Chapter 11

"Where did the Flyer go? Seven, do you have a visual?" B'Elanna cried in panic as she stared at her monitors. The Delta Flyer had just… vanished in darkness.

"Negative."

"The sensors do not detect their presence," Tuvok's voice added. "They appear to be inside the anomaly, which interferes with our sensors."

B'Elanna swallowed her panic and tried to focus. "What about Neelix?"

"This is Captain Uang, we have Neelix aboard Aspire, we picked up his ship when we tried to reach the Delta Flyer. He and the other passengers are safe and sound. But we couldn't make it to the Flyer in time."

B'Elanna closed her eyes. Neelix and his people were safe, at least. "Seven, what's going on with the anomaly?"

"It has spread further outside the bounds of the wormhole, but so far parts of it are still within the conduit. Whether that is voluntary or not is impossible to know. Whatever the case, its presence within the conduit seems to be keeping it open."

"It's sticking its foot in the door to keep it from closing…" B'Elanna mumbled to herself.

"Are you suggesting it's a sentient being?" Harry asked over the comms and B'Elanna startled. She hadn't realized she'd spoken out loud.

"I don't know. What if it is?"

"Captain Uang," Tuvok started, "I believe you are the highest ranking officer in this fleet, it therefore falls upon you to act out Admiral Janeway's orders and decide on the next course of action."

There was a short pause. B'Elanna could almost picture the tall woman on the bridge of Aspire take a deep breath.

"Yes, the admiral told me as much herself this morning. Voyager, hold your defensive position. With your improved armor, you'll be the station's last line of defense in case this goes awry. Everyone else, take your position as instructed by the admiral. Lieutenant Torres, I think you might be onto something. Let's figure out if this thing really is sentient. Because if it is, it's gotta either want something, or be afraid of something."

oooOooo

Fear. Worry. Determination.

Chakotay slowly blinked to consciousness.

A new wave of emotions surged through him. Relief. Hope. Concern. They were so intense it was almost painful and the rush overwhelmed any ability to think as his mind slowly awoke.

It took his eyes a moment to focus on Kathryn's face as she leaned over him, tricorder in her hand. It was dark inside the Delta Flyer, but the emergency lighting weakly illuminated her features. Chakotay groaned as he became conscious of a blinding headache – as if there was too much pressure building inside his skull. The beeping sounds of the tricorder didn't help.

"Chakotay, can you hear me?"

Chakotay nodded slowly and she administered a hypospray to his neck. Chakotay barely felt it touch his skin, instead…

Relief. Worry. And something else…

She gently pulled him up into a sitting position and he sat still for a moment, holding his head in his hands. She quickly switched her tricorder back on and resumed scanning him for any injuries. "You have a fever, and there's some unusual activity in your brain," she stated, but Chakotay could barely process her words.

Concern. Affection. Fear. Determination. Too many feelings, too much noise, what the hell was going on with him? The fear he'd felt before as though it wasn't his now added to his own. The feeling intensified in an endless escalation to the point where it became physically painful. It seized him through his chest and around his ribcage, preventing him from breathing properly. And the headache…

"Stop! Stop!" Chakotay cried, clutching his chest with his fist, hoping it would pass.

Kathryn's hand with the tricorder paused instantly and she edged closer to look into his eyes. "Chakotay, what is it?"

The fear and helplessness were almost unbearable, but just beneath it he could feel something else, the driving force of those emotions and it was… powerful. Beautiful. Unshakable. But also…constrained. His subconscious mind recognized it as familiar and safe. It gave him an anchor amidst everything else, something to hold on to amidst the confusion.

And underneath it, far deeper… fear, instinct, need. Curiosity. Such raw emotions felt alien to him, too powerful and wild to be his own.

The worry and concern that remained at the surface of everything intensified and it pulled him back to himself, to his senses. To what he knew, what he could touch. Kathryn was staring at him wide-eyed, her features etched into a mask of concern.

"Kathryn…What happened?" He panted trough the tight squeeze that remained around his ribs, his voice sounding far and foreign to his ears.

Cautious relief amidst the fear and worry.

Her concerned gaze didn't falter. "The anomaly overtook us before Captain Uang could get close enough to beam us out of the way… It's all around us. We still don't have power, and communications are down. We're cut off from the fleet, but emergency systems are operational, including life support." Her tone took a softer edge. "We both blacked out for a while. When I came to you were still unconscious. You had me worried."

The headache was slowly abating, and Chakotay could now breathe easier. Wiping the cold sweat that dampened his forehead with his palm, he slowly stood. Kathryn gave him a lending hand, her expression still one of concern. When she noticed how much he was shaking, she gently led him back to his copilot seat and helped him settle down.

