Chapel and Priest: Husks part 18-21 [end]
Eighteen: Confess to me your sins my son, and you shall sleep once more
At least Scotty's bizarre re-calibration of Charlie's phaser was good for something. Although he balked at using it, when the orderly awakened, it made a powerful persuader. They couldn't leave without finding out if these two women's memories, thoughts and sense of self were merely parked somewhere, or destroyed forever.
He couldn't stand the sight of the orderly's mutilated hand; it put him in mind of a ghost train holo he took Joanna to as a kid. She screamed enough to bust his eardrums. Why is it that the scream of a ten-year-old girl is the loudest sound on the planet? Instead of looking at the freak show, he bandaged it, handling the white bone stumps like glass. Perhaps the guy was poor, looking for any job; not a low-down type. Among all this obscenity, he wanted to believe that.
They gagged and tied him, and propped his bulk up against a wall opposite a utilitarian chair, where McCoy sat. A flutter of eyelids meant their captive was waking. For a second he looked just like he'd woken in a feather bed at the Ritz then, as his eyesight and memory began to clear, he thrashed; a hog, tied.
“Wouldn't do that if I was you. Likely to give yourself an injury. You don't want to upset my associate here.” The statue that was Spock stood upright to the side of the doctor's chair, hands clasped behind his back, but one eyebrow twitched, a tiny gesture that was all Spock. McCoy always thought the hands behind back stance was menacing, not calm. A man who in extreme danger doesn't even ready his stance? A fool would think him unprepared, and they would remember that thought later, as they rubbed their aching neck, having lost several hours.
Dirty and underhand as it was, he took his own phaser from his waistband - it looked the same as Charlie's - how was the sap to know? A pained whimper reverberated around the hard medical surfaces of the ward. Not making eye contact with the patsy, McCoy stroked the phaser and looked over the guy's shoulder to the wall, then put on his discarded hat. “I got a name, you know.You wanna hear it?”
A noise that could have been yes or no echoed about the room.
“They call me The Priest. You know why? Nope? You don't? Hell, I'll tell ya anyway.” Bones clipped the phaser to the waistband of his suit trousers, lowered his head and clasped his hands over his lap, quiet as if in prayer. After a few meditative breaths his head rose, lifted by slow puppet-strings, and he glared at their captive from beneath the rim of the Fedora.
“Every soul who comes to me?” McCoy stood, bent in front of the orderly and placed his splayed hand on the crown of the man's head in a benediction. “By sunrise, they’ve confessed their sins.”
McCoy stretched, brought a wrist in front of his face, and regarded his watch, his speech deliberate. “And sunrise is only a few hours away, my son.”
Tonight he was angry enough to be, not just inhabit, the part he often played. “My Vulcan friend here, well, he'll remove your gag. If you scream, or make any move we're not happy with, I can trim your body-parts to my heart's content. Matter of fact, my weapon can be calibrated to disintegrate muscle, but not blood vessels. You can watch your blood goin’ around in your veins. Of course, without musculature to support them, the view will only last a few seconds.” For effect, he revealed the phaser once more, pushing the flap of his jacket away from his thigh.
With a flick of Spock's wrist, the gag was off. Caught in the Vulcan's blank stare, the orderly pissed his pants. A shallow pool of liquid blossomed on the hard floor. This was good; McCoy hoped this meant he was just naive, dragged into this racket by poverty and unemployment.
“These two women,” he jerked his head to the beds, “are their wiped minds still here? Can you restore them?”
A stuttering nod was the answer.
“What about the others? The other fifteen? We know all about them.” It was a gamble, but this guy didn't look like he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Nothing, the sap stayed quiet. McCoy aimed the phaser just south of the man's foot, and fired. On stun, it didn't even melt the floor covering, but the reaction was swift. The orderly squealed and drew his knees up to his chest. A trickle of sweat made its way down the side of his flushed face.
“Redistributed, their minds replaced.”
“What in hell does redistributed mean?” Bones leaned close to the man's face, baring his teeth.
“Put back - b-back in society with a different identity.”
“What? Why?” If this wasn't the darned strangest thing McCoy ever heard.
With his eyes trained on the phaser, the orderly started singing like a canary. “P-protection racket, kinda.”
“Excuse me? You whistlin' Dixie, boy?”
“Are you the police? What's g-g-gonna happen to me?”
“Nope, I'm a PI. Got a few clients, friends of the disappeared. Police aren't making much headway, got friends there too.” McCoy removed the phaser from his waistband and placed it in his lap. “Now if you're a good boy and tell us what we want to know, we'll put a nice word in for you with NGPD. Now, spill, tell us all about this protection racket.”
**
He shook, sweaty and rumpled like an old sheet, and the bright lights of the ward gave his face a blue-grey cast. Between each slothful sentence, he wheezed in an ailing breath. “KhanCorp was offering special clients a 'deal'. Move their consciousness to a low-maintenance, slow-ageing new shell. They got a brand new bio-body at knock-down prices. Some in Khan's inner circle thought it was like a 'gift', for being good customers, ya know? Instead of putting them in a new body, we kidnapped lookalikes, re-tooled their DNA, and gave them surgery to look like a better or younger version of the client, whatever they wanted.”
The orderly raised the side of his mouth in a sneer, shaking his head. “Who'd think they could get a bio-body for that dough, huh? You flatter these celebrities or wannabes, whatever, and they believe any old crap. Anything to get in with the politicians. The rich, famous and vain sure love politics.”
With the roll of a fat baby in a wet diaper, the man shifted position, still wheezing; “Then, Khan calls the client and asks for protection money. He don't say it like that of course, more like 'a donation for my political campaign.' Makes out like there's been some kinda leak in security, if they give to his party, he'll protect their ass, make sure they don't get arrested.”
It was a tale as tall as JT's building, but this dope looked like he couldn't spin one, so it was likely true. McCoy still couldn't fill in the blanks. “So, you're saying there's a bunch of beings out there who think they've been transferred into a new illegal bio-body, but they are just in some poor kidnapped bastard's real body?”
“Yeah, they'll believe it, 'till their ass starts to go south, or they get some disease. They think they're immune to STDs, ha!”
“So why didn't you just put the clients under, operate to make them look younger and pretend they'd been put into a new bio-body?”
Their captive hacked out a laugh. “Tried that once, client wanted to know where his old body was and cottoned on to the racket. A smart customer wants to see the old parts that get replaced when an engineer works on his vehicle, don't he?”
“What happened to him? The guy who rumbled you?”
“We wiped the last weeks of his memory, planted a few fake stories in the Enquirer about a drug habit, roughed him up some and pumped him full of RiDi. Police found him 'tired and emotional' in a private suite in the Orion Fetish Club on Renfield. He didn't know if it was New York or New Year. Khan paid for his rehab -- he thinks the sun shines out of the boss' ass now. He don't remember nothin' about any bio-body.”
