On the surface, the monastery of the Order of Ste’kor looked ancient and weathered, sturdy grey stone etched into the mountain and standing against time and the elements. Deeper in, led by Ibius, they found an altogether more technologically sophisticated setup. Stone passageways led to metal automated doors that creaked as they opened, showing a blackened corridor of metal construction that still, to Beckett, looked like Romulan architecture. All along the way, they passed other weakened, shambling, inchoate Romulan monks who barely acknowledged their existence.

‘You gotta tend to them?’ said Logan, in the lead alongside Ibius.

‘As best I can. Until supplies run out.’

Logan glanced back at Kharth, and Beckett didn’t need to be a telepath to hear the silent discussion. Could they bring Ibius with them? All of the monks? What happened to them next? Abandoning them was beyond contemplation.

‘I’ve had to conserve our power supplies,’ said Ibius, leading them down corridors of sealed doors. ‘These are labs and libraries, workspaces and research facilities. They’ve been locked off. There’s no point powering them. I’m hoping you have some of your Starfleet ingenuity ready, though. Because I’ve not been able to access the lower levels.’

‘We know how to handle Romulan systems,’ Thawn assured him.

‘I’m afraid that won’t help,’ said Ibius, and turned a corner.

The heavy doorway was not Romulan. Beckett’s breath caught as he recognised the inky-black metal, the etchings along what looked like a control panel set into the wall beside it. ‘Vorkasi.’

Airex frowned at the etchings. ‘Can you read the language?’

‘Some.’ Ibius shrugged. ‘Yes, that’s a label. What would you label something like that other than “access,” though?’

‘Good point.’ Airex turned to Beckett and Thawn. ‘Lieutenants, you’re up.’

‘I think it needs power,’ said Ibius. ‘We’ve accessed it in the past, and for a long time, I thought it ran off its own reserves. But as everything else here broke down, this doorway did, too. I’ve not had the facilities to conduct any repairs.’

‘Power,’ said Thawn, pulling out her tricorder, ‘we can do. Nate, help me with this panel.’

They had to detach it, and then Beckett mostly watched as Thawn fiddled with the interior. It was a stretch to say they knew what they were doing, but they’d seen more of Vorkasi systems than any of the others, and some principles – especially the principles of powering a door – would not diverge too greatly.

But after a few minutes’ work, Thawn frowned. ‘I’ve tapped it into my tricorder’s power reserve, which should be enough. But it’s not accessing it.’

Beckett glanced at her. ‘You think it needs a command? Maybe non-physical?’

‘Maybe,’ she said, and frowned with that tell-tale knot of concentration in the centre of her brow.

At the same time, Beckett again felt that chill on the back of his neck. With a rumble like rolling thunder, the door began to open.

‘Great work, Lieutenant!’ Airex said, beaming at Thawn.

She didn’t stop frowning. ‘I’m not sure that was me,’ she said. When she gave Beckett a cautious look, he said nothing.

‘Wonderous,’ breathed Ibius. ‘It’s been years since I was down here. We must hurry.’

The holding chamber for the Vorkasi telepathic circlet that would have bent the world of Drapice to its will had been carved into the mountain it was built in. This chamber on a distant world hundreds of light-years away was no different, with the chill settled deep into their bones as they set foot on metal plating surrounded by the rough-hewn stone of the mountain.

This was, if possible, bigger, but Beckett was relieved to see Romulan technological apparatus laid over the Vorkasi control banks and displays. After centuries down here, the monks had established some basic means of interfacing with the Vorkasi technology that Starfleet was barely beginning to comprehend. The banks made a circle in the middle of the dim, rough-hewn chamber, their light anaemic but present. Above them hovered an array of figures and digits, symbols Beckett only passingly recognised as the Vorkasi language, holographic projections likely showing some sort of status.

Ibius waved a hand at it. ‘This is where we accessed the Vorkasi library. Over centuries we barely scratched the surface. Telepathic technology seemed to identify us as intruders, no matter what we did to the computer systems. It took us years to access even a micron of a percentage of the records, and then the system would change itself, locking us out. It’s like a living security system in a living library.’