Worry. Fear. And a little beneath it, determination.

She sat on the edge of her own seat, though her eyes never left him. "How are you feeling?" She asked.

He let out a bark of laughter at the irony of the question and she recoiled slightly. How was he feeling?

The worry was now mixed with curiosity and a touch of indignation.

Chakotay's laughter died abruptly as his gaze shot to her. "How are you feeling?" He asked, alarmed.

Confusion. "I'm fine, Chakotay," she reassured gently.

"No, I mean, what are you feeling, what emotions?"

The confusion intensified and became intertwined with concern. And fear, fear of revealing too much, fear of letting go of that tightly constrained force that had anchored him to himself earlier. Chakotay's eyes narrowed in on her face in surprise. Could those feelings actually be coming from her? Awe and wonder – his own – smoothed out the fear and worry that still lurked beneath.

Should he tell her about his suspicions? She would be embarrassed, but she needed to know… She had a right to know that he could feel whatever she was feeling, it was enough of an invasion of her privacy as it was.

"Why?" she asked cautiously.

"Because I think, whatever happened while we were out, the…anomaly, or whatever entity it is, did something to me."

A wave of fear tinged with curiosity flowed through him.

Hers. The fear and the curiosity came from her.

Part of him marveled at the realization.

"What did it do?" She asked softly, as though she could barely breathe. It was her fear that kept her from drawing air into her lungs. He could sense that now, as though he was feeling it himself. It was the strangest thing, to feel someone else's feelings without being able to do anything about them. All he could do was let them flow through. He was just a conduit.

"I think it wants to use me somehow."

"How? For what?"

The primal fear and hunger, the presence that he could feel at the root of himself, now motivated with a powerful instinct for self-preservation, sprang upwards, to the surface, and Chakotay groaned in pain again as it pierced through the layers of emotions until those powerful impulses raged to the surface and pulsed beneath his skull with an acute pain.

He could barely hear Kathryn speak his name over the buzzing inside his skull.

Curiosity. Hunger. Fear. Guilt.

He realized through the fog and the pain that those were not his or Kathryn's feelings – he'd known, subconsciously, somehow. They belonged to someone else. Something else. Whatever it was that had opened up his body to the abilities of an empath.

"What do you want from me?" Chakotay croaked through gritted teeth. The pain tightened its grip on his ribcage before suddenly vanishing as the feelings retreated back the way they'd come.

"Chakotay!" Kathryn's worried voice reached his consciousness and when he opened his eyes again one of her hands was holding his tightly where he had them into fists against his chest while the other rested on his cheek. Her hands felt warm and steady, and he held on to the sensations.

"The darkness. It's not just around us, it's here with us. It… feels things."

She blinked, but didn't doubt the truth of his words. "How do you know?"

"Because I feel them too."

Surprise. Concern. Resolve. "What does it feel?"

"Fear, worry, resolve…" Chakotay frowned as he realized that those were the emotions floating nearer the surface. "No wait, I think those are coming from you."

She blinked at his words, and the wave of her emotions shifted from surprise into something akin to embarrassment and doubt. The fear of being found out also returned with a vengeance. But he already knew – he'd already felt the truth of her feelings, those that she desperately tried to contain and hide from him. How was it possible? That after all this time…? That he'd misread her so utterly? It was all too much to handle right now. He couldn't think about the implications now, not when he was already feeling so much, too much.

Guilt, Chakotay's guilt this time, flashed to the surface at his invasion of Kathryn's privacy. "I can't control what or whose feelings I feel, I'm just… a receptor, I guess. I'm sorry."

She nodded after a moment's hesitation. Acceptation took over the fear. "I understand. I wonder to what end, if not to communicate with us." She gave a small, wry smile. "I bet you're wishing Tuvok had been the one to come with you now!"

Chakotay managed a smile before he focused his mind on that other presence, beneath it all, crawling under layers of feelings and closed his eyes. "It feels… fear. Curiosity. Hunger. Earlier it felt guilt too."

She latched onto that, because guilt suggested self-awareness, empathy. "Guilt? What about?"

Chakotay shook his head. "I'm not sure. Causing me pain, maybe."

Cautious hope. "Can you talk to it?"

Chakotay shook his head. "I'm not sure how."

She studied his expression for a moment, her own expression the perfect outward manifestation of all that he was receiving from her.

