McCoy paced his office, trying to make sense of Kirk's vital signs. By all accounts, he should be conscious and walking around. The inference, however, was in direct contradiction to his observations. Kirk was lying in his Sick Bay out like a light. The familiar beeping of the biobed machines was like a slow crawl compared to his heart, beating fast and wild. He'd left Olivia on that godforsaken planet.

"Idiot," he added several curse words to flavor the air before making a swift kick to his desk. A sharp pain consumed his shin but he didn't care.

Taking in a slow, deep breath, McCoy grabbed his scanner and went to go check on Kirk again. As he suspected the man's condition remained stable. Placing a slightly shaking hand on his patient, McCoy ran another scan.

"Damnit," he growled. "Jim, you've got to wake up. Green-blooded hobgoblin's gone crazy. He's ordering a retreat. A retreat! Jim, Olivia is down there. Come on, Jim. You can beat this. Wake up." With each sentence McCoy's voice grew louder until he was nearly yelling at his best friend. Slumping into the chain beside the biobed,

"Curious, Doctor. What medical benefit can be derived from that behavior?"

McCoy swallowed the retort climbing up his throat. "What is it, captain?"

"I sensed you are distressed about leaving the planet." When McCoy said nothing, Spock took a few more steps into the room. "It's not your fault. You did what duty bounded you to do, save your captain. Lieutenant Gellar would have done the same."

"Can we not talk about this, Spock?"

"Very well. How long until Captain Kirk is conscious?"

Analyzing the new data coming into his scanner, McCoy rubbed the back of his sore neck. "He could very well become conscious in the next ten minutes; it's just not likely." He softly chuckled. "His scans show that he should be walking around. I can't make sense of these scans."

"An approximation then?"

McCoy sighed heavily. "Another hour or two. Three at the most."

"We should be half-way back to Earth by then."

Captain Spock, report to the bridge

"On my way. Doctor, inform me when Captain Kirk has regained consciousness."

He turned on his heel and walked briskly through the doors. As he passed, Doctor Kolshar stood at the entrance to Sick Bay. Spock spared her a passing glance before continuing on his way. Erin stepped forward, immediately aware of the incredible amount of tension in the room. She had only suffered minor wounds. After a quick stop through decontamination, she was sent to a spare chamber for bed rest. After lying there for two hours, she decided rest wasn't going to do a thing to help the situation. She was a doctor and there were wounded people in need of her help, so she slipped into a uniform and limped here as it was closer than her own Sick Bay. Running a hand through her hair, Erin's gaze locked onto McCoy. She bit the corner of her lip and advanced slowly. McCoy heard the footsteps and thought it was that damn hobgoblin come back to further criticize his work.

"Look. I said I'd tell you when he's conscious. What more do you want you gr—" He whirled around to meet Erin's gaze. "Doctor Kolshar. I thought I confined you to bed rest?"

"There are wounded that need taken care of, Doctor McCoy." Her gaze fell, settling on the half-naked torso that belonged to Captain Kirk. Were they not in these circumstances, she would have delighted in the sight of the captain's chest and muscular arms. She pushed the thoughts aside and retrieved the scanner from the bag she'd brought with her.

"Don't bother. The readings are wacky."

She continued anyway, her brow creasing in confusion. He was right. "According to this, Captain Kirk is as healthy as a horse. So why isn't he conscious?"

"That's what I've been trying to figure out. Maybe something is wrong with the equipment. Hell, maybe something's wrong with me."

They worked in silence for several minutes until Erin couldn't stand the silence.

"Did. . .is Olivia ok? Did she. . ." Once Erin beheld the pain in McCoy's eyes she stopped, taking in a choked gasp. "You mean she's dead?"

"I don't know. We weren't able to get her before beaming up."

Anger flared in her chest. "You mean you left her?"

"It appears the captain—"

"Answer me, Doctor."

McCoy sighed, clutching the scanner he held with white knuckles. He offered her a chair, which Erin flatly refused. Only after he reminded her of her weakened condition did Erin take a seat. Only, she reminded herself, to get McCoy to continue.

"There wasn't a lot of time. Both you and Jim were seriously wounded. If we didn't get you back, you both would have died. We had to leave her behind."

"How could you?" Her voice was a whisper but contained more strength than a million photon torpedoes. She stood, knocking the chair clear across the room. The slight dizziness forbade her from stomping up to him so Erin settled for glaring at him with fire-filled gold eyes.

