Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Past
Taking a deep breath she centered herself in the small, strange room that she had been taken to. She remembered her father's pained, stoic face as she had been led away from before their house.
Surak, what had she done wrong now? She hadn't given the bullies in her class bloody noses in weeks now. She had even been meditating more, trying to stop her frantically running thoughts that flew at all hours of the day, convenient a time or not.
Her tan hands gripped her thin robe as she rose from her sitting position and began to pace. The thick smell of dust and disuse of the room tore the comforting desert air straight from her nose and she folded her arms protectively over her chest.
Spock couldn't hear anything either, something that discomforted her so strongly that she went to the corner, curling her knees to her chest. The heavy stone walls beside her pressed coldly into her back and the sand between her bare toes was chilled. There was no window to let in light or warmth, only the heavy door across the room, its high barred slot letting in a very dim glow for the corridor.
The room was bare for but a mat in the corner, so thin it could barely be considered a bed.
She heard a shuffle in the hallway and her watched as her door was pulled open, standing as three grown men led a single one between them.
His head covered in a mask but she could tell that he was older than her by many years.
Watching as the mask was taken off and his wild eyes were exposed it was then that Spock knew.
Horror bloomed in her chest and it all slid into place. Why her father had said nothing, why her grandmother had been the one to prepare her, why she was there with him.
She didn't know his name and she found, as the elders left the room and sealed the door behind them, as he began to shake as he walked closer to her, as the light was gone and she was alone with a monster; that she didn't give a shit.
Present
Chocking back a grunt, she pressed her hand into her forearm, hard. The biting sting of smoke fogged her eyes, despite her second lid, and the hot, humid air folded around her like a long forgotten lover.
Spock tried to ignore it with moderate success as she rapidly thought of the blueprints her and her team had memorized before the mission had begun.
Like a blooming flower the memories came to her and with quick elimination she picked the exit closest to them. They had to get out.
They had been told that their target had been somewhere in the complex, they were to locate and retrieve Dr. James T. Kirk, whose Anti-serum would effectively and completely neutralize all traces of the innocuous poison that all Klingon soldier weapons currently carried.
Great, wonderful. Just what the Fleet needed.
Now all she had to wonder about was why Archer had come to her for this.
Sure, it was a mission ranked above all others, and as her team was above all others in the case of location and retrieval, the mission fell to them… But she hadn't been a part of said team for almost a year and suddenly they needed her? They had been doing fine, she had made sure of it.
Beaming into the complex had been easy, highly noticeable, but easy. It had been… strange to Spock that she hadn't been attacked or approached by the enemy when entering.
Creeping along in the dark complex, she had been surprised to come across so many dead. Maybe this was why they wanted her…
The humans in the standard science/medical blues, their eyes dull and their bodies ravished by long, ragged tears of violent assault, had been surprising.
She hadn't been informed as to possible dead. Dammit.
Stopping briefly, she turned one of the dead officers on their back. The male's face was whole and untouched except for the splattering of blood. His neck and chest however…
Dipping a gloved fingers into the exposed bowl of the man's chest, she carefully pushed aside the snapped toothpick like ribs and found that the inside organs appeared black and twisted as they interwove.
Sliding her fingers across the split lung, she pushed them through the tear of the gray, deformed organ. Bringing her hand back up, she delicately sniffed the almost coagulated blood that blended seamlessly into her black glove. The smell of rotting meat met her highly attuned olfactory sense and she realized that she didn't know what poison it was that had killed the man, of if it even was poison.
She narrowed her eyes. So this was why Archer had picked her. She always had been a bit of a wild hat when dealing with the unknown. And she was much, much better at it then any of her old teammates.
Cursing quietly she scrapped the gunk off of her hand and proceeded to the alien lying next to the human. Contusions decorated his skull and chest in a gross parody of what Spock knew to be coming of age tattoos. Probing the bruised flesh she frowned when feeling what appeared to be a lack of bone.
Feeling again, she discerned that yes, the back of the cranial bone was there, but it was fractured into such tiny pieces that it pierced the brain and left the appearance of none under the skin.
