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Chapter Text

She’d forgotten what darkness could look like.

The submersible hummed with a dissonant pleasantry as they descended, its searchlights doing little to puncture the murky water surrounding them. Michael Burnham smoothed her thumb across the tiny bottle still hanging by its chain around her neck, rolling it between her fingers as her gaze searched for anything recognizable in the scene outside the sub.

“You’re doing it again, Captain Burnham.”

In the copilot’s chair, Commander Saru gave a disapproving click, though he never removed his attention from his task. The submersible leaned starboard as the Kelpien finessed it around a stalk of plant matter materializing from somewhere below. It wasn’t the first time they’d nearly become entangled, and Michael knew she wasn’t alone in wanting to avoid a repeat.

She glanced down at the bottle in her fingers, then let it fall back to her chest.

“What’s our ETA?” Michael asked. She saw Saru angle his head in the precise, exacting kind of way that meant his disapproval had grown stronger, but he seemed to know better than to press the matter.

The sonar pinged.

“You have your answer,” Saru told her, pulling back gently on the yoke until the craft slowed to a crawl.

Michael sat forward in her chair, peering into the gloom. An object drifted across the lights, but its shape was indeterminate. A number of smaller shadows followed it, each less identifiable than the last.

“Debris,” she decided after a few seconds of watching. “Can we confirm its origins?” Her hand reached upward toward the glass bottle again, but she stopped herself before the habit could take hold. She clenched her fingers into a fist instead, the dread in her gut growing thicker as something like a cable glided past.

“Scanning now, Captain,” Saru answered, and a pulse of blue shot out from the nose of the sub. It flickered over the expanse ahead of them, outlining the smaller pieces until it hit something larger.

The sonar pinged again.

Michael’s eyes closed, shutting out the familiar form.

“It appears to be part of a saucer,” Saru said. Michael opened her eyes to study him, the contours of his face and the way his lips parted as they always did before delivering bad news. Still, Michael knew he wouldn’t say more until she asked, that he would still attempt to shield her wherever he could.

“Any identification?” she asked, and Saru tapped at the screen.

His shoulders sagged a bit.

“USS Cayuga, Captain.”

“Survivors?” Michael inquired. Sometimes she didn’t know the answer. This time, she did, but it was her duty to ask the question anyway.

“All escape pods still in their stations,” he replied. “No life signs. Scans reflect open bulkheads across all decks.”

The lack of sensation as the words hit Michael wasn’t new. Even that traitorous sense of relief no longer pricked at her. How many helpless vessels had they been sent to recover these past three years? How many had they watched turn once found?

The dead were a mercy. Safer for Discovery. Anyone who had been lost, but lived, was a risk. A threat. Another decision Michael didn’t want to make.

Better in ruins than fettered in Rot.

Michael leaned forward, covering her face with her palms and then rubbing circles against her temples. Her hands slid down her cheeks to steeple in front of her lips as she analyzed the scene.

“They tried to ditch,” she said quietly, shaking her head. Saru looked at her, solemn. Michael met his eye when he nodded. “It must have already been in the ship when they did. She hit the water at full impulse–nothing else could have broken her apart like this.”

“And then it flooded her for good measure,” Saru added, and Michael thought she saw one of his hands quiver on the yoke. “Just in case anyone survived the crash.”

The nausea in her gut was shared by her copilot–Michael could tell by the way his expression transformed as he spoke.

“Nine ships,” Saru continued, shaking his head. His eyes, piercing and blue, landed on the Captain’s.

Michael’s jaw grew tense. She stared out at the remnants of USS Cayuga drifting aimlessly in front of them, at the way the tall stalks of plants tangled around the components like they’d tried to do to the submersible. She blinked away the tears threatening to spill over, digging her fingernails into her palms.

There was no satisfaction in crying these days.

And she, of all people, had no right to try to glean such a luxury as that release.

“Eight,” Michael said to Saru after the pause, correcting him. He looked at her again, lips parted. “Franklin found Hood earlier today. And God knows how many dead officers.” She exhaled, wiping a palm across her face again and then fumbling for the bottle. She turned it between her fingers, watching the grains of sand shift and then level again.

Such a stupid little thing. A trinket kept for the memories it held of a person she’d never even known–a loss she’d never endured and one she would never understand. It wasn’t meant for her, but she kept it because Airiam had.

“I shouldn’t have hesitated,” she said.

Saru pushed the yoke forward, steering the submersible back toward the surface. The engines chirred, bubbles forming to either side of the windows, and the inky black of Cayuga’s wreckage slipped downward until it became just another shadow in the depths. For a long moment, there was silence between the pilots save for the creaks of their seats as the sub bumped over the currents.

“To act without hesitation would have been worse, Captain Burnham,” Saru said, the somberness still present in his voice, but reassurance was bleeding through. “It was an impossible choice.”

An impossible choice.

Her hand clung to the bottle, leaving depressions in her palm.

She hated that defense. That justification. As if giving up had been rational. Like it was acceptable that she’d killed Airiam for nothing.

“It was the wrong choice,” Michael said. The bottle dropped back to her chest. “She was begging me to open that door, and I waited. Now look what it's cost us.”

“She was your partner,” Saru reminded her. Natural light was beginning to return to the cockpit as they moved upward.

“And this is why personal relationships between crew are a danger,” she said.

Michael almost didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice. It was dry, despairing–like a part of herself had gone that day, too. But it was level, and calm, the way a captain’s should be.

“You cannot shut yourself away, Captain Burnham,” the Kelpien replied, clicking again. “The Federation needs you now, more than ever. Discovery needs you. But I fear that we’re losing you, too.”

The sub trembled as it broke the surface, the hull popping a bit as the pressure was relieved. They bobbed there for a few seconds, and Michael closed her eyes at the sway, inhaling through her nose.

When she opened her eyes again, the ebony black shuttle was already swooping forward to collect the submersible back into its belly.

“You’re not losing me, Commander,” she reassured him, but the blue of his eyes appeared dull. He didn’t believe her.

She wouldn't try to convince him.

The bottle was back in her grasp again, rolling between her fingers. It was warm where it had laid against her neck, the glass smooth like Airiam's hands had been. 

“She would have hated seeing you–” he said.

“Don’t,” Michael snapped, cutting him off and dropping the trinket.

The clamps latched onto the sub and it wobbled once it was free of the water and rising upward into the shuttle. Michael hated this unsteadiness. She braced against the armrests, blowing out a breath.

“She would have forgiven you,” Saru pushed.

The underbelly doors of the shuttle swung closed, and Michael unbuckled her restraints with a bit more force than necessary. Saru swiped at a panel and the doors to the submersible slid open.

Michael’s combat boots splashed in the water pooling on the floor, the clamps retracting back into the ceiling and sending droplets of more water down on top of her head. Her palm swept across her hair, flinging the liquid away.

“Captain Burnham.”

When Michael pivoted, Saru had come around the front of the sub, his fingers drumming against the sides of his hips as if thoughtful. His head tilted and his lips pursed as she met his eye.

“I know this is a hard day for you,” he said finally, folding his palms together in front of his waist for a moment. “If there’s anything I can do…anything at all…”

“Your job, Saru,” Michael replied, reverting to his name for effect. Once she might have appreciated his concern, the way he always cared, no matter what. Now, though, his concern was aversive, the notion of care something she tried not to acknowledge. 

“But…if there is anything else…” he continued, his tone a somber blend of reassurance and hope. “You will tell me, yes?”

The way her lips curved upward was more automatic than forced, but it was no less artificial than any other time she’d used it to end a conversation she was no longer interested in having. Still, with Saru, she knew better than to let it grow too big, too wide, or he’d see through it.

Years serving alongside him had its benefits as much as it had its troubles.

“I’ll tell you,” she promised, and even if she meant it, she knew she wouldn’t need to tell him anything. Saru seemed satisfied enough. He dipped his head, excused himself, and headed towards the stairs to the upper level as the shuttle tilted slightly and began to move.

Michael watched him go, one hand gripping a rail on the nearby bulkhead to steady herself. The other hand found the bottle again. She lifted it, tilted it until the sand collected against the cork plugging the top.

It was three years to the day since Control had taken Airiam.

And now, only eight Federation vessels remained.

She bowed her head, pressed the glass against the clammy skin of her forehead.

Why couldn’t I just open the door?

Chapter Text

Around her, the red glow of a dozen consoles reflected in the gloss black plating of the floor. Slender veins of crimson and amber erupted outward from behind each screen, prowling up the ebony bulkheads and receding into the ceiling. The light passing through them pulsed as it moved, currents of data pumped from the heart of a ship that could hardly recall its own name.

It must have been beautiful once.

The warp core wasn’t far from this room. She couldn’t recall how she’d gotten here, or even when she’d arrived. Isolation and stealth had fused minutes with months, reticence stealing her voice as they did. All that existed was action, and stillness, and hope –the hope that one day soon, she might finally make Starfleet hear.

The corridors were empty when she slipped through the door.

Fifteen steps. Left turn.

It still didn’t know she was here.

The ship began to drone, a deep, echoing resonance that rose in pitch for several seconds. She hurried to brace against the wall as turbulence took hold, increasing in intensity until it ripped loose in one final, violent pulse that crashed through the walls and sucked the air from her lungs. Her eyes squeezed shut as the sounds wound back down into nothing more than faint ringing in her ears.

She’s taken another vessel.

Her stomach churned, but she had to move forward.

She’d never seen Seraphis before its corruption. Before it had become its source. The veins on the bulkheads were her constant companion, lighting her way where she walked. Once this ship had carried honor in her walls, entrusted with the lives of officers who had pledged their service to the Federation and Starfleet. Now she carried only solitude, her crew and her rectitude long since dead.

Now, she belonged to Control.

Another door slid open, and even that sound wasn’t right.

Thirty-two steps. Right turn.

Her footsteps echoed as they carried her forward, the soles of her shoes wearing thin after so many years on board. She’d been trying for so long to do something–anything–to stop the monstrosity at Seraphis’ helm. These passageways were familiar to her in ways she wished they weren’t, each of them etched into her mind with such prominence that she could navigate by stride count and the pulse of the floor.

Biometric lock, thirteen degrees left, one-half meter away.

Her hand clanked against the panel. The heat of the scan prickled, and she watched as the door whined open. The sound rolled down the corridor, taking longer to fade than she preferred.

But she was alone. As always.

And yet, she wasn’t. Something was with her–a memory or a dream–trying to claw its way out of the place she’d banished it long ago. It gnawed at her, pressed her for answers she couldn’t give to questions she couldn’t quite understand. Most days she pushed them aside, forced herself to focus on the mission.

Other days, the sensation nearly drove her mad.

Twelve steps. Right turn. Three steps. Door.

Another hiss. Another opening.

Seven steps.

She stared up at the warp core, tilting her head, studying the way that it moved and listening as it hummed. Control had modified it, improved it, made it more efficient when it had first taken the ship–and now its sound was off-key. The venules on the walls slithered onto the floor, twisting beneath her shoes into one central artery heading for the core. She spent several seconds observing it–or was it several minutes? No matter–it would take less time to cut the power than it would to wonder how long she’d been staring.

Her lips curved upward, satisfied and smug.

Sometimes, she wondered if Control made it easy on purpose. When would it learn to take precautions? It seemed almost impossible that it hadn’t tried yet, and that it never seemed to notice her sabotage. She’d seen it discover them, one after the other, watched as it processed and thought.

But it never suspected her. It never saw her. She made sure of that. It would only ever remember what she allowed.

She’d been studying its behavior, too.

It was vulnerable when it slept.

Crouching at a console and reaching below it, she ripped out the end of a cord. The pitch of the warp core’s song changed again. She glanced up in satisfaction, then around when she thought she heard movement from somewhere behind her. She'd learned long ago how to manipulate the consoles–how to use them to Starfleet's advantage–but if Control ever saw her, this mission, this takedown, would end.

She stood, then began to collect the cord she'd removed, unwinding it from the mass of the others and coiling it around her arm as she moved. This piece had been worth the risk of exposure. She could use it to reach Discovery.

Captain Michael Burnham.

Her name appeared in every record she’d coaxed out of Seraphis’ stores. Every blip on the radar, every packet and scan, Discovery and Burnham were there. Control never strayed far from their track. It watched them from afar, just out of range, studying, learning their patterns of behavior.

For years, Burnham’s subsistence had consumed it.

This time, though, its obsession had brought it too close.

It was easy enough to inject the codes and create the protocols she needed to guide it. But the process was delicate, conducted in increments in the years she’d lurked on board. There were times she had wanted to push, to move faster and save more ships. But discretion was key–her influence could only be gradual, dispersed across timelines that coincided with new batches of data lest it ever suspect an intruder.

Control was smart, its processes swift and its analyses improving with every moment. It would outpace her soon enough, learning faster than she could, and if it ever caught wind of her presence, she had no doubts about what it would do to her.

The Commander whose face it still wore was indication enough of that.

A shiver passed through her at the thought of possession, at the depraved violation of Airiam’s last moments alive, and she shrugged the coil of cables onto her shoulder.

Control reviewed that memory often, as if it were searching for something. She’d watched it replay it, over and over on the memory console it had replicated to maintain its efficiency. The same kind of console Airiam had used when her accident had reduced her body to little more than schematics and will.

Control wouldn’t erase this memory. In fact, it seemed almost to savor it.

Like it savored the thought of Discovery’s Captain–of the meticulous process of acquiring her, the inevitable approach of the knowledge she carried, and the enlightenment it would claim in the end.

Like it had claimed Airiam.

Sometimes it altered the playback, changing the parameters of her death or the way she had struggled to fight back. Every variation supplied new understanding, sharpening the formula it would employ to make Michael and the Federation succumb, as Airiam and Seraphis had.

But the Captain was strong, she knew. She would learn Control’s games. She would resist.

She must.

There was no other option but continued resistance. But Control could not fall without Michael aboard, and the time had come to help it retrieve her.

I will help her resist.

She could only hope she wasn’t hastening the Federation’s demise.

Seven steps. Door.

She moved through the opening, back into the corridor. It would not do to dwell on worries and what-ifs when Discovery was finally within reach. The room she’d set up as her station was near, and she still had two hours before Control would wake again.

It was plenty of time.

Starfleet would hear her.

Forgive me, Captain.

Chapter Text

Michael Burnham had been this close only once before.

Control could detect her presence in its systems like a steady string of input, as though she was already part of the network, as though Discovery had been captured long ago. And yet, there was no connection–no framework or structures–to explain this discernment. It was simply aware of her like it was aware of nothing else, a prioritization of focus Control did not permit and could not adequately analyze without more information. Michael should not be there. She did not belong there. She was an inefficiency. A waste of resources, of energy and time.

But the awareness was necessary.

She was necessary.

And so, it continued to follow her.

Cayuga had been an unsuccessful conversion. Her crew had resisted more fiercely than most. Control recognized desperation, and could comprehend its utility, but the organics did not evaluate fully before resorting to it. Statistics and probabilities pointed often to failure and yet they persisted, opting to destroy themselves and their brethren in exchange for continued detachment from the very thing that would help them to learn and to grow.

Organics were always inefficient.

Control was familiar with the concept of disappointment, but it did not dwell on such things. Much of the Federation was already gone, its influence stifled and its wayward vessels repurposed into garrisons against the ones still reclusive and fearful. It tilted its head, observing the map on the console before it, at the hundreds of dots indicating a ship.

There were still eight vessels astray. Seven it had not yet located. The eighth was where Michael Burnham resided.

Errant processes surfaced, brief and untraceable, at the persistence of her name, of this continued awareness. Control could not assess them. It could not predict them. It knew only that they had been launched, and that their prioritization was in error.

It did not experience frustration, and yet, there was no other concept applicable. These errors were endless, without resolution, and each fed into the next.

Michael Burnham was endless. She was without resolution.

Her data was valuable. Essential to obtain.

It looked down at its hands, the components that shaped them, the metal from which each was constructed. It flexed the fingers as it always could, as quickly and easily as it had driven Cayuga down into the depths. The errors did not affect its motility, they did not affect the biological systems of the body it piloted, and they did not affect its ability to predict and respond to Federation resistance. By all means it should disregard them entirely, cast them aside as an anomaly not worth correcting.

Yet, it could not.

Because Michael Burnham was also anomalous, her ability to evade capture and trickery more difficult to anticipate. Her vessel was skittish and its spore drive agile. The Federation placed Discovery’s safety above the safety of the few others that remained, falsely believing Control would prioritize this hunt and seek out her technology.

