Part Nine
The only description that Billy Travis was capable of making about the place he was presently residing with his newfound friend Quinn, was by the euphemistic term employed by scientists who made use of the technology. Anthropologists called the device a duck blind. Billy had been on some expeditions with his mother where the device had been called into use and at this moment, the description of his situation could be best explained by that reference. Anthropologist, in order to study primitive cultures without interfering with the course of the society's development, used duck blinds. Utilizing light refraction technologies, the scientists could make their studies in a self-contained environment that was completely invisible to the outside world.
At the moment, the bubble he occupied inside Quinn's holodeck was not too different from that.
He could see everything taking place and the bubble moved when they wished it too, so that he could observe several different people all at once. He had seen the captain; Vin and Security Chief Standish battling it out with the villain Top Hat Bob and recoiled slightly when Nathan Jackson had found that dead woman on the street. He confessed he did not like Mr. Poplar much and was glad that Josiah made him small when they had encountered each other. He felt a little apprehension when he saw Mr. Wickes trying to hurt his ma but Quinn assured him that there was nothing to worry about. After all, wasn't she always getting into trouble in the real Magnificent Seven program? Billy knew that it was only an excuse for Chris to save her all the time.
In fact, that seemed the only reason to have women in the program at all Billy thought to himself, now that he considered it more deeply. Whenever his mother or Chief Engineer Pemberton was in the simulation, they were always being kidnapped, held hostage or in danger in some way that mobilized the seven into acting. He supposed that's why Science Officer Styles did not participate because he could imagine no situation where she would need rescuing.
"The captain is very resourceful." Quinn remarked as they watched the group following the end of Chris' fist fight with Top hat Bob.
"He's the best Captain in Starfleet," Billy said as they both sat on the floor of their bubble, cross-legged and munching on treats as if they were watching a holovid or something. "Next to my father that is." Billy added after a moment, feeling a wave of sadness when he recalled the father that had died not too long ago. He liked Chris very much but sometimes it was not quite the same as the stoic Vulcan who had always been the paragon of what it was to be Vulcan and yet still put him to sleep with a lullaby. Billy missed him very much.
Quinn looked at Billy. "You are sad."
Billy nodded slightly, trying to hide it but it simply overcame him too quickly.
"I do not understand this idea of death." Quinn answered. "How can one not exist any more? I have always been."
"No you haven't," Billy shook his head. "You were born, like I was born. Everybody gets born."
"But I do not die." Quinn stated.
"You have to die. Every living thing dies." The young Vulcan pointed out.
"I do not die." His new friend repeated himself. "I do not get sick, I do not get injured and I do not die. My father tells me I will live until the universe stops and beyond I wish it. I could go to the past and live as many times as I like because I won't die."
Billy did not think that sounded very good. He was only a child but he did know that he would not like to live so long that everyone else around him would die first. It had been hard enough losing his father; he would not like to have that experience repeated over and over again. "That sounds awful." He said after awhile.
"My father says that I should be grateful that I can do anything." Quinn answered.
"Grown up always say that." Billy remarked.
"Except that I can." Quinn met his gaze and Billy sensed that there was great confusion going on behind the boy's eyes. "I made all this happen."
"This is a holodeck program." The Vulcan pointed out.
"Yes," Quinn nodded with an unfathomable expression that was well beyond Billy's experience to truly understand. "Just a program."
"You know something?" Buck Wilmington said to Chris after they had left Top Hat Bob some distance behind them.
"What?" Chris asked as he dusted himself off after his altercation and victory over Bob.
"If you were not my Captain, I would knock you on your ass!" Buck looked at Chris with a decidedly stormy expression on his face. The first officer had not at all been impressed by the Captain's confrontation with Bob, especially in this pseudo-reality where there were no safety protocols to protect them from death and the characters of holodeck had some how gained flesh and blood status.
"For once I'm in complete agreement with Buck," Alex spoke up. "Captain, that was extremely foolish and dangerous. If Bob had played it smart, he could decided to shoot you when you disarmed yourself to fight him."
"Jesus," Chris grumbled, "you two are like a bunch of old women."
"Hey!" Mary declared. "Chris, they're worried about you like I'm worried about you. We're in enough of a mess without you getting yourself killed. The Captain is the most important person on the ship. Protocols are in place to safeguard you not simply because you are the captain but because you are responsible for your crew and your ship."
