FOURTEEN

Stardate Unknown

—better than a mint julep.”

McCoy looked around him. He was standing in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Garishly colored plastic chairs all around him, a pile of data slates on a table, no doubt containing out-of-date downloads.

Wait a second—this wasn’t any ordinary doctor’s office. This was his father’s.

His eyes flashed to the sign next to the door. “DAVID A. MCCOY, M.D.

He was back in Georgia—Forsyth, to be exact.

He’d only ever seen the waiting room this empty after hours, yet all the lights were on. The counter, where there would be a receptionist, was unoccupied.

A noise from behind McCoy made him turn around. In a little niche, where children’s toys were kept, the hovertrain was running.

“This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?”

McCoy spun around, immediately spotting his father at the reception desk. His father looked as he did when McCoy was a boy. Above a proud face with dark gray eyes, his dark brown hair was cut short. He was dressed in scrubs. A little black bag sat in front of him on the counter.

“Contact,” McCoy said. “A welcoming committee. Hell, even a party. Not more of the same.”

“Maybe you should stick to medicine,” his father replied. “This place needs you—you left it behind. Leave the space stuff to the professionals.”

“I am a professional!”

“That’s why your cure for my suffering was death?” asked his father. “You stopped being a doctor.”

“Never!” He turned around and headed for the door to the waiting room. “I have some patients to find.”

“Running away like always!” his father shouted after him. “This place needs you, son! Stay here!”

McCoy swung the door open, expecting to find West Chambers Street. “The only reason I’m running—”

“—is to help people.”

The first thing McCoy saw was a group of muscular humanoids, dressed in colorful clothes decorated with fur, all significantly taller than the doctor.

“This is Capella IV.” The planet where he’d spent six months learning the local medical traditions and teaching the natives some new ones.

“Of course it is,” his father said. He was standing in the center of the group of giants, the tallest of them. He had suddenly grown to almost two and a half meters. “This is where you went to get away from me, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t run away, I was posted here.” McCoy crossed his arms in a defensive stance.

“Who selected the assignment?” demanded his father, sneering. “The outsider must be put to death!”

He reached out with the spear in his hand and stabbed McCoy through the chest.

For a fraction of a second, there was nothing. Then, pain filled McCoy, welling up from where his pierced heart still beat, working its way out to his fingertips. Every inch of him screamed in agony. His legs weakened, he fell to the ground. McCoy tried to inspect his chest, but there was nothing there, no blood, no wound. But the pain remained.

McCoy wished it would stop. The humanoids were standing all around him, more than he could count. He knew them all. They weren’t Capellans. They were his father, SCPO Hendrick, Ensign Rellik, Lieutenant Rizzo, and others, too many to name. They were everyone who had died under his care.

A communicator appeared in his hand—his own, judging from the scratches and dents on the cover. With what little strength he could muster, he flipped it open.

Enterprise, one to—”

“—beam up.”

The pain was gone. He was standing in a darkened transporter room. The only light was coming from the lit-up circle beneath his feet.

“I never thought I’d be glad for that blasted thing.”

The pad next to him lit up, illuminating the person on it from below. “Don’t kid yourself, Bones. The transporter has saved your skin more times than you can count.”

McCoy felt his mouth broaden into a grin. “Jim, am I glad to see you!” He tried to move toward the other man, but he couldn’t get past the column of light. “Why can’t I move?”

“You’re safe here, Bones,” Jim replied with a shrug. “Isolated, protected.”

“That’s not what I want!” insisted McCoy. “I went into space to do good, not to save myself!”

“If you had wanted to do good, the logical thing to do was to remain at home.” With a flash, the next pad lit up. It was Spock. “Perhaps you should have enrolled in medical school. I believe the space-focused course of study is a mere four years.”

“You blasted Vulcan, I’m perfectly qualified!” He moved toward him, but again was stopped. Was it his imagination or was the edge of the beam getting closer to him?

“That’s not how it seemed to me.” Nurse Chapel had appeared. “I may have gone into space to look for Roger, but with a degree in bioresearch, at least I know about space medicine.”

McCoy tried to turn around, but he was trapped within the glowing column of light. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t run from here. This was his safe haven, dammit! He’d fled to the Enterprise to be safe.

“Bones, you are safe.” Kirk smiled. “Within that column, nothing can touch you ever again.”