A hot indignation seared in Beckett’s chest as he advanced on the controls. ‘It’s not like a living system. It is living. This isn’t a library, it’s a prison.’ He knew as he advanced, more than ever, that he was right. ‘The Vorkasi were a bunch of authoritarian, conquering bastards, who locked up some telepathic entity that they probably couldn’t otherwise control or destroy. It’s likely been the power source to this whole damn place all along.’

Ibius looked bewildered. ‘We assumed this was a form of… telepathic artificial intelligence.’

‘You weren’t scholars for centuries, you were jailers, Ibius.’ Beckett looked at Kharth. ‘We should end this.’

She frowned. ‘Let’s not race into anything, Lieutenant. We came looking for Vorkasi technology in case it was being used to manipulate a world again. This is different. We’re still not sure what this is. Or if you’re right.’

Airex raised a hand at the blossoming tension. ‘Lieutenant Thawn, can you feel a consciousness? You have some experience of artificial telepathic constructs from your encounters with the Tkon.’

Thawn looked a little surprised at Airex’s mention of a mission he hadn’t been present for, but she nodded and stepped towards the control bank. She placed a ginger hand on the edge of the black metal surface of a panel, and closed her eyes to concentrate.

The wave of feeling hit Beckett enough to almost make him bend double. Find me. Free me. His vision blurred, the dim stone chamber illuminated by a flash of burning skies, and he staggered at the sense of metal chains wrapping tight around him. When his heart rate slowed and his vision cleared and his legs felt sturdy under him, the others looked shaken, but Thawn was on her knees, clutching at the panel for support.

‘Rosara!’ He rushed over, reaching to help her, but she was pulling herself to her feet, leaning on the panel, and was upright before he got there.

She turned, face pale and shining with sweat. Dark eyes flashed from him to the others. ‘I’ve never felt a mind like this.’ Her voice rasped, and she swallowed hard. ‘This is something else. More powerful. More alien. Whatever this is, I don’t think it knows existence as we do. I don’t think it has a corporeal form. It wants out. And it is furious.’

Kharth drew a sharp breath. Beckett couldn’t tell if she’d seen what he had, but she’d clearly experienced something. ‘All the more reason to not rush to liberate some sort of inter-dimensional telepathic demigod. Not if it’s pissed.’

‘You’d be pissed,’ said Beckett, ‘if you’d been locked up for thousands of years.’

Ibius was chewing on his bottom lip. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said, swaying. ‘It – it was a Vorkasi AI…’

‘It’s a being,’ said Thawn, and reached for the control panel. Set over the Vorkasi controls was a Romulan-constructed interface, a keyboard with symbols they could all recognise. As she hit a control, a new holographic screen came to life, showing what looked like a limited translation of the Vorkasi projection in the centre.

‘At some point, the Vorkasi systems containing it began to weaken,’ she said, tapping at the controls. ‘And it began to struggle against them. Which meant the Vorkasi system activated countermeasures.’ She pointed at the screen, and Beckett and Airex approached. ‘Look,’ said Thawn. ‘We don’t know much about Vorkasi tech, but those are power levels. The main power levels have been going down, but different systems have been spiking.’

‘How much of this have you picked up from that screen?’ said Kharth, still guarded. ‘And how much from the telepathic thing in a cage?’

‘The Vorkasi have technology that can influence minds.’ Thawn looked back at her. ‘As these countermeasures have tried to restore control of the prisoner, they’ve also affected everyone near these systems. What do you think drove the monks mad?’

‘The prisoner?’ pointed out Kharth. ‘I know you had a run-in with the Vorkasi before -’

‘And they were bad news,’ butted in Beckett. ‘If I’m this creature, and the monks think I’m an AI, and I’m starting to break free of my shackles, I try to communicate with them and talk my way out – not drive them so nuts the only people who could free me become incoherent. It has been asking for help. Asking us for help. Why would it have hurt the Romulans first?’

‘Revenge?’ said Kharth.