Could this really be true? McCoy was sure Khan was rich as Croesus. This wasn't the full reveal, not by a country mile. “Seems a bit elaborate just to get campaign donations. Doesn't seem like Khan would be that desperate.”
A high-pitched choo-choo whistle of a laugh preceded the answer, and McCoy's fingers twitched in an urge to de-rail it with his phaser. “Khan don't care about donations. He's weedin' out the faithful, those that are calm are noted in his little black book, the ones that panic, well they get put in another column. It's a kinda psychological experiment, see how they hold under pressure.”
Still, the whole thing was odd, you had to be a serious sociopath to go to these lengths. “Good Gorn man, there must be more to it than this, you don't just kidnap folks off the street and wipe their minds for an experiment.”
The stool pigeon shrugged his round, sloping shoulders. “He hates crawlers, and he likes to pull the legs off bugs. He's bored, he's doin' it for fun. He does it, because he can.”
Ants crawled over his skin, and Bones rubbed the back of his neck. He was sweating, and groped about in the background anxieties of his mind to find out why. “Why’re you so talky about this?”
“I wanted to make it so the self-destruct you activated when you disconnected your guy over there got time to work. When the women's minds are restored, that'll finish it, you got nothin'.” A sinister clown's smile spread on the man's face.
McCoy was sick to his stomach. He'd made an error. Would Jim have made a tactical screw-up like this? He didn't have time to think about it, and it took all he had not to smash a clenched fist into the clown's face -- the sound of splintering bone would have been a welcome release-valve. Instead, he nodded to Spock.
“I've heard enough, put his gag back on, we gotta move it.”
**
Spock dragged the orderly through to the other side of the glass wall, leaving a damp streak on the floor, sat him upright, then moved to the console and punched controls with lightning reflexes. “The orderly was correct in his assessment; there is nothing on this system except two large data files, primed for biological transfer. They appear to consist of human thought patterns and memories. I am unable to duplicate them, and if we return these minds, this entire system will be a husk also, barren of information, merely a data-free operating system. It is a particularly nasty trap.”
“Are you saying we've got no choice? We can't keep a copy of the files for proof?” Never in his life would he ever make a pig's ear like this again.
It was as if Spock read his mind. “Mister Priest, I could see nothing to indicate that the medical monitoring equipment was connected to their main computer's data files. If there is fault, it is mine. I am, after all, New Glasgow's top computer expert.”
Furious with himself, McCoy's voice was curt and he heard his accent thicken. “I'll ignore that self-assessment of your talents, but I appreciate the sentiment. What now?”
“I need codes to progress this operation. I would rather we obtained them in the conventional manner.”
Behind the console slumped the geek who'd suffered at the Vulcan's neck-pinch. The guy had a face like a slice of salami, red and mottled. Stringy, greasy hair hung over his ears and Bones wondered why a boy who worked for a cosmetic surgery company was allowed to look that way. Not front of the house, he supposed. Rummaging through the untidy office, McCoy found an unused cable and bound the computer operator's ankles to his chair. From his suit pocket, he drew a glinting hypo and plunged it into the boy's jugular with force, then kicked the chair over on its wheels, so the geek became a beetle on his back.
Stroking the hypo, he stood over the computer operator, whose eyelids flickered as he awoke, and when the lids rose, McCoy spoke with languid sleaze. “I like them tied. I like a submissive with their ankles bound. It allows for easier penetration. He stroked the hypo some more as the small undernourished scrote lay on the floor shouting obscenities.
“You fucker, what the fuck is going on here? I'm not just some fucking drone who knows nothing. I got qualifications. Five years at KhanCorp, my boss will bend you over and screw you right in the ass.”
“That right? He'll have to step over you to get to me.”
“Fuck you!” He spat at the doctor's boots.
“You don't wanna do that son, I'm real particular 'bout my boots. That, my boy, was a mistake, but thanks for the DNA sample. Collecting them's a hobby of mine.” Spock grabbed the man's arms and McCoy knelt, touching the hypo to the operator's neck again, using it to trace the line of the vein. “And, for the record? I don't much care for your language; shows a lack of imagination.”
McCoy never wore shoes, shoes were for patsies. His boots were old, ten years old and soft through wear, their uppers polished to a patent-black. Each night as he unlaced his support, he gave thanks to the unknown cobbler. Without his feet, what was a detective? A nobody, that's what. Like all of his kind, instead of an Italian leather sole, his boots were rubber-soled. He could gum-shoe around a crime. After he gave up this game, his dream was to get a pair of real leather-soled boots. A sole that hit the pavement with staccato purpose; a sole he could strike a match on. A sole that needed replaced, taken to a shoemaker; a sole that gave someone steady work.
The doctor took the phaser from his suit, and spoke to the sleaze-bag, real quiet. “Give us the codes to put these women's minds back or I will shove my phaser up your asshole, put it on 'slow cook' and fry your innards from the inside out. Wanna be shitting into a bag for the rest of your life for the minimum wage that suppurating boil Khan gives you? 'Coz on your wages you can't afford the re-constructive surgery. It's a sick world here boy, where essential, life-threatening surgery costs a hundred times as much as cosmetic falderals. Do it now or I will maim you where you lie. But not before I get my Vulcan associate to hack into your head.”
McCoy dropped lower and put his lips to the operator's ear, so only the two of them could hear his whispered words.
“He can enter your thoughts like a man crushing the soft pulp of a ripe Georgia peach to get to the kernel. He doesn't want to soil his mind, but he can just about tolerate it, if the rewards are sufficient. The needs of the many, and all that jazz.”
McCoy pocketed the hypo and turned his attention to the phaser, talking at normal volume. “I came by a new toy today, it's enlightening. Made your friend here 'see the light'. Come on, let's ask him if he thinks you should cooperate with your priest.” Panicked squealing came from behind the orderly's gag, accompanied by fierce head-nodding.
“See, he thinks you should. Or I could unwrap his bandages and show you our handiwork, if that would help you come to a decision.” More squealing followed, and the injured man shook his head with violence.
“See? The wounds inflicted even make me sick, and I used to be a doctor. Makes me good at persuasion.” Bones tipped Spock a nod, and the Vulcan lifted the greasy kid by his arms, righting him on the chair, and put one hand on the boy's shoulder, near to the neck-pinch nerve.
“The Vulcan here can sense your intentions. One false move and he'll knock you out, rummage about in your brain and find out how to fix these patients himself, in the process finding out all your darkest secrets and desires. If he's careless, tramples rather than tiptoes, I can't guess at your prognosis.”
“That's against Vulcan ethics, he won't do it.” Still defiant, the geek gritted his jaw.
“He's half-Vulcan, he's got leeway.” Easy as shooting fish in a barrel, underworld scum believed any old lie; they judged everyone by their own standards.
With his face now purple and thunderous, the operator rattled out some numbers to the computer. McCoy and Spock watched as two progress bars crept along the display.
Transferring Cortical Storage to Bio-Unit >> client 023a, Human, Female, 23.4 Terran years.