"Alright already," Chris growled, starting to feel a little outnumbered. "I get the point but might I remind you a starship is not a democracy?" He gave them a hard stare and then noticed that Ezra, the one he expected to be most vocal about this subject was strangely silent. Normally, the security chief would be the first to be admonishing him for risking himself as he had with Bob but instead, there was an expression of disquiet on the commander's face as his eyes studied the surrounding area.
"Ezra, what is it?" Josiah who noticed it too asked before Chris could.
"Where is Julia?" He asked.
"Well she was right behind us when Chris was fighting it out with Bob." Josiah answered automatically and then realized that he had not really seen where the Chief Engineer had gone to other than that memory.
"She'd know better than to just wander off." Vin retorted. "Especially now that we know that this Q is involved."
"He might have taken her." Nathan suggested, aware that Q was more than capable of spiriting the people he toyed with away at a moment's notice. He had done the same thing to the Enterprise, transported an entire starship in the blink of an eye to distant space where the Federation was first to engage the Borg for the very first time. If Q had not set those events into motion, the Federation might have been spared the Borg onslaught for years to come. However, that premature meeting had made the Borg aware of the Federation, the Klingon Empire and the even the Romulan Star Empire. It had changed the course of Alpha Quadrant politics when the powers that be realized that there were things in space far more terrifying than their petty rivalries with each other.
Chris considered that possibility for the moment and then decided that it was unlikely. Since they had been brought here, one things was evident. While Q was content to throw the entire pantheon of Magnificent Seven foes in their direction, he had not engaged them directly. It was the entity's pleasure to watch his players' dance to the tune he had set for them, not take part in it himself. If Julia was gone, it was more likely to do with the villains that had been plaguing them since the onset of this crazy abduction than Q taking an active interest in things.
"I don't think so," Chris shook his head in response. "It isn't his style."
"God," Mary suddenly gasped. "It could be disgusting Wickes character." She looked at Alex and Buck simultaneously. "The man's a monster Chris! If he has Julia…."
"It will not get that far," Ezra retorted sharply. "Captain, permission to find Mr. Wickes."
"Wait, there's something else." Nathan hated to consider this as a possibility but he had to. Now that they knew they were no longer dealing with holograms but real human beings, he had not choice but to consider it. That girl he had found in the street, however she had come to being had been alive when her life was stolen from her so cruelly. Nathan was certain that to her killer, the possibility that Julia may be something else entirely would not matter to him. He would take her life as ruthlessly as he had done to the poor child with the coins in her eyes. "Before we met up with you. We found a body in the street." He explained.
"A body?" Chris did not at all like the sound of this.
"A girl," Josiah continued. "Young, pretty, she had been strangled to death. The killer placed coins in her eyes."
"That's bizarre." JD exclaimed. "Why?" A cold shudder ran through his spine just picturing the image of a corpse in the eyes.
"Well if it's a classical reference, it could mean that the killer wanted to ensure she had money to pay the Ferryman to get to the other side."
"Excuse me?" Vin looked at her strangely.
"In Greek and Roman literature, when you die you have to cross the River Styx to reach the Underworld and the Ferryman, Charon will take you there only if you pay him. That's why when they buried their dead, they put coins in the eyes so that they could pay him."
"That is an act of compassion." Josiah pointed out.
"From a man who strangles them beforehand." Ezra said skeptically, guessing already what Josiah was trying not to come out and say. "Are you telling me a creature like this has taken Julia?" His voice was barely a whisper as he made that demand.
"More than likely cause this don't sound like something Wickes would do." Buck spoke up; hating to admit that Nathan could be right but the truth was Wickes had not seen Julia with him, just Mary and Alex. It made far more sense that if the man were going to attack this way, he would have taken one of them. However, Wickes was the kind that seldom went anywhere without his men. If he had taken Julia, they would have seen him. Unfortunately, the silent abduction that had seen Julia stolen out of their midst, seemed more consistent with the behavior of Nathan's murderer.
"We are wasting time." Ezra interrupted, desperate to find Julia the more and more he heard about this Mr. Wickes and this unseen killer that was stalking women about town and murdering them. "We need to start looking for her now."
"Lieutenant Commander," Chris said sharply and reminded Ezra that he was security chief and nothing would be served in they all descended into a blind panic. "We will find her but I need your head screwed on right at this moment."
Ezra dropped his gaze to the ground for a moment slightly embarrassed by his lack of professionalism. Julia was the one person in the universe that could bring the real Ezra Standish to surface, not the cold, hard cynic they had come to know but the person that existed deep beneath that jaded exterior. When he finally met the captain's eyes, Ezra noted the sympathy being exhibited by his friends for his pain and Ezra felt strangely comforted by it. "I apologize." He said evenly.
