"Captain, it sounds like they're being held here for experimentation." Hoshi reported quietly.

"What kind of experiments?" the Captain scanned the hostages worriedly.

Hoshi spoke a few words to them and translated for the Captain. "Genetic experiments, mutilation, enhancements."

"What?" the Captain was shocked.

"It seems this outpost is operated by a branch of the Romulan military that's researching augments to the military."

The Captain clenched his jaw.

The door to the cell opened and admitted a heavily decorated General and his two guards.

The prisoners fell back against the wall, but the Captain stepped up to meet him. "I'm Captain Jonathan Archer." he started, puffing up his chest.

"You have violated Romulan space," the robust general called over them. He, like his officers, wore a head covering military scarf, of which he had not pulled down the veil from over his nose and mouth. "Where is the rest of your crew?"

The captain waved his hands to try and settle the general, but it had the opposite effect. "I'm certain we can come to some kind of understanding."

"Your ship, Captain?"

"Let my men go."

"I can't do that, Captain. My government has strict guidelines for the treatment of trespassers."

"What do you intend to do to us?"

"Oh, Captain." he laughed coldly, "I'm inclined to kill you, and all the people in this cell, and then I'll take your shuttles and find your ship and take it to Romulus to study your technology." The general turned away.

With a glance to his engineer, the Captain lurched after the General, and spun him around, fist flying.

The general was too fast, and caught him below the ribs with the butt of his staff. The Captain fell as the air was forced out of his lungs. The General caught him once more above the right eye.

"Hey!" Trip called, as he tackled the General. In one swift movement, the guards had the Commander in their grasp, and dragged him out of the room. The General shut the door behind him.

X X X

"So, Commander," the General sneered, "We are not an unpleasant people. As a show of good faith, we'll help you. Who will it be? Who's most important to you."

Trip peered up through hazy eyes. There was that beautiful girl, speaking thoughts to her beautiful mother, and then he knew: they weren't going to help him. He focussed on the Captain, and made a point of it.

"Ah, the Captain! An interesting choice." commented the Romulan, "But it wasn't your first, now was it? Bring the Vulcan, the girl." he shouted to the guard.

X X X

I'll be alright. Fear is the mind killer. Were the last words T'Mir mindspoke to her mother as the guards pulled her away. She pushed them off her arms, preferring the dignity of her own mobility.

They walked her past Trip toward the door. She made brief eye contact with him, calmly, hoping he would hold out, no matter what.

The guards turned her sharply, coming about in front of a medical cart. They pushed her down, roughly, onto her knees so that she slumped down, biting back the pain of impact.

Trip squirmed in his chair, but didn't say anything.

The General stepped in front of him holding a green-yellow cylinder. "Do you know what this is, Commander. It's a neurolytic compound, a torture device really." He mulled it over in his hand, "We were in the practice of using it on defectors of the Empire, but it was outlawed for the sheer inhumanity of it. You see, it stimulates all the neural fibres at once – your skin burns, blood boils, the mind loses it's stability. I've heard it's much worse on Vulcans.

"First, I expect she'll lose all that pleasant Vulcan control, usually hallucination follows shortly after, and in a matter of minutes, complete loss of brain activity. But don't worry, the subject usually dies, in convulsions, of tachycardia before that final unpleasantness – so you see, I am a decent person." The General grinned poisonously before stepping behind T'Mir.

T'Mir raised her head, proud in sacrifice, taking a final stilling breath, holding eye contact with T'Pol.

T'Pol raised her hand up to the glass, more fear running through her veins than she thought to ever be possible. She felt the reserve of the hostages around her, how they stepped back, how they knew her daughter was going to die.

The Romulan reached around T'Mir's neck, pulling her head back, loaded hypospray poised. "Is there anything you'd like to tell me, Commander." After a brief silence, he stabbed down with his left hand, an air pressure hiss sounding through the room.

T'Mir inhaled noisily, painfully. She rocked forward, folding almost in half, clawing at her neck.

