A/N: Thanks so much for the likes and comments my dudes...I know it feels like nothing but whenever I get a notification in my email I always hope it's from here. This site doesn't let me respond to your comments but know I appreciate and read all of them!

Above him, his hazy vision cleared somewhat, the blurry images forming into shapes and colours, until finally he was able to tell what he was looking at.

Spock was on his right, his hand still firmly placed on his head, as if too afraid to see what would happen if he let go. Bones was on his left, looking absolutely mortified by what he'd just experienced.

It seems Spock heard the commotion after the onslaught of doctors rushing around and followed them into the room.

"I will not be able to maintain this link for long, doctor."

McCoy shut his eyes and shook his head in dismissal, "I know, I know," and he paced around, trying to figure out how he was going to do this. They still needed Jim somewhat awake.

Spock almost didn't register McCoy darting off in another direction, his eyes watching Jim closely, eyes blown wide in fear. His fingers still had not moved from Jim's face.

His eye caught McCoy walking by him, "Get me a cannister of nitrous oxide," he heard him say, strolling across the room again. The doctor's words were distant and fragmented as Spock's mind focused on nothing but the man in front of him.

The meld was probably not helping.

Jim was pale, his blue eyes that were once filled with energy and passion were now starless, dull, and terrified. It was clear he was experiencing something—some kind of flashback, perhaps.

Through the link, he was only able to establish that something was wrong emotionally with Jim. But his thoughts were so disjointed and confusing, it was a rapid mess, a sea of random images that even his own sharp mind could not process.

Something had happened to Jim back on the planet of Bovis, something that he clearly did not want to talk about.

He almost didn't notice McCoy returning to his side, swiftly sitting himself on a stool behind the bed where Jim's head lay, placing the cannister beside him.

"Okay," he was muttering to himself, leaning forward slightly over Jim's face and glancing up at Spock, "You need to stop whatever you're doing now."

As much as Spock wanted to keep the link established, it was weakening his mental shields, and if he remain here then Jim too would grow worse.

"It's alright," McCoy quickly added, drawing Spock's attention back to him, "You can stay. I just need access to his…face."

It was true, the doctor couldn't do anything while Spock had his hands planted over Jim.

He paused for a moment, allowing himself to carefully ease away from the meld, before removing his hand and glancing up to McCoy expectantly.

The other man nodded his thanks, and Spock watched as Jim grew more aware, his eyes beginning to dart around the room.

McCoy placed a hand on Jim's cheek to try to get his attention.

"Hey, kid. You with me?"

It took a moment for confused eyes to find him; but they did.

McCoy continued, "I know this is probably freakin' you out, huh? Well, I'm gonna help with that, and Spock here is gonna stay here and irritate me, aren't'cha?" he side-eyed Spock as if to urge a reply.

Spock decided this was not the correct moment to tease the doctor into pretending he didn't understand his jokes.

"I will remain here, unless of course you decide you do not need me."

Jim's eyes suddenly gained focus then, his neck dropping to the right to face Spock.

"I do…" Jim swallowed hard, seemingly struggling to form a straight sentence, "I do need you…" his voice was hollow, and did not sound like Jim Kirk.

There was silence from all three men, no snarky response even from the doctor.

Both the Captain and the first officer stared at each other for a while longer, before McCoy decided the contest was off, "Alright, that's enough of that," he said jokingly, grabbing the kid's head and forcing it upright again, "Don't move your head."

Jim didn't nod in reply, only a brief acknowledgement with a forced exhale through his nose.

"Now, I don't want you smacking my hands away while I'm in the middle of this, so…" McCoy twisted behind him, picking up something and returning back around to Jim, "Don't know why my staff couldn't have fitted this thing them damn selves," he grumbled, stuffing a tube into the cannister irritably.

"What you gonna do?" Jim quietly asked, his voice any softer it probably wouldn't have been intelligible.

McCoy glanced back up at Jim, "Just makin' you comfortable," he encouraged with a smirk, "But don't you go asking for this again in the future…if you get written up with a nitrous oxide addition it's gonna look real bad on me," he added, picking up the device on the other end of the tube and carefully placing it over Jim's nose, the blonde's eyes going cross-eyed from trying to watch so closely.

