Chapter 10

Briony could barely stutter an unnecessary "don't go anywhere" and a promise of doing everything within her "archaeological power" to help him out of his predicament before darting from the room. With a friend on his side, Chekov now felt the slightest bit more hopeful, more secure. He felt like he stood a chance of saving his relationships, his sanity, his career, everything he had worked his entire life for, young as he was.

Mere moments after her exit, Dr. McCoy paid a less-than-cheerful visit to run another set of scans and deliver a few salty opinions on various aspects of Chekov's condition. Personally, Chekov found it all annoying and useless, but knew better than to tell that to the man himself.

Now, finally, he was alone again.

Or…was he?

"So much for not ending up in the psych ward."

Somehow, Chekov wasn't too surprised by the return of the familiar, deep voice. He opened his eyes and rolled his head to the left, finding a very different version of Matharus—docile and genuinely apologetic—perched atop a counter.

"You hef ze worst of timings."

"Young One, I'm here to apologize—no," Matharus hung his head, "I'm here to beg your forgiveness."

"Ha! No way," Chekov snorted. "And you can stop calling me 'Young One'. You're in my head, you know my name."

"I-I know we're not exactly on the best of terms right now…but please, at least listen to me. I panicked and lost my head—"

"No, you lost my head."

Matharus had to think about that one. "Yes...yes, good point, but what I'm trying to say is that I made a terrible mistake. I was sore and humiliated about how you made me disappear and I completely lost control. This is my fault…"

"And you told me your people are an adwanced race."

"Advanced, yes. Perfect? Sadly, no, although we do try." He sighed heavily. "You're a human. You of all species should understand that people do stupid things when they're upset."

"Stupid?" The ensign's words were sharp with anger and he tugged at the restraints, wishing he could miraculously break free and throttle the man…or at least that's what he would do if it were possible to throttle a figment of his mind. "Stupid?! You possessed me and made me try to hijack a starship! You made me hurt my friends and basically destroyed my entire life in a matter of a few minutes. Everyone I know is conwinced I'm unstable and dangerous, and I'm headed for a court-martial to be tried for a crime I can't even remember committing!"

"Well, if they find you competent to stand trial, you mean—"

"Not. Helping."

"Right, sorry…"

A tense silence dropped between them and Matharus descended from the countertop slowly. Scowling, Chekov watched him float around to the foot of the biobed with eyes averted and proverbial tail between legs.

"You have a strong mind," he said quietly. "Much, much stronger and more complex than any of us thought possible in a fledgling species like yours. I believe we've greatly underestimated you."

Chekov cooled slightly at what he assumed to be a compliment, though he said nothing.

"Yes, it's true we've been around a lot longer than you, and yes, we're advanced beyond anything you can comprehend at this point in your development, but even the most intelligent beings need a leg up every once in a while."

"So, why me?"

"The Vessel was designed to sense and assess the value of any being it comes into contact with. It wouldn't have chosen you if you weren't worthy or capable of the task."

"But zat is insane! How can I possibly help you? I'm just…just an inferior, mentally fragile human."

"To be blunt, you have no choice. The fate of every consciousness you hold in your mind, including mine, is bound to yours. Our very existence depends on you—the Host, our Guardian—and if you fail to complete the task, we will be trapped inside you for the rest of your life."

The words slammed into Chekov with enough force to make his head reel and his stomach plummet.

"However long that life may be, I should add," Matharus continued gravely. "Even though it may be strong, your mind isn't made for long-term storage of whole civilizations. Eventually, the mental strain will become too much and it will...it will kill you. In fact, you're already showing signs of…"

Chekov's throat tightened. "Signs of what?"

"Well, let's just say we're running out of time. Quickly."

He allowed the paling, overwhelmed boy a moment to comprehend.

"I…I should never hef touched ze sphere…"

Matharus quirked his head in agreement. "Maybe not, but you did. You heard the call. You answered it. You can't turn back."

Tears stung at Chekov's eyes, welling over as a small, terrified noise became strangled in his throat.

"I did not ask for this to heppen…" he choked out after a shaky pause.

