“We’re going to be wrong no matter what we choose.”  Captain Dread stood with the others outside the quarantine quarters, having listened to the report from each of them, and her response was one of tired finality – the road to this moment had been turbulent at best and frustrating at worst.  “Ambrose Harris didn’t have a choice in this, which makes whatever we do more of a horror show.”  She shook her head, “We let him die; his body wastes away slowly.  We unlock his mind piece by piece – we don’t know what’s going to wake up inside him.  It could be your former captain back from the brink…or it could be something else.”

Reid added, “And even if we bring him back – to keep him alive would require a highly specialized medical facility that we would have to build here and eventually transfer him to Starfleet Medical – the level of care his body needs exceeds our abilities.”  It hurt to say it out loud.  She had loved him deeply.  She would have to leave the Douglas and find a space on a station to work beside him, care for him, and aid him in living this new…life?  She wasn’t sure what to call it.  What would that life even look like?  He would never be able to leave the station, and much of his time would be spent in or near a medical ward.  What kind of life was that?  It sounded like a nightmare for a man who had been a chief engineer and vaulted to commander and then captain.  Then again, she realized – shouldn’t he be given the choice of what to do with his renewed life?  She allowed, “We may have to ask him what he wants to do.”

The group remained silent as she admitted what they all had been wondering.  The agency over the body was that of whoever was inside.  They just didn’t know who they were going to get when they flipped the switches.  Helena walked up to the glass, glancing at the readings before focusing on the body.  They didn’t have much of a choice.  “Let’s bring…whoever it is back.  Keep the body restrained.  Have a security team on standby outside the doors.”  She hoped Ambrose Harris was still in there, somewhere.

“Fourth removed…fifth in progress.”  Halsey was working the device, taking out the shunts one step at a time.  it circled around the head of Ambrose Harris, a surgical transporter device working with pinpoint accuracy to remove the devices.  Leopold tapped at the glass one final time, “Fifth removed.”  The equipment deftly returned to the ceiling and walls as the scanners focused on the body and brain.  Everyone stood at the glass, waiting.  Watching.

The world had gone white, black, red, blue, and green…before a dark orange had consumed his vision…and now, a glaring white was fading away to reveal a space he had never seen before.  It looked medical and stale – clinical in the starkly clean nature of the room.  His eyes flicked around as his senses returned in a harsh blast of sound and fury.  He winced at it all, his mind taking time to adjust to whatever this reality was compared to where he had been moments ago.  His father had been with him…and he had been enjoying the time when something had interrupted the moment.  His body was restrained, and he made no move to push against it.  He had died.  He had been in a place far removed from what looked like…a starship?  Was this another space in the afterlife?  Or had they decided the sins of his life had outweighed the good, and to the nightmares, he’d been condemned?  He moved to speak, and his voice croaked, “What…is happening?”

A voice he didn’t recognize spoke over a speaker: “Ambrose Harris—this is Captain Helena Dread of the Federation starship USS Douglas. You’re here under our care.”

He turned to see the glass was a mirror, reflecting his haggard state back to him.  He looked like himself, to a point.  Focusing closer, there were pieces of him that were not how he remembered them.  Harris wondered where he had ended up in the afterlife, “I’m dead.  I know that much.  I can’t be on a Federation Starship.  This is the place of nightmares, isn’t it?  I’ve read about this part of the afterlife story.”

“Mr. Harris…you’re alive.  Do you remember the alt-Carolyn Crawford?”  He nodded.  “She stole your body.  And this is the result.”  There was a pause, “You were brought back for a purpose…of which we don’t fully know.”

He thought, taking time to remember the echoes he had been hearing in the background of his life after death, “She was speaking to me…there was a voice…I thought something in that place was trying to tell me something…but it was her – as I was thinking it and you said it…it just…clicked.  She said I would be used for a great mission.  A mission that would save the Federation from itself.”  He closed his sighs, expressing his sadness in a long, drawn-out sigh, “I can feel myself dying again.  Whatever she did, she gave me something extra – a sense of…the time I had left.”  He searched deeper, “She didn’t finish her programming…whatever it was stopped suddenly, and the voice was gone.”  He stared at the ceiling, “How a monster like her gets a chance to keep living…and I have to watch my life go out in a flash from a greedy Devore Imperium soldier…the universe has never been fair.”  He waited for a response from Captain Dread, but there was silence from the other side of the glass.  He wondered how long he had been dead.  What had happened to his family?  To Jordan?  When his body failed him, would he return to his father?  Or would he be bound somewhere else for the sins of Carolyn Crawford in rebirthing him from the dead?

“I’m to ask you what you want to do, Mr. Harris.”

He turned his head to face the glass. “What do I want to do?” he stared at the glass. “You’re saying…I could live?”

“It would be…challenging.”  She explained the scenario they had gamed out and what it would mean for him.  “I cannot guarantee anything, Mr. Harris.”

Harris turned his attention back to the ceiling, “Life isn’t a guarantee, as I’ve come to discover.  How long do I have before I return to my grave?”

“48 hours, give or take.”

He chuckled, “You have an excellent bedside manner, Captain Dread.”

“Captain and Doctor Dread, if you can believe it.”

Harris groaned, “The worst kind – medical and command.”  He smiled after he said, “I’ve known an exception.”  More silence.  He wondered who was on the other end of that glass.  Dread probably had a chief medical, a science officer or two…probably a couple of security bodies just in case he lost his mind and tried to kill them all somehow.

The next voice was certainly a surprise, “Ambrose?”

His eyes went wide, her voice an electric shot down his spine, “Jordan?!”