Fic: Uncharted Territories, NC-17, McCoy/Chapel, Chapter Five
Title: Uncharted Territories
Rating: NC-17
Author: fringedweller
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Beta: The amazing seren_ccd
Warnings: Sex and violence, but only for the deserving.
Word Count: 50000
Disclaimer: Nothing recognisable is mine, and trust me, I'm making nothing from this!
Notes: Written for het_bigbang.
She woke in a strange room. Her first impressions were of icy coldness, and when her head had cleared enough for her to struggle to a sitting position, she realised that she was lying on a cold metallic table, completely naked.
That was enough to get her to her feet. Her head cleared pretty quickly, and she scanned the room desperately for something, anything, to cover herself with. The room was small, made from the same bland grey utilitarian materials that were used in cheap buildings all over the planet. Other than the metal table, which turned out to be some kind of medical gurney, she realised, the room had a basin, a few empty cupboards and an overhead light, stuck on a dim setting.
Her first response was to cover her nakedness with her hands, but she soon realised that she had fewer arms than were required for the job. Rather than make the difficult decision between covering her upper or lower body, she forced herself to drop her arms. Yes, she was naked, but now she could have slightly more control over her environment.
The door to the room was open, and she peeked out into a drab hallway that extended in both directions. Every so often the grey wall covering, devoid of markings or identification signatures, broke to reveal a door. Another, slightly more thorough search of her room didn’t reveal any new information about her location or how she’d got there. Her clothes were still missing too. She guessed that this was some kind of bizarre Section 31 induction test, although why they felt it necessary to strip her naked for it…
Because I said I wasn’t confident with my body, she thought. If they’d been monitoring her test scores, she realised, a waterfall of thoughts cascading through her brain, then they’d very likely been monitoring her too, and she’d said to some of the women in the changing room for the physical tests how she didn’t like the rather skimpy physical training uniform. And McCoy, she’d said to McCoy…
Not now, she thought hurriedly. No time to think about him now. Not here. Use what made her uncomfortable and scared against her, would they?
Forget that.
Seeing no other option, and now angry rather than scared, she marched out into the corridor. She went right, for no other reason than she instinctively turned that way. She opened every door she came to, and discovered room after room identical to the one that she had woken up in. She methodically went through all the cupboards, and every so often found an item that could be of use. She found a sheet in one room, and she wrapped it around herself gratefully. Another room gave her an old-fashioned screwdriver.
She tried to think that the tool had nothing to do with her drink order on her night out. She began to flush scarlet as she thought of Section 31 somehow tracking her that night and witnessing her time in the alley with McCoy.
Now decently covered, and armed with a pointy weapon that had the bonus use of unscrewing things, she set off again. Again, she found more of the same - room after room of empty metal tables and unused cupboards. There were no people, there was no noise other than that of her footsteps and even they were dulled by the cool, smooth flooring. That was what was freaking her out the most, she realised, as she rifled through another set of empty cupboards. The lack of noise.
She’d mentioned that to one of the psychologists she’d met while going through her evaluations. She’d been asked about her dreams, and she’d mentioned a semi-recurrent nightmare about being deaf, and nobody around her noticing.
What else had they in store for her, she wondered, as she stamped back out into the corridor. What other goodies had they culled from her psych evaluations and test scores and chats in line at the cafeteria?
She looked ahead of her, at a seemingly unending row of unopened doors. Behind her lay an identical sight. She’d tried to keep track of how many rooms she’d checked, but she’d lost count somewhere in the mid-twenties. After she’d found the screwdriver, she’d scratched a mark in the wall outside each room, but given up when she saw the wall absorb the scratch and then return to its pristine condition. That was odd, but considering the day she’d had so far, by far the least strange thing to happen.
There was no clue as to where she was. There were no windows or ventilation systems. There were no signs or marks on any of the walls or doors. There was no hum of a power generator or steady throb of an engine. There was just her, and her sheet, and her screwdriver.
Christine let out a long breath. God knows how long she’d been unconscious, and she had no way of telling how long she’d been wandering up and down the corridor. Tears began to prick at her eyes, and she firmly blinked them back.
“Alright!” she said out loud, looking up at the ceiling to see if a speaker suddenly appeared. “That’s it! You’ve had your fun. I hope you all had a good time seeing me wander up and down your funhouse, but that’s it. I’m done.”