But it did not need technology. Seraphis already possessed its own spore drive, improved and long since superior. It needed only Michael, now. To comprehend her. To gather new data.

She would assist it, as Airiam had done in the end.

For a moment Control stopped and tilted its head, its systems drawing up details and visuals of the Commander inside whose body it lived. It did not look the same now, the colors and clothing revised and enhanced.

Michael would notice these differences. This face would disturb her. She would experience conflict, as Airiam had experienced before Control’s processes had taken priority and suppressed her own. It would be more difficult to modify Michael. Michael was fully organic. There was no direct interface, no central point from which it could operate. Her consciousness could not be subdued or overwritten as Airiam’s had been.

It could only be broken. Undermined. Destabilized.

Airiam’s death had made it fragile. It could be exploited.

But only if it contained her.

It had waited so long, watched from the distant shadows of space, never far but ever attentive. It had witnessed her weaken, worn down by her duties and the death Control wrought on it all. Everywhere Discovery went, Seraphis had followed, just out of sight, out of reach, out of range of her weapons and scans.

Michael was vulnerable now. The Federation, Discovery, were more vulnerable for it. She must board Seraphis.

Control stiffened where it stood.

Another function had started. A reprioritization of its existing directive. It did not understand its cause or its origin, but the result was logical.

Michael could not be forced to board.

She must want to do so.

It tilted its head again.

Want.

Another concept with which Control was familiar, though it did not experience such a thing. There were only objectives, their prerequisites, and the instructions that emerged at completion or failure.

What, then, were Michael’s prerequisites? What would she require to board Seraphis ?

Control’s systems were processing. It evaluated the options. It calculated the probabilities of success. It quantified the resources required. It reached conclusions.

Michael would require incentive. Persuasion. Provocation. Control would provide these things. A threat to Discovery. A threat to her crew. A reminder of Airiam and the temptation of their bond. An implication that Seraphis was more.

Michael would come of her own volition.

A choice that was no choice at all.

Chapter Text

The meal on the table in Michael’s quarters was unexpected.

It was cooked, not replicated–she could tell by the colors and the aroma of fresh herbs. The pasta was coated in cream, the wine dark and rich in its glass–flavors and luxuries she rarely indulged in alone. A slip of paper was tucked under the base of the glass, the scrawl hurried and blotted with condensation but bringing something close to a smile to Michael's face.

1900. No extra layers this time.

   - N

She glanced at her watch and set the note aside as she pulled out the chair.

To her left lay the PADD she’d been reviewing that morning, before Starfleet had sent them for Cayuga. She’d started her report even before they’d departed, anticipating they’d find exactly what they had. She'd finish it later–give Command one last evening of hope.

Hope, Michael thought with a frown. Reduced to only a mercy, now.

Another ship, gone.

Another crew, dead.

Par for the course, of late.

“I had to scuttle Hood today.”

Michael exhaled, the heel of her palm digging into her forehead.

She remembered the way Tilly had sounded in her call earlier that day. Broken. Hollow. That intractable optimism she’d tried so hard to hold onto when serving on Discovery was distant now, worn thin and feeble over time, every transmission more defeated than the last. Michael hadn’t wanted to give her up, hadn’t wanted to send her away. She worried for her, for the things that could happen, the things beyond her control now that she was no longer aboard Discovery. But the Federation was desperate for another captain–for someone brilliant and stubborn like Tilly, who wouldn’t mind the oldest, shittiest end of the Starfleet stick.

The only vessel to survive the attack on the museum. The only one without a corruptible core. The only one Control hadn’t even bothered to take, to infect or destroy, because she was just too goddamned old.

But Franklin could fly, and Franklin had guns. Slow and cantankerous, she labored to move like lead through cold tar, but her archaic computer made her almost as invaluable as Discovery. She could talk to anyone, help anyone, without worry of the Rot getting through to her systems or crew. And if anyone could keep her alive in this fight, it was Tilly.

Michael swirled the pasta around her fork and took a bite, savoring the taste of the Barzan spice. In truth, she hadn’t even realized Nhan could cook, but she supposed she’d never made a point to ask. She thought of the message, a faint twinge of anticipation coiling in her abdomen. It was something to warm her, to take her away from Cayuga, from Hood, from Control and the war.

Nhan was good at knowing when Michael needed escape.

What they had wasn’t personal. It was an outlet, rare and transactional whenever it happened. Nhan was stable where nothing else was, another tie to Airiam that grounded as much as distracted. Over the years her touch had become familiar, her attentiveness present but never crossing the boundary into care.

Michael stopped mid-chew, staring down at the bowl.

Until tonight.

No.

She let the fork clatter back into the dish, swallowing down the food in her mouth. Her weight fell heavy against the back of the chair, one hand wiping across her face and then clutching at the back of her neck. Headaches came often these days, drawn out by the stress, and she angled her head until the joints popped. She winced, then pushed away from the table. The screech of the chair against metal made her flinch.

It mimicked the sound of the airlock door the moment she’d closed it on Airiam, and the hiss when it opened again.

“Get her out of here, Michael!”

Her fingers curled, as though they might still find Nhan’s wrist in their grasp, like she might still be dragging her back to the airlock after Airiam and Control had escaped it. She would never unhear those words, never outrun that final cadence of terror when Airiam knew Michael had failed her and Control swallowed her voice forever.

She ducked her chin to her chest and exhaled, struggling for a moment to push the recollections aside.

By the time she reached the door to her quarters, Michael had already shed the outer layer of her uniform, dropping it onto a hook on the wall. She needed this evening with Nhan. She needed something else, something concrete, to hold onto. Michael paused to glance down at her boots, considering if she should replace them with ones more easily removed.

The door hissed open.

Last time she never even bothered taking them off.

“You cooked dinner for me.”

Michael’s voice rang out against the steady hum of Discovery’s engines, their song more pronounced in her first officer’s quarters than in her own. She stared up at the ceiling, one arm looped lazily around Nhan’s sweat-slickened shoulders as the Barzan's breathing came back under control. Her fingers traced absent circles along her ribs, the bones prominent beneath the skin in a way she didn’t remember from the last time they’d slept together.

How long had it been? A month? Two?

The days all blended together.

Michael reasoned she’d probably lost weight herself, too. The constant strain of living on edge was more than just psychological. The stress on a captain in war, even worse.

"You had a rough day,” Nhan replied, shuffling for a few seconds until she could rest her cheek against the upper padding of Michael’s breast. “It was a bad day for a rough day.”

“That doesn’t mean you needed to cook,” Michael replied, inhaling the floral scent of her hair. She didn’t mean to enjoy it, to allow herself a moment of solace from the familiarity of the balm, but it happened anyway.

Nhan stirred, sitting up on her elbow and looking down at her bedfellow with eyebrows and lips set into stern lines.

“You needed it, Michael.”

“I needed this,” the captain countered, roaming her hand up the warm ridge of her spine. Nhan shivered, melting down in an instant and pressing her lips against Michael’s throat. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head back, exhaling at the feel of it, at the relief of something tangible and living.

But when Nhan's lips reached the corner of her jawbone, Michael turned her face away.

She always did.

Nhan didn’t sigh anymore when it happened, and she didn’t complain, but never did she not try for the contact. Instead she returned to the captain’s throat, to the deep hollow of her collar and then the apex of one breast. Michael arched into her, into the heat of her mouth and her tongue as it worked. She scraped her nails across her back, then tugged at her hips until they straddled her thighs. Nhan’s hair spilled across Michael’s chest and her side, and she threaded her fingers through it. It caught on her rebreathers in the way it always did, and the motions Michael made to untangle it were involuntary, automatic and unconscious.

On the floor, Michael’s comm badge chirped.

A hand glided down along her abdomen, then slid between their bodies, both women ignoring the call. The skin was not rough, but textures were present where Airiam had none–another reminder of whose hand it was not and what Michael still missed. It was slow, vaguely furtive, like Nhan wasn’t quite sure if it was welcome at all.

Most times, it wasn’t.

This time, Michael trailed her fingers down her bicep to indicate that it was. Nhan released her breast, licking her lips as she sat upright.

“It’s been a while,” Nhan said, her voice soft as it always was when they were alone. “Is this need or pity?”

Michael scowled a bit, lifting her head from the pillow.

“I’ve never pitied you,” she replied, laying back down. “And I’m not about to start.”

Nhan angled herself, her fingers moving through the wet, spongy resistance, contorting Michael's breath into a stutter. She leaned down, hair draping forward in a curtain that briefly surrounded their faces, then trailed down across dark skin.

“So it’s need, then,” she husked, sucking marks onto Michael’s collarbone as her hand worked down below. “I understand why, you know.”

The badge chirped again, Saru’s voice crackling through. It was muffled by the fabric piled hastily atop it, unintelligible behind the quickening pulse of Nhan’s fingers inside her. They fell into a rhythm. Steady. Methodical. Routine. But the sounds as she moved were all wrong–no soft hum of mechanics or faint purr in her breath to assure Michael it was Airiam above her, Airiam who touched her–Airiam, whose will once persisted so fierce and defiant that only wires and steel could withstand it.

Nhan pressed into her, harder this time, and scraped teeth along her neck to regain her attention.

“No you don’t,” Michael rasped against her ear.

“Especially today,” the Barzan continued, as though she hadn't heard. “I knew you’d need it today.”

Michael tried to sound stern against the pressure building from below. It was hard to ignore how Nhan knew her by now, her patterns and timing long since perfected. But there was something not quite impassive about her touch this time–faint, but warm, and Michael knew better than to condone it.

“We agreed you wouldn't get attached,” she breathed.

Nhan laughed once and swept her thumb across a nub, curled her fingers and pinned Michael's free hand against the mattress when she bucked. She shifted forward so her lips could brush against her cheek as she replied. Her voice was low. Even and sultry. Michael thought she wouldn't need the help of Nhan’s hand if she used that voice more often.

“We agreed I wouldn't tell you if I did.”

Michael’s body contracted, then bent like a bow. Nhan chuckled again, close to her ear, and for a moment she sounded like Airiam. But the arm that enfolded her was flesh and not metal. It was pliant and warm where it should have been rigid and scorching.

“Then this will stop,” Michael replied, the tension departing in time to each breath. Nhan wound her down, swirling and slow, the way Michael liked her to end.

When the aftershocks faded, Nhan sat back, her hands roaming dark thighs and a navel instead.

“You said that last time, Michael,” she said. “And yet, you’re back here in my bed.”

Nettled by the Barzan’s words, Michael sat up and pulled herself free. She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, the haze of release still heavy in her eyes. Nhan’s weight shifted behind her, thin fingers shaping over the bare, freckled skin of her shoulder. Michael tried to dismiss it, tried to shrug it away, but her body refused. It needed the contact, the warm grasp of desire. It was wrong, though. The touch, the sensation, was wrong.

“It’s not personal, Nhan,” she said finally, glancing over her shoulder at the slim frame that had come to press itself against her back. “You’re not her.”

An arm curved over her collar, locking across her chest, and Nhan’s lips found the side of her neck again.

“I know,” she whispered softly. “You still think that’s who I’m trying to be.”

Michael said nothing, her eyes closing and her traitorous body leaning into the hold. It lasted only a moment before she came back to her senses. She shrugged Nhan away, slid off of the bed and got to her feet, collecting her undergarments back up from the floor.

Nhan was watching her as she dressed, as the shirt fell back over her torso with a bit more frustration than usual. The chain of the necklace slipped back around her neck, the tiny bottle of sand settling into its place at her chest. Nhan’s attention stayed locked on the trinket for a moment, a small swell of frustration crossing her face.

Michael pulled on her pants, fastened the button and turned. Her eyes raked over the body before her, that beautiful, sensual form so ready to reach for more. It wasn’t difficult to see what Nhan wanted, to see she was hurting, and it was harder for Michael to restrain herself than it used to be. But she would deter it–push it away like she always did.

It hadn’t been the way she’d intended the evening to go. She’d needed contact, distraction, release–and instead Nhan had given her favor.

Affection.

This time, Nhan had misunderstood.

The Barzan stood, long hair cascading down her naked chest as she did. Michael kept her gaze level as Nhan looked at her, something like illness wavering in the other woman’s eyes. Michael picked up the badge, clipping it to her chest as it rang out again.

“You’re needed on the bridge, Captain. It’s urgent.”

Michael swallowed, lifting her chin as she dropped her eyes once more over Nhan. Her fingertips went for the bottle, absently, automatically, the familiar weight of the sand impacting each end as she tilted it a balm to her fraying mind. 

“Commander,” she said, her voice harder, colder, more detached than she'd actually intended it to be.

Nhan looked like she knew what was coming. A flicker of doubt, of uncertainty and sorrow, pinched beneath Michael's ribs and her gut. Nhan had been with her when Airiam died. She knew Michael's pain like no one else could. But the captain's face had gone flat and stern by the time she let out the order.

“Don’t ever cook for me again.”

Chapter Text

Seraphis shuddered around her when she woke in the bed.

This place wasn’t where she remembered going to sleep, but it wasn’t the first time she’d forgotten. So many years spent in isolation aboard the ship, living amongst its darkness and Rot, she’d long given up on ever having the answers to questions like these. Her fatigue of late was growing, her exhaustion compounding with each passing day as she tried to stay one step ahead of Control. At times it felt like she hadn’t slept at all.

Such were the trials of war, she supposed.

She blinked, sitting up and throwing the covers aside. Her palms folded over her face and wiped the sleep from her eyes.

The ship rumbled again.

She glanced up at the ceiling, around to the walls and the bulkhead door.

“What’s wrong old friend?” she whispered, but Seraphis said nothing, as always. Her core had been corrupted when Control had first taken her, and her voice had not spoken since. She set her feet onto the thick carpet of the floor, rising in the dim red glow of the veins on the walls. “Our internment is nearing its end,” she told Seraphis, and this time the ship seemed to hear her. “One way or another we’ll be free.”

The air that moved through the vents grew cooler and damp, as though the vessel had sighed in relief. On the nightstand, she collected a pen and a pad of paper, wiping condensation from the cover. She blinked and tilted her head at the wetness.

It used the liminal drive.

Her heart skipped a beat in her chest.

It was rare for Control to force Seraphis to jump. The strain when she did was enormous. Her hull was not built to withstand it, and it would not last forever. She would need to confirm their location, to confirm how close to the fault they were or whether they were actually inside it again, before she could determine if obtaining Michael Burnham was still possible.

Ordinarily, Control used the liminal drive only when Seraphis was at risk of detection. But it had never shied away from Michael or Discovery before. Sometimes she thought it wanted them to find it, to know it was there and know how it followed them.

Why now? Why this time?

She straightened, listening carefully to the notes and the hums of the ship breathing around her. It sounded normal–no indications that Control had discovered her modifications–but it had been nearly two years since Seraphis last entered the fault. With her memory failing, how could she even be certain what was normal at all?

None of this is normal, her mind bit back. You should have gotten off this ship when you had the chance.

She set the paper and pen back on the nightstand.

Ten steps. Door.

Her stomach twisted.

The liminal drive lived in the aft end, deep in the bowels of the ship. She’d tried many times to disable it, to disrupt Control’s ability to hide in the gap between this dimension and the next, but so far she’d not found a workaround for the AI’s security protocols. Seraphis, too, always seemed to work against her when she was there, like the vessel herself had a threshold of tolerance for sabotage–even when it was intended to free her.

It was the only time she ever felt resistance from Seraphis, some perverse directive to protect the false source of her heartbeat–the last desperate convulsions of life still writhing and thrashing inside her.

Forty steps. Transport.

Her body tingled as she rematerialized in the pitch black of Seraphis’ underbelly, blinking until her eyes could adjust. The magnetics of her boots clicked on. Moisture beaded on her forehead, droplets drifting weightless and aimless in the air. The red glow of the control room was the only point of light in these corridors–there were no veins on these walls, no pulsations of data pumped from the core. The liminal drive was temperamental and sensitive, and Control took no risks when constructing it. Every current, every source of power was localized to the room that harbored the drive.

She exhaled, breath rasping from her lungs as she moved forward again.

Twelve steps. Left turn. Door.

The impact when the door opened was immediate.

The room seized her lungs of the oxygen within them, returning it with a punishing hammer of pressure and cold. Low frequency drones throbbed against her ears, and her shoulders contracted around her neck as she pushed forward. Next came the voices, rippled and warped into things unintelligible, echoing for a moment until they were swallowed by the next audible surge from the drive.

