"We cannot allow any other intelligent race to compete with us for resources. We will not allow it. We can see what the universe will be in billions of years into the future. We know that the stars will die and not be born again. We know that eventually everything will be absorbed by super massive black holes, and if there are other intelligent beings around we will have to fight them for those limited resources. We must be the last, and we will be the last."

"You might have no other choice but to deal with other races," Marjorie replied. "You will meet a race that is just as advance as you."

"We grow with each race we destroy. We have numbers. If we meet a race that's stronger than us we will simply overwhelm them. We have weapons and technology you can't even fathom."

"You're a virus." Captain Cook replied disgusted. "You spread and destroy. You-" She stopped when she saw the odd look on her Handler's face. He seemed to be listening to something from the outside. He let out a loud, bone-chilling scream, his mouth opening wider than she could ever think possible, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Then, he collapsed to the ground.

Marjorie stared at the body for a few moments wondering what just happened. Had her thoughts killed him? She wondered if she finally had complete control of everything in this strange dream world.

"Captain," She heard the words from everywhere. "Captain." It was Commander Pippleton. It was his voice calling to her. "Captain, wake up, we need to get out of here."

She slowly opened her eyes. Her training took over and, in an instant; she could recognize who was there and who wasn't. The Commander hovered over her and looked down. Next to him was a female medic, she had an empty syringe she was putting it back into a medical bag. The ships security team, it looked like every single one of them, scanned the room, guns ready for anything.

On the floor she saw five alien bodies. They were black with overlapping armor plates and several large holes in their torsos. One of them seemed to be inside some sort of box. It reminded her of the box she saw when Newman had taken her around.

Marjorie tried to move but found she couldn't. She tried to speak but found her mouth unable to form words. Frustrated, she looked at the Commander and frowned.

The Commander must have gotten her message. "Let's move out!" He said. He placed his hands under her back, lifted gently, and carried her out of the room.

Her feet and hands dragged on the ground while her head hung from her shoulders. She could see the wall, nothing more. "Captain, I'm sorry I have to do this, but I think it'll be much more comfortable and I'll be able to run faster."

He gently slung her over his shoulder. Now all Marjorie could see was the floor which, thanks to the Commander's height, was uncomfortable close to her face. "We've been monitoring your vital signs. About twenty minutes ago we detected a sharp spike in your heart rate and blood pressure. I was going to interfere then but one of the crew suggested I waited. He thought that perhaps you and the other Captain were mating."

If Marjorie weren't paralyzed she would have objected, instead she said nothing and let the Commander continue. "It wasn't until we received word that Professor Ricter and Ensign Monrow had gone missing that I decided to see what was happening. I didn't like what I saw, Captain so we're leaving."

What about the Professor and Juliet? Why was Juliet with Professor Ricter? She tried to asked but could only hear a soft moan leave her lips.

The Commander continued. "We have search teams looking for them but according to our sensors they're not on this station or on the Sphere. At least we can't find them on the sphere. Our sensors might not be strong enough to detect them in something that large."

Marjorie opened her mouth but nothing came out. Frustration built the more she tried. All she heard were gargled word's barley auditable. She had an idea of where the Professor and Juliet were, and she wanted to tell the Commander. She wanted to order him to stop and wait, that they would return. It was easy to imagine the Professor finding the wormhole and wanting to explore it. Heck, it would be against his character if he didn't go through it. They needed to find that wormhole. They needed to go through to bring him back.

"Captain, don't try to talk. We can work things out when we get back to the Arwen."

You won't find him here. Marjorie thought. He's not on the station. We can't find him unless we go through the wormhole.

"Roger," Commander Pimpleton said to some invisible person. He must have been talking to someone on a communicator. "Captain, the station is empty."

No, they're in there; they're in there! She thought and tried to speak. She heard moans coming out of her mouth.

The Commander stopped and gently placed her in a wheelchair that was waiting for her in front of the shuttle. "Captain, I know you want us to stay and look for the Professor, but we need to go. The station is empty. They are not here."

They are, did they find the wormhole? Did they look for it? Helplessness was not something Marjorie did well, and she fought to speak. "Wormhole." She said.

The Commander lifted his shoulders up a bit, the equivalent of someone shaking their heads. "Captain, we need to go."

No, Marjorie thought. No, he can't be gone. We can't leave without him. As the Commander wheeled her up the ramp Marjorie tried to look back. From the very corner of her eye she saw the empty hallway. She half expected to see the Professor come running around the corner dragging Juliet with him. Even as the shuttle door closed she still held out hope. The shuttle lifted off. Marjorie lowered her head and sobbed.

Chapter twenty-four.

The Doctor looked at his data pad, then back to Marjorie, and then to his data pad again. He let out a whistle of astonishment. Marjorie, who was lying in the sickbay bed, was only barely able to speak. She could form the words in her head easily enough but when it came time to talk she found her mouth sometimes had a mind of its own. "What?"