Transferring Cortical Storage to Bio-Unit >> client 041, Orion, Female, 33.7 Terran years.
“How long will it take?” Spock's first words uttered to the operator caused his face to blanch, giving his mottled face even more of a salami-appearance.
“It's about four petabytes per CSU, so less than twenty minutes.” McCoy detected a self-satisfied tone to the answer, that he knew something a Vulcan didn't. If McCoy wasn't the law he'd have been tempted to give the goon a phaser-whipping.
Twenty minutes to restore two women's lives? The doctor was impressed and sickened. They waited in silence, watching the progress of the uploads. Sixteen minutes in, Spock yanked the operator and his chair back. “I would appreciate, sir, if you did not attempt to engage the emergency call below your console.”
Bones' restraint was tissue-thin. “Better watch you don't accidentally fall over in that chair and do yourself a critical injury.”
“You wouldn't dare!” The geek was all bravado.
“You're right, I didn't say it would be me. I leave all the messy stuff to the Police Department. They get off on a bit of casual brutality.” Bones shook his head, fed up. “I've had it here. Let's leave this to the real detectives.”
McCoy flipped his communicator and summoned the NGPD.
~~intermission~~
Nineteen: The morning sun shines lightly on
It was both very late, and very early. The team (minus their engineer) sat on the comfy couches in the good office all, including the Vulcan and the teenager, cradling large glasses of bourbon. Chekov sat on an armchair with Porthos cradled in his lap, still sleeping off his surgery. Observing the motley crew, Uhura thought they looked like survivors of a shuttle crash. Even Spock was in disarray, his tie loosened and his waistcoat unbuttoned. Christine's eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and she sat close to Charlene who was already two whiskies down; she'd had Scotty's share.
Bones was low in his seat, iron filings of a beard dusting his chin. “Well, the two women are a police matter now, we reunited them with their wits, thanks to the help of an unfriendly computer operator and Charlie's downright illegal phaser. We'll have to tell SI and NGPD the phaser malfunctioned, if they ask.”
Gazing into the bottom of his glass, Chekov was morose. “It is all gone, nothing, no proof, if it ever existed. Uhura and I have searched everything from the codes Mister Spock transferred to us.”
“That's not quite true, Chekov. We still have the ghost records from the TransForm clinic.” Uhura leant over and touched Chekov's arm but he shook his head.
“It's tough luck, son. I should have known my disconnection of Scotty triggered some kinda fail-safe, a self-destruct. We were lucky it didn't wipe the cortical storage units.”
“Although,” Spock swirled the liquid in his glass, holding it up to the light, “it is entirely possible that KhanCorp kept paper records.”
“Well,” McCoy slumped further, “if they did, someone will have put a match to them by now, and the DA will want us to prove we didn't fabricate the ghost records to pin a bum rap on Khan. Anyway, no matter how this turns out, I'm proud of you all, and I've put a slip in to Jim for a commendation for Porthos. Other animals get bravery awards, why not him? We saved two women's lives tonight, don't forget it.” Looking older than his forty years, Bones wiped an eye. “Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going to my bunk.”
**
Chekov asked Charlie permission to take Porthos, and another bourbon, to bed with him and she granted it; he looked done in, poor kid. Christine said she'd leave her door unlocked for whatever Charlie decided so they said their good nights, leaving her alone in the office with Uhura and Spock, sensitive to her status as a spare part. Spock was looking at Uhura with such expectation that it seemed easier to go up and face Scotty than to sit one more minute among the fog of tension, so she downed the remains of her drink and exited.
Outside her apartment door, she put her hand on the knob, fired up by the booze. It was sunrise, and for New Glasgow, a particularly bright one. On little cat feet, she crossed the sitting room and opened the liquor cabinet. A bottle of Arran fifty-year-old Scotch, matured in port barrels, sat pride of place. It was a gift to Scotty from a grateful client with a very expensive broken-down shuttle car, and the seal wasn't even cracked. She set it on the little table beside the couch, along with a glass. She would need it later.
In common with the whole team, she hated the climate on New Glasgow. It was the job, her friends and her lover that kept her going, and kept the secret off her shoulders a little. But now the cat was out of the bag, she wasn't sure where she stood with her lover, and her dearest friendship, with Christine, was only just out of the ICU. Perhaps, after all, she only had her own self to rely on.
In the kitchenette she rummaged for scissors, then moved to the small bathroom.
Standing at the mirror, she grasped her puff of hair and cut through it below the tie. Both the tie and the hair went in the trash.
Quick, deliberate snips cut the rest away, leaving her with the rough-shorn skull of a hustler street-urchin, then she picked up Scotty's keratin-trimmer and disintegrated what was left in slow, even strokes.
One good thing about the lack of sunlight on this dull planet was that her scalp and face were similar in tone. Before leaving the bathroom, she swept seven bottles of hair product into the waste-basket onto her hair.
From now on, Charlene Masters would be taking the simple approach to life. She was what she was, and if people needed persuading, it was not her concern. As McCoy said, her new body was her parents' risk to take, and not her weight to bear. At seventeen, she’d begun to blend into the background with her boy's clothes, shoes and hats. No more; her masculine clothes would accentuate her femininity, not disguise it.
A year-old birthday gift from Scotty sat on the top of her jewellery box; pearl earrings the size of an old Euro coin, rarely worn. Until today, she'd thought them too extravagant, for special occasions only. Now she fitted them into her ears and fastened them with a snap, uncorked the Arran and poured herself two generous fingers. The morning sun shone lightly on her slight form, as she sat back in an armchair pulled up to the bed. Rays glanced off her amber glass and she sipped, savouring the sweet, taste of liquid heat slipping down her throat.
**
Sunshine filtered through his half-closed lids; it was a novelty here all right. Scotty felt energised for a brief moment, until he realised where he was, and how he had got there. In the night, Christine left him in the recovery position, but now he was lying on his back, a sign he'd been able to move himself. He gave the toes of one foot a tentative wiggle and joy flooded his heart when his extremities obeyed him, followed by shame as he thought of the word extremities, and his interaction with the nurse. If he hadn't been such a dobber he wouldn't have got into the first mess, that got him into the second mess, that ended up with him here, alone in bed while Charlie slept downstairs.
Because of his master's petulance, Porthos had been abused, and would be the recipient of the best treats credits could buy. Moisture came to his eyes as he thought of his pet's devotion; Scotty could give him an old tennis ball inside a holey sock and he'd wag his tail in excitement like it was the best present in the whole wide world. A man could learn a lot from his dog. Blinking the tears away, he rolled over to look at the bedside clock, and got a hell of a shock to see Charlie in a chair by the bed, fast asleep with her hand round a glass of whisky. He leaned over and eased the glass from her grasp. She didn't stir; had she watched over him all night? No, she couldn't have, Christine and McCoy were there and he didn't see her then.