"Those who find themselves thrown into a position of great responsibility rarely do. But if it's of any consolation, I do believe you were chosen for a reason, Young One."

"No, you mean I was chosen to die. I was chosen because I was ze most suitable host to achieve your ends, to take you where you want to go and then be disposed of."

"I assure you, that has never been and never will be our intention."

"Oh, really? Then what would you call zat little incident up on ze bridge?"

"Like I said, a mistake. But I am sworn by the Council—which, by the way, gave me the chastisement of a lifetime (our lifetime, not yours)—to be your liaison and guide. I'm still here to help you."

"And how are you supposed to help me? You live in my head."

"Ah, that's the fun part." Matharus folded his arms, a mischievous smile flickering on his lips.

"Fun…?"

"Of course! Between your brains and my charming good looks, we could be unstoppable! In fact, I don't think there's anything we couldn't do, including getting us home and out of your mind. But," he waggled a finger, "the catch is we have to work together, which means you don't make me disappear and I don't possess you."

Wary and upset as he was, Chekov couldn't deny that this was probably the best option either of them had. It may not be the safest or the smartest, but it was definitely a chance, which was more than he'd started out with that morning.

"So, what do you say, Young One? Truce?"

"Truce. And don't call me 'Young One' anymore."

…

"I don't get it." Uhura's forehead was frozen in that telltale crease that showed up whenever she was intently focused or upset. "Of all the people to randomly snap…why Chekov? It doesn't add up any way you look at it."

The senior staff—minus one—were all present in the conference room, a few looking a little worse for wear, even though some time had passed between now and the strange episode on the bridge. Captain Kirk slumped back in his seat holding an icepack to aching black eye. Across from him, Sulu leaned into the conference room table, an ice pack of his own pressed against his jaw. It wasn't broken, thankfully, but that shoe imprint would probably be there a while. Scotty sat next to the pilot, occupied with the set of round red bite marks on his arm, his expression an amalgamation of confusion and mild disgust.

"Honestly," Kirk mumbled, "I always thought it would be Bones, but—"

Right on cue, Dr. McCoy marched through the door without fanfare. "Well, the kid's conscious and talking now."

"Talking?" Kirk straightened a little. "About…?"

"You tell me. At first I couldn't understand a word he was saying."

"Sounds pretty typical of the wee man t'me," Scotty put in.

"No, not typical. Nonsense. Soon as he was awake, he started spouting absolute gibberish. Now, I'm no linguist, but I know Chekov and he wasn't speaking Russian. At least any version I've ever heard. On that note, I'll get straight to the point and say he wasn't too happy about waking up strapped to a biobed."

"Who would be?" Sulu snorted.

"Claims to have no memory of the incident and blames an imaginary man named…named 'Mathias', or something, for possessing and forcing him into the hijacking."

The captain grunted, kneading a finger into a temple. "Well, this just keeps getting better, doesn't it?"

"It'll probably get worse before we're through. Just a hunch."

And there was that classic McCoy pessimism shining through as usual.

"What can we do to help?" Uhura was alert and on the edge of her seat, looking more than determined to tackle the problem head-on by herself if necessary.

"Not much," the doctor replied, "aside from filling me in on his behavior leading up to this. You've all been around him more than I have the past few days. Has he shown any uncharacteristic signs of paranoia? Nervousness? Twitching? Said or done anything out of the ordinary?"

Scotty lifted a finger. "Aye, the captain and I ran inta the lad this mornin' on the lift. Seemed a bit tetchy. Almost, eh…desperate, I'd say. And he told us he was headin' for the archives to do research."

Dr. McCoy's brow furrowed. "Research? On what? And what was he doing out of his quarters? I specifically—"

"He told us he was bored," Kirk said, "then mentioned having some kind of problem he needed to fix just before he bolted."

There was murder in the chief medical officer's eyes as he turned to face Kirk. "You let him run away after he told you that?! Why didn't you stop him, for the love of—"

"How were we supposed to know he was about to go renegade? It's Chekov! Everybody on this ship knows he's always got some project or another going in his spare time. Why should this have been any different?"