He had not died of the same thing as the human had. It set Spock on edge.
Standing she proceeded forward, stepping over similarly injured humans and aliens alike, she found that it appeared that whoever had taken the weapon to swing at the some of the dead had been determined to kill, mutilation merely being an effect.
Walking quietly, she had been peering around a corner when she smelt the fire start. Snapping on her respirator she had continued her search of the doctor.
The fire had been unplanned, but that was what you came to expect with the job and she had long since stopped panicking. Spock figured that the assailants' plan hadn't gone as they wished and seeing as the floors of the labs were covered in medical personnel and not, she had to figure that someone on base had weapons training… or was blitzing. But depending on the subject's danger trigger, she determined that she would be unable to safely rely on their help in the matter of locating one James T. Kirk.
She was slightly ashamed to admit, but the fact that the fellow insurgent could be the doctor himself had not occurred to her. The doctor's file had not hinted or nay, even stated that Dr. Kirk could possibly have even the minimum amount of combat training.
As such, she was rightfully shocked to enter a room and see what she had.
The room stank with the smell of death, sex, blood, and other, thicker things. The heat of the fire was already reaching the room, flames licked against the far door. Smoke twisted and writhed along the bloodstained floor and she suddenly didn't care to know what was going on in the complex.
No, better her be the mindless dog and do her master's bidding. Right then she longed for her large classroom, her attentive students. She did not want to be in this tomb, ready to kill to save a single man.
Keeping to the shadows she watched as a man fitting the description of Dr. Kirk raising a bar and bringing it down on a alien's skull.
By then, she had almost determined that the doctor was dead, and not in fact in the compound at all. She was certainly surprised as she stood and watched the doctor repeatedly bring the bar down on the alien's head and chest.
Was the man mad? She worried. If he was and resisted her assistance she would have to take him out of the picture. That, she realized as she watched him beat a living being to death, would be a mite difficult.
She watched as his chest heaved and sweat coated his brow. His breath wheezed between his lips and she raised her gun, aligning it with his head as she cleared her throat.
He spun, but she kept a steady bead on him as he brought his weapon up to defend. His blue eyes widened and he froze when he saw the gun.
"Are you Dr. James T. Kirk?"
He didn't respond.
"You will answer me," she said sternly, already working out a way to get him unconscious if she needed to.
"Are you or are you not Dr. James T. Kirk?" Spock asked one more time, ready to shot.
"I am," he said, his voice raspy and his body tense.
"I am Gray Hound, sent by Star Fleet for your retrieval. Please drop your weapon and we will proceed to evacuate," she spoke coldly and clearly as she kept her gun steady. The respirator barely made a sound.
There was a long moment where their eyes met before he lay his makeshift bat on the floor and looked at her.
She holstered her gun, grateful that she didn't have to drag his body through the burning complex. Because her ankle was already starting to ache from the weight of her equipment, joining her wrist and hips.
"Please, sir, if you'll follow me."
He grabbed a bag from the corner and followed her out the door, breaking into a run to keep up. She ignored the pain and pushed on and soon they were close to an exit.
In the hallway the smoke was worse though, and she listened to his cough as she made a quick decision to remove her respirator and press it over his face.
It sealed with a near silent suck and she watched as he took a breath of clean oxygen and fidgeted with the bag over his shoulder.
"What took you guys so long?" he asked as they again jogged down a hallway.
"We-"
With no warning she barely ducked as a fist came flying around the corner.
The second fist smacked her in the mouth, breaking her already split lip under the thin black face mask, and she grunted as she kicked up her heel into the man's nose.
With a wet crunch she watched dispassionately as his eyes rolled into his skull.
She had kicked his nose into his brain.
Spinning, she grabbed the doctor and continued on, ready to get out of this new hell.
As they passed through the hallways she ruthlessly took out any and all in their way.
One managed to slash her arm and she put pressure on it as she planned their way to freedom.
So much she had to do, and so little time to do it.