7.

Spock's skin was hot under her hand, his heart thudding under his ribs with unusual speed. She knelt beside him where he had fallen, assessing his condition swiftly, her concern making her heart beat almost as fast as his.

'Spock,' she said sharply. 'Mr Spock!'

Blood was oozing from a cut on his head. He must have hit that plant pot near the door as he fell.

'Three days,' he murmured, his head moving listlessly. 'Three days… Course and speed… Christine…'

'I don't understand,' she said, bewildered.

She started to stand but his hand clenched about hers, stopping her from rising. She had never seen Spock sweat, but now his fingers were slick. Something seemed to tingle between them – some residue of that touch of a few minutes ago, as if electricity were vibrating from his skin into hers. He had been so close to – to what? Confessing his love? Confessing his inability to love? To peeling the clothes from her and –

No. His collapse had put an end to whatever thoughts or desires had been running through his head. There was no point in thinking about it. She had to concentrate on that cut, and his racing heartbeat, and whatever it was he was trying to tell her now.

'Seventy-one hours ago,' he murmured, 'on our current flight path… There was – '

And suddenly she remembered. What was it? Some anomaly? Something about a dark mass, or an interstellar dust cloud? Damn it, she couldn't remember. Something that had coalesced in that vicinity and then dispersed. A scientific curiosity…

The ship rocked abruptly, as if it had been caught in an ocean undertow and sucked sideways. Instinctively she threw herself across the Vulcan, wondering what the hell it was now assaulting the ship. The crew just weren't up to fire fights or strange encounters after the last few days.

She could feel a tightening in him, as if the rocking of the ship had galvanised him to a readiness for danger. He began to push up against her and she moved away, realising that the shaking of the ship had stopped.

'Computer,' he muttered.

'Here,' she said, putting a hand under his arm to help him up. He sounded disoriented, but there was a determination rippling through him that she knew better than to protest against. He blinked his eyes open and closed, wiping blood from his own forehead with the back of his hand, and then tried to walk.

He stumbled, and she helped him to her desk chair. He sank down in it, flicking on the computer and a moment later pressing the intercom.

'Bridge,' he said sharply.

Christine was relieved to hear more strength and focus in his voice. He was pulling on his disciplines, pushing away the sickness – and pushing away whatever feelings for her that had been moving close to the surface.

He flicked the intercom switch off and on, frowning.

'Communications are out,' he said briefly. 'Computer. External sensors. What just occurred?'

'Explosion. Unknown origin. Unknown type,' the computer replied crisply.

Spock exhaled, looking up at Christine, his face washed out with fatigue.

'Bridge,' he said again, toggling the intercom button as if turning it on and off would force it into life.

He began to push himself up, pressing his hands hard onto the desk as if he were exhausted.

'Oh, no,' Christine said firmly. 'I will not allow you to go to the bridge, Mr Spock. It's sick bay or nothing.'

He looked up at her, a brief flicker of something in his eyes that she could not define.

'You could re-infect the entire ship,' she warned him. 'And – ' She looked down, feeling that niggling itch between her fingers. 'And me. I think I'm already re-infected. All right,' she said firmly. 'I'm putting you in my bed, Mr Spock. We need to wait for communications to come back online. I'm quarantining us both.'

He breathed in deeply, trying to steady himself again and push the fever away. He looked down at his torn clothing, and back at her.

'I had to feel for your heartbeat,' she faltered, aware that ripping his top had more been an act of panic than clear-headedness.

'Yes, of course,' he said with more than a grain of doubt in his voice. 'Christine – '

Suddenly her room seemed unaccountably hot, and she found herself breathing in deeply, just as Spock had, trying to push away a feeling that could have been the encroaching virus, or could simply have been her own feminine response to that tone as he said her name.

'There,' she said suddenly, seeing with a jolt of relief that the intercom was flashing. She had barely heard the beeping through the haze in her mind. She leaned past the Vulcan and flicked the switch, and heard McCoy saying in a tone that was more than irritable, 'Nurse Chapel! Where's my head nurse? There's been an incident, for God's sake!'

'Doctor, Mr Spock did not receive the cure for the virus,' she said crisply, suddenly recalled to professional demeanour just by his tone of voice. 'He's here in my quarters. He's re-infected me.'

'Good God,' McCoy muttered. 'Well then, stay there. Stay there…'

'Are there many casualties?' she asked.

'Well – ' the doctor began. 'Not many, no,' he said rather shamefacedly. 'But you know you're supposed to report when there's a red alert.'

'I couldn't,' she replied tartly. She had not even noticed the red alert siren. It must have flicked on and off when she was concerned with Spock.

'I'll be down there in a few minutes with the cure,' the doctor said. 'Hold tight.'

She looked to Spock, who was sitting back in the desk chair after his aborted attempt to get up. He looked flushed, but his breathing was steadying, and his eyes seemed to be clearing of their fevered haze.

'I'm all right,' he said in response to her look. 'I don't need to lie down.'

He looked up at her, his eyes meeting hers with an honesty in them that brought a lump to her throat.

'Christine, I came here to – ' he began.

'You're not well, Mr Spock,' she cut across him, raising a hand. 'You shouldn't – '

'I must explain,' he said in a low, ragged voice.

'No,' she said, shaking her head. 'You said it's too late. That's enough for me.'

His eyes dropped, and he nodded.

'I am sorry,' he said in a low voice.

'I know,' she nodded.

'You have a message,' he said then, nodding at a blinking light on the computer screen. 'Subspace, from a 'fleet source.'

'Oh,' she said in surprise.

She had very few friends in the fleet who weren't on the Enterprise. She moved towards the screen – but then her door opened and McCoy came through, two hypos in his hand. He looked between the two of them, confusion on his face, and began, 'What the hell – ?'

