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writesandramblings · 6 years

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The Captain’s Secret - p.95

“Maybe I’m Amazed”

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 94 - Let Me Give You My Life 96 - Nowhere and Everywhere >>

The familiar metallic sheen of the transporter rang in Lorca's ears as the blisteringly white light stabbed daggers in his eyes that for once he barely registered against the overwhelming, boulder-like pressure in his chest. The shift of particles around him turned the sensation of physical contact into emptiness as the transporter safety protocols isolated him from the rest of the beam-out and deposited him alongside two other forms, all of them in various states of collapse, but his was the one that slumped over with a gurgle onto the surface of the transporter pad, a bloom of red spreading out around him to the rhythm of his slowing heartbeat.

A moment later, O'Malley's arms were around him, a human compress struggling to contain the gaping hole in Lorca's chest. Lorca tried to speak, make one last dig at O'Malley's expense, but he no longer had the strength for it and managed only a weak, wet, rasping groan.

O'Malley's only thought was of his promise to Lalana as he shouted at the startled, curly-haired transporter technician: "One-one transport, Lab 26! Now!" To his credit, the technician defaulted to executing the order without question.

This time, as the white light rose and fell again, the sensation of O'Malley's arms remained constant. One-one transport; slang for transport without positional or biological filtering.

In the confusion, the tech had sent along for the journey the third form on the transporter pad: the hulking mass of Einar Larsson's dead body, still synced to the emergency transponder on O'Malley's wrist.

"Computer! Override door locks, authorization O'Malley Delta-Niner-7-5-2-gray!"

Both doors opened, exposing the contents of the lab directly to the ship for the first time since Discovery's launch.

They were all there: Mischkelovitz, Lalana, Groves. "Help! Help me!" yelled O'Malley, holding on to Lorca as tightly as he could. Lorca groaned faintly. His eyes were losing focus and his limbs felt like lead. Darkness was encircling him. It somehow felt like going home all over again.

Lalana propelled herself across the full five meters between them in two giant, bounding strides, landing directly beside them, and thrust her tail into the hole in Lorca's chest. A moment later, Lorca inhaled a wet, sucking breath. The darkness faded to the edges of his vision as some flow of blood and oxygen returned.

"Do not worry, Gabriel," she said. "I have you, and so does Macarius."

Lorca stared at Lalana, horrified. It felt like the boulder on his chest had doubled in weight and become a pulsing fist, gripping him and squeezing him somehow from the inside out, each pulse a mixture of agony and relief as it made possible his continued respiration and circulation. He was alive though, and breathing, and conscious.

"You need—you need to say goodbye," O'Malley blurted at Lalana, scrunching his nose as tears dripped down his cheeks.

"I would rather say hello," said Lalana as Groves and Mischkelovitz arrived.

Groves did a double-take at the sight of Lalana's tail embedded in Lorca's chest. "Sickbay," Groves started, but Mischkelovitz cut him off. She saw the tears on O'Malley's face and they confirmed everything she had suspected because she was supposed to be the one who cried, not him.

"No!" she shouted, staring wild-eyed at the grisly scene. She finally knew what the message was. Equally, she could see that while O'Malley had not been motivated by any sort of medical expertise, he had accidentally given Lorca his best chance at survival.

Null time, the particle map, the spore field, the temporal remnant, the integrity of history, Lalana, monsters. The only question left was whether it was too late. Words came rushing out of her at an almost unintelligible speed: "I know what to do! The pattern! I can see it! There are two Discoveries!"

As usual, no one but Mischkelovitz had any idea what she was talking about. This did not deter her. Her hands began to flap with excitement. "Inside, now!"

"Can we move him?" asked Groves doubtfully, not just because moving Lorca seemed preposterous. Groves had the glimmer of an idea what Mischkelovitz was on about, and if he was right, it was potentially disastrous for them all.

"If Macarius continues to hold on very tightly, then yes," said Lalana.

"I won't let go," said O'Malley. He couldn't bear the thought.

"Hold on," rasped Lorca, "what—"

Groves took Lorca's legs. "On three."

A sharp jolt of pain shot through Lorca, strong enough to release a strangled, gasping half-scream from his lungs. Mischkelovitz ran ahead, shutting the doors as they passed through them, and as the second door closed, she frantically shouted, "Computer! Omega Tau protocol, authorization Mischkelovitz-9-5-8-5-1!"

It was unclear what that meant, but the computer responded, "Omega Tau protocol active, duration fifty-three hours and seventeen minutes. Field integrity at ninety-eight percent. Power reserves at ninety-nine percent."

As O'Malley lacked both height and strength to lift Lorca onto Mischkelovitz's workbench, they proceeded through the lab to Lalana's quarters and put Lorca on the couch. It took all of Lorca's strength to remain conscious during the move. Mischkelovitz did not continue with them the whole way; she lingered in the lab, gathering up supplies.

Once he was on the couch, O'Malley behind him and Lalana at his side, Lorca said, "This is not my kind of threesome." Lalana started clicking her tongue. O'Malley winced and suppressed a groan of annoyance.

"You should let him die just for that," declared Groves.

"Shut up, John!" said O'Malley. "And if you're not going to help, get out." That was invitation enough for Groves to leave. The sight of Lalana's tail in Lorca's chest was deeply unnerving.

An eerie silence fell, broken only by the faint rasps of Lorca's shallow breaths. Lalana and O'Malley were both keeping as still as possible, each concerned too much movement would disrupt the other's role in keeping Lorca alive. Lorca could feel dark exhaustion closing in again. He struggled to keep his eyes open. "I think this is it," he said.

