Welcome to Act III. Time to discover the truth...

~Coop

CHAPTER 17

Origin was a water planet with a volcanic center that, when combined with the sun's weak light, kept the equator region of the planet's surface warm enough to prevent freezing.

Warm, Kirk thought as cold winds clawed at the hood of his parka and sent shards of ice into his flesh, was a relative term. He had never known wind to be so cold before, and he couldn't stop the shivers that wracked his body.

The landing party had beamed down nearly three minutes before to the only structure identified on the ship's scans: a massive, concrete building that rose up out of the sea and tapered to a flat area just short of a triangle. They had materialized on an external platform, and Kirk was momentarily alarmed that they'd be blown into the waves pounding the structure's base, but his sharp eyes quickly spotted the doorway. His shout was lost in the surge and crash of the thundering water, so he motioned them forward with his arms. Huddled together, Kirk, McCoy, Aggie, and two security guards, Tomo and Smith, waited as Spock punched a set of buttons on his tricorder that would disengage the door's locking mechanism.

It seemed to take an eternity but in truth took less than a minute. Still, it was time enough for Kirk to wonder why the strange structure wasn't located closer to one of the axis where it could have been constructed on a billion meters of solid ice. He caught sight of Aggie, half hidden as she sheltered between McCoy and the door, but he could see the pinched line between her brows, the tautness around her eyes and mouth. Kirk wondered how she was holding up. He watched a strand of her hair, caught by a gust of wind, curl upward in an undulating dance before she caught it and shoved it back inside the hood. At any moment, he knew, twenty-five years worth of memories could come flooding back. Or, possibly worse, nothing at all.

Kirk shook his head slightly, unable to comprehend such a reality.

Spock, bundled in a thicker parka which contained heating elements to make the climate more bearable for the Vulcan, lowered his tricorder just as the doors slid open. Such was their eagerness to escape the wind that they nearly tumbled over one another entering through the narrow door.

"Damn," whispered Smith as the door closed behind her, otherwise leaving the room in a silence that was almost deafening. A dull light clicked on overhead, no doubt from a hydro-generator stored somewhere within the bowels of the building. A quick glance and Kirk saw that Smith's narrow face looked more apprehensive than it had been on the Ginny. He hated to admit it, but he felt it in his own body as well. The external platform, the cold wind, the raging waters, all fell short of a warm welcome.

Of course, there wouldn't be any welcome at all. Despite the low-grade energy field that prevented beaming directly inside the structure, the Enterprise had been able to perform life scans. There had been no signs of life.

That knowledge didn't ease Kirk's tension.

McCoy's voice broke the silence. "Aggie? Do you—"

"I've been here before," she said, frowning. She stepped away from the group, deeper into the antechamber. Her footsteps echoed off the high, unadorned walls. "I've been here many times. But not at the same times. Always after the other." Her voice was almost trance-like as she spoke.

McCoy hovered by her side. "Not at the same time? I don't understand."

She turned large eyes on him, blinked, and then shook her head a little as if in apology. "Doesn't make any sense, does it? I just had this feeling. Like echoes."

A tricorder beeped and Spock spoke. "There are several chambers beyond this one," he said, indicating the utilitarian door painted a bleak-looking gray at the end of the entryway. "Power levels are rising. Internal temperatures are increasing and apparently"—he paused to wave a hand in front of the gray door which caused another recessed light to click on—"lighting is motion activated."

It was an eerie feeling, the lights popping on as if their arrival had been expected. Kirk stepped around McCoy and Aggie and walked to the door, Tomo and Smith flanking him with hands hovering over their phasers. The door sensor had been partially smashed and the door itself had been wrenched off its rail. Mudd, Kirk thought in disgust, watching as the wall gears whirred in a fruitless attempt to open at his approach.

Kirk slid his fingers into the gap between the door and wall and with a firm tug, shoved the door back enough for them to enter.

Inside, utilitarian lights popped on, leaving bright imprints on the back of Kirk's eyelids. Tomo and Smith came in behind him and he motioned for them to skirt the room.

