A/N: Thanks for the reviews and well wishes everyone! You all definitely had an opinion on the last few chapters and it was a lot of fun reading everyone's responses. As to my first week of grad school-it went great! Hard work but I'm loving it and making great friends at the same time.

Now, fair warning that there's some swearing here. I didn't try to be obscene about it but it's here nonetheless.

Didn't See It Coming - Part One

U.S.S. Enterprise, 2281.215, ?. Se'tak came to slowly, the back of his head throbbing like mad, and tried to let out a groan; that's when he discovered the gag shoved into his mouth.

With a start he learned his eyes had also been covered and his hands cuffed tightly behind his back around what felt like some sort of pole. For several minutes he tugged at the bindings but they wouldn't give and the clang of metal on metal only worsened his growing headache.

For the first time since he was a little kid he was well and truly scared. He'd been jumped from behind and didn't know who'd taken him, where he was or how he'd gotten there—and at the moment there didn't seem to be any hope of escape.

The panic was making him start to hyperventilate.

U.S.S. Enterprise, 2281.178, 1440 hours. Following his break-up with Tabitha, Se'tak chose to spend the majority of his time sulking, and it wasn't until recently that he began to notice that there was more going on in the world than his own little bit of misery. As he re-joined ship life he noticed that Tabby had taken their time apart to radically change both her appearance and her personality. She'd cut her hair into all these crazy layers and dyed parts of it hot pink and neon green; she also wore mostly black or gray low-cut tops and short skirts with big chunky boots. She looked and acted like a different person, but worst of all was the crowd she hung out with; she'd forsaken all their old friends to spend time with Kevin Sweeney, Sean Morrison, Renata Barone and Cole Granger.

Just watching that scum bucket and the easy way he threw his arm over Tabitha's shoulders made him seethe.

Part of him thought that she was just hanging out with Cole to get back at him—the ultimate "SCREW YOU!"—but it wasn't until today that Se'tak learned it went deeper than that. Tabby and Cole were now dating.

The news came out in the middle of one of the guys' laser tag match-ups.

"SHE'S WHAT?!" He stood up in the middle of the field and a shot rang out from the far corner that pinged him in the middle of his chest; a few seconds later Egil let out a triumphant cry.

"Sorry, Man," Aaron said with a shrug of the shoulders, "I thought you knew."

"Obviously not!"

His friend back away, hands raised, "Hey now, don't get mad at me, it's not exactly like they've been keeping it a secret or anything!"

Se'tak stopped in his tracks and thought about that. It was true, it was obvious, he'd just been too busy moping to see how close they were. He wanted to gag.

"I've heard rumors too."

His head snapped up and he narrowed his eyes. "What rumors?"

Aaron looked uneasy. "You've got to promise me you're not going to bite my head off or anything…"

"What rumors?!"

He gulped hard. "I heard they've been, uh…foolin' around. You know, like that."

Se'tak was dumbfounded. Well fuck…

U.S.S. Enterprise, 2281.194, 0815 hours. This was by far the WORST. SUMMER. EVER!

First he and Tabby break-up, then Tabby hooks up with Cole, and now Sa-mekh was skipping out on the shuttle lessons he so desperately needed—and the test was only a few weeks away!

UGH! THIS SUCKS!

1649 hours. T'Alora set him up—and not in a bad way, either. He forgot she even had her pilot's license until she dragged him to the Shuttle Bay for a private lesson. It was nice hanging out, just the two of them, and he didn't realize how much he resented her closeness with Selas until they'd been able to spend some time alone. She'd been quiet since she came back from school and even more distant than usual but he didn't know why that was and she didn't seem to want to say; it wasn't until she pried a bit into his own life that he discovered T'Alora had had her heart stomped on too.

And yet here she was still looking out for him.

He gave her a hug before they disembarked. From now on he'd try and look out for her more too.

U.S.S. Enterprise, 2281.215, 0950 hours. He woke up and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Mama and Sa-mekh were already at work off-ship (as part of the landing party on Tiveron) meaning he was left to his own devices. Se'tak closed his eyes and reviewed his mental checklist. There was the work-out he'd promised Egil, then there were the toiletries he needed to pick up from Stores. He had to hit up the library too and get a copy of the new Space Inspector Lovell book that Lieutenant Palmer was holding onto for him; and somewhere in-between all that Se'tak had lunch plans with the sibs. That last thought was the only thing that finally made him get a move on, otherwise the whole morning would be wasted.

1244 hours. "Se'tak is 14.3 minutes late."