There was no sound. No door opened. Nobody appeared.
“This is a test,” she said, adjusting her sheet carefully as she sat down against a wall and leaned against it. “I get it. You show you’ve been following me all week and you’ve gathered a bunch of intel on what makes me tick. Congratulations. Now stop.”
More nothing.
“I should have said that I’m mortally afraid of beaches,” Christine sighed. “Scared of sand. Frightened of those drinks in the coconuts with the umbrellas in them. Hammocks. Deadly hammocks.”
She frowned.
“Oh, and nice trick with the drink,” she said, addressing the ceiling. “I hope you went over my medical records thoroughly, I could have had a nasty reaction to whatever you put in it.”
Silence ruled the corridor.
“You think that I’m going to get freaked out by the silence?” she asked the ceiling. “Oh, no. That’s not what I do. Do you know what you do when you get freaked out by silence? You make noise.”
She proceeded to belt out a couple of her favourite songs, deliberately off-key and hitting every top note somewhere to the left of centre.
“And now,” she said importantly, “for a medley from my favourite musicals.”
“Okay that’s it, simulation over,” somebody barked loudly, and all around Christine the corridor shimmered and faded away to reveal a large black room that had thin yellow stripes running across it to form squares. The wall on one side slid aside to reveal a pained looking official in Starfleet grey, carrying what looked like her cadet uniform.
“You can put this on now,” he told her, not quite making eye contact with her as he handed her the bundle of clothes.
Feeling her most brave, and her most angry, Christine unknotted the sheet and let it fall to the ground. The man looked completely away from her, at one of the walls of the room.
“No need to preserve my modesty,” she told him icily. “No doubt you all saw plenty.”
His slight blush and a heavy swallow confirmed her suspicions.
She dressed slowly. As she was fastening her uniform jacket, Admiral Marcus came into the room.
“Dismissed,” he said curtly to other man, and he gathered the sheet from the floor. He held out his hand for the screwdriver, which Christine was idly tossing in her hand.
“No,” she told him firmly.
He looked beseechingly at the admiral, who nodded curtly. The man all but ran for the door.
“I take it that was a training exercise, sir,” Christine said, still keeping a firm grip on the screwdriver.
“It was,” he told her, staring hard at her.
“Did I pass?” she asked.
“Did you pass?” repeated the admiral, contempt obvious in his voice. “Cadet, you didn’t even finish the test.”
“I didn’t?” she said, frowning. “I figured out what was going on. You were using data you had gathered on me to put me in situations I’d find difficult to deal with.”
“I know, cadet, I oversaw the psychologists that designed the test parameters for you,” the admiral said through gritted teeth. “All potential Section 31 recruits go through this test.”
“So how did I fail?” Christine asked, confused.
“Because no other recruit has ever refused to carry it out, sat down and sang badly at the people monitoring their responses!” he all but bellowed.
“So you’re saying I failed the test because I figured out it was a test?” Christine asked, tacking on a “sir” belatedly at the end.
“Yes!” Admiral Marcus said, waving the PADD he carried in the air.
“So, doesn’t that mean that all the other recruits failed because they didn’t realise it was a test?” she pressed.
Admiral Marcus opened his mouth, stared at her, and shut it again.
“That was the assessment of some of the monitoring panel,” he said gruffly. “Although not mine, cadet.”
“Yes sir,” Christine said, which she had discovered was a useful thing to say to a superior officer when there wasn’t anything that you really could say without getting reprimanded for insubordination. She wondered if he had gone through his own version of this test, and if he was angry that he hadn’t figured out what was going on. She really, really hoped so.
“You’ll be escorted back to the Academy building,” he told her. “You will be contacted at a later date for the next round of testing.”
“Sir,” Christine asked as he turned away. “May I ask a question?”
“You can ask, cadet. I may not answer.”
Dick, Christine thought. “It’s about my course assignment,” she said. “I had applied to join the MD programme, not nursing. Were my test scores not high enough?”
“No, your scores were good. Very good, in fact,” Marcus said, running his finger across his PADD. “But it was felt that you would best serve Section 31 -and, by extension, the United Federation of Planets, I may add - by training in a different field.”
