"Beautiful, isn't it?"
T'Pol looked up from her scans to see Ensign Hoshi Sato staring dreamily at the viewscreen. "It is a particle cloud," she replied.
Sato turned to her and frowned. "Yes, but--look at it!"
"It is merely a collection of interstellar molecules," T'Pol continued, but to Sato's amusement, she took a better look at the viewscreen anyway. The cloud was bright gold and seemed almost to glow from within. "I suppose you could say that it holds an aesthetic appeal," T'Pol conceded.
"You just like taking the fun out of everything," Sato teased, but T'Pol just raised an eyebrow in response and turned back to her station.
Sato sighed the sigh of the bored. Enterprise was winding a lazy route to Denobula and naturally there wasn't much work for a linguist on the bridge when they were studying various phenomena and not meeting new species.
The view sure was pretty, though--much prettier than the gaseous anomaly that they had scanned a few weeks ago, when Captain Archer and Commander Tucker had taken a shuttlepod, only to crash land. That anomaly had swirled and undulated, but it didn't have the beautiful colors.
Ensign Miller, Sato's night shift replacement, walked onto the bridge, and Sato gathered her PADD and smiled at him.
"Miller's here, so I'm off," she said to T'Pol as she passed the science station.
"Sleep well," came the Vulcan's reply, and Sato grinned.
"Oh, I intend to."
Sato sipped her tea while she stared out the windows in the mess hall. The particle cloud was truly mesmerizing, glittering gold and subtle reds as Enterprise slowly circled it. She made a mental note to ask someone what would make the cloud move like that, like it was shifting inside, like...
...like a face looming out of the dark, dark eyes sunken and shriveled, mouth gaping, screaming, glittering with sharp teeth--
She jerked back, away from the window, and spilled scalding tea on her lap. Sato didn't notice; instead, she stared hard at the cloud for a long minute, looking for any sign of movement. The face didn't reappear, and as she took a quick look around the mess hall, noting that no one else seemed to have seen anything strange, she found Travis Mayweather hovering near her table, empty tray in hand, watching her with open concern.
"Hey, are you all right?" he asked.
She smiled and shrugged. He hadn't seen it--no one had seen it. "Yeah, I just--I'm overtired."
He grinned in understanding, and with a nod, he wished her a good night's rest before leaving. Sato glanced out the window one more time, just to be sure, before rising.
"I really do just need some sleep," she muttered to herself, brushing absently at her tea-stained pants, and headed to her quarters.
Every time Sato found herself on the verge of sleeping, she would hear something in her room--an electronic buzz, a whisper of movement, a sigh of air. They were all in her head, she knew; Sato could see every corner of her quarters from where she lay, and she was alone. But the niggling feeling of wrong wouldn't leave.
Her mind raced, filling with the memory of the face in the cloud. "Overactive imagination, more like," she chided herself.
There was nothing in her room. There was no face in the cloud.
Sato considered asking Phlox for a sedative, but she knew she needed to be able to have eight hours of undisturbed sleep in order to not be drowsy in the morning, and a quick glance at the clock showed she was looking at more like six--two hours too few for her to risk it. Resigned, Sato tried once more to fall asleep, huddling under her blanket and willing her mind to rest. She took deep, cleansing breaths and let them out slowly, feeling her chest contract and expand, contract and expand--
Something grabbed her arm and she screamed, hurtling out of bed and across the small room. She groped for the lights and turned them on to full brightness...but there was nothing there. She was alone. Of course she was alone. The bright light reassured her; no shadows played tricks on her.
Feeling ridiculous, she turned her lights off and climbed back into bed. "There's nothing here," she said aloud, and hearing it made her feel better. "There's nothing here."
She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
When her morning alarm buzzed in her ear, Sato stretched herself awake and rolled out of bed. Considering the trouble she'd had falling asleep the night before, she was surprised at how rested she felt.
She took a shower, filling the small bathroom with steam, and when she got out, she cleaned a patch of the mirror with the palm of her hand so she could see herself. Her reflection looked out at her from the mirror, but something wasn't right--her reflection wasn't reaching out to touch the glass.
Sato withdrew her hand slowly, watching in horror as her reflection never changed. It simply stared back at her. It reached a hand up to its face. It touched its cheek and pulled the skin there, stretched it down until it showed a deep black void beneath. Its mouth opened wide, as if it were ready to speak, then it opened wider in a scream, and wider yet--
She covered her eyes with her hands and shook her head wildly, letting a strangled sound crawl out of her throat. "This is a dream," Sato told herself. "You're only half-awake. This isn't real!" When she dared peek out from between her fingers, her reflection was reassuringly mimicking her, searching her face as she searched its. She kept her mouth determinedly closed.
Sato collapsed to the floor, breathing hard. She drew a weary hand across her face, trying not to think about how her skin might peel off if she touched too forcefully. She decided that she would go see Doctor Phlox after breakfast, have him scan her for...something, she wasn't sure what--she just knew that something was wrong. This was more than being jumpy. Between the face she saw in the cloud, the phantom hand that touched her last night, and this new horrible image, Sato was beginning to question her sanity. Was she imagining these things? She thought she was, but she couldn't be sure, and that doubt worried her more than the disturbing images themselves.
She rose to her feet, but she didn't look in the mirror. She brushed and dried her hair by touch alone. Anxious and running late, she hurriedly finished her morning routine. Sato looked around for the data PADD she'd been using the day before--she was certain she'd left it right here on the corner of this desk, but it wasn't there now. She checked on the floor, in her drawers, under the bed, in the bed...but when she looked around again, she saw that it was there on the corner of her desk, exactly where she had left it. Sato scooped it up and tried not to think about it.
The mess hall was nearly empty. At this time of the morning, it was usually full of both people who were starting and ending their day, but there were only a handful of crew members scattered across the room.
She clutched her PADD a little tighter and picked up a tray, absently sliding food onto it without really looking at it. She saw Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed eating together at a table in the corner. She dumped her data PADD on the tray so she could carry it with both hands, and she made her way to them.
