Possession - J.M. Dillard [44]
“More than forty crew members. I interact with at least twelve of them on the data I’m working on, and they in turn interact with higher-ranking scientists. The senior officer of our team reports to Commander Data.”
Forty people. Forty Enterprise personnel. How many must those forty interact with?
“Forty people must accomplish a great deal of work.”
She tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile of pride. “We try to, sir.”
“It was very thoughtful of Captain Picard to provide me a liaison with a science background. You no doubt have knowledge of equipment I may need to run certain tests; you might be able to help me accomplish my tasks more efficiently.”
“That’s my job, sir. If you’d provide me a list of what you need, I’ll attend to it immediately.”
He picked up a padd on which he’d jotted a few instructions. “I have been working on just such a list.”
He took another step forward, placed the gray padd securely in her palm—then smoothly slid his fingers around her wrist and held it securely.
At his touch, she tensed and moved to pull away; when he did not easily release his grip, she stared up at him, her eyes wide and questioning.
This time, Skel did not politely avert his gaze, as he had with the empath or the captain or the doctor. This time, he stared intently down into Barbara Evans’s startled eyes.
“Excuse me—sir—” she stammered, clearly frightened, and took a step back. He moved with her, then closed in until he pressed against her body. His free hand moved up, swiftly, before she could react and then he made contact, five fingers finding the neural pathways so quickly that Evans had no time to escape, no time even to call for help.
Inside his head, T’Reth’s voice screamed, NOT HER EYES! YOU MUST NEVER LOOK INTO ANOTHER BEING’S EYES! REMEMBER—
But he had been too long denied, and the other voices would not be stilled so close to their release.
“My mind to your mind,” he intoned, as his piercing gaze, a gaze with which he had never touched another being in eighty years, bore into Ensign Evans’s eyes, as if they could drill their way into her cerebral cortex … deeper, deeper, down into her soul.
Evans grunted a small protest and went limp, although her eyes remained huge, impossibly wide, and transfixed in a horror she could not have imagined before stepping through his doors. The padd clattered softly to the carpet, and Skel caught her small body with his free arm to keep her from falling. He brought that hand up behind her neck, touching the bare skin there, his fingers seeking out neural pathways that were less used, less convenient than the ones on the face. He felt the connection being made, felt the circle completed between the fingertips of his two hands. It was like a jolt of raw pleasure, and a small sound escaped his lips.
This was not like the melds with T’Son. Those were nothing less than torture, as she probed his mind, searching for his secrets. No, his ease of entry into the unsuspecting human woman was a delight.
“And now we are one,” he whispered, as the meld became complete and her mouth moved, parroting the words. Her eyes remained enormous and filled with terror, the only indication that she was aware of what was happening to her.
“You have asked how you may be of service to me, Ensign Evans,” he murmured to her, never once moving his gaze from her captive one. “You may indeed be of great use, which I will explain carefully so that you fully understand. And when you leave me to complete your assignment, then I will visit my colleague, Dr. Tarmud.”
She trembled in his grip like a sapling in a gale, but it was the only visible protest her conscious mind could manage. As he infected her with the entities that had hidden within his brain all these years, the entities that had manipulated him and mastered him from childhood on, only he could hear the silent protest of her mind. It was the same warning voice that had tortured him since that terrible night of his childhood, the night when life had changed for him