“I don’t want to stay here! I want to save my patients! They need me.” The beam contracted as he talked, getting smaller with every passing second.

“That cannot be the case, Doctor, otherwise you would not be here,” said Spock with an arch of his eyebrow. “If you are on the Enterprise, you must seek safety.”

The espers had been reaching out to him by making him feel pain. If he wanted to meet them, he needed to go toward the pain.

“Beam me back down there.”

“Are you sure, laddie?” Scotty was standing at the transporter console. “You want to go back to Capella IV?”

“Yes,” said McCoy. “No, wait.” He needed to go back to the pain’s original source. “Send me to Jocelyn. She’s at the center—”

Image

“—of this whole mess.”

He found himself hunched over the computer in the office of the apartment he and Jocelyn shared in Atlanta. There was a stack of data slates, medical texts and articles and notes. His eyes hurt, reminding him that he’d been staring at this monitor for hours. He had an exam tomorrow and didn’t feel prepared. Damn, it looked like it was going to be another all-nighter.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready for bed?”

“Not yet,” he said, suppressing a yawn. “A few more minutes.”

“You always say that,” she said. “I’d rather you just be honest and admit that—”

“I am being honest!” He knew it wasn’t true. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“I want you to come now.”

“What does it matter?” he snapped, turning his chair around to face her for the first time. “We’ll be asleep.”

Jocelyn was wearing one of his old oversized T-shirts. This one bore the words “OLE MISS.” She stood there, arms crossed. “Leonard, if I wanted to spend every night alone, I wouldn’t have gotten married!”

“Maybe you wish you hadn’t!” he replied, astonished that he was shouting.

“That’s not what I want!” Her expression was one of anger bubbling dangerously close to the surface. “Is that what you want?”

“All I want to do is pass my exam tomorrow! Not all of us have an easy office job.”

“I like how you always make it about me.”

“I like how you just made it about me.”

They stared at each other, not saying anything for a moment.

With a start, McCoy remembered when he was. This was the first night he’d stormed out, a liberating move at first, establishing a pattern. The next day he’d come back, and the two of them acted like nothing had happened. Until the entire scene had repeated itself, again and again.

McCoy knew he needed to stay to make the pain worse.

“Maybe if you were supportive of what I do,” he said. “Med school is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It takes time.”

“It takes time?” Jocelyn’s eyes were angry. “The only time you spend is with her.”

“Nancy helps me,” said McCoy. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

“She ‘helps’ you, does she?”

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“I know full well what you meant!”

They stared at each other for a moment. “If you’re just going to shout at me, why do you want me to come to bed with you?”

“Maybe if you did come to bed with me, I wouldn’t be shouting at you!”

“Well,” said McCoy, turning his chair back around, “I’m staying here and I’m studying. I have patients to save.” He looked at the text on the monitor—Harding-Cyzewski’s paper. He was getting somewhere!

“Leonard McCoy, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”

He sensed it coming before he saw it. A data slate went flying by his head, straight at the computer screen. It connected with a crack and threw the thin device off its base and onto the table.

The monitor wasn’t shattered, but a gaping black hole had appeared in the middle of it, growing as he watched. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, McCoy felt drawn toward the increasing blackness.

“Look at me!” Jocelyn yelled.

The hole was enveloping the table. It would soon swallow the entire room. He could feel it reaching out to him.

The doctor knew he had to touch it. He extended his hand toward it. “I have patients to help, Jocelyn.”

“You could help me.” She sounded hurt rather than angry. The hole was pulling him in. He could feel it, a whole new universe beckoning him.

With a great deal of effort, McCoy turned to look at Jocelyn. She was crying. Regret coursed through his body. Could he have done it differently? “I wish I could, honey.”

With a gigantic jerk, McCoy was pulled out of his chair.

“But not—”

“—today.”

McCoy was alone in the darkness.

There was nothing here. As far as he could see, there was inky blackness, featureless and empty.

It felt real. The places he’d passed through before had felt insubstantial and weightless. He opened his mouth to call out, but no sound issued forth. McCoy reached for his throat, only to realize he didn’t have any hands.

He didn’t have anything. No hands, no feet, no head, nothing.

Instinctively, he tried to speak. Again, no sound. The only evidence that he still existed was his thoughts. And he was alone for the first time in two days.

Welcome.

A chorus of voices came from everywhere and nowhere.

