Nobody

A Star Trek Fan Fiction

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Chapter Two

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The darkness of night played on the boy's nerves like a master on the harp. His eyes zigzagged in their sockets as he tried to find anyone that could be perceived as a potential enemy. In the distance he could still hear the wail of a siren and see the orange glow where the pub now in flames used to be. Shock was wrapping itself around his mind as he realized his wake was filled with destruction and danger.

If only he knew why!

When Auri directed his attention back to the intercom system, he couldn't stop jolting nervously at every shadow that seemed to flicker at the edge of his vision; he was desperate to get behind some walls. Quickly he scanned the names that were digitally displayed on the security interface. Most the pixels were out, so there were a few that might have been McCoy, or McNabb, or even Michael. The teen went with the first one and prayed for good luck – not that this night generated any for him so far.

The response was delayed, but after a minute a gruff voice answered.

"Do you have any idea what time of it is? What kind of yellow-livered piece of trash calls people at this ungodly hour? Tracy is that you…? I'm going to do your next prostate exam with a fork-"

"M-McCoy… it's Auri…" The woman said weakly before the man progressed with his rant. Her face was ebbing from the receiver as her carrier struggled to get her head level. The boy's arms were starting to protest the constant strain. "I need help… please..."

Immediately there was a buzz from the door and the boy went for it. It was a pain to try and grasp the handle around his bulky cargo, but he managed to pull it off and get inside. The well-lit lobby hurt his eyes and he tried to keep his mind on getting to wherever this doctor was. He couldn't afford being in the spotlight like this, not when there were strange gang members out there trying to kill him.

Mirrors lined the walls, and made the boy stare in shock at what he saw there. If he didn't know any better he would have thought himself a stranger. Bright blue orbs looked out from behind long eyelashes encrusted with dirt and blood. If he didn't know any better he'd put his age at around seventeen, though his mind felt to him as if it were much older. Auri looked worse for wear of course, like she was rescued out of a nightmare. The large bundle of limbs in his arms muttered something about the fifth floor, so they boarded the elevator and hoped that the security cameras weren't getting a good look at their faces – not that it would matter with the layer of soot and grime they accumulated.

Once the elevator doors opened there was a rough looking man waiting to receive them. His eyes were of the friendly sort, yet blood-shot and weary looking enough to make the boy wonder. The discoloration made the blue of his irises stand out more than ever, and the teen was momentarily entranced. The doctor however, was not.

"What's the matter kid, never seen five-o-clock shadow before?" McCoy grumbled as he carefully took Auri out of his arms and started to rush her towards an open door at the end of the corridor; mumbles the kid could barely hear wafted after them, "Why can't it be a cup of sugar for once…? Just once I'd like to be woken up in the middle of the night for something simple." His voice faded as he entered the apartment. The teen followed him, jumping slightly as McCoy barked for him to shut the door.

The doctor laid Auri out on his kitchen table and gave her a quick once over. His expression turned into an intense frown before he swore and began running around to collect various tools. "Thought it might have been phaser fire but damn… she was hit with archaic weaponry." His quiet mutterings made the blond wonder if he should be paying attention or not. He stood awkwardly by the door rubbing dried blood off his hands. The doctor continued, "Never thought I'd see a bullet wound that was out of a textbook. Second degree burns on her back and some bruising on her face... Jesus kid, what did you rescue her from? " There was a certain note in the man's voice that cued the teen to answer.

He didn't know where to start, but started anyway.

"Some guys called The Executioners blew up the pub we were at... I didn't see her get shot though..." The boy replied, feeling useless as he hovered around watching.

The doctor pulled out a hypo-spray and put it to Auri's neck, making her slump unconsciously to the table's surface. He then proceeded to cut away portions of her clothing to get at the wound. The boy decided to turn his head at that moment, but after a few seconds he couldn't stop his eyes from sliding back to the dying woman.

The hole in her stomach was small, but the blood and gore that surrounded it made it look a lot worse. McCoy took out a pair of surgical scissors and some gauze before looking to his guest with an intimidating eye. "Get your ass over here, I'm making you my nurse. Hand me that hypo-spray with the yellow dial and get me a pot of boiling water, I'll need to sterilize... Joanna had her hands all over my tools and I don't know if my disinfectant is compatible with Caitian biology."

The kid did as he was told and ordered a pot of water at 100 degrees Celsius from the replicator. All that happened was a fizzle of smoke, which smelt absolutely awful, and a long mechanical whine ending with a pop. The doctor looked up from whatever he was doing and barked at the boy with more crankiness than a groggy Klingon. "Do it the old fashioned way, everything on Sera is a useless pile of circuitry. Their stone-age technology still functions ad a god damned joke- damn miracle if you ask me. The pot is under the sink and the stove is pretty self explanatory."