"The kid had just suffered a traumatic injury! You were there when he woke up. Are you blind?"

Uhura cut smoothly into what might have become an argument. "I'm not sure this counts as out of the ordinary, but I have noticed him with a member of the xeno-archaeology team recently. I don't know who she is off the top of my head, but I saw them talking on the observation deck a few nights ago. I've overheard others saying they've caught glimpses of the two together several times since then."

"Been eavesdroppin' a bit, eh, lass?"

"No, just paying attention. I can hear a lot of things most people can't whether I want to or not."

"Aah, whoa, hold on," Kirk said, feeling slower and dimmer with every new shot of information, "are you saying Chekov's lost his mind…over a girl?"

Uhura rolled her eyes. "I'm saying maybe this girl can help us put the pieces together. You said Pavel was on his way to the archives when you met him on the lift, didn't you?"

"Aye," Scotty answered. "Tha' we did."

"The xeno-archaeology lab is located in the archives."

"Hm." Scowling, Dr. McCoy folded his arms. "That's exactly where he got himself electrocuted, too. And this young lady, she was the one that called for a team. Downright hysterical."

"Waitwaitwait," the captain waved his hands. "I have a really nasty headache coming on and I'm not sure I'm following all of this. So, just to recap, Chekov started acting a little...odd the day of the accident, which occurred in the xeno-archaeology lab where this girl he's been hanging around with works."

"Right."

"And between then and now, something which may or may not be related to said girl and accident sets him off, he attacks the bridge saying he wants to go home, then wakes up speaking in tongues and swears a guy named 'Mathias' made him do it…even though he can't remember anything?"

"Right. Although, it might have been 'Matharus', actually."

Kirk sighed after several moments of contemplation. "I knew we'd run into some crazy stuff out here, but…" he trailed. "Why don't they have training for these kinds of situations? I don't remember any simulations back at the Academy involving a teenaged Russian genius-turned-psycho trying to carry out a really shoddy coup on the bridge."

"Ha, maybe we should send a memo or something…" Sulu put in.

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," snorted Uhura.

"While you're at it, don't forget to ask about starting up a class on how to fix a starship after the teenaged Russian genius-turned-psycho nearly cripples it using nothing but his mind."

Kirk decided he might as well take advantage of this turning point, however sarcastic it was meant to be.

"Speaking of which, how're things looking in your territory, Scotty?"

The engineer huffed. "I cannae understand how he did et, but the lad blew ou' two o'the compressor rigs beneath the dilithium chamber, sent a few secondary systems in the main computer into a raging fit, and torched a good bit o' cable to boot."

Torched? What do you mean?"

"Aye. Burned nearly to a nice crisp."

Captain Kirk almost dreaded asking. "Fixable?"

Eyes averted, Scotty let out a slow breath through pursed lips before answering. "Ah…aye, Captain. I mean, it'll take a day, maybe two. As far as I know, nothin' else was hit, so we'll get'er patched righ' up."

Kirk loosened slightly at the news. "Good to hear. The faster the better. We're lucky we got hung up in Federation space, but sitting around like this still makes me nervous."

"It makes you nervous?" said McCoy with a shudder. "Stranded in the middle of nowhere with a damaged ship and a potential madman—or should I say 'madkid'—with an imaginary enemy in my medbay."

Kirk turned to him. "Bones, are you sure this Matharus guy is actually imaginary? Chekov did seem to be having some sort of, uh…power struggle with himself and…something else…inside him. You all saw that, right?"

"Yes," several of the room's occupants chorused.

"Some of us a little closer than others," muttered Sulu under his breath.

"Jim," Dr. McCoy said, "what can you call an invisible man only Chekov can see other than 'imaginary'?"

"I don't know, 'demonic possession'? And definitely not 'Matharus'. Where would he even come up with a name like that, anyway?"

"Aye, Captain," Scotty replied before the unamused doctor could. "Sounds like the type o'guy who'd be righ' at home in an archive, though. D'yeh think all o'this could've been triggered by the electrical shock?"