“May I ask why?” Christine asked, fighting incredibly hard to keep the anger from her voice.
“Nurses are useful,” Marcus said bluntly. “You blend into the background. Nobody really notices you. Nobody would think twice about a pretty woman being kind to them, and they may say more than they intend. Nurses are always needed, especially out in deep space, and nobody will say no to being given another one on their crew. Nurses know how to save lives, Cadet Chapel, and they know how to take them, but nobody ever suspects a nurse because everybody thinks that they’re not as smart as the doctor, so they’re not as dangerous.”
“Wow,” Christine said, stunned.
“I know it’s not what you planned,” Marcus said, “but then, you never planned this - “ and he waved around at the holosuite they were standing in. “Anybody can be doctor, Chapel, but not many people can be functional Section 31 agents and despite today’s events,” he said heavily, “I still think you can be one of them.”
“Thank you, sir,” Christine said.
“With a lot of training,” he added, with a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Thank you, sir,” Christine said again, biting back the retort that would have ended her career before it started.
“If anybody looks at your test scores, they’ll find that you missed the cut-off for the MD programme by a small margin, but came out well for nursing. Act disappointed, but not put off. Somebody will come to escort you back to your room. As of tomorrow your class will be reassigned housing in the Academy. You’ll have a private room.”
“Thank you, sir,” Christine said for the third time in as many minutes.
“It’s not a perk, cadet,” the admiral said sharply. “As well as maintaining a full course load, you’ll be expected to train in other areas that nurses traditionally don’t. Having a single occupancy room will cut down on the number of lies you’ll have to tell to an inquisitive roommate.”
Christine nodded.
“Enjoy your night, cadet,” he said. “The real work starts tomorrow.”
Before she could manage another less than enthusiastic “Thank you, sir”, he turned and left the room. As soon as he left, the officer from before rushed back in.
“I’m to escort you back to the Academy building,” he said apologetically.
“Yes sir, I’m ready to go,” Christine said, turning towards him. As she did so, she caught sight of his hand raising quickly, and she heard the distinctive hiss of a hypospray.
“Son of a …” she managed, before feeling her knees buckle under her.
“You’ll get used to it,” she heard him say with a sigh, before the world became black.
Rating: NC-17
Author: fringedweller
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Beta: The amazing seren_ccd
Warnings: Sex and violence, but only for the deserving.
Word Count: 50000
Disclaimer: Nothing recognisable is mine, and trust me, I'm making nothing from this!
Notes: Written for het_bigbang.
She woke in a strange room. Her first impressions were of icy coldness, and when her head had cleared enough for her to struggle to a sitting position, she realised that she was lying on a cold metallic table, completely naked.
That was enough to get her to her feet. Her head cleared pretty quickly, and she scanned the room desperately for something, anything, to cover herself with. The room was small, made from the same bland grey utilitarian materials that were used in cheap buildings all over the planet. Other than the metal table, which turned out to be some kind of medical gurney, she realised, the room had a basin, a few empty cupboards and an overhead light, stuck on a dim setting.
Her first response was to cover her nakedness with her hands, but she soon realised that she had fewer arms than were required for the job. Rather than make the difficult decision between covering her upper or lower body, she forced herself to drop her arms. Yes, she was naked, but now she could have slightly more control over her environment.
The door to the room was open, and she peeked out into a drab hallway that extended in both directions. Every so often the grey wall covering, devoid of markings or identification signatures, broke to reveal a door. Another, slightly more thorough search of her room didn’t reveal any new information about her location or how she’d got there. Her clothes were still missing too. She guessed that this was some kind of bizarre Section 31 induction test, although why they felt it necessary to strip her naked for it…
Because I said I wasn’t confident with my body, she thought. If they’d been monitoring her test scores, she realised, a waterfall of thoughts cascading through her brain, then they’d very likely been monitoring her too, and she’d said to some of the women in the changing room for the physical tests how she didn’t like the rather skimpy physical training uniform. And McCoy, she’d said to McCoy…
Not now, she thought hurriedly. No time to think about him now. Not here. Use what made her uncomfortable and scared against her, would they?
Forget that.