"First, the good news. You'll be fine. Whatever drug they gave you was just a powerful muscle relaxant. Once it runs through your body you'll have full control, including speech."

She did feel better. Every few hours it seemed she was able control another limb. Those were easy, it was complex muscle control of her mouth she was having a problem with now. "And?"

"And, you're perfectly healthy."

"So?" She asked, wanting to expand the question even further. So, why did you whistle? So, why the astonished look on your face? So, what happened to the age spots on the back of my hand?

"Well, there's nothing wrong with you. I mean, nothing. You no longer have Fullerton's. Your blood pressure, which was always a bit high, is normal, your heart is as healthy as I've ever seen it and you've lost all your 'character lines.' "

She could smile. She called them character lines since she first spotted them several years ago. It was nice to see someone was listening. "Why?"

"I don't know. That place was great for you. What did they do over there?"

The drink. Marjorie thought. Newman told her she would now live for hundreds of years. What was in that drink? "Took a drink," she said. "Felt better after it."

"Hmmm," the doctor said. "I'll run some tests on your blood, maybe I can find an answer there."

She nodded, and laid back on the bed. It was difficult not to think about Professor Ricter. He was gone. She didn't know if he was dead, if he returned to the station to find the Arwen gone, or if he got lost somewhere in Wormhole Beta space. She knew he would find a way to survive if he could. Would even the great Theo Ricter survive this? She didn't know and that killed her.

She sniffed back the tear and the hurt. The guilt would come later, right now all she felt was grief. Whatever it was that made her younger did nothing to dampen her emotions. If anything, they felt stronger than ever. She would never see him again. She would never get a late-night call asking her to take the Arwen to come see what he discovered. She would never again hear him talk about himself and how he was going to save yet another planet from certain destruction. A thought entered her head, she quickly sat up, startling the doctor. "What's wrong?" He asked.

She swung her legs over the table and hopped off. He had to grab her or else she would have fallen. After he steadied her she walked as fast as she could to the door. Her grown flapped open behind her and the Doctor looked away. "Bridge," she said.

"I wouldn't recommend it."

"Now." She ordered.

"Right," he said pulling open a drawer and pulling out small plastic bag. "Here are your cloths; you might want to put them on before walking the hallways."

Commander Pippleton sat in the Captain's chair. It was the first time in a while he felt he could relax. They had some loses, Professor Ricter and Ensign Monrow, but all things considered that was acceptable.

The bridge was quiet now. They had been in Wormhole space for almost a day and would be in wormhole space for the next few months. They had enough food and water to last them but it would be close.

The hum from the elevator told the Commander he was about to get some company. He turned just as the door opened. He lifted his shoulder in surprise at the sight of Captain Cook. She looked younger. The lines on her face had smoothed out. Above all, she seemed to move faster. When she spoke the voice was different, it was stronger and a bit higher. "Commander, full stop."

"Full stop," he repeated. "May I ask why?"

"Not here," she said. "Meeting, me, you, and Fran in four hours." She leaned against the wall as if her strength suddenly left her.

"Okay, I'll see you there. Do you need help getting back to your room?"

She smiled, and even her smiled seemed youthful. "No, I'll make it."

She headed back to the infirmary where the doctor was waiting for her. He seemed excited as he looked at his data pad. "Captain, this is extraordinary."

"What is it?" She asked.

"I have the results of the scans and the blood work. Please, take a seat."

She looked at him with an inquisitive eye and sat on the table. He pulled up a chair and sat next to her. Tilting the data pad up so she could see what he was looking at he said, "According to the scan the Handlers injected you with a large amount of very advanced nanobots. I would need to do more tests but from what I can gather they've taken over almost every system. They're making your red blood cells more efficient. They're making your liver and kidneys function well above normal and, most incredibly, they seem to have taken over all the damaged nerves from your Fullerton."

"What do you mean taken over?" She asked. The idea of millions of tiny robots insider her body made her shutter. She felt violated beyond belief.

"Fullerton damages the nerves, basically destroying them slowly over time. The nanobots have bonded with the damaged nerves. They've taken over the function of passing the electrical information from the brain to the muscles."

"Can you remove them?" She asked.

He seemed taken aback by the question. "Why would you want to do that? Right now, you've got nearly super-human abilities."

"Captain Ruzoto said I would live for another three hundred years," She replied. Depression sank in. She felt tired and alone. "But I don't want them inside of me. I want them out."

"Captain, I don't see how that would be possible. Maybe when we get back to Earth-"

She held her hand up to stop him talking. "No, Doctor, I need to know if you can do it."

"I don't want to commit to answering. I don't have enough information to say if I can or if I can't. I'll need to run more tests."

"Fine, run your tests. Run as many as you need. I want them out. I want them gone."

The Doctor stood from his chair. He seemed to have a strange determination about him, a resolve she knew she had put there. It's what a leader did, she thought. It made people do things they never thought they could do. "Give me a few days to figure this out. I'll do my best, if anything I can at least gather information to give to the Corps doctors when we return."

