Shahr nodded in relief. Reentering the transporter room, Shahr featured vaguely to the crewman there to step out of the way. Working quickly but efficiently, Shahr verified the ship had downloaded his scans, then began to manually join the two data sets.

“Shahr to Stroyer. I am confident I have programmed the sensors to find you anywhere on the ship, but it would help if you two were together. Any chance you’ve located Kazansky?”

”Not yet.”, replied Stroyer. “I… can try, okay? I mean I still got… three minutes.”

“Ok well keep this channel open. If I lose sight of you on sensors, I’ll need to you backtrack quickly. Keep talking to me, Stroyer. I know the hallucinations can be very real, I’ll help you through it.”

Hina nodded to Shahr, smiling It was good he was keeping the Ensign talking. She was cursing herself for not checking that the others had gotten off the ship. This is why she was an engineer and didn’t go on away missions often.

Stroyer muttered something that was best left unheard by both other officers, and moved away from the console in search of Kazansky. Now though, she was wondering if Kazansky was even real.

“Do we even have someone called Kazansky on the ship?”, she wondered loudly, then let out a fairly girly scream as she found herself face to face with not one, but several versions of the maybe-not-even-existing Chief of Security and Tactical.

“Ensign Stroyer… we’ll have you out of there shortly.” she said. She reached under the transporter console, pulling out a tool kit. She popped the top open and selected a couple of tools before moving to the other side of the room. She needed to boost power to the confinement beam if they wanted to pull Stroyer and Kazansky out through the distortions. “Quick as you can Shahr.” she commented.

“Almost done. Yes… yes. I have a definite lock on Stroyer. I don’t see Kazansky… I’m going to run through inconsistencies between my tricorder readings and ship’s sensors and see if one matches our missing friend.” Shahr risked a second to glance over at Hina to see what she was working on.

“Im going to boost the power to the annular confinement beam… we should be able to pull them both out of there with no issues once I do… but it’ll take me a minute.” she said. Thankfully they had just a bit longer than that.

Shahr slammed his clenched fist against the side of the console in frustration. “I can’t find him!” Then he realized he had said that over the comms he had insisted on keeping open to calm his shipmate, so he tried to correct himself. “I mean, I haven’t found him yet. Haven’t finished running the comparison across the entire ship. It’ll work.”

“Find both their signals… and be ready to energize.” Hina said, running a sonic driver over a couple conduits. “Ensign Stroyer, almost there…”

“Are we sure there are no other people on the ship? Because I see people, okay? We can’t just let them explode!”, screamed Stroyer, now obviously panicking.

“No there isn’t anyone else on that ship.” Hina said.

“But what if they are real?”, the younger woman asked.

That made Hina pause. She had seen the bodies, seen the log from their doctor. Had it all been a hallucination? Could they have imagined it? What was real at this point? Were they even on the Valkyrie? She rubbed her face, now unsure what to do. Someone was hallucinating. But who? She looked back at Shahr, and spoke quietly.

“Shahr… Im ready… but… are we sure we aren’t hallucinating?”

That made Shahr pause. He tapped his badge to silence the line, then whispered back. “I… I guess I don’t know. It is extremely unusual that nobody has come to even check on us yet. That makes me suspicious, but it could just mean the rest of the crew is busy fighting their own hallucinatory demons. On the other hand, what are the chances you and I are locked into the same, joint hallucination? I feel like we’re probably ok… How do we tell?”

Shahr gulped hard. Best case scenario, they were saving their friends. Worst case, they were actually operating some other panel on the ship, about to blow all the airlocks, or detonate the warp core, or something equally horrible.

Hina shrugged. She wasn’t sure. She hadn’t been sure about anything for the past few hours at this point. She looked at the work she had done, sure that if everything was real two people would transport back to the Valkyrie. She nodded.

“Then do it once you have them both.” she ordered. “Ensign Stroyer… we’re going to beam you both back… theres no one but you on that ship. I’m sure.” she was sure they’d get them both but she wasn’t sure about the rest of it.

“O-… okay…”

Shahr nodded in acknowledgment, then faced his panel once more. The awful truth was there wasn’t time left to figure this out. They had to make the best decision they could, with the information they had. Suddenly his tricorder and the transporter console pinged in unison.

“We did it! I have two locks!” Shahr tapped his badge again, remembering he had muted himself. “Stroyer, I got you. I see you both. Stand by.”

“Beam them back.” she said, stepping away from the panel. She tapped another comm panel. “Morishita to bridge. If you can hear this, move us away from the other vessel…” she said. She didn’t know if Saffiya or anyone up there would hear it, but there wasn’t much she could do other wise.

Placing three fingers on the panel, Shahr slid them up the console to initialize the transporter beams. He watched the readout on the console as the computer verified the two bio-signs had been fully confined and then converted to energy. The computer signaled readiness to reverse the process on its own pad, so Shahr slid his fingers back down the panel. A column of light appeared on the right, and a slumped over burst of light appeared to the left. Both transporter beams coalesced into people Shahr recognized. Stroyer stood in front of him, while Kazansky was laying on the transporter pad.

“Glad you’re back, Stroyer! Hina, I mean, Lieutenant, what do we do now? Get them to sickbay?”

Hina nodded and moved to the pad to help their two crewmates. She hoped she had made the right decisions. These werent the sorts of decisions she wanted to be making. She directed Shahr to assist Stroyer while she scooped up Kazansky to carry the woman to sickbay.