"Good morning," Sato said as she reached their table. With a mouth full of food, Tucker greeted her by waving at the chair beside him and patting her on the shoulder when she took it. She laughed at his attempts at silent communication and shared a grin with Reed. But Reed's smile was tight around the edges, and he immediately turned his attention to the room, watching it warily.
"Where is everyone this morning?" she asked as casually as she could. Tucker paused midchew and exchanged a look with Reed.
"I was going to ask you the same thing," Reed replied. "I thought maybe there was a lower-level staff meeting this morning that I didn't know about."
"Or a chess tournament," Tucker supplied around a swallow.
Sato frowned. "At 0600?" she asked doubtfully. The men glanced around uneasily.
"Well, then, where the hell are they?" Tucker demanded. "This many people don't just sleep in."
"They wouldn't be sleeping in," Reed argued. "Everyone who's here works this morning--the people that are missing are the night shift." He turned to Tucker. "You said yourself that both Captain Archer and Commander T'Pol weren't in their quarters when you stopped by this morning. If they're not here, where are they?"
"The captain's mess," Tucker said promptly, just as Sato replied, "Well, I'm sure they're not missing." She could hear the doubt in her voice. "If the crew started disappearing in the middle of the night, don't you think we'd know about it? T'Pol was on the bridge after shift, studying the particle cloud. If anything strange happened last night, she would have woken us up."
"But if she disappeared, too, how could she warn us?" Reed countered.
"Maybe we should just have a look around, Malcolm," Tucker said. "We don't know that anyone's missing--just that they're not in the mess hall for breakfast. There must be a perfectly good explanation for all of this. The entire night shift disappearing in the middle of the night, and no one knowing it?" The three of them glanced around at all the empty tables, at the few more people that had trickled in since Sato had sat down.
"No one else seems too concerned, either," Sato added. "If people were missing, someone would have noticed by now."
Reed stood from the table and frowned at them. "We have noticed," he retorted. Tucker and Sato stared helplessly at him. "I'm going to the bridge. I'll let you know when I've found something."
"You mean like T'Pol and the Cap'n at their stations?" Tucker teased, but the joke fell flat amid their unease.
With a glare, Reed collected his tray and left the mess. Sato turned her attention to Tucker. He had started to push his food around on his plate, brooding.
"Chess tournament, huh?" she said lightly, trying to distract him from his thoughts.
Tucker winced and shrugged. "Seemed more plausible than mass abduction," he replied. "Although out here..." he gestured out the window to space, "mass abduction is just as likely."
Sato followed his hand and stared out at space with a growing unease. "Where's the particle cloud?" she asked. As far as the eye could see were stars, the familiar landscape of their journey. The particle cloud was gone.
"On the other side of the ship, maybe?" Tucker replied. He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned. "But that would mean we've turned around, wouldn't it." His eyes looked worried, even as he said logically, "Well, sure, T'Pol probably turned the ship around to use the port sensors."
"She optimized the scanning pattern to the ship's sensors," Sato reminded him, but she could see that he knew that. Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong and Sato could feel it, deep inside, like a deep blackness that would come streaming out if she opened her mouth. She stood up, suddenly desperate to get away from the window. "I've got to see Phlox," she told Tucker. Her voice sounded scared to her own ears. Tucker stared up at her in concern.
"I'll walk you," he said, and picked up both their trays. Sato reached toward her tray.
"Thanks, just let me grab my--" But her data PADD wasn't on the tray. "Where is it?" she said, annoyed. She checked the table, checked the floor, clenched both hands to make sure it wasn't there.
"What are you looking for?" Tucker asked, and she could hear the worry in his voice.
"My data PADD. I brought it with me this morning and now it's--"
"In your pocket?" he interrupted.
"My--my pocket?" She patted her uniform, and sure enough, the familiar square of metal was tucked into a pocket. She took it out and stared at it. It was definitely her PADD. She activated it, but it was just as she'd left it: notes for a paper she was writing about the use of aporia in the Vulcan language.
"Hoshi, are you all right?" Tucker asked.
Sato hugged her chest and stared at him. "I have no idea."
Ensign Miller shifted impatiently in his seat for the umpteenth time in the last fifteen minutes. T'Pol raised an eyebrow at him and he grimaced.
"I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you," Miller apologized, "but Ensign Sato should have been here twenty minutes ago."
T'Pol glanced at the clock on her terminal and discovered that all of the bridge crew were late for their shift. She set aside her work and paged Sato's quarters. There was no response.
She rose from her seat. "I will go to her quarters and see if she has overslept," she informed the ensign. She gestured to the empty seats and the other impatient crew members. "Perhaps there has been a malfunction with the ship's master clock, and it has affected the alarms."
T'Pol passed several people in the hall on her way to Sato's quarters, but none of them were people she knew to be on the morning shift. She pressed the chime on Sato's quarters and waited, but Sato didn't come to the door. After a moment's deliberation, T'Pol overrode the door lock with her command code and entered the room.
Sato was sleeping in her bed, her brow creased and legs and arms crossed protectively, as if walling herself off from someone unseen. T'Pol frowned. This was most unlike Sato.
"Ensign Sato, it is time for your shift," T'Pol said from across the room. Sato didn't respond or even twitch, and T'Pol approached the bed. "Ensign?" She shook the woman's shoulder, lightly and then more forcefully when Sato didn't respond. "Ensign Sato? Hoshi! It is time to wake up."
Sato remained undisturbed. Her rest was too deep, too quiet, her breathing deep and regular. T'Pol knew something was wrong. She crossed to the intercom and called Phlox.
"Good morning, Commander! What can I do for you?" came the doctor's genial voice.
"I am unable to wake Ensign Sato. I believe there is something wrong with her."
There was a pause, and then--"I'll be right up."
