Chapter 4: The New Normal and Hope
Three months is ninety-one point three days. Tom counted them, each one a perfect lie.
He performed his husbandry with robotic precision. He brought B’Elanna raktajino in engineering, remembered to laugh at her jokes, made love to her on Tuesdays and Saturdays with a careful, considerate technique that left her satisfied and utterly unaware. His body functioned. His mouth smiled. When she curled against him in sleep, her head on his chest, he stared at the ceiling and felt the hum. The constant, subvocal vibration of the link was his true pulse. Her perfume in their quarters was a cloying scent, a souvenir from a country he’d left without looking back.
His devotion had a single locus: Cargo Bay Two. It wasn’t a study anymore. It was a worship.
He found her in a hyposhower stall in the crew gym, late at night when the schedule predicted 99.7% vacancy. The stall was narrow, all white ceramic and recycled steam. The air was thick with moisture and the sharp, clean smell of ionized water.
Seven stood under the spray, her back to him, her biosuit a dark pile on the wet floor. Water sluiced over the stark geometry of her implants, over the powerful muscles of her back and ass. She knew he was there. The link told her.
“You are fifteen minutes late,” she stated, voice echoing off the tiles. Not a reproach. A data point.
“Captain needed a nebula analysis logged before beta shift ended,” he said, already pulling his black undershirt over his head. His skin prickled in the humid air. The sight of her, naked and imperious under the water, made his breath catch. It always did.
“Irrelevant. My need was greater.”
She turned. Water beaded on her eyelashes, streamed between her breasts. Her gaze was possession itself. She didn’t ask. She commanded with a look. He stepped under the scalding spray with her, the water soaking his hair, running into his eyes. He didn’t close them. He wanted to watch.
Her mouth crashed into his, a collision, not a kiss. Her tongue was demanding, tasting of recycled water and her own unique, metallic sweetness. Her hands grabbed his ass, pulling his hips hard against hers. The stiff, wet length of his cock pressed against her stomach.
“Fuck me,” she growled into his mouth, the vulgarity still sounding oddly formal, a chosen tool. “Now. I require the sensation of being dominated against a hard surface.”
He spun her, his hands on her slick shoulders, pushing her face-first against the cold, tiled wall. She spread her legs, bracing herself, offering herself. He didn’t need to prepare her. She was already wet, her arousal a different viscosity from the shower spray. He guided himself to her entrance, the blunt head of his cock nudging against her.
“Tell me,” he grunted, his lips against the neural node on her jaw. A ritual.
“You are mine,” she said, her voice a low thrum. “Your wife touches a ghost. Your life is my experiment. Your cock belongs inside me. Now.”
He drove into her in one brutal, deep thrust.
Seven cried out, a sharp, punched sound that was swallowed by the drumming water. Her inner walls clenched around him, a viselike, perfect grip. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, his hips slamming against the lush curve of her ass, the wet smack of skin on skin mixing with the shower’s roar. One hand fisted in her soaked blonde hair, pulling her head back. The other wrapped around her torso, his fingers finding her nipple, pinching and twisting.
The link was a fire hose of shared sensation. He felt the stretch and burn of his own invasion from her perspective—the overwhelming fullness, the ceramic tiles cold and unyielding against her cheek, the thrilling degradation of being taken like this in a public, utilitarian space. And she felt his raw, animal drive, the electric pleasure-pain of her tight channel milking him, the obscene thrill of possession.
“Harder,” she demanded, her voice fraying. “Your emotional compliance is 100%. Demonstrate your physical efficiency.”
He obeyed, pistoning into her with a strength that bordered on violence. The stall filled with the sounds of them: guttural grunts, choked gasps, the incessant, wet slap of coupling. His world narrowed to heat, pressure, and the hum in his skull that was her approval. He fucked her like he was trying to erase his own name, to become only this instrument of her pleasure.
“I am… I am detecting a cascade toward climax,” she panted, her body beginning to shudder. “The variable of the public location increases endocrine output by 40%. Do not stop. Do not—”
Her sentence dissolved into a raw, shattered scream as her orgasm ripped through her. Her back arched, her muscles locking. The convulsions of her cunt around his cock were rhythmic, ruthless pulls. It tipped him over the edge.
He came with a broken shout, burying himself to the hilt as he pulsed inside her, his release a hot flood lost instantly in the shower spray. He collapsed against her, his forehead pressed to her shoulder blade, breathing in steam and her skin.
