It Always Watches: A Star Trek Discovery Horror Story

VIII: Waking Nightmare

"Burnham, what the hell--?" Stamets started then broke off in confusion and terror at the sight of Tillinghast.

"Paul," McMartin said gently, gliding toward him, "you need to understand what you're helping to make happen..."

"Don't move!" Burnham shouted and drew a bead on the woman's head.

"The equations," Stamets said. "Like they were building a bridge in time as well as boring through subspace. You're not mapping some subspace network. What are you doing?"

"You have to understand what we've discovered here. What we've been able to communicate with."

"We have to go, Lieutenant," Burnham urged, not lowering the phaser. "Something's happening to the crew of this ship. Something monstrous."

"We are...so close..." the thing that was Tillinghast managed through its now-deformed mouth.

"We found it here," McMichaels said. "It spoke with us, found us through our efforts to peel back subspace. It was here before the Universe was born, and now it exists somewhere beyond conventional space/time."

Burnham felt her stomach roil as McMichael's beaming features began to swirl and change.

"It created existence, billions of years before the Big Bang. It can do the same to our universe through the portions of space we've weakened," the thing Tilinghast had become said.

"It's going to remake everything..." McMichaels managed before her face twisted into something incapable of human speech, then blossomed into an obscene flower of flesh.

Stamets screamed. Burnham fired into the thing. It reached out to them with clawed hands, shrugging off the phaser bolts.

Another inhuman wail filled the room, and from the shadows Tillinghast's body stretched toward them on an elongated ribbon of flesh, his mouth now a gaping chasm lined with sharklike teeth.

"FUCK!" Stamets screamed and threw himself to the deck, just as Burnham held the trigger on the phaser and burned the thing out of existence.

Now the thing that had been McMichaels made an alien keening sound, and swiped the air with long-taloned digits. "YOUUU SSSSTANDDD BEEEEFORE GOOOOOOD!" It bellowed before its anatomy became no longer able to manage human speech. It stabbed at the console nearest to it, one eye extended on an elastic stalk taking in the readout, and the great, cavernous room went dim as the ship hummed around them with the flow of massive amounts of energy.

"We've got to get out of here!" Burnham called out.

"Fucking obviously!" Stamets shouted back as he scrambled to his feet.

"Get to the turbolift!"

Stamets bolted as Burnham fired on the thing that been McMichaels, the phaser holts bouncing harmlessly off it as they were made of rubber. He piled inside and held the door.

"Burnham!"

But she'd already sprinted across the expanse of the engineering room and lunged into the lift. Stamets released the doors and the capsule shot up through the shaft.

"We've got to get out of here," he gasped. Burnham managed not to slap him silly.

"Oh, you think?"

"Well, I didn't know that...that...Burnham what the hell is going on here? What was that thing? Was that Doctor McMichaels? Was there ever a Doctor McMichaels?"

"I think so," Burnham said as she checked the power pack on the phaser. She had about a quarter left. "I've found some logs that indicate that McMichaels—before she...That she was telling the truth. They found something here. Something that could, I don't know...reach out from before the beginning of creation. Something that lived..." Michaels mind was beginning to dissemble with the unimaginability of what she was saying.

"There are still particles and cosmic rays from before the Big Bang," Stamets said. "It's not inconceivable that there would be a...a...doorway? A window? A way into this universe. But what's looking through the window?"

"Something beyond our understanding," Burnham answered. "Something terrible."

The lift stopped at the shuttlebay, and they made for the waiting shuttlecraft, sitting alone and scarred in a small pool of light. "What if they don't let us leave?" Stamets asked breathlessly as they belted in.

"I don't think they're worried about us," Burnham said as she worked the controls and gently lifted the craft off the deck. "You felt it. The ship is powering up. They've got to be close to breaking through to that thing."

"Doctor McMichaels said we were close." Stamets turned and faced her. "Burnham, you have to know I never knew...I wouldn't have..."

"Don't worry about it, Lieutenant," she said as gently as she could while punching the throttle and maneuvering the ship through the half-closed shuttlebay doors. "It gets in your mind. I felt it, too."

"But you didn't join us," Stamets said dourly.

"It helps when you've been raised by Vulcans," she replied. "My mental discipline is stronger than most humans."

"That actually makes me feel better," Stamets said a little more lightly. "But, I..." he dropped off as the shuttle arced away from the Pretorious and the entirety of the ship suddenly came into view. A solid column of scarlet energy extended from the ship's lateral sensor array to a fixed point in the nebula which grew brighter and brighter, and, as they watched, horrified, began to resemble ripped fabric.

"They're doing it!" Stamets exclaimed. "Burnham, we've got to stop them."

But Burham's attention was caught by the warning playing across her tactical display.

"We can't stop them," she said. "This shuttle's unarmed."

"Well, we can't just let them succeed!"

Burnham met his gaze. "We're not."