((Chapter heading is from a Lacuna Coil song called Unspoken. I find it fitting. And regarding lose ends from Air, here goes the first, even if it's a tiny one.))

Chapter 10

Voice Without Words

Jim watched patient seven over the monitor and wished he had Spock's detachment. The Vulcan had ambled out of Vires's cell without so much as ruffled feathers, meditating to get rid of an illogical sense of guilt. Over the past three days, Jim had managed to convince him that her fate was sealed long before his visit to her. So far, Spock claimed that he felt nothing out of the ordinary, but something told Jim that this precious time with the sword of Damocles just out of sight was all but over. He couldn't point his finger at it, but the bond seemed more active, perhaps more distracting, than it had been before, and he feared that this was the beginning of the symptoms.

For now, however, he was acting as the security personnel he had volunteered to be. Bones was going to take patient zero to a biobed to start an attempted treatment. It was highly unethical to do research like this, the doctor had told him. The patient was doomed, however, and the VSA had declared a state of emergency that allowed any experimental treatment in the last stages of the disease. It couldn't do any harm anyway. But it might help.

Right now, patient seven seemed calm enough. He was pacing his cell, walking around the wall like a caged lion. He was about to say as much when the Vulcan sagged forwards against the wall. 'Not again,' Bones said in a pained voice. Horrified, Jim watched him slide down, his face scraping down the wall, drawing a green stain along the way. 'He's doing this on purpose. I don't know why, but this isn't accidental. He keeps hurting himself.'

'What can you do for him?'

'Depends. Functionally, Vulcan brains aren't that dissimilar to ours, but chemically there are huge differences. The problem is that this hell of a drug destroys the receptors for certain neurotransmitters. For humans they only block them temporarily, and they block different receptors. Now I can stimulate the brain to produce more of them, but not without causing intense stress. Look at him. Look at that and tell me what you think more stress will do.' Jim sighed.

'Can you give it to Spock yet?'

'No. I'm not risking that.'

'Bones, I think he's running out of time.'

'Listen, Jim. Developing a medication that seems to work in the lab is one thing, but using it on a patient is something else entirely. There's always a chance something doesn't work out as it should, and then you have caused permanent damage that could have been avoided. In someone already half dead it's kind of all right if the alternative is standing by and shrugging, but Spock … We still have some time.'

'And when he's like this he'll die either from the drug or the treatment.'

'Or we have something less aggressive by then and he'll be fine. Jim, I can't promise you that I can save him, but I'll do everything I can, and you should know that.' Feeling foolish, Jim nodded.

'I do. Now what do we do with him here?'

'You go out, I deactivate the force field, you stun him, and we carry him back to the biobed on a stretcher. What else.'

They had barely strapped the poor soul to the biobed when he came back around. He started thrashing immediately, but with the little room for movement he had, he couldn't get very far. 'These straps will hold him?' Jim remembered too well how easily Spock had broken free once.

'They're designed for Vulcan strength. They'll hold.' Jim decided that Bones had to know best and just kept watching, ready to fire another stun. Completely unperturbed by the attempts to attack him, Bones treated the wounds on patient seven's face first. Only then he took the hypospray and applied it after a meaningful glance at Jim. 'Now pray, Jim. If this works, we can get the stuff out of Spock's system.'

Jim's medical knowledge was rudimentary at best, but he knew how to read the medical panels. And it did look good. The readings that were far too high started to level. Bones didn't look too optimistic, however.

Then it happened. The heart rate shot up and through the roof. Bones applied another medication, but there was no effect. The thrashing Vulcan started screaming at the top of his voice until Bones applied what seemed to be a chemical whack on the head. But even though patient seven lay still now, his heart was beating way too fast even for a Vulcan. A seizure gripped him and the readings fell rapidly until all was silent. Bones closed his eyes and shook his head. Jim walked over to him and squeezed his shoulder.

'And you ask me,' his friend said in a low voice, 'if I want to try this on Spock?'

'What happened?'

'Panic. He died of panic, Jim. The receptors came back too fast. And this was something I could see coming from the lab test, but I couldn't say how bad it would be. That's why you don't work like that.'

'Change the dose, then.' Bones turned away from the body and faced Jim.

'Can't. It's just enough to work. I have to change the entire compound. I feared as much, but if I hadn't tested it someone else would have.' He rubbed his hand over his face. 'I need to go back to the lab. If you got the time, I can tell you what we know so far.' Jim answered by falling into step beside him. Bones told an orderly to deal with patient seven. He would be kept in a freezer for further studying. Vulcans, at least, didn't have qualms with autopsies.