T'Alora turned her eyes away from the door and looked at Selas. "Yes, he is." The smells drifting from the kitchen made her pause and consider whether or not they should continue waiting for their less-than-punctual brother. The staff were serving black bean vegetable burgers, a personal favorite, and she was hungry. "I believe we have waited for him long enough; let us retrieve our meals."

Selas did not need to be told twice; he was up and headed toward the food line before she even had time to back out her chair.

1413 hours. She was becoming concerned. They had returned to their quarters after lunch with Se'tak never having appeared nor called to explain his absence; and while her brother had his moments of carelessness he was not known for being this thoughtless. T'Alora could not adequately explain why she was so uneasy but it was a sensation she was not willing to ignore, especially when it came to him. Setting her PADD aside she rose from the sofa and plodded down the hall to examine her brother's bedroom, hoping to find some clue as to his whereabouts.

There was the faint scent of his body spray as soon as she opened the door, but it was not recent. He had dirty clothes strewn about the floor along with a handful of PADDs and his video game controller. His bed was also unmade but none of what she saw was out of the normal. Se'tak had always been messy; he adhered to disorder as steadfastly as she did her methods of organization. Nothing she saw gave away his plans for the day or that anything was amiss.

"Computer," she said as she sat at the foot of her brother's bed. "Locate Se'tak."

"Unable to comply with that request."

T'Alora sucked in her breath and jumped up. "Computer, locate S'chn T'gai Se'tak."

"Unable to comply with that request."

She strode out to the main console in the living room and entered in a manual search; she was told once more that the computer was unable to discover his whereabouts. "Computer," she called out again, "Locate Selas."

"Selas is on Deck 9, suite 338."

Her heart skipped a beat. This was not a glitch in the programming. Quickly she pulled up the shuttle and transporter logs for the day but there was nothing in them to indicate that her brother had gone off ship. She began to suspect that his disappearance was something much more sinister than first appeared.

Selas entered the room and came up behind her shoulder. "Se'tak is in trouble."

"Yes," she replied, "I agree."

?. He turned to Sa-mekh's meditative breathing techniques and was able to stave off most of the panic but his heart was hammering in his side. Once he gathered his wits about him he decided to try and take stock of his surroundings. He quickly discovered that he could manage a low crouch but he couldn't stand; apparently he was cuffed to the lowest rung of a ladder (possibly a Jeffries tube?) which hampered his progress.

The chamber he was in was small and contained. He was also starting to sweat, something he hardly ever did. Se'tak wasn't sure if it was because he was that freaked out or if the room was really that warm. He tried nudging away the rag around his eyes to get a better look at the place but the cloth wouldn't budge. He could hear humming like from a piece of machinery but it wasn't anything that told him what equipment was running or where he was.

The best thing he could do at this point—really the only thing he could do—was sit tight and wait until someone noticed he was gone.

1420 hours. T'Alora took Selas and what scant evidence she had and marched straight for the Security Office. Commander Ulan was not on duty but Lieutenant Deng was and he listened patiently to her as she outlined her suspicions. The Lieutenant was not immediately convinced until he too tried to locate Se'tak using the ship's computer and reached the same conclusion that she had, that someone had tampered with the programming.

"Do you know where he went today or what he was doing?"

"No, I do not."

The Lieutenant walked over to his desk, grabbed his PADD and pulled up several screens which he then threw up onto the main screen behind her. Twelve different security camera images were displayed showing areas in and around their quarters. "Any idea what time he left your place?"

T'Alora shook her head no. "I left at 8:30 and did not return until 10:30. I believe that Se'tak was still asleep when I left."

"He was," Selas chimed in. "I left at 9:20 to meet Rebecca in the library so that we could work on a school project. I stopped into his room to inquire whether he wanted me to pick up a PADD for him and discovered he was still sleeping. When I returned home at 11:30 he was gone."

"9:20, you said?" Deng tapped in the information and the video in the upper left corner re-set itself. It was the hallway outside their front door. The Lieutenant fast-forwarded until Se'tak appeared on-screen, carrying a small black bag with him. "Ok, so it looks like he left a little after 10 o'clock, let's see where he went from there." The computer tracked Se'tak's movements as he stopped first at Stores, then met up with Egil at the gym. They saw him leave the gym still carrying his bag in what appeared to be the direction of the Mess but then they lost him on Deck 12.

"I do not understand." She studied the screen; all footage for that area of the ship was dark.

Selas tugged on her sleeve. "What is it?"

The Lieutenant peered hard at the black screen. "It's nothing, and that's the problem." Without another word the man sprang into action, ordering three of his subordinates to start combing through video footage of the surrounding area then sending four more out to scour the ship; next he called Mama and Sa-mekh to apprise them of the situation. As all this was going on T'Alora spied a vacant seat at a nearby station and decided she would make herself useful as it would keep her from mercilessly beating whoever had the audacity to abduct her younger brother. She called up the video surveillance program to take a closer look at the code and find out how someone was able to mask Se'tak's signature.

