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Chakotay swallowed hard. Much as he hated to admit it, Neelix was probably right.

But even as the fragile shards of hope that he was clinging to began to slip from his grasp, Chakotay realized that he still had at least one final card to play in this game.

“What would happen if someone other than the captain placed the Key in its lock?” he asked.

Neelix paused to consider.

“I honestly don’t know. Probably nothing,” he replied.

“Or Phoebe might come back to stop us. If the captain is dead then the next person to touch it should be the new owner.”

“I don’t know, Commander…” Neelix said warily.

But Chakotay felt his spirits reviving as he continued. “If the captain is the only one that can use the Key, and we place it in the lock… it won’t work. And we’ll know she’s still alive. If it works…”

“But won’t that be worse… for all of us?” Neelix asked.

“I doubt very much that Phoebe will let us get that far,” Chakotay said.

The door chimed again. Chakotay called, “Enter,” and B’Elanna strode quickly into the room, Tom and Harry at her heels.

“Chakotay,” she began without waiting for permission to speak, “you have to see this.”

“What is it?” he asked, somewhat unwilling to be derailed from his present line of thinking.

“Tom and Harry…” she said before obviously realizing that in her enthusiasm she was stealing their thunder. She nodded to Tom, who was beaming from ear to ear.

“Lieutenant?” Chakotay directed at Tom.

“We’ve discovered how the tetryon transport system works,” he said.

“Can we use it to leave the array safely?” Chakotay asked.

Things might be falling into place after all. If we can force Phoebe to return the captain, and we can use the array’s transporters to leave…

Chakotay’s mind was racing with new possibilities.

“No,” Harry jumped in.

Chakotay looked between the three of them, crestfallen and curious as to why, based on this statement, they were all still smiling.

“Then what…?” he said, at a loss.

“We can use it to get a lot farther than that,” Harry said.

Tom stepped slightly forward. His bright blue eyes blazing, Tom finally made their enthusiasm clear for Chakotay.

“We can use it to get home, Commander.”

Vorik felt better. As he rested on one of sickbay’s empty biobeds, the crushing weight that had descended so suddenly upon his mind had begun to lift, thanks in large part to the neural inhibitor that the Doctor had placed on his forehead. The Doctor stood beside him, running a medical tricorder around his head and neck and clucking softly at the readings he was seeing.

Taking several slow, measured breaths, Vorik tried to remember exactly what he had been doing before the painful interruption… something about the singularity’s event horizon…

Vorik.

The voice was in his mind. The shooting pain that had so recently brought him to his knees threatened to cripple him again as the Doctor stopped in midscan to ask, “What just happened, Ensign?”

“I don’t know…” he managed through gritted teeth, clutching his head in both of his hands to keep it stabilized atop his neck.

“I’m detecting a drop in neuropeptide production in your limbic system,” the Doctor said, attempting to hide his alarm.

The Doctor quickly coded a hypospray, and with a soft hiss the medication flowed from Vorik’s neck directly into his bloodstream.

A few breaths later, Vorik again seemed calmer.

“Can you tell me when…” the Doctor began.

But Vorik couldn’t hear him. This time, what entered his mind was a fragment of a memory. He was seated across from Tuvok in the mess hall, long after his duty shift had ended. They were playing kal-toh, a Vulcan strategy game where several small pieces were arranged to form a semblance of a sphere, but only the proper alignment of each piece in relation to the others would result in perfection. Tuvok was a master of the game. This particular match had taken place over several days and, if this moment was any indication, would take as many more as Vorik’s dense brain would require. It wasn’t that Tuvok was letting him win, though Vorik knew full well that had Tuvok so desired,