In a few minutes there was a pot of steaming water sitting next to the doctor and his stainless steel tools were within it. He fished them out with a pair of tongs before going to work on Auri's mopped up wound.

"She'll be all right, but the trip here did some damage she's going to have to live with. I told her she should have skipped town, but no... the idiot had to go get herself shot." He punctuated his sentence with a snip of his scissors. "Stubborn woman. She makes my ex-wife look like a tribble."

The kid's forehead furrowed as he tried to comprehend what the man was talking about. "Wait... what do you mean she should have skipped town?"

McCoy looked up from stitching the woman shut. "She works as an informant for Starfleet. The Executioners found out about her awhile ago, but the fool thought she wasn't a big enough target - yet." His expression turned sour as he realized he was saying too much to a kid he didn't know. "That's all you need to know kiddo. Just who the hell are you anyway? Not many humans on Sera that aren't in uniform..."

The boy's stomach did a guilty roll. "Aa... that's a funny story. I suppose you can call me John-"

The doctor interrupted testily, "What do you mean, you suppose? It's a name kid. It's John or it isn't John. John what?"

"I don't know..." The boy had the distinct impression he was being interrogated, and he didn't like it. "To be honest, I have absolutely no clue who, where or what I'm doing here. All I know is that I woke up in an alleyway a couple of hours ago and I wandered into the nearest pub and Auri was there ready to clean me up."

"That's your story? Amnesia?" The doctor strolled over with a pair of bloody scissors in his hand. The boy backed up instinctively and put up his hands. He did not want his night to end with fighting a sleep-deprived physician.

"Look, I know it's weird... but how the hell do you think I feel? I don't even know if I have a family out there looking for me - or if these Executioners murdered them. They killed one of their own kind right in front of me. Right... like right..." He couldn't explain exactly what happened. The words were too much to say. His eyes glazed over and the image of that Seran woman spraying blood up the wall repeated itself over in his head. This night was a night from hell and all he wanted to do was sleep it off. "God... I just want to know who I am so I can go home – if I even have a home to go to."

Something in the kid's voice registered with the doctor and his expression softened. McCoy placed his tools back into the pot of hot water, creating pink clouds of tainted blood. "All right kid, relax..." He washed his hands then headed back over to his next patient. "Let me take a look at that gash above your eye, I noticed you favored your right leg as well… strip down and I'll see what I can do-"

CRASH!

The young man couldn't relax - no one could. He heard the sound of breaking glass from outside the building and tensed. Just as he was about to go to the window to take a look at what was going on, the doctor shoved him aside. "Don't be an idiot! Stay away from the windows, they'll recognize you!" He quickly peered out the small window in the kitchen and paled. "Fuck... it's them. They followed you, and I bet they're not the cup of sugar type either..."

The boy backed up into the wall in a state of panic. His mind was working a mile a minute to figure out how to get out of his new mess. He looked to the floor and groaned. "McCoy... it's the blood. Look." He pointed to the droplets created by Auri as they carried her to the table. It would give them a trail straight to the doctor's door.

It was McCoy's turn to panic. His eyes flickered to the bedroom opposite the kitchen. "I have a seven-year old daughter in the other room and they're not going to think twice about..." He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't have to.

Both men looked at each other with a look that clearly said, "think of something!"

The kid took a deep breath and quelled the fear that was threatening to drown him. "Your apartment... it's on the right side of the building?"

"Yes."

The boy raced to the room on his left, pausing only to locate the window. It was above the bed of a sleeping girl clutching a large purple teddy-bear. What he saw out the window made his demeanor become more confident. He had a plan.

"We can escape using the scaffolding. I'll take Auri with me on my back and you can take your kid. Just tell me where the nearest safe haven is and we'll take refuge there... everything will be fine." He looked back to the doctor with a shadow of a smile.

McCoy ran a hand through his hair, "All right... go get Auri. We'll hide in another apartment... there's a cadet named Chapel on the first floor who will take us in." He knelt on the hardwood floor and started to shake his child awake. "Jo-Jo honey, this is an emergency… you have to wake up sweetheart."

Joanna woke very sleepily, but upon seeing a beaten up stranger in her room, her baby blues widened. "Dad, there's a stranger in my bedroom."

"I know bumblebee, I'll explain everything when we have the time. Right now I need you bright-eyed and bushy tailed. That's a good girl." His voice was attempting to be soothing, but his tones were laced with fear. He knew what monsters these Executioners could be and if they got their hands on Joanna…

The boy let McCoy reassure his daughter as he raced into the kitchen and picked up Auri over his shoulder. Just as he turned to head back to Joanna's room, the lights went out, engulfing everything with overwhelming blackness. After some cursing he tried to blindly navigate back to McCoy's daughter's room, yet ran into the corner of the table and cursed loudly. In the silence that followed, he heard the sound of angry voices coming from the stairs down the hall. The kid picked up speed and scrambled to begin his escape plan, shutting the bedroom door behind him. "Doctor, we're out of time!" He frantically rushed to the window and slid it open. "We need to go now!"