Seeing no other option, and now angry rather than scared, she marched out into the corridor. She went right, for no other reason than she instinctively turned that way. She opened every door she came to, and discovered room after room identical to the one that she had woken up in. She methodically went through all the cupboards, and every so often found an item that could be of use. She found a sheet in one room, and she wrapped it around herself gratefully. Another room gave her an old-fashioned screwdriver.
She tried to think that the tool had nothing to do with her drink order on her night out. She began to flush scarlet as she thought of Section 31 somehow tracking her that night and witnessing her time in the alley with McCoy.
Now decently covered, and armed with a pointy weapon that had the bonus use of unscrewing things, she set off again. Again, she found more of the same - room after room of empty metal tables and unused cupboards. There were no people, there was no noise other than that of her footsteps and even they were dulled by the cool, smooth flooring. That was what was freaking her out the most, she realised, as she rifled through another set of empty cupboards. The lack of noise.
She’d mentioned that to one of the psychologists she’d met while going through her evaluations. She’d been asked about her dreams, and she’d mentioned a semi-recurrent nightmare about being deaf, and nobody around her noticing.
What else had they in store for her, she wondered, as she stamped back out into the corridor. What other goodies had they culled from her psych evaluations and test scores and chats in line at the cafeteria?
She looked ahead of her, at a seemingly unending row of unopened doors. Behind her lay an identical sight. She’d tried to keep track of how many rooms she’d checked, but she’d lost count somewhere in the mid-twenties. After she’d found the screwdriver, she’d scratched a mark in the wall outside each room, but given up when she saw the wall absorb the scratch and then return to its pristine condition. That was odd, but considering the day she’d had so far, by far the least strange thing to happen.
There was no clue as to where she was. There were no windows or ventilation systems. There were no signs or marks on any of the walls or doors. There was no hum of a power generator or steady throb of an engine. There was just her, and her sheet, and her screwdriver.
Christine let out a long breath. God knows how long she’d been unconscious, and she had no way of telling how long she’d been wandering up and down the corridor. Tears began to prick at her eyes, and she firmly blinked them back.
“Alright!” she said out loud, looking up at the ceiling to see if a speaker suddenly appeared. “That’s it! You’ve had your fun. I hope you all had a good time seeing me wander up and down your funhouse, but that’s it. I’m done.”
There was no sound. No door opened. Nobody appeared.
“This is a test,” she said, adjusting her sheet carefully as she sat down against a wall and leaned against it. “I get it. You show you’ve been following me all week and you’ve gathered a bunch of intel on what makes me tick. Congratulations. Now stop.”
More nothing.
“I should have said that I’m mortally afraid of beaches,” Christine sighed. “Scared of sand. Frightened of those drinks in the coconuts with the umbrellas in them. Hammocks. Deadly hammocks.”
She frowned.
“Oh, and nice trick with the drink,” she said, addressing the ceiling. “I hope you went over my medical records thoroughly, I could have had a nasty reaction to whatever you put in it.”
Silence ruled the corridor.
“You think that I’m going to get freaked out by the silence?” she asked the ceiling. “Oh, no. That’s not what I do. Do you know what you do when you get freaked out by silence? You make noise.”
She proceeded to belt out a couple of her favourite songs, deliberately off-key and hitting every top note somewhere to the left of centre.
“And now,” she said importantly, “for a medley from my favourite musicals.”
“Okay that’s it, simulation over,” somebody barked loudly, and all around Christine the corridor shimmered and faded away to reveal a large black room that had thin yellow stripes running across it to form squares. The wall on one side slid aside to reveal a pained looking official in Starfleet grey, carrying what looked like her cadet uniform.
“You can put this on now,” he told her, not quite making eye contact with her as he handed her the bundle of clothes.
Feeling her most brave, and her most angry, Christine unknotted the sheet and let it fall to the ground. The man looked completely away from her, at one of the walls of the room.
“No need to preserve my modesty,” she told him icily. “No doubt you all saw plenty.”
His slight blush and a heavy swallow confirmed her suspicions.
She dressed slowly. As she was fastening her uniform jacket, Admiral Marcus came into the room.
“Dismissed,” he said curtly to other man, and he gathered the sheet from the floor. He held out his hand for the screwdriver, which Christine was idly tossing in her hand.
“No,” she told him firmly.
He looked beseechingly at the admiral, who nodded curtly. The man all but ran for the door.
