Ten

"Victoria?"

Arm still outstretched towards the keypad next to her door, Victoria froze at the unfamiliar voice calling her name, a name no one should know. It wasn't Jim either. Whirling around, she could not decide whether to be upset or relieved when she saw it was Uhura.

The dark-skinned woman smiled at her, slightly hesitantly. "Hey."

"Hi," replied Victoria. She didn't know what else to say.

Uhura cleared her throat and gestured towards her door. "Can we talk?"

"Yeah, of course," blinking rapidly, Victoria unlocked the door and gestured for Uhura to go in first. Glancing around the empty corridor once more, she followed her in. She tried to smile. "Can I help you?"

Uhura didn't answer. Instead, she smiled and looked around the room. "I love what you've done with the place."

Victoria rolled her eyes. Her room was as sparse as it had been two days ago, when she had first walked in. "Thanks, being on the run really gives me time to channel my inner decorator."

Uhura bit her lip to suppress a laugh. "Jim said you might be upset that I knew."

"Jim told you?" Victoria was aghast. "Wasn't it Spock?"

This time it was Uhura who rolled her eyes. "He can't break a rule if his life depends on it," she said wryly. "You think he'd disobey a direct order from his captain?"

Victoria folded her arms across her chest. "You tell me, you're the one dating a half-Vulcan."

"Even I don't understand how his brain works sometimes."

"Ah, now you just sound like every other woman," Victoria shook her head. "Fine, I'll bite. You're not going to tell me how you found out I was here, so what are you here for?"

"I'm coming off as more mysterious than I am," Uhura looked slightly chagrined. "I knew you were on the ship, clearly. I just don't know why."

It took Victoria only a few seconds to figure out what had happened. "Ah, so Spock hasn't breached protocol," she smiled a little. "You knew I was on the ship because you're the communications expert and you must have heard Admiral More send over my credentials so I could be put into the system. And because talking about it with someone who already knew won't be against the rules, Spock has talked to you about me. You can't say Vulcans aren't clever."

Uhura continued to smile innocently. "I just think the ship is a better place if you have friends, Victoria."

"I've got Jim."

"Jim is reckless at worst and emotional at best," Uhura didn't say it unkindly. It was a fact. "You need someone with a clear head."

"And you think that's you."

"Maybe."

Victoria shook her head smilingly. "You're not stupid, Nyota. We both know Spock has put you up to this because he's worried about having me on the ship."

"Be that as it may, I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be."

"So you think I'm a threat too?"

"No. I really do think space is a better place with friends," Uhura's eyes softened. "Jim told me why he let you on the ship, Victoria. Spock may have trouble wrapping his head around it, but I don't. You don't practically raise a kid and get him out of trouble for over a decade, and then throw him and everyone he cares about into harm's way unless you have no other choice."

Victoria sighed. "So you want to know my story?" Uhura nodded. "It's a long one. And I can't tell you everything. Most of it is classified. Some of it is personal."

"I understand," said Uhura. "I'm willing to accept whatever you can tell me. But I do need to know more than I already do."

Inwardly, Victoria wondered if the woman realized how much she sounded like Spock sometimes. "I've been very careful to stay under the radar, since the incident with Nero a few years ago," she began quietly. "I had nothing to do with it, but I was part of an expedition in the Laurentian system when it happened, on one of the smaller ships that had been given a specific task by a highly-ranked admiral," Uhura's face was calm and blank, so Victoria trudged on reluctantly. "Skipping out the classified parts, let's just say we found what we were told to look for. What we weren't told, however, was that we weren't supposed to use it."

"You found and used something you weren't supposed to?" Uhura frowned. "That sounds like every single mission I've ever been on with Jim."