Kirk wasn't a medical man or a scientist, but he was around it enough to recognize what he was seeing. He was standing in a huge lab: gleaming durasteel tables, skinny vials clamped above heating elements, and dozens, if not hundreds of Petrie-like dishes next to old-fashioned bio-scanners.

But it was the thing in the center of the room that caught his eye: a metal gurney complete with wrist and ankle straps. Next to it stood a skinny metal pole where a dried-out, or drained out, fluid bag hung from a clip. The clear plastic bag was stained a rust-red color along the bottom.

Kirk glanced up, half expecting to see the lightning rod and cage from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but all he saw was a concrete ceiling. Not the homiest of homes, Kirk thought as the others entered the room. Spock immediately went to an old-fashioned computer sitting on one of the workbenches.

"Computer on," he said evenly, and waited for the machine to respond. When nothing happened, he repeated his request. The computer remained stubbornly dark. "The system is either malfunctioning, voice-password protected, or not receiving power," he said loud enough for everyone to hear.

McCoy and Aggie had been studying a stack of Petrie dishes, but on hearing the commander, McCoy wandered over. With a look of barely contained glee, he bent over the computer and pushed a small button. There was a soft hum and then data began to flash across the screen.

"It's called a power button, Mr. Spock," McCoy explained with a drawl as thick as molasses. "It's a little old-fashioned but my great-granddaddy refused to upgrade. Why, if my math is correct, that'd make this bit of tech about a hundred and twenty-five years old. And that'd be pretty close to Mr. Scott's approximation of the cryo-unit, wouldn't it?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. "You are quite correct, Doctor," he conceded. "Combined with your advanced human age and that of your great grandfather's, this technology would be equivalent to that Earth era."

"Advanced age . . . ?" McCoy sputtered, at a loss for words. After a moment, his face relaxed and he muttered "era my ass" before wandering over to a bio-scanner. Spock claimed a dusty chair and promptly began accessing the computer's history logs.

Kirk had moved to stand next to the metal gurney where he fiddled with a wrist strap. It was made of a synthetic weave, but they reminded him of the metallic ones that the medical scientists had used on Tarsus IV. Those spared from the execution squads had faced slower deaths in unimaginable ways.

Lost in thought, he jumped as gentle fingers pulled the strap from his grasp.

"Sorry," he said to Aggie, then as though his apology wasn't enough, added, "old memories."

She looked sad as she studied the strap. "I wish I could say the same. Or maybe not. I don't think I want to remember this." She twisted the strap between her fingers.

The only sound in the large chamber were Spock's fingers at the computer.

"Sometimes it's best not to remember," he agreed quietly. "Trying to forget again can be"—his lips formed a grimace—"difficult." For a moment, Kirk thought he could hear the faint screams of men, women, and children as they were experimented on. He knew he would never forget those sounds. They had become a part of him, part of who he was; they reminded him that he was a survivor.

And so was Aggie.

"This doesn't define who you are, you know," Kirk said suddenly, nodding at the gurney. "Whatever all this means, good or bad, it's not you. Not now. You are who you want to be."

"Like a starship captain?" She asked softly, her green eyes seeing beneath his exterior to the painful memories he always hid. The feeling of vulnerability did not alarm Kirk as it usually did.

"Yes," he admitted, giving her a small smile. "Like a starship captain."

Aggie glanced at McCoy.

"I love him so much, Jim," she murmured, turning wide eyes back to him. "I can't shake this horrible feeling that my very existence is somehow . . . wrong." She bit her lip, clearly agonizing over her next words, then confessed in a rushed whisper, "I'm scared to look in the mirror sometimes. Will it be me staring back? Or someone else? Some . . . stranger. A weapon."

Kirk squeezed her hand. "Then don't trust your eyes, Aggie. Trust his," he said, jerking his head in McCoy's direction. "He's in love with you but he's not blind. He sees who you really are and nothing we find here is going to change that."

"But what if it changes me?" She asked, her voice tight. "What if I'm not the me he loves anymore?"

