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Thelin followed closely behind Kirk into the Enterprise sickbay. Immediately the combination of scents assailed his senses-sterile antiseptics amid the acrid odor of burned flesh. This was the part of a captaincy that Thelin abhorred. The notion that young men and women under his charge had paid such a price with their bodies, some with their lives, was a difficult concept to accept. But on this day, it was Admiral Kirk who was in command, and who was the first to stop at the end of each bed and look each patient in the eye, silently if not vocally thanking them for their sacrifice.

At the far end of the wing, next to the doors leading to other wards and offices, Doctor McCoy finished giving instructions to one of several nurses dealing with the influx of casualties, and after updating the chart of the patient nearest him, he approached the two men.

“Bones,” Kirk said warmly but solemnly. “How are you holding up?”

McCoy sighed heavily. “Well, it could have been a lot worse, Jim. Mostly burns, a few broken bones…but fewer casualties than what we got when the Reliant attacked us. The kids who got the worst of it are back in the ICW. They’re the ones who were in the shuttlebay when the blast from the Genesis wave compromised the hull.”

Thelin knew enough about the Genesis wave and its effects to fear the worst. “How bad is it, Doctor?”

McCoy nodded his head in the direction of the hallway behind him. “Come see for yourself.”

Kirk and Thelin followed the doctor’s lead, but not before Kirk took a quick gander about the room. “I thought David had said he was coming down here.”

“He’s here,” McCoy said, looking back over his shoulder. “He wanted to spend a few minutes alone in the morgue.”

“The morgue?” Kirk said.

“Well, yeah, the scientists that Khan murdered at the Regula One spacelab are in there. They were David’s colleagues and friends, you know. I’m sure he wanted to pay his respects.”

“Of course,” Kirk replied with embarrassment. “I’m sorry; I should have realized.”

McCoy stopped before the door reading Intensive Care Ward. “It’s all right, Jim. We’ve all got a lot on our minds right now.” The door slid open and he stepped through. Kirk and Thelin closely followed.

On the bed nearest the door laid a young man, the eyes on his cherubic face closed in quiet but uneasy slumber. The readouts on the monitor above him flashed routine status updates and echoed his heartbeat in a steady audible rhythm. McCoy approached his bedside and gripped the seam of the sheet that lay across the patient’s bare torso. “We’re keeping him sedated for now, partly due to the pain, but mostly because he’s not quite prepared to deal with this yet.” He drew down the sheets until the cadet’s full frame lay uncovered.

“Oh my God,” Kirk gasped.

The man’s body appeared strong, chiseled and perfectly healthy from his head and torso down to the lower seams of his undergarments. But about halfway down his thighs, the skin became discolored and increasingly mottled. The muscular tone weakened considerably at about the area where his knees had once been, beyond which the bone structure disappeared, and each of his limbs tapered off into a tentacle-like appendage with a dark leathery surface, the ends gently quivering as they curled up into tight spirals.

“The explosion did this?” Kirk asked with astonishment.

“The wave did it,” McCoy clarified. “It’s like it fundamentally altered his molecular biology, right down to the DNA. His limbs were reconstituted into something much more genetically primitive.”

“Could it be reversed?” Thelin asked.

McCoy blew out his breath and shrugged. “I dunno…Maybe, with genetic modification therapy. It won’t be easy for him, in any event.”

“Dammit, Bones,” Kirk bitterly complained, “I need more than that. What am I supposed to tell this kid’s parents?”

“Calm down, Jim,” McCoy chided him. “I know what you’re feeling, but use your head. It’s not your place to plan out his rehabilitation. He’ll get the best treatment Starfleet has to offer.