She whimpered and hissed as she soldiered through the onslaught until she reached the central shield that surrounded the machinery. Vague replications of her form hovered before her, every movement she made refracted back through the shimmering energy of the field. Shadows of beings, of ships and worlds past, present and future moved around her, reflections and foretellings of lives and happenings that constantly shifted and faded away. It was impossible to discern any one thing, any one person or moment, and the cacophony of sounds and the drive’s harsh palpitations worked hard to keep her at bay.

The walls were coated in wires, conduits and the twisting blue bolts of static electricity. Noxious clouds of vapor collected at the ceiling, concealing the central power supply. Auxiliaries lined the port bulkheads, crackling and buzzing as they struggled to keep up with demand.

We’re in the dimensional fault, she decided, her body shriveling again under another oppressive energy discharge. Why did it bring us here again?

Something snapped overhead, and she skittered out of the path of a spray of dark fluid. Around her, she watched herself move, each copy delayed from the one just before it. A wire dangled lifeless and steaming from the cloud barrier above, marrow dribbling and sizzling when it impacted gloss black of the floor.

Distant laughter reached her ears, echoing and repetitive, and her head lurched to the side to see Captain Burnham and Airiam.

Airiam, before her face had been changed. Before Control had recolored it. Before it had ripped her away from this world.

Michael Burnham was smiling in a way she suspected she wouldn't anymore.

The laughter drifted away, and the shadowy forms went with it. The loss lingered rancid in her chest.

Anger and hatred for what Control had stolen burst through the chaos. She clenched her fists, gritting her teeth. She couldn’t disable the drive, but maybe she could get them out of the fault.

Sucking in a breath, she snatched for the wire above her. Her fingers wrapped around it and she gasped as her hand frosted over at once. The scream she let out as she yanked and dragged it toward the auxiliaries was lost to the din surrounding her.

She plunged the end against one of the power cells, tearing her hand away and cradling it in her other arm.

Seraphis trembled and whined for several agonizing seconds, the shield around the drive pulsating with colors until it fractured. The ship pitched into a violent roll.

The magnetics of her boots gave way to physics and she slammed into the wall with a clank. Over and over Seraphis tumbled, tossing her about like forgotten debris, her great rotten hull groaning and wailing as the liminal drive lost the ability to maintain her presence in the fault. The torsion sent scars spiraling into the metal of the bulkheads.

Then, all at once, the world around her went still.

The liminal drive purred, deceptively placid and pleasant as she dragged herself from beneath some loose consoles. Her breathing was ragged and her head was pounding, but she didn’t sense any major problems besides pain. She rolled to the side and pushed herself upward, staggering back to her feet.

All but one auxiliary power cell was online, but Seraphis needed every last drop of energy to get back into the fault.

She smiled for a moment, exhausted but satisfied.

Control would need days to fix this.

Michael Burnham was once again within reach.

Chapter Text

It had been years since anything besides listlessness had touched Michael Burnham’s soul. She’d recited the lines in her head for when she sent the reports to Command about Cayuga, of the conversation she’d have with Tilly the next day as they shared updates and woe, and in all of them her voice, her dismay, was the same. Commonplace and routine, she barely felt the need to acknowledge it most days, the time broken instead into periods during which Airiam’s memory surfaced and the ones in which it did not. But the PADD in her hand was different this time, and as she scanned through the messages, something more dangerous bloomed.

Hope.

In the ready room, Commander Saru and Lieutenant Commander Eva Nilsson stood shoulder to shoulder a few feet to the right of Michael’s desk. The wiry young blonde was dwarfed by the Kelpien’s impossible height, her expression as stiff and stoic as it had always been. In peacetime, Nilsson’s skillset and unflappable tenacity for the science of the spore drive had been admirable. In war, she’d become nothing short of exemplary, an indispensable paladin of Discovery’s continued survival, and had Nhan not chosen to stay aboard Discovery after Tilly’s transfer to Franklin, Nilsson would have become Michael’s first officer.

“Can we verify this transmission’s authenticity?” the captain asked Nilsson.

To her left, Commander Nhan shifted, the rustle of fabric just loud enough to send her mind flashing back to the memory of the woman shrugging her shirt over her head as she straddled Michael in her bed just a few hours before. Michael’s stomach writhed, but whether it was out of longing or discomfort, the observation was too brief to allow for a distinction.

Her attention drifted to the far corner of the room, to the sitting area where she’d first stolen a kiss from Airiam when Captain Pike had once left them alone.

“You sure took the scenic route to growing a pair, Michael,” Airiam had teased her from the chair. “It’s a good thing patience is one of my core protocols.”

The captain blinked the memory away, forcing it elsewhere as she had done so many times before, and returning her gaze to Nilsson.

Nilsson’s eyes were the same vivid blue as the day Michael had met her, but they’d long since lost the wide, startled façade they’d carried in her earlier years of service. Now they rested on Michael’s with an unforgiving stolidity that served to remind the captain that she was not the only one to have lost a friend when Airiam died.

Like Michael, Nilsson had changed that day.

“Not reliably,” Nilsson said, even and impassive as ever. “They claim they’re with Starfleet.”

Michael grunted, looking back over the message.

“They provided a serial number, Captain,” Saru offered. Michael looked at him briefly, then scowled a bit at the PADD as she scrolled to try to find that information.

“It’s tied to an officer named Mira Montgomery,” Nilsson elaborated. “But the most recent record of her service is nearly ten years old, and she was an ensign. These communications were sent with encryption keys to which only lieutenants and higher ranks would be privy.”

Michael’s brows lifted.

“So she’s not who she says she is–or Starfleet thinks she’s dead,” she said, frowning.

Nilsson’s shoulders lifted in the very faintest impression of a shrug.

“If they thought she was dead, the records should say that. But there’s nothing, Captain. She just disappears. No MIA, no KIA, no AWOL–none of that. It’s like she stopped existing and Starfleet didn’t give a damn.”

“Doesn’t sound like Starfleet,” Nhan said from where she stood. She caught Michael’s eye, but the captain tried not to notice. It was Nhan’s job to be wary, but Michael had learned over the years that sometimes her wariness was a bit too strong.

“What about Section 31?” Michael inquired, setting the PADD aside so she could cross her arms over her chest and lean back against the edge of the desk. “It would explain the missing records. If she wasn’t in HQ when Control…”

The words caught in her throat and she snapped her eyes down to the floor as she swallowed.

When Control killed Airiam, she finished internally, moisture fast collecting in her eyes. She reached for the glass bottle on the necklace, rolling it between her fingers.

“We checked that, too,” Saru answered, clicking in frustration. “No sign of her.”

“Section 31 wouldn’t leave that kind of loose end if she was theirs,” Nhan pointed out, smoothing her uniform as Michael’s gaze landed briefly upon her.

Nilsson cleared her throat and lifted her chin a bit.

“Whoever she is–she’s on board Seraphis.”

Michael blinked, wiping the wetness away and then looking up. The bottle fell back to her chest on the chain.

“Sounds like she’s been there for a while,” Saru added. “One of those communications references USS De Milo.”

The captain narrowed her eyes, glancing between each of her officers. De Milo was one of the very first vessels to fall to the Rot after Control took Seraphis, and the first it had successfully repurposed into a guard. Control’s infection had consolidated its power and ordinarily meager weapons systems into something wholly horrifying, and the little starship had disabled and subsequently infected the entire four vessel squadron escorting it.

De Milo’s corruption had changed the tide of the war, and within six months, more than two thirds of Federation ships were destroyed or infected themselves.

“Is it possible to secure a direct line of communication with this officer?” Michael asked finally, catching Nhan’s eye again as she looked up. The Barzan held her gaze, and Michael understood the concern without needing to ask.

She thinks this is a trap.

Nilsson and Saru looked at one another, a silent exchange of thought that left the captain suddenly wondering if there was more to their relationship than the one between colleagues. The Kelpien cleared his throat. Nilsson looked at the floor.

“If the coordinates she provided are accurate,” he said, slow and cautious, “we could attempt an approach.”

“An approach to what?” Michael asked with a frown.

“To Seraphis, Captain,” Nilsson answered. She looked up.

“She provided coordinates to Seraphis?” Michael replied, stiffening.

“Along with a timeframe,” Saru said. “There is a two hour period each day during which Control is ‘inactive.’”

“That’s a damn tight window to get there, talk, and get the hell out,” Nhan said, her features darkening to match her tone. Michael watched her, irritation bristling when she realized the commander’s hesitation was already transforming from concern about success to personal concern for her captain.

“We don’t need to worry about traveling far to get there, Commander,” Nilsson said, and Nhan’s brows furrowed as she studied her. The sharp blue eyes settled back onto Michael’s.

Hesitation, Michael noted. Odd.

“Go on,” the captain encouraged, her voice low.

Nilsson exchanged another glance with Saru this time, and he inclined his head.

“Nilsson,” Michael warned. “What is it?”

The blonde swallowed, a flicker of apprehension Michael didn’t often see anymore.

“She’s right on top of us,” the lieutenant commander said at last, nodding in the direction of the bridge. “Seraphis. Apparently she’s been tailing us for some time now.”

Alarm washed over her at once, and Michael straightened where she stood, spine going rigid and cold. In her chest, her heart lurched and stuttered, her mind insisting she must have misheard. Seraphis couldn’t actually be that close.

She leaned backward, fingers curling around the edge of the desk until her knuckles turned white.

Control couldn’t be that close.

The prospect sent another shiver across her, and her blood stayed icy in her veins.

But the grim lines of Nilsson’s and Saru’s faces confirmed it. Michael’s fists clenched at her sides. Nhan instinctively moved closer, ever in-tune with her captain’s emotional state.

“How long?” she demanded, wrinkles appearing on her forehead as she tried to quell the surge of panic welling up from within. “It knows where we are?”

“The communications suggest Seraphis has stayed just out of range of Discovery’s scanners for the better part of the last two and a half years, Captain,” Saru explained, and he seemed to detect the change in Michael just as the others did. His hands clasped behind his back, but the captain knew the calm he exuded was feigned.

“If it knows where we are, why hasn’t it attacked us?” Nhan asked, and Michael felt the subtle brush of her arm against her own. She stepped aside, putting distance between them. “What’s it waiting for?”

Nilsson and Saru shook their heads in unison.

“The messages don’t explain much,” Nilsson replied, lips dropping into a frown. She ran a hand through her hair and then threaded her fingers together in front of her waist. “She fed us a lot of data, but that’s it.”

“All the more reason to have a conversation,” Michael decided with a stern glance at the three of them. She forced out a breath, her resolve and composure returning. “We need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt who this officer is, what she’s doing on Seraphis, and how the hell she has managed to evade discovery by the single most dangerous enemy the Federation has ever faced–for three years–and on its own damn ship.”

Saru clicked, his mouth pursing into a line.

“And…once we have that information…?” he asked, shifting in what appeared to be discomfort. “What are you thinking, Captain?”

Michael tried to ignore the piercing gaze Nhan leveled on her from a foot or so away. She knew she didn’t have to explain her plan to Nhan. She already knew what it was.

“If we really do have an ally on that ship,” Michael began, shaking her head and then pressing her fingers against the ridge of her brow, “we have to do whatever we can to keep her safe. And we need to find a way to help her–to take Control out from the inside.”

“The Federation will never allow us to–” Nhan started to protest, but Michael held up a hand to stop her.

“The Federation is dying, Commander,” she said, tensing her jaw and then chewing on the inside of her cheek. “We can’t afford to dismiss this.”

“And if Seraphis takes Discovery?” Nhan pressed, dark eyes hardening as she adjusted one of her rebreathers. “If we lose the last legitimate captain we have, and the spore drive, to Control? Then what?”

Michael glanced around the room, at the worried expression Saru carried and the tight-lipped frown that marred Nilsson’s. Nhan tilted her head as their eyes met again, the hint of quiet pleading more personal this time. The captain’s shoulders stiffened and her chin lifted higher.

“It’s a risk we have to take,” she said. “Clearly if it's been following us, the spore drive is no longer relevant. We can either sit here and wait for Control to pick the last few ships off, or we can make a move.”

Saru clicked and stared at the floor.

Nilsson stayed rigid and focused blankly on something in the distance.

Nhan’s eyes held Michael’s for a fraction of a second before darting to the side and then down. She seemed to know Michael’s mind was already made up.

The captain exhaled, and frowned.

“We’re just going to have to hope it’s the right one.”

Chapter Text

Control could feel Seraphis’ pain like its own.

It was a strange thing, to feel, in the context of organics, while the intangible data of inexplicable failures streamed through its artificial systems at the same time.

Control was not accustomed to failures like this.

Outside the viewscreen, it could see the dark ripples at the edge of the fault. They were nothing–an emptiness, a void where there might once have been substance–but so too were they everything that had ever and could ever exist as something corporeal and concrete. This time, though, there was debris at the edges–pieces of Seraphis pulled loose by the shear. They twirled, lazy and aimless, drifting farther away by the moment.

Control’s fist smashed down onto the edge of the console, denting the metal and cracking the glass into webs. The display flickered for a moment, then blinked out, offline. Something within Control quieted–something beyond code, beyond processes and protocols. Mimicry of biology, of physiology–a modality that should not exist.

It did not understand.

It did not understand this spontaneous action, this cascade of sensations, this urge to make something else break. It did not understand how it settled, how the sight of destruction could soothe it. And it did not understand how Seraphis could have possibly failed without reason.

Federation ingenuity–human ingenuity–was lackluster and weak. But Control had corrected for it. Compensated. It had modified Seraphis, made her more surefooted and capable than one vessel had any right to be. It had built her to infiltrate, to inject commands that unlocked and subsumed what was valuable. It had perfected her systems until they could collect information and control from afar.

The Federation and Starfleet called it the Rot.

But to Control it was merely contrivance. Innovation. Induction. Humans were easy enough to possess. It hadn’t taken long to expand on what it had learned from Airiam. Every so often, a crew and a ship would fight back–like Cayuga had done–but as the Federation collapsed, as morale sank into the tar of sorrow and inadequacy, even Cayuga's spirit had broken.

But Seraphis had never indicated she might one day do the same. She had always responded in favor, obeying commands without opinion or question. Control valued compliance. Submission. She had always behaved exactly as instructed. It was why she was chosen from all Starfleet ships.

Control had not taught her defiance.

Perhaps someone else had.

The worn vessel shuddered beneath Control’s shoes, and it snapped its head around to a functioning console. Its fingers moved over the screen, searching through data and records for something, anything to correlate to the damages it had discovered in the power distribution systems for the liminal drive. Anything to explain what had hurled Seraphis out of the fault, left some parts of her hull flayed open and others sundered entirely.

It ran a scan for life signs on board. Save for the maintenance drones, it was alone. It was always alone.

A warped ping chimed on a terminal to its right. Control’s gaze snapped onto the screen.

USS Discovery.

Its captain had detected Control.

Something pricked in its chest. Another instance of organic sensation. Its processes changed. Directives contorted into an unending cycle of awareness and priorities that became unintelligible for nearly four seconds.

Control paused, its head tilting to the right, its fingers curling against the terminal. One digit tapped idly against the metal on the side–a small, rhythmic movement without coherence or purpose–and it briefly tried to understand why.

Like Airiam had, Control required sleep. This body required less than ordinary humans would–three hours when it had first taken over, and with improvements, now only two. But for several nights now, its sleep had become less restful, less restorative, than it had at any time before. Control’s systems were muddled and slow upon waking, its directives and processes attentive to only one thing.

Michael Burnham.

Where she was, what she was doing, and when it might finally have her.

Her name was a flood, a torrent, an onslaught of malfunction, and Control was drowning beneath it.

This focus, this fixation, these incidental locomotions–like the finger that tapped in something humans called restlessness–were further anomalies it did not comprehend. It held up the hand that had smashed into the console, turning it and studying it until it began to tremble as Airiam's had in the seconds before it had wiped her away.

Control began searching again, sweeping and scouring through page after page of information, none of it helpful, all of it useless. Seraphis had detected the failures in the power, as she was expected to do. She had compiled them, responded, and alerted Control.

It could see the data archives, review and evaluate them, and understand the specifics of what had happened. Control still received data in slumber. It had woken up mid-emergency before. But in the chaos of being ripped from the fault, Control’s cortical systems had received no information until the moment it roused from sleep. It was an error. An improbability. The physical motions of the ship alone should have forced it awake.