In the sunlight, her scalp glowed with the sheen of the pearls in her ears and he smiled; he'd always wondered what she would look like bald. It wasn't such a big leap since her usual tight hairstyle was so flat to her skull. Thick black eyelashes curled on her cheeks and Scotty felt his eyes sting yet again; she was so perfect he wondered if he was dreaming, and propped himself up on an elbow just to watch her for a bit. As he sipped the whisky - Gorn, whatever it was it was good stuff - his stomach became lead. All he had was “sorry”, and perhaps it wouldn't be enough.
Scotty set the glass on the bedside table and sat up.
“Gah!” He'd forgotten about Christine's Sanitary Assistance Device. A burning spike caused his bladder to contract and he buried his fists in his eye sockets, trying not to say the worst words he could think of, more from the humiliation than the pain. Surgical glue nipped the delicate skin on a part of his anatomy that he never again wanted to name in the same sentence as 'surgical glue'.
“Scotty, what's wrong?” Charlene must have been wakened by his squawk, and he felt her small fingers close around his wrists to prise his hands away.
He stammered, finding his voice once more, after many hours, “I-I love you, and you look beautiful.” Slim arms went about his neck and he felt the new sensation of her bald head against his cheek.
“You great Scottish eejit, you didn't hear my big speech, and I had one all prepared.”
“'Sorry, 's all right, don't talk,” he buried his nose in her shoulder, euphoric at the smell of her perfume once more, amazed it could be such a tangible thing, “don't talk.”
~~intermission~~
Twenty: He led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd
“Crimson Crest is on the funny farm! Had to be taken away by the men in white coats!” Mudd was gleeful on the end of Uhura's communicator. “She's in a padded room, gibbering like a Ferengi caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the dear unfortunate.”
“Harcourt Fenton Mudd! That's not very sympathetic!” Uhura wasn't convinced his attachment to her was a good thing, but it was helpful.
“Oh my dear deluded girl, the first person who says they don't have a prurient interest is a liar. Funny how I can never find anyone who reads the Herald Enquirer and yet, mysteriously, its sales figures tell me that almost half the population of New Glasgow subscribes to its site.”
“What do they say is wrong with Crimson, Mister Mudd?”
“The poor thing thinks she is not residing in her own body! They’ve tested her against her DNA records and she most certainly is. I blame this quest for fame. It has sent the tragic girl quite mad: 'Oh heavens, is't possible a young maid's wits/Should be as mortal as an old man's life?' I hope to get an exclusive interview with her.”
“’Hamlet’, Harry? 'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.' Perhaps, like Ophelia, Crimson has been driven to the brink by the treatment of others.”
“You my dear Uhura, are altogether too, too sentimental.”
**
In her head, her voice sounded high; the dampening effects of her skull did not conspire to bring it down an octave or two.
She hardly remembered having a voice at all; she’d learned to speak with her hands. Having speech all of a sudden, vibrations and reverberations in your head that weren't there before, was terrifying. It sounded like a construction worker's drill. She used her hands in a dance, her expression entirely through them, until the psychologist came to her and told her to stop, to try to use her voice. Instead of her beautiful, elegant, manicured hands she used this weird, croaking, screeching mouth. A mouth she ate, kissed and smiled with.
How could these vulgar, jarring noises come from a mouth that savoured the brine of Dublin Bay prawns, and the heat, spice and prickle of Cardassian fire ants? A friend from Terra had once made fried Orion star-fruit with chili flakes, lime and butter, and she could taste it yet. On her tongue, she devoured the tingle, temperature and taste of all those who sought comfort with her, the hot-penny flesh of Vulcans, the salt-iron of humans, and the familiar bland flavour of her fellow Orions.
By her own choice she wore the collar, funny how it made her sound like a priest, and indeed, many did kneel before her to confess, but she was free. Much as a woman who wished to deflect unwanted suitors wore a fake wedding ring, her collar was her shield and protection.
Ungrateful, that's what she felt. Her voice, if this screeching could be called that, was restored, and yet she wished it taken from her again. Without a voice, people listened, taking time to allow her to sign, or write. Now she was one voice in a cacophony, talked over in the rush by those eager to hear only their own voices.
Only one man understood. He returned her life to her, and she asked him to take back her voice. It was less drastic, what he did. He blocked a vital neural pathway. He could unblock the path, if she wished it. She would never wish it. It would be restored over her cold, dead hands.
**
One woman was devastated, one delighted. Starfleet psychiatrists were on standby to welcome Mandy Anders (for that was her name) back to the land of the living with her new body. Instead of terror, they found joy, instead of horror, happiness, and the pronouncement that she'd “got a million credits worth of kick-ass surgery for free!”
“Gorn, I thought I'd found a good 'un in that bar, so when he offered me a 'pick-me-up', I reckoned it was some kinda upper. Then I woke up like this! I'm so darned beautiful, I could jest cry.” Her moist, full lips trembled at her good fortune.
Felicity Angel wasn't so happy. Sadly for Angel, her doppelgänger turned to a professional lookalike agency and was earning thousands of credits as a 'retro'; a ten-years-younger reminder of her fading looks. But Angel was rich enough to stop acting, and so she started up two new political lobbying organisations called the Body Copyright Association, and the Natural Body Foundation, there being none so righteous as the converted. Of course, when questioned by the police, she knew nothing, and the cost of her lawyer allowed her to evade a lie detector test, due to her state of extreme trauma.
Crimson Crest was not so lucky. She sits yet in a psychiatric facility, completely sane, but unheeded. Gaila and Jim visit as much as they can; their guilt cannot allow them to do otherwise. McCoy visits every few weeks and tells her he is fighting to get proof. The guards taunt her, tell her the doctor is playing along with her Depersonalisation disorder. And the one thing that truly belongs to Crimson - her mind - they tell her it has been lost.
~~intermission~~
Twenty-one: Epilogue
It was early, red fingers of dawn were still feeling their way through the clouds, and Christine expected to be the first person in the office, but she was wrong. There at his desk sat the Kid, hair on end, tie askew and with an illegal number of empty coffee cups strewn about. It begged a question, “What are you up to, Chekov?”
“I have hacked into the New Glasgow IRS system.” The heels of his palms went to his eyes and rubbed hard, he looked about twelve years old, going on forty.
“Yeah? Trying to dodge your taxes, Kid?” Without thinking, Christine smoothed down his hair and he batted her hand away.
“I wish to, but no. It is very enlightening, that is all.”
“What is? What's enlightening?” Christine flicked - distracted - through the messages on her Padd.
The Kid was as wily as she'd ever seen him, a vulpine grin spreading over his features. “Looking through Mayor Khan's tax returns. He owns such big companies but his tax bill is very advantageous. Now that is wery enlightening.”
~~ The End ~~
Awesome fanmix With our Rain Washed Histories by
i_am_32_flavors
Beautiful character art by
theoreticalpixy
[ Part 1-3] [ Part 4-6] [ Part 7-9] [ Part 10-12] [ Part 13-15] [ Part 16-17] [ Part 18-end]
Chapel and Priest, Limited Copyright, spockchick 2011. Please do not reproduce or distribute without the author's permission. The characters of Crimson Crest and Hawkins © the author
At least Scotty's bizarre re-calibration of Charlie's phaser was good for something. Although he balked at using it, when the orderly awakened, it made a powerful persuader. They couldn't leave without finding out if these two women's memories, thoughts and sense of self were merely parked somewhere, or destroyed forever.
