notes: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I hope this chapter continues to satisfy. Also many thanks to Helen for her amazing beta work.

Part XXI: Nostrum

Chakotay, Tom, Harry, and Tuvok, who had joined them at the door to the brig and insisted he accompany them, stole down the long, curving hallways of the Kaminoan ship, alternately bathed in washed-out green and pale, yellow light. The pattern was indistinguishable to Tom, but he figured there had to be some rhyme of reason to it—either that, or the Kaminoans were less scientific than they seemed.

Under the command of B'Elanna and Mike Ayala, the rest of the crew had been sent to go find and attempt to retake Voyager. "I expect our ship to be ours again by the time we get back with news of the Captain," Chakotay had said by way of farewell. B'Elanna and Mike had both grinned and nodded, seeing in him the spark that had made him the best Maquis captain from their base—the determination, the concrete faith in their performance, and the certainty that they would take the day, all tinged with a hint of wildfire. It had been a long time since either of them had seen that spark; that fire had been tamed by Captain Janeway, for good or ill.

"Where do you think she is?" Tom asked. The four of them were huddled together at a hallway junction bathed in yellow light. The edge of the gun Chakotay carried, liberated from one of the Kaminoan guards, dug into Tom's ribs, making him squirm.

"If they're doing what they said they'd do," Chakotay whispered back, "she's probably in their sickbay."

"And where is that?" Harry asked.

"I have no clue," Chakotay said.

"Logically," Tuvok said, chiming in for the first time since they had left the brig, "assuming the Kaminoans follow the same patterns of logic as most humanoid species, their medical bay will be close to the heart of the ship, as that is the best protected area."

"Makes sense," Tom said. "So where are we in relation to the heart of the ship?"

They made a guess, and struck out in what they hoped was the right direction. Five times they had to duck into a side corridor or double back to avoid a group of Kaminoans walking the halls. Twice Tom thought that they were going to be discovered—but the Kaminoans were oblivious to the intruders, confident as they were in their total triumph.

Idiots, Tom though. Arrogant idiots. He hoped Voyager's crewmembers wouldn't be so blasé with an entire crew of prisoners in their brig.

And then their luck ran out.

They rounded a corner, Chakotay with their single gun still in the lead, and ran straight into a group of Kaminoans. Their chattering stopped at once in stunned surprise, and for a painful second there was only silence, frozen breath, and indecision.

The moment shattered, and panic and adrenaline and desperation crashed through them all, sweeping them up and into frenzied battle.

Chakotay fired once, twice, three times, and the Kaminoan in the lead fell like a stone, shirt smoking gently. Tom watched as the thin wisps vanished into the air. And then the Kaminoans were upon them, swinging knuckled fists, grabbing with long and bony fingers, lashing out with elbows and feet and knees.

Tom ducked a swing and came up on the inside, ramming the Kaminoan attacking him with his head. The Kaminoan grunted and stumbled back, and Tom followed through with a kick to the alien's right knee.

But the Tom's opponent was not so easily defeated. With a surge it regained its feet, and it lashed out at Tom. Tom only just managed to deflect the blow with his forearms, but the blow sent him staggering. He ducked again, feeling the rush of air from another punch dance across his cheek, and tried to dodge sideways, looking for another opening.

Pain exploded in his right temple as the Kaminoan's third fist snuck in from the side. With a gasping grunt, Tom fell to his knees, eyesight swimming, shadows crawling into the corners of his eyes. The ground was hard beneath him, the air cold on his face as he reeled, the world unsteady around him.

Hands fastened into the front of Tom's uniform jacket, and then he felt himself hoisted into the air. There was the breath of movement around him—and then the air was knocked from Tom's lungs as his back smashed into the corridor wall. He gasped and gaped, a fish out of water, unable to breathe, unable to cry out.

More movement. And then the sharp shock of his back slamming into the wall again.

Tom squirmed, fighting the hard hands in his uniform jacket, fighting the shadows oozing over his sight. His fingers scrabbled at one of the Kaminoan's wrists, feeling warm blood pool and streak across his fingertips, and heard the Kaminoan cry out and jerk away.

Tom landed on the floor with a hard thud. He coughed, dragging in pained breath after pained breath, and then staggered to his feet.

The Kaminoan was before him, undamaged fists already clenched and poised to strike. Tom ducked, lifting his arms to shield his face, waiting for a blow that never came.

There was a thud, and then silence. Tom peered around his crossed arms, and found himself staring up at Tuvok standing silent and stalwart as ever. The Kaminoan Tom had been fighting lay at their feet, unconscious.

"Thanks," Tom said, straightening.

"Certainly," Tuvok replied, and then turned away.