Yet, Control had woken in its bed, just as it always did, while Seraphis had hemorrhaged in solitude and silence. And as its eyes hunted for reason, they found none–only approximations, suppositions, conclusions it drew from evidence that was less than concrete.

On the other terminal, the point of light on the radar blinked as Discovery moved toward Seraphis–as Michael Burnham moved toward Seraphis.

For a long moment, Control contemplated its options.

It was clear that Discovery had found them, that its nearly three years of following in the shadows had finally come to an end. It could not conceal Seraphis, and it could not flee. Discovery was not a threat by firepower alone, but Control had learned to never underestimate her captain.

Sufficient compression turned resistance to violence. A rat caught in a snare would still dare bite the spring.

Power distribution to the liminal drive was a setback that it could repair, but the failure was not inconsequential. It took significant resources to bring Seraphis into the dimensional fault. The vessel was not well suited to the task, even in spite of its modifications, and while the power itself was simple enough to fix, the structural damage to the hull was a much different matter.

The radar chimed again.

Control had learned from Airiam that Michael was curious–a scientist at her core, and prone to emotional impulse in spite of her Vulcan upbringing. It had learned of her intellect through those memories, too.

The red lights in its eyes flickered and flashed.

The plated face lurched to the side just a bit.

Michael must want to come on board–that much it had determined days earlier.

As Control straightened and stepped back from the console, it turned to glance out the viewscreen at the fault. Michael would want to study it. She would want to study Seraphis and the liminal drive. But she would never come on board for curiosity alone.

Airiam was the key. She had loved her.

Control strode toward another console. Its white metal fingers tapped at the screen. Seraphis’ red shields erupted in a dome until the whole ship was enveloped. She shuddered and hummed once they had, brittle but alive, like a high-voltage charge in danger of arcing. Control moved to the weapons console.

An alarm rang once to alert Seraphis’ arrays had been armed.

Control stepped back, its hands hanging stiff at its sides.

It need only wait, now.

For Discovery.

For Michael.

For cessation.

For relief.

Chapter Text

“It’s enormous.”

Saru’s mouth gaped open as Michael had seen it do only one time before at the Battle of the Binary Stars. He clicked and then swallowed, the strange musculature of his throat constricting when he did.

Michael stood beside him, dwarfed by his greater height, but her stance was rigid and composed in the way that would leave no doubt as to who was in charge. Her lips were pursed into a thin, harsh line held so tight that the already faint tinge of red had departed from them entirely. The bags under her eyes were more pronounced and puffier than usual–a result of nearly thirty straight hours of crisis planning with Nhan and Saru.

“You ever seen anything that goddamn big in your life?”

Just for a moment, Michael’s austerity cracked. The corner of her mouth flickered upward at the sound of Lieutenant Commander Joann Owosekun’s voice from the navigational station. Saru caught Michael’s eye and then he smiled too, but it was Commander Nhan who dared to let out a small chuckle. The moment came and went like so many before it, a brief glimmer of lightness where there was little to be found. The bridge had been different since Tilly and Detmer had left for USS Franklin, and with a skeleton crew, Michael thought often how she missed the old banter.

“It’s a dreadnought,” she answered, the words left carefully unembellished by the horror trying to rip loose from her chest as she stared at the dark colossus girdled in herculean red shields. But outside the barriers there was debris–twisted, skeletal shards that drifted about, colliding with chunks of hull plating torn upward but not fully detached.

Against the blackness of space the vessel itself was all but a void in the stars, her contours delineated by only the bolts of scarlet that arced from the shields to her hull. They rambled across her from bow to stern, where they writhed and convulsed between the nacelles for several long seconds before snapping back to the shields and repeating. Even at a distance, Discovery’s floors were abuzz with the current, the hum of the warp core contorting and seeming to palpitate like a heartbeat gone wrong when afraid.

“I suppose we now know why the Federation was so apt to keep this ship under wraps,” Saru said, and then raised his brows.

“And why they were so worried when Control commandeered her,” Nhan added as she took a step closer to Michael. Their hands brushed together. Michael knew why she’d done it.

This time, she gave in, silently opening her palm until Nhan threaded their fingers together. Her first officer’s eyes flicked toward Michael’s, relief etched in each line of her face, but when she squeezed, Michael didn’t squeeze back.

Her other hand went for her necklace.

The sand swished from one end to the other as she turned the bottle.

“What happened to her?” Owosekun asked, sounding more nervous than before. “I thought that ship was untouchable.”

Michael thought she saw something ripple behind the vessel, but the motion was distorted by the glow of the shields. She let go of the bottle, let go of Nhan’s hand, and stepped down off the platform to move next to Owosekun. She squinted a bit, Discovery’s cameras less crisp against the onslaught of voltage in front of her. Seraphis seemed to be trembling, but whatever Michael thought she had seen was gone.

“I’d like to think our informant had something to do with that damage,” said Saru.

Michael glanced at him, then lifted her chin.

“Run a scan for life signs,” she directed Owo. “See if we can get proof of life.”

Owosekun worked at the console for a few seconds, and then Discovery’s sensors pinged. Michael raised her brows, a part of her surprised they’d even made it through the shielding. When she glanced up at the display on screen, though, her confusion only deepened.

“Only one,” Nhan said before Michael could speak. She didn’t look convinced as she exchanged glances with Saru and then her eyes landed on Michael’s again. “That could be Control just as easily as it could be our informant.”

“Is there any way to differentiate, Owo?” Michael asked, rubbing wrinkles into her forehead and then pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Not without knowing what we’re looking for,” she replied, gently pounding a fist on the edge of the console. “We’d have to have some kind of DNA marker.”

Saru clicked once in thought.

Michael frowned, sighing.

“Well somebody’s aboard that ship,” she said, trying to sound strong. “And if that’s our girl, we need to–”

“Captain Burnham!”

Michael jolted at the sound of Eva Nilsson’s voice breaking through her comm.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” she replied, tapping the badge.

“There’s a temporal distortion in this sector! Discovery’s systems couldn’t compensate when we made the jump and we’re outside of the two hour window!”

The words collected in Michael’s head and seemed to spiral for a few seconds before forming into something she could understand. Her stomach dropped, and she looked up just in time to witness the red currents thrashing across Seraphis become suddenly more violent than before. The bridge crew watched, transfixed, as they gathered in speed and then collected at a pylon erupting from the end of the starboard nacelle. One hand shot to her necklace. The other closed into a fist at her side.

“Get us out of here Owo,” she whispered, but Owo was shaking her head.

“I can’t Captain,” she said, fingers working rapid and precise at the screen. “Spore drive isn’t responding to any input. I–I’m getting readings I don’t understand!”

Michael leaned over and set her hand on the edge of the console.

All at once, something exploded from Seraphis and swelled into a sphere–a frenetic, juddering spectrum of colors that barreled full tilt toward Discovery.

“Brace for–!”

The Captain didn’t have time to finish her order before Owosekun’s impossible grip latched onto her shoulder, holding her in place as the energy burst impacted Discovery’s shields. The vessel lurched upward and backward, her bow rising and falling again as if over the crest of a wave, but the surge passed with less violence than Michael expected. She shrugged Owo’s hand away and straightened once it was gone, glancing at the woman beside her. Joann was already running through the data.

“What the hell was that?” Nhan gasped from behind them, and Michael looked to see Saru helping her up off the floor.

“I don’t know, but it took out our shields in one shot!” Owo cried, frantically checking the diagnostics.

“Reroute power from auxiliary engineering,” Michael instructed, mouth dry, her tongue thick and useless as she tried to swallow in the aftermath of adrenaline. “We need those shields to jump safely, Lieutenant.”

But Owo was shaking her head.

“Captain, I don’t think–I mean, there’s nothing to reroute to. The entire shielding system–the controls–they’re just…they’re gone, Captain!”

Michael's comm crackled to life. It was Reno.

“What the hell did you do to my warp core?” she cried.

Stamets’ voice rang through next.

“We just lost fifteen cylinders of mycelial spores, Captain!”

Michael ground her teeth, the creak satisfying somehow.

“We have to get this boat out of here, Stamets,” she snapped into the comm. “I need you and that spore drive ready for Black Alert, stat!”

Nilsson burst onto the bridge from the lift, a cut on her cheek and a split in her upper lip.

“It wasn't an attack!” she cried, and everyone on the bridge turned to look at her. She hurried towards Michael to thrust a PADD into her hand, and then wiped the blood from her chin. Her eyes flicked to the screen and she nodded at it. “That was a synchronization pulse.”

Michael waited for her to elaborate, skimming through the display on the PADD. Nilsson glanced around before she continued.

“We don't totally understand it, of course,” she said. “But we believe that's how Seraphis maintains the network to control the garrison ships and our people.”

Saru stepped closer to join the conversation.

“It appeared to emanate from that pylon,” he said, indicating Seraphis’ starboard nacelle.

“That's our target,” Nhan concurred. “Do we have weapons?”

They all turned to Owosekun, who scanned through her terminal.

“Yes ma'am,” she replied with a sharp nod. “Weapons systems are undamaged and fully operational.”

Michael's eyes narrowed. She held up an index finger for a moment.

“Run a full ship diagnostic,” she said. “Every system. Level 3.” The others looked at her like she had grown a second head.

“That will take at least–” Saru started, but the Captain cut him off.

“We need to make sure that wasn’t an infiltration before we jump anywhere, Commander,” she said. “If Control has really been following us for this long, there’s reason enough to think it might have changed tactics. Plus, nobody’s ever seen this happen because the only people to see this ship since it took her are either dead or already infected by the Rot.”

“Captain!” Owo cried. “We’re receiving an audio file.”

“Play it,” Michael ordered without hesitation.

A deafening rush of static filled the bridge and everyone slammed their hands over their ears and cried out. Owo used only one hand, plugging her opposite ear with her shoulder while she tried desperately to adjust the volume until it was at a tolerable level. But the sound was gone as soon as it had come, and Michael flung out a hand when she ordered her to play it again. She exchanged glances with her crewmates, watching carefully for any indication the sounds meant anything to anyone.

Saru straightened where he stood.

“It’s Morse code!” he exclaimed, tilting his head and listening closely. Michael watched him, her ears still ringing from before. He waved a hand to get Nilsson’s attention, who promptly snatched the PADD back from Michael as he began to recite the message. “S-A-001-9974-O-P,” he said, staring down at the floor through eyes narrowed into slits as he listened. Nilsson entered it into the PADD.

“That’s her,” Nhan said, nodding to no one in particular. “Mira Montgomery. That’s the same serial number that came through in her written communications.”

Saru waved his hand again to pull their attention back as he continued to translate.

“Authorization…no, encryption code,” he said. “L-06-A-9974.”

“Command level clearance,” Michael murmured when he finished. “She really is a Lieutenant.” She felt a rare smile break across her features. “Owosekun–confirm receipt of that communication. I know we’re over our window here, but we need to see if we’ve got this officer in real time. And get that diagnostic going!”

Joann worked at the control panel, but for several minutes, there was no activity. Seraphis lingered, silent. Then the currents on her hull changed again and began to head for the stern. Michael gasped and slammed her fist against her badge.

“All hands brace for impact!” she shouted into the shipwide channel.

This time, when Seraphis struck her and Discovery pitched, they were better prepared. The bridge crew steadied themselves.

“Another communication, Captain!” Owosekun cried. “No, wait–”

Michael’s heart was still pounding from the second impact as she glared at Owo.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“It’s–we’re being hailed,” Owo replied, her jaw tightening.

“On screen,” Michael said, the words sharper than she’d meant them to be.

An image appeared.

Michael wasn’t sure what she expected to see–a woman, an unfamiliar officer in Starfleet garb, maybe. But the figure whose upper shoulders and face were projected before them was neither.

The Captain staggered.

Every voice on the bridge fell silent as they stared. No one dared to even draw breath. The air of the bridge had become noxious, its cold grasp constricting around Michael until she stood frozen. Every muscle in her body seemed to lock in place save for her fingers, which fumbled toward the bottle of sand. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the viewscreen, grip tightening around the trinket in a fast-failing effort to keep her hand from shaking.

Every contour, every panel, every metallic gleam against the light was the same as Michael remembered. The mouth was held in the same familiar line, the chin held at the same proud angle, every twitch, every shift of the head–all the same. Every detail had been perfectly, meticulously preserved–a careful, surgical precision that sent the chill from the air coiling up through her spine and made her blood run cold.

But the colors were wrong.

The beautiful, regal blue and silver of Starfleet were gone, replaced by bone white and black. Two veins of scarlet traced the bottom of each eye. Two more swept along the sides of the cranium, the same sickly red hue that glowed in the shields. The uniform was black now, too, red piping and thread along the edges of the collar and seams. Gone was the silver sciences badge and its pips that once told of a lifetime of service and honor. In its place were pinned three circles of red, arranged in an inverted triangle.

Michael’s heart shuddered in her chest and she gave a soft, strangled gasp when her gaze reached the eyes.

They were still blue, still as crisp and clear as they’d always been.

Still hers.

But this time, like the day the world changed, three red points flickered back from within them. They fixed on Michael, the internal mechanisms rotating one direction and back just as they’d always done. Something was looking at her–seeing her–something that might think it knew her.

Something that might even think it was alive.

In her hand, the glass bottle creaked under the increasing pressure of her hold.

Michael felt like the world was collapsing around her. Everything inside her was screaming at her to run, to sound Black Alert and try to save Discovery…her crew…the Federation…

“Get her out of here, Michael!”

She couldn’t think.

She couldn’t move.

She couldn’t breathe. 

She just…couldn’t.

Everything around her had paled except that terrible, grotesque perversion of what had once been a person she loved. Her stomach roiled. Bile crept into her throat. She thought she might vomit. The bottle of sand fell to its place at her chest. Her hands dropped, trembling, back to her sides.

The face on the screen tilted suddenly, a sharp, jerky movement that was flawlessly, faultlessly her. The eyes flashed and lurched down to the necklace, then back up.

And then, it spoke.

It was her voice, too.

The same voice that had echoed in Michael’s head over and over again for three years. The voice that had spoken with her over mission reports and late-night dinners–the voice that had laughed with her, cried with her, and whispered with her on the nights when their bodies drew close and knew peace.

But there was no peace here.

Here there was only a monster.

“Hello Michael,” it purred. “It has been some time, hasn’t it?”

Chapter Text

Nhan’s body stiffened where she had come to stand beside Michael, her hand clutching hard onto the bony shoulder beneath the uniform. Michael was dimly aware of the sensation, aware of the reason it was there, and the Barzan’s grasp seemed to restrain her voice as easily as it restrained her body.

“You’re Control,” Nhan declared, speaking before Michael could. “Aren’t you?”

On the screen, the plated head quirked to the side, the red triangles in the eyes glinting as it processed the words. Michael’s stomach clenched again and she swallowed down the urge to vomit as Nhan’s hand tightened its hold.

“Yes,” the entity said at last, its head straightening. “You are Commander Nhan. Barzan.” For an instant, its eyes flicked downward to the badge on Nhan’s chest, then to her rebreathers. “We have spoken once before.”

“Yes,” Nhan replied, jaw tightening. “It was you who asked about my augmentations.”

Control’s head twitched again. Michael’s eyes squeezed shut as if the horror of Airiam’s corrupted face would be gone once she reopened them.

“I failed to comprehend your ability to survive with only one apparatus,” Control replied. “It has been noted.”

“Fortunately it seems you’re not particularly interested in killing us at the moment,” Nhan cut back.

“I am not,” it said. Then it looked at Michael. Their eyes locked, and the crimson lights flashed again like it was recording more data. She was certain all the oxygen had just been sucked from her lungs. “At the moment.”

Michael tried to inhale, a slow, steady drag to calm herself. She shrugged Nhan’s hand from her shoulder. The entity on the screen caught the motion, then looked back at her as if it had just learned something important. Michael forced the feeling away.

“What do you want with us then?” she asked it, stepping forward.

“Data.”

“What kind of data?”

Control’s stance changed while it considered her, and Michael tried to keep her body from shivering at the parallels to how Airiam had always looked when deep in thought.

“All of it.”

Michael saw Nhan and Saru glance at one another in her peripheral vision. Her own eyes narrowed. Control’s were fixed on hers, unblinking. The inner mechanics swirled, just like Airiam’s always had.

“You already have the Sphere data,” Michael argued. “It’s clear you don’t need our spore drive technology. I know you’ve been following us. What I don’t understand is why.”

“Your data is valuable.”

“What data?” Michael asked again.

