Possession - J.M. Dillard [94]
Curled on his side like an unborn child on the deck, tears streaming from his closed eyes, Picard whispered, “You won’t use me. I won’t let you use me, not the way they did …”
Skel moved closer to the invisible shield, crouching down to sit on his haunches. His entities urged him to demand that Picard look at him; but from time to time they also allowed a modicum of freedom to the true Skel—the struggling, entrapped Vulcan consciousness—so long as it did not interfere with their aims. And the true Skel looked upon the gibbering madman in his cell with compassion and curiosity, and asked softly, “Who, Captain? Who else has so used you?”
“The Borg.” Picard sobbed, trembling with both pain and incandescent pleasure. “They took my mind, my voice, my face, used me as a weapon against my own people … and I will die before I permit that to happen again!”
Skel listened with divided consciousness. The strongest, most overwhelming thought came from the entities: A pity, that Picard had chosen not to cooperate—but the inconvenience would not prove fatal to their plans.
Yet beneath the crushing mental overlay, a small voice whispered: I understand. Given the opportunity, I, too, would choose death …
Yet a third consciousness intervened: one quite separate from Skel’s, yet irretrievably linked.
Skel blinked as, before his very gaze, Picard’s lean muscular form shimmered, wavered, changed. On the other side of the forcefield, the captain’s eyes slowly opened and met Skel’s gaze.
Yet Picard’s eyes were no longer human. As Skel watched, Picard’s soft hazel irises darkened to pure gleaming black, and the brows lifted in decidedly Vulcan cant. The face, too, shifted, from that of an outworlder to that of a Vulcan woman, regally beautiful, yet that beauty was marred as bright green bruises bloomed on her cheeks, forehead, throat.
My son is still inside you, she said in perfect Vulcan, her demeanor calm, contained, despite the pain that convulsed her body. Trapped inside all these years. She paused, her tone changing, warming ever so perceptibly as she addressed Skel directly. I know you are there, my son—waiting for your freedom. Have patience; it will come. I will not desert you… .
Abruptly, he found himself staring into Picard’s sweat-slicked face; the human struggled to his knees. “Who is she?” the captain demanded. “Who is this woman who wears my mother’s face and voice, yet speaks the Vulcan tongue?”
“She is my mother,” Skel said. Though the Vulcan within him might have remained, the entities bade him turn, before either he or his mother had the opportunity to come to the Starfleet captain’s aid again. Skel exited swiftly, with both Picard’s screams—and his mother’s—echoing hollowly in his ears.
Inside the shadowed, dimly lit tunnel adjacent to Jeffries tube sixteen, Deanna sat exhausted between Alexander and Worf, trying to absorb their emotions to distract herself from the entities’ pull. Together, the three watched as Data attached a small round device to his temple; instantly, its single telltale began blinking merrily.
“I am confident I can detect the entities now,” the android assured them. “Dr. Dannelke is correct in her assumption that, before he was infected, Commander La Forge would have been able to see the particular wavelength these entities emit through his VISOR.”
“It was probably the last thing he saw before they got him,” Kyla murmured, her tone grim—but her expression, as she stood beside Data regarding the device at his temple, was one of pure scientific absorption.
“Now, with the adjustment to my vision that she has helped me create,” Data told them, “I will be able to see them as well.”
“A walking, talking entity-detector.” Dannelke presented him to the group with a small flourish.
“Is your normal vision impaired, Data?” Deanna asked.
“Not at all.” The android glanced around the small group. “And I can assure you that none of you are infected.