Welcome to my ship." Archer looked tired, but if he shared Tucker's discomfort with Reed's replacement he did not show it.

"Thank you, Captain. It's an honour to be a part of this mission."

"Where was your last station?" Archer asked, visibly trying to show interest in the newest member of his crew. Tucker suspected the captain wanted nothing more at this moment than to crash in bed for a few hours.

"Jupiter Station," the Andorian replied. Archer nodded.

"Yes, of course. I believe Admiral Gardner mentioned that. You come very highly recommended by him, by the way."

"I will do my best to live up to those recommendations, sir."

"Not right away, I'm afraid. Our ship's doctor needs to perform a medical examination on you first. We don't have much experience with Andorian physiology, and he'd like to get a baseline. Hoshi, would you show the Lieutenant to Sickbay and to his quarters afterward?"

"Of course."

Tucker watched them leave, already speaking in Andorian again. To his quarters. To Reed's quarters, really. Archer recalled his wandering attention.

"Commander, I'd like you and Ensign Tanner to arrange for Lieutenant Reed's body to be transferred to the Vulcan ship immediately," he said quietly. "Our Vulcan guests are on a time crunch."

"Yes, sir."

"We'll see to it, Captain," Tanner said sombrely. It occurred to Tucker that although the corpse waiting in Sickbay for transportation meant nothing to him personally, it held a great deal of meaning to Tanner and his staff, who wholeheartedly believed it to be Reed's body.

"Thank you." Archer sounded genuinely grateful. Perhaps he was relieved he didn't have to be a party to that farce as well. "You're dismissed."

"…it's almost like an entirely separate language. I always thought human nonverbal communication was quite intricate, but this is something entirely different. Did you know there are entire dialects of Andorian that rely only on antennae movements? Almost like sign language. And their poetry…"

Tucker barely listened to Sato's enthusiastic monologue about the complexities of Andorian communication and culture stemming from the aliens' antennae. He had tried to pay attention at first, but the topic – obviously inspired by Lieutenant Covan's recent arrival – was hardly one that he wanted to discuss. He resorted to nodding along, lost in his own thoughts.

"…and you're not even listening to me, are you?"

"Mm-hmm," Tucker nodded absently. Sato sighed.

"Trip."

"What?" Tucker looked up over his barely-touched plate of fried fish and potatoes. "Sorry, Hoshi."

"What's bothering you?"

"Nothing." Nothing he could explain to her, anyway. Archer's orders had been clear. Only he, Tucker, T'Pol, and Phlox were to know the truth of Reed's 'disappearance.' Tucker wondered how Sato would react if she knew.

"Sure. And I'm a Vulcan snowman." Vulcan's lowest temperatures were well above the freezing point of water. "It's about Covan, isn't it? You don't like him."

"I like him fine," Tucker protested.

"I'm a communications expert, Trip. I saw how you were looking at him – I thought you were going to strangle him for a minute there."

"I'm sure I'll get used to him."

"You didn't want Starfleet to replace Malcolm so soon," Sato guessed quietly.

"I know, it's not really fair to him," Tucker admitted. "It's just strange to see someone in Malcolm's place." Especially while Malcolm's still alive. But he couldn't say that.

"It's not fair to us, either," Sato pointed out gently. "None of this is fair. But we can't just stop the mission. You know Malcolm wouldn't have wanted that."

"These days I'm not sure what Malcolm would have wanted," Tucker said darkly, with a hint of bitterness that seemed to take Sato aback. How much of what he knew about Reed was true, and how much was a lie? Tucker hated himself for doubting Reed, then hated himself just as much for not taking the captain's word on the matter. All this had him so screwed up. Nothing was the way it should be. The Reed that Tucker knew would never desert or betray Archer and the Enterprise; but he already had once, and apparently had done so again. If only he could just talk to Reed. Maybe there was an explanation, somewhere.

Mistaking his frustration for grief, Sato put a hand on his wrist. "I miss him too. I still catch myself thinking he's down in the Armoury. The number of times I've almost hailed Malcolm instead of Ensign Tanner…" she shook her head sorrowfully. "We all miss him. But he's gone, Trip. We have to move on."

He's not dead! Tucker wanted to shout in her face. He left, Hoshi! He left all of us to think that he's dead. And for what? For the orders of some mysterious former employer? Instead of shouting, Tucker forced himself to act along. It was surprisingly easy to portray his anger as sadness. Had it been this easy for Reed to act the part of something he was not? He might not have been acting, Tucker insisted futilely to himself. There's an explanation. There has to be.

