.o0o.

As Spock moved slowly back to his own quarters, he began to question whether there was more to this human intuition, or "gut feelings" as the captain tended to call them, than he had originally given them credit. This was certainly not the first occasion where the captain's gut feeling had more merit than his logic would dictate it was due. Kirk had given him a look as he'd left the room, and Spock had known humans long enough and the captain well enough to know that it was a look of betrayal, likely because Spock had said nothing in the captain's defense. However, Spock knew that if the captain was right and Baker was a Romulan plant, then defending him would likely give Baker the cause she needed to remove him from duty.

"What's happened?" McCoy stood immediately when he entered, sensing that something was off.

Spock sat; the load of all that had just happened pushing on his shoulders like a physical weight. "Lieutenant Uhura intercepted a message going into Romulan space. We were able to track it to a transmitter located in Captain Kirk's quarters. He has been detained there."

McCoy let out a long, low whistle that Spock wasn't entirely sure what it meant, and sat himself back on the bed. "Jim was right. Baker has been weeding us out one by one, and now the Enterprise is an open target for the Romulans."

"Given that the Enterprise is currently the only defense against the Romulans, this could have much farther reaching effects. Starfleet itself is in danger of being overrun. If we cannot regain control of the ship and slow the Romulan advance, there will be little chance of keeping the Federation from becoming part of the Romulan Empire."

The doctor nodded gravely, and Spock wondered if he was aware of how low their chances of success had fallen to. The margin of error was, in fact, significantly larger than their calculated success, which, statistically speaking, put the likelihood of success at a negative number. "What did Jim suggest?"

"I was unable to speak with him privately. His room has been sealed."

"Which can only be opened by the Captain, First Officer, or Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise. Ranks that, conveniently, none of us have any more." McCoy was practically growling.

"I do not believe it is convenient." Spock deadpanned.

McCoy attempted to groan, but a chuckle escaped. "We need to give her evidence that Jim's not guilty. Maybe if you do a mindmeld to verify that he's not some Romulan plant..."

"I do not believe that will be substantive evidence. Baker will argue that I was unable to determine that you were a Romulan plant."

"Have Serin do it, then."

Spock paused, then shook his head. "It would still require her to trust someone's word. I believe we will have more success if we can present physical, documented evidence that he is not culpable."

"The computer can verify if he wasn't in his chambers at that time." McCoy suggested.

"However, it would be a simple task to program the transmitter to send the message at any time he desired, particularly for a starship captain." Spock contemplated for a moment in silence. He could faintly feel the doctor's brain whirring over the link and it comforted him to know that he was in control of himself again. Then, Spock made the connection. "You stated at Sagumpta's autopsy that her brain activity was very obviously tampered with, particularly in areas of higher functioning thought processes. You would be able to detect this on a live patient as well, correct?"

"Well, sure, if I had a Feinberger and an NPM unit, it wouldn't be too difficult. But they're all locked up tighter than liquor at a candy store." Then, McCoy frowned. "I do have one in my quarters, too, but I can't see how we'd get in there either."

Spock stood, feeling suddenly and strangely lighter, despite the chronometer telling him they only had eight and a half hours left. "Perhaps we could simply ask." He crossed the floor and pressed the comm unit. "Spock to Baker."

The unit was quiet for an abnormally long time before, "Baker here."

"Captain," Spock instantly decided he did not find pleasure in addressing her as such. McCoy was making a face from the opposite side of the room. "Dr. McCoy would like to retrieve some items from his previous quarters."

There was another long pause. "Now?"

"The doctor has been unable to collect his personal affects since the change in room assignments, and I believe it is becoming increasingly challenging for him to go without."

A third long pause greeted them before she assented. "Fine. I'm sending Stark down to let you in. Try to be quick about it."

"Acknowledged, Captain."

McCoy was looking at him appreciatively. "I want to learn to lie like that."

Spock's eyebrow came up of its own accord. "I did not lie."

"Exactly."

Spock felt a feeling of warmth come over him, and, not for the first time, pushed it completely from his mind. He had a mission. He accompanied McCoy out into the hallway and waiting outside of Baker's quarters.

"Man, if I'd known flying the coup was this easy, I'd have done it days ago."

Spock attempted to assess if he was being serious. While he'd quickly discovered that McCoy tended to use a great deal of sarcasm, it was always challenging to differentiate because there tended to be a grain of truth to them. "Your movement has undoubtedly already been cataloged and reported to Captain Baker. You would not make it far."

"Spoil sport." McCoy returned affectionately.

Stark rounded the corner with a look of disdain on his face and entered his override on the door. He followed them both into the room and watched them closely. Spock did his best to stand in Stark's line of vision as much as he could while McCoy scurried around the room and shoved some things into his bag. Stark didn't say a word to either of them, but did stop McCoy on his way out and rifled through his bag. Stark grunted and left, locking the door behind them.