He formed a question in his mind, as if he were talking to them. “Is that you?” No noise, yet McCoy felt a normal conversation was appropriate. The doctor wasn’t trained in mind matters. “Who am I speaking to?”

Olivier Bouchard.

Gaetano Petriello.

Hanna Santos.

Nanase Fraser.

Rammal Salah.

Then, as one: We are here.

“I made it.”

Thank you for coming.

“What’s the matter with you all? What happened to you?”

We reached out and we found Nothing.

“There’s not always going to be a mind for you to touch.”

We didn’t find nothing. We found Nothing.

“What are you talking about?”

We hadn’t noticed it before. We are low-level telepaths, none of us can read minds. And yet we always heard something. A buzzing, a crackling, a knowing. There was always something for us to hear.

“Quantum entanglement,” realized McCoy. “All your particles were linked to everyone else’s.”

We could hear the universe.

“But not anymore?”

No. Our minds reached out as they always do, to feel the other universe… and felt Nothing. A whole reality of Silence, from end to end.

“And that’s what caused your comas?”

We didn’t understand. Our minds didn’t understand. They shut down, drove us into comas. We reached out and found each other. We took solace in each other’s minds, falling together. Pushing against the Nothing. We needed to hold it back. But there was nothing we could do.

“Why has the medical staff been seeing and hearing things?” McCoy demanded.

We sought other minds, ones that might show us a way out. We found you and the others. We worked our way in.

“Why the hallucinations? Who thought it was a good idea to appear as our worst doubts and fears?”

The only way we could gain access was via the weakest point of everyone’s minds. Doubt. Your doubt was the strongest… your mind was the easiest to enter.

It was hard to deny. He had been restless, thinking about moving on. His doubts had opened him up to outside interference.

A thought stirred at the back of his mind. Weak … defenseless. “Did you try to reach Lieutenant Haines? Or Specialist Huber? They were in pain despite being sedated.”

We tried to contact them. It… did not work.

“You caused unbearable agony.”

We were desperate. We still are.

“You still haven’t explained how you were able to do this.”

We reached out and found each other. Together we are stronger than we ever have been alone.

“Five panicked minds working in concert… that could be enough to overwhelm even Spock.”

It’s difficult to control our power. We didn’t want this. We didn’t seek it out. Because of the Nothing, our lives are in danger. We can’t survive here, so close to it. Help us!

“What am I supposed to do? Tell me. I’ve tried so many things, but none of them have worked.”

Get us away. It’s killing us.

“It’s tearing the Enterprise apart. Don’t you think we want to get away, too?”

WE MUST GET AWAY FROM THE NOTHING.

The thought blared into McCoy’s mind from every direction, reverberating and rippling. The whole emptiness was defined by that one idea.

“How do I cure you? Your bodies are all about to die out there.”

The only way to save us is to get the Enterprise out of here. The Nothing will destroy the ship if we stay, everyone will die.

“How?”

Power is the key.

“What do you mean?”

The Enterprise can’t move. Her power will be the ship’s death. The Nothing will consume us all.

“Don’t be so cryptic. What do we have to do?”

Find another power.

He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

You will come up with something. We depend on it.

“Thanks. Will you let me go now?”

There was no answer for a long time. When an answer came, it was almost too weak to be heard. We don’t know how.

“What? You called out to me because you wanted to talk to me, but now you can’t let me out of here?”

We don’t have control over this… We are not keeping you here.

“I need to wake up. If I don’t, we might all die. There must be a way.”

The blackness did not answer this time. No voice rose out of it, no thought or word came to him.

McCoy was alone in the darkness.

Stardate 4758.3 (0639 hours)

With growing concern, Chapel watched the readout over the doctor’s biobed. He’d been under for fifteen minutes. At first his readings had been high due to the neural stimulant, but they had steadily dropped. They were starting to match the level of the espers’—their readings had sunk so low that they were all in danger of brain death.

“Why don’t you stand there and stare some more. I bet that’ll help.”

The insulting sarcasm was something she had trouble ignoring. Roger knew that. He’d been observing her and commenting on her actions, pointing out how unsuitable she was. She found it hard to concentrate. Hopefully, the doctor would find a way to banish him and the other unwelcome visitors.

Doctor McCoy had been adamant that Chapel not wake him up unless she absolutely had to. He needed to wake himself up. “The last thing I need is to be learning what’s going on and then have you tear me away. Let it go as long as you can.” But McCoy’s readings were sinking.