"I'm sorry," said O'Malley, and though Lorca could not see the tears on O'Malley's face, he could hear the anguish in his voice.

"Kill Georgiou. Make sure Michael—tell her—"

O'Malley bit back a sob. Still, at the end of it all, Lorca was more concerned with Michael Burnham than anything else. It was a sickness none of them could cure—a terminal illness that had brought Lorca to this very moment and was killing him right in front of their eyes.

Lalana had more leeway to move than O'Malley. She stretched up slightly and tilted her head at Lorca. "Tell her yourself. I will not let you die."

Lorca smiled faintly. "I don't think fate cares what you want."

She looked at him, her eyes immense, and said, "Hayliel was my heartbeat, and now I am yours. You think this is fate, but it is not. Now that I know there is time travel, I know that it was not fate that I met Hayliel, it was someone's will."

"Then that person wants me dead," Lorca exhaled, closing his eyes.

"No," said Lalana, "she does not."

"That's right," said O'Malley, hopeful again, "Melly doesn't want you dead! She sent a message back through time to save you!"

Lalana tapped her fingers together, amazed at how oblivious humans could be. She decided not to correct them. Let them think this was their story. Lorca was always happiest thinking that.

Mischkelovitz came back in, her arms laden with medical tools. She deposited them unceremoniously upon the coffee table and left again, returning next pulling a crate Lorca recognized from the hidden storage room at Memory Alpha. She adjusted the environmental controls to a lower temperature.

"Okay," she announced, seemingly to herself, and began scanning Lorca's wound. Lalana's biological camouflage field was a potent adversary when it came to scanners, but in her months of studying the lului, Mischkelovitz had devised a few tricks. By narrowing the scanner focus and targeting it at the particle level, she could scan around Lalana with enough accuracy to construct a composite image featuring a void where Lalana's cells were. Null data, in this case, was still data. She brought up a holographic display of the wound as the computer assembled the image. The way Lalana's cells were intentionally wrapped around Lorca's anatomy was very similar to how Mischkelovitz designed her implants. She could work with this.

Lorca swallowed as the image formed in the air. "Got any painkillers in your bag, doc?" Mischkelovitz ignored him. Lorca sighed slightly. "Lorca to sickbay."

"Unable to comply. Communications have been disabled."

O'Malley frowned. "Computer, enable communications."

"Unable to comply. Omega Tau protocol is active."

"Disable 'Omega Tau protocol,'" growled Lorca.

"Unable to comply."

Lorca tried an override authorization code. It did not work, Saru had already disabled Lorca's command subroutines. O'Malley tried next with the same result. While they attempted to bargain with the computer and invoke emergency protocols, Mischkelovitz stood transfixed on the image unfolding in front of her, oblivious to their efforts. Finally, O'Malley asked, "Melly?" No answer.

"Imaging complete," said the computer.

"Surgery time," declared Mischkelovitz. She started selecting instruments from the pile on the table.

There was a chorus of objections, none of which Mischkelovitz registered. Only when she turned towards Lorca with tools in hand did she realize everyone was trying to talk to her. She pressed a finger to the implant behind her ear and external sound flooded back to her. (This was the price of her implants being repaired. She now had the freedom to cut them out at a moment's notice whenever she wanted, and apparently had decided to exercise that freedom to the fullest.)

"He needs painkillers!" O'Malley shouted at her.

"We don't have any," Mischkelovitz replied.

Lalana's words were much kinder. "Then please go get some. I can maintain this position for as long as is necessary."

"I can't," said Mischkelovitz. "I need to focus, so I'm turning my implants off."

"Wait!" went O'Malley. "You can't operate without anesthetic!"

"Of course I can. I have all the tools I need."

In her mind, there was no distinction between can and should. Lorca was reminded of the official report on the Edison incident. When we found them, he was screaming, the statement from the leader of the rescue team read. He was bisected. Lower half crushed. Left arm, too. His head was split open. (This was the crucial line that had been repeated incorrectly as a severed head.) She had hooked him up to some sort of makeshift recycler to circulate blood, bypassing most of the body while she worked on the brain. We tried to get her to explain what she was doing. She wouldn't answer us. When we pulled her off him, she attacked and we had to sedate her. He didn't stop screaming until we shut off the recycler.

Perhaps Mischkelovitz and Petrellovitz weren't so different after all.

The coroner's addendum provided further details: Subject was a male, aged thirty-three, with extensive biomedical implants throughout the body to compensate for deficiencies in organ function. Many of these implants were damaged irreparably by blunt force trauma to the lower body while others were surgically harvested shortly prior to death. According to field report, these implants were used as components for a primitive life support device. A single cause of death cannot be determined. Subject was kept in a semi-alive state by external intervention with the brain marginally functional after the rest of the body entered a state of total termination. Brain death followed several hours after all other bodily functions ceased. Evidence was present of an attempt to reconstruct the damaged portion of the subject's brain on a sub-cellular level. Owing to the damage and loss of neural tissue at the site of injury and the limitations of current medical technology, it is unlikely this enterprise could have succeeded. Primary cause of death was damage to the body consistent with crushing by a large, heavy object and termination of organ functions both natural and artificial. Secondary cause of death was lack of oxygen to the brain due to disconnection from natural and artificial circulatory systems following an unsuccessful neurosurgery attempt. No trace of sedatives or anesthetics were found in the subject's system.