"Alright," she decided as she straightened back into her chair. "Rest a while, allow the hypospray to take effect. When you feel up to it, see if you can find a way to use your… ability… to communicate with the entity, and find out why it's holding us hostage. It might be our best chance of getting out of here. In the meantime I'll see what I can do to revive the Flyer. With any luck we can squeeze out just enough juice out of it to get us out of here."

oooOooo

Aboard the starship Aspire, Neelix promptly made his way to the bridge, Nirax on his heels. He only had a basic knowledge of what was going on from the chatter he'd overheard, but if there was a chance that he could help Admiral Janeway and Captain Chakotay… Because they couldn't be dead. Not like this. Not because of him. He had to speak to the captain of Aspire.

"Permission to step onto the bridge," Neelix asked when the turbolift doors opened and numerous pairs of eyes settled on him and his companion.

"You must be Neelix, please!" A tall, mature woman with jet-black hair greeted as she walked over to meet them halfway. "We've never met, but I've heard quite a lot about you. I'm Captain Uang. Welcome aboard Aspire."

"Thank you. This is Nirax. Lieutenant Torres said our people are safe?"

She gave a curt nod. "They are. They are being escorted at a safe distance until we know it's safe for them to return to the station. You'll be able to join them soon, however our priority is to figure out what to do about this."

Neelix and Nirax followed her gaze to the viewscreen, and Neelix gasped. The darkness had followed them through the wormhole, and though it had not fully crossed the event horizon, tendrils of darkness extended outward, like an evil mist. Was there any chance at all that the Flyer survived such a thing?

oooOooo

Chakotay had spent the last several minutes trying to meditate and find a way to access or touch the feelings he believed belonged to the entity now holding them hostage. If he could figure out how to jostle them somehow, touch them with his own curiosity, it might respond. However so far it had come to naught – he just didn't seem to be able to go down deep enough. And even if he did, there was no telling whether he would be able to interact at all. So far all he seemed to be able to do was host the feelings, not control them.

Maybe the solution lay in the logs and the time elapsed between the moment the entity seized them and the moment he and Kathryn awoke. If they could figure out exactly how the entity had taken hold of him or perhaps understand what the entity actually was… So he was now looking through the emergency logs to figure out what exactly had happened while he and Kathryn had been unconscious.

Meanwhile, Kathryn was lying on her back, head stuck under the primary systems panel. She was only visible from the waist down as she worked to try to resuscitate the Delta Flyer. He could still feel her emotions. They usually came in waves: worry, resolve, annoyance and, every once in a while, something akin to curiosity. He tried not to think about it, or about what she'd unwittingly revealed to him through her feelings. It was too unexpected and wondrous for him to process in the state he was in right now. And part of him was wary of letting hope fully take hold of his heart – in case he'd gotten it all wrong or the entity was playing tricks on him. After all, emotions were complex things, especially when taken out of context or separated from thoughts. There had to be a reason why she was so afraid to reveal those feelings, after all, and the last thing he wanted was to force her hand. Or her heart.

"According to this, we lost consciousness for about an hour," he stated. "Although I suppose we could be dealing with a relativity paradox, since our last position was close to the wormhole."

She didn't move from under the console, but he could hear the sounds of screws coming undone. Annoyance resurfaced again. "Just what we need," she muttered. "Something else to mess with the Flyer. Chakotay, pass me that tricorder again?"

Chakotay gingerly crouched down next to her as he handed her the device. "It occurred to me we might need to reroute power from emergency controls if replacing the power cell parts with the spare ones doesn't work to reroute power from the shields to command. It's not a lot, but it might give us what we need."

She raised her head to throw him a look. She'd let her hair down so that the clamp that held her hair up didn't dig into her skull as she lay on her back, and she blew away a strand that had found its way across her face at the movement. "We'll leave that for our last option, since it's going to affect life support." She paused and leaned up on her elbow to better look at him. "How are you doing?"

"Okay. Better." He still felt feverish but his headache had faded somewhat. He was slowly getting used to the emotional jumble and to teasing apart where each feeling came from – himself, Kathryn, or the entity. "Put me to work, Admiral."

Relief. Amusement. One corner of her mouth curved upwards as she finally pried the panel open. "Hand me those spare power cells, then, Captain."

They fell silent as they worked, and soon Chakotay was getting encouraging readings from the tricorder as she tried this and that. "Let's give it a shot," she said at last while putting back the panel.

Chakotay felt the wave of curiosity and dread before she even opened her mouth. "I know this is hardly the time to discuss anything, but...You were going to tell me before… how long it's been over…" She trailed off, her eyes resolutely focused on her task.

He didn't insult her by asking what she was talking about. Her surge of intermingled emotions was enough of a hint that she meant his relationship with Seven. "About six months."

Surprise. She deflected it with a sarcastic raise of the eyebrow. "Six months… You were right, it's amazing the gossip hasn't reached us at the DQU yet. There's got to be some cosmic phenomenon that would explain the delay."