The lift ride seemed to take far less time than usual, but Sato dismissed the notion as paranoia. Everything around her seemed to be taking on a strange aspect, which was impossible. She was sure that doors stood in different places, that the halls had changed. She was trying not to think about it too much. Thinking about it, she discovered, made her anxious. There were so many things going on that she couldn't explain, that no one could explain--and the fact that she wasn't the only one, at least, was reassuring. It meant that she wasn't losing her mind as she had feared, but unfortunately it meant that there could be something far more sinister going on.
When the lift doors opened, Tucker led the way to sickbay, chatting all the while about repairs he was doing and upgrades he was planning. Sato listened as intently as she could, nodding and answering where appropriate, but she was distracted by trying to keep track of corridors that she should know by heart but that suddenly seemed unfamiliar.
Tucker's end of the conversation dried up after about ten minutes--or maybe it was an hour. Sato found she had lost all perception of time, just as she had lost all sense of distance. Short turbolift rides and long corridors--nothing seemed right.
Tucker paused, turned around, scratched his head. "Did we pass it?" he asked, genuinely confused.
This is wrong. Sato looked back the way they had come. "No."
"We should have been there by now," Tucker said, examining the numbers beside the doors and frowning deeply. "Where are we?"
Before Sato could respond, a page came over the ship's communication system: "Lieutenant Reed to Commander Tucker."
They walked down the hall until they found a communications panel. Tucker leaned in and pressed the button as Sato turned to look down the corridor, trying to get her bearings. "Tucker here."
"The bridge is empty," said Reed, "and internal scans are offline. I was going to try raising Captain Archer and T'Pol, but then I found something interesting." Sato could hear Reed tapping at his console in the background. "I brought up last night's shift roster, and it was blank."
"Blank?" Tucker repeated, incredulous.
"According to this, no one worked last night. But it gets even stranger."
This is wrong.
Mild panic began to set in, and Sato shifted uncomfortably. She looked warily about her and tried to tamp it down.
"I brought up the crew manifest to see if I could determine how many people are unaccounted for, but according to this list, we're all here."
"What do you mean?" Sato demanded, unease clear in her voice.
"According to the ship's manifest, the people that we know were here last night aren't even members of the crew."
Tucker and Sato exchanged confused looks. "They're not on the manifest?" Tucker asked.
"Captain Archer, T'Pol, Phlox, plus all the people that I know were working night shift and even some that weren't--they're not on the manifest. It's like they were never here."
"How does that happen?" Tucker demanded. "Did someone go in and change it?"
"Not as far as I can tell," Reed replied. "Whoever did this must have covered their tracks very well. I'll dig a little deeper."
Crew members inexplicably disappearing, their inability to locate sickbay, the conspicuous absence of the particle cloud--they all pointed to something else, to something even more frightening than what Reed and Tucker were suggesting. Coupled with all the bizarre things Sato had seen last night and this morning, plus the inexplicable feeling she had that something was wrong, made her certain she was right.
"It's not them," Sato interrupted, suddenly.
The men were silent. Tucker looked at her, studied her. "Who's 'them,' Hoshi?"
She shook her head; he didn't understand. "No, no, it's not them. They aren't missing."
"What do you mean?" Reed asked carefully.
"It's us! Don't you get it? They aren't missing. We are."
There was dead silence for a second. Then: "Hoshi--"
Sato interrupted Tucker. "No, think about it. Things are different. The halls, the rooms--they're in different places. We can't find sickbay. We're the only ones on the manifest." She met Tucker's eyes. "The particle cloud is gone. We checked. It's not on either side of the ship."
They heard a beep through the intercom. "Someone was just added to the manifest," Reed informed them.
"Someone was added?" Tucker asked, incredulous.
"Like I said," Sato insisted forcefully, "it's not them. It's us."
Captain Archer maneuvered around the crewmen carrying stretchers in and out of sickbay. With a quick glance around the room, he saw that half of his command staff were in infirmary beds. The bridge had seemed empty without them. He'd kept a skeleton crew on the bridge and sent everyone else off duty for a break. Enterprise seemed different without the bustle of the crew, but the particle cloud remained the same. It sparked and glittered, visible from every starboard window.
"What happened?" he demanded.
Phlox sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "They're asleep. Beyond that, I haven't got a clue."
"Can't you wake them up?"
"I've tried shaking them, making loud noises, pinching and pricking their skin, and pouring cold water over their faces. Nothing works."
Archer rubbed his face with his hands. "Fine, so we can't wake them up. Do we have any idea why?"
Phlox gestured at T'Pol, who handed a PADD to Archer.
"I detected theta waves emanating from the particle cloud," T'Pol explained. "I was attempting to locate the source when Ensign Miller informed me that the bridge crew was late for their shift."
Phlox picked up where T'Pol had stopped. "In terms of human physiology, the brain goes through cycles of sleep, each cycle exhibiting different wave patterns." He pointed to one of Sato's monitors, which displayed a rendition of her brain and a distinct wave pattern along the side. "These are the readings I'm getting from Hoshi's brain: REM sleep, or the dreaming state, which also is characterized by the emanation of theta waves."
Archer frowned as he studied the readings. "So something in the particle cloud has caused the crew to REM sleep?"
"Not exactly," T'Pol corrected. "We believe that the theta waves emanating from the cloud are forcing the crew's normal sleep cycle into the REM cycle."
"Which means?" Archer demanded.
"Which means that they are unable to naturally cycle out of the REM stage, essentially trapping them in a dream state."
"This only affects us humans? You two are immune?"
T'Pol raised an eyebrow. "Our different physiology renders us less susceptible, but not immune. Doctor Phlox does not sleep as often as the rest of us, and I can go for several weeks without succumbing to sleep deprivation."
"Well, at least that's good news." He turned back to Phlox. "Do you have any idea how to fix this?"
Phlox hmmed and scratched his head. "Not at the moment, no."
"Great," Archer replied, and his frustration was clear in his voice. "Would moving away from the particle cloud help at all?" he asked.
"I have no idea whether it would help or harm them," Phlox replied. "I may need to inject everyone with something to ease the transition away from the theta waves. I don't recommend moving just now."