"She loved you, you know that? She loved you and you left her on that terrible planet. You bastard! How can you live with yourself? And you call yourself a saver of lives? You condemned hers."

"I fought that decision, believe me. Don't you dare tell me I didn't care about Olivia. I love her, damnit!" Tension choked the air between. McCoy broke eye contact first when a familiar beeping indicated the end of yet another test.

"Wait a minute. These brain scans. They show he's conscious."

Erin did a double take between her scanner and Doctor McCoy's. Her breath caught in her chest, leaving her breathless. A slight pain erupted in her side, which she bit down and willed to subside. This was too great an oddity to disrupt with simple side pains.

"Impossible," she whispered.

"These machines don't lie."

"So why is he not awake?"

McCoy leaned over Kirk's body, pressing a couple fingers to the man's throat. His pulse was full and strong, more alike to a conscious man than one nearing a coma. What the hell was going on? He pointed to a cabinet at the other end of the room. He didn't need to speak before Erin was darting across the room. She found the familiar bottle and tossed it to him. He was going to ask how she knew what to get when he realized now was not the time to worry about such things.

Suddenly Kirk's vitals did a complete twist. His heart rate skyrocketed and his brain activity shot back up to above normal levels. Kirk's eyes shot open as a blood-curdling scream spilled from his mouth. It was cold, unnatural and made Erin want to run far away. Blood-shot eyes met hers and immediately recognized her.

"Gellar. . .everything. . .not real. . .don't trust. . ."

Everything else was shrieked in frenzy. McCoy had to throw himself on Kirk to prevent the man from jumping up and likely hurt himself in the process.

"Kolshar, get the sedative. Then help me with these restraints." She did as ordered, injecting Kirk just in the nick of time. His blue eyes glazed over for a moment, allowing McCoy and Erin to strap the man down. A few minutes later, the sedative lost effect. Only this time, as Kirk flew into a fiery rage, the restraints were there to keep him to the table.

"Another sedative?"

McCoy shook his head. "He's already had the limit. We better hope to God those restraints hold."

"Or what?"

"I've never seen Jim this angry." Kirk let forth another hellish growl, bucking against the bed. Where the restraints met his skin, a small trickle of blood fell onto the sheets.

Kirk felt like a fire had ignited at the center of his chest while daggers stabbed at his wrists and ribs. Oh the pain was terrible, so awful the screams hardly did anything to help. He tried to form words but the instinctual need to shriek overrode him. He became like an untamed animal made fiercer by being held down. Why the hell wouldn't Bones release him or at the very least take away the pain.

Suddenly the lights flickered. McCoy and Erin looked around in confusion before a huge rumble shook the entire room. They both lost their footing and fell to the floor. The lights flickered again, weakly before shutting off altogether. The power soon followed. Luckily the restraints didn't depend on power. Drowning in the darkness, McCoy and Erin strained to regain their footing.

"What the hell now?" Erin felt her way to the intercom on the wall. Pressing what she thought was the appropriate button, she waited for the static to indicate a connection.

But there was none.

In the darkness, Kirk continued his screaming. With the lights off, the pain only intensified.

"Bones," his voice was shrill and nearly an octave higher than normal.

Another flicker brought back up power online. McCoy pulled at his communicator and tried reaching the bridge.

"Spock. What's happening?"

"Doctor McCoy. You better get up to the bridge." The voice was Uhura's, shaking with what McCoy would gather as fear. "Commander Spock is injured. He's not responding."

He gritted his teeth, realizing his knee had taken a hard blow during the fall. He turned to Erin who simply nodded just as the first heavily injured victims were dragged into Sick Bay. She was already floating between them, deciding who was fine and who needed to be tended to that very moment. McCoy left Sick Bay with Kirk still screaming and the moans of the dying to plague his thoughts.

Erin dealt with the first few victims when Kirk's vitals took a nosedive. His heart rate plummeted and his brain activity was reduced to nearly zero. His struggling stopped, his eerily body still on the biobed. Kirk fell deeper to the darkness and the cold.

Strange, he would have thought this to be more peaceful.

Commander Spock had never seen anything quite like this before. All was well, considering the circumstances. They were about to depart from the planet when suddenly an aura, for any other word would fail to describe the sheer brilliance of color, enveloped them. Readings failed to detect the presence of anything odd. According to the ship, what they were looking at didn't exist. But the eyes of nearly a dozen crewmen do not lie.