“I take it that was a training exercise, sir,” Christine said, still keeping a firm grip on the screwdriver.
“It was,” he told her, staring hard at her.
“Did I pass?” she asked.
“Did you pass?” repeated the admiral, contempt obvious in his voice. “Cadet, you didn’t even finish the test.”
“I didn’t?” she said, frowning. “I figured out what was going on. You were using data you had gathered on me to put me in situations I’d find difficult to deal with.”
“I know, cadet, I oversaw the psychologists that designed the test parameters for you,” the admiral said through gritted teeth. “All potential Section 31 recruits go through this test.”
“So how did I fail?” Christine asked, confused.
“Because no other recruit has ever refused to carry it out, sat down and sang badly at the people monitoring their responses!” he all but bellowed.
“So you’re saying I failed the test because I figured out it was a test?” Christine asked, tacking on a “sir” belatedly at the end.
“Yes!” Admiral Marcus said, waving the PADD he carried in the air.
“So, doesn’t that mean that all the other recruits failed because they didn’t realise it was a test?” she pressed.
Admiral Marcus opened his mouth, stared at her, and shut it again.
“That was the assessment of some of the monitoring panel,” he said gruffly. “Although not mine, cadet.”
“Yes sir,” Christine said, which she had discovered was a useful thing to say to a superior officer when there wasn’t anything that you really could say without getting reprimanded for insubordination. She wondered if he had gone through his own version of this test, and if he was angry that he hadn’t figured out what was going on. She really, really hoped so.
“You’ll be escorted back to the Academy building,” he told her. “You will be contacted at a later date for the next round of testing.”
“Sir,” Christine asked as he turned away. “May I ask a question?”
“You can ask, cadet. I may not answer.”
Dick, Christine thought. “It’s about my course assignment,” she said. “I had applied to join the MD programme, not nursing. Were my test scores not high enough?”
“No, your scores were good. Very good, in fact,” Marcus said, running his finger across his PADD. “But it was felt that you would best serve Section 31 -and, by extension, the United Federation of Planets, I may add - by training in a different field.”
“May I ask why?” Christine asked, fighting incredibly hard to keep the anger from her voice.
“Nurses are useful,” Marcus said bluntly. “You blend into the background. Nobody really notices you. Nobody would think twice about a pretty woman being kind to them, and they may say more than they intend. Nurses are always needed, especially out in deep space, and nobody will say no to being given another one on their crew. Nurses know how to save lives, Cadet Chapel, and they know how to take them, but nobody ever suspects a nurse because everybody thinks that they’re not as smart as the doctor, so they’re not as dangerous.”
“Wow,” Christine said, stunned.
“I know it’s not what you planned,” Marcus said, “but then, you never planned this - “ and he waved around at the holosuite they were standing in. “Anybody can be doctor, Chapel, but not many people can be functional Section 31 agents and despite today’s events,” he said heavily, “I still think you can be one of them.”
“Thank you, sir,” Christine said.
“With a lot of training,” he added, with a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Thank you, sir,” Christine said again, biting back the retort that would have ended her career before it started.
“If anybody looks at your test scores, they’ll find that you missed the cut-off for the MD programme by a small margin, but came out well for nursing. Act disappointed, but not put off. Somebody will come to escort you back to your room. As of tomorrow your class will be reassigned housing in the Academy. You’ll have a private room.”
“Thank you, sir,” Christine said for the third time in as many minutes.
“It’s not a perk, cadet,” the admiral said sharply. “As well as maintaining a full course load, you’ll be expected to train in other areas that nurses traditionally don’t. Having a single occupancy room will cut down on the number of lies you’ll have to tell to an inquisitive roommate.”
Christine nodded.
“Enjoy your night, cadet,” he said. “The real work starts tomorrow.”
Before she could manage another less than enthusiastic “Thank you, sir”, he turned and left the room. As soon as he left, the officer from before rushed back in.
“I’m to escort you back to the Academy building,” he said apologetically.
“Yes sir, I’m ready to go,” Christine said, turning towards him. As she did so, she caught sight of his hand raising quickly, and she heard the distinctive hiss of a hypospray.
“Son of a …” she managed, before feeling her knees buckle under her.
“You’ll get used to it,” she heard him say with a sigh, before the world became black.