She slid from under the panel and he reached out to help pull her up. He felt a shiver course through him at the simple contact of their hands, but in this case he couldn't tell where her feelings ended and his began.

"So her sudden request for a transfer… it wasn't related? I'd wondered…" She asked as she pulled back her hand and pushed her hair back behind her ears.

"I don't know. I don't think so – we've been working together for the last six months and it's never been a problem." He shook his head. "But you'd have to ask her."

She threw him a glance as she settled back in her chair and Chakotay sat in the copilot seat. "You didn't discuss her motives with her?"

"I did, but since we… ended things, she hasn't been particularly forthcoming with me when it comes to personal matters." He shrugged, the guilt fully his own. "I can't say I blame her. I should have been more mindful of her inexperience when it comes to human feelings. The way I acted, I was callous. Irresponsible. And I regret that more than anything else. She deserves better."

She didn't say anything but her jumbled mix of curiosity, dread, hope, hurt and a touch of disappointment spoke louder than words. She agreed with his assessment, then. Her emotions shifted slightly and something new wafted his way: betrayal. The emotion was fleeting and it disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, as though Kathryn had rationalized it to the point of making it disappear. But he had felt it.

She felt like he had betrayed her.

And of course she was right. Without realizing, without meaning to, he had betrayed her.

Not on the surface – after all they had never promised each other anything, and she had always upheld the line between them, to the point where he'd simply believed that she didn't feel about him the way he felt about her. That was the surface of their relationship, the part that was regulated by protocols and briefings and banter. But deep down they had a connection, a trust, that transcended Starfleet, that transcended distance and even disagreements or superfluous doubt. This special connection, this bond that he should have protected at all costs, had suffered from his decision to move on. And there, in that place, is where she felt betrayed.

He didn't disagree – he felt he had betrayed himself – but was he the only one at fault, here? He wouldn't have tried to move on if he hadn't believed that she'd wished him to – if he hadn't believed that she would only ever feel friendship for him. It took two to tango after all.

She cleared her throat and Chakotay tore his gaze away from her profile. "Alright, let's give this a try."

She punched the necessary commands and the power cells hummed for a second, lights flashed overhead and the control panel flickered. "Come on…" Kathryn encouraged under her breath and, as if the Flyer understood, the lights suddenly came fully on and the control panel came to life.

Relief, cautious excitement.

Chakotay exchanged a small smile with her before she returned her attention to her task. "Engaging thrusters, now."

The engines hummed and the piloting sticks shook with the surge in power. But, they were not moving.

"The anomaly's holding us in place, it's like we're spinning in mud," Chakotay said as he pressed commands in the hopes of boosting power. To no effect.

Without warning, the emotions that lay deep within him, the ones that weren't his or Kathryn's, surged upwards, soaring to the surface. The pain in his chest and in his head returned with a vengeance and Chakotay doubled back in pain.

"Chakotay!" Kathryn's voice sounded far away through the humming inside his head and the fear, pain and anger that now overwhelmed him.

Chakotay tried to focus on those feelings, tried to find a way to convey some sort of communication through that bond. We're not trying to hurt you. What do you want? Let us go.

Need. Hunger. Fear.

And just like that, the feelings vanished again. Chakotay panted as his muscles relaxed, eyes closed. He could hear the tricorder's beeping sounds as Kathryn checked him over again. She had turned off power to the Flyer engines.

"Well, I don't need to be an empath to understand that," she drawled. "Clearly it doesn't like it when we activate the thrusters," she reflected.

Chakotay nodded as he tried to get his breathing under control. He was shaking so badly his teeth were almost clattering. "Help me to the back of the compartment. I don't think we're going to navigate our way out of here, so I suggest rerouting power from propulsion to the force field to contain me."

Displeasure. Curiosity. "Why?"

"I don't know what this is doing to me – I don't know what it's going to do with me. At least if I'm on the other side of that field, I'll be contained. And look on the bright side, it might keep me from reading your emotions," he added with a tight smile.

She opened her mouth to argue, but he beat her to it, instinctively knowing what her complaint was going to be about. "You'll be in control of the force field, you can deactivate it if you deem it necessary that I get medical assistance."

Annoyance. Resolve. She pursed her lips before standing to her feet. "Fine. You know Chakotay," she began while he stood on shaky legs and she grabbed his arm to support him, "I understand that this new ability of yours might be our best chance out of here, but I have to say – I find it rather annoying."

He managed a small chuckle as he slowly made his way to the back. "Trust me, annoying doesn't begin to describe it. Although, I have to admit, it has some advantages."