Tom took stock of his companions. Chakotay seemed to be the most hurt; he sported a black eye that was already threatening to swell shut and a broken nose, blood drying on his upper lip and chin. Harry was nursing a finger that, when Tom sidled up to him and asked what was wrong, he said he thought was probably broken. Tuvok alone among them seemed unhurt.

"I recommend we hide the bodies promptly," Tuvok said, turning to level a steady gaze on Chakotay.

Chakotay nodded. "I saw a door a little way back down the hall," he said, voice thick with blood and pain. "Let's stash them there."

They each grabbed a Kaminoan and dragged them down the hall, back the way they had come. When they reached the door, Chakotay armed the gun, then motioned for Harry to trigger the opening sensor.

The door slid open to reveal a janitorial closet. It was small and cramped, filled with cleaners and various unknown pieces of equipment, likely meant to serve as brooms, mops, and other such cleaning paraphernalia.

They stuffed all but one of the Kaminoans into the closet, then shut the door, Harry kicking one of the alien's feet to get the door shut all the way. The last one—the one Tuvok had rescued Tom from—they dragged farther down the hall and into a small inset. Chakotay handed off the gun to Tuvok, who stood in the entrance with Harry, then knelt with Tom beside the unconscious Kaminoan.

Half a dozen taps to the face and a curse later, the Kaminoan woke with a groggy groan.

"Who are you?" it asked, looking from Chakotay to Tom, then back to Chakotay kneeling over him.

"Where's Sickbay?" Chakotay asked.

The Kaminoan frowned. "Sickbay?" it repeated.

"Yes," Chakotay snapped, somewhat testy. His voice came out far gruffer than Tom suspected he intended, the broken and bloody nose warping his soft tenor. "Sickbay, the infirmary, the medical wing..."

The Kaminoan's frown deepened, lines creasing between his brows and on his forehead. "And why should I tell you?" he asked.

"Because we're asking nicely?" Tom suggested.

The Kaminoan snorted and did not answer.

"You can answer us," Chakotay said, rising slightly to tower over the Kaminoan, "or you can go in the closet with the rest of your friends."

"I have no reason to help you," the Kaminoan spat. "You aren't going to hurt me. The worst you might do is stun me."

"Says who?" said Chakotay.

"No one has to," the Kaminoan replied. "If you were going to hurt me, you would have done so already."

A war seemed to wage behind Chakotay's eyes, dark and bleak and dangerous. For a second his fingers flexed into a fist—but then Chakotay sighed. "You're right. We aren't going to hurt you." He rose, turned to Tuvok, and reclaimed the gun. He lowered it, and shot the Kaminoan in the chest. The Kaminoan slumped back, unconscious.

"Well that was a waste of time," Chakotay said.

"Commander," Tuvok said, stepping back and turning to face Chakotay, "more are coming."

As one they all shrank back, pressing themselves against the walls of the small inset. Chakotay shifted the gun so that he could bring it up in an instant to fire, but kept it close against his body.

Then Tom heard footsteps—many footsteps, belonging to many feet. Tom held his breath, and fought the urge to shut his eyes, as if by blocking out the sight of the Kaminoans he would hide himself from their view.

"—I heard that," one of them was saying.

"Do you think one of us will get a try at being a guide?" another said.

"I don't know," said a third. "They haven't even tried one yet. Chances are they'll find someone before it gets to us."

"You know what they're saying," the first said.

"I know, I know," the last said. "But still…"

Then they were gone, the footsteps and voices receding down the hall, vanishing beneath the hush of air from vents and the hum of engines underfoot.

"Well that was close," Harry murmured, pulling away from the wall and looking around at the others.

"Do you think they were talking about the Captain?" Tom asked.

"I don't know," Chakotay said. "Right now we don't have enough information. So let's get this Kaminoan in with the others, and then find their sickbay."

They dragged it down the hall and stuffed it in the closet. Again, Harry had to kick a stray foot so that the door would close. Then they were off, creeping down the corridor with Chakotay and his gun leading.

Halfway down the next hall, Chakotay lifted a hand. Harry, Tuvok, and Tom all came to a quick stop behind him. Tom looked questioningly at Harry, who shrugged.

Then Tom heard what Chakotay had heard: voices. He strained his ears to decipher what was being said, but all he could pick up was the faint murmur of indistinct words. Tom wondered how Chakotay had even noticed the sound.

Motioning for them to follow him quietly and carefully, Chakotay slid noiselessly down the corridor and toward the source of the voices.

"—she ready?"

Tom held his breath and strained his ears to hear the faint words

"Yes, sir," a second voice, low but with a shrilling edge, said.