'Good or bad news?' he asked. Bones made a face at him.

'Both,' he said. 'T'Kray managed to get background knowledge on Stal and Vires and a few of the previous cases. It seems that the more controlled can withstand longer. Since Spock is a model Vulcan, that's a good thing. It's why he's still fine. The problem is, when they do give, they give quickly. Stal is in constant struggle, but he's coping some of the time. Then we can talk to him, he even cooperates occasionally. But Vires is a mess now that she's fallen.'

'Spock thinks that's because of her meld with him.'

'I don't know. I think once she fell, she fell fast, and that would have happened anyway. Perhaps ten minutes later, but the end is the same. And here's the thing. Once the symptoms start for Spock, we'll have to watch him very carefully. We being you. As soon as he gets the symptoms, or let's say serious symptoms, we must put him into a cell, too. Because once he notices that he's losing his battle, he won't have the time to turn himself in.'

'You don't really think that you'll have a cure in time, do you?' Bones opened his mouth and closed it when Jim stepped in front of him, forcing him to look him in the eye.

'I … don't know, Jim. Don't give him up just yet, but … I really don't know.'

'And does it make a difference if he's eating more of the drug?'

'Ah, yes, it does.' Bones smiled vaguely. 'So Stal, with his brittle hold on himself had the symptoms almost at once but they remain relatively light, and Spock has none yet. It makes sense, even though Stal only had the chance to get one dose of the drug. And make no mistake, he was attacked deliberately. They took out the people with the background to solve the myth. At least they tried. Another dose for Spock would be dramatic. At least I can protect him from that.'

Ϡ

Spock looked up from the tricorder and frowned. Leonard generally passed all information he had on to him at once, but so far they had not come up with anything overly useful. It was most likely moot, at any rate. He had only a few days left, if the previous cases were any indication.

Spock needed air, needed to feel the sun burning down on him. The ship was generally too cold, the thick walls of the VSA could not keep the unrelenting heat out, but the sunlight itself.

In here, he was no good to anyone at the moment. There was no danger for Jim, but for him. And he was a threat himself. The moment he slipped, he could harm someone. He could harm his bondmate, and that would surely destroy him.

The fine sand crunched underneath Spock's feet, the scorching wind mussed up his hair, the light of the sun blurred his vision, but that was as it should be.

Every step would bring him closer to freedom. To the shelter from everything strange and uncontrollable and foreign. Out here, there was no threat to him. Vulcan's predators never came so close to civilisation, and out there …

Spock halted abruptly. He blinked and turned, noticing that he had ambled casually towards the desert. What that meant was clear. It was starting. And if it was starting there had to be something wrong with his mind. Sitting down right where he was, he decided to face it sooner rather than later.

Finding it was not too difficult. He had missed it, had thought the despair his own, but in fact, it was not. It was a cancer, something shifting and pulsating that ate away at him. Noting what it was and where, Spock prepared his defence, a mental bell jar to contain it. The difficult part was not to think of it, to think of something other than that sense of futility.

Even this focus was too much. The emotion shifted to something else. Something he had experienced once before, in a nightmare caused by the strange ritual that had given him decades of his life back. He was on his back, Jim poised above him, one hand on his face. He could not breathe. And he did not mind, because his attention was on the sheer desire he was feeling.

He flinched away from the fear this vision induced, fear of the very being he loved with every fibre and fear of himself. The nature of this new sensation gave him an easy out, however. Spock thought of Jim as he truly was, focussed on his affection for this human being. Only when he was certain that he was rooted in the security of the bond, he shifted the portion of his mind he had prepared as a receptacle for the foreign feeling towards it. He captured it on his first attempt.

What he wondered was if he could destroy it while it was trapped. Vires had said no such thing, but she had not warned him that it was impossible either. Shattering an emotion wasn't something that occurred to a Reldai, but it did occur to him. He had tried it on Gol. It had nothing to do with actual control, of course, but here it might help.