It was the sort of report O'Malley's division might have doctored in some way to mitigate the horrors of it, except because Mischkelovitz was not in a position of command and had acted independently, her actions were not deemed reflective of Starfleet as a whole and the report had never come to the secret branch of Investigative Services. Instead it was filed in official archives and promptly discovered by a journalist seeking to document the tragedies of the Binary Stars. The sensationalized details were then disseminated across the Federation, prompting outrage, accelerating the timetable of Mischkelovitz's medical review, and elevating that review into a full trial.

O'Malley had not read that report because he could not bring himself to know the full truth of Milosz Mischkelovitz's last moments, but he had heard the sensationalized whispers, much as he tried to avoid them. "Melly, that's—"

"Turn him over," she said, and flicked her implants off.

This was easier said than done. After a minute, Mischkelovitz got up, went to the door, and ordered Groves inside, commanding him to assist. With her implants off, she was oblivious to Groves' objections and simply waited for him to comply.

"I don't want any part of this!" Groves said. "He's a mass murderer. And—and he's supposed to be dead." The look he gave Lorca felt a lot like the one that had been on Michael Burnham's face in the throne room. It hurt less on Groves' face, but it was still a painful reminder of Burnham's inability to extend Lorca any empathy.

"Please, John," said O'Malley. Groves hesitated.

"If not for Macarius, then will you do it for me?" asked Lalana.

Lorca could see Groves considering, but he was still not convinced. Lorca fixed Groves with a steady gaze and grunted out, "You think you're—better than me? Prove it."

Groves bit his lower lip and sucked at it, still hesitating, but Lorca knew he had him because while Groves talked a good game about moral relativism, deep down, Groves was a good man struggling to contextualize what that meant in a world where people did terrible things for the most altruistic of reasons. Not this world, not Lorca's universe, but the one Groves had been born and survived to adulthood in. The world where his attempt to address the injustice of his sister Faiza's death had resulted in the destruction of his family and suicide of his father.

"And get that bottle of moonshine."

This time, O'Malley did not object to Lorca's dipping into the stash, but Lalana did. "Sparingly," she implored him. "The alcohol disrupts my cells' ability to communicate."

They removed the Terran armor, cut away the fabric of the uniform underneath, and rolled Lorca over. The shift in position drew out another muffled scream. Then Mischkelovitz went to work. She was not gentle. Her movements were sharp pinpricks and she succeeded in something most agony booths could not: after several minutes of excruciating pain, Lorca passed out.

Ninety minutes into the procedure, Lalana trilled softly in concern. Groves was lying on the ground on the other side of the coffee table, reading. It took him a moment to register the sound of the trill over the incessant muttering of Mischkelovitz's ongoing dialogue with herself as she narrated her surgical progress in jumbled, malformed snippets of English and qoryan, but when he did, he recognized it as a sound of mild alarm. "What?" he asked, sounding bored.

"He is losing too much blood," said Lalana. The alcohol was interfering with her ability to bridge Lorca's wound, creating a leaky plug, and as Mischkelovitz worked to repair the wound and periodically interrupted Lalana's cellular engagement with Lorca's tissue, more blood was seeping out. The brown fabric of the couch cushions was soaked black with the stuff and a stain of deep burgundy had spread onto the carpet below.

Behind Lorca, his arms stiff and numb, O'Malley's black Terran uniform showed the evidence of blood loss much less, but he could feel the drips between the fabric and his skin, which he had optimistically hoped was his own sweat despite the temperature in Lalana's quarters having dropped several degrees. O'Malley shifted his hand so it was in Mischkelovitz's way and refused to move it until she turned her implants back on. "Huh," she noted as sound returned, "he isn't screaming."

"He passed out hours ago!" said O'Malley, wildly overestimating because it felt like time had slowed to a crawl. Though Mischkelovitz's prodding elicited a steady stream of low, uncomfortable sounds, Lorca had fallen largely silent, none of his responses for the past hour approaching any level of meaningful consciousness.

"He is losing blood, Emellia. At this rate he will only last another two hours. This will not be enough time. Please bring some blood from the medical bay."

"I can't," said Mischkelovitz.

Groves sat up and stared across the table in shock. "Did you not tell them!?" He looked at Lalana and O'Malley, neither of whom seemed to have the faintest clue. "We're in null time!"

"I am aware, I noticed the particle change," said Lalana, who did have a clue even if her face was incapable of showing it, but there was a fact she was missing.

"Not the whole ship, just the lab," clarified Groves. The lack of communications, the command lockout, Mischkelovitz's refusal to provide basic medicines—none of it was obstinance on her part. They were cut off from these provisions.

"You must turn it off," said Lalana, her tone a strangely somber drone.

Mischkelovitz shook her head. "There's no time."

Taken at face value, the statement made no sense. "Don't we have fifty hours?" asked O'Malley, remembering the computer's announcement.

"In here, yes. Not out there!"

Groves rolled his eyes. "It's not a light switch, Mac. Once it's off we can't turn it back on."

O'Malley was even more confused than before. His face twisted thoughtfully. With so many things going on he did not understand, he decided to focus on the one thing he did know how to fix. "Give him my blood," he said.

Groves shook his head. "You realize you're doing it again. Anton, Roberts, Erreran. How do you never learn? Do you just not have any self-esteem? Come on! Not a single one of these jerks deserves this. Least of all this one."

"Shut up, John," hissed O'Malley through his teeth.

"Make me," said Groves, but got up and left the room. O'Malley was free to make his own bad decisions. It did not mean Groves had to stay and watch. A moment later, a repetitive thumping sound started up. Groves was bouncing his basketball against the wall in angry frustration.