"You can probably blame me for his lack of self-preservation, then," Victoria tried to smile, even though the last thing she wanted to be thinking about was the past. "It was a gaseous substance, radioactive and volatile, but our ship's scientists were eager to prove that we weren't just a bunch of average cadets, so we found a way to neutralize its harmful properties, and discovered these amazing healing abilities," despite herself, Victoria could feel herself getting excited. "It was incredible, really. The substance reacted with the human body in just the most brilliant ways, but you needed vast amounts of it in order to make it work. So we compressed the gas until it became a solid, like an ice-cube that didn't melt. It wouldn't absorb into the bloodstream, and it had healing properties the likes of which you'd never be able to find on Earth, or anywhere else for that matter. The effects were purely medicinal, and it had the capability to made regenerative technology completely obsolete," and then Victoria's excitement suddenly diminished, and a haunted look crept into her eyes. "Of course, we didn't know any of this until the CMO used it."

Uhura's eyes widened fractionally. "They used it on you."

"In a manner of speaking," Victoria grimaced. "The damn ship was basically a free-floating laboratory and the entire crew were lab-rats without even realizing it. They'd actually been using it for weeks, without telling the rest of the science division, before it was my turn. A few weeks after they'd developed their prototype, my captain and I were on the planet when there was an incident. I saved her, but I sustained massive injuries. I broke a lot of bones," she added, when Uhura seemed to be scanning her for wounds. "I shattered all the bones on my right side, punctured a lung and lost a lot of blood by the time we got beamed back up. If they had tried to do transfusions there would have been no point, because there was no way to recover from skeletal damage of that degree. The substance had already been used successfully once, and my captain had seen the effects. She asked the CMO to use it again, on me. It saved my life," taking a deep breath, Victoria bent down and rolled up the cuff of her trousers to her knee, straightening her leg. She saw Uhura's eyes widen with shock. Right above her kneecap, so small you could miss it, was an obvious bump under her skin, in a perfect square shape.

Uhura's eyes were full of sympathy when Victoria cleared her throat and lowered her pant leg again. "It's made you a target."

"I wish it had," Victoria snorted. "No, I'm being hunted alright, but it's for completely personal reasons. I did something stupid when I was young, and I initially stayed out on assignments to keep away from Earth. But then this happened, and Ben got married, so I tried to come back because space wasn't agreeing with me. Yorktown was supposed to be safe, but I got found out," she winced. "The Enterprise seemed the best solution. It's hard to find someone when the ship they're on doesn't have a definite route mapped out."

"I still don't understand how Starfleet is letting you roam free," Uhura shook her head. "I'm glad you're safe, but you should be locked up in a cage. We know how they work by now."

"They'd lock me up if they could, but the admiral who ran our mission was easy to reason with," and Victoria smiled a slow, secret smile that told Uhura she wouldn't be able to gain any more information on that topic from her. "The only problem is the upkeep of this little guy," she tapped her knee. "Fortunately, they've made enough of our findings public in the medical community that I can get away with some specific hyposprays and no one will ask any questions."

"And that's why Dr. McCoy has your file but not your real name," said Uhura knowingly.

Victoria sighed. "I'd like to tell him," she confessed. "I don't doubt that he's a good guy and a great doctor, but it's too risky. I had to tell Jim everything, because he needs to understand what he's chancing by helping me. I know Jim had to tell Spock because he needed his help to make the decision. I haven't told you enough to put you in any danger, but Dr. McCoy?" she shook her head. "He's a doctor. He'd ask a million questions, all legitimate, and each one would make me want to answer it. I can't risk it. The less anyone knows, the better it is."

"You can't keep it a secret forever."

"I can't," admitted Victoria. "But I'm sure as hell going to try."

"I won't push you," said Uhura patiently. "And I understand your reservations. If it helps, you can talk to me about it in code. I'm a xenolinguist, after all," she smirked. "I should be able to understand subtleties."

Victoria laughed. "Thank you, Nyota," she said genuinely. "I'm sorry I can't tell you more, but this is really for the best."

Uhura nodded. "I get it. But I don't agree with your isolation plan," she added, standing up to leave and smoothing out her uniform skirt. "A few of us girls meet every week for drinks and some downtime, and I'm inviting you. You don't have to say yes right away," she assured her, when Victoria opened her mouth to say no. "Just think about it. This ship can be a really lonely place, Victoria."

"Don't I know it," Victoria sighed quietly, but reluctantly agreed to consider Uhura's request as the other woman smiled and left.