"Benton!" Lataro yelled out as he noticed that Benton was no longer there. "Oh great!"
"What happened commander? Where is Lt. Benton?" Jennera asked.
"I don't know," he replied, taking a seat on the opposite bunk. Lataro began to rub his eyes and his temples. He began questioning himself if anything will ever go right for him. All his life it had been nothing but mishaps and accidents. First, it was as a child and the continual run-ins with the law. Then, onboard the Vixen when he lost his parents, orphaning him on a lone planet; it just doesn't seem to be getting any better. However, he rationalized that his assignment to the Virgo may have been the best thing for him, but quickly getting in to a fire fight with the Kirusan, Syrineans, and even the mishap with the Overlords, had made him question the validity of that. It only has been a few months since he had crashed on Trelane and when he and K'Lara finally got married, Lataro figured that his luck might be changing. Yeah right! he mused. Now he was locked in a room with no apparent way out, trapped with a woman who he inadvertently had made a pass at under the fog of alcohol. I bet K'Lara is really liking this!
"Commander. What do we do?" Tomme said, breaking his thoughts.
"I don't know yet."
Suddenly from the ceiling came a bright, intense light that shone on Lataro. In a mechanical, echoing voice, someone or something spoke. "What is your purpose?"
The voice startled Lataro. It almost sounded like the Borg, many voices speaking as one, but this was not Borg. This was something else: something that he had never experienced. "I am Commander Jonathan Lataro, First Officer of the Federation Starship Virgo. Why are being held captive? Where is my crewmember?"
"Silence! You have trespassed into our space. What is your purpose?" the voice retorted.
"Purpose? What purpose?" Lataro yelled defiantly. Suddenly the intense light turned red as surges of heat and coolness flooded over him. The light overpowered Lataro overloading his senses and screamed as it felt as if the skin was literally being burned away. Instantly, as the coolness sensation came, the 'exposed' flesh was frozen as causing Lataro to fall to his knees. Tomme quickly ran to Lataro's side and tried to put her arm around him to help him but the rays of light also acted a repulsor beam and kept her from making contact. Finally the light stopped, and Lataro writhed in pain on the floor. Bringing his hands where he could see them, he noticed that there were no burn marks or scars, but the pain still was present. "You son of a..." Lataro screamed.
"Again. What is your purpose?" the voice said.
"Purpose for what?" Tomme yelled, holding Lataro.
The light now shone on Tomme. She looked up and squinted as the lights shone directly in her eyes. However, the heat and coolness where not there, just the illumination.
"What are you?" the voice said.
"What do you mean 'what am I'?" Tomme yelled.
"You are not like this one. We have never seen a species such as yourself. What are you?"
"Of course I am not like him, I am a woman."
"Woman? What is woman?"
"Me!" Tomme said matter-of-factly.
"Lieutenant..." Lataro said painfully. "Name...rank...serial number..."
Tomme looked down at Lataro who was still on his back. He held his hands in a nursing way, shaking. His nerve endings were sensitive and sending back information to his brain: We are freezing.
"What is the purpose of woman?"
"Wouldn't you like to know." Tomme yelled defiantly.
Lataro looked up at the light an noticed that the beam was beginning to change colors again. Painfully but as quickly as possible, he rolled over and pushed Tomme out of the way where he was basked in the torture light. He began to scream as the light pulsed the familiar hot and cool rays that now reddened his skin. Lataro screamed loudly, so loud that it echoed throughout the chambers and hurt Tomme's ears.
"Stop it!" Tomme yelled as she watched helplessly as Lataro writhed in pain. "Stop it now!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, not being able to control her emotional response. Closing her eyes, she could sense the Commander's pain as if it were her own. She had to do something, but what? Suddenly, her form melted and grew into an energy shield. Instead of the beam reaching to Commander it pelted down on the energy matrix she had become. But she also knew she would be unable to keep it up for long. She could feel the light bearing down on her. Just as she was about to collapse from the relentless pelting, it suddenly stopped. Shaken, but still coherant, she melted back into her own human form, her auburn hair cascading down her back. She went to Commander Lataro who was unconscious and gently caressed his face. "Commander...Lataro..." she whispered, tears forming in her eyes. Tenderly, she dragged him from the path of the light and manuvered herself so she could rest his head on her lap. "Who's doing this to us?" she cried.
Suddenly, a groan issued from Lataro and his eyes opened. As their eyes met, she smiled, the tears still glistening brightly in her eyes."I'm glad to see you're awake..." she whispered.
He forced a smile and tried to sit up, but pain wracked his body and he groaned again. Quickly, Jenara pulled him back down. "Don't try to move yet. You're body needs time to recoup," she explained.
"It feels like every nerve in my body is on fire."
Tears started to appear in her green eyes once more. "You'll be all right," she replied. "Just some time to rest and you'll be as good as new." She could only hope she was right.
After some time had past, Commander Lataro started to recover, and, eventually, Jenara helped him to a bunk, sitting next to him to make sure he was all right, and to do what she could for him. "How are you feeling now?" Jenara asked.
"Better," he replied, sitting up.