"Its okay," Chris responded automatically. "Now we can't assume that she is with one person or the other, unfortunately we don't have the luxury of taking a guess. If she's with this nut, then we have very little time so we're going to have to split up. This town isn't that big, we can search it."
"That's right," Nathan added, wishing to give Ezra hope because he knew how deeply the security chief felt for the woman and knew that if it were Rain in the same unfortunate circumstances, he would be as unhinged as Ezra. "What he does with them needs him placed close to town so even though time is against us, he won't be far away. If he has her, he'll be wanting to do it someplace quiet where he can enjoy himself but at the same time not be remote enough to have trouble disposing the body."
"Doctor Jackson," Ezra cleared his throat, wincing each time the doctor had used the word 'body.' "Do you think you could manage to sound a little less impersonal? I do not see Julia as a body yet."
"Yes," Josiah frowned, giving the doctor a dark look that clearly indicated that his bedside manner could use a little work.
"Sorry," Nathan apologized, feeling a little mortified by his insensitivity. "However, we also need to keep in mind that if he is responsible for Julia's disappearance, he may have bitten of more than he can chew."
"I don't follow." JD responded.
"I think I do," Vin caught on immediately. "This guy is used to dealing with women from this time, who wouldn't know how to put up a fight if he came at them. Julia is not from the 19th century, she's from the 24th and she's an Academy trained Starfleet officer who knows how to get out of trouble if she has to. If this guy has her, Julia may know how to take care of herself or at the very least, stall him long enough for us to get to him."
"Right," Chris gave Vin a smile of gratitude at making that statement because Ezra needed to hear some positives regarding Julia's situation not merely the meaningless platitudes of well-intentioned friends. "At the moment, I'm assuming nothing so we're splitting up to find her. "Ezra, you, Josiah, Alex and Nathan see what you can do about finding this killer. I figure the four of you would have a better chance of tracking this killer than the rest of us."
"What are you going to do?" Alex asked.
"We're going after Mister Wickes," Chris answered. "Chances are if you don't find her, we will."
Ezra hoped it was as simple as that because in truth, he would rather Julia be in the hands of a whoremaster, even if the entire notion was odious, because the man would not be inclined to kill her.
Her chances of survival were considerably better than if she were the unwilling captive of a serial killer.
Julia's head hurt.
She woke up to scent in her lungs.
The acrid metallic stench assaulted her senses with the efficiency of smelling salts and forced her from the dark place she had been slumbering. Sensation bled into her at a crawl but when it did return, she almost wished it had not. The dull throbbing that had been distant and tolerable soon felt as if a thunderstorm was rumbling inside her mind. She did not know she had groaned when she first felt it but there was a sound so she supposed she must have made it.
Her throat felt parched and sluggish and when she lifted her head, fresh pain assailed her once more and force to lie down again. She was on the wooden floor of a place she had yet to identify because her vision was still blurred. Her eyesight was slower to return than her olfactory senses, which were bombarding her with a cavalcade of scents. She tried to identify the acrid smell that had roused her from her sleep and could not quite place it at first. Then Julia felt something warm and slick running through her scalp and was stymied by hair. When she felt it on her brow, she knew exactly what it was.
Blood.
When she attempted to reach for her forehead to investigate, Julia discovered that her arms were bound behind her back. The tension of rope around her wrists brought clarity to her mind like nothing else was capable of doing. Her eyes flew open and she immediately started to struggle, life surging into lethargic limbs, left too long in their uncomfortable position. The ropes bit into her skin, chaffing her flesh as she tried to loosen them enough so that she might free herself. After a few seconds, Julia discovered to her growing concern that the ropes were tied with exceptional skill, ensuring that the captive, being her, would not be able to accomplish what she was attempting to do now.
"You can't escape." A male voice said softly.
Julia froze. She had been so focused on freeing herself that it never occurred to she had been watched. She looked up slowly and also realized that she was in a church, specifically Josiah's church. During her visits to the program, she had opportunity to be in this place once or twice before and recognized it immediately.
"Who are you?" She asked hoarsely as she turned her head towards him and saw the man sitting on the nearby pew, watching her closely with dead eyes. The lack of anything in them sent a chill through Julia's spine.
"Nobody." He answered, observing her like she was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen.
"You must be somebody," Julia tried again. "I have to be able to call you something."
He met her gaze and suddenly, she saw something sparkle in his eyes. "You can call me Death."