He couldn't stand the sight of the orderly's mutilated hand; it put him in mind of a ghost train holo he took Joanna to as a kid. She screamed enough to bust his eardrums. Why is it that the scream of a ten-year-old girl is the loudest sound on the planet? Instead of looking at the freak show, he bandaged it, handling the white bone stumps like glass. Perhaps the guy was poor, looking for any job; not a low-down type. Among all this obscenity, he wanted to believe that.
They gagged and tied him, and propped his bulk up against a wall opposite a utilitarian chair, where McCoy sat. A flutter of eyelids meant their captive was waking. For a second he looked just like he'd woken in a feather bed at the Ritz then, as his eyesight and memory began to clear, he thrashed; a hog, tied.
“Wouldn't do that if I was you. Likely to give yourself an injury. You don't want to upset my associate here.” The statue that was Spock stood upright to the side of the doctor's chair, hands clasped behind his back, but one eyebrow twitched, a tiny gesture that was all Spock. McCoy always thought the hands behind back stance was menacing, not calm. A man who in extreme danger doesn't even ready his stance? A fool would think him unprepared, and they would remember that thought later, as they rubbed their aching neck, having lost several hours.
Dirty and underhand as it was, he took his own phaser from his waistband - it looked the same as Charlie's - how was the sap to know? A pained whimper reverberated around the hard medical surfaces of the ward. Not making eye contact with the patsy, McCoy stroked the phaser and looked over the guy's shoulder to the wall, then put on his discarded hat. “I got a name, you know.You wanna hear it?”
A noise that could have been yes or no echoed about the room.
“They call me The Priest. You know why? Nope? You don't? Hell, I'll tell ya anyway.” Bones clipped the phaser to the waistband of his suit trousers, lowered his head and clasped his hands over his lap, quiet as if in prayer. After a few meditative breaths his head rose, lifted by slow puppet-strings, and he glared at their captive from beneath the rim of the Fedora.
“Every soul who comes to me?” McCoy stood, bent in front of the orderly and placed his splayed hand on the crown of the man's head in a benediction. “By sunrise, they’ve confessed their sins.”
McCoy stretched, brought a wrist in front of his face, and regarded his watch, his speech deliberate. “And sunrise is only a few hours away, my son.”
Tonight he was angry enough to be, not just inhabit, the part he often played. “My Vulcan friend here, well, he'll remove your gag. If you scream, or make any move we're not happy with, I can trim your body-parts to my heart's content. Matter of fact, my weapon can be calibrated to disintegrate muscle, but not blood vessels. You can watch your blood goin’ around in your veins. Of course, without musculature to support them, the view will only last a few seconds.” For effect, he revealed the phaser once more, pushing the flap of his jacket away from his thigh.
With a flick of Spock's wrist, the gag was off. Caught in the Vulcan's blank stare, the orderly pissed his pants. A shallow pool of liquid blossomed on the hard floor. This was good; McCoy hoped this meant he was just naive, dragged into this racket by poverty and unemployment.
“These two women,” he jerked his head to the beds, “are their wiped minds still here? Can you restore them?”
A stuttering nod was the answer.
“What about the others? The other fifteen? We know all about them.” It was a gamble, but this guy didn't look like he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Nothing, the sap stayed quiet. McCoy aimed the phaser just south of the man's foot, and fired. On stun, it didn't even melt the floor covering, but the reaction was swift. The orderly squealed and drew his knees up to his chest. A trickle of sweat made its way down the side of his flushed face.
“Redistributed, their minds replaced.”
“What in hell does redistributed mean?” Bones leaned close to the man's face, baring his teeth.
“Put back - b-back in society with a different identity.”
“What? Why?” If this wasn't the darned strangest thing McCoy ever heard.
With his eyes trained on the phaser, the orderly started singing like a canary. “P-protection racket, kinda.”
“Excuse me? You whistlin' Dixie, boy?”
“Are you the police? What's g-g-gonna happen to me?”
“Nope, I'm a PI. Got a few clients, friends of the disappeared. Police aren't making much headway, got friends there too.” McCoy removed the phaser from his waistband and placed it in his lap. “Now if you're a good boy and tell us what we want to know, we'll put a nice word in for you with NGPD. Now, spill, tell us all about this protection racket.”
**
He shook, sweaty and rumpled like an old sheet, and the bright lights of the ward gave his face a blue-grey cast. Between each slothful sentence, he wheezed in an ailing breath. “KhanCorp was offering special clients a 'deal'. Move their consciousness to a low-maintenance, slow-ageing new shell. They got a brand new bio-body at knock-down prices. Some in Khan's inner circle thought it was like a 'gift', for being good customers, ya know? Instead of putting them in a new body, we kidnapped lookalikes, re-tooled their DNA, and gave them surgery to look like a better or younger version of the client, whatever they wanted.”
The orderly raised the side of his mouth in a sneer, shaking his head. “Who'd think they could get a bio-body for that dough, huh? You flatter these celebrities or wannabes, whatever, and they believe any old crap. Anything to get in with the politicians. The rich, famous and vain sure love politics.”
With the roll of a fat baby in a wet diaper, the man shifted position, still wheezing; “Then, Khan calls the client and asks for protection money. He don't say it like that of course, more like 'a donation for my political campaign.' Makes out like there's been some kinda leak in security, if they give to his party, he'll protect their ass, make sure they don't get arrested.”
It was a tale as tall as JT's building, but this dope looked like he couldn't spin one, so it was likely true. McCoy still couldn't fill in the blanks. “So, you're saying there's a bunch of beings out there who think they've been transferred into a new illegal bio-body, but they are just in some poor kidnapped bastard's real body?”
“Yeah, they'll believe it, 'till their ass starts to go south, or they get some disease. They think they're immune to STDs, ha!”
“So why didn't you just put the clients under, operate to make them look younger and pretend they'd been put into a new bio-body?”
Their captive hacked out a laugh. “Tried that once, client wanted to know where his old body was and cottoned on to the racket. A smart customer wants to see the old parts that get replaced when an engineer works on his vehicle, don't he?”
“What happened to him? The guy who rumbled you?”
“We wiped the last weeks of his memory, planted a few fake stories in the Enquirer about a drug habit, roughed him up some and pumped him full of RiDi. Police found him 'tired and emotional' in a private suite in the Orion Fetish Club on Renfield. He didn't know if it was New York or New Year. Khan paid for his rehab -- he thinks the sun shines out of the boss' ass now. He don't remember nothin' about any bio-body.”
Could this really be true? McCoy was sure Khan was rich as Croesus. This wasn't the full reveal, not by a country mile. “Seems a bit elaborate just to get campaign donations. Doesn't seem like Khan would be that desperate.”