"He's wrong," said Mischkelovitz as she set up the transfusion between O'Malley and Lorca.

"About what?" asked Lalana.

"Nobody deserves anything," said Mischkelovitz. "It's not about the recipient, it's about the person who gives, right?" She looked at O'Malley for confirmation.

He managed a weak smile. "That's right."

"That's why I'd do anything for you." That was the truth she had realized when Stamets and Tilly came to the lab: Lorca was never the one she was trying to save, he was merely the byproduct.

The infusion of blood began filtering into Lorca's system. As his pressure increased, it had the additional consequence of rousing him once more to this unfathomably awful nightmare when almost any other nightmare seemed preferable. He thrashed weakly as he came to with his face pressed against O'Malley's shoulder and O'Malley's arms tightened to keep him still. Lorca still felt the awful pressure of the pulse in his chest, but now it had been joined by the sensation of hundreds of needles digging into his back and a deep itch that, even if he had the strength to scratch it, would have been impossible to reach within the recesses of his own ribcage.

"Remain calm, Gabriel," Lalana said in soothing consolation. Lorca grunted an assent, followed by a guttural growl of discomfort as Mischkelovitz jammed what felt like a cattle prod against his spine. (It was only the needle of her microscopic tissue synthesizer brushing against an exposed nerve.) Lalana knocked her knuckles together in distress and tried to offer some distraction. "Macarius is giving you his blood. It is very unusual, like water."

Another sharp growl rumbled in Lorca's chest. "Rh-null," he gritted out through clenched teeth. He had looked it up after their conversation all those many weeks ago, wondering what made O'Malley's blood so special his wife felt compelled to marry him for it, and the answer had been right there in the biological data, a minor statistical quirk. He even remembered the statistic: "One in... hundred and fifty million."

"That's right," said O'Malley. "Practically an interspecies donor. D'you know, they used to call it golden blood? Most sought after in the world until they developed synthetic. Now it's only a prize to Misellians."

All of these were facts Lorca knew. It took considerable effort to reply, but he still tried. "And here I—didn't—get you—ghh!"

"Top stalking," said Mischkelovitz crossly.

Lalana tried to quell her hand-tapping, but she was having trouble managing it. It was taking most of her focus to deal with the wound. "How about a story. Macarius, will you tell us one?" O'Malley could not think of one.

"Your wife," breathed Lorca, a quiet enough exhalation that Mischkelovitz did not comment on it.

"Yes, tell us about Aeree."

"Where to begin," said O'Malley, but of course he began at the beginning. A diplomatic mission gone awry, the death of Aeree's mate by Federation representatives trying to protect themselves from a species whose bloodthirst had caused endless strife in that region of space. The struggle to reconcile the rights of an advanced, autonomous species whose evolution demanded they take something other races had no wish to give. The negotiations were at a standstill until O'Malley turned up to investigate the death and freely offered his own blood to the new leader of the Misellian delegation. "They called it a blood payment, and since I'd paid... Misellian tradition..."

O'Malley's head rolled to the side and his arms went slack. Mischkelovitz said his name, reached over, and pinched him. He sluggishly woke back up in a state of confusion. "I'm awake! What?"

Mischkelovitz was finished with Lorca's back. They rolled him over, freeing O'Malley in the process. Lorca had to do most of the movement himself; O'Malley was already reeling from his own blood loss. O'Malley apologized several times for this deficiency and attempted to resume storytelling, but after a few minutes of drifting in and out of coherency, not really managing to say anything that led anywhere, he gave up and mumbled more apologies.

The only certainty was that, while Lorca could have used more blood, O'Malley was already past what constituted a safe donation level and could contribute no more. Mischkelovitz removed the line linking them together. "I'm hungry," muttered O'Malley, getting to his feet. He made it two steps and then half-fell, half-laid down on the carpeted ground and closed his eyes with a soft mumble.

Mischkelovitz did not look up from her work. Lalana peered over at O'Malley's prone form. "Emellia, perhaps you should check on Macarius."

"It doesn't matter," said Mischkelovitz. "If I'm right, it doesn't matter."

Lalana tilted her head. "And if you are wrong?"

It was an innocent question intended only to ensure O'Malley was being looked after, but it triggered a chain of thought in Mischkelovitz that so disturbed her she stopped what she was doing, pushed away from the couch, and rolled back against the coffee table with her knees to her chin. Her jaw trembled. "If I'm wrong, then... then..." She began to cry. "Then it was all for nothing."

Lorca could have glared daggers at Lalana. "Come on, Mischka," he said, air hissing in his throat. It was a struggle to breathe and he could manage only a few words at a time. "Back to work. That's an order."

"But how am I fonna gix—fonna—fonna—fix—" She was crumbling at the worst possible moment.

"You must focus on what is in front of you," advised Lalana, which was both a fortune cookie-level aphorism and a literal truth under the circumstances. "You have made excellent progress and we are more than halfway done. I am confident you can complete this task."

"C'mere," said Lorca, opening his hand to try and entice Mischkelovitz to return. "You said... monsters gotta stick... together."

Mischkelovitz looked up. "Really? When did I say that?"

The way she said it sounded entirely rhetorical, so naturally Lalana took the question at face value and answered, "In your message from the future."

Mischkelovitz smacked herself in the face with the palm of her hand repeatedly. It was the only way she could express her frustration at the fact neither Lalana nor Lorca seemed to understand what she was saying. "You—idiots—there are two Discoveries!"

She had said that before, at the beginning of this venture.

"What does this have to do with the other Discovery?" asked Lalana.

