[ST] What Remains 1/6
Out of the Attic
He still couldn’t keep his hands steady.
Wrapped around the holster of a gun, sure that the man at the other end deserved to die, his hands trembled. And it didn’t have a damn thing to do with nerves. That was just another thing this place had taken from him.
He backed the man back against the wall, bringing the gun to point blank at his forehead. At least this way he knew he wouldn’t miss.
“Looks like you had a security breach.” His voice was scratchy, deeper than he remembered it, although it was difficult to remember much of anything. And even more impossible to know what was real - that was what this place did.
Hell, it was tempting to believe he was still in the attic because this wasn’t his life. Or rather this shouldn’t be his life.
There was a time when pointing a pistol at someone was against everything he stood for. He was a doctor, not a killer. Except Leonard McCoy hadn’t performed surgery on anyone in a long time and those initials at the end of his name were little more than decoration.
Swallowing hard, he released the safety. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away. No, if he was going to pull this trigger he was going to watch the life seep from the bastard against the wall.
There wasn’t a thing that would stop him.
“I sent for you.”
Except maybe for that.
“Heartless, conniving son of a bitch.” There might have been other words to describe Christopher Pike, but at the moment those words seemed the most fitting. “You must have gone crazy along with the world if you damn well think that after everything we’ve been through that I’m going to help you. I mean, the attic, what you did to my body…” His words dissolved into a frantic, hollow laughter. “Although I’m glad you’re doing well, Admiral.”
McCoy backed away. He lowered the gun that they both knew wasn’t going to be used. Not today at least.
“You became too much of a liability. What did you think would happen?” He crossed the room to the wet bar, picking up the decanter of whiskey.
“What I damn well knew would happen. Everywhere.”
Pike paused, carefully looking at McCoy for the first time. He weighed his next words very carefully. “You’ve been briefed?”
“I saw Chekov’s face,” McCoy spat the words. “God damn children…but then to be sure I went and took a walk outside.”
“That probably wasn’t the best idea.” Those were words that could only be chased with a finger of whiskey. Anything to prepare him for what came next.
“Ran into a group of cadets - I swear Starfleet designs those uniforms to be uncomfortable on purpose, probably to build character or some shit - they were just sitting in the fountain and asked me if I wanted to play pretty, pretty princess with them. Three grown men, playing patty cake without a care in the world.”
It sounded nice, actually, to not give a fuck. Except that McCoy had always been cursed with the ability to care too much.
“And I’m thinking are they prints or did they see what was coming and decide that insanity was the better option than watching the world burn?” The bite in his words hid how much stepping outside had shaken him. “So, tell me, Admiral Pike, how’s it feel to know you brought about the end of the world?”
Pike offered McCoy a glass of whiskey. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“I was never in the business of giving people what they want, or hell, what they need…always thought you were just children playing with matches.” McCoy knocked the glass from Pike’s hand, letting it shatter between them. “I was only ever trying to help people.”
The two men stood staring at each other. Pike looked nothing like the man who was the mastermind behind the Enterprise project. His hair was greyer, his posture a little less confident. For a moment, McCoy wondered if he had it better, locked in the attic for over four years.
He shuddered at the thought. No, there was nothing better about the attic.
“We were all trying to help people.”
McCoy shook his head. “Yeah, well, we did a bang up job of that.” Stepping over the broken glass, he went to the bar to get himself a drink.
“There may be a way to stop it.”
He paused turning around to look at Pike. No matter how much he wanted to, McCoy couldn’t just believe him. The technology was out there. There was no way to take it back. Still, he had to ask. “Chekov has a cure?”
“Jim does.”
His stomach dropped. That was the last name he wanted to hear. The only thing to do was pick up the whiskey decanter and take a nice long swig.
###
November 2258
Enterprise had been out in the black for six months. The actives were performing admirably. Everyone was pleased with the successes. Well, everyone except Leonard McCoy.
The truth was the whole situation bothered him. A lot.
Most days he could ignore or try to forget about the fact that half of the people in charge of this tin can weren’t actual people. McCoy knew his history, knew what happened when men tried to make people better and he didn’t believe for a second that any of the actives had volunteered for this service. He certainly wasn’t a volunteer.
He had walked right into Christopher Pike’s trap - sign on or die. He could still hear that air of superiority and bullshit speech Pike gave him just over six months ago.