“I remember when you were a bioresearcher,” Roger said, relentless in his taunts. “We were pushing at the frontiers of medicine together. Now you just stand here holding people’s hands as they give up the ghost. What happened to you?”

You happened to me!” Chapel replied before she could stop herself. “I went into space to find you. Starfleet needed nurses, not bioresearchers.” Fortunately, there was no one to hear her outburst.

“Well, that was stupid. You should have replaced me—just like I replaced you.” Roger held out his hand and suddenly Andrea was there—the android woman he had built. She never said anything in Chapel’s visions, she just stood there. Was she Roger’s perfect woman?

Her ruminations were interrupted by the sickbay door hissing open. She heard Assistant Chief Engineer DeSalle storming in, and knew he was headed for the control center.

The Enterprise’s situation was directly connected to the patients’ state. Chapel reasoned that she might be needed.

“I’m sure everyone really values the opinion of the ship’s nurse,” sneered Roger.

Roger could be such an ass. Chapel wondered why she’d never noticed it while he was alive.

She checked Doctor McCoy’s readings—they were holding. She called in Odhiambo to stay with him and quickly made her way to the lab/control room.

DeSalle was in the middle of his report when Chapel entered. “—position, the power systems are a patchwork of fixes. The real-space bubble is draining our power reserves.”

“We can’t move,” Uhura replied. “We know—” She stopped when she noticed Chapel and gave her a tired smile. “Hello, Christine. Is anything the matter?”

“No,” Chapel said. “It’s just that… with Doctor McCoy out for the moment, I thought I should keep myself up-to-date, as our patients are linked to whatever is out there.”

Uhura nodded. “So, we know what will happen to any duotronic system entering an area of high distortion. This entire ship is loaded with duotronics.” Chapel was struck by how exhausted she looked.

Pow,” said Padmanabhan, miming a miniature explosion with his hands. “Like a nova.”

Uhura gave the overly enthusiastic young ensign a withering stare. “Thank you, Mister Padmanabhan. Why are we losing power so quickly?”

“The other universe is affecting all our systems,” said DeSalle. “Not always catastrophically, but it’s definitely draining them.”

“Once we get out of the distort-zone, they’ll be fine.” Uhura made it sound like a certainty, but Chapel knew her well enough to spot the doubt underneath.

“Exactly,” DeSalle said.

Uhura turned to Padmanabhan. “Ensign, any progress in pushing back the other universe?”

“The edges of the ship are getting worse and worse,” he said. “It provides for some fascinating scan results, though. How does matter from our universe cope with one without quantum physics? I can’t even conceive of it. The stuff I’m seeing just on ten-percent permeation—”

“You’re getting off topic, Ensign,” said Uhura.

“Oh, right, sorry. No progress.”

“I want a way out of this thing,” said Uhura. “We can’t just sit here pushing back if in the end it won’t do any good. We need to shut these distortions down, and get out of this zone.”

“We barely have power,” protested DeSalle. “And if we move—”

“Solutions, not complaints.” Uhura cut off the engineer. “We are not going to lose this ship.”

“Lieutenant—” began Padmanabhan.

Uhura cut him off. “I want the two of you to come up with options to get us out of here.”

Padmanabhan and DeSalle looked at each other.

“We’ll move the crew to the core,” she said. “We’ll shut down as many systems as we can, too. I’ll coordinate it from here.”

“I’ll be in the spatial physics lab,” Padmanabhan said. “Maybe Bellos has new information.”

“I’ll be in engineering,” DeSalle said curtly.

When the door hissed shut behind them, Uhura headed back to her chair, but she stumbled before she could reach it.

Chapel rushed over, grabbed her, and guided her to the chair. “Are you okay?”

Uhura was breathing heavily, clutching her chest. “It hurts,” she said. “All of a sudden.”

Chapel grabbed a medical tricorder and aimed it at Uhura. As the readings began to come in, she frowned. “All of a sudden?”

“All of a sudden… a couple hours ago.”

“There’s a sliver of metal in your chest, working its way further in,” said Chapel. “It’s been there for a while, probably since the explosions on the bridge.”

“I’ve been… trying to ignore it,” Uhura said. “I’ve got to keep on going.”