Whatever Jim was thinking five minutes ago was apparently replaced by confusion from his current scenario.

"But what you gonna do?"

McCoy jerked his chin up and raised an eyebrow, "You'll see soon enough."

To Spock's dismay, Jim appeared to be shedding tears. Something clearly was wrong. He didn't understand why…this was a safe place. He was on the Enterprise with his chief medical officer and first officer, safe and sound in the medbay.

McCoy leaned over and grabbed the man's shaking wrist, "Hey hey hey, buddy, it's alright. Just give it a few minutes, it'll work."

Jim didn't attempt move his hand away, but his lips shook as he spoke, "Bones…I'm fuckin' scared and I don't know why," he stammered out, licking his lips and started crying ugly tears again, "I don't know what's fuckin' happening!"

McCoy placed a hand on Jim's shoulder and rubbed it soothingly, "Jus' hang in there for a little while longer."

When a reply from Jim went amiss, Spock gave into the mental tugging of his human side and slowly took Jim's arm, to the surprise of McCoy. He noticed the raised brow out the corner of his eye.

"Fear not, Jim…for I am here with you."

Slowly but surely, Jim's wild eyes stopped spazzing around the room and finally lay upon Spock, watching him for a while as if trying to decipher what he said.

To his interest, the doctor had also stopped pulling strange looks at him after he had uttered the last sentence, and he wondered why it had caused such a reaction.

Jim's eyes slowly went from sheer terror to furrowing his brow.

"It smells funny…."

McCoy turned his attention back to Jim, glancing to the monitor every now and then.

"Uh huh."

"Smells like metal…"

"That's normal."

"Smells like…Enterprise…"

A low chuckle, "Spock, you're not gonna like this."

Spock shook himself mentally out of his wistfulness and met McCoy's gaze. Why would he not like this?

"I do not understand."

McCoy smirked again, "Jim's gonna be acting…illogically," he stated apparently to appease Spock's vocabulary.

To his human delight, Jim's head slumped over to the side to face Spock and broke out in a grin.

"Spock! You're here!"

The Vulcan frowned.

"Is the Captain suffering from memory loss, doctor?"

The doctor shrugged, "Nope."

"Boooones!"

"Oh, Christ."

"Booones!"

Why was Jim acting so eccentrically?

He locked his gaze with the contraption currently planted over Jim's nose. Perhaps the nitrous oxide was having an effect on him.

"I believe Jim is having an allergic reaction to the gas you are feeding him."

The younger man was just rolling his head around the bed as if he were in euphoria. Even an emotional man such as Jim would not usually be displaying this amount of joy.

"He's not, Spock, this is normal," McCoy confirmed, running his hand along the side of the biobed to feel for the buttons, "You're a science man, you should know what this is doing to him!"

Spock pursed his lips. He was a science man, he was not however, a medical man. And the actions the Captain was displaying due to this gas was not something that he had experienced before…and he had no intent to.

"As you so often like to pride yourself, you are a doctor, so why not explain to me the reasoning behind Kirk's behaviour?"

McCoy sighed, simultaneously pressing a button that his fingers had found on the side of the bed, and instantly the head of the bed began lowering down flat again.

"It's a sedative that inhibits a human's nervous system neurotransmitter. I don't know how you Vulcans would react to it, so don't even ask," he vaguely explained, much to Spock's dissatisfaction.

"Doctor—"

"Spock, I need to concentrate. If you're still burning with the desire for knowledge on a damn sedative then look it up the data banks," McCoy barked, rolling up behind the now flat biobed and tapping on Jim's face. "How you feelin' Jim?"

Jim seemed to take a moment to process the sentence and come up with a reply. Then his eyes rolled back to look at McCoy and started grinning again.

"Feelin' good, huh? That's good. Spock, do me a favour and get nurse Chapel in here," he ordered, not even looking up to acknowledge the Vulcan.

Slightly irritated, Spock removed himself from his seat and headed for the door, glancing over to the Captain on the way over to make sure that he was still alright.

He was as well as could be expected, considering he was just staring at the ceiling giggling to himself illogically.