“We’re not looking for a surgeon. What we need is someone to look after Romeo. We’ll be embarking on a long term mission and he’ll need someone - someone who cares for him greatly - to watch and help him every step along the way if this is to succeed.”
“So you need a babysitter?”
“Do you have any better offers lined up?”
Now, they had him. McCoy was trapped between certain death and the unknown like someone took the damn planet from him, leaving him with nothing. Even if he did walk out of here, there would be no ground for him to run to. Starfleet was thorough.
“It gives you what you want - full access to Romeo and the chance to get us should we slip up.”
To say that McCoy had been obsessed with Jim Kirk would be polite. For a man who tried to kill him almost every time they met, Jim consumed him until he couldn’t think of anything else.
“If I said yes, how would this work?”
Pike smiled. “Simple. Romeo will be what the Federation needs and you will be whatever he needs.”
Whatever he needs. The thought still made him sick. It was better managed when he could hide away in his research labs and not have to look at anyone.
Except that sometimes what Jim needed was his presence at the senior officer meetings. Then he was forced to sit through all sorts of boring meetings, trying not to show his obvious discomfort with the actives sitting around them.
Of all of them, Spock bothered him the most. And he was second in command.
It was better just to focus on the captain, which wasn’t difficult. Between trying to figure out the construct and the neurological mystery that was Jim Kirk, the actual Jim Kirk, there was plenty to do.
Unnatural as it all was, Jim in action was something to behold. Even if that was just something Chekov dreamed up, there was beauty there. That bothered him the most.
“Alright, I think that’s all for today. Just be sure to review your briefing before the mission, but you’re dismissed.”
The officers all rose and shuffled out, McCoy was just about to follow when Jim asked him to hang back a minute.
“I’m busy, Jim.”
“Yeah, I get it, you’re a doctor, not my therapist. And you have at least two trials that require your attention, I’ve heard it all before.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“We haven’t hung out like we used to in ages.” Jim slapped McCoy on the shoulder and he tried not to flinch. “Come by my quarters after your shift and we’ll catch up.”
McCoy rolled his eyes. There was no ‘used to’ for them, not really.
“Don’t have me make it an order.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, sure he wasn’t going to win this one, “after my shift.”
Jim just grinned really wide. And that only meant trouble, specifically for him.
It also meant that for the rest of his shift he was going to be completely useless. Jim was up to something. It was unnerving enough with a normal person, but with a fake person - an active - with Romeo, well, it was a recipe for disaster.
He had other things he should have been doing. Instead he spent his time looking over Romeo’s latest medical updates - hoping that he could find something there that would give away the game.
Not that there was anything out of the ordinary to be found. The biggest mystery was that Romeo was evolving but there was no reason as to why.
This left him to watch, to learn, and to be whatever Romeo needed.
And the longer he was out here, McCoy started to think that maybe what he needed was Romeo. He liked being a sounding board and voice of reason for Jim. It was the sort of thing that was easy to get lost in.
“Bones? Hey, Earth to Bones.”
It was the name more than anything that jarred McCoy from his head. That wasn’t something that Chekov had written into the imprint. It annoyed the hell out of him, and yet it felt right.
“Bones, where are you right now?”
McCoy was surprised to realize how close Jim was to him.
Too many things ‘felt right’ with Romeo and even more with Jim Kirk. It was taking everything he had to not give into those urges that were probably just Pike and Chekov giving him something back. Not that he needed it. Out in the black he didn’t really have much of a choice but to comply.
“Just thinking.”
“You work too hard, Bones.” Jim was watching him carefully, eyes peering right into him.
McCoy snorted at that. “Says the man who doesn’t sleep more than four hours a night.”
“I’m the captain,” he said laughing, “what’s your excuse?”
All McCoy could do was shake his head. There was a lot going on that kept him awake at night. Once the actives went to bed for the night, the actuals had work of their own to attend to - diagnostics, reports, program update meetings. And that was without all of the extra work that McCoy was putting in for his own purposes.
Jim reached over and ran his hand through McCoy’s hair. “I worry about you. I mean I know this assignment wasn’t your first choice.” That was putting it lightly. “But I don’t think I could be doing this without you.”
McCoy closed his eyes, giving into that simple touch. It had been too long since he had been touched like that - or really at all. While he literally could not have seen it coming, he’d have to be a complete fool to be surprised.