"Because you can't change history!" she wailed.

At the mention of history, Lorca realized Mischkelovitz was not talking about the ISS Discovery captained by his universe's Sylvia Tilly. She was talking about the version of herself that had instigated the timeline changes. The remnant, Allan called it. "Mischka," he rasped at her. "You did something impossible. Sent a message back in time to save me."

Mischkelovitz shook her head and wiped at her tears. "That's not why I did it."

"Course it is," said Lorca, managing a desperate smile. It hurt to talk, a lot, but he had to get her back on task. "Other you—said so."

"Did you watch the whole message, then?" asked Lalana, thinking this was a part of the message she had not heard because Allan had only played the first part.

The recording was still in Lorca's pocket along with Allan's tooth. Before Lorca could raise any objection, Lalana plucked the little silver disc from Lorca's pants pocket with two fingers.

Mischkelovitz gasped. Her excitement momentarily stemmed the flow of tears and she scrambled forward and snatched the disc from Lalana. "How does it work?"

"Wait—"

"You flick so it spins up in the air."

"Like this?" asked Mischkelovitz. She got it on the first try.

A perfect hologram of an older Mischkelovitz appeared in front of them. "Hello, Lan. It's me, Melly."

The message began to play. Lorca was helpless to stop it. He could only listen in horror as the elder Mischkelovitz asked a favor from John Allan, talked about how they had to keep history the same while making tiny changes to it, talked about her actions ending her own existence, and declared herself unable to save anyone. Then she outlined the two changes she wanted to make, which he knew entailed the Triton encountering Lalana and a batch of spores contaminated with chronitons triggering the first null time incident, but the specifics of her instructions turned out to be exceedingly odd, because she told Allan to find Captain Chaudhuri and "induce a state of Mischka in the winter" and then "put bells and whistles in the broken pots that time the lights went out." No wonder Allan had not played that part of the message back on the Charon. These seemed to be coded missives only he would understand.

Nowhere in this little message did she say anything about saving Lorca's life. If anything, she seemed to be expressly counseling against it by insisting on the integrity of the timeline and history.

Mischkelovitz watched the message all the way through to the end and then played it again.

"Mischka—" tried Lorca, prepared to bargain for his life.

"Shh!" After the message finished playing for the second time, Mischkelovitz whirled on Lorca and Lalana with half-crazed eyes and exclaimed, "It's perfect! I wonder how many iterations it went through? I didn't even get the important part of the message and I still figured it out!"

"What is the important part?" asked Lalana.

"I can't save anyone!"

The delight in her eyes as she looked at Lorca with this revelation was bone-chilling. They were halfway through a surgery that felt like being ripped open, torn into tiny little pieces, and having the pieces melted back together and hammered into place. His life depended on her finishing the job or Lalana keeping her tail in the wound until someone else turned up who would. Assuming Mischkelovitz did not interpret her future self's words as a command to murder him to preserve history.

Seeing the fear on Lorca's face, Mischkelovitz laughed gaily. "Don't you see? I can't save anyone! I can't save anyone!" Her laughter overcame her. After a solid minute of hysterics, she wheezed and gasped and returned to a state approaching normalcy.

"Mischka," Lorca tried again, voice hopeful and enticing, because surely, after everything he had given her, she felt he was someone worth saving. "Hear me out. I'm sure we can... reach an understanding."

Mischkelovitz grinned. "Don't you see, captain? In our universe, you're no one. Literally!" Now her tears were happy, glistening in the low light like starlight on her eyelids. "Captain no one!"

Lalana caught the pun because it was exactly the sort of dual-layered, overly literal phrasing she herself frequently employed. Her hands spun with pleasure. "Captain Lorca always loves the stars, no matter who he is and where he is from, because when he was a child, his mother told him the sky was an ocean, just like in his favorite—"

"Bedtime story," breathed Lorca, eyes wide. A week ago, he had suggested Lalana tell Mischkelovitz a story and Lalana had asked him what story she should tell. Your favorite. A story about a dead man who had gone to the stars in search of adventure because of a captain called Nemo—a name that, in Latin, meant "no one."

Mischkelovitz was saying that the words "I can't save anyone" meant "I can save no one," and in her mind at least, those two words described him.

Her mind being the crucial element here. Either this was the greatest instance of talking on two levels in all of creation or she was twisting every detail of the message to mean what she wanted it to. So long as her agenda remained saving him, he didn't care which.

"Genius," he said, smirking in satisfaction.

"That is exceptionally clever," said Lalana. (Unlike Lorca, she accepted Mischkelovitz's assertion as to the true meaning of the message.)

"The important thing is, you have to be no one, or else everything she did—" Mischkelovitz stopped, her face twisting into a question. "He—he gave you the message?"

Allan had not given it to Lorca so much as had it pried from his cold, dead hands. The way Mischkelovitz phrased it could only mean one thing.

No one had told her Allan was dead.

Lorca didn't miss a beat. "He wanted you to have it," he rasped. "Told me to bring it to you." Lalana knew this was a lie and forced herself to remain still to avoid betraying anything through hand cues.

The lie on Lorca's face would have been painfully obvious to almost anyone else, but Mischkelovitz, with her limited social experience, failed to detect it. Instead, she visibly brightened. Of course Allan wanted her to have the message! Groves was wrong, Allan was a genius. By giving her the message when and how he had, he ensured she received it at just the right moment to capitalize on its contents without exposing himself. He had probably figured out qoryan by listening to it, too. "There are... There are two Discoveries. And—and I can save both of you! I can save both of you!" She grabbed the tissue regenerator and dove back to work with such gusto, Lorca yelled at the sudden wave of pain.