"Couldn't just be that easy, could it." Archer sighed. "Let me know when you've got something."
"I'll inform the crew that it's not in their best interests to fall asleep," Phlox replied.
Archer made his way out of sickbay, and T'Pol followed.
"May I have a word?" she asked. He nodded briefly as they strode down the hallway. "You did not sleep last night," she said, and Archer gave her a quick smile.
"Obviously not," he replied. "I was catching up on some reports and lost track of time. It was so late when I got done that I thought I would just watch some water polo until it was time for breakfast." Anticipating a comment, he added, "Championship game."
T'Pol raised an eyebrow at him. "I spent the evening running scans on the bridge. I, too, found that I lost track of time." She paused, a speculative look on her face.
"I guess we were lucky," Archer suggested with a half-smile and a shrug.
T'Pol inclined her head in acknowledgment.
Reed met Tucker and Sato outside Crewman Kelly's quarters, with Mayweather and Ensign Hughes, a security officer he'd collected on the way, in tow.
"Is this really necessary?" Sato asked as Reed overrode Kelly's door lock. "We haven't even tried knocking."
"Let me do my job, Ensign," Reed snapped.
Tucker sighed and rubbed his face. "Let's just try to be civil," he reasoned.
"Breaking into her quarters isn't being civil, Commander," Sato retorted. Reed snorted and glared at her.
"Kelly suddenly appeared on the ship after being gone for who knows how long. We need answers."
"So we should ask her questions instead of just barging into her quarters," Sato insisted.
"But why hasn't she tried contacting anyone?" Tucker said, the voice of reason. "You'd think if she found herself back on Enterprise she would want to tell someone."
"Are we still working on this mass abduction theory?" Sato asked dryly.
Tucker shrugged and handed her a weapon. "You've got a better one?"
She eyed the phase pistol balefully but accepted it, making certain it was set to stun.
"On three," Reed told them. He held up his fingers and counted down, then led the party into Kelly's room.
The woman spun around at the intrusion, dropping a hairpin in shock and raising her hands above her head at Reed's gesture. It looked to Sato as though Kelly were getting ready to go to work: she wore her uniform, although it wasn't fastened all the way up, and they had caught her in the process of putting up her hair.
"What's going on?" Kelly asked, staring at the five of them and the weapons trained on her.
"Where have you been?" Reed demanded.
Kelly opened and closed her mouth a few times, at a loss for words. "What?"
"Where have you been, Crewman?" Reed repeated, edging closer.
Kelly's eyes widened and she held her hands even higher. "I was in the shower, sir," she replied.
"Before that!"
"I don't understand. I haven't been anywhere!"
The men closed in around Kelly while Sato watched helplessly.
"This will all be easier if you just tell us where you've been," Tucker said, trying to relieve the woman's obvious terror and confusion.
Kelly shook her head. "I don't know what you mean!"
"Before you got in the shower," Sato replied. She pushed her way past the circle of men, ignoring the glare Reed gave her. "Where were you before you got in the shower?"
"Here," Kelly replied, looking puzzled. "I was in bed. I just woke up."
Realization dawned on Sato. "You went to bed last night...and woke up here?"
The other woman looked at her like she was crazy, but Sato was certain now more than ever that she wasn't--that she was actually right about all of this.
"Where else would I wake up?" Kelly asked, utterly confused.
"Nothing else happened to you?" Reed questioned, seeking clarification. "You didn't just get back from somewhere else?"
Kelly shook her head. "I've never left the ship," she said.
Reed eyed her for a moment longer before lowering his weapon, his men following suit. Kelly slowly lowered her hands. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded.
Now it was Reed's turn to look confused. "That's what we're trying to figure out."
"So everyone's just gone?" Kelly asked. The six of them stood in the hall outside her quarters as they tried to explain to her what they'd discovered.
"Ensign Sato seems to think there's something else going on," Reed replied, and by the tone of his voice Sato could tell he didn't believe her yet. She would just have to convince him.
"You can't explain where the crew went, Lieutenant. I'm sure you scanned for ships?"
"Of course," Reed replied, indignant.
Sato chimed in. "You can't explain how their names were erased from both the shift roster and the manifest. And you really can't explain how Crewman Kelly's name reappeared on the manifest right after she woke up."
Reed shifted from foot to foot and refused to meet her gaze. "No," he conceded. "But that doesn't mean that something has happened to us."
"Sickbay doesn't move by itself, Malcolm," Tucker added. "There's no way you can shrug that off." He waved a hand. "The one place, the one person, who could really help us out here, and it's gone!"
Reed sighed heavily. "So, what? Something has happened to us and we just don't know it?"
"Can't you feel that something is wrong?" Sato demanded. "I could feel it even last night before bed."
Tucker frowned at her. "What do you mean?"
Sato glanced around at the group. "Did anyone else have trouble falling asleep? I kept hearing strange noises, like there was someone in my room. I saw a face in the particle cloud, and I thought--I thought something grabbed me." She could tell by the way no one would look at each other that they had all had similar experiences. She took a deep breath and admitted, "This morning, I saw it--something--inside me, like it was trying to get out."
Her confession did the trick. "I didn't see anything inside me," Mayweather said slowly. "I just saw...things. Things right around the corner. Then they were gone."
Hughes made a noise of assent, and Kelly nodded and said, "I felt like that last night, like someone was watching me."
"I saw weird things, too," Tucker admitted. "I even heard--" He cut himself off and swallowed hard. "Well, let's just say I heard things I thought I'd left behind." He didn't have to say what it was for Sato to know: Tucker's sister had haunted him last night, and she touched his elbow, letting him know she understood. Tucker smiled weakly at her and patted her hand. "I thought she was trying to talk to me," he said. "But maybe I was just trying to explain it. I don't know."
"I thought I was just overtired," Mayweather added, "especially after I talked to Hoshi in the mess hall."
"What about objects?" Sato persisted. "I think my PADD moved."