Before he had any space left to think or over-think, Jim’s lips were on his. The kiss quickly became about giving in and just taking. It was everything he wanted and never thought he was allowed to have.
Or maybe it was needed.
Fuck.
What the fuck was he doing? What the fuck did he do now?
“Shouldn’t have done that,” he said in an exhale. He was still too close to Jim’s with their heartbeats pounding in sync “Jim, I - we can’t do this.”
Even as he said those words, all he could smell, all he could taste was Jim Kirk. He didn’t have an honest chance.
“Why?” Jim asked, not moving away. “What are you afraid of?”
McCoy swallowed, wishing he were a better man.
“It’s not right.” Perhaps he should have wished for more conviction in his voice then.
“It feels right to me.” Jim’s hands were still on him, soothing and discomforting at the same time. “And it seems like you agree or else you’d be long gone, so what is it? What aren’t you telling me, Bones?”
He hated the way Jim was looking at him now, like he knew him, like he had always known him. Up until eight months ago Romeo, Jim Kirk - whoever the hell they wanted him to be today, didn’t have a damn clue that Leonard McCoy existed.
“Look, Jim, I can’t, alright?” It wasn’t quite conviction, but annoyance suited along with the strength to push away from Jim and off the couch. The only thing he hated more than the way Jim was looking at him were all the thoughts going on in his head, everything telling him that there was nothing wrong with it. “Even if I want to, it’s not right because you’re not-“
“Real?”
McCoy paused, whipping his head around to look at Jim. He probably looked like a Klingon in the face of a tribble.
“That’s what you were going say, wasn’t it?” Although it was phrased like a question, McCoy wasn’t sure it actually was and that worried him a little bit more. “That I’m not real, that I’m just some thing that Chekov constructed.”
There was protocol for this. Things he should be doing because this wasn’t just a glitch, this bordered on composite event. McCoy had never witness one personally, but he knew they weren’t good. An active accessed all of his imprints at once causing a psychotic break and leading to a number of dead bodies. He should have felt scared.
“Jim…”
“And how I’m not supposed to know that because I’m supposed to think that I’m the same person I was born as, but I’m not.” Jim - fuck, was he Jim anymore? - stood up and walked across to McCoy his hands out showing that he proved no threat. “I remember them - all of the people I’ve been. They’re right here, I can slip one on and I become it or it becomes me, but none of them are the real Jim Kirk.”
McCoy didn’t know how to process what Jim was saying. By all accounts this moment shouldn’t be happening, but here they were. And he knew better than to doubt what Jim Kirk was capable of.
“Except even in all of that, there’s you, threaded through all of them…you’re the one thing that feels real, near and distant all at once like Jim Kirk, the real Jim, knew you.”
McCoy stepped away from Jim again, shaking his head. “That’s the handler-active protocol, you’re supposed to feel that way about me.”
“Bullshit.” He didn’t even hesitate. “This is more than that, because even if that was true you wouldn’t love me too.”
If he were a sensible man, he might have called Sulu and had this issue taken care of before it could grow. He should have shown tact, played dumb and denied, denied, denied everything that Jim put out there.
However, McCoy wasn’t sure he was a sensible man. Their twisted version of Sleeping Beauty had appeal. He did feel it too. “I…” McCoy started and then stopped again.
Jim smirked.
Trouble. He knew it from that look earlier. McCoy just didn’t know how much trouble it was going to be.
Unlike their first time, McCoy saw it coming this time, but even then he wasn’t ready. Kissing Jim once was enough, but doing it a second time was unbelievable. The initial awkwardness was still there, but with an unspoken familiarity. Maybe they had done this before. And how he wanted to do it again and again and again.
This time Jim pulled away, looking back at him with a new confidence at the far too open expression all over McCoy’s face. The want was a full-blown need and even if he knew it was wrong, McCoy didn’t care.
“And I’m going to help you figure out what this operation is really all about, and then we’re going to take it down together.”
It really did feel like they had been here before. (God, his stomach churned at that implication.) If that was true, he hoped they wouldn’t be here again.
###
This whole thing was because of him. He had made a deal with the devil. If he was being honest, he had made too many deals with different devils. And they all led him to this point. It was impossible for the universe to give Leonard McCoy a happy ending.