"Emellia, be careful!" chided Lalana. Lorca mumbled a demand for more alcohol. This time, Lalana provided it to him without comment and Mischkelovitz resumed her work.

Little by little, Lalana's tail emerged from the wound, covered in patches of brown discoloration. Whole sections of filaments lay limp and unresponsive. "The alcohol and your immune system," Lalana explained. If he were a better man, Lorca might have apologized for the effects the alcohol was having on her cells, but he felt no remorse. That precious bottle was the closest thing to medicine he had under the circumstances. He did, at least, refrain from any further drinking until her tail was out completely. Then he took a celebratory swig, even though his head was already reeling and the alcohol was only making him even weaker given the state of his blood.

The important thing was the wound was sealed. The odyssey was over and he was alive. Lorca closed his eyes and inhaled as deeply as he could manage, feeling an aching tightness in his chest in response. Beside him, Lalana pruned away unsalvageable cells from her tail, sloughing off patches of cellular material that melted into puddles of oily sludge on the glassy surface of the coffee table.

While Lorca and Lalana's post-operative states could be described as restful—and O'Malley's enduring state of unconsciousness was entirely so—Mischkelovitz became a flurry of activity. She sifted through the contents of the Memory Alpha crate. "Particle charge, particle charge," she muttered to herself, and went to unhook one of the larger exterior wall panels.

Lalana's reaction was violent and immediate. She trilled in alarm and slapped her tail over her eyes. "It is too bright!" Lorca tilted his head up and saw rows of glowing blue tubes running through the wall. Mycelium spores, frozen in place, not drifting around the way they did during jumps. He had missed the discussion on what the Omega Tau protocol was, but he figured it out easily enough from the evidence in front of him.

To his Terran eyes, the gentle glow of the chroniton-laden spores seemed unremarkable. To Lalana, it was like looking directly at a supernova, a hundred thousand times brighter than the halo of particles that lingered on time travelers and a million times worse than the faint haze that characterized her previous null time experiences. For once, her ability to see more than humans was not an advantage. It was akin to the sharp pain Lorca had struggled with in the overly-bright universe of Discovery's origin. Her fur writhed in discomfort as she trilled, "I cannot!" and jumped lengthwise across the couch, huddling in the shelter of the far side of the couch a moment before making a run for the door and fleeing to the forward section of the lab.

"What the hell are you up to," groaned Lorca, voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm setting up a mycelial transport," Mischkelovitz said, connecting a set of cables to the spore tubes in the wall and running them over to the coffee table.

Suddenly the differences between Mischkelovitz and Petrellovitz seemed entirely superficial. Lorca's eyes widened and he rolled upright with a grimace, gripping the arm of the couch tightly for support. His voice was firm, brimming with anger. "No." He tried to grab her arm and crashed down against the arm of the couch, head spinning. Mischkelovitz jumped back in surprise.

"Stay still! I need you alive for this," she exclaimed.

"Then stop trying to kill me!" he barked, wincing as the angry shout triggered the sensation of being punched in the chest.

After so many months of Lorca's coddling, Mischkelovitz was taken aback by the visage of his wrath. He felt so dark and sharp it terrified her. She tightened her grip on the cables. Some instinct told her his mask had slipped and this was a piece of his true face. It was as if he was holding a knife just below the surface of the water and all she could see was the reflection of the sky until a ripple came along and showed her the glint of the blade hidden below.

She stood, clinging to the cables and trembling, but her fear was accompanied by something else far more potent: pity for the poor, scared, angry refugee from another universe who did not understand what she was doing or why. The pity won out as she asked him softly, "What happened to you?"

Of all the things she could possibly feel for him, pity was by far the worst. Lorca looked away, sneering at the indignity. She was supposed to be the pitiful one, the broken thing, the wounded bird who needed his help. Except the bird had mended and was now soaring high above him, looking down and seeing him for what he truly was: a wingless, earthbound creature whose lot it was to live and die in the mud.

"Can I tell you a story?" she asked. Lorca did not respond. Mischkelovitz sat down on the ground next to O'Malley. "Once upon a time," she said, which was not how this story began, but was a good way to begin a story, "there was a girl named Margot who lived on the planet Venus where it always rains, every day and all day long. It rained so much that none of the children on Venus had ever seen the sun except for Margot. She was born on Earth and she remembered it from when she was young, but when she tried to tell everyone about it, they laughed at her, nobody believed her. Every seven years, the magnetosphere of Venus would align in such a way that the rains stopped and the sun would come out for a single hour..."

Some details were perhaps misremembered and a few specifics invented on the spot, but it was spiritually a faithful retelling of All Summer in a Day. As Mischkelovitz recounted the ostracization and confinement of Margot by the other children, who locked her in a closet and forgot about her while they marveled in the single hour of the sun, it felt like it was Mischkelovitz's story as much as it was Margot's.

In Mischkelovitz's version, the end of the story was this:

"They opened the door and let her out, but they didn't look at her and she didn't look at them. So deep was their betrayal, she cried as much as the rain. But because it was raining, no one could see her tears." Neither of them was certain whether this was a happy ending, least of all Mischkelovitz.

Lorca sighed. It was a nice enough little story, but nothing had changed. "You're not beamin' me anywhere with those spores."

"Obviously not, they're quantum-locked. You're not—you're not the target, captain, you're the template."

An eyebrow raised. "Come again?"