There was a moment of silence, and Tom feared he had lost the voices. Then, suddenly, the first voice said, "Initiating interface in three, two, one—"

Chakotay motioned them forward. Tom darted across the hall behind him, pressing his shoulder against the wall and sliding forward after his commander. He could hear and feel Harry following him.

A strange humming grew louder the closer they drew to the doorway now visible a dozen paces around the curve of the corridor. It was a sharp and cold sound, hard and clear like glass. It peaked, and then thrummed in an oscillating frequency.

"Interface connected," the first voice said.

Silence.

Then a scream, sudden and shrill, agonizing to hear. Chakotay leapt forward, Tom after him, and they swung around the corner of the door.

It was a large room made all of white—white ceiling, white walls, white floor. There were beds hidden behind white screens all along the right wall. Straight ahead was a door leading into a glass-walled office. To the left was a line of operating tables, cabinets and drawers filled with surgical tools built into the wall.

Tom took this all in with a sweeping glance. Then his eyes settled on the nearest bed, the occupant lying in it, and the two Kaminoans to either side of it.

It was his captain. She lay on the bed, pale and unconscious, entire body rigid, back arched. The Kaminoan to the left of her bed held an oblong device in his hands. Two wires connected the device to the captain's temples and the two white nodules there. The Kaminoan to the right held one of the captain's hands in his, and pressed the other against her cheek and chin, long, bony fingers splayed out across half of her face. He was on his knees beside the bed.

"Move away from her," Chakotay demanded, raising the gun and pointing it at the Kaminoan touching her.

He did not move—did not even turn.

The first Kaminoan—the one holding the device—looked at them. His expression was desperate.

"We can't stop now," he said. "We're in the middle of—"

A second scream ripped through the air. The Kaminoan holding the captain jerked as if punched, his body shuddering from the invisible blow—but his hands did not move. They remained firmly pressed against her hand and face, as if bound there.

A third scream, shrill and agonized—and this time it was the captain who jerked. Her back arched higher, entire body tense and coiled tightly like a spring. Her free hand spasmed by her side, clutching at the sheet draped over the bed. Her head rolled to the side, and for a split second Tom could see the her eyes; there was only white, sick and pale and disturbing, eyes rolled back into her head.

"Let go of her!" Chakotay shouted.

"No," the other Kaminoan cried. "We must complete the procedure. If it is interrupted—"

A fourth scream—and a fifth, as the captain opened her mouth and screamed too, high and terrified.

"Let go," Chakotay bellowed, and took a threatening step forward.

The Kaminoan holding her didn't respond.

He can't hear Chakotay, Tom thought. Something is wrong—really wrong. He can't let go.

The captain sat up suddenly. Her eyes were still white, her expression blank.

"Get out." The captain's voice was loud and ringing—but to Tom it sounded empty, vacant, as if something else was speaking through her. "You do not belong here."

The Kaminoan holding her jerked again. His mouth opened, but no sound came forth. His hands remained firmly pressed against her.

Tom dodged forward, hands outstretched. He grabbed onto the Kaminoan, fingers latching around its shoulder and arm, and yanked.

There was resistance, as if the Kaminoan was sunk in thick mud. Tom pulled, leaning back against the weight. But still the Kaminoan didn't move.

White. White and red and black.

Pain—coiling, striking pain lancing through his fingers, his arms, his shoulders, his chest. He yelled, and the pain filled his mouth, filled his scream. Never before had he felt pain like this; it was like a hundred thousand ants burying beneath his skin, crawling along his bones, burrowing through muscle and sinew and ligament. His whole world was pain—he was nothing but pain.

He fell.

And then there was darkness. He stood on nothing, and nothing pressed in on him from every side. He turned and found that the pain was only an echo of memory in his body. He turned again, looking for something, anything, that could ground him. But there was only nothing.

Then the nothing opened up, and Tom fell forward. Wind battered his face, caught on his uniform jacket, tugged on his hair. He squinted his eyes, looking to either side. He caught glimpses—flashes of images, thoughts, feelings—on either side of him: fire; B'Elanna's face, pale and still; a shuttle lying half-buried in the ice; and in it all: fear.

An image appeared, far before him but growing closer with every second.

The first thing he noticed were the Cardassians. They ringed the room and filled it, grey skin and grey laughter, too loud and too harsh. The nearer Tom fell, the more terrified he grew. Was there someplace he could hide? Some way he could keep from being seen?

The second thing he saw was his captain. She was maybe twenty years younger, and she was naked, bloody, and on her knees. Tom quickly averted his eyes.

That was when he saw the third thing. It was a man. He hung from the ceiling by his wrists, which were bound in shackles. He too was naked and covered in blood, and he was screaming.

The man was Tom's father.