McCoy slouched on the couch turned away from the big bay windows. Looking at the outside world was just too much now. Seeing Chekov’s face was one thing, hearing the full briefing right from the man in charge just made it worse. And McCoy hadn’t thought that was possible.
The decanter was almost empty now, but the edge was still there. There was something that Pike wasn’t telling him.
“We’ll have to save catching up further for another time.” On cue his communicator beeped. Pike didn’t have to flip it open to know what the message was - perimeter breach. “Right now, you’ll find that your best course of action is to run.”
“What?”
“Run, commander, run as fast as you can or what happens next will make the attic feel like a pleasant day dream.”
“Wait, you’re just letting me go?” He couldn’t have heard that right. After everything he did there was no way he just got to walk out of here a free man, even if this was the end of the world.
Pike stood up from behind his desk and crossed the office to his arms locker. “You are a dangerous man, McCoy. One the Federation wishes to keep close and given the course they set out on, it is my belief that said danger would be better directed back toward your captors rather than working for them.”
McCoy recognized it for what it was - a move. This was the man who condemned him to purgatory in the attic. There was no way he was risking his life and his livelihood for Leonard McCoy. With more time, McCoy might have been able to figure it out. Except down in the courtyard a team of men was establishing a perimeter around the building. The ATL had sent MACOs.
“As you can imagine, my superiors do not share these sentiments.”
It was unreal.
“Are you out of your mind?”
Pike pulled a hypospray from the cabinet and handed it to McCoy.
“Or perhaps I am the last sane voice left.”
One glance at the hypo, he knew what it was. The Farrell Blocker. He took it from Pike’s hand and jabbed it hard into his thigh. If this was how he died at least he went out as his own person.
“Where do I go?”
Pike exchanged the empty hypo for McCoy’s phase pistol. “Just go. Find Jim. Help him.”
“What makes you think he ever wants to see me again?”
Pike keyed his code into the console at his desk and an invisible door slid open behind his desk. “Do not make me repeat myself again.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” McCoy shook his head and started toward the back exit.
Then Pike did the last thing McCoy would have expected in this moment. He laughed. “Only as much as you do.”
There was no time for a snide remark. All he could do was run.
The door slid closed behind him. He was no more than 100 yards away when he heard a gun shot from behind. God, he hoped that wasn’t what he thought it was, although maybe that was for the better.
Run.
That was his only option. And it made him the biggest coward he could imagine, because he never wanted to stop running. Leonard McCoy just wanted to disappear into nothingness, slip away from this life and try to find out what normal meant because that was the dream.
Only there was no more normal.
The blocker coursing through his system, if it was his original design, was only temporary. It would only get him so far. And if Pike were worth anything, there would be some sort of a tracer spliced into the drug mix. It was one thing to let him go free, it was just plain moronic to not have a way to bring him back. So, McCoy would have to deal with that too.
McCoy made a sharp turn through the tunnels. He kicked open a giant metal screen that led to the transport bay. In the bay was a wide range of transportation options - hover bikes, old style cars, and even a few short-range shuttles. He hated just about every one of them, but his feet could only take him so far. McCoy was just about to pick the lesser of the evils when he spotted a familiar face.
“Sulu! Thank god, I was thinking I was going to have to drive one of these myself.”
McCoy wouldn’t go so far as to call Sulu an ally, but he never thought he was an enemy. It made sense if Pike was trying to get him out of here that Sulu would be sent to help. It was a relief, until he saw the smirk on his face as the security chief turned around.
“Doctor McCoy, what a pleasure seeing you here.”
Sulu drew his weapon, making something of a show to set it to stun.
“What the hell, you little shit!” McCoy knew he shouldn’t have trusted Pike. Always a card to play and one that usually screwed him over in the process. “Pike, let me go!”
“That was not a decision that Pike was authorized to make.” Crossing over toward McCoy he shot him square in the chest. “I’m securing my place in the new world order and if you’re smart, you’ll do the same.”
Even if McCoy wanted to fight, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. He just fell to the ground, a loaded but otherwise empty stream of profanity leaving his mouth as he went down.
Once he was sure that McCoy wasn’t going anywhere, Sulu pulled out his communicator.
“I have McCoy secured in the transport bay.”
“Why Mr. Sulu, there is finally something worth while in this house after all.” On the other end of the line was a rich southern voice - it made McCoy think of a home that was barely even a distant memory. “I’m sending a team down to collect McCoy. Once he has been transferred I’m afraid you’ll need to come up to your new office and deal with the mess we’ve made. My apologies, of course.”