Spock followed McCoy back into his own room, where the doctor dumped the bag out on his desk. Mostly, it was filled with clothes and a few momentos, a couple of pictures, and a couple non-regulation shirts with crudely made puns on the front. Finally, McCoy felt around for a Feinberger at the bottom of his bag and dragged it out, then unrolled a pair of his pants and produced another device which Spock was much less familiar with.

"Please instruct me on the proper way to use this instrument, and I will attempt to collect the data."

"It's not that easy." McCoy replied, twisting some nobs and thumbing the screen. "The NPM is designed to monitor conscious neural processing. I'll need to modify it to display both the subconscious and conscious streams at the same time, and connect the Feinberger to observe physical manifestations of mental oddities. It may take a few hours."

"We are working under a time limit." Spock informed him.

"I know." McCoy responded. Spock wondered how much he thought he knew and contemplated the positive and negative impacts of specifying that they indeed had just over eight hours in all.

"Very well." Spock returned. "How may I be of assistance?"

"Get down to Sciences before you get canned from your other job as well and we have no standing on the ship."

"Unnecessary. I have been and will continue observing and participating in Sciences from my quarters." Spock gestured to his PADD, where he'd been keeping in touch with the only department he had influence over anymore. "I will remain here."

"Then give me your tricorder, so I can cannibalize it for parts."

Spock hesitated a brief moment before handing it over. He was, perhaps, inordinately fond of his tricorder. Spock offered to help again, but McCoy seemed more interested in using him for a test subject than anything else, so he sat to work on his PADD while the doctor tinkered with his devices.

Hours passed, and Spock watched as their eight hours dwindled down to three. He wondered what else he could be doing, but again came back to the same dead end. Baker.

"Finished!" McCoy exclaimed suddenly, jarring Spock from his close inspection of the chronometer. He shifted the display towards Spock and started gesturing to some squiggly lines. "See, here are the baseline standards for the human conscious brain up here, and the subconscious down here. These colored areas indicate acceptable norms." McCoy then scanned his own head and showed the reading, which added an extra layer on top of the previous image. Spock could sense a bit of relief coming off the doctor, likely due to the images confirming that Serin had succeeded in his task. "This would be somewhat normal. Up here, you're going to want to see a lot of activity, so it looks something like this, but down here should be roughly a straight line, like this. If it's reversed, you've found a plant."

"And how close to the subject will I need to be for the scanner to be effective?"

"Ideally, you'd be right up next to them, but if no one else is near them, you should have a good three feet or more." McCoy explained as he erased his own scan. "Now what?"

Spock took the machine from his hands. "Now, I will go scan Baker."

"And then what?"

"Assuming she is a Romulan plant, I will subdue her, demonstrate my evidence, and attempt to retake control of the ship."

McCoy nodded like that was all a good plan, though Spock knew it was filled with several large gaps. He might have mumbled 'good luck' on Spock's way out, but it was difficult to tell.

The first part of Spock's plan went off unexpectedly well. The Vulcan was able to quietly approach Baker sitting in the captain's chair and discretely run a scan. He ran a second one to check himself, but he got the same results. Baker was not a Romulan plant.

"Spock." Baker turned and her gaze dropped to the device in his hand. "I suppose this is evidence that will get Kirk out." She didn't sound upset when she said it. She almost sounded hopeful.

"I believe it may." Spock confirmed. "This machine determines whether the brain is overactive on a subconscious level, which should indicate a person under the influence of the Romulans."

"Interesting." Baker responded, nodding along. "How accurate is it?"

"I have confidence that it is highly effective."

"Well, try it out on me, then." Baker suggested.

Spock complied, running the scan for the third time and still coming up negative. "You are not a Romulan plant." He stated.

"About time you got that out of your head." Baker snorted. "Why don't you test the bridge crew? It'd be nice to be sure we're all on the same side here."

Spock nodded his assent and went around the room. Uhura was unaffected. Chekov checked out. Lieutenant Riley looked rather relieved when he was cleared. "No one here is a Romulan plant."

Baker was watching thoughtfully. "You sure it works?" She asked again. "I'd feel better if Hovard took a look at it before we go releasing anyone just because your contraption says so."

"Very well." Spock agreed, and they walked down to Sickbay in silence. Spock considered it fortunate that Baker was not a plant, but was unsure of what the next move should be in that case.

"I'd like you to take a look at this." Baker demanded as she strolled in. "Tell me what you think."

"Fascinating." Spock commented at the same time. On his screen, the subconscious was wildly out of line, squiggles dancing all over the screen, but the conscious line was also active, nothing like the relatively straight line Dr. McCoy had demonstrated. "I believe she is a plant." Spock stated.