What was he supposed to do now? His main function was to keep the captain safe, and he didn't have to man the bridge now that they were docked and Sulu was acting-acting Captain.

They had arrived at Starbase K94, he might as well greet those who are waiting for him. He was the acting Captain now, after all…as much as he preferred Jim in that seat.

But Jim was safe with the doctor, he must remember that.

McCoy kept his hands clasped around Jim's face, trying to remind him not to move.

Apparently "don't move your head" was able to stay in the kid's brain for all of five seconds before he started lulling to the side again.

At this rate Jim was gonna end up with a laser beam to the eyebrow.

Swoosh…

The doors opened.

McCoy looked up, offered a half-smirk to his nurse before gesturing his chin at Jim, "He's under conscious sedation but he won't stop moving his damn head."

Nurse Chapel quickly took her place beside him, with herself to the left of Jim's body and McCoy behind his head.

She quickly stole a glance under the biobed and looked up under her eyebrows to her boss, "Perhaps instead of having me hold him here we can just use a forehead strap?"

McCoy searched for Chapel's hands and nodded, scooting out the way for his nurse to do her job.

As he did so, giggling began under his hands again.

"Bones…ah-ha-ha…do I look like a pig?"

McCoy snorted and stared at him absurdly, "What?"

Jim went cross-eyed, "I have a thing on my nose…" he lifted his hand to touch the mask, "…M' a pig…"

McCoy quickly took Jim's hand and placed it back over his chest again, "Yeah, you're a pig, whatever. Just stop moving."

As Chapel pulled the strap over Jim's forehead, all that could be heard was low giggling fits.

"Someone's happy, huh?" Chapel teased, running her hand along the fabric to make sure it was tight enough then nodding to McCoy.

The doctor glanced back to Jim and gave him a once-over, making sure there wasn't a way he was going to be able to move his head and mess up his delicate work.

"Okay," he confirmed. He might as well start now, "Pass me the tray and we'll get to work."

Jim made a low noise at the back of this throat, which soon ended up turning into a giggle, "…Get to work, Bones!" he sing-songed, not giving a care in the world to the situation outside of his drugged state.

"Get to work…get get…get to work…get…get get…geeeet to work…"

"Jesus Christ this kid is gonna be annoying," McCoy mumbled, taking an aural speculum and twiddling with it with his fingers.

"Geeeet to work…get get get—whats that?"

McCoy paused momentarily, realising he'd still need to be careful around Jim. He'd gone through trauma back on that planet with being experimented on and being partially sedated wasn't a complete cure.

"I'm gonna retract your eyelids so you can't blink."

He saw Jim's apprehensive look from under him, his drugged brain trying to figure out what that meant.

"Whaaaat?"

Chapel swooped in, "He means he wants to look at your eye, but he can't see it when you're blinking," she explained as if to a child.

It was lucky she was trained to do such things.

"Oh." Jim acknowledged, shrugging regardless and breaking out into a grin again, "Kay!"

Rolling his eyes, McCoy leaned over towards Jim and carefully pushed the device between Jim's eyelids, pulling them completely open, but Jim was still laughing.

"I can see yooou!"

McCoy resisted the urge to rub his face in his hands and grunted.

Jesus Christ, Jim.

"Let's do a cryopexy, we should be able to seal the tear from there, it's pretty small," he instructed, producing a vial of proparacaine to squeeze the numbing drop into Jim's eye.

"You sound reeeallly intelligent!" Jim retorted, his fingers beginning to rub up and down his legs. It was clear he was getting distressed by what was happening, but the drugs had him content.

"Yeah? Thanks, Jim," McCoy mumbled, concentrating on lingering the drop over Jim's eye, then squeezed gently.

Jim jolted as the drop hit his eye, causing a temporary spike in his heart-rate until it calmed down again. McCoy frowned at the monitors for a second and turned to Chapel.

"Up the nitrous a little, he still seems to be struggling."

She nodded, immediately wheeling her stool over to the cannister and slightly increasing the amounts within safe range.

McCoy placed the vial aside and leaned over Jim, "You doin' okay there?"

Jim's eyes were bright—if not watery by the drops—but there was a certain spark in there that he hadn't seen before he was on the medication.