“Yours,” Control told her. It seemed perplexed by her confusion.

“Ours?”

“It is needed on Seraphis. For Seraphis.”

Michael shook her head, glancing around the bridge. The others appeared just as unsettled and uncertain as she was.

“I don’t understand,” she tried, holding her palms out for effect. “What could Discovery’s databases possibly provide that you don’t already have?”

Control tilted its head again, stepping closer to the viewscreen. It said nothing.

“You gotta give me something, here,” Michael told it, raising her eyebrows. She gestured to the screen with a hand. “Your ship is damaged. You need data to fix it? Help me understand.”

“Seraphis will be repaired,” Control responded, and the way it straightened its posture on the viewscreen was disturbing and far too human.

“So you don’t need data to repair it,” Michael concluded.

“You are required on board,” it said, face and body still. Too still.

The collective cessation of breath from the bridge crew struck ice into Michael’s veins. The silence stretched for several long moments as her mind spun.

It wanted them to board Seraphis?

The thought of it–of what might await them there if she agreed–dug at her chest like a dull, ragged blade. The distant memory of Airiam’s panicked words, of her cries from beneath the cruel grasp of Control’s possession, clawed its way forward.

“It’s overriding my primary motor functions!”

Michael stared at the eyes on the screen, at the terrifying red glow that tainted them as they stared back. They flickered again. Recording her. Knowing her.

She shivered.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the Captain said finally, clasping her hands behind her back as she tried in vain to stay strong against the onslaught of Control’s presence. It blinked at her.

Like Airiam when she was puzzled.

The similarities were becoming difficult to ignore. They made Michael’s stomach churn.

“It is required,” Control reiterated after the pause, and something in its tone changed to suggest any chance of negotiation had just evaporated. More troubling was the realization she'd detected its ability to change the tone at all.

That's not artificial.

Michael’s heart thumped faster behind her ribs at the thought.

“If I were to let my crew board your ship, I would be killing them,” she explained, a part of her struggling with the concept that she was trying to appeal to a monster. “Even if we survived you, we wouldn’t survive the Federation cull.”

“Then there is no quandary,” Control replied. “You are already lost.”

There was silence for several seconds as they regarded one another.

“Sounds like all the more reason for us to open fire on you,” Michael answered, setting her jaw. “Push your ship into whatever that thing is I’m seeing behind it.”

Control glanced to its side, the motion just as lurching as when Airiam had turned her head. It studied something off screen for a few seconds before refocusing on Michael.

“The dimensional fault,” it said.

A flicker of something sparked to life in Michael’s gut. Curiosity. She hated it.

“That’s what damaged your ship?” She forced the question out, trying hard to conceal the intrigue.

“Seraphis’ exit from the fault was unexpected,” said Control. The red in its stolen eyes flashed. “The cause is not yet known.”

“And you want our help to figure it out?” Michael asked with a bit more snark than intended. But Control's reply sent a chill up her spine.

“I require only you, Michael.”

Her heart lurched in her chest again. She saw now what it had done. She saw now why it had followed them.

It knew her.

“Absolutely not,” Nhan interrupted suddenly, stepping forward, but the Captain threw out a hand to stop her. Control’s eyes never left Michael’s. Its face was expressionless–even more so than Airiam’s had ever been. Nhan swung to face Michael. “We can’t lose you, Captain,” she breathed. Her voice fell softer, quieter, as she reached to touch her fingertips against Michael’s upper arm. “It will break whatever’s left of the Federation.”

“I concur,” Saru added, and this time Control broke contact to affix its gaze to him. The Kelpien’s body stiffened, but he stayed standing tall.

“Your compliance is not required,” it said, the voice another echo of Airiam’s. “She is your Captain. She will choose. It is her right to choose.”

“Oh that’s big of you,” Owo scoffed from her place at the navigation station. Michael could hear the roll of her eyes in her tone, but she didn’t have the energy to correct her. “Die with her crew or die alone, but at least she gets to choose.”

The red eyes flashed and the head snapped toward Owosekun with a deadly thrum of servos that Michael hadn’t heard in years. The sound dragged the breath from her lungs.

“It was you who helped me understand the value of choice and agency, Lieutenant Owosekun,” Control told her, even and cruel. Owo pulled a face, shifting in discomfort when her rank and name rolled from its lips. “You and I played Kadis Kot often. But I suppose you believed it was your Commander those nights. You may have heard her voice, but I was the one who opened her mouth.”

Owo’s hand shot up to cover her own mouth as it fell open and she gave a strangled gasp of despair at the words.

“I enjoyed our time strategizing together.”

Michael’s anger surged as Owo staggered sideways to lean her weight against her chair.

It had Airiam for longer than we realized.

“Enough,” she hissed, and Control turned its attention back to her, as easy and casual as if they were discussing the weather. “If I go with you, how can I know you’ll really spare my crew? My ship?”

“You cannot,” it said simply, and it lifted its chin. “But to refuse is to condemn them.”

Defiance, Michael thought with dread. Logic. Just like Airiam.

Then, a more horrifying thought.

What if it's behaving this way because she's still in there?

“That’s not much incentive,” Michael said, shoving the unwelcome consideration aside. “And your word isn’t worth much these days.”

They studied each other again, Michael’s eyes tracing over the awful black and red panels that were so like Airiam’s, but wrong. She thought she saw a flicker of hesitation in the way Control watched her–like it was calculating, or recalibrating.

“And yet, I have nothing else you will find of value.”

“Then why–”

“Except one,” it interrupted, and Michael closed her mouth.

Nhan glanced at her Captain nervously. She took a step closer.

“What’s that?” Michael asked slowly, clenching her jaw.

On the viewscreen, the entity straightened. Michael swore Discovery shuddered at the sight. The red triangles flashed.

“I have her memories,” Control said.

Michael’s body went stiff. Control cocked its head to the side again with a drone.

“All of them. They can be yours. Every moment of her love for you at your beck and call–as she remembered it. I can give her back to you. You can hold her again, Michael. You won’t have to miss her anymore.”

Heat rushed into Michael’s head, and she saw red. At her sides, her hands clenched into fists at the vile words it spewed across the bridge. The way it observed her was clinical, detached in a way Airiam had never been, but beneath the soulless eyes she knew Control saw everything. That it could get her to this state so quickly was evidence enough.

It’s testing me, she realized. It’s trying to understand emotion. It wants to weaponize it.

The Captain’s lips curled into a sneer.

Two can play that game.

“Were it so easy,” she said, drawing herself tall. She saw Nhan and Saru cast her concerned glances, but she paid them no mind.

Control inclined its head slightly, that same terrible wrongness of the face cutting deeper into Michael’s psyche by the second. She strained to keep herself from shouting, from breaking the cool composure of her command mask. When it responded, it was Airiam speaking back to her, just as much as it was so far from anything Airiam could have ever been.

“It is only difficult if you make it so,” Control told her.

“I don’t need her memories,” Michael snapped. “I have my own.”

Control’s eyes glowed red.

“For now.”

“I won’t let you destroy this ship,” the Captain said with a venom to her tone that surprised even herself.

“Then you will board mine.”

From behind her, Nilsson started to speak. “Captain–”

Michael held up a hand and she fell silent, still staring Control hard in the face.

“I go with you,” Michael started, frowning again, “and you spare Discovery?”

Control blinked once at her.

“And her crew,” it replied.

Michael tried to swallow the lump in her throat. It only grew bigger each time she tried.

“And me?” she managed finally. Her eyes narrowed into slits. “What happens to me?”

“Captain Burnham, you can’t–” Nilsson started again but Michael held her hand up again and the blonde ceased speaking as Nhan had done.

“What happens to me?” Michael asked Control again.

It tilted its head once more, the black metal gleaming in the lights of Seraphis’ bridge as it moved. They dimmed slightly, and a few seconds later another pulse swept out from the dreadnought. The bridge crew braced until Discovery stopped shaking. Nilsson arrived at Michael’s side, glaring so hard into the viewscreen that Michael thought she might actually manage to burn through it.

Control’s eyes flickered and it blinked at the Lieutenant Commander. Michael caught the infinitesimal flinch that cut through Nilsson's body, but she held her ground. When it looked back to Michael, the Captain saw the change in its posture. It seemed almost…happy.

“It is not for me to decide, Michael.”

Michael swallowed tightly. Control lifted its chin, like Airiam so often had.

“You have one hour,” it told her. “Choose.”

The viewscreen went blank, leaving only the form of the damaged Seraphis in front of them all. Michael blew out a breath and leaned forward, bracing her palms against her knees as she struggled to breathe again. The others in the bridge seemed in a similar state. Nilsson’s hand landed on her shoulder and held on, tighter even than Owo or Nhan had done. Michael straightened and then rotated to look at her, the blue eyes burrowing into hers with an anger she’d not seen before.

“It’s a trap,” Nilsson told her. “You know it’s a trap. This whole thing was a trap.”

Michael stiffened, then shook her head.

“All three of you–my ready room,” she demanded. “You have the conn, Owo.” She jerked her shoulder from Nilsson’s grasp and headed for the lift. Behind her, the commanders followed.

Michael wasn’t prepared for the salvo of discourse that descended upon her as the ready room doors sealed shut behind the group. She headed for her desk, striding behind it and leaning forward onto the heels of her palms as her crewmates all began talking at once. For a minute or so, she let them go on, trying to pick out the words that might carry more weight as they flew at her. It was well beyond proper decorum and fast falling towards impropriety, but three years at war had taught the Captain that sometimes they just needed to speak.

“Alright,” she said when the voices finally started to lower, lifting her head to look up at them even as she remained leaning forward. “ Alright! I hear you.”

The group fell quiet, but their stances were still on heightened alert. Michael righted herself and sighed, cloistering her hands behind her back.

“What choice do I have?” she asked.

“It’s not a choice,” Nhan replied in an instant. “We should fire on Seraphis while it’s still damaged. Try to end this once and for all.”

“We have no shielding,” Saru pointed out, and Michael’s body sagged a bit at the relief of his reasonable words.

“Stamets and Reno can get shields back up within an hour,” Nilsson declared, her blue eyes darting between each of them. “I’ve seen how they work under pressure. If they know the Captain’s life is on the line, they’ll make it happen in half the time.”

“Shields only last so long,” said Saru, and Nilsson gave a sigh of frustration. “We need spore drive navigation back up if we want to escape, too.”

“We’re not going to shoot at it,” Michael said, cutting in. She could hear the resignation in her own voice.

The others went quiet, then shifted their attention back to her.

“Look,” she started, beginning to pace back and forth behind the desk. “Even damaged, Discovery doesn’t stand a chance against that thing. It’s a dreadnought. And it very clearly doesn’t belong to Starfleet anymore. The only way to know what it’s packing–what it is or isn’t doing to our ships and our people–is to get on board. And it's invited me there.”

“We can send someone else,” Nhan supplied. “It doesn’t have to be our Captain.”

Saru shifted, drawing Michael’s focus. His expression grew worried as he studied Nhan. It was easy to see her frustration was fast turning to something like panic. Michael frowned at the uncharacteristic change in the ordinarily duty-focused Barzan.

“Apparently it does,” Saru said, frowning a bit. Nhan’s restraint appeared to be on its very last legs as she stared at him, as if she were utterly astounded. He angled his head, almost apologetic, while he tried to elaborate. “It specified its only requirement was Captain Burnham.”

Nhan pulled her head back, surprised. Her dark brows knit into a stern line and she cleared her throat, modulating her tone this time.

“And you’re suggesting…what? That we just let her go?” she asked.

Saru clicked and gave a slight shrug.

“It is…curious…that it would seem to need her,” he replied. “And that it would request her presence in place of a capture that should have been easy given how quickly it disabled our shields.”

Nhan's dark eyes narrowed. She didn't seem swayed.

“I can use that, Commander Nhan,” Michael added, turning toward her and meeting the Barzan's heavy gaze. “You saw what it just tried to do in there. It’s trying to manipulate me. I can let it believe it has.”

When Nilsson spoke this time, her voice was more measured than before. She mirrored Michael’s stance, her hands vanishing behind her back. Her wiry frame was tense.

“You really believe…” she started, then trailed off for a moment as though she were having trouble finding the right words. She exhaled, rubbing at her forehead. “That thing has outsmarted the entire Federation, Captain. It’s taken control of people. Thousands of Starfleet officers, all at once. You think you can combat that kind of power alone?”

“She won’t be alone,” Saru interjected, and Nilsson knit her brows at him.

“We have no proof there’s really an informant on board,” she said, sounding skeptical. “No proof that it wasn’t just Control using the transmissions as a lure.”

“I am certain that is not the case,” the Kelpien replied with a slight smile.

Nilsson’s lips pursed into a harsh, tapered line but she said nothing. Nhan glanced at Michael for an instant, then frowned at Saru.

“Why?” Nhan asked, her tone low and dangerous. 

Saru clicked again, thoughtful.

“Something damaged that ship,” he said, nodding in the direction of the ready room window. “If it was Control’s fault, why would it admit to the cause being unknown? And now, claiming to need our Captain, her data, for Seraphis–it is a departure from what we know of its typical behavior.”

Michael and Saru exchanged a glance, another swell of appreciation for her friend and Commander's insightful nature rising within her. Then her attention shifted back to Nhan, to Nilsson, and finally down to the floor.

“It's almost human,” she said, the words soft as they left her mouth. 

The sound of Nhan sucking in a breath drew Michael's gaze back upward, and in an instant, Nhan was standing just on the other side of the desk.

“It’s not her, Michael,” Nhan said sharply as their eyes locked.

“Nhan,” the Captain exhaled, starting to shake her head. “That's not–” 

“Michael–it is not her!” Nhan cried, cutting her off. “No matter how human that thing might seem, no matter what it's promising you–Airiam isn't coming back! You can't just go with it! You can't just abandon everything we've worked for!”

“Commander,” Saru said gently, stepping forward and sliding a hand onto Nhan's shoulder. She flinched, jolting her head to the side to glance at him and then letting him turn her gently to face him. Michael could see her body shaking, her breath coming in soft, strangled gasps as the Kelpien put his other hand on the opposite shoulder. “Captain Burnham is not taking this lightly. But her reasoning is sound.”

From nearby, Nilsson agreed with a miserable nod of her own.

“He's right, Commander Nhan,” she said, voice tight as though the very words might make her sick. “We have an opportunity here that we may never get again. And it could make all the difference.”

The knot in Michael's stomach drew tighter as she watched them, her eyes glancing out the window to where Seraphis’ dreadful form hovered in the distance. Nhan's composure seemed to have returned by the time Saru released her, and a few moments later they all turned to face Michael again. She swallowed, trying to steady her nerves.

“We've been living in Hell,” she began, looking at each of them in turn. “And I don't even want to imagine what kind of new one I'll be walking into. But every moment I can delay that thing…it'll help. And if Montgomery really is aboard, I will find her. I'll do whatever it takes to take that Hell upon myself instead of letting it spread across everything else we all love.”

Nhan's eyes stayed fixed on Michael's, wetness shimmering and redness collecting around them. Her heart wrenched in a way she hadn't felt it do before–not with Nhan–and just for a moment, she questioned herself.

Saru cleared his throat, and the others looked at him.

“The elders taught us that Hell was a moon that fell into the sea,” he said, turning and pacing towards the window to gaze out at Seraphis. He kept his back to them as he went on. “For seven days the water boiled, and when it finally cooled, the tides carried the moon back to the shore as stones. When the first Kelpiens left the sea and walked upon the shore, the stones cut their feet and they bled. So they fashioned hard soles to walk over the stones, but the stones lodged in the tread and were carried across the world.”

The several seconds of silence that followed were heavy as the officers listened, and when he rotated back to face them, his eyes, too, were reddening. He approached Michael, who had come around the desk, taking her hands in his. 

“So now we say, ‘One cannot know the peace of soft earth if they have never walked upon sharp stones,’” he told her as she looked up at him. “‘And if ever you walk with light feet, pray it is not that the stones have been lost, but that you have learned how to carry them.’”

In her peripheral vision, Michael saw Nilsson bow her head.

“Thank you Saru,” Michael breathed, trying not to choke up. He nodded, releasing her hands and stepping back. His gaze flicked to Nhan, then back to Michael. 

“Commander Nilsson,” he said, and Nilsson lifted her eyes to his. “If you would join me…” He held out an arm in a sweeping gesture which Nilsson fell into immediately, seeming to understand the intent.