"Doctor, we're not going to return." Captain Cook said lying back on the table. She closed her eyes and, as she drifted off into a deep sleep, continued the thought. "Not if I have anything to say about it."

Four hours didn't seem long enough, and Marjorie was still tired when she walked into the conference room. Sitting around the table where the people she trusted the most. Normally, there would be the Professor- She pushed him out of her mind and did her best not to start grieving for him here and now. This wasn't the time. That would come later. She would have plenty of time to grieve.

The group stood as she slowly walked to the head of the table. "Please, sit down." She said and they did. "Commander, fill me in what happened when I was out."

"We lost contact with you for a bit of time. When that happened I assembled a team but you returned not too long afterwards."

"Yes, the Captain took me to the sphere. Please continue."

"I decided to wait to see what would happen. I knew this was a first contact situation with a highly advanced race, and I did not want to instigate anything unless I was sure. So, we waited and monitored."

"That was a wise decision. What happened next?"

"We kept monitoring you and noticed several spikes in your blood pressure and heart rate. It worried us. Then, we got word that Professor Ricter and Ensign Monrow were missing. It was after that that I decided to interfere. We met no resistance up until we found you. When we entered the room we found several aliens hovering over you. They charged us, and we were forced to fight back."

"You did well. They were interrogating me." Marjorie replied, her voice cracked as she spoke and she found it hard to look anyone in the eye. "Captain Ruzo killed himself right after drugging me. He said they had kept him alive for over four hundred years and promised him they wouldn't revive him if he helped." She sniffed back some tears. "Then, they invaded my body with nanobots and read my memories. They took me to places I had been, had me relive all the good and the bad. Had me see people long since dead. It took me a while to figure out why they were doing it, and I hope I didn't give up the secret."

"What secret?" Fran asked, a look of concern on her brow.

"The location of Earth. They want to destroy the Earth and build a Dyson Sphere around our sun."

"What?" Fran asked. "There are plenty of suns out there, why ours?"

The memories were a bit fuzzy now, trying to remember what the Handler had told her. That might have been engineered, erase the memory of any information before shutting the system down. It would make the most sense as to why they were so open with her. If it wasn't for the Commander she was sure nothing she heard would have been remembered. "They want to destroy us because they think of us a threat. Well, not a threat now but a threat in the future and they want to stop that threat before we can give them a challenge."

"That's crazy," Fran replied. "We can share the universe. It's a big place."

"They don't think so," Marjorie replied. "From what I understand they live long lives and reproduce very quickly. They're like viruses, and the galaxy is their host. They won't stop. They don't want to stop expanding and Earth, Ulliam, and all the other planets in our local group are in their way, and they won't stop until we're gone. The only thing they're not sure of is where we are, and that's what they needed me for."

"Did you tell them?" Fran asked.

"No, at least I hope not. If they found Earth now-" She tailed off leaving the statement hanging. "That's why I called you all in here. We need to make a choice, a tough choice, but we need to make it."

"What kind of choice do we need to make?" Commander Pippleton asked.

"We need to figure out if we're going to go home, or if we're going to exit Wormhole space now and never return."

There was a silence around the table and Marjorie used it to continue talking. "I can't take the chance that they're following us. I can't take the chance that they have a way of tracking us. I worked hard holding that information away from them, and I don't want to give that up now."

"But, you're talking about never gone home," Fran said. "You want us to just get lost in space? To just move on, to not tell anyone on Earth what happened to us?"

"That's what we need to talk about. I know what we need to do and I want you guys to convince me otherwise. I don't want to give the order. I don't want to be the one to tell the crew we're not going home. Even though I know we have a reason for it, a reason that could very well save everything, I'm not going to make that choice until I'm sure we don't have any other choice."

"How can you be so sure we're being followed?" The Commander asked.

"I don't know. They have advanced technology, we have no idea what they are capable of. They spotted us in Wormhole Beta space, they knew we were coming so they can monitor us."

"It could have just been while we were in Beta space." Fran said, despair dripped from her voice.

"I've thought about that, and you may be right. We don't know and that's the tough part. They could very well be able to view us through wormhole Alpha space. If they can and they see where we exit they'll know where Earth is."

"But we don't know for sure," Fran said.

"No, we don't."

"What if they did find Earth?" Commander Pippleton asked. "I'm sure it would take them a while to gather a fleet to attack, that would give us time to prepare a defense. We could fight back."

"They're very advanced," Doctor Lipton replied before the Captain could say anything. "I didn't get to see much while I was logged onto their computers, but I saw enough to know they've gotten at least a millennium head start on us.

"Say we do decide not to return to Earth," Doctor Lipton continued. "What then? Do we know where we are? Do we know if there's a planet we can survive on, or do you plan on having us stay on the Arwen?"

"We'll find a planet," Captain Cook said. "Luckily planets that can sustain life aren't as rare as most people believe. It could be bacterial life but as long as there's water and air we can build and relocate."