IntERactive 3 - Behind the Door

CATEGORY: Crossover (Star Trek, Voyager) (Don't be put off, please)
RATING: PG-13 (language)
SPOILERS: Be Still My Heart
ARCHIVE: Feel free to archive, just contact me

DISCLAIMER: All these characters do NOT belong to me...but if TPTB at WB are reading, it's a month till my birthday...

A) Carter and Torres go to check on Lucy together.	5 VOTE <s> most of you want to see Torres kick some pyscho ass...see what we can do
B) They decide to enjoy the party, and check on Lucy later.	0 VOTES couldn't bear to see Lucy left, eh?
C) Carter decides to check on Lucy himself and let Torres return to the party.	0 VOTES oh the irony of it!
D) One of the Voyager crew turn up. Specify.	1 VOTE Tom Eugene Paris, one and only Ensign/ former Lt. helm boy

"Lucy hasn't got that leg lac yet?" Carter asked as Lily tried to block out the back ground music.

"No, she's still waiting on a pysch consult for the patient in curtain three," the nurse replied. Torres found the patient on the board, a P. Sobricki.

Carter sighed and headed off in the direction of the patient. Torres took this as her oppertunity to save her ear drums.

"Dr. Carter!" Torres yelled after him, "Do you want me to check on her?"

Carter turned around as he started to roll up his sleeves and took a step towards Torres, "Well...sure, you can never start soon enough, this way Miss Torres."

B'Elanna joined the side of the young doctor as they passed giggling couples, stumbling out of darkened and deserted examination rooms, "It's just Torres, Dr. Carter. No miss."

He smiled at her as he finished off rolling up the sleeve of his left arm, "It's just Carter, Torres. No doctor."

"Hmm," Torres smiled back as he pushed open a heavy wood door, the sign out side read Curtain Area Three. "It certainly is dark in here!"

Carter nodded, peering into the darkness as he held back the door with one hand, waiting for Torres to go in first. A look of confusion passed across his face, which was quickly replaced with a grin as he leant over in to the side of where Torres was standing by the first gurney. The gurney where Lucy's patient had been was still waiting to be made, and the curtain around the third bed had been drawn around an elderly lady who had died a few miutes ago, well that was what Torres had gathered from reading the patient board at the administration desk. "Lucy must've taken Sobricki up to psych," Carter commented, his voice was muffled as he was currently facing the floor.

When he straightened up, she could see the reason for this action. He held out a heart shaped card in front of him. It was covered in red foil and the inside with inscribed with Lucy's name with a cursive scrawl that Carter identified as Yosh Takada's, though Torres had to read the name at the bottom before she knew that.

"Look at that!" Carter said, a laugh in his voice, "Yosh must've sent every one in the ER a Valentine's except me."

"I don't see what all the fuss is about," Torres muttered, getting accustomed to the dark of the room.

"You one of the bah'humbuggers of the Valentine season?"

Torres did not get what he was on about, so she gave a little indecipherable grunt, "I suppose it's back to the party then."

"You don't seem that enthusiastic!" Carter laughed, "Don't you like the music?"

"Oh, it's not my thing," Torres replied she lent against the door, facing Carter who lent against the frame as he checked his watch, "my boyfriend's maybe, but not mine."

"What are you into?"

Torres grinned, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Well, it can't be..." Carter's smile dropped and he turned his head.

Torres looked at him, worridly, "What?"

"Did...did you hear that?" Carter asked, his eyes wide as he crept into the darkness of the room, cautiously but not afraid.

"What did you hear?" Torres asked as she pricked her ears, not really hearing much against the pounding noise produced from the party in the main part of the emergency room. Then she heard it. A noise.

It made her blood curdle. Torres shivered despite the warmness of her surroundings.

A moan. A pathetic whimper that could only be heard with difficulty. It wasn't much but it spoke volumes. It conveyed, fear, hope, apprehension...terror.

Carter ran around to the far side of the second gurney. "Oh my god!" he dropped to the floor, clasping his hand over his mouth, "No, Lucy, no!....oh God...Lucy?"

Torres ran around to why Carter was kneeling, she gasped as she saw a pretty humanoid laid on her back, her clothes saturated with bright red blood which also coated the cool tiled floor. She knelt opposite Carter as he spoke erratically, stroking Lucy's hair and trying to establish the severity of her injuries. "God, Luce! Who did this!"

Torres watched as Carter proceeded to hold her in an upright postion in his arms, folding her in affectionate embrace, her face facing towards his from his lap. Lucy's arms twitched as though she meant to respond. Her eyes were open wide, shocked, and her mouth formed words involuntarily.

"Get someone!" Carter asked Torres, not taking his eyes away from Lucy, "Lucy, please, hold on...I"

Torres stopped, paralysed by the look in Carter's eyes, transfixed to the spot. He looked staright through her as she gazed back in terror as a dark figure from behind the curtain appeared an plunged a long, polished surface into the young man's back. The knife was retracted then forced into the lower part of Carter's back, twisting the implement. Torres looked on horrified at the contorsion of Carter's facial features and sickened by the gleeful visage of the attacker.

Carter gasped, choked on his breath and stared at Torres, then at Lucy as he reached gingerly behind his back, and painfully retrieving it. Carter recoiled at the sight of his hand dripping with his own blood.

Torres watched the stabber more quickly and quietly to the door. She forced her unresponsive body to get up, and she quickly grabbed his arms, causing the weapon he carried to fall to the ground with a metallic clatter. Torres performed a well practised series of manoeuvers, first twisting the man's arms backward, hitting him across the face and pressing her thumb and index finger against two specific areas of his neck. She watched on with satisfaction as she felt the assailant grow limp underneath her touch and then falling to the ground.

She moved over to where the two holo-characters laid, not sure why she felt such stong feelings for a series of photonic projections. Torres watched as Carter fell back on to the floor after attempting to push himself up. A bloody hand print accompanied the expanding and multiplying pools of red liquid on the floor. She watched as Carter lay gasping for breath on the ground, the young girl's forehead touching his own, which was laced with the perspiration of a cold sweat.

"Lucy," he groaned, Lucy nodded back slowly, as her breathing became incresingly shallowed and laboured, "I love you."

Carter's voice broke, and the solitary tear that cascaded down his flushed cheak mirrored Lucy's with a fearful symmetry and precision timing.

She looked deep into his eyes and mouthed two words before her eyes fluttered shut and her mouth lay still, lips slightly parted.

Carter's breath also slowed as he gasped through mixed emotions, "Lucy?" His strained voice faded as his eyes rolled back and were covered with his eyelids.

Torres wiped her face ad inhaled deeply, panic struck.

"Computer, halt programme."

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

a) Torres leaves the holodeck and goes off to cry, panic struck. Then returns to try and save their lives with 23rd Century gadgetry.

b) Torres reruns the programme and becomes obsessed with keeping Lucy and Carter alive (a la Groundhog Day).

c) Torres trys to create a miracle happy ending to the episode with the aid of super whizz kid Ensign Harry Kim- holoprogrammer extrodinaire.

d) Programme doesn't shutdown properly, Sobricki steals the Doctor's mobile emitter and goes on a killing spree on Voyager....hey, I needed a fourth option.