The blonde nodded instantly, confirming that he was ok, backing it up with a wide grin and a slurred "yeeeeah!"

McCoy nodded, scooting closer and glancing down at the eye he promised Jim he would fix.

If he couldn't fix it…then Jim would likely get thrown out of his captaincy, and there was no way McCoy would stay on board without him.

He watched his friend for a moment longer, Jim happily swaying his legs left and right on the biobed, tapping his fingers either in anticipation or worry. McCoy would fix him…he had to. And he wasn't going to back down until his friend had his sight back.

"Cryo-probe," he ordered, reaching a hand out to retrieve the item.

The tool was almost immediately slapped into the palm of his hand.

Before he was even able to turn it on, Jim was already going off on another drug-induced tangent.

"D'ya remember back when we were kids and we'd have walkie talkies?"

McCoy was three seconds away from slapping Jim across the forehead, but Chapel intervened.

"Yep, that was ages ago, wasn't it?"

"Uh huh. After this I'm gonna go n' get one!"

"That's what communicators are for, Jim."

Jim's other eye went almost as wide as the retracted one, "Commuuunicators?" astonished, he gaped in realisation, "Oh yeah!"

Noticing that the tense lines in McCoy's face were not in fact because of the procedure, Chapel decided it was best to try and stay quiet.

For perhaps, seventeen seconds.

"Booones…"

"Bones…"

"Booneees…"

"God, what?"

"Here is the verbal instruction manual on the inner workings of a fan! Firstly…"

Jim was still talking, but McCoy had stopped listening.

Ten minutes later, and Jim was still somehow finding the nerve to blab on about everything he could possibly think of under the sun, irritating McCoy to the point where he was beginning to consider taping the damn kid's mouth shut.

"D'yuh think a replicator can replicate chunks of a door?"

McCoy's eye twitched, and he held his hand out, "Get me a syringe of ocucoat for corneal lubrication," he ordered, trying his best not to take any notice of Jim.

"Yes, doctor."

"I think maybe Spock is feeling sad…."

Sighing, he leaned back to straighten his aching back while waiting for the tool to arrive.

"D'yew think he's sad?"

McCoy grunted and shut his eyes, "I wouldn't be surprised considering he has to deal with you for 9 hours a day."

Nurse Chapel promptly returned with the syringe of fluid, so he took it from her and got back to work.

"I'll tell you what," he heard Chapel say mockingly, "This is definitely good blackmail material."

Injecting the drops over his patient's eye, McCoy snorted at Chapel's retort and raised an eyebrow in agreement.

Blissfully, Jim's sentences had soon resorted to just humming, a sound that was much easier for McCoy to tolerate instead of the endless deluge of questions.

He picked up the now ready cryo-probe from the tray and carefully guided it towards Jim's eye.

"Might feel a lil' pressure, m'kay?" he mumbled, his eyes trained onto Jim's own.

Jim hummed again in acknowledgement, the peace and quiet finally a relief for the doctor who preferred silence.

Pressing it against the surface of Jim's eye, he saw the kid's fingers curl up into a fist.

"That hurt?" he asked, not taking the tool away from the eye.

He couldn't stop now.

"Nope…feels weird…"

"Uh-huh," McCoy agreed, moving the tool to a different part of Jim's eye and holding it there again, "Would do. Might feel a little cold, too."

Surprisingly, Jim remained quiet after that, and a niggling feeling at the back of McCoy's mind was telling him to start worrying. Even properly awake, Jim would still be talking to get his mind off of it.

"Bones?"

He moved the probe to a different location again.

"Mmmmhm?"

"Don't wanna be thrown outta the Enterprise…like it here." His voice was generally shaking, as if he generally believed he was going to be demoted.

McCoy sighed, moving the probe to it's last point of the eye, "You're not gonna get thrown out. I'm gonna fix ya."

A few moments went by before Jim spoke up again.

"Pike'll throw me out if I told him I was too scared, so I'm not gonna tell him…"

His stomach turned, "Why you feelin' scared?"

"I don't wanna go back to that planet anymore…"

McCoy scoffed quietly to himself.

No-one would want to after what you've been through, kid.

