The Governor looked from her to the girl, and back to her again. "Mackie, what the hell is this?"
"Sir," Mac tried to maintain some form of professional decorum. The were four of them gathered in the Governor's quarters, he had just woken up and was still dressed as such.
"No." he shouted, "This is too much. This should not have happened." the man, looking as though he was having difficulty keeping his blood pressure down, turned towards John. "Captain, you're likely to be court marshalled for this, and you too, Mackie. I have no choice but to bring this to the council. You know how much trouble it is to get a recovery license, now think about how much trouble this will cause. The three of you will be deleted from the timeline, there's nothing I can do about it."
"Governor," Mac pleaded.
"Hey, now." the girl interrupted, "Someone has to tell me what the hell is going on. One thing I know, I'm fixing a conduit in Jefreys tube 9-13, and the next, David's acting all cryptic and there's a silent counter that hits zero and the ship starts to rattle, and I end up on a transporter pad. I have a right to an explanation before I'm 'deleted'." she screamed at the governor.
"Right then." John said.
"It's John, not David." Mac muttered.
"Welcome to the Twilight Zone." John muttered and turned to the door.
"Find out where she came from." the Governor yelled.
"Captain John Geneija." Mac said, turning the highly miffed girl out the door.
"Lieutenant Erin Haaka, are you a temporal agent? Or, have you at any point encountered a temporal agent?" Mac went through her list of questions calmly. The white walls of the interrogation room, and her calm demeanor contrasted starkly with the wide-eyed, very frightened young woman across from her.
"No." she clipped, "Now, who are you? And who's he? And where am I?"
"I am Captain Tanja MacKinnley. Captain John Geneija is my partner. We are temporal agents. This is the 39th century. You are aboard a temporal station located deep within the beta quadrant. We orbit a natural gravitation phenomenon that allows us to accelerate signals beyond the natural speed of light."
"So why am I here?"
"We were attempting to remedy a temporal anomaly. The details are complex, but it was necessary to destroy the starship you were serving on for temporal continuity."
"So you killed all my friends, and the Captain?" she shouted, turning to look at John who stood in the corner.
"It was necessary." he mumbled.
"In fairness, your ship, and many of your crewmates should never have come to exist. Your ship was an anomaly, and it is our duty to restore the full natural timeline. Now, have you ever heard mention of temporal agents on board your former ship?"
"Obviously not, if it never existed!" she screamed.
"Please," Mac said calmly, "This is important."
"Mac, maybe we should give her some time." John suggested, "She's got no idea of what's going on right now, let alone how she got here."
"You." Erin stood and turned an accusing stare in his direction. "Dave – John – whatever your name is, what kind of person can do that? I mean, you were on our ship for three weeks. Everyone liked you, I liked you. You just lied and pretended you wanted to be our friend, and then you blew us all up."
"Look, I don't like doing it." he offered in defence, holding his hands up as she marched toward him. "And I'm sorry, for what it's worth, I know what you're going through."
"John, I told you your indiscretions would come back to you, and now there is clearly a very troublesome situation." Mac chided.
"Mac, I didn't mean for –."
"How can you possibly know what I'm going through?" Erin yelled at him.
"Because," he stated more forcefully, "I was pulled through too. I'm from the 20th century, and they brought me here to work with 'em. It's confusing, it's frustrating, we're tellin' you everyone you ever knew is long dead or never existed. You wanna scream, you wanna wake up, but we just keep feedin' ya the same crazy story, and you might just start ta believe it. Now, sit down!"
She plopped down her chair once more, staring up at him in fear.
"John." Mac soothed.
"Sorry."
"So, if he just showed up here like me, I don't see what the problem is." Erin reasoned.
"Captain Geneija was retrieved. There was a lengthy investigation and many discussions on the benefits of it, and we were granted a permit after a year long application process. In the natural timeline, he was lost and no body was ever found. It was a unique opportunity in that we were able to take him without harm to the timeline. It is different from this situation because I was authorized to bring him back."