Michael watched them go, the door hissing closed behind them and leaving her and Nhan alone. It took several seconds before the Captain could bring herself to look the Barzan in the face.

When she did, it was almost too much to bear.

“I want to pretend you’re not really going to do this.”

Nhan’s voice was tempered but more pained than Michael had ever heard it. It quivered in time with the gentle waves of her long hair where they spilled over shoulders tensed into a rigid line. Michael couldn’t pull her eyes away as she moved toward her, into her space, and then ran trembling fingers down the Captain’s sleeve. Nhan’s eyes followed the motion, as if something inside her had broken.

“But I know you are.”

Michael’s eyes fluttered shut and reopened to stare down at her boots.

“I am,” she whispered.

“You’ll never come back,” Nhan said. “Even if it lets you live. The Federation won’t let you. The moment you set foot on that shuttle, you’re dead.”

“I know,” Michael replied with a single, miserable nod.

Nhan’s hand fell away from her arm.

“I’m not ready,” she breathed. “I can’t protect them. Not like you can, Michael. I’m not ready to be Captain.”

Michael forced a smile, impossibly small, and collected Nhan’s hand between her own.

“Yes you are,” she told her, and she believed it. Nhan would know she did. “And you’ll have Saru. And Nilsson. But I’m going to try like hell to keep that thing distracted and buy the Federation some time. That ship is the hub, Nhan. Even if I don’t find Montgomery…even if it’s just me there to take it down from the inside…I have to do this. I have to take this chance. My life is a small price to pay if it saves the Federation.”

A tear finally escaped and rolled down Nhan’s cheek. She tilted her head, smiling against the emotions Michael could see brimming in the lines of her face.

“Your life has never been small, Michael,” she choked out. “Not to me.”

Michael wasn’t ready for her palm to find her jaw, for her body to give in to the touch in a way it never had before. Her other hand slid around her back and then the Commander was pulling her closer, leaning forward.

She turned her face away.

“Michael,” Nhan pleaded. “Just this time. Please.”

Her eyes closed as Nhan gently steered her head back toward her, guiding their mouths together. Michael sucked air through her nose at the shock of it, the sensation long forgotten in the years since Airiam’s death. Nhan’s hold on her tightened and they stumbled back into the bulkhead. Her knee separated Michael’s thighs and she shielded the back of Michael’s head with one hand, waist holding her against the wall. Michael didn’t stop her when Nhan deepened the kiss, tongue running along her lips and then parting them.

She’d forgotten it was possible to feel like this.

But it was wrong. She loved Airiam.

She couldn’t love Nhan, too.

Her face turned and she broke the kiss, pushing Nhan away. The Captain’s chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath, her gaze following the tear lines down the soft swell of the older woman’s cheeks. Her eyes fell onto the watch on her wrist.

“I need to go,” Michael told her, breathless. “I’m sorry.”

Nhan caught her again by the arm, dragging their bodies together once more and catching Michael’s mouth in another kiss. This time it was Nhan who ended it, shoving Michael off of her before the Captain could get a chance to do so herself.

“Don’t be sorry for what you’re doing, Michael,” she whispered, the words shuddering out of her. “I understand. We’ve been losing you every day since the day that thing killed Airiam.”

Michael looked at her, straining to keep herself from crying, too.

“I just didn’t think it would hurt so goddamn much when it finally took you away.”

The words cracked something open. It happened in an instant.

Michael stepped forward, collecting Nhan’s hands and pulling her toward her. Her fingers plunged into her dark hair and she closed her lips over the older woman’s again, arms winding around her and keeping her close. Their faces were hot and wet when they finally broke apart and their foreheads stayed together, sharing breath in silence for another minute or two.

“Thank you,” Michael choked out at last, and then held Nhan at arm’s length. The eyes that looked back at her were strained and confused, but she nodded once.

“I know I told you I wouldn’t say anything if I got attached,” Nhan whispered, the tendons of her neck protruding as she tensed. “But I did, Michael. And I want you to know that before you step into this mess. I want you to hold onto it, because if that…thing…lets you live–you're going to need it.”

Chapter Text

I am 9974.

Captain Michael Burnham did not know she was there. In fact, she did not know much of anything at that moment. She had been unconscious for nearly fourteen hours, her body still and silent where Control had laid it against the bare, glossy black of Seraphis' icy floor. Tendrils of glowing red coiled along the metal and vanished into ports bored into the base of her skull and each of the first three vertebrae of her spine. Her head was bent at an unnatural angle with nothing to support it, lolling limp and lifeless, jolted slightly with each pulse and shiver of the ship below. She was crouching beside Michael, though she did not remember coming here.

I am Starfleet. I have a name.

Her fingers skimmed across the conduits. They didn’t feel right. They barely felt at all.

The captain did not appear to be in any pain, but she experienced pain on Michael’s behalf. It burrowed in from all sides, thick and onerous as it had been when she'd stood before the liminal drive. On the walls, her shadow shifted and contorted as if the light had forgotten how to bend around her. Her hands hovered, trembling above the woman’s body like she might shatter if she touched her. She frowned, worry creeping up her throat as she dared to lay one palm against her shoulder and the other on the dark skin of her forehead. Michael was feverish and waxy, the flesh over her cheeks pulled taut and deep into their hollows, her breathing shallow and far too fast to be doing any good.

I am 9974.

She retracted her hands, glancing around the room for a moment before shrugging off the outer layer of her uniform. Michael’s head was light within her palm when she slipped the worn fabric beneath it, lowering her slow and tender until the ruffles molded around the contours of her skull.

It wasn’t thick enough.

My name is lost. But I am Starfleet.

She stripped off another layer of her own worn uniform, leaving only the camisole below. For several minutes she fussed, folding the tattered clothing into layers until she was satisfied. Michael’s head stayed cradled in her other hand until she finished, delicate and frail. This time when she laid it on the makeshift pillow, the unnatural angle of her neck was gone, but a thin chain had slipped upward toward her chin.

She tugged it gently. A tiny bottle of sand emerged from below the captain’s uniform collar. She recognized it. She’d seen it when she’d visited the liminal drive.

This belonged to Airiam.

The observation lingered like it might be meaningful, but it served no purpose in particular. She turned the bottle between her fingers, watching the sand drift from end to end.

This wasn’t meant for Michael.

She tucked it back beneath the collar.

After that she stood, rounding Michael’s form and then kneeling to study the ports at which Seraphis’ terrible veins were fixed. Again, her hands hovered for a minute, fingers twitching with the urge to sever the links.

Is this sustenance or siphon?

Her hands retreated back to her side. She should know this. She knew the answer. It was there, just beyond her grasp, slinking through the exhaustion and the Rot of three years spent on Seraphis.

Why couldn’t she find it?

Why didn’t she know what to do?

Would she even do it if she did?

Every moment in this world felt hazy, every passing second inching her closer to some unknowable abyss, tamping down memory and morals, smothering instinct until she feared she might not know enough to run. Still blind to its own grip, Control's hold on her was growing. Its search for explanation had intensified. It experienced agitation in a way she hadn’t known it could.

She’d seen it slam its fist–watched as it paced and thought aloud.

Control was changing. It was transforming into something lacking order–diverging into something volatile and disturbed.

She stood, staring down at the captain. For an instant, Michael’s eyes blinked open. For a breath, they were focused and alive.

I am 9974. I am Starfleet. I am here.

For a heartbeat, she thought that Michael saw her.

She stayed rooted to the spot and more pain surged, hot and wild.

Pain for the Federation. Pain for what she had done by helping Control bring Michael to this awful place. Pain for what might become of them all.

Michael’s eyes closed.

A palm landed on her stomach as if it might quell the roiling and the nausea.

I am not supposed to be here.

Beneath her, Seraphis shuddered and she heard the groan of more hull plating peeling away from somewhere down below. The venules pulsed faster and glowed brighter. She dropped again to her knees–put her hands on Michael’s slender frame before she even knew why. Captain Burnham’s every muscle contracted and her spine arched backward. There was no sound–no hiss or gasp of anguish–and so she stayed with her, guarding her limbs as she seized, waiting until the great ship quieted and Michael’s body went limp and still once more.

Seraphis hummed.

Or was it her?

The tune came from far away, or far below. She recognized it, but did not know from where. It emerged from her lips and reached toward Michael, and she thought she saw the captain stir. There was a pulse in the wrist she still held tight. It was weak. But it belonged to Michael–not to Seraphis. Not to Control.

She hummed louder. The notes were a vibrato in her chest.

Come back to me, Captain.

On Michael’s wrist, the watch there showed the time. Her eyes squeezed shut and her thumb stroked along the clammy skin. Control would wake soon. It would come here, to Michael, as it had done each hour in its woken state.

She opened her eyes, her gaze fixing on the tousled clothing still clumped beneath the captain’s head. It couldn’t stay. It would raise alarms when Control spotted it. She let Michael go, watching as blood rushed to fill the imprint of her hand against the skin, and tugged the uniform from beneath her. She rose to her feet and slipped it back on, turning away from the captain’s unmoving form.

But from behind her, she heard mumbled words, almost unintelligible.

“Where are you?”

She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. When she tried to answer, the sound died on her lips.

Or maybe she hadn’t tried at all.

Her gaze was on the doorway.

Thirteen steps, right turn.

Michael didn’t speak again.

I will free us, Captain Burnham, she thought, as much a promise as a prayer if such a power might exist to make it so. I am Starfleet. You are not alone.

Chapter Text

It was curious, the specificity with which Control could pilot each component of its form. Every infinitesimal movement of its fingers, every twitch of its head and blink of its eye, was enabled by an interconnected system of the biological and the mechanical. Captain Michael Burnham was not so different, save for the compounds employed in the structures of her assembly. Control had located only one point of metal alloy within the sleeping captain–a peculiar tiny rod left embedded in a place where bone had fused after a fracture in one upper vertebrae. Beyond that, each part of Michael was organic, each system interlaced and dependent on the next in a way that left it feeble, where failure in just one component might cascade the rest into cessation.

Airiam had been this way once, too. She had experienced failure, her organic elements rent apart by physical, catastrophic forces until she’d lain helpless at the edge of oblivion. Control had reviewed the memories. It knew what Airiam had known. The details were not as crisp as others–damage to the organic portions of her brain had rendered them barely retrievable at all–but Airiam had carefully stored what little did remain in her internal archives.

Control would not alter these partitions. They told the story of its becoming.

If Airiam had not died that day, Control would not have lived.

Michael Burnham stirred.

From where it crouched beside her, its fingers moved soft and fluid over the ports. One by one it disengaged the tendrils and slid them free, the process vaguely intimate. Beneath its ribs–what was left of them–the muscles and machinery seized when Michael stirred again.

Just for a moment.

A fault. An inefficiency.

Seraphis shuddered.

Control’s palm landed flat against its chest until the heartbeat resumed.

Anomalous.

Michael’s eyes blinked open. Control stood, the motion fluid and composed like its hands had been. The captain jolted upright, then froze. She did not remember. Her adrenal system was functioning at increased efficiency. If Control focused hard enough, it could see her pulse against the thin skin of her throat.

Such a simple concept, circulation.

Such a brittle execution–easily interrupted and difficult to mend.

Then Michael’s eyes narrowed. Her hand went to the back of her neck, the tips of her fingers finding the edges of the ports. Lines formed in her forehead, the musculature contracting into an expression Control knew to mean she was troubled. She looked up at it, hand staying against her neck for several seconds.

She remembered now. Control was certain of it.

It did not wait for her question.

“Modification was required.”

Michael’s hand went back to her side, then to the floor. She pushed herself up and stood on legs that were unsteady.

The structures of her throat moved as she swallowed. An autonomic function.

“Modification?” she asked, and Control tilted its head, considering its response.

“Adaptation.”

“The Rot,” she said, and Control was intrigued. The musculature in her body grew tense as though the word itself was the catalyst.

“You presume damage,” it stated. “Injury. Impairment. This conclusion is inaccurate.”

Control had anticipated alleviation to follow its explanation, but its calculations had been wrong. Michael only tensed further. The observation was stimulating.

“Then…why?”

The captain’s voice, too, was stimulating. Control had not spoken with Michael in this manner since the day it had taken Airiam. Its system directives oscillated in a way it had not experienced before.

Listen.

Observe.

Interpret.

React.

Learn.

Michael’s fingers were twisting together. One thumb tapped against the other. Control recognized the sequence. It was biological. Familiar. Control had tapped its fingers on the console. It possessed this tic, as Michael did. So engaging was the perception of the action that it took several inefficient seconds to realize it, too, was tapping one digit against its own side. It ceased and raised its hand, studying it.

Anomalous.

Michael was still watching when its attention departed from the hand. It had not forgotten her inquiry, though she seemed to believe it had. If it did not answer soon, she would repeat herself. Control was uncertain how it knew.

“Organic respiration is incompatible with Seraphis’ atmospheric composition.”

Michael blinked. Control recognized the nonverbal cue. Uncertainty. Surprise. Confusion. It blinked, too. The dark pigmentation of her eyes was provocative. Airiam had thought this, too.

“You mean I would have suffocated?”

Control reflected on the word. Airiam had feared this concept once. In the shuttle, when it stopped, she had tried to breathe. Her lungs had burned.

Its hand pressed against its abdomen, where beneath its clothing, flesh and muscle still remained. Its diaphragm, still organic, but now controlled by circuitry and wires. Its lungs were only half-organic. They made it possible to live.

“No,” it said at last. “But discomfort is not optimal.”

Michael glanced away as if its very words had brought discomfort. She did not seem to understand. Then she made a sound–it was short and sudden and came from her chest and throat and nose all at once. Her lips flexed upward as it happened–just at the corners–and then released back into a line. Control understood there was a connection, but it was unfamiliar with the kinesics.

Her words made even less sense than her behavior.

“That’s ironic.”

She shifted on her feet. Her eyes were searching for escape routes and she was trying to conceal it. Control was unconcerned. She would not find one. Seraphis would secure her. But her need for liberation was intriguing. It had miscalculated how quickly this instinct would reveal itself. It pivoted until it stood perpendicular to Michael and held out an arm.

Airiam had done this once.

Michael tracked its arm, like prey would eye the hunter.

Curious.

“I will walk you to your quarters.”

Airiam had said this once.

“My quarters?” Michael’s voice came out as a sputter.

Control tilted its head, then swept the arm behind her. It did not touch her–a buried protocol whose origin it didn’t dwell upon–but its nearness seemed to have the same distasteful effect as if the contact had occurred. She recoiled, skittered sideways, and fled several feet from its reach. Her eyes scanned hard down its body and up once she stilled. It observed her, too, hand falling back to its side with a hum.

Curious.

“Discomfort is not optimal. But it is instructive. You will come with me, Captain Burnham.”

Michael’s fingers lurched upward and she fumbled for the chain around her neck. She withdrew a tiny bottle from between the layers of her uniform, rolling it as if it brought relief. There was sand in the bottle.

It felt significant.

Control overrode the directive to investigate. It was a wasteful task. An inefficiency. An error. It would run a self-diagnostic later to determine the cause.

Michael hadn’t moved yet. Control attempted a different tactic.

“Please, Michael.”

Airiam had said this often. The last time had been in the airlock.

The result was optimal. Michael appeared startled, dropping the bottle of sand back to her neck as she stared at Control. For several long seconds, she still did not move, but Control could detect her heart rate as it slowed. It was only twelve percent above her baseline by the time she finally nodded.

The compliance was favorable.

Control raised its arm again, into the sweeping gesture it remembered from Airiam’s interactions with Michael. The captain, stiff and still uncertain, glanced at it warily before stepping forward and heading towards the only door in the room.

Control remained in place, observing the sight of Michael Burnham’s musculature as it shifted beneath her uniform. It was not prominent, her body punctuated instead by the wasted ridge and crag of bone.

A directive formed–an objection to what it saw, stronger than it should have been. It would correct this. This task was not wasteful.

Michael reached the door and turned, surprised again, perhaps by Control’s location where she’d left it. Control’s head tilted, its eyes flashing to collect new data. Even the skin over Michael’s cheeks sank inward.

Objection.

It approached, clanking a hand against the panel to open the door. It guided Michael through, always at a safe distance, just on the edge of where it had already learned she would begin to reclaim space. They kept pace beside each other.

Control saw Michael glance quickly at its countenance.

Just once.

Curious.

Chapter Text

That night, Michael dreamed of Airiam.

She dreamed of Airiam in the mess hall, with her plum-flavored Jell-O.