McCoy looked to the bedroom door, the darkness putting definite tremble in his voice. There were the sounded of gears turning in the man's mind and he looked to the boy in the window.

"No, you go. I'll buy you some time."

"Dad? Why is the power out? What's going on...?"

The sounds of someone trying to break the door down was evident from where they were all standing. McCoy bent down on one knee and kissed his daughter's forehead. "Jo, you're a smart girl. Keep this idiot in line and lead him to Christine's room okay? Tell her that it's an emergency and that you and these two need to stay the night."

The crash of wood splintering filled the air as Joanna choked back a sob. The teen pushed the girl out onto the scaffolding before following her with Auri. He shut the window just as the back of McCoy charged into the pitch black of his living quarters and demanded to know what was going on. For a doctor, that man had a spine.

"Hurry… we need to clear the area in case they guess we took the window." The boy hissed to the little girl at his hip. Joanna shook her head and put a finger to her lips, making silence rule the area. She was all business now that her father put her in charge of making sure this battered teenager didn't get them killed.

From beneath them they could hear people quietly clambering up the lower levels, ready to block off any means of escape. Unfortunately this meant their safe haven was now unreachable. Johanna's large blue eyes wavered in the dim lighting of the rooftop billboards next door. "What are we going to do? Christine's room is down there…"

The boy turned around, and like a thief in the night, he slowly tread to the next available window. He gestured to McCoy's daughter and she silently moved beside him. The look of confusion she gave him was almost endearing. He pointed to the window leading into what looked like a kitchen and started to slide open the pane. Joanna looked horrified. "We're breaking into a stranger's house…!" Her voice came out a subtle squeak, but it was still too loud for comfort.

With a gentle shove, the kid ushered Joanna through. She went reluctantly and nearly tripped over a potted plant that was resting on the sill. When her face turned to look at him from the inside of the kitchen, the boy followed hauling Auri with him. He shut the window once they were all safely inside and turned to look around at their new surroundings.

Everything gleamed in the dim neon lighting from outside. There were no dishes in the sink, no clutter on the dinning table, and no sign of life for that matter. The teen slinked into the living room and set Auri down on the sofa – or what felt like a sofa anyway. He was careful to avoid windows and to not make a sound. Johanna followed his example, but navigating a stranger's house in the dark was daunting.

From the safety of this new apartment, they heard McCoy's door burst open and the sounds of a scuffle taking place. The kid ran to the door to look through the spy-glass embedded within, but he couldn't see much in the cruddy phosphorescent emergency lights lining the corridor. McCoy's door was at the end of the hall to the left, while this one was facing a very uninteresting stretch of hallway featuring patched drywall. Johanna scurried to the cyan glow that splayed out from the gap beneath the entrance and together they saw a scene unravel that made their hearts feel heavy.

"This building is full of Starfleet officers! You can't-"

McCoy was trying to wrestle out of the grip of one of the rough looking Serans, but the brute belted the doctor upside the head in mid-sentence. The man's head lolled back and a small tickle of blood rolled down his chin from a busted lip. He was merely dazed, but it helped the tall and deadly trio drag McCoy to the stairway. Everything looked so much more horrible in the dim blue haze that came from the strips fixed to the ceiling.

"Father…" came a hushed voice from the boy's feet. Sparing a glance in Johanna's direction, he saw tears rolling down the portions of her face that were illuminated by the crack in the door. The adolescent was drowning in empathy watching her pale face wrinkle in absolute horror. This entire situation was his fault - first that Seran woman getting murdered, then Auri being shot… and now this child's father being kidnapped. Worst of all, he didn't even know what he did wrong to have such terrible events befall each of his Samaritans.

Why were they abducting the doctor anyway? If they wanted to kill him they would have already; if they wanted information they would have interrogated him right there, unless they had reasons not to. It wasn't like anyone was going to call for help with the electricity down.

When The Executioners left, the young man went to comfort the crying figure at his feet. He knelt, and in muted tones he stroked her chestnut hair. He tried to tell her that everything was going to be all right - yet the tears didn't stop. Why should they? She was only seven, and he was a stranger that appeared in the dead of night to put her father in danger.

Giving up the futile attempt, the teen rose and went to check on Auri, but as he pivoted, he came face to face with someone who had snuck up behind them both like death himself. The boy only got a glimpse of cold brown irises before he felt a painful pinch somewhere around his collarbone and he fell to the hardwood floor like a sack of potatoes.