Chapter One

For days, the crew of the Enterprise stumbled around in a fog of confusion. No one aboard the bright and immaculately clean starship knew exactly what was going on. No one knew where they had just been, or what had happened there.

Kirk had woken up in the Captain's chair. Everyone around him was rubbing his or her forehead, glancing around the bridge in complete and utter bewilderment. They murmured amongst themselves, assessing the situation that they had now landed themselves in. The consensus was mutual: nobody knew anything. Jim himself tried to remember, giving himself a whopping headache. It hurt. It hurt to remember.

"Where are we?" Jim asked voice raspy, as if he'd just been sleeping soundly. That was what this felt like—a dream that he wished only to end. "Sulu? Where are we?"

Sulu glanced at him with blank eyes. His eyebrows hitched together. "Ca-Captain?"

"Yeah, duh. Come on, tell me."

Sulu glanced to the screen in front of him. "I…I don't know. I don't know where we are."

The /Captain shook his head, stressed. "Spock?" he asked. But when he looked over, his first officer wasn't there.

"Where's Spock?" Jim demanded. Wildly, he glanced around the Bridge. No one would meet his eyes.

It was a couple of hours before Jim made a decision. Everyone on the bridge seemed to have forgotten how to work their instruments at each of their stations, and it took Sulu a full five hours to finally find out where they were.

Three hours before that, however, Jim made an all-call. He tried not to pay attention to Uhura, who was crying and softly muttering to herself in a language he didn't know.

"I know that you all must be concerned. I am too. As of right now, we are trying to figure out what exactly is going on. One person, Commander Spock, is missing. If you see Mr. Spock, please have him report to the bridge. If you notice anyone else missing, I ask you to report their absence. And if you have any information on where we just departed from, or our reason for being there, tell us. I don't care what rank you are. If you know something, get your ass to the bridge immediately. Kirk out."

When Sulu and Checkov combined got the navigation system back working, they assessed where they were.

"There are no nearby planets. But we're still in the Milky Way. The nearest planet is Earth and we are about a three-day's journey from it."

"God," Jim muttered, looking at the screen over Sulu's shoulder. "What the hell are we doing here?"

"No clue, sir." Sulu met his eyes briefly, then turned his attention back to the computer.

Again, Jim tried to remember. Nothing resurfaced, nothing except for a painful headache. Finally, he straightened up. "Checkov, you have the con. But don't do anything. I'll be right back. I need to talk to Dr. McCoy.

Dr. McCoy was busier than Jim had expected he would be. His brown eyebrows were furrowed together, lips pursed in irritation.

"The general diagnosis? Amnesia." He said, before the sliding door could swish behind him. "Imagine that. It's unreal!"

"I've got a headache. Have any Ibuprofen?"

McCoy strode over to a cabinet, opened it, got something out, then slammed it closed. He turned, and Jim saw that he was now very focused on opening a pill bottle. The tablets inside rattled as he twisted the top off.

"Jim, does anyone remember anything?" McCoy's blue eyes met his. "Do you remember anything?"

Jim shook his head. "No, I…"

McCoy thrust out a hand. "Here" He said. In his palm sat two white pills. Jim took them, swallowing both without water. "I know you hate the hypos."

"Spock's missing," he announced, a bitter trace of pill biting the back of his throat.

McCoy was about to twist the top back on the pill bottle, but he stopped. "What?"

"Spock. He's…gone."

The bottle dropped. Tablets noisily spilled across the linoleum.

"That ain't possible." McCoy said. "He's got to be somewhere on this hunk of junk."

Something told Jim that he was wrong.

What should I do, Bones? How can I report this to Star Fleet?"

"I don't know, Jim, but you're going to have to. What else are we going to do?"

"It sounds insane. What're they going to think when I let them know that I have no idea what our last mission was, why we are this far from any planet or starbase, and how an entire crew gets a case of amnesia?"

"Tell the truth. What else can you do?"

Jim groaned. He pulled an arm over his head and stretched it. "I guess…not much else."

His head was still pounding. Jim rubbed his temple, went over to the wall, and pressed the button to call Uhura. "Kirk to bridge," he said.

"B-b-bridge." That was Uhura.

"Uhura, transfer me to Checkov. I need him to do something for me."

"Okay."

"And…stop blubbering. You're the communications officer. Get it together."

Her voice was much harder when she replied. "Yes, Captain."

Checkov was on in the next second. "Da…er…Keptin. Yes?"

"Find ten security members to conduct a search and rescue mission. We're going to search the ship for Commander Spock."

"Aye, aye, sir."

He cut off.

Before he went back up to the bridge, Jim swung by Spock's quarters, just in case. He rapped his knuckles against the door.

"Hey, uh, Spock. If you're in there, open up." A pause. He pounded on the door again. "Dude. It's Jim. As in…your Captain." He started to hit the door with the butt of his palm. "Spock!"

A sharp pain shot through his skull. He recoiled, clutching a hand to his forehead. His eyes squeezed shut.

What was that? A memory? Why was it so painful? Had he done that before—yelled his first officer's name?

Desperation nipped at his mind, flittered in his stomach like a bunch of butterflies. It could be anything. He pounded the door raw, yelling, "Spock! Spock!" several times. For the first time, his head became a bit clearer. It was a relief enough for him to step back from the door. He had no idea why, but for some reason he felt more in control of his thoughts.

Then his headache returned. He looked around him to see several crew members staring at him like he was insane.

"What?" he asked, raising his arms. "Standard procedure, right?"

Calmly, he headed back up to the bridge.