"Nothing here can change you if you don't want it to," Kirk said with conviction. "It can only offer you the choice of who you want to be. Remember," he added. "The darker the night, the brighter the stars shine."

Aggie gave him a watery smile. "Sounds like something Len would say."

"Where do you think I got it from?" Kirk smiled reassuringly. "He told me the same thing after, well, after a rough time. And you know what? He was right."

The look of love she gave McCoy was so profound that Kirk felt a flash of envy. Aggie didn't need stars to shine for her, he thought, she was a star. A woman like that could push back the darkness that sometimes haunted a man's soul.

Awkwardly, Kirk realized that he was still gripping her hand, and he quickly let it drop. He cleared his throat. "So nothing here"—he gestured at the lab—"seems familiar, I'm guessing. But what about other rooms, living quarters and such?"

"Other rooms," Aggie repeated, looking as though she were mentally reaching for the end of a string that would, if she followed it carefully, lead her to Somewhere Important. "I think maybe, yeah." She pointed to a narrow staircase that lead upward. "There. I remember running up those stairs. I was by myself but I always imagined another girl there, like me, and we would race to the top where . . . "

Her voice drifted off as she started to move toward the staircase. As though he had felt a tug on an invisible tether, McCoy looked up abruptly, eyes searching. Silently, he fell in step next to Kirk, following Aggie across the room and up the stairway.

The stairs ended at one end of a long hallway. It was as plain and dreary as the entryway: undecorated walls, bare floors, and with doors painted the same dull, mind-numbing gray. Aggie walked past a dozen or so open doors without bothering to look in, but Kirk recognized rooms designed for educational studies, such as science and engineering. They looked like the labs at Star Fleet where students could reserve a station and work independently, except in these rooms there was only one desk. Kirk was more interested in the last room on his side of the hallway. Three of the walls had shelves that contained hundreds, if not thousands, of data tapes. In the center was a computer terminal with a few data tapes scattered across the desk. But it was the rows and rows of antique books on the fourth wall that nearly took Kirk's breath away. His fingers itched to touch the bound papers, bring them to his face where he could breath in the smell of old ink.

Later, he promised himself then passed a room that was obviously a gym. There were exercise machines, resistance bands, even a climbing wall. No boxing ring, he noted. Nothing that would require a partner.

"What the hell is this place?" McCoy asked, his voice horrified as he paused to stare into the opposite room. Kirk leaned around the doctor and saw a room that could only have been described as an armory, but one so broad that it contained everything from a metal sword to a high-powered phaser rifle.

Aggie hesitated but didn't stop as she passed a room filled with rich oil paintings. Every inch of every canvas was filled entirely with flowers: hyacinth, roses, pansies, daffodils, and exotic ones like bulbous Astro-Fives and spiky Jupiter Jems. There were dozens more that Kirk couldn't begin to identify, but there was little doubt in his mind that whoever the artist had been, he or she had loved flowers.

Finally, at the end of the hallway in front of the only door that wasn't painted gray, Aggie stopped. The door had been painted a pale pink, but sloppily, as though it had been done in a hurry. It was also the only door with a lock, Kirk noted. Aggie raised her hand to the entry keypad, the fingers hovering over the numbers briefly, before her entire body shuddered and she snatched her hand away as if burned.

"Aggie, you don't have to do this," McCoy whispered, a concerned expression on his face. He moved to stand just behind her, his hands resting on her hips. "We can come back later or someone else—"

"No," Aggie said firmly. "I have to know, Len. I have to face my past before I can have a future." She reached up and pressed her hand against his cheek. "A future with you."

Kirk averted his eyes until he heard the faint beeps as Aggie entered a code on the keypad. He tensed as the doors slid open.

But he was surprised to find that the room on the other side was no bigger than his own quarters onboard the Enterprise, and held even less. There was a narrow cot pressed against one wall, covered with a quilt that might have, at one time, been a bright yellow. Now it was faded, thin, and drab with dust. Tucked beneath one ragged edge, as though it had been put down for a nap, a stuffed creature gazed out at him with three lackluster eyes. One of its four ears was missing and two of the others looked as though they'd been chewed on. On the cement floor in front of the bed was a painted oval the same shade as the door. It was sad-looking, as though the occupant had tried to add warmth and softness to the otherwise barren room. There were toys in a plasteel bin but not many, and they reminded Kirk of those that Miri and the other near-ageless children had played with: old and shabby.