He tried to remember the contact with Vires's mind, and indeed, he believed that her partitions were somewhere in the background. Getting rid of what he had managed to trap could give him time and make it easier. This was chess, pure and simple. Do not do too many things at once. And if you cannot win, try for a deadlock. He could not win, but perhaps he managed a stalemate rather than a draw by perpetual check. If there was a moment to attempt this, it was now: now, while there was nothing new coming to haunt him too soon, just this one thing. With an effort, Spock obliterated the bell jar, including what was in it. For four minutes he remained motionless and searched himself. Only when he was satisfied that he had succeeded, he slipped out of the light meditation and rose to his feet. Brushing sand off his clothes, Spock allowed himself a small smile.

Ϡ

Leonard let the computer run its tests on an attempted change of the chemical makeup of his treatment. He leaned back in his chair, arms behind his neck, and stared at the ceiling. This would take a few minutes. 'Thing is, Jim, there'll be a residual risk even with the best of results. Spock may look all Vulcan, but he's still a hybrid. So I have to take into account that a barely surviving Vulcan can mean he just won't make it. See the problem?' For almost half a minute, there was no response. Leonard was about to make a comment on his silence when he heard a suppressed groan. He darted to his feet and to where Jim had sunk to the ground. The Feinberger showed nothing out of the ordinary. 'Jim … Jim, talk to me,' he said. Grabbing one shoulder, he tilted his head up by the chin, but Jim wasn't seeing him. His eyes were turned back, and a helpless hand started grappling at Leonard's arm. There was nothing physically wrong, nothing that wanted medical attention. The only conclusion was that Spock was showing symptoms and Jim was suffering with him.

Before Leonard could make up his mind what he should do, it was all over. Jim blinked and focussed on him. 'You should cut down on the brandy, Jim,' he said with a levity he didn't feel, earning a glare. 'Is he all right?' Jim shook his head, then he nodded.

'I think so. I can't reach him. He's shielding.'

'About time. What happened? Can you tell?' Jim shrugged and grabbed Leonard's proffered hand, letting the doctor haul him to his feet.

'It was odd. First I felt something like desperation, and then Spock swamped me. I don't think he knows that he was doing it. But I got the strangest vision.'

'Vision? That's new.'

'I'm the first bondmate of a victim, aren't I?'

'What did you see, then?' Jim licked his lips and looked away. 'Maybe this is important. Spill it.'

'I was … attacking Spock. More or less.' Leonard folded his arms and stared at Jim with the no-nonsense expression he generally used on patients. It worked often enough, even on Jim. 'Well, I was above him and holding his nose and mouth shut.'

'And he let you?'

'He seemed to … Bones, please.' And then it dawned on Leonard.

'Oh, God, what the hell do you do when you're alone together?' Jim glared at him.

'I never … that's not something I'd ever …'

'I wonder what T'Kray would have to say to this. No, seriously. If we assume, and I think we can do that safely, that neither you nor Spock are into something of this kind, then it must be something more worrisome than a naughty fantasy.'

'Yes. I'll agree with you there.' Jim massaged the bridge of his nose. 'I'm getting a headache.'

'You got a psychic whiplash. I'd suppose that's to be expected.' Suddenly something struck him, a memory that seemed a lifetime ago but wasn't. 'Jim … that's what he said.' A vague grin formed on Jim's face.

'Excuse me?' Leonard threw up his arms.

'Back on Dainam. We all had night terrors from that bacteria, remember? And Spock said he was suffocating. I was being killed by T'Kray, you by him. And he was … he never said precisely, but now I'm sure. You were smothering him!' Jim shrugged.

'I never asked. What difference does it make?'

'A lot! It tells us something about what's happening to them. Imagine having to go through what happened to us that night all the time, and getting worse.'

'What are you saying?'

'I'm saying that I need all the data we have regarding the drug on the Covenant down here. And I need to … I need all the files Starfleet no doubt collected on the bacteria.'

'But T'Kray destroyed them.'

'She destroyed the cultivated stock. I'm sure there was more somewhere on the planet. I'll bet Starfleet got their hands on it.'

'Bad. Very bad.'

'Nah, they wouldn't use it, not as the natives did. But of course their scientists would be all over it.'

'And then someone might have used it for their own devices.' Leonard nodded eagerly.

'Yes. And if we know how the drug is made, we know a lot more than we do now. We can isolate it in the blood, but that isn't the same as having the actual substance on our hands. Just how're we supposed to do that?' Jim's face became grim.

'Well, let security handle it.'

'Knock yourself out. But let's find Spock first. Before he wanders off.'

'He's all right.' Jim smiled. 'He's on his way here. He'll help you. And I'll get you a sample of that drug.'