"I know. You don't have to go back there," he offered, removing the probe from the eye and placing it back in the tray. Hopefully, on top of a few regenerator treatments, Jim's eye should be able to repair itself now.

"But I have to go back there…but I don't want to…"

He sighed again, "Why do you have to go back there, Jim?"

"Mmm…Bovis people told me to come back so they can get rid of the thing they put in me and tell me if they're gonna join the Federation or not…"

He assumed Bovis people meant Ruri and Cadel.

"Well, we sure as hell ain't gonna let them join the Feder—" he paused, sitting back and staring at Jim suspiciously, "They put something in you?"

Jim's eyes drifted back to meet his.

"Yeah….it hurt lots so I don't wanna go back again because then it'll just hurt again and I don't want that…"

McCoy frowned, nodding towards Chapel and gesturing at the mask on Jim's nose.

He could reverse the effects of the gas now that the procedure was done, he did need a more coherent and 'intelligent' Jim to tell him what they had put into him.

"Why the hell you just tellin' me this now?" he accused, reaching towards the eyelid retractors to remove it.

"Don't wanna tell Bones…Bones reminds me of Ruri…"

McCoy felt bile rise to his throat at that. Why was Jim comparing him to someone that had tried to torture him?

"Why does Bones remind you of Ruri, Jim?" he asked, assuming the kid was so out of it that he had no idea who he was talking to.

Jim's fingers were now clawing on his gown, "I don't wanna be experimented on again…don't tell him what I told you or he'll get mad, okay?"

Bones swallowed the lump in his throat, carefully clicking off the retractors and placing it on a tray.

"Alright, I won't tell Bones," Bones said. He felt sick.

"I'm slowing the nitrous down and increasing the oxygen levels," Chapel informed him, cleverly not making any comment as to what Jim was saying, "He should start to gain lucidity in a few minutes."

McCoy nodded slightly, still a bit stunned.

Jim didn't want to tell McCoy about what was done to him because he reminded him of Ruri?

"Where's Spock?"

That caught him off guard.

"What?"

"Where's Spock?"

"Spock's outside, he uh…couldn't come in while you were uh…being treated."

Jim blinked, then paused and blinked again rapidly, apparently noticing he could actually move his left eye now.

"Don't strain it too much," he warned, "Nurse, get a patch for his eye will ya?"

Chapel, who was pretty much just on standby at the side, nodded and walked off in search for the patch.

When she returned and taped the bandage to Jim's eye, McCoy nodded towards her to confirm she could leave.

"Bones?"

Oh crap. He's lucid already.

"Yeah, Jim?" he turned around to face him, expecting there to be some kind of mass of apology after spilling the beans.

But upon locking eyes with him, Jim remained silent, was very pale and looking up at him pleadingly.

"You okay there?" he took a few steps towards the bed, expecting him to lash out like he had done before, but he just shut his eyes and moaned under his breath.

Christ.

"You can sleep now, y'know. It's all done."

Don't need my damn permission to go to sleep.

"'eel funny," Jim slurred, his tongue not working properly.

Upon closer inspection, Jim wasn't just shutting his eyes because he was tired—it looked to be something more. Excluding his pale features, his limbs were also slack and seemed to have laboured breathing.

Late reaction to the nitrous?

"S'alright buddy, think that's jus' the gas wearing off. You'll feel better once it's outta your system."

Jim moaned under his breath again; a strained, complaining moan.

"weak…feel really…wwweak…"

The monitors displaying his vitals were showing absolutely nothing wrong with him.

Frowning, McCoy quickly snatched up the PADD from the tray and hovered it over Jim's frail body.

Beep-beep-beep.

He glanced at the PADD's alert that the scan had finished, and rubbed his hand over his forehead.

"Jim, there's nothing wrong with you," he told him perplexedly, knowing full well himself that it was a lie. He could clearly see just from looking at the kid that something was wrong.

When Jim didn't reply, McCoy stepped beside him, placing a hand on his forehead.

Christ, he's runnin' one hell of a damn fever!

…Why aren't the monitors saying anything?

He quickly placed the PADD aside in favour of a fever reducer, popping the vial in and returning to Jim's bedside.