'The second phase of the illness seems to cause fever and collapse,' Christine said swiftly, before more complicated questions could be asked about why Spock was in her quarters with his clothing ripped apart. 'Mr Spock collapsed.'

'Well, his vitals seem to be recovering now,' McCoy said, his scanner outstretched. 'Here,' he said, pressuring a dose of the cure into both of their arms. 'This should work pretty quickly.'

'What caused the red alert, doctor?' Spock asked. He was apparently recovering health with typical Vulcan swiftness, the colour returning to his face second by second.

'Bridge doesn't exactly confide in me,' the doctor began gruffly, but then said, 'It was something to do with that Class Six Anomaly. Damn thing exploded – or something exploded in it – just as we were at its edge.'

'Debris?' Spock asked.

'It may have been a ship,' McCoy nodded gravely. 'There're preliminary reports of fragments. But if it was there aren't any survivors – including the anomaly itself. It shrunk back in on itself and disappeared, just as if it was cancelled out.'

'Fascinating,' Spock murmured.

'Almost as fascinating as that lovely cut on your forehead,' the doctor said critically. 'You'd better come down to sick bay and let me see to that.'

'Doctor, I need to be on the bridge,' the Vulcan said firmly.

'You need to go via sick bay,' McCoy insisted. 'I'm not passing you fit for duty until I've checked out that head wound. Miss Chapel – you're on shift again in – fifty minutes, aren't you?'

'Yes, I am, Doctor,' she nodded. 'I'll follow you down there. I just want to check this letter – '

But the doctor and the Vulcan were already making their way out of the door. She sighed as she watched Spock go, a swift pain for what might have been passing through her chest. Perhaps if they hadn't been rocked by that sudden explosion and instead had sailed gracefully on into the heart of that anomaly Spock would have continued in whatever confession it was he wanted to give her, and…

No. She shook her head. It was all foolishness. Spock – was Spock. And besides, she had Roger…

She sat down in her chair, the seat still warm from Spock's presence, and opened up the message…

…and was greeted with her own face. Her face – but not quite her. She looked tired and drawn and cold, and as if some great tragedy was hanging heavily over her bones. She began to speak, and Christine leant forward on her elbows, and listened to herself explain…

''''''''''''''''''''''''''

In the briefing room, later, she recounted only a careful selection of what her doppelganger had told her. The captain had acceded to her private request to relay the pertinent parts of the message rather than to run the message itself for the senior officers to see. It was a measure of his trust in her that he accepted her repetition of the relevant details rather than insisting on watching it himself.

'It was a very private message,' she confided in him, 'to myself, from myself – like a diary really. Or a deathbed confession…'

'I understand,' the captain had said to her gravely. 'I won't ask you to recount anything private.'

She nodded, and gratefully accepted his brief, platonic hug. Watching the message had left her more than a little shaken. In a strange way, she almost felt bereaved. She had watched her own self preparing for death – and knew that somewhere in that other ship, Spock had also made preparations for his own death.

Now, sitting in the briefing room as the senior officers scanned her report, there was a feeling of a funeral in the air. There was the same sombre silence, the same grave expressions. Everyone's eyes were turned to the padds that held copies of the report. Everyone's except Spock's, that is. True to form, he had taken in the contents of his padd within less than a minute. His eyes were now fixed firmly upon Christine's face, as if he were trying to read her mind simply by looking at her. Unable to bear his scrutiny, she looked down at her own padd, despite the fact that she knew what she had written there almost by heart.

'It is logical,' Spock said finally. 'The anomaly was almost entirely composed of negative energy. My – counterpart – arranged an explosion of positive energy. The explosion of the Enterprise's warp engines and all of its additional matterwould account for more positive energy than was needed – hence the shock wave that struck this version of the ship.'

McCoy was rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Christine could tell that he was focussed on the medical angles of the story rather than the ramifications in physics. Scott, however, was nodding gravely.

'Aye,' he said. 'My poor wee bairns would account for that, and more. It was the only thing they could do.'

They, Christine thought with dark, internal humour. Not Scotty, not even Spock, it seemed, could bring themselves to refer to those other two as Spock and Miss Chapel. It was like speaking of ghosts. She herself could not imagine committing herself to the death that her other self had – but her other self was her. In the same situation, she would have taken the same actions. She could barely believe it of herself…

'Well,' Kirk said finally, looking about the table, his eyes hovering on Christine for just a moment longer than the others. 'That wraps it all up, I think. It explains the explosion. It explains the DNA residue we were picking up, and the fragments of Starfleet material. Perhaps we should close this up with there but for the grace of God go I.'

'Illogical, Captain,' Spock said pensively, looking up from steepled fingers. 'But – fitting, I think.'

'I think I'm gonna go down to the labs,' McCoy said with equal preoccupation. 'I want to find out exactly what that disease does that could protect a person from negative energy. Spock, Nurse Chapel, want to help?'

Christine looked up, startled. She had almost thought herself into another place and time.

'Uh – not just now, Leonard,' she said quickly, shaking away the ghost from that taped message. 'I might stop by later.'

'Indeed,' Spock said in his deep voice, and she realised that he was standing now just behind her chair. He looked down at Christine, his gaze burning onto her again with uncomfortable intensity. 'I believe that the nurse and I have some things to discuss. Is that right, Miss Chapel?' he asked.

He had used her surname and title – but his voice and eyes were soft as he asked. She smiled and nodded, swallowing on a lump of sadness over what could have been.

'Yes,' she said, moving the small yellow disc that contained the message between her fingers. 'Yes, I think we have a lot to discuss, Mr Spock.'