"No," Tom cried, reaching for his father, still far away—and then everything went blank.

Fingernails raked through his brain, gouging long, bloody furrows in their wake. Tom screamed.

The furrows filled with a thousand voices.

She is mine, the voices said. And you can't have her. They were cold, a thousand words all in one. They echoed, and reechoed, until they filled Tom's flesh and muscles and bones. He was the words—he was one with them, was nothing but them; Tom was gone, he was only the words echoing and echoing and echoing between his ribs and lungs and heart.

No, Tom thought. It pierced through the echoes of the thousand voices like lightning splitting the night. No, he thought again, and it was easier this time. The thought followed in the path of the first, and behind it came another thought. I am Tom Paris. And this is my captain. She is not yours—if she is anyone's, she is ours. She is our leader. Our captain. Our mother. You can't have her.

She is MINE, the voices shrieked.

NO, Tom screamed at them. She's OURS.

A pop. It filled Tom's body, ringing from fingers to head to toes. And then he was free and tumbling back. The floor rushed up and met his back, and for the third time that day all the air was pushed from his lungs with a sharp thud. Something hard and heavy landed on him.

"Get off him," someone—Harry, Tom thought. His name is Harry—said. There was a moment of movement, and then the weight pinning him to the ground and keeping his lungs from expanding was lifted away and he was free.

Tom sat up slowly, his entire body throbbing. His hands stung as if they'd been slapped.

"You okay?" Harry asked, kneeling down beside Tom.

Tom shook his head to clear his thoughts, then looked up at Harry. Harry was watching him with fear in his dark eyes.

"I'm fine," Tom reassured him. "I promise. Just a little…a little rattled." The memory of the image he saw—the image of his captain and his father—crept into his thoughts. He pushed it away; now was not the time to dwell on what he had seen.

"What happened?" Chakotay demanded. Tom looked up at him from his position on the floor and saw him pointing the gun he held at the Kaminoan still standing on the other side of the bed.

"I'm not sure," said Tom, heding. "It was like there were these…these voices yelling at me that the captain was theirs. I told them no, that she was ours. And then I was free." Tom was not yet ready to share about the image he had seen—not even with Harry, his best friend and closest confidant.

Chakotay turned to the Kaminoan, still lying on the floor beside Tom. "What happened?" he demaneded.

"I don't know," the Kaminoan said hurriedly. "I mean, I heard the voices, and I saw this image. It was a prison cell, and there were these creatures in it." He gulped, and went suddenly silent.

Chakotay narrowed his eyes. "What about you?" he asked, turning to the Kaminoan holding the device on the other side of the captain's bed.

"I'm not sure," it said. "Nothing like this has ever happened before. When a guide has been rejected in the past, they simply are unable to connect to the subject's neural patterns. That doesn't seem to have been the case here, though."

"You must have some idea what happened," Chakotay said.

"If—if I had to guess," the Kaminoan said, "and this is just a guess—but judging by what I just saw, I'd say the nanites have taken over your captain's body. They're programmed to infiltrate the subject's mind and manipulate the subject's reality. But it's possible—possible, though it's never happened before—that the nanites superseded or subverted their programming and infiltrated more than just her mind. When Mor'tack here tried to connect, he did so, but the nanites then rejected him."

"How could that have happened?" Chakotay asked.

"Well," the Kaminoan said slowly, "we've never had a subject who was a carrier of the nanites for this long. Usually it's only two or three days. Your captain has carried them for two weeks."

"How do we stop it?" Chakotay asked.

"I don't know," the Kaminoan said. "Really," he added hurriedly when Chakotay frowned.

"Guess," Chakotay growled.

"If I had to guess—and this is a guess—she has to complete the trials that the nanites are programmed to put her through, though I do not know what that will look like now that they have taken over her body. They are programmed to shut down and flush out of the body as soon as these trials are completed. That shutdown should still be in place."

"So how does one complete the trials?" Chakotay asked.

"First a guide must be introduced," the Kaminoan said. "But she just rejected a guide—and rather violently, as you saw."

Chakotay lowered his gun. "Okay," he said. "Hook me up."

"What?" the Kaminoan cried, surprised. "But you just saw what happened…"

"I want to at least try," Chakotay said.

"But why?"

"Because she's my captain," Chakotay replied. "And she's my best friend. I can't not try."

The Kaminoan was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Okay," he said.

Chakotay turned and handed the gun to Tuvok. "Good," he said. He moved to stand by the captain's bedside, where Mor'tack had stood. "I'm Chakotay," he added.

"I am Mat'iar," the Kaminoan said.

"Okay, Mat'iar," Chakotay said. "Hook me up."

end notes: Please consider leaving a review; I'd love to hear your thoughts!