"Either the monitor is broken or you've developed a psychic connection with technology," Bones grumbled, hitting the hypo at home and tossing it into the disposal.

Immediately retrieving his PADD, he scowled.

Temperature completely normal. What the hell?

"…'ones…"

He glanced up automatically at the small voice, swearing under his breath when he saw the kid was somehow drooling at the mouth. All the muscles had relaxed in his face.

Taking a scanner from the tray and hovering it over Jim, he waited for the inevitable—but it didn't come. Because the scanner claimed he was completely normal.

Cursing, he dropped the instrument on the tray and stomped over to Jim's bedside.

"Nurse!" he shouted out, hoping his voice would be heard from the closed door, not taking his eyes off Jim's lax face.

"You couldn't have had a reaction to the cryo-probe. Who the hell has a reaction to the cold? Or perhaps it was the drops? No…because then you'd be in pain," he gritted his teeth and stared at the door, willing for it to open and for Chapel to walk through.

Dammit.

What the hell's happenin' to you?

The door whooshed open, a dishevelled nurse Chapel parading through, clearly just about to take off for the today.

McCoy gestured at Jim, "He's feverish, weak and the muscles in his face are lax, but the monitors aren't showing anything at all."

She nodded, whipping up a scanner from a tray and waltzing over to Jim.

"I've already tried that," McCoy informed her, shaking his head, "All the technology is telling me he's within normal parameters."

Chapel frowned, placing the scanner back on the table and turning her head at Jim, "Someone might have tampered with the instruments?"

McCoy pushed past her and approached Jim, pressing two fingers against the carotid artery in his neck.

"Yeah, probably. His pulse is rapid and weak but the instruments say he's at a normal sinus rhythm."

The blonde nurse took a hold of Jim's wrist, feeling for his pulse there and confirming her own theory.

Jim was still half-conscious and drooling on the bed, oblivious to everything around him.

"We need to do this without the help of technology," McCoy concluded, storming over to the tray of instruments and wheeling it beside Jim, "Judging by the lax facial muscles it might be some kind of seizure, but we'll have to rule it out."

As concerning as this was, McCoy was a little relieved that he was able to use his own hands for diagnosis rather than the machines for once. It was old school, but he was an old school doctor, and he trusted his own hands over programmable technology.

"Take a full blood-spectrum and a full body scan," he ordered, snatching a stethoscope from the tray of instruments and pushing the tips in his ears as fast as he could.

Jim began to focus a little more when seeing him with the device, but for the wrong reasons. Panic was evidently going to start swelling in his gut again, leaving McCoy to wonder if someone had purposefully disrupted the diagnostic machines.

He swiftly pressed the chest-piece on Jim's skin, and immediately there was a response. Shaking fingers crept onto McCoy's, weakly trying to pry them away from him, stopping the man from touching him.

But Jim was feeble in comparison, the pushing at his fingers a mere irritant.

"I know you don't like it, Jim, just give me a minute," he soothed, trying to concentrate on the way his patient's heart was beating instead of the constant batting at his fingers.

"He's tachycardic, when was the last blood panel?" he asked his nurse, instantly whipping the stethoscope off to give Jim some relief.

While placing the device back on the tray, his eyes were trained on Jim, and it brought him some comfort to see he was relaxing into the mattress again.

"Before the procedure," Chapel replied, taking a blood sampler and quickly pressing it to Jim's wrist, "It sounds like someone did this on purpose?"

McCoy nodded distractedly.

He had a strong feeling that the two bastards back down on Bovis had something to do with it. Jim falling ill and the monitors not working at the same time?

And what was it Jim said about them 'putting something into him'?

He stalked back over to Jim, clasping his hands over his face to get his attention.

"Jim! What were you trying to tell me about Ruri putting something into you?"

The blonde blinked slowly, trying to decipher the information with his cognitive functions out the window.

The sampler clicked as it was removed from his wrist, Jim's eyes trying to follow Chapel as she moved, but gave up seconds later and continued gazing at the ceiling.

"Jim!" McCoy repeated, "What did they put into you?"

He blinked sluggishly again, dribble still pooling out the side of his mouth.

If the monitors were working correctly, no doubt they would be screaming right now.