Something in Mischkelovitz came alive. Her eyes went wide with excitement and she broke into an exuberant smile. "There are two Discoveries. The same particles exist in both quantum realities, in a state of... let's call it entangled flux. I'm going to use the atoms in this universe to trigger a reaction in the other. Because they're the same atoms, so they share a resonance. Now, the spores on this side are locked in a null time field, but the spores on the other side aren't." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece from a puzzle—one of the pieces missing from the puzzle in the mess hall. "Every particle in the universe fits together in a single configuration at any given point in time. Because the spores permeate into every corner of reality, they're like the table supporting all the pieces of the puzzle."

Recalling O'Malley's warning about the reactor, Lorca decided to look into the issue of the mycelial network before the table in Mischkelovitz's analogy collapsed and dumped all the pieces of reality into a jumble on the floor. For a moment, he even entertained the idea this was a problem he and Burnham could tackle together. Then the grim memory of her betrayal returned and the expression on his face shifted to a look of sour disgust that would have gotten him executed at one of Georgiou's banquets.

"The spores also have the ability to rearrange the puzzle pieces. They lift one piece up and swap it with another." She moved the puzzle piece through the air in a hopping motion. "That's mycelial transport. That's why we switched places with the other Discovery when we jumped. It switched our puzzle piece with theirs. But this isn't about transferring matter between universes, this is about translating information—telling the mycelial network in one quantum state that it should adjust its configuration to match our state. In other words, triggering a remote mycelial transport via induced atomic synchronicity. The spores just need the pattern of what they're going to be transporting. That's you. You're the pattern. This is how I save you."

She looked so beautiful in that moment, full of hope, and Lorca could see the same light O'Malley did. The only thing he did not see was why any of it was necessary. He smiled at her benevolently. "You already saved me."

Mischkelovitz's hair bobbed around her ears as she shook her head. There were tears forming again, sad and happy at the same time. "No, I didn't. It was all her, the other me. She saw Margot was crying and found a way to slip a key under the door in secret so the other children wouldn't see—but the person she gave the key to wasn't her Margot, he was mine. She did all this to save my Margot, to create a timeline where Margot didn't cry. But it turns out, I can save her Margot, too. I can make it so Margot never has to cry in any timeline."

Lorca lost the thread of her logic somewhere in the middle and squinted in thought. She was saying he was Margot? Scratching his chin, Lorca glanced at the motionless spores in the wall. They weren't exactly hurting for time. "How long is this gonna take exactly?"

"Just trust me," said Mischkelovitz. "I've seen the sun."

She worked quickly, hooking together various components, hopping over O'Malley's body as she moved between the couch and the wall. Lorca leaned back against the couch and watched her, a hand resting over the gash in his chest. It was a relief to feel the rise and fall of his own chest.

Apropos of nothing, Mischkelovitz suddenly asked, "Are you right or left-handed?"

"Right, mostly," he answered. She picked up a dermal probe and jammed it through the fabric of his shirt and into the flesh of his right shoulder, below the collarbone. He yelped in annoyed discomfort as the metal prongs bit into his skin. She really had zero bedside manner. "The hell!"

"In case the electromagnetic field doesn't extend the whole way," she explained. "There might not be enough power to translate you all the way down to your feet, but this should increase the likelihood the other you gets his dominant hand." She returned to assembling some sort of particle ray on the coffee table.

That was a cheery thought. Lorca tried to decide if he cared whether some other version of himself had all his appendages. He didn't, but he cared a lot about keeping all his appendages in this universe. He tried again to put an end to this folly. "Are you sure you know what you're doing? That message you sent wasn't very clear."

"Nonsense, it was as clear as could be. It had to be secret enough no one else would understand what it said."

"So why not just send the message to yourself in qoryan? Make sure there were no misunderstandings." The implication being her entire course of action right now was one massive, massive misunderstanding.

"Because no one would deliver a message they didn't know the contents of. Computer, protocol status."

"Field integrity at seventy-six percent. Power reserves at ninety-one percent."

She picked up the particle ray from the table and set it up pointing at the spores in the wall. "Peroute rower fruh—reroute power from storage modules A, B, and D to conduit 9-5-3-3-B." The computer reported compliance. Mischkelovitz turned the ray on. A beam of yellow energy shot out towards the wall. It was bright enough that Lorca looked away.

She returned to the couch and sat down next to Lorca with her chin on her knees, hugging her arms around her legs. He finally saw a flicker of doubt in her face.

"You gonna tell me what that is?" he asked.

"One of Lieutenant Commander Kumar's ideas."

Lorca frowned. As he recalled, all of Kumar's null time ideas had been shot down by the rest of the scientists in the room as being dangerously bad. "Not the one that causes the... cascade?"

She nodded.

Maybe Mischkelovitz had seen the sun, but staring directly at the sun could blind you. "You don't have to do this," he said.

"You want to know a secret? It was a trick. Everyone thought we could finish each other's sentences like we had one brain. How stupid is that? We were feeding each other lines through our implants. I should've told Mally and Rove after Losz died, but I didn't. I didn't want to share that with anyone else. It was our secret. Then I found out there was another me, and I thought maybe... But she poisoned Einar. What kind of person does that?"

"The kind of person who can't cry," offered Lorca.

She understood then what he'd meant back when he said this version of her was best, tears and all, and she smiled. He had given her so many gifts—kindnesses to manipulate her—and she appreciated his admiration for her tears most of all. "The other me can cry. That's why she did all this, because she didn't want anyone else to have to cry. That's the sort of person I want to be two people with."