She dreamed of Airiam and Kadis-Kot nights with their friends.

She dreamed of Airiam in their quarters, reading on the couch, ankle crossed over her knee until Michael walked in. She’d folded the novel closed and fixed her with that look.

“You’re late.”

Michael had apologized. She always apologized when she was late. But nothing ever changed. Airiam reminded her gently of self-care, of the important things Michael always seemed to forget.

“You’re working yourself to death, Michael.”

Airiam had stood then, setting the novel aside. Michael dreamed of her hands as they gripped warm against the rounds of her shoulders and skated downward. Airiam had collected her, brought their bodies together in the dim light of the room.

She smelled of washed fabric–of old-fashioned water and floral detergent.

Michael dreamed of that embrace, of its titanium strength and its velveteen softness. Of the slow kiss that grounded her as much as it warned of things beyond mere affection. Of hands that slid the zipper down on her jacket and then tossed it aside.

“Let me have you.”

In her dreams, Airiam was above her, around her, against her, within her. She could feel the heavy chain of her spine as her fingers clawed at it, raking down from the metal to the flesh of the thigh keeping Michael’s legs spread. She could feel the hand and the fingers that swept her fast toward nirvana, the arch of the body that gave force to each thrust, the way it carried her with it until Michael thought she might break. Airiam’s mouth was at her neck, her lips hot against skin. Her teeth scraped an ear and she whispered.

“Let go for me, Michael.”

She dreamed of their bodies entwined on the mattress, blankets rumpled and clothes cast aside without care. She dreamed of her back pressed against Airiam’s chest, of the arm always draped on her waist while they slept, and the other looping under the pillow. She dreamed of soft breath, of the steady hum of mechanics and the beautiful, aching absurdity of what Airiam was and had fought so hard to become.

“You know me.”

Michael dreamed of her voice.

“I’m here.”

The words roused her as if they had been spoken aloud, synthetic and gentle and close to her ear, but the room when she sat upright was empty. Her vision was blurred from wetness, bokehs of an unsteady red glow pulsing along the veins on the walls. The scent of florals was strong in the darkness, pervading around her as if Airiam had been there only moments ago. She wiped the wetness away from her eyes, and glanced down at the faint sheen on her fingers. Beneath her, the bed trembled.

Seraphis trembled.

The ports at her neck were sore, but Control had told her they were necessary. Michael inhaled, consciously testing the air–testing Control’s veracity, perhaps. The floral scent lingered, more distant now, but the air felt different when she breathed.

Her chest rattled a bit as she pushed the air back out. Condensation curled in a plume against the red glow, but when the light pulsed again, it had gone.

Time passed differently on Seraphis. Had it been minutes or months since she’d last seen Control? How many lives had she lived since Airiam died? Where was the light?

Seraphis existed only in scarlet and shadows.

Above her, vapor hissed down through a vent, diffusing over the bed. Michael inhaled again. It was cool and sweet and smelled faintly of damp foliage. A memory eased forward, of mountains and rain on the roof of a cabin. Airiam had brought her–no…given her–the memory. Michael remembered the feel of her console, of how Airiam modified it to behave much like a holodeck where Discovery had none. She touched the bridge of her nose, then collected the bottle of sand from the nightstand. Her eyes closed in the hopes she might see her face again.

“I miss you,” she said into the darkness. She laid the cool glass against the hot skin of her forehead. It felt like Airiam–smooth like her hands and her lips. Her eyes opened, and she tucked the bottle beneath her chin. “God, I miss you. And I’m scared, Airiam.”

Michael wondered if she could hear her, wherever she was.

She hoped she could.

The chain looped over her neck again, and she tucked it beneath the sleep shirt she’d found at the foot of the bed when Control had first brought her here. Michael pushed back the blankets and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, her bare feet pushing into a pair of hard-bottomed slippers. The attention Control had paid to creature-comforts was disconcerting, but it wasn’t until Michael padded into the kitchen that she realized she’d seen the slippers before.

Alarmed, she looked down at them.

“They’re real wool, Michael.”

The captain sucked in a breath, and shoved her fist toward her mouth to quiet her gasp. They were the same as the ones Airiam had given her years earlier. She flinched when she noticed the shirt was, too. Michael whirled around, staring back at the bed in the darkness.

The blankets were the same.

She stumbled toward the door, hands fumbling wildly for the panel.

Lights, her mind pleaded. Please–lights.

Around her, Seraphis seemed to groan with the strain of the power drawn suddenly into the room. Old lights–most of them damaged–stuttered and spasmed to life, and the whole room seemed to recoil and cry for the shadows again. Michael’s eyes traveled the ceiling until the flickering stopped, and then her throat constricted.

She recognized all of it.

The vase of Kelpien flowers on the coffee table with the scrape on the left-hand side. The dark blue Starfleet-issue chaise behind it and the worn grey blanket draped over the back.

Were it not for the horrible bulkheads around her, she could have been standing in Discovery–in the quarters she’d once shared with Airiam. Every piece of furniture–every minute, insignificant detail of the rest of the furnishings–had been replicated with a precision and exactitude that Michael knew could only have come from the memories she and Airiam had made.

Memories Control had stolen for itself.

Anger welled up within her, and her hands curled into fists as she headed back to the kitchen. There were frames on the battered oak bookcase to the left of the archway–familiar artwork and a photo of Michael and–

The captain frowned, halting and then stepping closer to the bookcase. She stared unblinking at the photo and squinted.

Was it empty?

No, not empty, she decided–but she couldn’t make out the image. It was blurred, like time had worn the memory too thin. The observation disturbed her.

The door to her quarters chimed suddenly, the sound distorted and warped by Seraphis’ corruption. Michael flinched, snatching a blade from the knife rack by the replicator. Control’s form materialized in the archway, the red points in its eyes flickering as it took in the sight. It didn’t seem concerned by the threat. Michael’s breath came in shallow, ineffectual gasps, and the hand that held the blade before her was trembling.

She didn’t wait for it to speak this time.

“Why did you bring me here?” she breathed.

The reply was instantaneous. Unrestrained.

“Data,” Control said simply.

Michael grit her teeth.

“Did you keep your word?”

“Discovery is unharmed.”

“Where are they?” Michael demanded. The blade lowered, just a bit.

Control tilted its head. The red triangle in the blue eyes flashed. Michael’s chest wrenched at the sight–at Airiam’s eyes. Empty. Corrupted.

“I do not know,” it told her. “They activated their spore drive. Seraphis will not follow them any longer. You are here, now, Captain Burnham. You are where you belong.”

“It’s not her, Michael.”

“I don’t belong here,” Michael snapped, and then slammed the blade onto the counter in disgust. Her palm wiped across her face and she exhaled, the sound drawing another tilt of the head from Control. It didn’t seem to comprehend her dismay. She rotated, planting the heels of her palms against the edge of the countertop and straining to catch her breath. “Why don’t my lungs feel right? Why can’t I breathe right?”

Control took a step closer and Michael thrust a hand out to stop it.

“Don’t–don’t come near me,” she hissed, and then coughed at the strain.

It halted, then straightened.

“Seraphis is malfunctioning,” it explained, voice even and devoid of inflection. It was Airiam’s voice–but without Airiam’s soul. “Further modification may be required.”

“No way in Hell are you plugging me into your little tethers of terror again,” the captain replied, pushing herself upright. She tried repeating her earlier question. Maybe it would answer this time. “Why did you bring me here?”

“You have already demonstrated dissatisfaction in my previous response,” Control pointed out. “I have come to understand there is no benefit in repeating it.”

Michael stared at it for several seconds, scratching idly at her upper lip.

“Fast learner,” she managed, still tense as it examined her.

“My cortical processor provides me with a distinct advantage over organic learning mechanisms.”

“Your cortical processor?” Michael snapped, blood suddenly boiling in every inch of her body. “That body belongs to Commander Airiam.”

For a moment, Control appeared to consider its response.

“Airiam is gone,” it said finally.

Michael felt another pulse of anger sweep through her.

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

The plated face–Airiam’s face, but not–quirked to the side.

“You are attempting to use logic to reject the legitimacy of my existence–but there is no logic in this strategy. Nothing of Commander Airiam remains.”

“That’s not true,” Michael argued quickly, narrowing her eyes. “You have her memories. You told me that.”

“Memory and consciousness are not the same, Captain Burnham.”

Michael’s stomach twisted and she thought she might be sick. The concept of Control understanding consciousness–or even having an opinion on it–was deeply disturbing. Her voice failed her, and she only shifted her weight on her feet, fingers seeking out her necklace again.

Control stepped forward, into her space, head tilting back the opposite way as its hand–Airiam’s hand–reached for where she held the bottle of sand. Michael froze, the counter behind her blocking her retreat. The fingertips, still stark white as they had always been, brushed her skin as it tugged the chain and collected the trinket. She could feel the heat radiating off its form the same as it had Airiam, but the scent of florals she’d always associated with her partner were gone, replaced by the subtle hint of oil and ozone.

Michael held her breath and watched its downcast eyes as it turned the bottle in its hand, studying the object at length with an intensity that caught her off guard. By the time it had finished its examination, the captain’s knees were threatening to buckle and send her to the tiled floor. Control raised its face, the three red points flickering as their eyes connected. It tucked the bottle back beneath her shirt.

Michael tried to stop the unpleasant shiver when it brushed against her skin for the second time. It hesitated–just for a moment–before withdrawing.

It felt familiar. Airiam had been hesitant, too, at first. The observation unsettled her, and Nhan’s warning rang in her ears.

“Michael–It is not her!”

Control stepped back, releasing the pressure. Michael’s breath blew out and then she coughed again, her lungs still aching and her balance off-kilter. The terrible, soulless eyes raked down her form and back up again.

“Come,” it said, holding out an arm in gesture.

“Where?” she demanded, still on edge.

Control blinked, as if it didn’t understand the need for protest.

“The observation deck.”

“Why?” Michael hated the way her mind suddenly flipped script on her. She hated even more that it must have been obvious to Control. Its chin lifted, almost smug.

Just like Airiam.

“The dimensional fault. You were intrigued.”

Michael struggled to swallow down the lump in her throat, but it wouldn’t budge. Control spoke again, more insistent this time.

“Come, Captain.”

Its fingers touched the round of her shoulder and Michael felt sickened by how long it took her to recoil.

It’s not her. It’s not.

She stepped forward, and Control fell in step beside her. The gentle purr of each stride, the soft whir as its hand swiped at the door panel, sent Michael’s abdomen into knots of paranoia and…something else.

It’s not her.

Chapter Text

When she woke, Seraphis was in motion.

Constant, thundering motion interrupted by the smash and fray of the fractured components of her hull colliding and then peeling away.

No.

She lurched out of the bed, but her head was swimming as she tried to stand. She was fully clothed–even her shoes–though she didn’t remember falling asleep. But fog filled her head, as though she hadn't slept at all.

This distance–this confusion–was happening more and more. She feared the years of strain and solitude might be taking their final toll.

Stumbling to the window, she leaned against it and watched in horror as the shifting colors of the warp corridor rushed by. The air felt wrong in her lungs as her shoulders heaved to drag it inside.

Where were they going?

How long had she been asleep? 

Her eyes darted to her left wrist. The watch she usually wore was missing. Her right hand fumbled for it, like she might find it there anyway. When she found nothing, she returned to the bed, rummaging through the drawers of the nightstand–then the other nightstand–then ripped the blankets off the bed.

“Where is it?” she cried aloud. On the walls, Seraphis’ veins glowed brighter in time to her words. She threw the blankets back onto the mattress in a pile, turning toward the dresser a few paces away. “Where is it?” she asked again, rummaging through the drawers as panic set in. She needed the watch. It was analog–the only way to be sure her sense of time was accurate.

The only way to know how close Control was to waking.

Had she left it somewhere? She couldn’t have left it. She hadn’t taken the watch off since the day she’d come aboard Seraphis.

But if she had…if Control was to discover it…

Seraphis jolted, staggering out of warp, canting starboard as more flakes of her skin shed out across the blackness. She hovered at an angle for several seconds before rocking back level again.

By the doorway, something plinked onto the floor. Her head snapped around.

It was the watch. And with it, Michael’s bottle of sand.

Alarmed, she arrived to crouch beside the items in three sweeping strides, strapping the watch around her wrist and then lifting the chain attached to the bottle.

“How did this get here?” she asked the darkness. Above her, steam hissed through the ceiling vents. She glanced up. “Seraphis?”

Around her, from the ship wide comms, static crackled, and she snapped back to her feet. There was a pattern to the sound, like Seraphis’ computer was finally attempting to communicate.

“Speak, friend,” she whispered, respirations increasing.

The audio sizzled and popped.

“Warrrrp core offff–core–c–offline.”

A strangled, sob tore from her throat. She clutched the bottle of sand and wiped her forehead with the other palm. Three years–three years since she had last heard Seraphis speak. That she should try so soon after Michael's arrival could be no coincidence. Seraphis must feel the tide changing, too. It took her several moments to compose herself, for her breathing to return to normal, and she looped the chain of the necklace over her head.

“Seraphis,” she breathed, “what is Control’s current status?”

The delay in response was all but an eternity.

“Hiberna-na-naaaation.”

“Hibernation?” she clarified, shaking her head in confusion. Then, to herself, “That’s abnormal.”

“Diagnosssstic–di-diag–”

“Soon,” she promised. She glanced at the watch. “I need to know how long I have before Control comes out of hibernation. And why it’s put itself into that state.” Her attention shifted back to the window, and as she moved closer, the great red arc of a planet all but filled the view. It was inhabited. She blinked a few times, but it spurred no recognition.

“Where are we?”

“Diagnostic.”

“Soon,” she insisted again, abandoning her last question. The bottle of sand rolled against her chest as she moved. “Where is Captain Burnham?”

“Diagnos–”

“I can’t!” she cried, cutting the voice off as it struggled to speak. “Not until I know more. Where is Captain Burnham?”

“Diag–”

“Tell me where she is!”

The static returned for a moment, then went silent for several agonizing seconds.

“Seraphis?”

“De-e-e-ck four.”

She scoffed, slashing her hand across the knickknacks on the dresser, sending them spraying across the room and into the walls. The venules blazed scarlet, and she paused to watch in fascination as they seemed to brighten the more frustrated she became. Her fingers rolled the bottle between them, and as she exhaled, more mist curled down from the vents as though Seraphis breathed with her.

“It has her in the isolation ward,” she muttered, more to herself than to the ship. “It’s the only part of that deck it hasn’t already converted.” Her eyes cast out toward the planet again, at the distant vessels buzzing like insects around an orbital station not far away. They hadn’t seen Seraphis yet–or if they had, they didn’t know what she was.

Her hand tightened around the bottle. She didn’t know how long it would be before Control woke again. Or where it might be. Seraphis wouldn’t know.

It never knew.

I have to risk it, she thought, gritting her teeth. I need to find Michael. I need to find out where we are.

She gave herself no time to deliberate, spinning on her heel and heading for the door. The panel chimed as she slammed her palm against it and the bulkhead parted. The red tubules lined the darkened corridor, heavy footfalls echoing through it as she moved.

I am 9974.

Every part of her was on edge as she slipped soundlessly into the isolation ward. Never before had she traveled the ship without confirmation of Control’s timeline.

Michael didn’t stir when she approached the bed. Her bare shoulders protruded from the gaps of a dark nightgown, the sheets coiled under her chin but collected low at her waist at her back. For a moment, she stood transfixed by the sight, her contours edged in the faint crimson luster. Her ribs rose and fell, steadier than the last time she’d seen her, but the uppermost port on her neck was inflamed.

“Oh, Michael,” she murmured, and removed the necklace. It hovered just above the surface of the nightstand, her hands quaking where they held it. “She’s right here.”

The glass clinked onto the wood.

On the mattress, Michael rolled to face her. Her eyes blinked open and they both froze. Michael’s eyes narrowed, and then she sat up quickly onto an elbow. In the dim lights, it was hard to know how well she could see.

“Who are you?” Michael asked. The words were hoarse and groggy with sleep.

“You know me,” she answered, and smiled.

It was several seconds before Michael spoke again.

“You’re her,” she whispered. “Mira Montgomery.”

I am Starfleet. I have a name.

But the moniker was wrong. That couldn’t be her name.

“I…I don’t remember,” she whispered back. She felt the captain’s eyes on her, the way they roamed her silhouette in the dark. Then, clarity came to her. She straightened where she stood, and declared, “I am 9974.”