Reed shook his head doubtfully. "I've only heard and seen things. Nothing has moved." The others all murmured assent, and Sato frowned. She pulled her PADD out and activated it, as though it contained answers, but again, it was only her notes.
"I think we all tried to explain our experiences away," Sato said, turning to the problem at hand as she returned the PADD to a pocket. "We didn't know any better. We didn't know something was really going on."
"So what do we do?" Kelly asked. "How do we figure out what's happened?"
Reed and Sato headed to the bridge while Tucker and the others went deck to deck, rounding up crew members and sending them to the mess hall where they could keep an eye on each other.
Sato waited for new names to appear in the manifest and tried to make sense of last night's sensor logs while Reed pored over security feeds, trying to discover some clue as to what had happened to them during the night.
"According to the data we collected yesterday," Sato called to Reed from her station across the bridge, "we've been on course to Denobula the entire time. We never detoured to inspect the particle cloud."
"Interesting," Reed replied, but the news didn't seem to faze him.
"Have you found anything yet?" she asked.
Reed chuckled. "Actually, it's what I haven't found that's interesting," he replied. "It's like none of us existed until this morning, even though the ship was here. I just can't make any sense of it."
Sato considered. "So we wake up, and we're here. But we never left the ship."
Reed frowned at his console. "I just don't know what to make of it. Even if it's us, if we were brought someplace--"
"Tucker to the bridge!" came Tucker's distressed voice over the communications system.
"Reed here. What seems to be the problem?"
"We saw some kind of...thing...down on D deck. We're in pursuit, but it moves fast, and I swear the walls are changing--moving around. We'd sure appreciate some backup."
Reed checked the phase pistol at his waist and gestured for Sato to follow him to the lift. "We're on our way, Commander. Reed out."
"Are you sure you saw something?"
"You saw it too!"
"I don't know what I saw. A whole lot of nothing."
Sato stayed right behind Reed as they approached the voices. They heard Tucker sigh and saw him wipe tiredly at his face as they rounded a bend in the corridor.
"What are we dealing with?" Reed asked, getting right to the point.
Tucker gestured at the hall ahead of them. "We've been chasing the thing down this corridor for I don't know how long, but we haven't seen it in a while. I think we lost it."
"What is it?" Sato asked, peering down the hall.
Tucker and Kelly exchanged glances. Kelly was the one who finally spoke. "Well, it looks kind of like a...shadow? Like a man, but he doesn't have any substance."
Sato absently touched her cheek, remembering the black void she'd seen under her skin in her reflection, her mouth opening wider than humanly possible in a scream, only instead of sound was blackness. Reed frowned and looked around warily.
"I saw something like that this morning," the lieutenant admitted. Mayweather and Hughes reported they had had similar encounters.
"Could it be that it's trying to talk to us?" Sato asked hesitantly.
Reed snorted. "It's not doing a good job of it," he pointed out.
"It's probably an alien." Sato remembered her face in the mirror, the mouth opening--as if to speak to her? As if to tell her something? And her PADD moving around like that, only, she remembered, if it had left her a note or something, she hadn't seen it. "And it's probably trying to communicate. That must be it." It knew she was a linguist. That was why it was using her face.
"How do you propose talking to it?" Reed asked logically, and Sato shook her head, at a loss. When she didn't respond, he said, "Well, all I know is, something odd is happening, and at the same time these odd things start happening, we spot this shadow creature. I believe it to be connected. And I believe us to be in danger."
"How do you want to handle this, Lieutenant?" Tucker asked Reed, cutting in impatiently.
"Internal sensors don't seem to be able to read it, so short of spotting it again--"
"There!" Kelly cried, pointing down the hall.
Sato whirled and saw a shadow speed across the wall, heading away from them, and six pairs of boots pounded the floor in hot pursuit.
The shadow always stayed just within their sight, disappearing around the next bend as soon as it came into view. Suddenly, they rounded a corner to find themselves presented with an inexplicable fork in the hall. Unsure which way the creature might have gone, Reed gestured for Tucker, Kelly, and Mayweather to take the left hall while he, Hughes, and Sato took the other.
The farther their team moved down the hall, the darker it became. Reed slowed their progress to a crawl.
"I think it went down the other hall," Hughes said.
"I agree," Reed replied. "We should double back and follow the others, see if we can catch--" He paused, listening.
"What is it?" Sato asked.
Reed motioned for her to stay silent and pressed his ear against a door. "I think it went into this room," he whispered. "You two stay here. I'm going in."
Sato and Hughes took positions beside the door and waited tensely while Reed opened the door and entered noiselessly. It was dark inside, and Sato lost sight of Reed almost instantly. Something moved in her peripheral vision and she snapped her head around.
The creature was back, and it was heading down the hall!
"Hughes, look!"
The man turned to see what she was pointing at. "What the...sir! The creature's out here in the hall!" Hughes cried excitedly.
But when they turned back the door to see whether Reed had returned, the door was gone.
This is wrong. Sharp apprehension flared in Sato's belly, and she gripped her phase pistol tighter.
"The walls really are moving," Hughes said, sounding both surprised and disturbed.
Sato grimaced and pounded on the wall. "Lieutenant! Malcolm!"
"We need to go after the shadow creature," Hughes told her, and Sato's eyes grew wide.
"No," she argued, "we need to double back and meet up with Commander Tucker and his team. We just lost Lieutenant Reed because the walls shifted. Who knows what else will happen out here?"
Hughes shook his head and raised his rifle to shoulder level, aiming carefully down the hallway. Sato had a feeling it wasn't set to stun. "Who knows if there's even a way back anymore?" He started moving down the hall. "It's almost out of sight--we need to follow it now!"
He took off down the hall, moving swiftly. Sato hesitated, torn in her desire to find relative safety with Tucker and the possibility of ending whatever was happening to them by destroying the shadow creature. "Why?" she whispered to herself. "Why do we need to follow it? If we catch it and kill it, will we get back home? Or is it trapped here like us?"