“Sir?”
“The correct response would be, ‘thank you for the promotion.’”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. You will not be disappointed.”
“No, I don’t believe I will be.”
The last thing McCoy heard was that voice with just an air of amusement. It felt like something out of a dream or maybe even from a life he tried not to remember.
The recovery team was prompt. Not that Sulu would expect anything else. They were ATL dispatched men and women, which meant they were programmed to be the best of the best.
Now he just had a matter of a mission to gain control over.
As he walked back through the barracks up to the officer’s suites, Sulu ignored the glances he received. They were of no concern to him. Hikaru Sulu was going to run a tight ship. Even better he was going to make Christopher Pike watch; well, assuming he wasn’t dead already.
Exiting the lift, he looked around Pike’s office - or rather his office now. He was going to have to do something about the decor. It was just so plain. “Admiral Pike, are you here?” Surveying the room, he didn’t immediately see the older man. Not that this came as a surprise. He could be wiry.
Matthews had the order to shoot him and Matthews didn’t miss. It was really just a matter of following the blood trail around the side of the imperial desk. “Oh Admiral Pike, how the mighty have fallen. You could have been the most powerful man in the world.” Pike tried to crawl away, grasping for each uneasy breath he sucked into his lungs. “You had McCoy, Romeo, India, and unlimited funds and now you’re bleeding on my rug.”
“Go to hell,” he spat.
Shaking his head, Sulu pulled out Pike’s chair and sat down. “Here I was going to be nice and call Dr. Chapel right away, but maybe I’ll wait a few minutes, that is if you think you have the time to spare.” Loud and clear he was heard. This was his house now. He called the shots.
Sulu didn’t know it then, but things were going to get worse. A lot worse.
If he had known that, maybe he wouldn’t have taken the throne, but right now what he saw was opportunity that Pike was letting go to waste.
###
The fucking irony was that getting out of the attic was the easy part. Before him, no one made it out alive. If they needed something from you, they just took it.
No other person who entered into the attic lasted more than a year. Leonard McCoy had spent just over four years in the hellhole.
Not that time meant anything for him. It was an eternity of playing out worst-case scenarios, living in a constant state of fear, searching for something real just to have it taken away from him, or worse - turned into a weapon.
That was the biggest joke of all.
He didn’t need to be turned into a weapon. Leonard McCoy already was a weapon. They just needed to aim him in the right direction and then whole civilizations could collapse just because someone answered a communicator.
Even with Pike’s interference, the end result could only be put off for so long. The ATL wanted him and they would stop at nothing until they had him back east in their labs.
While McCoy might have had a hand in shaping the world, it was no longer his. He had no control over anything. Hell, he didn’t even know where he was. The only thing he did know was that he wasn’t in the attic.
He wasn’t allowed to dream in the attic and he definitely had been dreaming of Georgia, in the years before Starfleet, well, before his dad got sick and he started down a dangerous path. They weren’t always happy or perfect dreams, but they were preferable to the waking world. At least in his dreams he knew that nothing was real. When he woke up he couldn’t be sure if what he knew was because he knew it or because someone put it in his head.
Today when he woke up, he wasn’t alone. Sitting across from him was a girl with dirty blonde hair and tired hazel eyes, staring at him like she was looking at a ghost.
“You better not try anything funny.”
He should have just shot himself. The second he got out of the attic, one shot clean to the head and this wouldn’t even have been a possibility. It could have been over.
Now, they were playing games with him.
“You’re Leonard McCoy.” It wasn’t a question. The young woman spoke like she might have known him, or at least thought she knew him.
“That’s what they’ve taken to calling me,” he said, giving her that much. “Although I can’t be sure who the hell that’s really supposed to be or what version you might have today.”
For as little as he gave, that seemed to be enough for her. She bolted up and ran right toward him, capturing him in a rather awkward hug. It hurt to be touched.
McCoy pushed her back, using the act of surprise against her. “I know this is the end of the world and all, but strangers still don’t take kindly to just being hugged.”
“Strangers?” She repeated, sounding infinitely smaller than she was. “We’re not strangers. Well, we are, but not as strange as you think. I’m your daughter, Joanna.”
