The world was hazy and hurt like hell.  Sadie Fowler pulled her head up, and her senses began to return.  The room smelled rank as if death had stayed over a few nights too many.  She blinked to clear her vision, feeling the ache of a stun injury.  Somehow, she hadn’t made it to the Icarus shuttle transporter.

“Where the hell is Carolyn Crawford?”  The voice came from the left, and a hard punch followed it, sending stars around Fowler’s vision as she remained strapped tightly into the chair.  The sharp pain blossomed into a thunderously dull pain.

Fowler cried out, “I don’t know!”  She was starting to put together what had happened.  Somehow, the doppelganger to the Carolyn she knew had thought Sadie was Carolyn, subverted the transporter connection, and been ready to do…whatever she was going to do to the real Carolyn.  Sadie began to pull herself together.

“Patra said she would be here.”  Alternate Carolyn was older and more worn.  Her face was marked with scars, and her eyes were a window into a tortured soul.  The science chief knew the life of the mirror universe was a terrible place and had read enough reports on the interactions with it to know the woman that paced before her now was more likely to kill her than let her live.  The only thing that might save her is the real Carolyn Crawford alive and on the Mackenzie, wherever she was.  Alt Carolyn was still talking about Patra, “He doesn’t lie.  His plans are perfect.”  She advanced on Fowler, “She’s not dead…I would know it!”  Her left half dug a deep slap across Fowler’s face, shocking the young woman out of her mild stupor.  “Tell me where she is, or I will make the hurt deeper than you can imagine.”

Sadie tried to get her breathing under control as she stared at the hulking mess that was alt Carolyn Crawford.  The woman’s eyes burned with an intensity that plucked at Sadie’s nerves.  Her mouth was shaped by rage in a sour frown.  The woman was scary.  Fowler sensed the woman would find her doppelganger eventually.  She was tenacious and terrifying.  Fowler groaned as the shock wore off, and the pain shot from all corners of her body. “She’s on the Mackenzie.  And no, I don’t know where she’s at.”

Alt Crawford’s response was a menacing smile, “I’ll find her.  And you’ll help me get so close to her.  Close enough to cut the life out of her.”

Fowler shook her head, gagging on the imagery the woman described, “That’ll be the day.”

Carolyn’s reply was a hard punch to the gut and a hard elbow punch to the head.  As her victim sputtered and moaned in the resulting pain, she cackled, “Life and death can be such wonderful motivators.  You’ll do it.  And we’ll both get to watch her die.”  She spat on Fowler and walked up the stairs and around the corner to the cockpit of her ship.

Sadie stifled her cries of pain.  She glanced at her uniform.  Her badge was still there.  Why hadn’t alt Carolyn removed it?  She looked around the room cautiously, playing as if she was stretching her head and neck against the pain.  She couldn’t see any cameras.  Didn’t Crawford know how communicators worked in this day and age?  If her hands had been free, she should have smacked her head.  Alt Crawford was from a time and place when communicators were advanced but not 2401 advanced.  She fought the urge to smile and spoke quietly to her badge.