Ibius frowned. ‘Some of my comrades were having dreams as everything went wrong. Dreams of flying, falling. They talked of leaving, but that there was something they had to do first. Then, they lost their minds entirely. I assumed it was part of what drove them mad in the first place.’

‘Or,’ said Beckett, ‘the entity reached out to them, and the Vorkasi defence systems made sure they were in no condition to help.’

‘That would follow. I am of the Order of Ste’kor, but I have always been very… lacking in any telepathic aptitude.’ Ibius shrugged. ‘It’s been a boon in research, a great test in our experiments. But perhaps it left me unable to help this entity, and protected from the Vorkasi.’

Airex again had to lift his hands to try to cut the discussion off and move to action. ‘Let’s see if we can establish contact with this entity.’

But before he could join Thawn at the panel, the sound of a scream came echoing in from the door back the way they had come. It was long, drawn-out, varying in pitch, and sounded as maddened as it did pained. In the cavernous depths of the chamber, it reverberated almost as deep as the telepathic communication.

Kharth turned to the doorway. ‘What was that?’

‘One of my colleagues,’ said Ibius with a sharp inhale. ‘Something’s agitated them.’

‘Possibly,’ said Logan, phaser still in hand, ‘whatever’s been freaking us out down here. I’m gonna take a look.’

Kharth hesitated, then looked back at Airex. ‘Commander, you’ve got this better than me, anyway,’ she said, and drew her phaser. She looked at Logan. ‘After you.’

He looked like he might argue, but nodded, clearly knowing she wouldn’t let him go alone. As one, the two security-trained officers headed out of the chamber.

Beckett turned to Thawn and Airex, wincing. ‘What if that’s another bit of the Vorkasi system being pissed off?’

‘Then we should try to establish contact fast,’ said Airex. ‘Ibius, we could do with your assistance.’

The monk advanced and tried to usher Thawn away. ‘If I may?’ She moved, and he reached with quicker hands for the interface. ‘I can show you as much of what we’ve been able to access – the archives and records.’

‘What did it show you?’ asked Beckett.

‘History. We assumed historical records. It must have been… memory.’ Ibius shook his head. ‘The Vorkasi had a vast empire. This place was nothing more than an outpost, we assumed. It must have been built as a prison far from its main holdings. Otherwise, they turned planets to their will using their technology so they could be conquered. If they could not, they destroyed them.’

‘That sounds about right,’ Beckett mumbled.

‘This is what we’ve understood of the system,’ said Ibius, bringing up a fresh screen. Above the Romulan interface, the Vorkasi projection changed incomprehensibly.

Thawn read over Ibius’s shoulder. ‘If your people’s interfacing with these Vorkasi systems is correct… then part of this system is a telepathic suppression field. Not to completely nullify telepathic capabilities, but restrict them. It looks like it’s one of the things that’s been breaking down over the last few years.’

Airex looked at her. ‘If we powered that down, we could perhaps interact more directly.’

‘Or you free it,’ said Ibius, frowning at them. ‘Your commander didn’t want that to happen.’

‘She didn’t want to jump to conclusions,’ said Airex. ‘If this is indeed a Vorkasi prisoner who can be safely released, we should do so.’

Ibius’s breath caught. He gestured at the screen. ‘We’ve learnt so much and only scratched the surface of its knowledge.’

Beckett frowned. ‘Are you suggesting we keep this thing locked up?’

But before Ibius could reply, their combadges chirruped to life.

‘Kharth to away team! The monks here have lost it. One of them attacked Logan and we had to stun them. The rest are banding up and… coming.’

Beckett’s eyes widened. ‘Vorkasi protections. Ibius, the prison system has been destroying your friends, and you want to keep it up?’

Ibius winced. ‘I don’t know if it’s safe to tinker with these systems.’

‘They’ve not just been driven mad, they’re being influenced,’ decided Airex. ‘Lieutenant Thawn, power down that suppression field. If we can make contact, maybe we can turn off these Vorkasi systems.’

Thawn nodded, then hit a control. And stood stock still.

For a moment, Beckett irrationally thought time itself had stopped. Instead, all three of them had frozen as it felt like something cold had slipped down the back of his neck, but after a heartbeat, he, Ibius, and Airex in unison took unwitting steps away from the controls. Thawn did not.