"I know." He feigned emotion in his expression. "I'm sure I'll get used to Covan in time."

"That's right. Give it time." Sato squeezed his arm and gave him a sad smile. Uncomfortable with her sincerity, Tucker tried to steer the conversation away.

"What are you, the ship's counsellor?"

"Sometimes," Sato smiled, some of the grief fading from her expression. "Phlox and I split the work."

"On this ship, it's probably a full-time job," Tucker said wryly, drawing a short laugh.

"You're not wrong." She gathered up her plate, preparing to leave, but paused to look at him. "Are you okay?"

"Sure." Tucker smiled past the whirlwind of doubt and confusion in his mind. "Thanks, Hosh."

Trapped in the dark with no point of reference, Reed had no idea how long had passed. By now the cricks in his crunched spine and neck had developed into a fully-fledged torment. Despite the substantial pain, the greatest trial was something else entirely. In the darkness, there was only his own mind to occupy him. Every time his consciousness began to slip – though it was hard to tell in the darkness whether or not he was drifting – he heard noises, or thought he did. Was he intentionally not being allowed to sleep? Or was it he imagining the sounds? Or was this sleep after all, some horrible nightmare? The angry throb in his neck suggested it was not, but he couldn't know.

Pricks of light danced in front of his vision when he opened his eyes, as if his mind simply could not grasp that there was absolutely nothing to see. Reed moved his fingers and wrists in a vain effort to keep blood flowing through them. He had given up on his feet, which had passed through various stages of pins and needles and into aching numbness some indefinable time ago. Nevertheless, the discomfort of the cramped box did not seem so terrible anymore. Reed found that if he lay perfectly still and breathed lightly, the pressure of the close walls was less terrible.

At least, it would not have been terrible except that there was nothing to quiet his mind.

He closed his eyes so he could pretend that if he opened them he would see something. He wished someone would interrogate him, give him something to fight other than his own mind. Give him something to hate. Anger was strength. He couldn't hate Harris: the man had done no wrong by using him in the only way in which Reed was still useful. In the Section there was no right or wrong, there was only the mission. And Harris had followed that law to the letter.

If there was blame to be placed, it was on Reed. He had walked willingly into Harris's trap, betraying as he did everything that had become most valuable to him. He had turned his back on the Enterprise. On his crew. On his Captain. The ship and her crew had become his home, or at least the closest he'd ever thought he would have to a home. And what had it taken for him to abandon that? Only the beckoning whistle of a man he'd sworn never again to follow, and he'd come obediently to the master's call.

He'd thought himself better than Harris. He'd thought he could turn away from what he had become in the Section. But some choices could not be undone, however young and stupid you were when you made them. Sometimes naivety could not excuse actions. Some acts were unforgivable, or became so once their implications had played out into actuality.

He never should have left. His loyalty was to the Captain of the Enterprise, and no longer to the Section. But it was too late for that, wasn't it? Archer was light-years away, believing him dead. He would never know of his traitorous officer's repentance that came just too late to do any good.

All his life had been lived from one too late to the next. He had never managed to learn that life didn't give second chances. Now he had run out of time.

There was water on his face. It felt cold against his skin. A thin, steady stream of water ran silently from somewhere above him. It trickled down around his nose and mouth, taunting him with its continuous flow as he first drank greedily and then choked it out when it didn't stop, when the stream became a river. The cold wetness pooled around his body and stole his air in the darkness. It kept coming, filling up the chamber.

The water lapped teasingly at his face, forcing him to lift his face to breathe. The only direction he could turn his head put his nose and mouth directly in the stream pouring down on him.

The water rose.

As the days and then weeks passed, Tucker found it appallingly easy to get accustomed to the new status quo on the Enterprise. It took about a week before stepping onto the bridge and seeing a blue-skinned face where Reed should have been no longer gave him a nasty jolt and the feeling that he'd stepped onto the bride of the wrong ship, but eventually that too dissipated. To the engineer's infinite fury, the targeting scanners, which had plagued Reed incessantly since the very beginning of the mission, abruptly gave up the struggle and resigned themselves to the unfortunate business of functioning correctly. Tucker never would have believed that a simple piece of equipment would anger him by working correctly, but there it stood. He scolded himself for his irrationality. Probably targeting scanners just needed to be broken in.