"mmm…m'head…" Jim slurred, his neck dropping to the side while his eyes shut.

"Your head? What did they put in your…? Nurse, get me a detailed scan of his head!"

Chapel was still trying to get an immediate result from the blood she just drew, "His brain?"

"No, dammit, his head. It could be related to the blindness in his eye. In fact, run it on the left side."

Chapel sounded uncomfortable, "I'm still waiting for the results of the blood to come through—"

"Then I'll do the damn scan!" the doctor interrupted, nearly running to the other side of the room to enter a series of commands into the large medical panel.

Almost immediately, there was a loud clunk as a cylinder tube was released from its dock and extended from Jim's head down to his chest.

"What are you thinking?" Chapel called from the other side of the room. McCoy finished entering the commands and stormed back over to Jim's side, half his body now encased in this machine.

"If they put a device in him, it could have a detection system that set off when I fixed his eye," he spoke quickly, swiftly pressing buttons on the side of the machine to begin the scan.

"It's possible the device is there to kill him if the sensor is dislocated, and disrupts the machinery in the room to trick it into registering different vital signs to not alert us that he's dying."

Jim was suddenly enveloped into a bright white light, quiet humming noises letting the doctor know that the scan had started. Despite his suspicions to the machinery, he was glad engineering advances meant that the technology was less noisy.

"If I'm right, and the device shows up, we can map out where they inserted it so I can surgically remove it."

Chapel approached him while he was speaking, passing over to him a PADD with the blood results.

"There's nothing here that would explain his weakness," she told him, McCoy rapidly reading through the numbers and trying to find any anomaly, "But like you said, the information could be falsified by whatever has been implanted in his head."

McCoy pursed his lips, handing the PADD back to her and scowling, "That's if there's an implant in his head," he flew over to the machine monitor and waited for the results. "He was doped up on drugs, he could say anything."

Just as the images began generating on screen, the sound of a door whooshed open behind him.

McCoy spun on his heel, to see two people he didn't recognise dressed in white-clad medical uniforms, a man and a woman.

"Doctor?" the female asked, glancing over to Jim and then back to the doctor again, "Doctor McCoy?"

He narrowed his eyes, and gave one quick look at the monitor before strolling up to his guests.

"Yeah? Who th' hell let you in here?" he gestured behind him to the humming machine, "I'm in the middle of a procedure!"

The male human-looking person took a step forward, and upon focusing his furiously darting eyes, McCoy noticed something looked a little off about their own green peekers.

"Apologies, doctor. I have permission to be here from Starfleet."

McCoy bit his tongue and turned to the female, "And you?"

She shuffled over to the man, "I am with him."

Oh, great. Just great. 'Starfleet' sent them here. 'Starfleet' sent them happily into the middle of a god damn operation because they wanted to show their authority. He'll show those egotistical sons of bitc—

"We're here for Captain," the female pointed to the giant tube, "Starfleet wants us to take him to the main Starbase medbay."

McCoy almost choked on his own saliva.

"What?" he spluttered, unsure of where to put his now flailing arms, "Take him to…? My god man, he can hardly function!"

The male nodded, "Precisely why we need to take him to a medical facility."

McCoy would have hit them across the face with his elbow if it wasn't for the fact he had a moral compass, "This is a medical facility! And it's…it's ten times more equipped than a Starbase, damn it!"

The female looked towards the male again, and something in their eyes made them seem…suspicious. As if they were hiding something and were turning to the other to silently ask for what to say.

"I'm confident you'll find that the Starbase medical facility has improved its facilities since your last visit," the man stated, making his first stride towards his Captain and best friend.

"Wait, what…what the hell are you talkin' about? It's only been 3 months since we were last here!"

Both the man and woman grabbed Jim's legs from under the tube machine, pulling him out, causing an alarm to go off from the sensors unfinished scan.

"The hell are you doing? You can't just come in here and…hey! What the fuck are you doing?" he watched them as they marched out of the sickbay doors with an unconscious Jim slumped over the man's shoulder, "Get the fuck back here you son of a bitch!"

Did you enjoy this piece of textual work? Do you desire it's continuation? It is only logical therefore to leave a kudos or comment. (please)