“No! You’ve got it wrong!” Quinn bellowed as four Imperium heavies hauled him toward the telepaths assembled in the shuttlebay. They were all chained, looking back his way as he screamed and fought. 

“I’m NOT a telepath. Believe me, I freaking hate them!” He shouted, kicking out, but the heavies crowding around him snarled and lifted a baton. The blows rained down heavy over his head and shoulders, but they were nothing compared to the beatings from his childhood and he refused to be cowed. 

“I’m not a telepath!”

“The tests don’t lie,” the heavy nearest to him snarled and punched him in the stomach. Quinn groaned and folded up, the wind knocked out of him. 

 A second later firm hands had a hold of him, a deep voice sounding somewhere above him. 

“He won’t be any trouble,” Harrow said to their captors, easily manhandling Quinn to block any more blows with his own body. “I’ll keep him quiet.”

They were hustled aboard a secure transport before Quinn caught his breath properly and he found himself chained to a hard bench next to Harrow. He jerked upright, the chains rattling as he saw Armstrong opposite. Her expression was tight, fear in her eyes as engines roared and they left the Resolute. 

He looked around to find the rest of the ship’s telepaths in a tight group around him, their expressions as grim as Armstrongs. They’d even picked up Kyana Taerial, the Resolute’s youngest crewmember, assigned to the ship just before they’d left for the delta quadrant. 

“Easy,” Harrow murmured, his deep voice somehow fortifying the small group. 

Quinn turned to him with a frown. “You’re a telepath?”

“I do have a talent for seeing the future.” Harrow gave him the smallest of winks, then flicked a glance at the guards either side of the loading doors. “Perhaps that picked up on their tests.”

Quinn sat back, the cuffs pulling on his wrists and closed his eyes. He was in a nightmare of his own making. Imprisoned on a ship full of telepaths with no way of escape. 

Meanwhile in the darkness…

It sat in the darkness. Exhausted and beyond hope. 

The screams of pain tore at its soul but there was nothing it could do. It folded in on itself, wishing for oblivion. Wishing for the peace of death. 

Then it came. 

The first whispers of a mind that shone in the darkness. A bright, shiny mind that drew it like a moth to a flame. It uncoiled itself in the darkness, reaching out tendrils to investigate. 

The mind didn’t belong to any of the flesh and blood creatures in the cells. Panic filled it. Where was it? It had sensed it, it KNEW it had. It had to be here!

Before the panic could become overwhelming, it realised the mind… the bright shiny mind that called out in a siren’s song… wasn’t on the surface. 

It was on a ship that approached, growing brighter and louder with each moment. 

It sat in the darkness, waiting for that moment the shuttle touched down and it would no longer be alone.

“Quinn…”