The Enterprise had entered a dry spell of space. It had been unusually long since they had encountered anything of note, from an M-class planet to a disgruntled alien. The timing, Tucker thought, couldn't have been worse. They all needed something to get their minds off Reed. Archer in particular seemed ready to go stir-crazy. Things had gotten so bad that they spent a full day studying an unusually-shaped piece of space rock which proved to have absolutely no strange characteristics at all beyond its outward shape. The science department had conducted test after test on the unoffending object, determined to find something wrong with it. They had even launched a full-scale plan to bring the entire thing aboard the Enterprise for further study – a feat which would have involved clearing one of the shuttle-bays and 'relocating,' according to their report, the wall of the aforementioned bay. T'Pol had promptly shot down the idea, probably astonished – if Vulcans could be astonished – at the bizarre persistence of her human colleagues in believing that the perfectly ordinary piece of rock could have 'useful scientific properties.' It had wasted the day, at any rate, and given them nothing in the end except a small amount of satisfaction for the Armoury staff when Archer had permitted Covan to blow it up with the super-charged phase cannons.

The new Tactical Officer was another reason why Tucker hoped to see some kind of action soon. He would never hope for the Enterprise to be attacked, of course, but he was curious to see how Covan would react under pressure. The Andorian seemed to be faring quite well as the head of his department. There had been none of the expected murmurs of discontent under the new leadership, or at least very few. Covan had made no attempt to change the protocols that Reed had put in place. Whether this was out of sensitivity or because he didn't have better ideas, Tucker wasn't sure. He knew which explanation he preferred. The transition from Tanner to Covan had to all appearances gone smoothly. The Lieutenant had already put his new staff through a few drills and training exercises, and reported in one of Archer's senior staff meetings that he was well pleased with their performance. But for all that he seemed to be an excellent officer insofar as the day-to-day life of the ship went, Tucker knew that things could change drastically once an actual crisis hit – and, devilish as the idea was, he rather hoped such a crisis would hit sooner rather than later. Nothing serious, of course, maybe just a random alien ship taking a few shots at them. At the very least, Tucker thought despairingly, that might give him something to fix. The warp core persisted in running perfectly, and there was a limit to how long Tucker could legitimately spend crawling around in access tubes pretending that he was making important modifications.

It was illogical, Tucker knew, to attribute any of this to Reed's absence. Still, he couldn't help feeling that if Reed were here, something would have happened. From the unfortunate events during their shore leave on Risa to their last away mission, it seemed that there had been hardly a dull moment with Reed around. Probably that was just Tucker desperately wanting to do something, and had no rational basis, but the impression lingered. Not that he would necessarily want to repeat all of those experiences, particularly not the one on Risa – but the sheer boredom almost made him think fondly of that unfortunate night.

And yet everything had been so simple back then. The weight of deception and ulterior motives had not hung heavy in the air between them back then. Or perhaps it had, as far as Reed was concerned, and Tucker had never noticed. Perhaps the past always seemed cleaner in comparison with the present. Whatever the case, he would have given almost everything to have back the Enterprise's early days: back when everything had been so new and exciting. When each day was an experiment. Back when he and Archer had been the closest of friends, off on their dream mission together. Before the Expanse had twisted his old friend into a vindictive dictator and a politician who could rationalize absolutely anything. Back when his friendship with Reed had been uncomplicated. He'd enjoyed making fun of the Brit, who shot back with a razor-sharp wit and rarely took any real offense. Back before the Sulliban. Before the Xindi. Before the superweapon, and all the damage it had done both directly and vicariously, both to him and to others.

But there was no point in dwelling on that. Tucker had to admit that the encounter with the mysterious Anachron species, despite the near-tragedy of the event, had left him strangely excited about the possibility of time travel; but for the moment at least, that was still a far-off fantasy. It was not yet a viable solution to any such problems as the Xindi had caused, and because of the volatility of such an endeavour, it might never be. And so the grass remained greener in retrospect. Tucker was okay with that; it was the helplessness of knowing that Reed was still alive and out there somewhere, and that there was nothing he could do about it, that left him frustrated and discontent. There was nothing he could do about it, though, or about the fact that the lack of anything substantial to do left him with far too much time for introspection. All there was left to do was to continue on; to pretend that Reed was dead and he himself was moving on; to will himself to believe that their mission out here was worth all it had cost them.