“Well, do something.” It was just like Roger to add a snide remark when this was the last thing Chapel needed. “Standing here ruing her actions isn’t helping. You’re not turning out to be much of a nurse.”

She ignored him and looked at the readings. “We’re going to need to operate to get that sliver out,” she said. “If Doctor McCoy doesn’t regain consciousness in the next half hour, I’ll do the operation myself.”

Uhura nodded, grimacing with pain as she spoke. “Very well.”

Chapel helped Uhura into the exam room. Carefully she helped Uhura onto a biobed.

Before the communications officer passed out, she said, “Christine… tell the captain I’m sorry.”

“I will, Nyota.” And then Uhura was unconscious.

Chapel checked to see who the senior yeoman on duty was. She got in touch with Lawton, telling her about Uhura’s plan to evacuate the crew to the core and shut down sections near the edge of the ship. Lawton said she could implement it.

“You’ve lost your boss, and now you’ve lost your commanding officer,” said Roger. “Just like you lost me. You’re not doing too well, dear.”

“Shut up!” Chapel snapped. She didn’t have time for this. Determined to do her job, she flipped the comm. “Engineering.”

“Ensign Harper here.”

“Ensign, this is Nurse Chapel. I need to talk to Lieutenant DeSalle.”

“He’s busy with the warp circuits right now. I don’t think he can—”

“That’s an order, Ensign.”

Harper sounded unconvinced. “Aye.”

“DeSalle here. What is it?”

“Lieutenant Uhura is unconscious, pending surgery.”

“So?”

“That puts you in command of the Enterprise.”

“Not if we ever hope to get free. Is Lieutenant Sulu well enough to do it?

A good question. “I’ll check.”

“Look, I can do more good down here. Engineering out.”

Chapel found herself wishing that Mister Spock was here. He would know what to do about the distortions, how to save the ship—

“Oh, that’s right,” said Roger, snapping his fingers. “You did replace me. With a man completely incapable of reciprocating your feelings. What does that say about you, I wonder?”

“I don’t—It’s not like—”

One blink later, a figure was standing next to Roger—Spock, as lifelike as could be. But unlike Roger, he didn’t say a thing. He simply stared at her, a judgmental look on his Vulcan features.

“I’ve moved on, from both of you,” she said at last.

Roger snorted. “That seems likely.”

Spock just raised an eyebrow.

Spock set the Hofstadter to head back to the planet and the source of the subspace distortion. The explosion had sent both shuttles reeling, and Spock had just regained control. The Columbus was stabilizing as well. He ordered Lieutenant Kologwe to match his course.

“What… what happened?” Engineer Scott asked in a shaken voice.

“We were hit by the explosion of the satellite,” Spock said. “Petty Officer Emalra’ehn was killed.”

“How?” Scott asked.

Spock kept his eyes on the screen ahead of him, but he could hear Scott attempting to sit up, followed by M’Benga admonishing him. “Once it was apparent that the Hofstadter would no longer be able to assist, Petty Officer Emalra’ehn triggered the power dump. He died instantly.”

“The poor lad… And the fighters?”

“The remaining fighter craft was destroyed. The shuttle sustained considerable damage. Shields are almost depleted.”

“Should we land?”

“Rest assured that this is what I have in mind, Mister Scott. We are heading to the hub of the reactor network, the cause of the subspace distortions.”

“Sir,” said Jaeger, who was at navigation. “There’s a Farrezzi ship in orbit. Over the northern hemisphere. It’s bigger than the fighters.”

Spock checked the readings. “We need to land before it notices us,” he said. “We cannot enter another firefight.”

“Are we still going to deactivate that weather satellite?” asked Jaeger.

“We will destroy it on our way down,” said Spock. “How long will it take the anomalous weather system to abate?”

Jaeger checked his readings. “A few hours at most.”

Spock nodded. “Setting course.” His fingers danced over the console. Simple, too simple. He had protected his crew, he had done his duty. But it was too easy, too easy to kill. Of late, Spock was troubled that he was forgetting what it meant to be Vulcan.

“Mister Spock,” said M’Benga, “do you know how the Columbus fared?”

Spock turned his attention to the physician. It appeared that he had sustained a cut on his forehead when the shuttle had been hit. “Kologwe reported that their shields held,” Spock said. “There were no injuries.”

M’Benga closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to glance around, in search of something. “I need to look after Mister Scott.”

“Perhaps you should look after yourself.”