"And so, what about you?"
"Me?" Mac was confused.
"How did you get here."
"Mac's a 39th century native, born and raised in San Diego." John offered.
Erin was astonished, "On Earth? But, you're Vulcan."
Mac smiled a little, which only shocked Erin more. "I am only partly Vulcan. At this time in the universe, boundaries between species mean very little, and there are very few people left who have a complete claim to their ancestry. I am mostly Vulcan, somewhat less than half, with a large portion of human, as well as Betazoid, Klingon, Rigellian, even some Romulan. The universe has become quite unified since your time. Furthermore, the Earth was destroyed several thousand years ago, San Diego is a district on Mars Colony. Now, for the last time, are you certain you have no connections to any temporal agents."
Erin gaped up at the two of them.
After a tense pause, Mac sighed heavily and turned away. "Take her to the Doctor, see if he can find anything."
The door opened and two gruff Lieutenants walked into the room, taking the girl by surprise. They quickly knocked her out with a hypospray and carried her away.
"That was a little much, don'cha think?" John asked, taken aback by what he'd just seen.
"It's Protocol." Mac replied. "You wouldn't remember it from when we retrieved you."
"I don't remember much from that time." John confessed.
"We kept you sedate through our preliminary investigations." Mac said, "Besides, we were pretty sure you weren't an agent, our security protocols were lax."
"I still don' see why this is so different."
"There is only one way she could have come through that without a great deal of effort on your part: she would need the temporal enzyme."
"Do you really resent being 'pulled through'?" Mackie asked quietly. She and John were waiting patiently in Sick Bay for the Doctor's report.
He turned and smiled at her. "Not at all, I wouldn't have met you otherwise." He laughed and gave her a little squeeze.
The Doctor pulled back the curtains around his sedate patient. He was a medical hologram, a gleaming bald patch in the image of Dr. Zimmerman, and a sarcastic bed side manner to match. "Well, I have your answer." he beamed proudly at them, withholding a PADD and bouncing on his heels.
"Well?" John prompted.
The Doctor sighed and gave over the PADD for Mac's scrutiny. "It's as you expected. She's a temporal agent, but not one of ours. I found a temporal stability nanobot in her blood stream."
"A machine?" John asked in surprise.
"Yes." The Doctor brought up a microscopic image on a nearby console. "Very advanced. A modification of Borg technology, I'd say."
"So, we're looking circa 24th century." John surmised.
"It would seem so." the Doctor nodded.
"Not necessarily," Mac added, "In another timeline, the Voyager heroics may not have destroyed the Borg. Remember the Voyager crew had a little temporal help in more than a few instances. The timeship could be from any subsequent century."
John nodded, wrapping his head around the logic. "True, but we should begin there, we know that's when the Borg began developing their temporal technology."
"Anything else you can tell us, Doctor?"
"Not much. Twenty-nine years of age, human, a broken femur in her early youth that's healed up nicely, recent copulation." the hologram raised his eyebrow suggestively, "I've asked the Governor to retrieve her medical file, I believe Jakubs is on it."
"I thought I saw him there." John shook his head and laughed. "Thanks, Doc."
"Of course." he nodded, and returned to his patient.
"So what do we know?" John asked. He and Mackie were sitting in a quiet Mess Hall reclining on one of the many massive white couches, a large laptop-like PADD open on her folded thighs.
"Well," Mac scratched her head, "we know how she got here. We don't know how she got there."
"Okay." John nodded, "Do we have her service record?"
"Not yet, Jakubs is still recovering the ship's database."
The chef brought them both a steaming mug of tea. "It's a late night for you kids." he said.
"Thanks, Regan." Mac smiled. She was tired, but John showed it more. "I expect we'll have a few late nights."
"Can I get you anything else before I turn in?" he asked.