That's when the real trouble started. The anomaly hit the ship with full force and nearly took out their entire power source. Mr. Scott had managed to save some of the backup power. Warp drive and weapons were offline but life support, impulse and communications were still operational. Remembering his duty as captain, Spock swallowed the small amount of fear nagging at the back of his mind and straightened in his chair. He ordered the confused crewmen to get to work analyzing what had just hit them.

No one could figure it out, at least, not before the second wave hit. This one was far more damaging. The rumble was much larger and longer than its predecessor. Without the adequate time to prepare, Spock lost his footing and fell hard to the ground. A sharp shriek at the edge of his consciousness indicated many had been hurt. He tried to get up but found his legs and arms in complete defiance of his mind. No matter how hard he tried, nothing was working.

He gasped lightly when a pair of delicate but firm hands flipped him onto his back. The darkness around his vision was not so great that he couldn't make out Lieutenant Uhura. Her brown eyes searched him for an injury, a search that was futile. Slowly the darkness consumed him. Luckily he had enough power left to transfer command to Chekov before finally going under. The last thing he remembered was his communicator and a voice in the distance calling out for him.

The USS Arrowbella had received their orders to track down the Enterprise and the ship she was accompanying nearly a week ago. They had arrived at the prescribed location of their last known location and spread out evenly from there. Three days and not one sighting.

Captain Greene was an impatient man who'd seen many deaths in his time. Why he continued captaining for the Federation was any one's guess. He said he enjoyed the job and sometimes one could catch him in a smile. For now, on missions like there some idiotic new captain forgot to report in and he had to go find the stupid mongrel, Captain Greene was extremely impatient. His wrinkled features were very nearly carved into his face like stone. Glowering blue eyes looked over his crew with a stern eyes. The more perfect job they did, the sooner they could find those two missing ships and go home.

"Captain. We're picking up some sort of disturbance shortly ahead." Greene was about to ask what this had to do with anything when his first officer pulled up the readings for him to see. "The Enterprise is right in the middle and the other ship is there too."

"Can we hail them?"

A young woman, blonde and still naïve shook her head. "Interference from the anomaly."

"Bloody brilliant," Greene mumbled. "Can we reach—"
Greene barely finished his sentence when the screen's data suddenly changed. The numbers were all over the place. He turned his gaze to his first officer who looked just as shocked as Greene was.

"What's going on?"

"The anomaly is acting strange. It's consuming the ships and the planet."

"What do you mean consuming? Destroying?"

"No. Scans show the structural integrity is intact. It's like the ship's are going out of phase, like they were never there to begin with."

Greene pressed a button on his command console that signaled the transporter room. "Are we within range for transport?"

Not yet, sir. Another few minutes.

Greene cast a look to his first officer who looked at his readings with dismay. He shook his head. "It'll be too late."

"Engineering. Can't we make this tub go faster?"

"Oh my God! The planet, the ships, sir they're all gone."

Greene, with a protest on his lips, went speechless when he saw the view screen. Space, empty and silent, stared back into his eyes.

"Get me Admiral Pike."

Kirk wasn't sure where he was when he opened his eyes. It couldn't be heaven. He still felt the chill of cold metal on his bare skin. It couldn't be hell. There was no fire or demons or anything of the sort. Maybe it was a go-between. A sort of purgatory.

Not bad, he thought. Could have been much worse.

That's when a bluish glow lit and he could vaguely see where he was and. . .

"I'm naked?"

Yes, he was naked and floating in a sort of reddish liquid that was thicker than nectar but felt comforting to his aching body. Wires were attached to his temples, chest and abdomen. More flowed from his elbows, knees and feet. He looked more machine than man. It was hard to move his arms but once he did, Kirk felt his arm bump into something. Turning over, he noticed the form was a woman. She too was naked. Too bad it was too dark to see definitive features on her face.

Clearing his head of those thoughts, Kirk climbed from the tub. Without watching his movements, he banged his shin against about a dozen different objects. Soon the pain subsided and he continued forward. Using his hands, he eventually felt what felt like clothes. Pulling them on, Kirk was disappointed but not surprised when a phaser was missing from the pile.

Suddenly the lights began to flicker on. His eyes recoiled, forcing him to dive for cover. Soft footsteps entered the room followed by two sets of heavy ones. A leader with two goons. Shouldn't be that bad. Unless, of course, they were armed. He swallowed past the large lump in his throat and tried to sneak closer for a better look.

