By-=/\=- Zanh Liis
80622.19
...continued from Part One
80622.19
...continued from Part One
"Good morning." She greeted the man standing behind the desk. "I'm Lieutenant Zanh Liis, reporting for duty, Sir."
"Jonas Vox," The man replied. His voice was low and inviting, and he extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Zanh Liis. I am told to expect great things from you."
Liis shrugged. "I'll give you my best, Sir. On that, you have my word."
"I'm told that you're a woman of your word, so I thank you." Vox replied. He turned and examined the potted plant on the shelf behind him. "Are you certain about your decision to take on this line of work?"
This was not the first time that Vox had asked her this question, not by a long shot. In fact, when he thought back on several other times in which he remembered doing it, he marveled that the determination in her voice always surprised him, each time he heard what she had to say next.
"I've never been more certain of anything."
"Are you willing to die in the performance of your duties?"
"That's the easy part."
"Pardon?" Again, he knew what she had said to him in past timelines, but the answer still caused a lump to form in his throat.
"Dying for your duty, that's the easy part. The hard part is living for it."
*Damn, * Vox thought. *Across time and space there were just some things that never did change. *
"Are you prepared to live for it?" he asked.
"I am."
"Very well then." Vox suddenly felt an eerie queasiness in his stomach over what he was about to do next. "It's time for you to meet your partner. He's got a lot of experience, and it will serve you well to listen to him and learn from him, Zanh Liis. He will be all that you have to count on when you're on a Jump- and he will rely on you just as much."
"I won't let him down, Sir. I won't let you down."
Vox nodded. "I'll just...send him in. We'll speak again later. It was a pleasure meeting you, Lieutenant Zanh."
As he shook her hand one last time, Jonas Vox thought about the last time he had seen her, lying dead and still on that field in Ireland beneath the wreckage of a fallen house, and shuddered slightly. Liis noticed the change in his expression and tilted her head curiously.
"Sir, is something wrong?"
"Not at all. You just…” he paused. “Please wait here. The Commander will join you momentarily."
"Yes, Sir."
Vox stepped out, and a few minutes later Liis heard a deep voice humming behind her.
It was the same voice she'd heard in the locker room before, and the same song.
Her back was turned to him, as she inspected Vox' African violet plant, the same one he'd been analyzing earlier. "Over watered," she mumbled to herself. Then she wondered just how she knew that, she didn't remember where she'd learned it.
She shrugged the sensation off as the man's footsteps came closer.
"Top of the mornin' to ye," Commander Keiran O'Sullivan greeted her cheerfully. "I hear you're to be my new Jump-mate."
"Yes, I am," Liis whirled about to face him. Seeing that he was indeed Terran as she had expected from the sound of his voice, she held out her hand once more in the customary greeting of his people. "Zanh Liis. Pleased to meet you, Commander..."
The moment he saw her face, the man's expression changed rapidly, and seemed to cycle through at least fifteen different emotional reflections in the next split second. He gasped softly, and blinked several times.
Liis was perplexed by this reaction.
She had never seen him before, but he seemed very distressed at the sight of her. "Yes, " she continued politely, her hand still extended as she waited for him to reach out and grasp it. "I'm Zanh Liis. I didn't quite catch your name, what did you say it was, Sir?"
He hadn't said and she knew it, but she didn't think that this was any way to start a partnership, without a proper introduction and a handshake.
She had found she got a very good feel for people in this manner, and her instincts were never far from the mark. Unless someone could hold still, stop talking, and look her in the eye while shaking her hand, she felt she could never really trust them.
Anytime she had deviated from that first instinctual, gut reaction to someone, she had lived to regret it.
"I'm," he stammered. "I am," He looked at her hand as if she held a knife on him, and he was terrified by it. He took a marked step backward. "I'm sorry. If you'll just. Excuse me. Please."
He stepped beyond her into the small lavatory attached to the office they now occupied, and shut the door.
*Strange,* she thought at first.
Then it went from being strange to being truly upsetting a moment later when she heard the clear and unmistakable sound of retching.
Observing from the other side of a two-way mirror on the wall, Jonas Vox uttered one very short, very profane word.
He stepped from the shadows, knowing now that this experiment had been a total failure. He hurried into the next room and approached a now very confused Zanh Liis.
"Admiral Vox," she was relieved to see him, "I believe the Commander is ill."
"He's been having a few health issues of late, Zanh Liis. We believed he was feeling better enough to return to duty, but perhaps we should have him checked out at the infirmary before you two try this again."
Zanh bit her lip, disappointed. She was anxious to get started, anxious to make her first Jump. She wasn't certain but somehow, this felt like a setback. She reached up and twisted the chain of her earring, and rocked her weight from her heels to her toes, then back again. "Orders, Sir?"
Vox tapped his badge to summon his assistant. "Ensign Swift, will you join us please?"
[Right away, Sir.] The doors opened again and a small, slight man appeared before them.
"Yes, Sir?"