"I was very concerned that I...I mean...WE would lose you. That beam, whatever it is, could have killed you," Jenara replied. Without her tricorder there was no way to know what that beam was composed of. She could sense her feelings for him cropping up again, and she tried to force them away. He was married and his heart belonged to someone else. But still, the feelings were strong. In fact, more powerful than they had ever been. Carefully, Jonathan sat up and looked at her. She could sense some of the same emotions within him. Tenderly, he caressed her face with his hand. She sighed and closed her eyes to allow the sensation to penetrate her very core. As her eyes opened again, they were drawing near each other, ready to share a kiss, when suddenly a noise caught there attention.
Meanwhile, somewhere else, Benton awoke to find himself lying on a cold metal slab. His vision quickly cleared, and he saw he was in another dark chamber similar to the one with the bunk beds. He was not restrained in any way, so he sat up and looked around. Apparently, his captors had not counted on his waking up, or they would surely have taken greater measures to keep him immobile.
The metal slab was in the center of the room. High above was the familiar light, and surrounding the slab were several complex control consoles. There was no one else in the room that Benton could see, so he swung his legs around and stood up. A wave of light-headedness hit him, and the room seemed to spin. Benton grabbed the edge of the metal slab with one hand to keep from falling over, and his head with the other hand.
Strange, he thought. What's been happening to me?
The dizziness passed quickly however, and Benton took a few seconds to make sure he was unharmed. Nothing hurt really, aside from a headache, and the pain caused by the high-pitched whine was gone. Benton surmised that it had been some kind of transporter effect, but thought its designers should probably do a little more work on reducing the audio impact it had on its transportees.
Benton tried to guess how long he had been lying on the slab. He had a vague feeling that more than just a few minutes had passed. For one thing, his stomach was rumbling hungrily, which it wasn't doing before he had been transported. For another, he felt as though he had been through a mighty mental battle of some kind. He couldn't recall any details, but somehow he knew he had fended off a powerful and ruthless telepathic probe into his memories. He was thankful he was Kelvan. What had merely given him a bad headache, would've killed a normal Human, and even a Vulcan would have been hard pressed to defend himself against what Benton felt he had endured.
I wonder where the others are, he thought. He tapped his com badge, "Benton to Lataro." There was no answer. "Benton to Tomme," he tried. Again no answer. He hadn't really expected one.
Benton resumed his inspection of his current surroundings. The metal slab he had been laying on was simply that, a featureless, silver metal surface approximately seven feet long and three wide. Looking at it made him feel uneasy, so he quickly shifted his attention to the control consoles surrounding the slab.
The consoles were covered with extremely complex data readouts and command inputs. Benton had no idea what their exact functions were, but he had a strong intuition that they were medical in nature. He opened his tricorder and took what readings he could. Maybe the Virgo's computers would be able to make sense of the data after they got back to the ship.
That task done, Benton turned his attention to the dark area beyond the lighted circle. He remembered what had happened to Lt. Tomme when she encountered the forcefield in the bunk room, so he proceeded carefully, scanning ahead with his tricorder. As he explored, he noticed that there was no dust on the floor in this room. Also, it was a lot larger than the bunk room. He had walked more than fifty feet already, and still there was no sign of a wall. And the darkness here was not as complete as it had been in the bunk room. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dimness, he could actually see a little.
After walking another fifty feet, Benton finally came to the wall. It was smooth and looked like granite. He scanned with his tricorder, but couldn't detect any force fields. Hesitantly, Benton reached out to touch the wall. As his fingertips made contact, he jerked his hand back. The wall was cold as ice. He tried to scan beyond the wall, but the tricorder's signals couldn't penetrate the material, whatever it was. He scanned the wall itself, and found that it was some kind of collapsed matter, similar to carbon neutronium, but very different on the sub-quantum level. Part of its substance actually seemed to physically extend into the subspace realm!
"Fascinating!" Benton said to no one.
He reluctantly tore himself away from his discovery and started along the wall. It was time to find a way out of here.
The room was quite large, so it took a while to reach what he was looking for. But finally, there it was in front of him: an open doorway.
Benton leveled the tricorder at the opening and scanned for force fields: nothing. He was immediately suspicious. Why would his captors leave him unattended and not even bother to close the door? It made no sense.
The darkness beyond the doorway was complete, but scans showed there was a lot of stuff inside the room beyond, none of it appeared to be threatening. Since there didn't seem to be anything else to do, Benton took a deep breath, steeled himself and walked forward into the darkness.
Benton was very conscious of his booted footfalls echoing throughout these rooms, and he felt exposed. When the lights suddenly came on in the room he was entering, he nearly jumped out of his boots. He dove for cover behind a heavy workbench and prepared to meet the expected attack.
But he could hear absolutely nothing except his own heavy breathing. Benton peeked above the top of the bench and surveyed the room. He was still alone, apparently the lights had been triggered automatically when he entered.
He stood, reopened the tricorder and continued exploring. This room was much smaller than the one outside, only about twenty feet squared, and it was well lit. There were no doors other than the one he had entered through. There were a number of big work benches like the one he had used for cover, all of them covered with tools, instruments and other, unidentifiable things. The unidentifiable things generally had little tags attached to them. Alien writing on the tags presumably labeled each item as to what it was.