For a moment, there was only the water and their ragged breaths.
Then, the sharp, intrusive chirp of a Starfleet combadge.
“Captain Janeway to all senior staff. Report to the bridge immediately. We have a situation.”
The voice was a bucket of ice water. Tom froze, still buried inside her. The link flared with a spike of pure, irrational fury from Seven—a disruption of her perfect, controlled data stream.
“Acknowledged,” Tom managed, his voice hoarse. He pulled out of her slowly. The loss of connection was a physical pain.
Seven turned, her face a mask of cold fury. Water sheeted off her. “This is untimely. My post-coital analysis period is critical.”
“It’s the Captain,” he said, already reaching for a towel, the facade snapping back into place so quickly it was dizzying. Lieutenant Paris. Husband. Pilot. The hollow man.
She watched him, her eyes calculating. “Proceed. I will follow in 4.2 minutes. My biosuit requires reassembly.” A pause. “The experiment continues after the ‘situation.’ The new data on interruption’s effect on neurochemical drop-off will be… valuable.”
He nodded, a devotee receiving a blessing. As he dressed in his damp uniform, the ghost of her, of them, clung to his skin. The hum in his mind was a satisfied purr.
The bridge was a stark contrast to the steam and sin of the shower. Cool, dry air. The quiet beep of consoles. The senior staff gathered around the central command well, their faces lit by the main viewer’s glow. B’Elanna shot him a quick, warm smile from her engineering station. He returned it, the expression feeling like a rubber mask.
Janeway stood before the screen, her posture rigid. On it, swirling against the star-flecked black, was an anomaly. It was not a regular wormhole. It pulsed like a sick heart, a ragged tear in space that flickered between violet and a nauseating, phosphorescent green. Tendrils of distorted space-time lashed out from its edges, vanishing and reappearing.
“Sensors are going haywire,” Harry Kim reported, his voice tight. “It’s emitting chroniton particles, tetryon beams, and something else… something the computer can’t classify. The energy signature is unlike anything in the database.”
“It’s unstable,” Chakotay said, studying the readings on his padd. “Violently so. It’s tearing itself apart and reforming dozens of times per second.”
“Is it navigable?” Janeway asked, her eyes never leaving the chaotic maw.
Tom found himself at the helm, his hands resting on the controls. The pull he felt wasn’t from the anomaly. It was from behind him. He knew the exact moment Seven stepped onto the bridge. The hum in his mind shifted, attuned to her focus.
“Theoretical navigability is point-zero-zero-three percent,” Seven stated, moving to an auxiliary console. Her hair was perfectly dry, her biosuit impeccable. Only someone who knew the taste of her sweat would see the faint, residual flush at her throat. “The structural integrity is highly erratic. However, my analysis of the tetryon emissions suggests the anomaly may be artificial. The pattern, while degraded, bears a 73% correlation to Borg spatial flexure technology.”
A cold silence fell over the bridge.
“Borg?” Janeway whispered.
“It is a hypothesis. If correct, the technology within may represent a unique advancement. A possible shortcut. Or a weapon of unimaginable scale.” Seven’s voice was pure, cold logic. But through the link, Tom felt it—a thrum of keen, intellectual avarice. A new toy for her collection. A new realm to explore. With him.
Janeway turned, her gaze sweeping her crew. It lingered on Tom for a fraction of a second. “Options?”
“We steer clear,” Chakotay said. “It’s a suicide run.”
“We have an opportunity to study potentially transformative technology,” Tuvok countered. “The risks are extreme, but the potential knowledge is significant.”
B’Elanna leaned forward. “If it is Borg, and it’s this unstable, it could be a threat to this entire sector. We might have a responsibility to understand it, or even try to collapse it.”
Janeway clasped her hands behind her back, staring into the pulsing, wounded rift in space. Tom’s fingers hovered over the helm. He felt the decision coalesce in the Captain before she spoke. He also felt the quiet, relentless pressure from the link. A desire not voiced, but transmitted. Go closer.
“We can’t ignore this,” Janeway said finally, her voice firm. “Prepare for a cautious approach. Full sensor suite active. Shields at maximum. Tom, take us in. Nice and easy. Let’s see what this thing is made of.”
“Aye, Captain,” Tom said.
His hands moved on the controls. The helmsman. The expert pilot. The hollow man filled only with a dark, devotional hum. The Voyager’s engines thrummed, and the ship began to glide, silently and deliberately, toward the devouring, flickering heart of the unknown.