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By Root 306 0

by the Doctor, and hunted again. Though Harry had been kept outside the simulations in order to constantly maintain and upgrade the system very much against his will, he had seen most of the holographic environments and the programmed scenarios. In one of the more disturbing simulations, captured prey were hung in cold rooms on large hooks used in Earth’s distant past for meat storage, until almost all of the blood had been drained from their bodies. Slaughterhouses, he remembered. Apart from the absence of the hooks, this room had the same feel. What was most overpowering was the sense of waste.

Harry had broken out into a cold sweat at first sight of the room. As his central nervous system debated the options of either collapse, or hyperventilation to counter the shock that was engulfing him, Harry was slapped back to the present by Tom’s urgent call.

“Harry!”

Tom was kneeling over a body that Harry did not immediately identify as Tuvok. The face and uniform were caked green with blood.

“Get over here and give me a hand,” Tom demanded.

Harry willed his legs to step through the throng of bodies. A med kit lay open beside Tom, who was busy taking readings from a medical tricorder.

“He’s alive… but just barely. His left leg is shattered and he’s suffered second-and third-degree burns over a third of his body, but he’s breathing,” he reported.

“His eyes are open,” Harry observed. “Is he conscious?”

“No,” Tom answered. “His pupils are fixed, but not dilated. We have to get him out of here. Where are the pattern enhancers?”

Harry knelt and opened his rucksack. With shaking hands he began to assemble the three pattern enhancers they had carried with them, in hopes that they would boost the transporter’s signal through the otherwise impenetrable alloy.

Tom tapped his combadge. “Paris to Voyager.”

“This is Rollins. Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

Tom smiled, relieved. “We’ve found Tuvok. We’re almost ready for transport. Stand by.”

Harry completed the perimeter and joined Tom beside Tuvok. He was about to signal for transport when the same troubling thought dawned on him and Tom at the same time.

“Where’s Chakotay?” they asked each other.

“He came through before me,” Harry began.

“You transported here just a few meters away from me. Almost the same spot where I materialized,” Tom said.

“So where did Chakotay end up?” Harry asked, pulling out the tricorder he had just stowed. After a few seconds, he had it. “He’s here. He also transported to this ring.”

“Where?”

“He’s almost five thousand meters from our present position.”

Tom grabbed the tricorder and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “You go with Tuvok. I’ll find Chakotay.”

Harry didn’t like the idea, but there was only one alternative and Tom didn’t look like he was in a mood to discuss it.

“Paris to Voyager… transport Ensign Kim and Lieutenant Tuvok directly to sickbay.”

For a few interminable seconds it looked as if the pattern enhancers would not be sufficient to cut through the array’s natural barrier. Finally, Harry felt the vague tingling sensation that often accompanied the onset of transport. The last sight he saw was Tom collecting his gear before the makeshift morgue vanished.

Chakotay materialized in a darkened corridor. For a moment he worried that the transport had not been successful. Through the dimness ahead, he could make out the junction of the corridor connecting to a well-lit adjacent hall. Reaching automatically for his tricorder, he remembered that Ensign Kim had been carrying all of their equipment aside from Tom’s med kit. He had designated himself as the team’s defender without seriously considering the possibility that they would be separated.

He walked double-quick toward the light, his senses heightened by the very real vulnerability he now felt. When he reached the branches of the hall, a quick glance told him that at the very least, he was now in a different part of the array. He hoped that he was also on the second ring, but his first priority had to be locating the others. Taking careful mental notes of his location, he started