Probably generational toys, passed down from parent to child, Kirk reasoned, but he had a terrible feeling that he was missing something. Perhaps McCoy was right, he thought suddenly, Aggie didn't have to do this. They should leave this place and never come back.

But Aggie had moved to the center of the room, gazing at the old toys, the tiny dresser, the narrow bed without any obvious signs of recognition. She went to the bed and picked up the stuffed creature, her insulated parka rustling as she hugged it experimentally. Rubbing one of the chewed ears against her cheek, she turned slowly until she faced the opposite wall.

Numbers had been painted on the wall, in a child's hand, and each number was surrounded by little decorations such as hearts, stars, or other shapes. Kirk first thought they were age and height markers, but he quickly saw that made no sense. Some of the higher numbers, like seven and twelve, were barely written a foot above the floor while four and fifteen were the same height.

Aggie stared at them for a long time, took turns standing in front of each number, until she finally stood in front of the seventeen. From where he stood, Kirk could see tiny flowers decorating the number; they were surprisingly detailed and painted with such depth that they looked as though they were growing out of the wall.

The stuffed creature fell to the floor, forgotten. With both hands held out in front of her, Aggie reached for the seventeen with its exquisite flowers. As soon as her fingertips touched the wall, she let out a piercing scream as though she'd been electrocuted.

"No! No! Not true!"

McCoy lunged forward—Aggie's fist had hit the wall once, twice, leaving a smear of bright red blood over the flowers. "Aggie, don't!" McCoy cried, struggling to pull her away from the wall. "Stop it! You're hurting your—" McCoy grunted loudly as her elbow connected with his stomach. He doubled over, and Aggie twisted from his grasp. Kirk stepped sharply to one side, intending to grab her, but she ducked underneath his arms and bolted down the corridor.

McCoy's lips drew back in fear and pain. "Aggie!" he cried out again then ran from the room. Kirk heard the echo of Aggie's sobs as he flew down the stairwell, just a few feet behind McCoy. They burst into the science lab where Tomo ran up to them, gesturing deeper into the lab.

"Captain, she went through those doors over there," he said, running next to Kirk as they followed McCoy. His pale face was flushed with adrenaline. "Smith checked them earlier, but they were locked. She entered a code, Sir."

"She was too fast for me, Sir," Smith panted when they reached the doors. Her dark brows were pinched in frustration. "I couldn't catch her. I'm sorry."

Kirk nodded at her but was more concerned with McCoy. When the doors hadn't opened at his approach, McCoy struck the metal hard enough to make them reverberate. Kirk grabbed his friend's shoulder and jerked him backward a few feet. "Bones, take your own advice. I just got my chief surgeon back from breaking a finger, and I don't want to lose him again so soon."

McCoy spun to face him, his broad features twisted in anger, but Kirk could see that the anger was directed inward. "I shouldn't have let her go in there, Jim! She shouldn't even be here," he spat. "No good can come from remembering any of this shit!" His gaze was directed at the metal gurney. "Please, Jim," he begged then, turning his watery blue eyes back to the captain. "I gotta get her out of here; I don't know what she'll do." He shook his head as though denying his fears. "I can't lose her. I won't."

A cold pit of dread had opened up inside Kirk, but he nodded at his friend once before going to Spock, who had already begun to scan the doors with his tricorder.

"Spock, we need to get inside that room. Fast," he said softly. "Any way to bust open those doors?"

"Negative," Spock answered evenly, looking up from the tricorder. "The doors are made of Angorian steel, a virtually indestructible material, which also runs throughout the skeletal structure of this building. It explains the lack of external erosion and our inability to transport within the structure."

"Damn the structure and damn the Angorian steel, Spock," Kirk growled. "I need a way inside that room!"