A high-pitched choo-choo whistle of a laugh preceded the answer, and McCoy's fingers twitched in an urge to de-rail it with his phaser. “Khan don't care about donations. He's weedin' out the faithful, those that are calm are noted in his little black book, the ones that panic, well they get put in another column. It's a kinda psychological experiment, see how they hold under pressure.”
Still, the whole thing was odd, you had to be a serious sociopath to go to these lengths. “Good Gorn man, there must be more to it than this, you don't just kidnap folks off the street and wipe their minds for an experiment.”
The stool pigeon shrugged his round, sloping shoulders. “He hates crawlers, and he likes to pull the legs off bugs. He's bored, he's doin' it for fun. He does it, because he can.”
Ants crawled over his skin, and Bones rubbed the back of his neck. He was sweating, and groped about in the background anxieties of his mind to find out why. “Why’re you so talky about this?”
“I wanted to make it so the self-destruct you activated when you disconnected your guy over there got time to work. When the women's minds are restored, that'll finish it, you got nothin'.” A sinister clown's smile spread on the man's face.
McCoy was sick to his stomach. He'd made an error. Would Jim have made a tactical screw-up like this? He didn't have time to think about it, and it took all he had not to smash a clenched fist into the clown's face -- the sound of splintering bone would have been a welcome release-valve. Instead, he nodded to Spock.
“I've heard enough, put his gag back on, we gotta move it.”
**
Spock dragged the orderly through to the other side of the glass wall, leaving a damp streak on the floor, sat him upright, then moved to the console and punched controls with lightning reflexes. “The orderly was correct in his assessment; there is nothing on this system except two large data files, primed for biological transfer. They appear to consist of human thought patterns and memories. I am unable to duplicate them, and if we return these minds, this entire system will be a husk also, barren of information, merely a data-free operating system. It is a particularly nasty trap.”
“Are you saying we've got no choice? We can't keep a copy of the files for proof?” Never in his life would he ever make a pig's ear like this again.
It was as if Spock read his mind. “Mister Priest, I could see nothing to indicate that the medical monitoring equipment was connected to their main computer's data files. If there is fault, it is mine. I am, after all, New Glasgow's top computer expert.”
Furious with himself, McCoy's voice was curt and he heard his accent thicken. “I'll ignore that self-assessment of your talents, but I appreciate the sentiment. What now?”
“I need codes to progress this operation. I would rather we obtained them in the conventional manner.”
Behind the console slumped the geek who'd suffered at the Vulcan's neck-pinch. The guy had a face like a slice of salami, red and mottled. Stringy, greasy hair hung over his ears and Bones wondered why a boy who worked for a cosmetic surgery company was allowed to look that way. Not front of the house, he supposed. Rummaging through the untidy office, McCoy found an unused cable and bound the computer operator's ankles to his chair. From his suit pocket, he drew a glinting hypo and plunged it into the boy's jugular with force, then kicked the chair over on its wheels, so the geek became a beetle on his back.
Stroking the hypo, he stood over the computer operator, whose eyelids flickered as he awoke, and when the lids rose, McCoy spoke with languid sleaze. “I like them tied. I like a submissive with their ankles bound. It allows for easier penetration. He stroked the hypo some more as the small undernourished scrote lay on the floor shouting obscenities.
“You fucker, what the fuck is going on here? I'm not just some fucking drone who knows nothing. I got qualifications. Five years at KhanCorp, my boss will bend you over and screw you right in the ass.”
“That right? He'll have to step over you to get to me.”
“Fuck you!” He spat at the doctor's boots.
“You don't wanna do that son, I'm real particular 'bout my boots. That, my boy, was a mistake, but thanks for the DNA sample. Collecting them's a hobby of mine.” Spock grabbed the man's arms and McCoy knelt, touching the hypo to the operator's neck again, using it to trace the line of the vein. “And, for the record? I don't much care for your language; shows a lack of imagination.”
McCoy never wore shoes, shoes were for patsies. His boots were old, ten years old and soft through wear, their uppers polished to a patent-black. Each night as he unlaced his support, he gave thanks to the unknown cobbler. Without his feet, what was a detective? A nobody, that's what. Like all of his kind, instead of an Italian leather sole, his boots were rubber-soled. He could gum-shoe around a crime. After he gave up this game, his dream was to get a pair of real leather-soled boots. A sole that hit the pavement with staccato purpose; a sole he could strike a match on. A sole that needed replaced, taken to a shoemaker; a sole that gave someone steady work.
The doctor took the phaser from his suit, and spoke to the sleaze-bag, real quiet. “Give us the codes to put these women's minds back or I will shove my phaser up your asshole, put it on 'slow cook' and fry your innards from the inside out. Wanna be shitting into a bag for the rest of your life for the minimum wage that suppurating boil Khan gives you? 'Coz on your wages you can't afford the re-constructive surgery. It's a sick world here boy, where essential, life-threatening surgery costs a hundred times as much as cosmetic falderals. Do it now or I will maim you where you lie. But not before I get my Vulcan associate to hack into your head.”
McCoy dropped lower and put his lips to the operator's ear, so only the two of them could hear his whispered words.
“He can enter your thoughts like a man crushing the soft pulp of a ripe Georgia peach to get to the kernel. He doesn't want to soil his mind, but he can just about tolerate it, if the rewards are sufficient. The needs of the many, and all that jazz.”
McCoy pocketed the hypo and turned his attention to the phaser, talking at normal volume. “I came by a new toy today, it's enlightening. Made your friend here 'see the light'. Come on, let's ask him if he thinks you should cooperate with your priest.” Panicked squealing came from behind the orderly's gag, accompanied by fierce head-nodding.
“See, he thinks you should. Or I could unwrap his bandages and show you our handiwork, if that would help you come to a decision.” More squealing followed, and the injured man shook his head with violence.
“See? The wounds inflicted even make me sick, and I used to be a doctor. Makes me good at persuasion.” Bones tipped Spock a nod, and the Vulcan lifted the greasy kid by his arms, righting him on the chair, and put one hand on the boy's shoulder, near to the neck-pinch nerve.
“The Vulcan here can sense your intentions. One false move and he'll knock you out, rummage about in your brain and find out how to fix these patients himself, in the process finding out all your darkest secrets and desires. If he's careless, tramples rather than tiptoes, I can't guess at your prognosis.”
“That's against Vulcan ethics, he won't do it.” Still defiant, the geek gritted his jaw.
“He's half-Vulcan, he's got leeway.” Easy as shooting fish in a barrel, underworld scum believed any old lie; they judged everyone by their own standards.
With his face now purple and thunderous, the operator rattled out some numbers to the computer. McCoy and Spock watched as two progress bars crept along the display.
Transferring Cortical Storage to Bio-Unit >> client 023a, Human, Female, 23.4 Terran years.
Transferring Cortical Storage to Bio-Unit >> client 041, Orion, Female, 33.7 Terran years.
