Loud music blared obtrusively out of Engineering. Kirk passed the doorway to the department, and barely escaped being thrown up against the wall by the fleeing Engineering officers. Back pressed against the wall, Kirk glimpsed Jaylah working inside, her head bouncing along to the beat enthusiastically, and Scotty distinctly not working. Scotty sat, head down on a counter, looking utterly dejected. The figure of a broken man seemed to breathe in, and let out an astronomical sigh. Kirk raised an eyebrow at the scene before him as the doors slid shut, and the noise was lessened. He looked up the corridor at the backs of the hurried Engineering officers and then sighed himself, opened the doors, and resigned to his duty as Captain, forced his way through the wall of sound.

Jaylah had not been impressed at Kirk's suggestion to turn the music down, but had allowed him to introduce her to earphones. Unfortunately, she still played the music so loud those nearby could hear her, but at least this time "nearby" meant 'within a few feet', not 'in the same star-system'. Kirk walked down the corridor, only to hear more music blasting out of a separate door. Abusing his Captain's privileges, and utilising his ability to override every lock, Kirk walked into the room without announcing his presence and began speaking:

"I like Sabotage as much as the next per…son," He trailed off distractedly, as Hannah screeched a high pitched noise, and dropped to the floor. She hid her frame behind the bed, and only allowed her head to be visible above the bed. Face flushed, Hannah's eyes had widened.

"Computer shut up." The words tumbled out of her mouth quickly, frantically. She stared at the Captain in horror. "Kirk, WHAT THE FUCK!" Her voice somehow rose mother octave. A hand snaked out and snatched the towel off the bed, and Hannah briefly turned away from Kirk, to wrap the material around her frame. The white towel reached to her mid-thigh and she stood up, taking a deliberately deep breath.

"Your music was really loud," Kirk said simply, sounding like a rebuked school boy, and looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Hannah stared back at him, something feral about her defensive pose.

"I turned it off?" Hannah mimicked his tone, not out of mockery. She looked almost as shocked as the man before her. They stared at each other. Hannah wrapped her hand into a fist, bunching the towel material into her hand, and fidgeting uncomfortably. "This is awkward."

"Very," Kirk agreed.

"I normally roll with this sort of thing really well," Hannah seemed to whisper, her voice coming out husky. Kirk raised an eyebrow, and the spell was broken. Hannah folded her arms, the towel, thankfully, staying put, and the panic-stricken expression left her face, replaced with a deadpan look.

"Clearly, you handle awkward very well," Kirk commented. Hannah stood around the bed, and stared him down.

"Clearly, you are more experienced with it. Care to teach me?" Hannah drawled. Kirk grinned at her. Hannah didn't blink, her defiant challenge hanging in the air. The crackle of a promise and a threat laced the words like venom, and Hannah's mind flung through the possibilities of this moment. A thousand possible futures lay just before her, uncommunicable hints hidden just out of sight, and yet only the one could come to pass.

"Captain, your presence is needed on the bridge,"

Hannah watched the door slid shut behind the Captain, and then sank slowly on to the bed. Vowing never again to loiter in her room, refusing to dress for extended periods of time after a shower, she scanned the room for her clothes. She dressed faster than she had done in her life, and then returned to her shell-shocked position on her bed. She stared at the wall for a few moments, and then, with a despairing groan, flung herself backwards on the bed. Her head bounced up slightly with he force that she had thrown herself downwards, and she internally winced. Her own embarrassment flooded the room, and she cringed. She lifted her hands and buried her face in her palms.

"Whyyyyyy," She grumbled, her voice emitting a muffled, incoherent moan. Knowing her face to be bright red, she pushed herself upright, and decided to go annoy McCoy in Med Bay, because she was going to go insane, shut inside with only her own memories circling in her head.

Hannah set off from her room, striding towards the Med Bay, before a familiar face a crowd of people threw her. Her footsteps halter, and her heart spluttered out a frantic, fearful irregular panic. She turned to stare at the back of the head, but it was lost amongst a sea of Star Fleet crew members. She shook her head, and set off again, a little more uncertain. Then the face bobbed into her sight again, from the same direction. And impossibly, there is was again. Hannah's breathing became rapid, and she fixed her gaze to the floor, walking faster. She now walked with a purpose, a different purpose. The striding had been replaced with an almost scurry. Feet moving below her with a rapidity that made her stand on her own feet, she brushed people out the way, and instinctually looked up to see him.

"No," Hannah gritted her teeth, telling herself this way not happening. He was dead, they were all dead. Even if she had been wrong then, they were all dead, it was 250 years into her future, they could not be alive. The Med Bay was just along one more corridor, she could make it there, and then McCoy would be able to tell her what the hell was happening.

"Remember me?" Drawled a voice, tantalisingly sinister. The hair on the back of her neck rose and she couldn't bear to turn around. The voice rose, and didn't stop. It harassed her the whole way to the Med Bay.

Hannah ran the rest of the way.