"No, thanks, Reg." John pulled up a quick smile. "Don't worry, we'll lock up when we're done."
"You've certainly done enough late nights that I wouldn't worry about my kitchens, it's you two." The chef eyed them, "You should really take some personal time, even temporal superheroes need to take a few minutes to relax."
"Thanks, Chef." Mac nodded and waved him off.
Mackie took a moments pause to savour the first hot sip of tea. "Did you notice anything while you were with her?"
John sighed, "No, not at all. She was completely average, she didn't have enough time in her day to do any meddling. Sure, her job took her in with the engines and to the ship's vital systems, but she was just an ensign. If she got to any sensitive machinery, there was always someone with her. She spent most of her off-duty time in the mess, or with me. She wasn't sneaking around – trust me, I would have noticed. I swept the ship's logs, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary: a few temporal readings I figured were from me, and from her as I well I suppose, but nothing suggestive of any major tempering or equipment, there was absolutely no evidence of temporal communication, no temporal technologies suitable for camouflage or communication. It was a completely boring ship. Maybe she really doesn't know anything about time."
"It just doesn't make sense. What purpose could it possibly serve to put a silent agent on a research vessel in an unoccupied region of space."
John lifted his tired eyebrows. "It did save the ship from the temporal wave we sent out."
"Oh." Mac sat up a little straighter in this new light. "Of course it did. What could the Others have been trying to set off?"
"I don't know. When we researched the first time, there was no evidence of causation, no significant effect the ship exerted on its surroundings. But maybe we missed something."
"I will probe her tomorrow." Mac decided. "For now, I'll go through these records again."
John looked at her with a sad smile and took the laptop out of her hands. "Chef's right, take a little personal time. Sleep at least."
"I'm perfectly fine to work through the night." she announced.
"Yes, but you've been up through the last couple of nights, and that's not fine. Meditate at least, for me." he smiled.
She gave a resigned nod and let him pull her up off the couch.
"Big day tomorrow," he said, "can't have you falling asleep in the middle of a meld."
"Captain MacKinnley," the Governor called after her, bustling up to her in the hall, "I just wanted to inform you that I've had to contact the Governor's circle, I expect you'll have about a day or two before you are summoned to appear with some answers about our new arrival."
She cringed internally, "Understood."
"Do you know anything yet?"
"The Doctor discovered temporal nanobots in her system, other than that, we have nothing. Just that I don't believe the girl knew she was a temporal agent."
"Hmpf." the Governor grunted. "Keep working on it."
"Yes, sir." Mac watched the man wobble away, and tried to shake the impending sense of doom out of her head.
"Jakubs returned last night." John announced when she breached the doors of Sick Bay.
"And?"
"Her personnel file goes back to her childhood. They found her as an infant in an escape pod. With no reference data to send the pod home, she grew up on board."
"You are joking." Mackie was not impressed. "Was there any evidence of tampering?"
"Absolutely not." John half-smiled in frustration.
"You're suggesting she really doesn't know."
"Only one way to find out." John nodded towards the bed and patient, set up just how she liked it for these special inside missions.
She shrugged like an athlete getting ready for a sprint. "One way." she agreed, and proceeded to the bedside.
After the traditional 'my mind to your mind' business, the meld Mackie was in was entirely uneventful. In fact, the simplicity of the girl's mind astonished her to the point of migraine. Deliriously happy memories, drunken nights at parties, drunken men, music, giggling girls. It made her stomach turn. She cycled through the open life events, the recently recalled memories.
She let the images slow as she approached the present. John had done well posing as a solo explorer turned chef, there was no doubt. He won the hearts of the crew quickly, always the first step of an extended mission. She was actually proud as she watched him, she had trained him herself, and now she was seeing the results of that first hand, when she wasn't there to guide him. When she thought about it, they had been partners for a long time now, not master and protege like they'd started as. She'd have to remember that when she got out of this ridiculous mind, maybe let him feel a little of the responsibility, take a little heat. She smiled almost perversely.