Sometimes, Tucker wondered if Reed had felt anything like this disillusionment as he walked the halls clothed in the professional veneer of an officer to cover the secrets he held.

Only the steady throb of Reed's heart told him that he was still alive. He had only that to separate reality from the images that his mind threw at him, all twisted up and snarled together with the sick taste of guilt.

He was still in the dark. The water had gone. It had taken something away from him when it went: the last of his sanity, perhaps. The spasms of his uncurled muscles were such that it had taken him a while to realise that he was not still in the cramped box.

His head ached sharply. A thousand needles, invisible in the dark, pressed into his skull from all sides. He thought he was imagining them until he tried to move and nearly put his eye out on one of the sharp spikes.

He thought he had been drugged. His whole body felt strange and limp, and it was more than the deep ache of stretched muscles that had grown unused to being stretched. Cold metal pressed against his skin on one side and thick, inflexible leathery straps on the other side. Between the two these held him upright. He would have fallen without them.

There were others in the room – Romulans, probably. He could sense the movements nearby. He felt little fear of them. The strange horror of the unknown hung over him like a shroud. The Romulans were known; they were not to be feared. It was something else entirely that brought clamminess into his icy hands.

The needles were doing something to his head.

He was sure of this without having any definite way of knowing. There was a strangely foreign sensation of mounting pressure inside his skull. His thoughts grew confused and scattered. He thought of a world that he had never really called home: a blue-green marble set in the great dark emptiness of space. He thought of a ship called Enterprise, and of the people on it. These things had gone distant with the unreality of drugged memory, brought clearer only in occasional fleeting snapshots. He could no longer be sure that any of the things he'd clung to so firmly at first – Tucker, the Enterprise, Captain Archer, Sato – had ever existed. The only thing he could depend on was the Romulans. He had seen their faces before they had stolen his eyesight with blackness; he remembered that. He heard their voices occasionally and it reassured him. The unknown words brought that one solid memory back into his mind. He could be certain of the Romulans even if they were the ones hurting him.

He wasn't at all sure that they had done this to him. The Romulan voice he heard more often than others was tight with worry. Were they concerned for him? The ides filled him with gratitude. Surely if they were doing this to him they would not be worried about him. Perhaps he was inventing it all in his mind, and they trying to save him. Perhaps none of it was real.

He wasn't fighting them anymore, wasn't trying to tell himself that someone would come for him. There was no one coming. Probably there had never been anyone to come. He had accepted that. He had accepted that he would die here, wherever 'here' was, and however he had gotten here. He had accepted it and yet it still gnawed at him with teeth of chilling fear because, although shaky logic told him otherwise, there was no end to what could happen to him in this shadowy void between imagination and truth. There were no finite bounds on the pain and terror he could experience before he died. It was not pain that he was afraid of so much as it was the fear. The fear turned his mind against him.

His mind did not seem to be under his control anyway. He saw things that he did not know: twin planets, one rusty brown and one pale, cloudy green. A home he had never set foot on. A family he did not have. These memories were not his own and he did not know where they came from.

Someone was screaming nearby and it was not him. He heard a great deal of shouting and felt movement all around him. He thought that among the voices he understood turn it off, you are going to kill him, but it could not have been about him. He was not dying. One of the Romulans was somehow terribly injured. It was still crying out. There was a sound of madness to its cries. Reed felt that in some way, though he did not know how, he was himself responsible for the Romulan's pain.

The needles pressing against his head scraped his skin and then were gone. There was light. Reed had not known he could still see. His eyes watered in protest at the sudden brightness, but he dared not shut them for fear of losing the light. After a time his vision cleared and he was able to see something of his surroundings. In front of him by some ten feet was a Romulan bound in a reinforced metal chair. Several Romulans were gathered around, two of them lifting a heavily-wired hemisphere of metal off of their companion's head. A helmet of some kind? Reed had no conception of what was happening. It was this bound Romulan that was screaming, though his cries were quickly fading to moans.

One of the other Romulans was angry, was demanding to know what had happened, and another was saying that something had failed. The mind probe cannot fail, the angry one insisted. Reed did not understand what they were talking about, but it was clear that something had gone terribly wrong and the Romulan now being released from its bindings had suffered the worst of the mishap. Reed grappled awkwardly to comprehend the situation and could not even begin to make sense of it. The confusion sickened him.

When one of the Romulans hyposprayed him into unconsciousness, it was a relief.