"Hard to tell," McCoy said. "This is where it starts to get downright weird."

"And nothing leading up to this qualified as downright weird?" said Kirk, mostly to himself.

"Maybe a little too weird, I mean. I ran full diagnostics on him when we brought him in the night of the accident—the whole spectrum—and again when he woke up almost a day later. Never seen a pair of scans come back so clean, so I discharged him. Ran the same diagnostics just now."

"And?

"You wouldn't believe it, but the inside of the kid's head is popping like corn over a campfire. He's always had a lot going on in there, but this…" Dr. McCoy swallowed and shook his head, seeming alarmingly perplexed, "this is like nothing I've ever seen."

Spock, who, up until this point, had remained perfectly still and reflective in his seat beside Kirk, began to stir.

"Doctor," he said, "am I correct to assume that, judging by your use of descriptive hyperbole, you have found his brain activity to be above its normal output?"

"Above? Not only is his own brain activity off the charts, it's like he's got a whole swarm of extra brains bouncing around inside his skull just for kicks."

The Vulcan contemplated. "Would it be possible that during your scans, you could have recorded distinct individual patterns within this…'swarm of extra brains'?"

"Here." Bones slid his medical PADD across the smooth glass tabletop. "See for yourself."

Spock caught the device, prompting Kirk and the others to gather around him.

"What…in the…" breathed Sulu after a good look.

The captain's uninjured eye widened. "Okay…okay, I was skeptical at first, but I see where you got the 'swarm of brains' thing now. Does this mean Chekov actually is…possessed?"

"No," said Spock, scrolling through the charts, "Chekov is not 'possessed' in the earthly religious connotation of the term. But, as you speculated earlier, our navigator could be harboring a consciousness other than his own. In fact, based on these readouts, it appears there may be not one, but thousands of others—"

"Thousands?"

"Indeed, Captain."

"Oh, Pasha," Uhura gasped through her fingers.

Kirk let his head sink onto his crossed arms. "Why does everything on this ship have to be so complicated?"

"Did you really just ask that, Jim?" said McCoy.

"Well, that's definitely no' on the list of common side effects of electrocution," Scotty put in. "At least no' where I come from."

"Electrocution?" Captain Kirk sat up again quickly, eyebrows knitting together as something clicked. "Wait a minute, everybody thinks Chekov was messing with some broken wiring the night of the accident. But what if that's not what he was doing? What if he…what if he lied?"

Sulu shot the captain a narrow-eyed glance of sheer befuddlement. "Why would someone lie about how they nearly died? That makes absolutely no sense."

"Especially when that someone happens to be Chekov." Uhura added. "Has he ever told a lie in his entire life?"

"Does Chekov even know what a lie is?"

Kirk shrugged. "Wouldn't you lie too if you'd almost gotten yourself killed doing something incredibly stupid? Or at least bend the truth a little to save face in front of your commanding officer?"

Sulu and Uhura exchanged a look. "No," they replied together.

"Let me put it this way. Say you're an eighteen-year-old with an uncommon amount of brainpower and a lot more responsibility than anyone your age should have to handle. Say you're living on a ship full of adults, constantly under pressure to perform and prove yourself."

"Wouldn't he want to tell the truth, then?" asked Sulu. "He doesn't get anywhere by lying."

"Yes, but he's eighteen," Kirk reiterated. "I bet no one in this room survived their teen years without at least exaggerating from time to…"

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"Uh, well, there's always the odd exception, of course, but what I'm saying is Chekov might be a Starfleet officer serving on a ship, and he may be a genius, but he's still—"

"—just a kid," Uhura finished, nodding in understanding.

"Right. And I don't know about you guys, but when I was his age, it made a lot more sense to tell a fib and move on with life than to get in trouble for whatever happened and regret it."

"Aye, but it still doesn't explain why he suddenly has thousands of extra minds mixed up in his head," Scotty pointed out. "Ah, shame we cannae take a peek inside…"

Kirk and Spock shared a knowing glance, after which the captain grinned.

"Actually, Scotty…maybe we can."