Spock pulled his head back slightly as though he were offended at the implication of inefficiency. "I have already scanned the keypad for Aggie's DNA and created an equation to determine the code's sequential order based on the amount of DNA left on each key. The tricorder should have the code within thirteen point three minutes, Captain."

Kirk gaped at Spock. "Keep talking like that and I'll kiss you, Mr. Spock."

An arched eyebrow few upward in an almost-alarm. "Please, Captain, restrain yourself."

Kirk grinned. "You're loss," he teased before jerking his head in the direction of the computer terminal. "Did you get anything off the antique?"

A dark look passed over the Vulcan's face. "I was able to access the log tapes that Mudd inadvertently activated, as well as some of the medical logs. It is"—in a rare occurrence, Spock seemed at a loss for words—"most disquieting."

Kirk felt torn. He itched to look at the logs himself but wanted to protect his friend. If the subject matter was too gruesome, he'd order the content filtered before McCoy saw it. Not that McCoy couldn't handle gruesome—the victims from last year's shuttle crash ranked pretty high, so much so that Kirk had vomited after leaving the critical care ward—but since the content most likely involved the woman McCoy loved, Kirk wanted to spare his friend as much grief as possible.

"If we have to wait another twelve minutes before those doors open"—a voice said softly from behind them—"then I suggest you show us, Spock."

Kirk jumped, spun around almost guiltily. "Maybe you should sit this one out, Bones."

"Naw. I don't think so, Jim," McCoy said, looking as though a great weight had settled on his shoulders. "I need to know everything so I can help her."

Kirk glanced at Spock and saw that the Vulcan's lips were pressed tightly together. Reluctantly, Kirk nodded. "All right."

"This is Doctor Morgan Moreau, a geneticist," Spock said after bringing up the image of a dark-haired man on the computer's viewing screen. "He lived on Earth until he was exiled."

Kirk stared at the man's severely angular face and thin lips. It wasn't the man's disdainful look that bothered him, but the coldness of the eyes that stared out from the screen. He doubted the man had ever smiled in his life.

"Moreau. I recognize the name," McCoy said. "He was banned from medical practice after recreating the gene sequence of an augmented human from the 1990's."

"Correct, Doctor," Spock said evenly. "He believed that eugenics could be used successfully without the narcissistic side-effects if one could manipulate the genes that formed an individual's moral center."

Kirk frowned. "I'm no geneticist, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any morality genes. Everyone has to develop their own moral guidelines based on their faiths, experiences, and relationships."

"Something he failed to develop himself," McCoy interjected bitterly. "He was exiled after attempting to modify the genes of two ovum in a fertility clinic."

"After which he left Earth and disappeared completely," Spock added. "And, from these logs, it is now clear that he continued his experiments, working with a single, stolen embryo." Spock tapped another key and images of the embryo appeared. Data scrolled downward on one side of the screen, listing the genetic modifications.

"Well, that's not Aggie," McCoy said, nodding at the image with a look of relief. "Moreau was exiled over two hundred years ago."

A look of sympathy crossed Spock's face. "Dr. McCoy," he began, but McCoy shook his head vehemently.

"Don't you dare say it, Spock! Even you can do the math: Aggie's age is twenty-five years and she was in stasis for a hundred and twenty-five years. That leaves quite a gap, wouldn't you say? Besides, all this data refers to a single embryo; I doubt Moreau had much opportunity to steal another way out here."

Spock didn't speak as he bent over to key in a new file. The image of the embryo disappeared, replaced by a medical log entry. Kirk grew sick as he read the title.

AGEE: Augmented Genetically Engineered Experiment.

"Eugenics was not Mr. Moreau's only area of specialty," Spock continued gently, his dark eyes filled with compassion. "He also specialized in cloning."

The words hung heavy in the air, filling Kirk's mouth with a sour taste. McCoy dropped into a chair as though his legs could no longer hold his weight.

"How . . . how many times?" McCoy asked, staring blindly at the screen.

Spock's lips tightened. "Seventeen."

Let me know your thoughts on this chapter.

Any surprises?

~Coop