“How long will it take?” Spock's first words uttered to the operator caused his face to blanch, giving his mottled face even more of a salami-appearance.
“It's about four petabytes per CSU, so less than twenty minutes.” McCoy detected a self-satisfied tone to the answer, that he knew something a Vulcan didn't. If McCoy wasn't the law he'd have been tempted to give the goon a phaser-whipping.
Twenty minutes to restore two women's lives? The doctor was impressed and sickened. They waited in silence, watching the progress of the uploads. Sixteen minutes in, Spock yanked the operator and his chair back. “I would appreciate, sir, if you did not attempt to engage the emergency call below your console.”
Bones' restraint was tissue-thin. “Better watch you don't accidentally fall over in that chair and do yourself a critical injury.”
“You wouldn't dare!” The geek was all bravado.
“You're right, I didn't say it would be me. I leave all the messy stuff to the Police Department. They get off on a bit of casual brutality.” Bones shook his head, fed up. “I've had it here. Let's leave this to the real detectives.”
McCoy flipped his communicator and summoned the NGPD.
~~intermission~~
Nineteen: The morning sun shines lightly on
It was both very late, and very early. The team (minus their engineer) sat on the comfy couches in the good office all, including the Vulcan and the teenager, cradling large glasses of bourbon. Chekov sat on an armchair with Porthos cradled in his lap, still sleeping off his surgery. Observing the motley crew, Uhura thought they looked like survivors of a shuttle crash. Even Spock was in disarray, his tie loosened and his waistcoat unbuttoned. Christine's eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and she sat close to Charlene who was already two whiskies down; she'd had Scotty's share.
Bones was low in his seat, iron filings of a beard dusting his chin. “Well, the two women are a police matter now, we reunited them with their wits, thanks to the help of an unfriendly computer operator and Charlie's downright illegal phaser. We'll have to tell SI and NGPD the phaser malfunctioned, if they ask.”
Gazing into the bottom of his glass, Chekov was morose. “It is all gone, nothing, no proof, if it ever existed. Uhura and I have searched everything from the codes Mister Spock transferred to us.”
“That's not quite true, Chekov. We still have the ghost records from the TransForm clinic.” Uhura leant over and touched Chekov's arm but he shook his head.
“It's tough luck, son. I should have known my disconnection of Scotty triggered some kinda fail-safe, a self-destruct. We were lucky it didn't wipe the cortical storage units.”
“Although,” Spock swirled the liquid in his glass, holding it up to the light, “it is entirely possible that KhanCorp kept paper records.”
“Well,” McCoy slumped further, “if they did, someone will have put a match to them by now, and the DA will want us to prove we didn't fabricate the ghost records to pin a bum rap on Khan. Anyway, no matter how this turns out, I'm proud of you all, and I've put a slip in to Jim for a commendation for Porthos. Other animals get bravery awards, why not him? We saved two women's lives tonight, don't forget it.” Looking older than his forty years, Bones wiped an eye. “Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going to my bunk.”
**
Chekov asked Charlie permission to take Porthos, and another bourbon, to bed with him and she granted it; he looked done in, poor kid. Christine said she'd leave her door unlocked for whatever Charlie decided so they said their good nights, leaving her alone in the office with Uhura and Spock, sensitive to her status as a spare part. Spock was looking at Uhura with such expectation that it seemed easier to go up and face Scotty than to sit one more minute among the fog of tension, so she downed the remains of her drink and exited.
Outside her apartment door, she put her hand on the knob, fired up by the booze. It was sunrise, and for New Glasgow, a particularly bright one. On little cat feet, she crossed the sitting room and opened the liquor cabinet. A bottle of Arran fifty-year-old Scotch, matured in port barrels, sat pride of place. It was a gift to Scotty from a grateful client with a very expensive broken-down shuttle car, and the seal wasn't even cracked. She set it on the little table beside the couch, along with a glass. She would need it later.
In common with the whole team, she hated the climate on New Glasgow. It was the job, her friends and her lover that kept her going, and kept the secret off her shoulders a little. But now the cat was out of the bag, she wasn't sure where she stood with her lover, and her dearest friendship, with Christine, was only just out of the ICU. Perhaps, after all, she only had her own self to rely on.
In the kitchenette she rummaged for scissors, then moved to the small bathroom.
Standing at the mirror, she grasped her puff of hair and cut through it below the tie. Both the tie and the hair went in the trash.
Quick, deliberate snips cut the rest away, leaving her with the rough-shorn skull of a hustler street-urchin, then she picked up Scotty's keratin-trimmer and disintegrated what was left in slow, even strokes.
One good thing about the lack of sunlight on this dull planet was that her scalp and face were similar in tone. Before leaving the bathroom, she swept seven bottles of hair product into the waste-basket onto her hair.
From now on, Charlene Masters would be taking the simple approach to life. She was what she was, and if people needed persuading, it was not her concern. As McCoy said, her new body was her parents' risk to take, and not her weight to bear. At seventeen, she’d begun to blend into the background with her boy's clothes, shoes and hats. No more; her masculine clothes would accentuate her femininity, not disguise it.
A year-old birthday gift from Scotty sat on the top of her jewellery box; pearl earrings the size of an old Euro coin, rarely worn. Until today, she'd thought them too extravagant, for special occasions only. Now she fitted them into her ears and fastened them with a snap, uncorked the Arran and poured herself two generous fingers. The morning sun shone lightly on her slight form, as she sat back in an armchair pulled up to the bed. Rays glanced off her amber glass and she sipped, savouring the sweet, taste of liquid heat slipping down her throat.
**
Sunshine filtered through his half-closed lids; it was a novelty here all right. Scotty felt energised for a brief moment, until he realised where he was, and how he had got there. In the night, Christine left him in the recovery position, but now he was lying on his back, a sign he'd been able to move himself. He gave the toes of one foot a tentative wiggle and joy flooded his heart when his extremities obeyed him, followed by shame as he thought of the word extremities, and his interaction with the nurse. If he hadn't been such a dobber he wouldn't have got into the first mess, that got him into the second mess, that ended up with him here, alone in bed while Charlie slept downstairs.
Because of his master's petulance, Porthos had been abused, and would be the recipient of the best treats credits could buy. Moisture came to his eyes as he thought of his pet's devotion; Scotty could give him an old tennis ball inside a holey sock and he'd wag his tail in excitement like it was the best present in the whole wide world. A man could learn a lot from his dog. Blinking the tears away, he rolled over to look at the bedside clock, and got a hell of a shock to see Charlie in a chair by the bed, fast asleep with her hand round a glass of whisky. He leaned over and eased the glass from her grasp. She didn't stir; had she watched over him all night? No, she couldn't have, Christine and McCoy were there and he didn't see her then.