He paused. Did he have a daughter? Somewhere in his head were memories of a daughter. A little girl who was his entire world as everything else fell to pieces.
The girl in the cell across from him could be her. Except McCoy wasn’t even sure that she was real. There were too many competing memories. So he settled on the safest one. “My daughter died.”
The girl shook her head. “That was what they had you believe because they knew you wouldn’t agree to any of it unless you really did lose everything in the divorce. I - gods - I never stopped looking for you, Dad, but then Mom - ”
“Yes, what about mommy dearest?” They both jumped at the man standing at the door, trying to hide his amusement. “Please don’t let me interrupt this little family reunion.”
McCoy pushed to his feet, hoping to lunge for the overweight man. Not that he expected it would give him a winning hand, but maybe this wasn’t about winning anymore. The man easily shoved McCoy back toward the ground.
“Now, now, there will be none of that. After all, I suppose this is my family too.” McCoy scrambled back against the wall. “What, you don’t recognize me? Well, I suppose I don’t really recognize myself either, but that’s the beauty of full body upgrades, although I’m not sure this one is exactly an upgrade, but it serves its purpose.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I already have what I want.”
“I don’t have a god damn thing to give to you.”
“C’mon Len, stupid was never a good look on you.” He sounded just like his ex-wife. “I’ve seen the output reports from your time in the attic and I know there is a lot more you’re going to do for us.”
“Quite the sales pitch.”
“Oh I don’t need a sales pitch, just this fact - you work for us, or I’m going to kill the kid.”
Joanna opened her mouth to protest, but McCoy beat her to it.
“Go ahead and kill the kid, it’s not like thousands of people dead aren’t already dirtying my hands.”
“Only this one would be different, this one you could have saved and this one is actually yours. I mean I did give birth to her, and found her simply too useful to get rid of after the divorce.”
McCoy didn’t trust it - couldn’t trust this man claiming to be Jocelyn. Even if he knew that full body upgrades were possible, he didn’t want to accept they existed.
Loathe as he was to admit it, it did make sense that she would be at the helm of this operation now. And even if the girl wasn’t his, and despite all of the people he might have gotten killed in the past, he wasn’t sure if he could watch it happen right in front of him.
The man signaled for the guards to come in. “Patience has never been my strong suit.”
McCoy wished he were a stone. That he could be Pike and not be affected. And he almost managed it until Joanna started crying.
The technology made it so no one had to die, but that didn’t mean that everyone got to live forever.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” After all, what was one more deal? If he even had a soul anymore, it surely wasn’t a good one.
He was a starving man who held a false hope that maybe if he complied things would be better for him. Or at the very least, he would get access to state of the art labs again. That way when he was working on what they wanted, he could be working on a way to undo what he did.
What surprised him was how easily he fell back into the routine of laboratory work. It was like coming home because in that one tiny room, he could control almost all of the variables and things happened the way they should have. He was doing what he always did best - figure things out.
And when he wasn’t preoccupied with lab work, he entertained the idea that it was only a matter of time before Jim made a move on the facility. There were pictures of him all over the ATL with a countdown since the last Kirk sighting. Apparently, he made it a game of raiding the facilities every so often, killing a few guards and stealing any supplies he could get his hands on.
McCoy had been at the facility almost three months now and Jim Kirk was nothing more than a fairy tale he overheard in the corridors. To think, Jim Kirk - the man, the construct, the fucking rebel who had escaped and become some small beacon of hope. His message had been simple - nothing was gone, just lost. And he would take down every single person associated with the imprint technology until the world was right again.
Although he did still sometimes wish that Jim would show up and blast him out of existence just to make it all stop. Joanna was barely even a comfort anymore. She was now just a carrot they waved in front of him, prompting him to go faster, to give them more. And even if he wasn’t actually in the attic, he might as well be because time no longer mattered. He only marked weeks by Darnell’s Monday afternoon check-ins.
Then Darnell broke pattern, rushing into the lab with a manic look on his face. “The base is going into lockdown and I thought I would ride out the Jim Kirk shit storm with you. Less you two get any funny ideas.”
McCoy chortled at the idea.
Darnell clearly didn’t know how bad things with Jim had become. The only outcome McCoy saw was two dead bodies. The only remaining variable was whether his death would be painless or not.