Benton guessed he was in some kind of science laboratory. All these items must have been collected from other captured space travelers like himself and the rest of the Virgo landing party. Things began to fall into place in Benton's mind.
"They're studying us!" he realized. "That's why I woke up on an examination table, and why they tried to probe my memories."
His gaze caught some familiar-looking objects lying on a bench on the opposite side of the room. He went over, but sighed when he got a closer look at them.
"Well, at least I found our phasers," he said as he picked up the disassembled pieces of one of them. "Looks like they're interested in more than just us. They've studied our technology too," he mumbled.
"I sure am talking to myself a lot," Benton said to himself. I'll have to watch that in the future.
One of the other, unidentifiable objects on the workbench caught Benton's eye. It was an asymetrically-shaped, roughly rectangular piece, about twelve inches in height, eight inches wide and a half inch thick. What looked like an ordinary mirror was framed by an inch-wide border of what looked like granite. There was a hand grip of sorts built into the lower left of the object, so Benton picked it up. He noticed that the grip was definitely not made for humanoid hands, and that the object was much lighter than it would have been if it had been made of rock and glass.
Benton scanned it with his tricorder. The frame was composed of the same strange metal as the room's walls, and the "mirror" part didn't register at all! He hypothesized that the reflective material was capable of reflecting all wavelengths, even the scans from his tricorder!
He closed the tricorder and inspected the "mirror" more closely. The back of the object was just featureless "granite". There didn't appear to be any controls or access ports or a power supply. He turned it right-side-up again. The "mirror" reflected his face perfectly, although there was a slight quasi-shimmer if he looked at its surface out of the corner of his eye. He noticed he needed a shave, another hint that they had been here for quite some time. Behind the reflection of his own face, he could see the rest of the alien lab.
But then, the quasi-shimmer grew more distinct. What looked like a blue electrical wave washed across the surface of the "mirror" from lower right to upper left like a miniature wave across a miniature ocean. When it had passed, Benton was astonished to find that his reflection was gone! He could still see the reflection of the lab behind him, but he couldn't see himself. It was as if he were a ghost and the "mirror" was looking right through him! He tried looking at the "mirror" from different angles, all to no avail.
Just what is this mirror, that my tricorder can't scan it, and that can do this? Curiosity got the better of Benton, and he reached his free hand up to touch the "mirror" surface. His fingertips touched the smooth, glass-like surface and an enormous electrical shock shot up his arm and coursed through his body!
His muscles were locked in place by the bolt, so he couldn't withdraw his fingers or even drop the "mirror". He tried to cry out, but those muscles were locked too. The scene before his eyes flashed momentarily brilliant white, then black as pitch, then it was all over.
As quickly as the bolt had come, it was gone. In fact, what had seemed an eternity of high voltage induced paralysis had lasted only the tiniest fraction of a second. Even as Benton thought on it, the memory faded until finally he wasn't even sure the incident had even ever happened.
He was still holding the "mirror". Its surface had resumed its more normal appearance, and his usual clean-shaven reflection was once again visible. I'm glad I let the doctor talk me into trying a facial depilator salve. Now I can go a month between having to shave, he thought.
Setting aside such frivolous thinking, Benton turned his mind back to the problem at hand. The "mirror" would prove interesting to study, so he took it with him. He also went to collect the phaser parts in hopes that at least one could be reassembled. He was momentarily confused when the phasers weren't where he was expecting them to be.
I could've sworn they were on this bench. Benton looked around the room. Oh, there they are. Strange.
Having collected everything he needed, Benton left the alien lab the way he had come in. When he exited the room, the light went out, he was once again in the dark. He took a few minutes to let his eyes readjust to the dimness, then set off again in search of his comrades.
After another long walk beside the wall enclosing the medical lab, Benton came to another open doorway. He set down his cargo and drew his tricorder. This time, there was indeed a force field across the door opening. He focused the tricorder's beams on the field as best he could, but the information he could gain was minimal. He was fairly certain that the force field was not deadly. It most closely resembled the atmospheric containment field that covered the doors of the hangar bay on the Virgo, but unfortunately, there were differences which made him nervous.
He decided to look for other doors before trying this one. He left the "mirror" and the phaser parts on the floor to mark his starting point and set off to circumnavigate the big medical lab.
There were no other doors. In the end he wound up back at the force field door. He scanned it one more time. The tricorder showed a livable environment on the other side, but no other details. Finally, unable to think of anything else to do, Benton holstered the tricorder, picked up the "mirror" and the phaser parts, took another deep breath, and stepped into the force field.
It was as if a giant hand had grabbed him and flung him forward. He was shot out the other end of the doorway like a human cannonball and landed very unceremoniously flat on his stomach. The things he had been carrying flew out of his hands and skittered across the dusty floor.
Two shocked voices cried out in unison, "Benton!"
Benton looked up from his prone position and saw Commander Lataro and Lieutenant Tomme sitting on a bunk and staring at him open-mouthed.
"Oh dear," he said.