By the time Sato finally decided to follow Hughes, she'd already lost sight of him. She could hear the sound of his feet pounding down the hall, though, so she knew he couldn't be too far ahead of her.
And then she heard him scream.
In sickbay, Ensign Hughes screamed, startling Phlox. He rushed over to his patient and watched in horror as Hughes convulsed, ripping some of the monitors off his skin. Phlox reattached them as best he could and watched helplessly as Hughes' vital stats climbed--blood pressure, heart rate, adrenaline.
It was as if he was under some sort of terrible stress. Phlox went to fill a hypospray with a sedative, but when he returned moments later, Hughes had gone into cardiac arrest.
"Nurse!" Phlox called. "Resuscitation cart!"
They shocked him, shocked him again...
Sato stopped dead and pressed herself against the wall. She crept slowly down the hall, pistol pointed forward, clutched in both trembling hands, and slowly edged closer and closer into darkness. The lights were dimmer here, and even further down, it was almost fully dark.
She knew Hughes was in trouble, but she wanted to turn around so much--the darkness wasn't right. The walls weren't right. She didn't even know where she was. The familiar ship had become alien, like the face under her own, black, glimpsed for only an instant...
Sato pressed on and stopped with her toes just inside the absolute darkness. It was like an insubstantial wall, an empty, black void that was ice cold where she touched it. An uncontrollable shiver raced down her spine.
"Hughes?" she called quietly. If the shadow creature was here, she didn't want to draw its attention, but with no other way of finding Hughes, her options were limited. She slid the toes of her right foot into the freezing black. "Hughes, can you hear me?"
Something lurched out of the dark beside her and she swallowed her frightened scream and managed to train her weapon on it. Through her panic she saw that it was Hughes, but something wasn't right. He looked--he looked almost...
The body dropped to the floor like a lead weight.
"Captain Archer, this is Doctor Phlox. Ensign Hughes has just died."
Archer's voice crackled over the communications panel. "What? What happened?"
"He went into distress and had a heart attack. I couldn't revive him."
Two beds over, Sato moved restlessly in her sleep.
Sato forced herself to make certain he was dead by checking his pulse. Hughes's skin was cold as ice, cold as the void he had fallen out of, and he was utterly still. There was nothing she could do.
A shadow grew along the floor, stretching out of the dark, and when Sato looked up, she saw the face from the cloud silently screaming at her, features pressing out of the shadow creature where it stood behind her. She could feel the cold radiating from it, chilling her, and her mind made the connection between the creature and the void just as it lunged for her. Sato rolled out of the way and scrambled up with a scream. She ran as fast as she could back the way she came, praying there was a way out of this hellish maze. She didn't look back. She was afraid of the nothingness she might see.
Archer and T'Pol reached sickbay at the same time. Hughes's body had already been shrouded in a sheet, and Phlox was carefully monitoring Sato's vitals.
"What happened?" Archer demanded.
"The same thing that happened to Hughes began to happen to Hoshi, but to a lesser extent. Her vitals didn't climb nearly as high, and eventually it passed."
"What could be causing this?" T'Pol asked.
"Something in their dreams?" Archer added.
Phlox sighed and turned to them. "If I knew what was going on, don't you think I'd--" He stopped abruptly, staring just past T'Pol's shoulder.
Archer followed his gaze. He saw only an empty bed. "Where's Lieutenant Reed?" he asked.
"I have no idea," replied Phlox. "I'm sure he was there a moment ago--"
"Did he wake up?" Archer demanded.
Phlox and T'Pol exchanged glances, and Archer knew the answer was no.
"I will scan the ship, see if he has...wandered off," T'Pol informed them.
"Let's hope that's all it is, just sleepwalking," Phlox replied. "Otherwise we have another problem on our hands."
Sato had no idea how long she'd been running. Time seemed to lose all meaning here in these shifting corridors, in the Enterprise that wasn't Enterprise, just as her face wasn't her face, especially when she was alone. The halls all looked the same--in fact, she wasn't sure they weren't the same, just that she had been taking the only turns available to her.
After what had happened to Reed, she had decided she wouldn't open any doors. She couldn't be certain she'd be able to get back into the hall.
Just as she was starting to calm down and feeling like maybe she could slow her pace and walk for a bit, she turned a corner and slammed into something. Her body, still fresh with adrenaline, attacked without thought, but whatever it was was stronger than her and she was pressed bodily against a wall.
"Hoshi?" a familiar, surprised voice asked. Sato sagged in relief when she realized she had found Tucker and his team.
"Oh, thank god!" she cried. "I've been running and running. I wasn't sure where you were. I was starting to think I was going in circles." Sato barked out a desperate, relieved laugh, and Tucker let her off the wall but kept a firm grip on one of her wrists.
"Where are Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Hughes?" he asked. Kelly and Mayweather looked on warily, weapons drawn, and Sato realized how close she had just been to getting shot.
"We lost Reed a while ago. He went into a room, and then the door disappeared. We found the shadow creature, and Hughes went after it. I followed it, but I was too far behind." Sato hesitated. She didn't want to say this part, even though she knew she had to tell the others, because if she said it, it would be true. "Hughes is dead," she finally admitted. Tucker squeezed her wrist comfortingly. "I found the body."
"Was it the creature?" Mayweather asked, and Kelly cast a terrified glance down the hall Sato had come from.
"The creature was there when I checked Hughes's vitals, but there was also a strange dark wall. It was like..." Sato struggled to describe it. "It looked just like the creature, only...bigger. Stationary. And it was cold, cold like...space, maybe? Hughes fell out of it, and his body was cold, too." She left out the part where the creature nearly touched her with its icy hands. It was too frightening to admit her mortality out loud. Her thoughts of communicating with the creature had given way to fear, she realized. She could never face the creature down and attempt to talk. She would freeze and die terrified, as Hughes had done.
With a frustrated grumble, Tucker let her go and wiped both hands down his face. "I just got a report that more than twenty-five of the missing crew members have popped up."