###
January 2259
Giving into his need and being with Jim was strange, wrong, and so very right all at the same time. As he settled into it, he was able to learn more about the technology and elasticity of the brain than anyone had ever learned before. It was ground breaking research that he kept close.
The things men with a vision could do with what he knew.
And then there was Jim. Being with Jim was familiar - too familiar.
And given his tenuous relationship with the universe, he couldn’t just trust that this was what love felt like. He knew too much and he knew that men like him didn’t just stumble into the perfect mate without so much as trying.
Besides, he needed a control anyway and he certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone else.
It was all perfectly normal. It was normal until it wasn’t.
How could he not have seen this before?
“You never made a scan of yourself,” he said, answering his own question. He never wanted to before. Hell, the mere act of getting into that chair made his skin crawl, sending his heart rate through the roof like he was terrified of it.
He was terrified of the chair and apparently with good reason. What he saw wasn’t a healthy, normal human brain. There was massive scarring throughout the cerebrum. And while some connections were trying to grow around and between the scarring, most of the neural activity in his head happened in the cerebellum.
Any other doctor might not have been able to make sense of what he was seeing. But Leonard McCoy knew. He spent endless days staring at brains that looked like this. Well, not just like this - his was rather unique in that sense, but brains that had active architecture installed.
“No.” He stumbled backward away from the monitor, as though distance could make what he was seeing unseen. The problem was you couldn’t unring a bell.
“No. No. No.” That couldn’t be right.
“I’m a person!” He shouted, grateful that his lab was secure and completely soundproof. “I’m a god damn person!”
Wobbly hands picked up the closest thing not bolted down to a work surface and he threw it across the room. The lab he worked for months to build was destroyed in just a few minutes.
“I’m real. I know I’m real.” With nothing left to destroy, he slammed his fist into the monitor. The glass shattered, cutting his knuckles open - the shaking still would not stop.
He couldn’t trust them anymore. Couldn’t trust anyone. Not even Jim. Especially not Jim. There were too many variables there.
Jim was familiar - like those damn trust protocols they installed for handlers.
And Jim knew too much about what McCoy was doing, about all of things he wasn’t telling Chekov or Sulu or, fuck, even Pike.
They were playing him. He was just some goddamn pawn, another one of their actives used to destroy the world. McCoy wouldn’t have it - couldn’t have it. He would not become a destroyer of men.
“What do I do? What do I do?” He repeated it over and over to himself.
Who could he trust? Who would help him take down Enterprise, to make sure that this technology was buried?
He went over to the still functioning communicator and opened a line to the last person anyone would have expected him to call.
“Clay?” He asked, trying to keep together, “I’m going to need your help.”
“Len!” The man on the other end was nothing but cheer and bright smiles. “What can I do you for?”
“I’ve made it inside Enterprise, it’s real, it’s all real and we need to make it stop…you’re…you’re the only person I can trust.”
It would be a year before Jim found him out. But it was nine months too late. It had already begun.
###
“Well, look what I found here,” said Jim as he walked into the laboratory. “Darnell, you’ve certainly seen better days, but thanks for saving me the work of having to hunt you down to do this.”
He made the mistake the first time of not shooting to kill. He had some false sense of compassion then. Now, he knew better.
“Do you ever think that if you didn’t cut The Company off at the head, the tech wouldn’t have gotten out of control?”
Laughing, Jim pulled out his phase pistol and pointed it at Darnell. “Yeah, because you're a real model of control.” He switched the gun to kill.
“I’m in twenty other bodies right now, do you think this is going to change anything?”
Jim just smirked and shot him right through the head. “Ask me that again sometime.”
The body fell to the ground. It would be a few hours until the other Darnells realized one was taken off line. It would probably be only a day or two, until a replacement was installed.
There was a movement to his left side and Jim shifted, setting the gun right at the target.
Leonard McCoy. The man he hadn’t seen in over four years, but still haunted his existence. It was almost unreal, seeing him again.
Only there was no heartfelt reunion. The scene wouldn’t close with two lovers caught in a passionate embrace. Jim just aimed the gun right at McCoy’s head. “You going to tell me you’re in twenty other bodies too?”
McCoy laughed. He hoped there weren’t any back ups of him running around. “You know where I’ve been, shit, go ahead and shoot me. That would be a blessing if it actually managed to stick.”
“I also know exactly what sort of things that brain of yours has been doing the past four years.”
“So what are you waiting for?”
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