When she turned, her eyes were not Betazoid-black, but a deep, vibrant purple. When she opened her mouth, the voice was not hers. It was the one he’d heard in his dreams.

‘Free me.’

In the distance, they heard another howling scream. And, more muffled, phaser blasts.

Beckett took a sharp step forward. ‘Is this really your only way to communicate?’ he snapped. ‘You chatted in my head fine.’

‘An influence.’ Thawn’s face was slack as her lips moved. ‘A mere brush of our minds. This is precise. But. Not much time.’ Another distant scream from whatever was going on with Logan, Kharth, and the monks. ‘The jailers’ shackles tighten. They feel my escape. I opposed them, and they could not defeat me. But they could trap me. Harness me. Use me. But if their grip tightens, these bonds will shatter me.’ A pause. ‘And this mind.’

Ice-cold fear snaked up Beckett’s chest. ‘How do we free you?’

Airex tensed. ‘Lieutenant –’

‘Sir, I saw this thing’s past. What the Vorkasi did, what it stood against. They couldn’t stop it, so they imprisoned it. Now they’ve got Rosara tied up in this, too.’ It was too much risk to her, too soon after the last disaster, and it made his head spin. His eyes locked on Thawn’s – or the entity’s. ‘How?’

‘Disconnect me from the power.’

Beckett looked at the controls, at the interface, and knew it would take hours, years to master it. He rounded on Ibius. ‘Do it.’

The monk slipped uncomfortably past Thawn to reach the panel. ‘Are you sure?’ His eyes flashed as they locked on to Beckett. ‘You don’t know what will happen.’

For a moment, Beckett thought that Airex would argue. Then came another howl of a monk from back the way they came, and the tall Trill winced. ‘Do as he says.’

It could have only taken seconds for the monk to manipulate the controls. But they felt like lifetimes, the Vorkasi holographic display overhead flashing wildly, from blues to urgent reds, one block of the display at a time. Then Ibius hit one final button, and everything went dead.

Thawn’s body shuddered, her head snapping back, eyes rolling up into her head. Her breath rattled from her slack, open mouth, as she gasped, ‘…at last.’ Then she fell, and Beckett had to lunge forward to catch her.

She was shivering as he held her, conscious but rattled. In the distance, over the sound of his own ragged breathing, Beckett realised the noises of far-off clashing had stopped.

After another moment, the combadge chirruped. ‘This is Kharth. The monks have… they just keeled over. Vor, I think they’re all dead.’

‘Rosara.’ Beckett helped her upright, hands coming to her face to turn it to his, and when her eyelids flickered open, they were black.

And turned quickly to horror. ‘You let it out.’

He stopped. ‘It needed to -’

‘No.’ She was on her feet in an instant, wild-eyed, wild-haired, looking not at the controls but all around. ‘No, this was – this was a trick.’

‘A trick?’ Airex stepped in, calmer, more level. ‘Lieutenant, slow down. Explain.’

She did not slow down as she rounded on them. ‘It stood against the Vorkasi, yes, they were expansionist and ruthless and conquering, and, yes, they imprisoned it and used it for power. But it’s not from this dimension.’ Her hands came up to bury themselves in her hair, her expression sinking with horrified realisation. ‘It feeds on suffering – on the emotions of suffering. And it stokes them – it manipulates minds, influences them, makes them do things, breaks them – then it feeds on them more, this cycle of causing horror and inflicting it. The Vorkasi drew its attention with their conquest, and it tried to bend them to its will. So they trapped it. For tens of thousands of years. When Romulus blew up and the Star Empire fell, that caused so much suffering, it empowered it. The Vorkasi defences didn’t drive the monks mad. It did. And now… now it’s out.’

Beckett stared, his mouth tasting of bitter ash. Then he turned to Ibius, and his eyes narrowed. ‘It didn’t drive all the monks mad.’

Ibius had been stood listening, at first shocked, then expressionless. As eyes fell on him, though, the shift in his face was something else. A smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘I couldn’t do it on my own.’