Sato was torn between hope and dread at this news, but judging by the look on Tucker's face, she knew it was the latter she should feel.
"The weird thing," he continued, "is that they don't show up in their quarters--Miller was found waking up at his station, one of my boys was found wandering around engineering, a bunch of others suddenly appeared in the mess hall. One poor guy woke up on the floor down the hall from where sickbay should be."
"Well, what are they saying?" Sato asked. "Where have they been?"
"That's just the thing," Tucker replied, and he sounded more weary than she'd ever heard him. "It's just like Crewman Kelly. They don't know how they got here. They don't remember what they were doing before they woke up--they don't even remember falling asleep."
"It's worse than I thought," Phlox informed Archer on his next trip to sickbay. "It seems that the theta waves aren't simply preventing the crew's sleep from cycling. It's also begun to induce sleep."
He gestured at a small army of screens, all displaying various people's vitals. He'd repurposed a cargo bay and was monitoring them remotely because sickbay was full. "More than twenty-five crewmen have fallen asleep where they stood in the last several hours. Since there's no beds left and even the cargo bay is becoming crowded, I've sent the few people left awake to simply make sure people are comfortable."
"You're saying that my crew are sleep-deprived and they're starting to succumb," Archer paraphrased. "Why don't we put them on stimulants?"
Phlox grunted and shook his head. "I already have. Because I didn't know how long it would take me to solve this, and since it's unsafe to take stimulants for extended periods of time, I only gave them to people once they couldn't stay awake on their own anymore. Unfortunately, those crew members fell asleep soon after--the stimulants had little to no effect."
Archer scowled around the room. "Since you obviously didn't call me down here to give me something to stay awake, you must have had a breakthrough."
"Yes," Phlox replied, "I do have some good news. I think I've come up with a way to stop the theta waves from affecting the crew's brains. If I can somehow block the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin from reaching the brain--"
"Am I actually going to understand this?" Archer interrupted, a wary look on his face.
"Ah. Good point. I'll let you know when the first trial is ready."
"Be sure that you do. And work quickly, please." Archer cast a sad glance over Hughes's sheet-covered body and Reed's empty bed. "I don't want to lose any more crew members today."
Archer stared at his computer screen, trying to make sense of the report T'Pol had given him about the readings she'd taken from the particle cloud. He couldn't seem to concentrate on it, though, and his eyes felt heavy.
Too heavy.
He closed them for just a moment, just to rest them, but that's all it took. Archer slumped forward over his desk, fast asleep.
When Tucker and Sato arrived on the bridge, the computer said it had been fifty-one hours since they had woken up, even though it had only felt like a few hours. They weren't hungry or tired, and Sato hadn't needed to use the bathroom yet. If the shadow creature and Hughes's death hadn't left her with a heavy, uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, this revelation definitely would have.
Tucker put Sato in charge of scrolling through the security feeds to look for Reed, any new arrivals, and the shadow creature while he went to the mess hall to question the "new" crew members himself. Sato sat at Reed's station and flipped through the channels, directing the patrol teams Tucker had sent out to go collect anyone that appeared. When Captain Archer suddenly appeared, slumped over the desk in his ready room, Tucker insisted on going to meet him, but unfortunately the captain was just as befuddled as the rest of the newcomers.
By the time Reed reappeared, according to the ship's clock, Sato had been awake over sixty hours.
Sato would recognize Reed's blond-tipped hair anywhere, but she wasn't relieved to see him. Something gnawed at her as she watched him standing in a corridor facing a wall, upper body carefully turned away from the camera. He was completely still, arms stiff by his sides even though his shoulders were slumped--everything about him looked unnatural.
This is wrong.
Sato licked her lips nervously, but made a quick decision.
"Commander Tucker, this is Sato. Lieutenant Reed just reappeared. I'm going to join the closest team to his position and retrieve him."
She didn't wait for his response.
"Captain Archer has succumbed to his sleep deprivation," T'Pol informed Phlox as she arrived in sickbay. "All of the crew are now asleep."
"Did you locate Lieutenant Reed?" Phlox asked.
"He does not appear to be on the ship," she replied. "However, my further investigation has been...inconclusive."
Phlox studied her carefully. "Have you been experiencing any strange symptoms?" he asked her.
"I find myself losing track of time," she admitted. "It is almost as if I am sleeping with my eyes open."
He patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. "Another few hours and I should have the inhibitor ready. Just hold on until then. Then you'll have to help me administer it, and then move the ship away from the particle cloud."
Sato had never had any intention of joining one of the security teams--for some reason, she felt like this was something she had to do alone. She had unholstered her phase pistol, still set to stun, and now she cautiously rounded the last corner before she reached Reed's last known position.
She found Reed now in the same place she'd discovered him in--facing the wall, but with his shoulders turned slightly away, bent under some invisible weight, with his arms tensely held beside him. Sato approached him slowly and silently, hugging the opposite wall.
"Lieutenant Reed?" she called, watching carefully for any sign of movement. There was none. "Malcolm?" she tried again, closer now.
Sato was beginning to regret her rash decision. "What if this is a trick?" she thought to herself. "What if it's not Malcolm? What if it's something else?"
She took another step closer. And another. "Malcolm?" She reached her free hand out, tense, and touched his shoulder. Reed didn't move.
Gripping him more firmly, she turned him by the shoulder. He turned easily, willingly--
Sato yanked her hand back as if she'd been burned. It was Reed, she was certain of it now, but his face was contorted into a horrible, screaming mask. His eyes stared blankly out at her and she recognized that his face had been molded into the likeness of the one in the cloud, the one in the shadow creature, and bile rose in Sato's throat, burning the back of her mouth.
Her feet carried her backward before her horrified mind caught up, and then she was spinning, running again, trying to get away from the absolute wrongness she had just been witness to. Something had happened to Reed, something horrible. She wasn't even sure if he was in there, or if Reed was just a shell.
