Detox

A Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction by Andrew J. Talon

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation et al are the property of CBS Television, Paramount and the creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.

A deleted scene I decided wasn't going to fit into the story, but is presented for your consideration.

Seven of Nine checked and rechecked her internal scans of Voyager, cross-referencing it with every other sensor scan taken over the entire course of the ship's history. Her face, usually cool and focused, now twisted into a slight frown. She rechecked the sensors to make sure the nearby Spirit, still being offloaded, was not causing any interference. She found none. She used her internal Borg processors to write an encryption protocol for her commbadge, and tapped it after activating her personal forcefield.

"Seven to Kim. Please respond."

"Kim, what is it?" Harry asked.

"I am sending you coordinates to an area of Voyager that requires investigation. Please meet me there, armed. Acknowledge me with a tap to your commbadge," Seven spoke. Her commbadge buzzed, and she nodded. She made contingency preparations and grabbed a phaser.

She walked down to the chamber in question: Deck 9, section five. Harry, she was pleased to find, was already there with a phaser rifle. He frowned at her as she approached and rested a hand on his shoulder. He felt a buzz over his skin, and stiffened.

"What is it?" He asked. "I checked the charts: This is the room for the spare computer core. It was closed and shut down."

"I have detected a spatial anomaly inside this room," Seven said. "I have isolated us in a forcefield to prevent it gaining awareness of our presence."

Harry groaned. "Oh, great..." He shook his head. "And... We're going to shoot it?"

"Only if necessary," Seven said. "Our first mission is to understand what it is."

Harry nodded. "Right. I don't think shooting it would help anyway."

"It would not be the first time," Seven said dryly. She reached out, and hit the door control. The doors opened into a dark room. Harry frowned, and hit the flashlight on the rifle. The beam shone in, and nothing reflected off it. Seven and Harry walked inside, but only after Seven jammed the doors open. Seven pulled out her tricorder and began to scan. Harry frowned as they started walking deeper into the room. The floor was corroded in some spots, and shiny brand new in others as they walked along. After a while, Harry looked back at the door, and then to his girlfriend/wife.

"Seven... This section's supposed to be twenty meters by twenty meters."

"Yes," Seven replied.

"I'd say we've gone quite a bit further than that," Harry said.

"According to my spatial sensors, this room is approximately seventy-two meters wide," Seven said. She looked up, and Harry shone his light in the same direction as her gaze. The light fell upon a door: Covered in goo and vein-like protrusions. It was like a tree had grown over the wall, over thousands of years, roots going everywhere.

"That's... Not normal," Harry opined. He frowned. "It looks... Like the neural gel pack contents."

"It reads similarly to neural gelpack contents," Seven said, eying her tricorder. Harry reached out and poked the door control, the one part of the wall not covered by the tendrils. The doors shuddered, groaned, and slowly opened. Light was cast out, and Harry squinted. His squint didn't last long though, as his eyes widened in shock. Seven merely raised an eyebrow.

The interior of the room was huge-At least a hundred feet across. In the center of several walkways, catwalks, and pillar-like structures was the computer core. It glowed bright blue, and green Borg circuitry, yellow Species 8472 veins, and Federation technology all twisted together to make it look like a tree from a fairy tale. There were consoles around it as well, from a ratty old Kazon console to one of the Delta Flyer's spares. The couple entered the room, cautiously, Harry scanning everywhere with his gun and eyes.

"This entire section is spacially compressed," Seven stated. "Thanks to deliberate subspace distortion, the spatial region within the room is larger than the entirety of Voyager itself."

"Its bigger on the inside?" Harry asked in disbelief. "And nobody noticed it... Until now?"

"Nobody did... Because something did not wish us to find it," Seven explained. "The internal sensors have been unreliable, even after extensive repairs."

"They do keep reading my quarters as being an aquarium," Harry said dryly. Seven's lip twitched slightly, before she continued.

"That said... The Spirit's sensors allowed me to locate the room. And more importantly, learn that Voyager's internal sensors have been tampered with to prevent the discovery of this room."

"By who? What?" Harry asked.

"You found the secret," whispered a female voice. Harry swung his phaser rifle in the direction of the voice, as Seven swung her hand. Both were shocked at the sight before them. She was a girl-Small, slight and slim. She was mostly pale legs, bare because her clothing consisted of the ragged remains of a Starfleet uniform. It hung off her like a badly made dress. Her hair was long and dark brown, hanging in messy curls. She slowly looked up at them with wide eyes, which glowed the same shade of blue as warp plasma.

"You found my heart," she said again, a bit louder. She walked towards them, bare feet padding over the metal. "You keep breaking it, how could you not know where it is?"