A large splash brought Kirk's attention to the other end of the room. The bodyguards stood in the way of their leader but the one who climbed from the tub he instantly recognized as Olivia. Like him, she too was naked and had wires poking from nearly every part of her body.

"What? What's going on?"

Olivia had the worst headache in the world. She was pulled from the abyss and into a strange place. She was naked and in a strange, sticky liquid. Once her vision came back, Olivia immediately looked up at the ones who had hauled her from the tub. Two brutes stood guard while their leader crossed her arms with a sly smirk playing across her bitchy features.

"You bitch. What have you done with Erin?"

"She's safe in her little world. We just gave them a little shock, nothing serious. How are you feeling?"

"Since when do you care?"

"Your body holds the cure. Can't let it be damaged."

Olivia spat at Sara. "What the hell is going on?"

Sara turned back to her bodyguards and nodded toward Olivia. "Bring her to the preparation room. I'll join you in a minute." She grabbed a weapon from her bodyguard and watched them carry Olivia away. Olivia wanted so desperately to struggle but couldn't bring herself to do so, feeling very lethargic and heavy in her limbs.

Sara waited for the door to close before turning back to the other pods in the room. "I'd come out now, Captain Kirk."

He staid silent, crouching lower among the crates.

"Playing the silent game are we?" She advanced to a specific pod, McCoy's. "If you don't come out, I'll simply kill your friends. One at a time. Their death will be painful and not stoppable." Still Kirk did not respond. Sara sighed, reaching for the keyboard to enter the command. "One. . .two. . .th—"

"Wait," he shouted. He put his hands up to indicate he was not armed. Stepping around the boxes, he felt Sara's gaze wander over him.

"Such a handsome specimen." The familiar sound of the weapon activating sent chills down Kirk's spine. "It kills me to have to do this."

He didn't manage to draw a breath before the phaser sent a beam directly at his chest. Knees wobbling, he crumpled to the floor and twitched twice before lying still. His mind echoed with the woman's laughter, cold and malignant.

McCoy limped back into Sick Bay. Erin rushed around the room, from patient to patient, hoping to keep her mind preoccupied with other things besides how many had died in the span of maybe five minutes. He placed a strong hand on her shoulder. She looked back at him with weary eyes.

"Have you checked in with your ship?"

"Yes. Everyone's alright. Hallon is taking charge while Jackson is recovering. How's the Bridge?"

"Only a couple major injuries, but nothing too serious. Spock recovered quickly. He's getting everyone back in order."

"Well everything is taken care of here. Why don't you go get some sleep?" She stifled a yawn. "You could use one."

"Me? Look at you." He bit his cheek to keep his eyes from drooping.

Doctor Kolshar.

"Yes, Commander Hallon?"

Captain Jackson has awakened and is asking for you.

"Very well. I'll be right there."

McCoy saw Erin off before returning to his patients. That's when the relative peace was broken by a shrill scream. He turned to see Nurse Chapel pressed against the wall with her hand shaking as it covered her mouth.

"My God woman. What's wrong?"

"The captain." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "He was fine and then. . .oh, it's terrible."

"Out with it."

"See for yourself."

Grumbling under his breath, McCoy turned and saw the horror that Nurse Chapel had witnessed. Across Kirk's chest was the most horrific burn mark he'd ever seen. Several bruises lined his arms and abdomen.

Spock was on the bridge when McCoy finally reached him. McCoy had insisted he get to Sick Bay. When he entered the room, his eye was caught by the biobed with the sheet pulled up to cover the man lying beneath it.

"Doctor McCoy."

"Spock. Much as I hate to say this, but you're captain now. Jim's dead."

"Are you certain?"

"Damn right, I'm certain."

Before Spock could get out another word, a hole in Kirk's skin appeared near his right side. It sliced up his side and then across his stomach. Similar cuts lined his chest until only one single word was carved and made bold by the gushing of blood.

"Plato."

*

Author's Note:

So I think we can safely establish I suck at updating. It took me a while to figure out what direction to take this story. I finally figured it out and have started writing again. I hope the quality makes up for the wait. As always, reviews are welcome.

Also, if anyone can figure out what Plato means will earn a special surprise from the author. I'm thinking either naming a red shirt or becoming a character.

I'll be on Christmas break in a few weeks and that lasts for three ish weeks so be prepared for lots of updates.

Thank you to all those who have reviewed/alerted the story.....all the support is appreciated

Much Love,

Trekky18