Quickly, the Romulan rushed toward Trip, loading the injector with a new red vial. "You see this," he shouted, "this is the antidote, it has to be administered soon or she will die! Where is your ship? Tell me!"

T'Mir clawed raggedly at her neck, arms, face, leaving trails of blood. A green vein bulged across her forehead. She screamed unreservedly all the while, never letting up for breath, bearing too much pain. She laid half on her side, still on her knees, muttering in Vulcan, "Atan ni'arha, j'jenun ... dobres, valartia. Atan ni'arha..."

Trip sobbed, fixated to the writhing sight in front of him. "There's am asteroid belt..." Trip started.

T'Mir acted now, springing to life. There was a guard directly behind her, noisy, and she swung up and into him, her fist contacting his jaw. She turned, leaving him with a solid kick that sent him flying, and she elbowed the general to her side. He staggered, and she caught him with her left fist and then her right, sending him sprawling across the floor before he'd even had a chance to react. The last guard came running at her, and she was able to bash his head against her knee and shove him across the floor.

X X X

The Romulans in the room were disabled. Her vision swam out of focus, the room loomed in front of her. All the clearheadedness adrenaline had left in battle was suddenly stripped as the drug began to affect her. There was something else – something – there, on the floor, the hypospray: an antidote – why? The drug. It was affecting her.

She took a shaky footstep towards it, stumbling immediately. Breaths came out as rags. She crawled past the General on the floor – napping, she wanted a nap, she could just lie down right here – if it was good enough for a General... He sure flung that thing a long way when he fell.

Her leg tremoured, and she was forced once again into a kneeling position. She reached out one long arm and grabbed the device, curling over into a foetal position. She had the hypospray – now what, what did Phlox always do? Hibernate, maybe she could hibernate. No, that wasn't it. She plunged the injector tip haphazardly into her neck, and it released.

She rolled over, groaning. The tremours spread across her body. She whimpered quietly as each one shook her. The pain was so much, everywhere, but someone stood before her, held her up. It was T'Pol, her hair was shorter then, so long ago, her first memories of happiness. And then her heart stopped.

X X X

"T''Mir! T'Mir!" Trip screamed frantically, struggling wildly against his restraints.

The onlookers in the booth watched in horrified silence. T'Pol felt Trip's heart breaking in complement to her own. A violent sob shook her, her emotional control faltered.

Without premonition, T'Mir's eyes flashed wide open and she sucked in air as her torso convulsed. She lay on the floor for a minute, breathing heavily. She blinked, as though trying to remember where she was.

Suddenly, with renewed determination, she hit the floor with her hand and used the momentum to help her raise herself up. She staggered weakly to the observation booth, taking a moment to rest with her forehead against the glass, breath fogging the glass in the doors. With steeled resolve, she punched in the code to unlock the doors. Then the room went dark, and just voices and footsteps floated past her.

X X X

One of the hostages caught her as she fell, and then she felt her mother's firm grip helping to bring her to the bench on the wall. Someone unlocked Trip's restraints, and he came running; she heard a prayer under his breath. He reached her, combing through her hair, feeling all over her face, determining that she was really alive before him.

Dr. Phlox was there, he pushed his way in, drawing his medical scanner over her. He said something, but it was lost among her pain and convulsions.

X X X

"She's in shock." Phlox announced to the room. "I'll need a sedative, somebody find me a sedative in all this mess. Come on people, look!"

"What's happenin', Doc?" Trip asked. Beneath his arms, his daughter was flailing wildly, screaming incoherently, wild eyes imparting a sense of doom.

"She's in neurolytic shock, Commander, her heart stopped. Frankly, I'm not sure how she's even alive."

"Here, sir." an ensign ran up, holding out another vial.

Phlox scanned it. "It will do." Then he jabbed it too into her neck

"What was that?" Trip questioned.

"A sedative, Mr. Tucker... I hope."

"Doc?"

"We'll have to see." was the Doctor's cold response.