And yet ... and yet ...

She stood over him, licking lips that had suddenly gone bone dry. The thought of what she was about to do horrified her to the core, but she could see no other option. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then reached into her own mental center and calmed herself. She slowed her breathing, even her heart, penetrating to the peaceful nucleus of her very being so that she could find the inner strength to do what she needed to.

Her long fingers fluttered, hesitated. Preparing to send her mind into what might well be a dead brain was the psychic equivalent of plunging one’s unprotected hands into raw sewage. The very notion was repulsive; most schools of teaching of the Vulcan mind-meld absolutely forbade it. It was considered a perversion of a very sacred technique. To engage in it was to taint one’s very katra,perhaps beyond reclamation.

Soleta took a deep breath, clearing her mind, shoving aside any hesitations. Entering a mind-meld, even a routine one, could be fatal if there were any doubts. And this was certainly anything but routine.

She slowed her breathing, let her consciousness begin to slip away, malleable, flowing like water, envisioning the mind of her subject as a receptacle into which she could pour her essence. Her initial skittishness evaporated, simply because she didn’t allow for it to exist. Instead, having resolved to do what she felt needed doing, she remembered one of the most important rules of a mind-meld: Confidence. Confidence at all times that one would accomplish what needed to be done. Confidence in one’s sense of self, in one’s ego. Because to lose confidence was to risk being pulled into the mind of the other, and having an exceptionally difficult time finding the way back. Considering the nature of the other in this case, Soleta could not afford to engage in the endeavor with anything other than total commitment and a certainty that she would be able to achieve her goal.

She eased herself in, at first slightly tentative, like a bather dabbing her feet into a pool of icy water. Then she took a breath, fully committed herself, and eased her mind into

Nothing, there were nothing there, just black void, just emptiness, he was gone, that’s all, simply gone, and it was madness for her to be there, she knew it, this was an unnatural act she was engaging in, an exercise in necrophilia, there was no point to this at all, Mark McHenry was nowhere to be found, his soul had wandered away, gone to wherever such things went, and this was perverse, this was a sick exercise in, wait, what’s that, just up ahead, she sensed something, something in the blackness that surrounded her, something in the void that seemed to whisper to her and urge her to come forward, deeper, and there was a soft glow from so far away, so very far, far away, and in the times that she had performed a mind-meld before, she had undergone some difficulties and taken on some challenges, but she had never seen a mind so far removed, she had never needed to probe so far into the very essence of another being, this was no mind-meld, this was no blending of minds, no halfway meeting, this was Soleta thrusting the entirety of her essence as far as she possibly could, and for a heartbeat, a heartbeat she could actually hear, she hesitated, and then she shrugged the hesitation away like an old coat and literally/virtually swam through the blackness, envisioning herself as a swimmer, which was a good trick considering she couldn’t swim, and she plunged forward and down, her arms swinging in great arcs, her legs scissoring, and the chill invaded every aspect of her essence, and down further she went, the cold everywhere now, seeping in through her imaginary bones, slowing her imaginary joints, and down further into darkness until she reached the point where she was sure she would never be able to return and still she went, and she heard him, an unimaginable distance, crying out to her, calling her name, seeking succor, and she tried to call back to him but her lungs were paralyzed and might actually have collapsed in her virtual chest, and she reimagined herself, she saw herself as a being of purest light in the darkness, because she was confident in her goal and knew that she represented the forces of light and purity and goodness, and she was not going to leave him behind and she was calling to him, and he was answering...

... and the deaths were there, the dead Romulans, and it all came spinning back to her, when she had gone to the Romulan homeworld, to carry out the last bidding of the Romulan bastard who was her father, and that last bidding had turned out to be a sinister trick into which she had guilelessly walked, and the result had been an explosion that had killed dozens, maybe hundreds of Romulans, and it was all her fault, and she had run away without taking responsibility, which was certainly consistent as she had hidden the true nature of her heritage from Starfleet, so who was she to pretend she had clean hands, who was she to present herself as some son of heroine coming to save the day, and all the fears and uncertainties hammered into her, pounding her back, and she sensed that they were coming from somewhere else, originating from some source that stood between her and McHenry, and McHenry was crying out to her, begging her not to leave him, and she thrust forward as hard as she could, but for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction, as science officer she knew that, and this was no exception, for as she tried to lunge forward, to impart a fragment of her own essence to aid McHenry in the dark prison of the soul where he was being kept, the horror of what she had done, the screams of dying Romulans, the searing of their flesh from their bones, the blood, the gore, the suffering and agony, it all came at her in one great black rush and then Soleta’s own screams were mingling with the Romulans’, and it was horrible, just horrible, and she wanted to die, wanted to end herself right there, right then, just drive a psychic knife deep into her ownkatra and terminate the suffering and the guilt, and the blackness spun around her like an ebony tornado, the whirling both trying to pull her down and push her up, and she felt herself being torn apart, just shredded, just...

... SOLETA, SOLETA NOW, COME TO ME NOW...

... and Soleta tumbled backward, her arms waving about helplessly, trying to grab handholds on empty air. She collapsed, and the only thing that prevented her from hitting the floor were the strong arms of Dr. Selar.

“You are out. You are out. It is over,” Selar kept saying, and Soleta looked around to see the confused and concerned expressions of medical technicians. For a heartbeat she forgot where she was, and then remembered. Sickbay. McHenry.

“McHenry,” she whispered, and her voice was raspy and constricted. “McHenry ... he’s in there. He’s ...”

“Calmly, Lieutenant,” Selar said to her, and then Soleta felt the push of something against her forearm, and the telltale hiss of a spray hypo. “Calm yourself.” Waving off the other technicians, Dr. Selar eased Soleta over toward a diagnostic table and helped her lie down on it. Whatever the drug Selar had pumped into Soleta’s system, it was obviously working, as Soleta’s pounding heart and scrambled mind began to relax and settle into their more normal patterns.

Selar glanced up at the readings and nodded in mute approval of what she was seeing. “Now then, Lieutenant,” she said, “would you mind telling me what you thought you were doing?”

“Mind-meld ... with McHenry ...”

If Selar felt any revulsion at the concept—a revulsion that would have been as culturally ingrained in her as it would be in Soleta—she covered it with her customary aplomb. “That was ill advised” was all she said.

“I had to try. Had to see if he was there.”