"Would you do me a favor, please, and give Lieutenant Zanh the grand tour of our facility? Be sure she doesn't miss the Clock Room."
*Tour? * Liis silently fumed. *I'm ready to meet my partner and get to work and they want to send me on a f**king tour? *
"Absolutely, Sir, it would be my pleasure. Lieutenant," He gestured toward the doors and Liis nodded, then followed.
"Take her to lunch," Vox added breezily as they left. "Try the Chicken Parmesan in the dining hall, Zanh Liis. It's delicious."
"I hate Parmesan," Liis commented to Swift, who laughed softly as he set about starting his tour.
Once Liis had gone, Vox softly knocked on the door to the bathroom, even as he listened to Keiran's struggle continue on the other side.
“O’Sullivan," he began slowly, guilt evident in his voice. "Are you all right or should I break down the door?"
A moment later he heard the sound of the sink, as Keiran ran water to splash upon his face, and rinse out his mouth.
When he opened the door, the Irishman looked as Vox had not seen since that horrible day in the meadow beyond his home.
"How could you," O'Sullivan whispered bitterly, leaning against the wall for support. "Just...bringing her in like that, and not telling me, and-"
"God damn it, Keiran, you were not supposed to remember her."
"She was my wife, Jonas!" Keiran shouted, "I was supposed to forget that?"
"Yes! You were!" Vox exclaimed, "Keep your voice down."
Keiran traversed the space between them in two swift strides and soon had Vox up against the wall, held suspended from the deck by the front of his shirt.
"I can't do this. I can't do it again. It'll kill me, understand?"
Vox sighed slowly. The last resequencing had obviously been a dismal failure. It had seemed so promising, they had even told him that his new partner would be a Bajoran female and Keiran had registered no reaction.
But sadly all it took was being in the same room with her, and the man simply came unhinged.
"They really thought it would work, Keiran. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Vox was sincere in his words. "Aren't you at least gratified to see that she's alive? That your Jump was a success and here she is, back again at the beginning?"
*I can't go back to square one with her and pretend that...”
*I'll never be able to keep the code. * O'Sullivan thought to himself.
"I'm only a man, Jonas, for Christ's sake. I'm only-"
Slowly, he lowered Vox back to the floor. Releasing his grip, he looked at the Admiral apologetically.
"It's over." Keiran announced, reaching up and pulling his badge from his uniform. "My career is over. My life is over."
"Wait,"
"No. You wait." Keiran said, panic rising in his tone again. "You can't ever, ever put me in a situation again with Zanh Liis and expect that I won't remember her." He stared off into the distance. "I've loved her, and what's more I have needed her, and you can't expect that I will ever forget how much."
Vox stepped forward but refused to accept the badge O'Sullivan held out to him.
"There is one other option."
-=The Next Day, Starfleet Medical Research and Development Center: Location Classified=-
"Are you ready, Commander O'Sullivan?"
The surgical team stood all around him, with sincere concern and sympathy written across their faces.
"Aye."
"You're certain that you're ready to accept the risks."
"Aye."
"If you survive, you will not be the same person."
Tears fell from the corners of Keiran O'Sullivan's eyes as he closed them, and just wished for them to get on with it.
"I'm countin' upon that," he whispered.
The next thing he was aware of was someone putting a neural monitor for his vital signs on his forehead, and then another two leads, one on each of his wrists.
"We're starting the anesthesia now, Keiran. It'll all be over in a matter of hours," The surgeon announced. Keiran began to feel sleepy as he heard the nurse at his side speak to him softly.
"Count backward, Commander O'Sullivan, from ten,"
"Ten," He was shaking as he realized that if all went to plan, when he woke up, he would no longer remember what it felt like when Zanh Liis loved him.
"Nine," tears fell again down his cheek, and he felt the nurse gently brush them away. "Eight,"
"Just relax, and keep counting," she whispered.
"Seven," Keiran whispered. As he drifted from consciousness, the last image in his mind was of Zanh Liis, with her arms clasped around his neck as they danced in their living room on their wedding anniversary.
Echoes of the song that had played sounded in his mind as he slipped into darkness.
*More time,* Keiran thought. *If only we'd had more time.*
-=Current Time: Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-
The ship shook again for some unknown reason, and Avery Breaux cursed.
"Gods, don't they realize I've got sick people down here? Least they could do is keep the ship in one piece and steady so I can do care for them!"
He'd been unable to bring Zanh Liis out of unconsciousness, and now matters were worse.
"Doctor, the Captain is going into neural shock," T'Dara announced. Breaux swore again, much more loudly and explicitly.
Locked inside her own mind, Zanh Liis was suffering, remembering from Keiran's perspective the full force of the pain that he had felt upon seeing her again in the next version of the timeline- the one immediately after the Jump he'd made to erase all they had been to each other.
As she received his memories directly now, from his thoughts through a link with the Sylph Luminary herself, the pain was simply more than she could bear. Even as she tried to wake herself from this endless nightmare, her brain, and her body, began to shut down.
--------------------------------
-=/\=-Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
-=/\=-Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012