In the sunlight, her scalp glowed with the sheen of the pearls in her ears and he smiled; he'd always wondered what she would look like bald. It wasn't such a big leap since her usual tight hairstyle was so flat to her skull. Thick black eyelashes curled on her cheeks and Scotty felt his eyes sting yet again; she was so perfect he wondered if he was dreaming, and propped himself up on an elbow just to watch her for a bit. As he sipped the whisky - Gorn, whatever it was it was good stuff - his stomach became lead. All he had was “sorry”, and perhaps it wouldn't be enough.
Scotty set the glass on the bedside table and sat up.
“Gah!” He'd forgotten about Christine's Sanitary Assistance Device. A burning spike caused his bladder to contract and he buried his fists in his eye sockets, trying not to say the worst words he could think of, more from the humiliation than the pain. Surgical glue nipped the delicate skin on a part of his anatomy that he never again wanted to name in the same sentence as 'surgical glue'.
“Scotty, what's wrong?” Charlene must have been wakened by his squawk, and he felt her small fingers close around his wrists to prise his hands away.
He stammered, finding his voice once more, after many hours, “I-I love you, and you look beautiful.” Slim arms went about his neck and he felt the new sensation of her bald head against his cheek.
“You great Scottish eejit, you didn't hear my big speech, and I had one all prepared.”
“'Sorry, 's all right, don't talk,” he buried his nose in her shoulder, euphoric at the smell of her perfume once more, amazed it could be such a tangible thing, “don't talk.”
~~intermission~~
Twenty: He led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd
“Crimson Crest is on the funny farm! Had to be taken away by the men in white coats!” Mudd was gleeful on the end of Uhura's communicator. “She's in a padded room, gibbering like a Ferengi caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the dear unfortunate.”
“Harcourt Fenton Mudd! That's not very sympathetic!” Uhura wasn't convinced his attachment to her was a good thing, but it was helpful.
“Oh my dear deluded girl, the first person who says they don't have a prurient interest is a liar. Funny how I can never find anyone who reads the Herald Enquirer and yet, mysteriously, its sales figures tell me that almost half the population of New Glasgow subscribes to its site.”
“What do they say is wrong with Crimson, Mister Mudd?”
“The poor thing thinks she is not residing in her own body! They’ve tested her against her DNA records and she most certainly is. I blame this quest for fame. It has sent the tragic girl quite mad: 'Oh heavens, is't possible a young maid's wits/Should be as mortal as an old man's life?' I hope to get an exclusive interview with her.”
“’Hamlet’, Harry? 'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.' Perhaps, like Ophelia, Crimson has been driven to the brink by the treatment of others.”
“You my dear Uhura, are altogether too, too sentimental.”
**
In her head, her voice sounded high; the dampening effects of her skull did not conspire to bring it down an octave or two.
She hardly remembered having a voice at all; she’d learned to speak with her hands. Having speech all of a sudden, vibrations and reverberations in your head that weren't there before, was terrifying. It sounded like a construction worker's drill. She used her hands in a dance, her expression entirely through them, until the psychologist came to her and told her to stop, to try to use her voice. Instead of her beautiful, elegant, manicured hands she used this weird, croaking, screeching mouth. A mouth she ate, kissed and smiled with.
How could these vulgar, jarring noises come from a mouth that savoured the brine of Dublin Bay prawns, and the heat, spice and prickle of Cardassian fire ants? A friend from Terra had once made fried Orion star-fruit with chili flakes, lime and butter, and she could taste it yet. On her tongue, she devoured the tingle, temperature and taste of all those who sought comfort with her, the hot-penny flesh of Vulcans, the salt-iron of humans, and the familiar bland flavour of her fellow Orions.
By her own choice she wore the collar, funny how it made her sound like a priest, and indeed, many did kneel before her to confess, but she was free. Much as a woman who wished to deflect unwanted suitors wore a fake wedding ring, her collar was her shield and protection.
Ungrateful, that's what she felt. Her voice, if this screeching could be called that, was restored, and yet she wished it taken from her again. Without a voice, people listened, taking time to allow her to sign, or write. Now she was one voice in a cacophony, talked over in the rush by those eager to hear only their own voices.
Only one man understood. He returned her life to her, and she asked him to take back her voice. It was less drastic, what he did. He blocked a vital neural pathway. He could unblock the path, if she wished it. She would never wish it. It would be restored over her cold, dead hands.
**
One woman was devastated, one delighted. Starfleet psychiatrists were on standby to welcome Mandy Anders (for that was her name) back to the land of the living with her new body. Instead of terror, they found joy, instead of horror, happiness, and the pronouncement that she'd “got a million credits worth of kick-ass surgery for free!”
“Gorn, I thought I'd found a good 'un in that bar, so when he offered me a 'pick-me-up', I reckoned it was some kinda upper. Then I woke up like this! I'm so darned beautiful, I could jest cry.” Her moist, full lips trembled at her good fortune.
Felicity Angel wasn't so happy. Sadly for Angel, her doppelgänger turned to a professional lookalike agency and was earning thousands of credits as a 'retro'; a ten-years-younger reminder of her fading looks. But Angel was rich enough to stop acting, and so she started up two new political lobbying organisations called the Body Copyright Association, and the Natural Body Foundation, there being none so righteous as the converted. Of course, when questioned by the police, she knew nothing, and the cost of her lawyer allowed her to evade a lie detector test, due to her state of extreme trauma.
Crimson Crest was not so lucky. She sits yet in a psychiatric facility, completely sane, but unheeded. Gaila and Jim visit as much as they can; their guilt cannot allow them to do otherwise. McCoy visits every few weeks and tells her he is fighting to get proof. The guards taunt her, tell her the doctor is playing along with her Depersonalisation disorder. And the one thing that truly belongs to Crimson - her mind - they tell her it has been lost.
~~intermission~~
Twenty-one: Epilogue
It was early, red fingers of dawn were still feeling their way through the clouds, and Christine expected to be the first person in the office, but she was wrong. There at his desk sat the Kid, hair on end, tie askew and with an illegal number of empty coffee cups strewn about. It begged a question, “What are you up to, Chekov?”
“I have hacked into the New Glasgow IRS system.” The heels of his palms went to his eyes and rubbed hard, he looked about twelve years old, going on forty.
“Yeah? Trying to dodge your taxes, Kid?” Without thinking, Christine smoothed down his hair and he batted her hand away.
“I wish to, but no. It is very enlightening, that is all.”
“What is? What's enlightening?” Christine flicked - distracted - through the messages on her Padd.
The Kid was as wily as she'd ever seen him, a vulpine grin spreading over his features. “Looking through Mayor Khan's tax returns. He owns such big companies but his tax bill is very advantageous. Now that is wery enlightening.”
~~ The End ~~
Awesome fanmix With our Rain Washed Histories by
i_am_32_flavors
Beautiful character art by
theoreticalpixy
[ Part 1-3] [ Part 4-6] [ Part 7-9] [ Part 10-12] [ Part 13-15] [ Part 16-17] [ Part 18-end]
Chapel and Priest, Limited Copyright, spockchick 2011. Please do not reproduce or distribute without the author's permission. The characters of Crimson Crest and Hawkins © the author