"McCoy, I am hallucinating." It was not a question, there was no uncertainty in the statement. What there was, however, was fear. Her voice trembled, and her eyes snapped shut. Hannah pushed her body back on to the door, and clamped her hands over her ears. "I am going insane, and I don't know why, so I don't know how but fix it."

Voices circled her, vultures waiting. Watching. Preparing for the death they knew to be coming soon. Breath was shivering down her neck, clammy hands. Hands everywhere.

She curled into a ball, holding her hands over her ears tighter, and tighter. Her hands went white with the pressure, blood surging through her veins to her ears. Heart beat pounded. Fear. She needed to move, to run, to get away from this voice, from those hands- but where could she go? She was trapped on a ship, with nothing but an empty, desolate void outside the hull. Through the cold sweat that had drowned her frame, she felt metal press against her skin, and darkness cradled her in its arms.

McCoy looked down at the young woman, who had fallen limply to the side. Her hands had released their death grip on her ears, and the flush which had driven her to start running towards the wall, eyes still firmly shut, had faded from her cheeks. Hannah looked a hollow frame of a person. Even though McCoy had seen her less than two hours prior, the girl had flung herself into Med Bay looking haunted and somehow gaunt. It was as though the demons, she believed to chase her, had sucked the life out of her. Her heart beat had faded the minute McCoy had injected her with the anaesthetic, but it had faded too quickly, and too much to be normal. Tricorder in hand, McCoy frowned, not understanding the readings he was receiving from the medical tricorder.

"Jim?"

"What is it, Bones?" Came the response over the comms, sounding bored, and a little exasperated.

"I think there's something you need to see,"

Kirk was in the Med Bay in a matter of moments. McCoy gestured to the woman lying on the bed.

"It seems to be some kind of bacterial infection, but I've never seen anything like it," McCoy explained, as the Captain moved forwards to look at her. He was met with a force field, which crackled below his fingers. Kirk turned his head sharply. "She was hallucinating, I didn't want to be on the receiving end if she wakes up."

"If?" The word came out tersely, and a little high pitched. Kirk strode back to McCoy. "What do you mean 'if'?" McCoy sighed, and stared at the readings on the console in front of him.

"She doesn't have the same antibodies, and physiology as the rest of us- not exactly, anyway. If I tried to kill the bacteria, I could end up killing her too." McCoy didn't soften the blow, and Kirk physically recoiled from the words. McCoy watched his friend closely, and stepped forwards, to just behind him.

"Can you wake her?" Kirk asked, quietly.

"Anaesthetic is going to wear off in a few seconds," McCoy answered. "She'll wake herself." Hopefully he didn't add aloud, but the word hung in the air so densely, it was almost audible. Kirk stared at the woman on the bed, and, as if sensing him, she blinked herself into wakefulness. Hannah sat up, a hand lifting to her head slowly, agonisingly.

"Hannah?" Kirk tested. Hannah lifted her head, to look at him. The colour flooded from her face, and she stared at Kirk in horror. She flung herself back off the bed, colliding with the wall with such a force that her whole frame shuddered from the impact, but her eyes remained fixed on Kirk.

"No," She whispered hoarsely, unblinking. Unmoving.

"Hannah, it's me. It's Kirk," Kirk tried again. Hannah tried to back away further her back pressed into the wall. Her hands splayed on the wall, and for the first time, she broke eye contact with Kirk, and seemed to scan around the bed for a weapon. Not finding one, she leapt over the bed, and slammed into the force field. The collision with the invisible wall seemed to shatter her illusion, and she sank to the floor.

"Kirk," She breathed, fear infantilising her voice. "Kirk, what's happening to me?"

"You're hallucinating." McCoy answered for him. Hannah let her eyes drift shut. "I think it's a bacterial infection, but I don't know how to treat it."

"Not to tell you how to do your job, but have you tried some fucking antibiotics- and you SHUT UP." Hannah's head whipped around to glower at something over her shoulder, something that didn't exist. Kirk knelt down, the other side of the force field, and pity wafted from him. McCoy barely resisted sarcasm in response.

"I've tried antibiotics. You didn't respond to them," McCoy answered monotonously. Hannah pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, and gritted her teeth.

"Have you tried antibiotics from my time? Or hell, even fucking penicillin?" She spat, and lifted a single hand behind her. Initially a fist, she fired her middle finger upright. The empty room behind her didn't respond, at least not that Kirk or McCoy could see. "And once you've done that, can you bring Jaylah and her music in here, so I can drown this out?"

McCoy now felt like he was the one going insane. Hannah flicked between singing loudly along to Jaylah's "angry" music, and sassing an invisible figure. McCoy actually had to admit, her piss fights with empty air were quite funny, but Hannah seemed to be straining to hold herself together. Her hallucinations had lasted nearly two hours now, and the cracks in her disinterested facade were beginning to show. Her hands trembled on her knees, and she furled them into balls, screaming out lyrics from Thunderstruck, her voice crackling slightly. McCoy had flooded the air inside the force field with gaseous penicillin but it hadn't seemed to help her in anyway yet.