The security officers scoured the starship. Jim had them check everywhere—bathrooms, private quarters, janitorial closets, cabinets…they even checked the engine room, just to be sure. Spock was nowhere to be found.

And so, after an already arduous day, Jim had to make an arduous call to Star Fleet. He was yelled at extensively over the communicator by his superiors, transferred several times down on planet Earth before he could finally talk to someone who didn't scream at him when he told him their situation.

"Whoa," the unknown admiral said. "That's insane."

"That's what happened," Jim replied, propping his chin on his right fist.

The admiral was quiet for a minute. Then he grunted into the speaker. "Tell ya what," he said.

"What?"

"You and your crew come back home. I'll be here. We'll send out word that your first officer is missing to any starbase within your vicinity. What starbases are in your vicinity?"

Jim couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, admiral, you're funny."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, as you and I both know, there are no starbases near me."

There was a very long pause. It seemed to Kirk that the admiral was checking his location. After a minute more of silence, he came back on. "…So there's not."

When he spoke again, his voice was strained. "Captain Kirk, what the hell was your crew doing?! You obviously weren't sent there by us."

"Yes sir, I know…"

"You were supposed to be coming back from a mission, were you not? A routine one. Dropping off supplies. To a nearby planet. In the opposite direction."

"With all due respect sir, I have no clue what we were supposed to be doing."

"Well, I'm telling you." A pat of sound on the speaker, like he was putting down his hand. "That is what your log says, anyway. Captain, is Commander Spock the only one from your ship that's missing?"

"That I know of," replied Kirk.

"Then I hate to say this, but you're shit out of luck."

Finally, the Enterprise was on track to Earth. It was night, now, and Jim was tired. He left the bridge behind everyone else, dragging his ass all the way to his quarters. The room was dark—probably the way he'd left it, before all of this shit had happened.

A routine mission.

Jim flopped onto the bed. Cool covers invited him to sprawl out on his back, his hands coming behind his head. The fan was on. Apparently, he'd left this room in a hurry.

Dropping off supplies.

Why'd he leave? Had he been sleeping? His head still ached, a dull, throbbing, consistent pain.

To a nearby planet…

Very vaguely, he remembered this. The mission had gone off without a hitch. Easy as pie. The planet's inhabitants had been very thankful for their supplies and the ease with which they acquired them. He remembered leaving…

…No, he didn't, either. And Spock…Spock…

Jim closed his eyes and groaned. It felt as if his headache had intensified tenfold. His neck rolled to the left.

He remembered how he looked. Quite dignified, really. Dark hair and warm brown eyes. He had been wearing the formal black uniform, firmly pressed, that identified him as one in command. He spoke to the dignitaries with a cool, musical, apathetic tone, back always ramrod straight.

Why did it feel like he'd died? Was there something his mind was keeping from him?

"Bones, I hate running."

"Yeah, Jim, I get that. And I do too. But you still gotta stay in shape. And aerobic exercise is part of doing that."

It was the day after, and the entire ship was a little uneasy, everyone on board trying to cope with the amnesia. Not a lot of people were in the ship's expansive gym, but those that were exercised vigorously and didn't seem to notice Jim and the doctor. Honestly, McCoy didn't ask Jim to exercise with him that often, and when they did, he didn't seem to stick on to him as much. Maybe he was just as off as everyone else.

Jim did the only thing he could think of doing—let out a huge groan. "Booooones!"

"Come on, don't you want to stay skinny? Get your ass in gear!"

Reluctantly, Jim went over to the treadmills to run. "One mile," he said when he stepped on.

"Two."

"One point five."

"Two point five."

"Shit, Bones!"

"Fine," he conceded. "One point five. No less."

Leonard McCoy turned on his treadmill. He reached over and turned on Jim's as well. The giant machine lurched to life, and Jim picked up his feet and ran.

Almost as soon as he started, another bolt of pain struck through his brain. "Agh!" he said, involuntarily.

"You alright, Jim?"

"Fine," he said, surprised to find that he was telling the truth. The dull ache in his skull seemed to have dissipated with one strike of double-edged pain., He had still had a headache from the night before when he'd woken up this morning. Now it was gone.

Jim ran on the treadmill for a little over fifteen minutes before his breath became heavy and impossible and he realized again why he hated running. He turned it off faster than he should have and stood there for a while, calves trembling. He and the doctor shared a glance. Running was one of his least favorite things to spend a morning doing, and Leonard shared his opinion.

Something, though, was pulling him back toward the treadmill. Damn endorphins.

Jim took a quick shower and headed up to the bridge. Sulu and Checkov were there, examining their instruments and chatting back and forth. They seemed pretty happy—Sulu made jabs at Checkov's accent while the Russian boy prattled on about Mother Russia. Jim was amused by their conversation but when they turned and asked him what was so funny, he waved it off. He shouldn't have been laughing; their situation was way too critical for that. It surprised him that he was worried about Spock this much, but he couldn't help it. It didn't matter how much the man sometimes annoyed him. Spock was his friend. And to just leave for home, as the admiral had suggested…Well, the whole ordeal made Jim want to turn the starship around and conduct his very own wild goose chase across the galaxy.

But if they had to go home, they had to go home. It was as simple as that.

A boring but anxious day on the bridge. A thorough investigation was done on all of the ship's logs as well as on the engine instruments. Scotty reported near noon that there was something "off with the engine" but had no evidence to back it up. None of the ship's logs showed anything, either. So still, they were on square one.

The same inexplicable urge to run after he'd just gotten off the treadmill led Jim to the gym again that afternoon. Running helped; he wasn't sure why. But if it helped, by god, he was going to do it.