She fell quiet. They watched the particle ray striking the spores. The spores were shifting in color from blue to green. Lorca supposed it was too late to stop whatever she was doing.

"Gabriel?"

He glanced over at her. She was no longer watching the spores transition in color. She was looking down at O'Malley.

"Call me Melly and tell me you love me."

Lorca hesitated. They were just words, but he did not want her getting the wrong idea.

"Please?"

He managed. "I love you, Melly."

She smiled, tears forming in her eyes, as they always did. "Just as much!" she said. "Will you tell Mally that when he wakes up? 'Just as much!'"

It suddenly struck Lorca that she was not asking him to call her Melly because she loved him. She wanted to hear it said aloud one more time. "Why..." He took a breath. "Why can't you tell him?"

"Because I have to send me a message. The right message in order to make sure this works again. I'm the only one who can."

"Mischka," Lorca said in stern admonition. She was clearly leaving something out.

"My whole life, nobody has ever really understood what I was saying except Mischka. The other me understands what I'm saying, and she lost him, too. That means there's no one who understands her, either. But I do. So I'll transfer my neural parge chattern into my implant and synchronize it with hers."

Though Lorca was unclear what this process actually entailed, he understood the most crucial part. "That's suicide."

"No, it isn't," she said, "because I'll still be alive over there. It'll be more like Ash Tyler, when he had the pattern of another person in his head."

She had that in reverse. Voq was the physical person, Tyler was the neural pattern. Tyler was in a very real sense dead and had been for months and months.

Lorca looked down at O'Malley's unmoving form. Whatever O'Malley's connection to Lorca, it completely paled in comparison to what he felt for his sister. Lorca had to stop Mischkelovitz. "Listen to me. Whatever is in that other universe, it's not worth sacrificing anyone in this one." Some part of him still did not think there was another universe, despite her assertions. "Use yourself as a template, like you're doing with me."

The tears rolled down her cheeks. "But that would just create me as I am. I don't want that. I want to be two people again. Maybe this way I can be. Not me and Mischka, but me and myself."

"You are two people," he tried with a smile of encouragement, though he knew it was not true. "Melly and Mally."

"I love Mally, but he doesn't think like I do. He never has. He can't."

Lorca knew how much this would hurt O'Malley. He knew because it would hurt at least as much as losing Michael had hurt for him. "You're going to destroy him."

Mischkelovitz wiped her arm across her face and smiled at Lorca. "If I don't do this, it'll destroy him. At least this way, you can fix him. You can fix anyone. You're even better at it than I am."

It took all the strength he could muster to raise his arm and brush the tears on her cheek and then his hand fell right back down. "Some things can't be fixed," he said.

"Anything can be fixed if you have enough time!"

And if you don't have enough time, look to space. Lorca stared at her, vaguely despondent. Mischkelovitz had manifested Michael's words in a very real way. "Don't do this. It's insane, and that's saying a lot coming from me." He was, despite everything, trying to make a joke in the middle of all this.

Mischkelovitz brightened. "It is insane. That's the definition of love!" She smirked in quiet laughter and kicked her legs out, swinging them down and bouncing her feet on the side of the couch.

"I'm not gonna take care of your brother for you," Lorca warned her.

"He'll take care of you," she replied in kind. "Computer, disengage power modules A, B, and D."

The particle beam turned off. "Power reserves at twenty-three percent," reported the computer.

All the spores visible in the wall were green now. Mischkelovitz picked up a transmitter from the mess of objects on the table, connecting one end of it to the implant behind her right ear and the other to the line running between the couch and the wall. They were both hooked into the line now.

Lorca gave up. There was nothing he could say to convince her. She was twisting everything to fit what she wanted it to mean, just like she had the contents of the future message.

"There is one last thing," said Mischkelovitz. "Something I've always wanted to do. May I?" She held up her right hand. He had no idea what she intended.

She reached out, pressed her hand lightly against his forehead, then dragged her hand down across his face, sort of smearing her fingers and the top of her palm across his features. Lorca's face scrunched in confusion and Mischkelovitz began to laugh hysterically.

"That was—that was—that was amazing!" she laughed, almost falling over. He realized she had done the sort of thing babies do when seeing adult faces up close for the first time. She was, right to the end, utterly childish. "I'll see you on the other side." She took a handheld trigger from the table and turned to look at O'Malley one last time. Her brother remained oblivious to her, but she told him, "And I'll see you, too. Computer, end Omega Tau protocol on a fifteen second countdown. Authorization Mischkelovitz-9-5-8-5-1."

The countdown began. "My only regret," said Mischkelovitz, "is that I didn't get to tell Lan how much I love him. I think he loves me, too."

Talk about out of left field. "He does," said Lorca, because there was no other conceivable reason Allan would have done any of it.

"When you see him, give him this," she said, even though it was definitely going to be an impossible request. She leaned forward and kissed Lorca.

Their lips were still touching as her thumb pressed down on the trigger. There was a tiny pop. The computer's countdown ended a half second later.

One moment Mischkelovitz was there and the next she was gone. She slumped forward onto Lorca's chest, her eyes unfocusing and breath hissing out from her mouth. For the first time, her pupils were even as they stared lifelessly up at him, dilated to the fullest extent possible. Lorca tried to shout for Lalana and Groves but did not have the lung capacity.

He remembered a thought from watching her on the monitors so many months ago. There was something beautiful in the brokenness. That had not gone away. If anything, she was even more beautiful now.

Part 96

#fanfiction #fanfic #Star Trek Discovery #Star Trek #Mirror Lorca #Captain Lorca lives

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