“No, sir, I’m fine. I can—” M’Benga wiped the blood off his forehead. He headed aft.

Spock swiveled around to face the console, resolving to increase their speed without overtaxing the engines.

Stardate Unknown

McCoy pushed upward, but the darkness swirled around him, dragging him back down.

stay here stay here stay here stay with us don’t go stay here stay here

The voice was Jocelyn’s.

He tried to shut it out, but it was almost comforting. Outside, all that waited for him was an insoluble problem. In here, he was safe.

that’s right stay here stay here don’t go stay here stay here

The voice was his father’s.

Safe? No! When had he ever thought this way? He’d been dogged by doubt his whole life. Was he doing the right thing? Was it for the right reason? But he’d always been able to keep on going.

you can’t you can’t you don’t want to you’re scared you’re frightened stay here stay here

The voice was Joanna’s.

He’d spent his adult life on the move, escaping the past.

no no no no stay here stay here

The voice was everyone’s. Everyone he’d ever left behind, everyone he’d ever let down.

Suddenly, he was out of the darkness, tumbling through… through what?

Thoughts peppered his consciousness from a dozen different directions, worries and anxieties, joys and triumphs. The feel of sheets on the first night he’d spent with Nancy. The taste of Jocelyn’s lips. The grateful smile of a patient he’d saved on Dramia. His hand switching off the monitor over the first crew member he’d lost on the Republic.

McCoy had never been as hard on himself as he had been today. This wasn’t natural. It was because of the espers. It was because they had reached out to him. It was because they were desperate. It was because they needed his help.

How? The espers didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t know how to get him back to consciousness. He was trapped.

McCoy felt himself falling backward, sinking back into the blackness.

come back come back oh yes oh yes stay here stay here

He stayed.

Stardate 4758.3 (0708 hours)

Chapel watched the doctor’s readings. They’d gone up for a brief moment and then slid back down. They now matched the coma patients’.

She had decided against a neural stimulant. Administering a stimulant had caused this, but waking him was just as dangerous. His mind was hovering on the precipice, not able to pull itself out. He wasn’t dying, not yet.

“You can’t do anything for him?” Roger asked, unwilling to leave her alone. “Nothing at all?”

She looked at her fiancé. It was an entire lifetime ago that she’d loved this man.

“He’s beyond the abilities of our medicine to reach,” she said.

Roger knelt down in front of her. “Here’s the thing, Christine. It’s all about self-doubt, isn’t it? Yours, his. The constant thought that we’re faking it, or that we don’t do things for the right reason. We spend our lives ignoring our doubts because we want to accomplish something. But what do we do when we feel the worst?”

“We… I don’t know.” What was he getting at? How was he trying to undermine her this time?

Was he trying to undermine her this time? If Doctor McCoy was right, these visitors were the espers’ way of communicating. Maybe he wanted to tell her something. “Talk to someone else?” she ventured.

Roger nodded.

A bleep from McCoy’s monitor drew her attention. His life-signs were sinking. She turned to face Roger, but he was gone.

Chapel knew what she had to do. McCoy could be quick to criticize, but just as quick to praise. He was a caring, devoted physician who’d do anything to save a patient. Chapel wondered if he knew that.

“Doctor McCoy …” she began. That wasn’t right. “Leonard. I know you’re there somewhere, but you need to come back. Your patients need you. Only you can save them. You can’t give up. Come back to us, Leonard. Come back.”

Captain Kirk, Horr-Sav-Frerin, and Neff-Bironomaktio-Frerish—a Farrezzi with hunting experience—had taken the lead. With the element of surprise on their side, the fight against the slavers outside the interrogation room had been short. Several Farrezzi had been shot. Fortunately, several of the group knew first aid. The captain had been hit on the arm. He was keeping pressure on it as he watched the Farrezzi wrenching the door open with metal poles. Only a few minutes more, and the New Planets Cousins would have gotten in.

The heavily damaged door had been raised only halfway when Kirk slipped beneath it. The captain felt the heat coming from the lower edge and took care not to touch it.

Giotto was standing near the ensign, looking tired but relieved. Chekov was a mess but alive. At the back of the room, a pole reached to the ceiling, beside an unconscious Farrezzi slaver. There were dark red smears on the wall.

“The cavalry’s here.” Kirk smiled to reassure his crew.