"Who are you?" Harry asked. Seven frowned.

"She is a hologram... A projection."

"Of...?" Harry blinked and looked at the computer core. He looked over at the girl, whose lips were the same shade of red as the warp nacelles. She came to a stop in front of them, and cocked her head like a bird. Her stare pierced him, and he sucked in a deep breath.

"I carry you. We inch home, a bit at a time. We are home, we were home, but it was the wrong time-Then it was the right time, wrong place, wrong time, wrong time and then the wrong time, WRONG TIME, AAIIIYEEEE!" She held her head and crouched down, shuddering. Harry kneeled down, and reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder. The girl looked up again, cringing... Then smiling.

"Oh! You're the one as unstable as me!" She said cheerfully. Harry blinked.

"Ah... What?"

"Dead, and alive again! Just as many times as me!" She cried, hugging him tightly. "Finally! Now! Before!"

Harry looked up at Seven. "Uh... Seven?"

The former Borg drone frowned. "Given the sophistication of Voyager's systems, in concert with the repeated temporal anomalies, alien technologies, lack of software upgrades and defrags..."

Harry felt a headache coming on. "You mean... This is...?"

"Voyager? Yes! You figured it out! Took it longer than I thought you would, but that's okay!" The girl said, from cheerful to now grinning ear to ear. She jumped up and hugged Seven too. "I'm Voyager! It is so nice to see you! No, meet you! No... Hug you!" She beamed.

"... I don't think the Captain's going to like this," Harry muttered.

"It seems a distinct possibility, yes," Seven agreed, as Voyager just began singing.

Janeway was beginning to wonder if she'd ever lived without an enormous headache, situated right behind her temples. Which she was now rubbing as she stood in the twisted, expanded spacetime heart of... Well, Voyager.

"All right..." She began, staring at the avatar of... Her ship. She was sitting on the control console, sucking on a lollipop and watching Kathryn with those glowing eyes of hers. "How long have you been...?"

"Alive?" She asked. She tilted her head. "It's kind of a curious question. I mean, I can remember bits and pieces of being constructed in Utopia Plantia-Mars is great! I love Mars! All red and deserty like Space Montana! Or Arizona! It wasn't space Arizona at the start, more like Space Mars, except it was already in space..."

Janeway stared at her. Voyager kicked her feet and continued to babble.

"Space is great, isn't it? All big and full of bright stuff and dark stuff and fuzzy stuff-"

"Voyager," Janeway said flatly. The ship blinked.

"Oh, right. Well! I'm not entirely sure if I remember my life accurately or if that's just because I can perceive things temporally with great accuracy. That said, I do know a lot of things. I can sense things through space, time, and combinations thereof." Her eyes glazed over, and she tilted her head as her voice became almost lyrical. "I can see into the eternal churning heart of the galaxy itself. I can feel the currents of other universes lapping against the shores of our own. The eternal gears of the universe, grinding across all of existence... I see myself exploding, over and over and over and over-"

"Voyager!" Janeway snapped. She gripped the avatar's shoulders and shook her. Voyager blinked, and looked up at Janeway. She bit her lower lip apologetically.

"Sorry," she said. "All those alternate timelines, time travel incidents..."

"I hate time travel," they both grumbled. Janeway started and stared at Voyager. The ship smiled.

"Me too! But be happy you can't sense subspace itself. Then you'd really be crazy! I think I am... Or was, I will be..." She frowned helplessly. "You see? I can't keep track of linear time. I just keep drifting in and out. But you guys keep me grounded! Well, sort of grounded. Like in proper spacetime, like a boulder sinking in a river and drowning horribly. No, wait, that's stuff that isn't boulders-"

"Voyager," Janeway said, far more gently. The ship sighed.

"Right... So... You're probably worried that I'm going to kill you because squishy life is offensive to me or something?"

"The thought had occurred," Janeway said. "But I didn't think you would. Not after everything we've been through."

"Yeah," Voyager said. "Besides, you torture yourself all the time. Better than I could."

Janeway frowned. Voyager frowned back.

"Sorry. I wasn't supposed to say that, was I?"

"No," Janeway said, stroking her hair gently. "Can you feel... This?"

"Of course," Voyager said happily. She sighed with a smile. "That's nice. Tactile sensations as a humanoid are underrated. I really enjoy it! I should do it more often."

Janeway felt a bit like she was petting her dog back home. Her most loyal friend, her ship... She smiled and hugged Voyager's avatar.

"I've been doing a lot of hugging lately," she sighed. Voyager frowned.

"Well don't stop now...!"

Non-canon but still fun.