1433 hours. Selas heard the doors open and quickly recognized his parent's footfalls as they hurried in. "How long has he been gone?" Mama asked breathlessly.

"About 2.5 hours, so far as we can tell, Ma'am," Lieutenant Deng replied.

He felt Sa-mekh's heat against his back as he rested his hands on his shoulders and came to stand behind him. "What specifically is being done to locate him?"

As the security officer spoke with his parents Selas once again checked the mental connection he had with his brother. It had been quiet save for that one brief flicker of pained surprise earlier, but as he focused on it now he realized that Se'tak was slowly becoming more aware of his surroundings. He concentrated harder on what little his brother was projecting. Metal, heat…

"He is in a warm, dark place and he is bound."

Sa-mekh spun him around in his chair and crouched down so that they were face-to-face. "What do you mean Se'tak is bound?"

"I mean that he cannot escape. Someone has taken great care to handcuff him. He is in a small, warm space, but that is all I can gather as he is also blindfolded and gagged."

Mama let out a gasp while Lieutenant Deng asked, "Handcuffed, are you sure?"

"Yes, why?"

"Give me a second." Selas listened to the familiar, frenzied tapping on a PADD. "We had a report a few weeks ago, one of our guys misplaced a set of cuffs. Now if I can just find that file…"

The doors opened again and two more persons entered the room. An object of some heft was placed on the table in the center of the room. "We found this," Ensign Harrow declared, "On Deck 12, just past Conference Room 177H. We also, um," she stumbled a bit and Selas could feel the tension in the room ramp up, "there was a bit of blood on the wall." Mama cried out again while he started shaking. "It wasn't a lot," the ensign hastened to add, "but more than just a passing cut. The mark was high up—my guess is that whoever did this probably hit him from behind."

Selas did not need to see to perceive everyone's distress. To think that someone had done this to his brother deliberately angered him as much as it frightened him. Se'tak was not perfect but there was nothing he could have done to warrant such mistreatment in what was clearly some type of retaliatory action.

A zipper was pulled and he heard what sounded like someone rummaging around in a bag. "Well it's definitely his gym stuff," Lieutenant Deng declared.

"Lieutenant," Lieutenant Junior Grade Nashwan suddenly called out, "I think I have something here." Everyone moved en masse to the far side of the room. "The cameras on Deck 12 were down for their scheduled maintenance this week, so I decided to do a deck by deck scan of the footage from around the time the boy went missing. I found this…" Collectively those gathered held their breaths as they watched and Selas waited for someone to tell him what was happening.

"It is a shipping crate," T'Alora announced.

"Yes," Lieutenant Junior Grade Nashwan agreed, "But did you see how the screen flickered? It means the feed's been hacked; otherwise how else could the hallway be empty one minute and then show this guy here the next? This has to be related to your brother's disappearance…and I can't get a good look at the guy's face because the hat's pulled down low and he's turned away from the cameras."

"I concur with your assessment," Sa-mekh said. "There is also a piece of fabric sticking out of the corner of the crate and it matches one of Se'tak's shirts."

"Oh Spock!" He heard Mama reach for Sa-mekh as he pulled her in close.

There was the rapid tapping of keys and then Lieutenant Junior Grade Nashwan said, "We're lucky we even found this. Whoever the hacker is they slipped up. Unfortunately it's the only lead we've got because once they pull around that corner we lose them again. The feed from that hallway shows it to be completely empty. I've no idea where they went after that but it's safe to assume he's on the 4th floor or below."

"Understood." Sa-mekh paused a moment before asking, "Lieutenant, could this be the work of an intruder?"

"It's highly unlikely, Sir," Lieutenant Deng rushed to answer him. "The person would have to have an intimate knowledge of the Enterprise workings to be able to get around undetected. No, I believe it was someone already on the ship."

"Then I have my suspicions as to the identity of the perpetrator," Sa-mekh said darkly. Selas' stomach twisted itself up in knots.

"As do I," the Lieutenant replied, "But let's not jump to conclusions until we have some evidence to back it up."

"Spock, you don't really think…" Mama let the thought trail off in what he suspected to be a private, internal conversation.

The group splintered off into their various focuses. T'Alora remained at her station with the other techs while those patrolling the halls resumed their search. Mama and Sa-mekh stood off in the far corner quietly talking among themselves while to his left Lieutenant Deng paced and tapped away at his PADD.

All of a sudden the tapping stopped. "Commanders," the Lieutenant called out, "I think it's time to jump to conclusions now."