"Computer, turn the music off." The sudden silence in the Med Bay was eerie. McCoy felt disconcerted at the abrupt quiet, and feared for half a heartbeat that he would start to hear voices too. Hannah stood, and pressed her hands against the force field. There was a crackling of blue and yellow from below her hands. "McCoy, this bacteria, do you lot have antibodies against this shithead?" McCoy nodded in response.

"Yeah, it's common on Earth, but it doesn't affect anyone this way," He frowned at her. "You're not thinkin-"

-"Aye, I'm fucking thinking blood transfusion."

"I can't guarantee it'll work," McCoy warned her. Hannah looked at him, her eyes dead.

"At this point, you cannae guarantee anything will bloody work, so how 'bouts we give it a wee try, okay?"

Kirk sat in his chair, fingers tapping nervously on the arm. He waited tensely for the message to come from McCoy to say Hannah had gotten worse, that her condition was deteriorating, but no such call came and that was worse. He had no idea if what was happening to her would affect the rest of his crew- and out here, in deep space, 50 days travel from the nearest Star Fleet station, it was less than ideal. He'd already made the executive decision that if someone else was affected by these hallucinations, that he was setting the Enterprise to autopilot all the way back to Yorktown. He couldn't risk the lives of his whole crew, either from the mania of their colleagues, or from the bacteria itself.

"Captain, I'm reading a nebula off our starboard bow. It's dense in both deuterium and anti-deuterium," Spock reported. "Our supply of both substances would benefit from being replenished." Kirk nodded distractedly, his mind still in the Med Bay. He ran a hand through his hair.

"Yeah, um, you can deal with that, right?" Kirk asked, shifting responsibility for the minor act to someone else. Spock nodded, turned and left the Bridge.

"Well, I mean, you've got to get over it at some point," Hannah muttered. "You've only been dead 250 years, you'll have to get used to it." McCoy glanced over at Hannah, who was clearly listening to the answer her hallucinations were giving. "Didnae be petty, threatening to kill me? Like come on, you didnae exist, the only way you can make me pay, is if you make me make me suffer? And whilst saying 'make me make me' pains me, it isnae gonna kill me." Hannah glowered over her shoulder again. She narrowed her eyes, and scoffed: "Oh suck a dick!" McCoy raised his eyebrows at her outburst. This was the most violent one yet, and her heart rate had spiked dramatically. Moving steadily upwards from her resting heart rate of 64 to 89 beats per minute, Hannah's hands tensed again, the veins lifting out from her skin. The doors slid open, and Hannah saw another ghost walk in, this time wearing a friend's face. She let her frame drop backwards, and McCoy hurried forwards to the console, checking her life signs.

"Hannah?" He called.

"I'm fine," She moaned, staring at the ceiling. "Did the door actually open?" McCoy answered positively.

"Yeah, Jim just came in," McCoy told her. "Who are you seeing?"

"Someone who was in the army with me. He died whilst I was serving with him," She complained. "Like thank you brain. Just what I want, guilt to add to my disgust." Hannah flipped off her 'disgust', yet again. She waved at the Captain. "Please dear God tell me you know how to fix this?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid," Kirk apologised. Hannah sat up, and looked hopefully at McCoy.

"I don't know how to fix it yet, but I know what's causing it."

"Tell me." It was not a request that spilled from Hannah's mouth. She scrambled to the edge of the force field, and pressed her body as close she could to the invisible shield.

"It's respiring anaerobically in your brain, yet for some reason the ethanol is interacting with your neuro-pathways in such a way that it's making you hallucinate," McCoy explained. He frowned at the screen again, his brow straining with the effort. "Does that hurt? Pressing into the force field?"

"Like a bitch, why?" Hannah asked plainly, swiftly. Kirk moved towards her and placed a hand on the force field himself. He recoiled his hand sharply as an electric current ran through his body.

"How-?" Kirk didn't finish his question, but he didn't need to. Hannah smiled a cruel perversion of a smile. Bitter and twisted, it emanated a history behind the past that would never be spoken.

"It keeps me grounded. He," She jerked her head back to symbolise 'disgust' behind her, "is happy when I'm in pain. It's his retribution for me killing him." The statement came out with no emotion, no regret. Kirk stared at her, suddenly able to see the person he had read about. Before Hannah's past seemed to have happened to someone else, but now, in that moment, Kirk was able to see the steel that drove her to protect herself. Whilst her act may have been self-defence, it was still deadly, and that lethal coldness shone in her in that moment. McCoy coughed, interrupting their moment, Hannah turned to look at him, her steely cold eyes emptying, and turning back to sad. As her cheek turned away from Kirk, he realised how hollow it was. Somehow, in the space of 4 hours, Hannah had lost weight. She had lost a lot of weight.

"I think I have something, want to try it?" McCoy offered Hannah. She nodded stiffly, and McCoy pressed a single button on the console. Hannah stared at him for a moment, ready to be disappointed, and then fell to the ground.