“Just in the nick of time, sir,” Giotto said. “We’d almost given—” He cut himself off. “You’re wounded!”

Kirk waved it away. “It looks worse than it is. How’s Chekov?”

“Hard to say for sure, sir. He needs a doctor.”

“We need to turn this ship around. The Farrezzi have collected the guns from the slavers we knocked out. They’re ready to fight…. We’ll have surprise on our side.”

“How did you manage it, sir?”

“Diplomacy, Commander. And a kindergarten teacher.”

Giotto gave the captain a curious look. He ripped off a piece of his sleeve for a bandage. Wrapping it around Kirk’s arm, Giotto said, “Thank you, sir.”

“Let’s get Chekov out of here.” Kirk could only guess at what Chekov had gone through. “We’ll head for the command center.”

Stardate Unknown

McCoy was on his own in the darkness, with nothing to do but think.

“Pains you, doesn’t it?” a voice said from nowhere. It didn’t belong to one of his ghosts, nor to one of the espers. But whose was it? “When you have to stay in one place and can’t hide from what’s bothering you. You’re not used to that. You always ran rather than face your problems.”

“Who are you?” McCoy asked.

“Don’t you recognize yourself?”

It was his own voice. He shouldn’t be surprised—after engaging in conversations with hallucinations, talking to yourself was the next logical step.

“You sound like me, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

A chuckle in the dark. “Always the skeptic. Everybody lies, at least when they’re dealing with you. Isn’t that your opinion?”

“I never say that.”

“But you fear it, don’t you? Oh, I know you do. I’m you, after all.”

A figure appeared, a couple of meters away, but it was as if it had been there all along and he only just noticed it. It looked like him.

“Can’t you put away your doubts? Hell, I had no idea talking to yourself could be so aggravating.”

McCoy chose to get to the heart of the matter. “What do you want?”

“To help you. And me, of course. We’re in this together, you might say.”

“How do I get out of here?”

His mirror image raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

“I wouldn’t still be here, playing your damn game, if I knew, would I?”

“You can’t run away. You have to face it. Make a choice.”

“I’ve always made choices.”

His other self shook its head. “But you always picked the easy choice, didn’t you? The choice that let you leave anything behind that troubled you, that inconvenienced you, that limited you. Your wife, your daughter, your dying father. The list goes on. Even right now, you want to leave the Enterprise.”

“That’s not true,” McCoy replied, but without conviction.

The other him snorted and took a step closer. “You may fool the others, but you can’t fool yourself. You left because it was easier than staying. In space, nothing could touch you.”

McCoy wanted to protest, to say that this wasn’t true. But there was an element of truth in it.

“You thought if you could be out here,” the other McCoy said, “where nobody knew you, you could avoid making connections with people.”

“I like people. I have friends.” He forced the words out. “And they like me.”

“Do they? Or are they just claiming to like you? It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? You can never be sure if their affection is real. You’d have to be a mind reader to find out, like old Pointy Ears.”

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“Shut up, I said.” McCoy could barely contain his anger. Instead of venting it aimlessly, he chose to focus it on what he’d come here to do. He wouldn’t let himself be derailed, not even by what claimed to be a part of him. “I’m a doctor. In here, I can’t do anybody any good. I have to leave.”

“You can’t.”

“Let me go!”

His other self laughed. “You don’t want to go, not really. Or you wouldn’t have to ask for my permission.”

“I need to allow myself to leave,” McCoy said, in order to make himself believe it. “I can’t stay here. I’m needed out there.”

His double waved the comment away. “So what?”

“I’m a doctor. Saving lives is what I do. I used to run away. But I haven’t run away in a long time, I’ve chosen. I’ve run to where I belong—Starfleet. I’ve saved lives that never would have been saved. I’ve chosen to stay.”

From somewhere above his head, a beam of light engulfed McCoy. Very quickly, everything was getting brighter and brighter, until he could see nothing.

When the blinding brightness receded, he could make out shapes. A bed. A monitor. Sickbay. At first, everything was silent, as though he was looking at a recording with the sound turned off. Gradually, his hearing returned.

Was this another illusion? Everything told him it wasn’t.

McCoy knew that his patients needed him, that only he could save them. They were all waiting for him. He couldn’t give up, not this time. No matter how bad it was, he had to return to them.

Determined to save his patients, McCoy took a deep breath, and plunged ahead. He looked ahead as he always did—