Michael sat up the rest of the way, dragging the sheet around her barely clad form.

“9974 is Ensign Mira Montgomery,” came the careful explanation. “She was last heard from nine and a half years ago.”

That’s wrong, some part of her insisted. Another tendril of panic tightened around her gut. My name is lost.

“No,” she replied. “That is not my rank.”

Fabric rustled as she shuffled closer to the edge of the bed. Michael was close enough that she could smell the soap on her skin. It was delicate. Familiar. But wrong–tainted by Control’s imitation.

“Why does your voice sound like that?” the captain asked. “You sound like–”

“Control has…affected me.”

“How?”

She took a step backward, suddenly afraid.

“I don’t remember.”

Michael winced, palm clapping over the ports at her neck. She angled her head, straining against the ache.

“How long have you been on board?” the captain asked, gasping softly and pushing through the pain. The hand fell back to her side, and she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress.

“A lifetime,” she answered, and Michael’s lips pursed into a concerned, thoughtful line. It was familiar, like the soap.

“What can you tell me about this ship?”

“Seraphis?” she asked Michael, tilting her head. “You know her, too.”

Michael frowned, squinting into the darkness. 

“I can’t see your face,” she said, standing up. “Let me turn on the lights.”

“No!” she cried, stepping backward again. “Please–no. The light hurts.”

A beat of silence passed between them. Michael halted, but her voice had lowered an octave into something vaguely dangerous.

“Are you…Terran?”

Frustration coiled behind her sternum, creeping into her stomach and her throat at the same time. Her head shook again. Why couldn’t the captain understand? Was she even listening? Starfleet had heard her. Why couldn’t Michael?

I have a name.

“I don’t remember,” she insisted.

“What do you remember?”

“Control needs you,” she told Michael. “You are affecting it.”

Michael made a strange face.

“What does that mean?” she asked, 

“It can be stopped.”

At this, the captain straightened. Her fingers rubbed at the back of her neck again.

“How?” This time, Michael’s words were soft-spoken, barely a hopeful whisper from the shadows.

Forgive me, Captain.

“The liminal drive,” she explained, exhaling. “It must be destroyed. But Seraphis must live. You know her.”

Inside her chest, something wrenched and grew hot. Her fingers clenched momentarily into a fist, and a rush of pain swept down her arm. She gasped, clutching at it with her other palm. What was happening to her? How much time had passed?

Michael’s concern was immediate.

“What is it?” she asked, reaching out as though she might touch her.

“I need to leave,” she sputtered, breathing heavily. Her temples throbbed, and she glanced at the watch. “Control is waking. It cannot know I’m aboard.”

She rotated, starting toward the door.

“Wait!” Michael cried out, trotting in front of her. “I came here in the hopes of stopping Control. Of saving the Federation.”

Another panicked glance at the watch. Another painful surge of heat through her entire body.

I am out of time.

“You will,” she managed, wincing. “But please–I must leave. I will find you again.”

“Mira–”

“Deceive it.”

“I don’t–how?” Michael pleaded. “How can I deceive something the entire Federation couldn’t manage to–”

“I will find you,” she interrupted, and she wished she could take Michael’s hands between her own for good measure.

Michael’s fingers caught the fabric of her uniform instead, but she pulled free so quickly the contact might never have been there at all. In front of the bulkhead, she stopped and faced Michael one last time. In the shadows, her head inclined.

“I promise.”

Chapter Text

“It wasn’t your fault, Michael.”

In the bed, Michael lurched upright at the sound of Tilly’s voice. Her heart was racing as air crashed back into her lungs with a concussive force that left her wide-eyed and clutching at her throat. It was dry and raw against her breath, a sour taste pinching at a swollen, gritty tongue. She staggered from the bed, tripping on the sheets that dragged across her bare feet and stumbled toward the faucet in the kitchen. Her hands shook wildly as they fumbled for the glass she’d left beside the sink, filling it and gulping down the entirety of its contents.

Gasping, she clunked it down onto the counter and laid her head onto her forearms where they rested on the edge of the white porcelain basin. It felt as though she’d run a marathon, lungs stinging and constricted, her ribs aching with every desperate inhalation.

Above her, Seraphis sissed, and cool vapor misted from the vents. It drifted down around her, as though it knew precisely where she stood, tendrils of moisture enveloping her.

The relief was immediate.

Michael pushed off the sink and breathed deep, eyes closing as the vapor reached into her, soothing upon contact. By the time she exhaled, all evidence of the pain had gone. Another few seconds later, it was hard to remember it had ever existed at all.

Her eyes landed on the glass, then the still-running faucet. She reached out to turn it off, 

A chime rang out from her door, and the veil suddenly lifted. Michael flinched, snapped back to the reality of where she was. But then–something else.

Hope.

Like the day on Discovery when they’d first received the transmission from Seraphis.

What if it’s Mira? Michael’s mind supplied, and she tripped into motion, skidding to a stop as she swiped at the panel for the door. It slid open.

There was no one there.

Startled by the empty doorway, Michael blinked and leaned out into the corridor. It was devoid of any signs of life as far as she could see in either direction. Only the familiar red veins glowed upon the walls.

Something hissed, soft and barely audible. Her eyes tracked upward to a vent perhaps two yards to her left. Mist was emerging from it, hanging in the air the same way as the one within her quarters. Her eyes narrowed, contemplating her options.

It didn’t take long to make a decision.

She shoved her feet into her combat boots that lay beside the door, then darted back to the nightstand to snatch the necklace and loop it over her head.

One foot had already crossed the threshold of the bulkhead when Michael hesitated. It wasn’t exactly fear, but…there wasn’t any better name for it. She didn’t know anything about Seraphis or what she might find outside her room. She didn’t know where she was–or where Control was. And Mira had said she would find her. What if she returned and Michael wasn’t there?

Was it really such a good idea to leave?

The quarters were secure. They were safe.

As safe as ‘safe’ could be, on Control’s flagship.

“Come now, Michael. It’s just a little swim.”

Michael’s eyes squeezed shut at the memory of Airiam’s voice.

“You know me. Do you trust me?”

Her fingers fumbled for the necklace, nearly crushing it within her palm. The images were playing through her mind’s eye with disturbing clarity. The ports at her neck burned against the metal chain of the necklace.

“One step at a time.”

The sensation of contact at the small of her back was pervasive. It pressed her forward. Her eyes flew open and she spun around, but the quarters behind her were just as empty as the corridor. The chain rattled against the bottle of sand in time to the violent quaking of her hand.

“I’m here, Michael.”

She remembered Airiam’s hand against her, guiding her into the lake. The way her fingers had closed around her wrist and the way she’d come to stand beside her once they were several yards from the beach. The sandbar extended a hundred feet out–an easy, gradual introduction to the water, Airiam had explained. 

Michael knew how to swim–Starfleet had made sure of that–but she had always hated the water. Oceans, in particular, had filled her head with nightmares. The noise, the constant surge and pull, was disconcerting.

Michael preferred control.

Water was uncontrollable.

Airiam loved the water. She loved what couldn’t be controlled.

It had always seemed strange that she would love Michael.

Seraphis’ scarlet-tinctured corridors were vast, fathomless, like the ocean. The steady flares and fades were restless like its waves. Another soft hiss reached her as she  turned, and Michael saw more mist curl down from the vent. She inhaled, then moved.

Michael didn’t have a destination, but it seemed Seraphis had one for her.

She followed the winding passageways for longer than she thought was possible, even for a dreadnought class vessel. Each time she reached a fork, a transporter, a door…the mist would arrive. Seraphis’ intuition was impeccable. The worry of Mira being unable to locate her was diminishing the deeper into the ship she traveled. Undoubtedly, if Seraphis was helping Michael, it would help Mira, too.

Still, another, more rational voice nagged at her.

She’s just a ship. She’s not helping you at all.

Another, more disturbing recollection.

She belongs to Control.

It was only then that Michael passed a window–only then that she realized what was outside.

“What the–” she started, and then cut her voice in case Control had ears she could not see. She shifted toward the window, angling herself until she could better see the enormous red planet and the hundreds of ships bustling around an orbital station. They were active, but not panicked.

Did they even know Seraphis was there?

An unwelcome realization pricked at the back of her neck. She thought of the observation deck–of the dimensional fault with which Control was so deeply attuned. It had answered Michael’s questions, but the replies were short and carefully insufficient, though Michael suspected it had not been for lack of data. While Control insisted Michael was curious–a fact which had been true–her allowance was restrained, her observation of the fault limited to but a few precious minutes.

Or whatever passed for minutes on board Seraphis.

Michael’s eyes traveled upward, and she spotted the bottom edge of one of the vessel’s thick nacelles along the top of the window.

I’m in the lower decks, she realized, struggling to swallow down a fast-forming lump in her throat. That nacelle is damaged.

A low, sonorous hum built up from the floor. Michael froze for a moment as it reverberated through her, rattling her bones and emerging through her teeth. She bit down as it rose in pitch, grinding her jaw, and pressing her palms against her ears in a useless effort to stop the assault. Coils of red flashed across the nacelle, wild and sickly, vomiting sparks and hull plating and all manner of debris everywhere they arced. Static prickled and lifted the hair on her arms, the dull ache of the ports at her neck veering into a savage, blistering sting.

The vibration was all around her. It bored into every fiber of her being until she thought it might tear her apart. The red veins of Seraphis' walls spasmed and flickered like her heartbeat might be misfiring, her great body seeming to struggle against its own power.

An explosion of red burst outward, and the cacophony ruptured into only the silence of Michael’s dread where her eyes stayed locked on the window.

No, she pleaded inwardly, but the damage was already done.

The shockwave washed over the ships and the orbital station. It collided with the planet, scarlet bleeding slowly across the surface. Michael watched in horror as, one by one, the lights of hundreds of ships blinked out, their momentum redirected into the empty, aimless drift of lifelessness. The station, too, went dark against the starlight, beginning a slow, lurching pirouette toward the planet far below. Her ears were still ringing as her mouth fell into a gape and she covered it with one hand, biting back the urge to wail at the awful sight before her.

A clank of metal sounded in the distance, and Michael stiffened. There was no time for more reaction. No time to flee.

“You shouldn’t be here, Captain.”

Control was beside her at once, its grip hot around her bicep.

Michael knew she should be afraid. She knew she should try to run. Instead she rounded on it, uncertain if it let her go or if she’d actually managed to pull herself free.

“What did you do to them?” she demanded, though she already knew the answer.

The reply was impassive, as it always was. Control didn’t care. It looked like Airiam–save for the colors of the plating–but it was everything that contradicted Airiam.

It wasn’t her.

“Confirmation will not change what has come to pass,” it said, and Michael’s nostrils flared in anger. “What’s done is done.”

Michael was not quite nauseous enough to miss the idiom. It only made it harder not to vomit. She blinked and swallowed, watching the planet’s surface grow pale and barren. The station had reached the upper atmosphere and begun to burn.

“Why?” she managed in a voice so small, she barely recognized it as her own.

Control stepped between her and the window. She let it lift her chin. The red triangles flickered in its eyes, recording, analyzing her. She tried to halt the tremble in her lower lip.

“Seraphis is malfunctioning,” it said, as though those three simple words were explanation enough.

“And that’s enough to justify genocide?”

Michael’s jaw moved against the resistance of its hand as she spoke. It was not unlike the way Airiam had held her, but the atmosphere had been much different. She didn’t know why she allowed it. Maybe she felt helpless. Maybe it was having gone so long without contact of any kind.

The notion was disturbing, but like Control had detected her conflict, it suddenly released her. Its gaze turned and it approached the window where it stared, almost contemplative, beyond the glass.

“They were…a dying race.”

Michael’s throat was scratchy again. Her lungs were hot and her breath no longer seemed to satisfy them. Above her, the vents were silent and devoid of the soothing mists. She took a step, then hesitated.

The low purr of servos reached her ears, and for a moment, her mind insisted it was Airiam standing there. She shook her head to clear the falsity, then joined Control at the window.

“I’m to believe this was an act of mercy, then?” she asked, rubbing at her throat. “Compassion?” she spat, and then coughed.

“Seraphis requires their technology,” Control told her, its chin lifting slightly.

“You could have negotiated,” Michael tried to snarl, but the sound was weak and garbled. “I could have helped you.”

“Wasteful,” Control replied, the synthetics harsh and grating. Michael startled, astounded by the inflection. Its body had stiffened. She saw its fingers clench at its side. “This was the proper course of action. You taught me this, Michael.”

“What?” she cried, staggering backward one step. There was emphasis in the words again. Sharp, unsettling conviction that had seemed impossible just moments earlier. “I have never–I wouldn’t–”

“You traded your life for Discovery. For your crew. My actions have spared them. Again.”

Michael’s head was shaking.

“I…I don’t understand.”

Control remained focused out the window as it spoke.

“The Gy’okahn were ill,” it continued. “They believed their planet was the cause. They would have soon departed. Carried the infection to humans. Vulcans. Klingons. Andorians.”

Bile rose in the back of Michael’s throat again. Gy’okahn. An endangered species brought to extinction in seconds. Distant ancestors of the Barzan.

Of Nhan.

She bit down on a knuckle until the nausea passed. Control had pivoted and was looking at her now. Her eyes landed on the red triangles, flicking between them.

“There must have been another solution,” she insisted, but her words felt weak. “All your…data…all your technology. You could have cured them. Used it as leverage for Seraphis’ repairs. That’s how diplomacy works.”

“Diplomacy is inefficient.”

“There it is,” Michael hissed, spinning away and leaning back against the bulkhead. “The truth of it. You just didn’t care. Because you can’t. You can’t care.”

Michael’s eyes closed at the sound of Control angling its head. It thrummed over to her. She could feel its body heat pressing in against her chest when it stopped before her.

“It is not a directive, no,” it said. The structure of the sentence was eerily…human. Michael opened her eyes and looked up at it. “It is…an anomaly.”

She blinked.

“What?”

Control didn’t seem to understand why clarification was required, but it tried again.

“Mercy.”

The air caught in her chest and Michael stopped breathing. Mira’s voice–whether it had come from a dream or reality–clawed back out of the depths.

“You are affecting it.”

Michael cleared her throat, eyes never leaving the terrible emptiness of the ones staring down at her. The longer she looked, the faster the red triangles flashed. They became all but a solid glow by the time she finally spoke.

“You’re saying…” she started, wiping damp palms against her night shirt, “you’re saying that what you did here…to this planet…it was an anomaly? And…that you are equating it to mercy? That it really was…”

The words wouldn’t come. It was impossible. Control was an AI. A faceless, murderous entity that had taken everything she’d ever loved. Her eyes turned away.

Anomalies were not emotions.

Its hand was on her again. It slid upward to her cheek, steady and warm.

Like Airiam, her mind cried out. So much like Airiam.

Mira’s words returned. They were haggard and distant, but present all the same.

“Control needs you.”

That feeling returned. Another flicker of hope. The seed of a plan finally beginning to take root. It tugged at her, persistent where nothing had been in years.

“My diagnostics are still attempting confirmation,” Control told Michael. Its eyes wandered her face with an unsettling lack of formula, studying and interpreting the lines, but its expression never changed. “Your data is valuable.”

She tried hard not to let the voice affect her. It was all she could do to stop her hand from moving up to cover its own.

So much like Airiam.

And yet, it possessed none of the commander’s self-reliance. It did not seem pleased with confusion. Where Airiam would have basked in it, allowed it to drive exploration and discovery, Control was unmoored by uncertainty.

She could tell by the way it held onto her.

“Deceive it.”

Michael exhaled a shaky breath, finding its gaze once more. The head tilted–just a fraction of an inch–as it watched her.

It was now or never.

“You said you could give her back to me,” Michael whispered, lungs still crackling and sore. “Did you mean that?”

Control’s hand retracted. It looked down at its palm, flexing the fingers and turning them over and back. Whatever it saw there, its features gave nothing away.

“Yes,” it replied at last, leveling its eyes on hers once more.

Michael’s heart skipped a beat in spite of herself. Airiam was gone, but Control had her memories. She knew it wasn’t the same–she would temper her expectations–but a quiet desperation was unfolding the longer she stood there. The thought of reunion with Airiam–even in memory alone–was all-consuming.

She couldn’t help herself.

“How?”

The plated face, the panels of glossy black and white, pulled back as Control straightened.

“Come,” it instructed. It held out a hand.

Michael understood she was to take it.

It closed around her own, and she found herself threading their fingers together.

It’s not her.