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Hearts Astray

Chapter 11

Existence.

Kathryn still existed. Even though she had stepped into the colors, and was inside them now, she still existed. Her mind was conscious and her body, though tingling, was alive. But how? Why? Kathryn could not understand it. She had been so sure that when she stepped into the colors she would step into oblivion. But she had not faded away, had not been erased from time. She still existed. Kathryn turned around, looking to see if she could see Chakotay through the colors, but she could not. All she could see was the colors. They were swarming around her, dancing before her, and seemed to be shooting right through her as through she was a ghost.

Then Kathryn heard something. Noises. Voices. They were coming from ahead and were muffled, distorted. Kathryn strained her eyes to see through the colors and, as she did, she saw a dark swirling mass. The voices were coming from it and were echoing eerily. Hardly aware of what she was doing, Kathryn stepped into the blackness and then...

And then she was standing in her bedroom on Voyager. The room was dark, silent, but all around her the colors glowed, dancing on the walls like disco lights. Kathryn turned around, turning towards the bed, and gasped at what she saw. There, right before her, was a pulsating wave of colors. It was ripping through the bed, slicing through it like a knife, and in the bed, sleeping, was herself. Yet not quite herself for her face was constantly changing. One second it was old, the next younger, and then middle aged...

Temporal Flux.

Everything was suddenly clear. The anomaly had not only fractured time on Voyager, but this tendril of the anomaly had fractured her existence. Right before her eyes she was living a myriad of lifetimes, on a myriad of Voyagers, in only seconds. That had to explain how she had got displaced. When B'Elanna put Voyager back together again, it was the Voyager she was on at that split second that she found herself in. For all the Voyagers, all her lives, were linked to this anomaly, to this moment, and were merged together. Somehow, some way, this anomaly had splintered, yet united, a million existences.

A million existences. But yet...

The faces were repeating. Every few seconds the same face appeared. This could only mean one thing. There weren't countless lifetimes involved, there were only a few. Three, in fact, as the three same lifetimes kept repeating over and over. These lifetimes were happening right now. They were happening over and over. Just like she'd thought, everything she'd experienced since waking up on the wrong Voyager with temporal flux had not been real. It was not real because she was still in her bed. She was in her bed in a state of temporal chaos.

So where was she now? In which reality was this room? Her own reality, the one she'd just left, or the other?

"Computer," she said, "access Kathryn Janeway's personal logs."

The computer cooperated. "Logs accessed."

"How many times does the name Lieutenant Tanya Marshall appear?"

"The name Lieutenant Tanya Marshall appears only once."

Once. That once had to be the pronouncement of her death.

"Does that log entry tell of the death of Lieutenant Tanya Marshall when Voyager got pulled into the Delta Quadrant?"

"It does."

Then there was every chance that this Voyager was her Voyager.

"Computer, find and read entries relating to New Earth. Was I stranded there with Chakotay or B'Elanna?"

"With neither. You were stranded with Commander Tuvok."

Tuvok.

Then this room was in the third reality, the one she knew nothing about. But she guessed it was similar to the other two. For this third Voyager to have been at the same place, at the same time, as the other two Voyagers, then it had to have an identical temporal framework. Little did it matter which of the realities she was in, anyway, as they were all mixed together. What mattered was finding a way to unmix them. That had to be why she was here. She was here to put things right. A chronoton field was evidently not the answer. It may have worked for Chakotay, but it had clearly not worked for B'Elanna. It had only created a temporal loop. If a chronoton field was generated again, then this whole thing would happen again. She would be displaced again, would end up here again, and then displaced again. The loop would go on and on. It had to be broken.

But how?

Kathryn racked her brains for an answer, and then, suddenly, it came to her. A message had to be sent to Tomorrow from Yesterday. It was the only way of stopping this whole thing from happening again without generating the chronoton field. Of course, a chronoton field was going to be generated in all three realities at precisely the same time, but, if her understanding of temporal mechanics was correct, she only needed to stop it in one reality to stop it in all. So, once she'd found B'Elanna and stopped her generating the field, all she had to do was find a past time-frame in each of the three realities using her logs, and, when she found them, upload a message to Voyager's security file that would automatically activate the deflector dish at the precise moment of the strike. This would prevent Voyager being fractured in all three timelines and the ultimate timeline would be restored.

There was just one problem. The anomaly was blocking the door to the lounge. There was no way she could leave her quarters without walking through it. And if she did that, anything could happen. No, she had to find another way to leave her quarters. She had to breakout. Quickly, Kathryn went into the bathroom, replicated a phaser, and then hurried back into her bedroom. There was not a moment to lose as she had to find B'Elanna before she generated the field. But as Kathryn aimed her phaser at the double wall that separated her bedroom from the corridor, a dizziness overcame her and she dropped the phaser. Kathryn fought against the affliction, fought against the ongoing temporal flux, and picked up her phaser. Her limbs were heavy, weak, but using two hands she managed to hold up the phaser and start cutting through the inner wall. Then she aimed her phaser at the outer wall and cut through that. When both holes were cut, she carefully climbed through the openings into the corridor. It was bright here, dazzling rainbows, and Kathryn had to put her hand to her eyes as she looked around. The lights were coming from the anomaly. It was brighter here, glowing, and flickered as it ripped through the sector. Gripping her phaser tightly, as any dangers from Voyager's past or future could be waiting for her ahead, Kathryn took a deep breath and hurried down the corridor into the unknown.

END OF CHAPTER ELEVEN