The memories Erin had of John were a little more rivetting: a friendly smile, a special dessert for a birthday, and a casual kiss. At the least, Mac noticed, Erin had been the one to go after him, in the onset. He had organized the follow-up visits. Mac found herself holding her breath as things turned a little heated in her quarters after a private dinner. Her heart was racing as the evening proceeded and she saw John's intimacies through the woman's eyes.
She shook herself, she didn't need to see any more. She started working back now, through the less recent memories, back to her childhood. If the girl had known she were a temporal spy, she never acted on it, or acknowledged it. As promised, Erin had arrived on the starship as a baby, brief flickers of age suppressed memory told Mackie. Before that, things were too hazy.
Memories could be forced out, Mac was certain. A vision of a safety pod, before that the safety pod being sealed, a man above. He was handsome, but cold, a slightly noticeable metal protrusion came from behind his eyelid. The room was unmarked, white walls and fluorescent lighting burned at young retinas. In reverse time, he held the infant and brought her to a bio-carriage. Mac sensed from him a brilliant, calculating mind and a desolate compassion; his creation destined for a powerful mission.
Mackie snapped awake. Creation. That was it, the girl had no racial memory, no parental images. She had been shocked to life through some bio-medical wizardry and sent to the doomed USS Discovery.
John cleared his throat. "Well?"
"It's just as it appears to be. There's no memory of any extraneous missions to her StarFleet career, the lifepod is there. There was a face of a man, but other than that the memories are too blocked, or non-existant. I believe she was created with this purpose."
"Created? So, what are we going to do with her? What are you going to tell the board of Governors?"
"I am uncertain."
Mackie took a deep cleansing breath and tried to focus her energies inward. It had been a long time since she'd tried to meditate. She usually had her emotions under solid control, and being not entirely Vulcan, she didn't adhere strictly to their ancient practices. But Surak was wise, and after the stress she'd been thrown into in the last 48 hours, she could certainly use some help before the board meeting at 0800.
She tried to let herself drift into the white space of calm but found it marred. Recent interactions with one Erin Haaka cycled through her mind at light speeds, and images of John and the Governor's cherry-red face. The Doctor's disturbing news came to the forefront once, and was settled as a point of medical certainty.
Her mind drifted to a place with evergreens and a crystal clear stream on a bed of smoothly-eroded stones. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, with a single strip of cirrius cloud breaking the azure. She knew this place, but certainly none like it existed anymore.
She turned to her right, the stream still on her left. A bush rustled, and there he was: John. But he was different in this memory, maybe it wasn't a memory, he had before looked on her with fear and distrust and promptly run in the opposite direction, where now he smiled and came to her.
"Ya look worried, Mackie." he reached out to touch her, but she resisted. "I'm sorry about all this." he continued, "I didn't ever plan on it – really, what are the odds?" He laughed a little bit in between, even though she did her best to ignore his presence as she watched him skip rocks. "You know, this is where you first found me. Ya really put me through hell, but I guess ya saved my life, so it's okay. Maybe we did the same for Erin. This could be a good thing, we're learning about a whole new culture that we didn't know existed – maybe she was planted there for us to find. Kind of like a 'welcome to the temporal world' kind of practical joke."
He came up to her now, sidling in front of her, and pecked her cheek. "Ya know, when I first saw you, I thought you were an angel, or the devil. You were so beautiful, I knew you then, knew you held my future. So, I ran, do you remember that? Yeah. It doesn't make a lot of sense, it makes more sense now that I know what ya had in for me." he laughed, "I guess, my point is don't be afraid of these unpredictable events, not when you've got someone like me watchin' out for ya."
Mac woke on the floor of her quarters, drenched in her own sweat, the meditation candle long burnt down. She looked at the chronometer, 0715. At the least, rushing to the meeting, she felt calm and composed so her peculiar meditation had done the trick, or so it seemed.
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