Sato ran like before, following the corridors where they turned and ignoring all the doors. She knew she should try to find her way to the mess hall, to find Tucker or a security team. She shouldn't have come out here alone.
She slowed down enough to look at the room numbers, but she couldn't make them out. It was like they were suddenly written in a language she didn't know, had never seen.
This is wrong.
"Where am I?"
Turning in a circle, she tried to find her bearings. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, forcing blood to rush past her ears, and her vision blurred with her panic.
"I don't know where I am! I don't know, I don't know--"
A shadow crept into the edge of her vision. It had found her. It would always find her, because it was inside her. Sato started running again, frantic to escape, but she didn't know where she was, had no idea where she was going. She saw the shadow again, in front of her this time, so she turned around and ran back the way she came.
Glimpsing it again, she searched desperately for an escape route, and one opened for her--a new corridor, forking off this one.
This is wrong.
She ignored her feeling of dread and took the corridor. Sato knew better, she really did, but all she could think about was getting away from the shadow creature.
"Doctor Phlox!"
Sato arched off the bed, convulsing, and T'Pol moved the monitors out of the woman's reach. Phlox rushed across the room and took in the readings as quickly as he could.
"Her adrenaline levels are abnormally high, her heart rate is dangerously high--"
"You must do something," T'Pol urged.
Phlox shook his head helplessly. "I'm not sure that the inhibitor is ready. I need another hour to test it."
"Hoshi does not have another hour," T'Pol argued.
The hallway closed behind Sato, and as soon as it did, she realized she'd been herded. She'd been tricked into this hallway and now...she looked ahead of her and saw the dark mass blocked her way.
"No!" she yelled, and beat her hands futilely against the wall. "Let me out!"
A shadow loomed up beside her. Sato backed away, but she was trapped; back against the wall, shadow creature leaning in toward her.
All she could do now was scream.
Sato screamed, and Phlox made his decision. He loaded a hypospray with the inhibitor and gestured for T'Pol to hold the writhing woman down. The familiar hiss of an injection sounded.
The shadow creature reached out, stretching itself, aiming for her cheek, and Sato squeezed her eyes closed, waiting for the icy touch. Waiting. Waiting.
She snapped her eyes open, and it was sickeningly bright. T'Pol and Phlox were staring intently down at her, and Sato frowned.
"Am I in sickbay?" she asked, confused.
Phlox grinned his disturbingly wide smile and patted her on the shoulder. "It looks like the inhibitor worked!" he said, and busied himself with inspecting the monitors. "Fantastic! You're completely awake!"
"I was asleep?" Sato asked. She struggled to sit up but T'Pol pressed her firmly back into the biobed.
"Please remain still," T'Pol told her.
Phlox began to inject the rest of the sickbay's inhabitants with the inhibitor while T'Pol explained what had happened to the crew while she had been asleep and coaxed Sato to tell her what had happened in her dreams. Sato told her about how the missing crew members had begun to reappear, about the shadow creature and the face in the particle cloud, and how Reed had disappeared and something had obviously happened to him.
"Lieutenant Reed reappeared in your dream?" T'Pol demanded.
"Yes, not long before I woke up. But there was something terrible about him--he looked like the face I kept seeing. It was the most frightening thing I've ever seen."
Phlox and T'Pol shared an uneasy look. "Lieutenant Reed inexplicably disappeared from the ship," T'Pol explained, "but if he reappeared in your dream, perhaps he is back now. Where did you find him?"
Sato told her, and T'Pol left, taking a loaded hypospray with her.
"It's good to see you awake, Captain!" Phlox exclaimed as Archer arrived in sickbay.
"It's good to see everyone else, too," Archer replied and clapped Mayweather and Tucker on the shoulder as he passed them.
Sato looked on from her perch on her bed, an easy smile gracing her lips. It felt good to know it had all been a dream--to know for certain that she hadn't been losing her mind.
She had asked Phlox about the shadow creature and what it might mean to have seen it within herself. The doctor had smiled kindly and assured her that it was just a figment of her imagination. He also posited that because the crew appeared to have experienced a shared dreamscape, the shadow creature was likely a manifestation of the entire crew's darkest fears.
While that revelation didn't necessarily make her memories of the creature any less terrifying, it did explain why the void might have killed Hughes--he had, quite literally, been scared to death. Sato suppressed a shiver at the thought of how close she had come to sharing the same fate and turned a bright smile on the captain when he approached her.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"Very much so," she replied. "I'm glad it's over."
"Once T'Pol finds Reed, we'll put as much distance between us and the particle cloud as quickly as Tucker can push the engines to take us," Archer told them. "How does that sound?"
Sato enthusiastically agreed, but at the mention of Reed's name, the atmosphere in sickbay took on a more somber tone.
T'Pol found Reed slumped against the wall, precisely where Sato had said he would be. She hesitated, taking in his strange posture, then injected him with the inhibitor and watched him slowly come awake.
He jerked, banged his elbow against the wall, and blinked up at her.
"Hello," he said, then frowned. T'Pol hovered nearby as Reed slowly climbed to his feet.
"How are you feeling, Lieutenant?" she asked him. Something about the way he was looking confusedly about himself struck her as odd.
"Lieutenant?" he echoed, like the title was unfamiliar.
"Are you well?" T'Pol asked again, insistently this time, and Reed finally looked at her.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"You are aboard the Enterprise, Lieutenant. Can you tell me where you've been?"
Reed turned in a slow circle, taking everything in. "What's going on?" he asked, sounding bewildered.
"I was hoping you could tell me," T'Pol replied. She followed his clumsy movements with her eyes. "What do you remember?"
He gave a short, barking laugh. "About what?" he asked.
Something was wrong. "About...this ship. Or about me."
"This ship? I've never been here before. And I don't even know who you are." He paused, and his face looked stricken. "In fact, I don't remember anything."
Warp 5 Complex
Star Trek Enterprise fan fiction archive
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Author's Chapter Notes: Kathy Rose, Kylie Lee |
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