Hovard mouth went into a fine line, but there was very little emotion in her voice. "I'd know if I were a plant. Besides, I've never even been to Capella IV."

Baker's head whipped side to side. "You can't be serious."

Spock allowed his face to become perfectly blank. "As you can clearly tell from this catalog of normal brain activity, Dr. Hovard's subconscious is hyperactive indicating manipulation from an outside source."

"I hate to say it, Elease, but you're going to have to sit this one out until we can get this all sorted." Baker walked the protesting woman into the office and locked her in. "We'll get Serin up here as soon as we can, but our top priority needs to be figuring out what's going to happen in, oh, two and a half hours. I believe your next highest ranking doctor is M'Benga? He'll take over position as CMO." She then muttered something about going through doctors like disposable diapers.

She turned to leave. "Captain, I do not think you are giving the situation proper consideration, given that the two are likely inextricably linked. We must have Serin examine Doctor Hovard immediately and scan as many crewmembers as possible, starting with the highest ranking officers if we are to have the best chance of discovering and extracting information from the culprit."

"I have half the crew occupied with running diagnostics on every part of the ship, and I've got our best people working on the transmitter." Baker countered.

"Both measures may prove ineffective if we still have several plants aboard the ship."

Baker sighed and wandered over to the comm unit on the wall. "Baker to Stark."

Almost immediately, she received a reply. "Stark here."

"Swing by the officer's quarters and collect Kirk and McCoy and bring them down to Sickbay right away."

"Yes, sir."

Baker took the wait time to find M'Benga, personally run a scan over him, and promote him to acting CMO.

It took just a few minutes for Baker to explain the situation, but Stark was instantly against it. "I don't think it's wise to trust Captain Kirk's First Officer to determine whether or not Kirk is to blame. We found the transmitter in his room, didn't we?"

Baker shook her head. "My conversations with the captain have not helped us at all. I am willing to try something else. Spock has given me no reason to not trust him yet, and has demonstrated how the machine works. I think it's worth a shot."

Spock ran the scan over Kirk and, as expected, it came up negative. "Of course it's going to come up negative." Stark groused. "That doesn't prove anything."

"Nevertheless, we're all going to try it." Baker said sternly. Stark folded his arms across his chest and said nothing.

"Have you tried it?" Kirk questioned.

"It was negative, Captain." Spock supplied. Kirk still looked suspicious of Baker, but didn't say anything. McCoy allowed himself to be scanned again, then shifted next to Spock so he could see the results. "Negative." Spock intoned.

"Now we know that machine is faulty. Dr. McCoy is a confirmed Romulan plant." Stark protested again.

"Was." Kirk said, "He's since been cleared." Baker didn't look particularly happy about that.

Spock then turned the scanner on Stark. The top line was full of squiggles while the bottom was perfectly flat. "Stark is not a Romulan plant, either." Spock stated.

McCoy peered closer, coming fully into Spock's personal space to inspect the instrument. "He's not a plant," McCoy agreed, but he still took ahold of the device and brought it closer to Stark. Stark looked uncomfortable at the attention and stepped backward. The Feinberger buzzed and whirled. "He's not a plant; he's a Romulan." McCoy declared.

"That's insane." Stark growled, "You don't know what you're talking about."

"No, really. Lie down on the bed."

"No!"

Baker looked horrified and disbelieving. "Just humor him, Stark, so we can get on with it."

Stark hesitated again, than sat on the bed. The lights flared and beeping ensued. Stark's numbers were all over the board.

"Note that he's not in a healthy range for any of the human settings." McCoy confirmed.

Stark lunged at the doctor, but Spock quickly stepped in to defend him, forcing the man back to the bed with more force than necessary. Kirk and Baker also joined in to hold him as McCoy snapped the straps back into place. "It's too late." Stark was saying, "You don't have any time left. They'll be here within an hour."

"Who?" Kirk shouted back. "The Romulans?"

"We've been heading straight for them for hours!" Stark laughed heartily.

"Impossible. We're not head that way, and certainly not fast enough to reach them any time soon." Baker refuted, seeming to regain more of herself. "I had the systems rechecked."

"Fast? No. But the travel time is cut in half, since they're moving toward us as well. The navigation system was easy enough to fake, especially when you put me on the team meant to fix them." Stark went on, a devilish smile taking up his face. "It was really all too easy."

"I trusted you!" Baker snarled in his face.

Kirk pulled her back slightly. "You can't seriously believe that the Romulan Empire is going to come in and successfully take over the whole Federation. They'll never win."

"It's not about winning or losing." Stark stated calmly. "It's about sending a message."

"What message are they trying to send?" Spock asked.

"The human mind is weak; humans are weak. Sooner or later, humans will fall to the Romulans. It's just a matter of time."

.o0o