Chapter 28: Power Growth
[USS Enterprise-D — Cargo Bay 4 — 2364, Day 108]
The phaser rifle discharged at setting seven and Cole caught it.
Not caught—absorbed. The orange beam crossed three meters of empty cargo bay and struck his outstretched palm, the directed energy flooding into his nervous system through pathways he'd been carving for weeks. Pain—sharp, electric, radiating from his hand to his elbow—but contained. Controlled. The energy dispersed through his body like heat through metal, his enhanced physiology converting the assault into something his cells could process.
"Duration: four-point-seven seconds. Energy absorbed: 87.3% of discharge. Residual thermal emission: negligible." Data lowered the rifle. "This represents a 23% improvement over last week's maximum. However, your cardiac rhythm is elevated and your neural activity has exceeded baseline by 340%."
"Again."
"Cole, I would recommend—"
"Again, Data."
The rifle discharged. Cole absorbed the beam—five seconds this time, five and a half, the energy screaming through neural pathways that burned like overloaded circuits. His palm glowed—the faint amber luminescence that accompanied maximum absorption, visible in the cargo bay's reduced lighting.
He pushed the energy outward. The projection erupted from his left hand—not the raw, desperate blast he'd thrown at Lore three weeks ago but a controlled stream, directed, sustained. The energy splashed against the far bulkhead and dissipated. Two seconds of continuous projection. Three. Four.
His vision whited out.
The floor hit his knees. Then his palms. Then his forehead—would have hit his forehead, except Data's hand was already there, catching his skull two centimeters from the deck with the precise timing of a positronic brain that had been watching Cole's neural readings and calculated the collapse three-point-two seconds before it happened.
"You have exceeded safe parameters by 47%." Data eased Cole onto his back. The cargo bay ceiling spun—a slow, nauseating rotation that had nothing to do with the ship's movement and everything to do with a nervous system that had just processed more directed energy than it was built to handle. "Your cortisol levels are elevated. Your blood glucose has dropped below functional minimums. I strongly recommend immediate cessation of training."
Cole lay on the deck and breathed. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The technique he'd developed during the first weeks of training—before the Traveler, before the projection breakthrough, before everything—when the only thing between him and unconsciousness was the simple discipline of remembering to breathe.
"I need more." The words came out hoarse. Ragged. "I need to be ready."
"Ready for what?"
The question hung in the cargo bay's recycled air. Data's yellow eyes—patient, analytical, incapable of deception—waited for an answer that Cole couldn't give. Not the real answer. Not Vagra II, Armus, the thing that kills Tasha in twenty days unless I'm strong enough to stop it.
"I have a feeling." Cole pushed himself to sitting. The cargo bay tilted, stabilized, tilted again. His hands shook—the fine tremor of neural overload, worse than the absorption burn from Lore, longer-lasting, the kind of shake that meant his body was sending urgent messages about exceeding design parameters. "A bad one. Something's coming that I need to be strong enough to stop."
Data processed this. Four-point-eight seconds—longer than usual, the additional computation time suggesting that the android was weighing Cole's words against his behavioral patterns, his track record, the accumulated evidence of three months of friendship and research.
"Your 'feelings' have proven accurate before." Data set the phaser rifle on the deck with the care of a researcher handling volatile materials. "The Bok device. Lore's neural architecture. The Klingon fugitives. In each instance, your intuitive assessment preceded empirical evidence by a significant margin."
"So you believe me."
"I believe that your perceptive capabilities include a predictive element that defies conventional analysis." Data's head tilted. "I also believe that your current training regimen will result in permanent neural damage if continued at this intensity. I will help you prepare. But I will not help you destroy yourself."
Cole's stomach clenched—not metaphorically. The caloric debt from the session hit like a wall: three phaser rifle absorptions, two sustained projections, forty minutes of continuous energy work. His body demanded fuel with the urgency of a reactor running on empty.
"Food first?" Data asked.
"Food first."
Data helped him stand. The cargo bay floor was scorched in three places—the residual thermal damage from imperfect projections, each mark a record of a failed attempt, a calibration error, a moment where the energy had gone somewhere other than where Cole directed it. The pattern told a story of gradual improvement: the oldest marks were wide, scattered, evidence of uncontrolled release. The newest were tight, focused, almost surgical.
Almost. Not enough. Not yet.
They ate in the library—Cole's unofficial territory, the place where prune juice and philosophy had become the foundation of the most important friendship of his new life. Cole consumed four thousand calories in twenty minutes: two replicated steaks, a plate of pasta, bread, three glasses of synthehol-free beer. The food was mechanically perfect and spiritually empty, but his body didn't care about soul—it cared about glucose and protein and the raw materials needed to repair neural pathways that had been pushed past their tolerance.
Data watched him eat with the particular attention he gave to biological processes he found interesting.
"Your caloric requirements have increased 34% over the past month." Data's PADD displayed a graph—Cole's daily intake charted against his training intensity, the correlation unmistakable. "If the trend continues, you will require approximately 8,000 calories daily within two weeks."
"That's a lot of replicated steak."
"Indeed. I have also noted that your resting body temperature has increased 0.3 degrees Celsius since the Datalore incident. This suggests ongoing metabolic adaptation."
Cole set down his fork. The steak tasted like nutrition. The pasta tasted like fuel. Nothing tasted like the pot roast his grandmother used to make—the phantom memory from the corridor at the edge of the universe, the smell that meant home in a life he'd never get back.
"Data. If something happens to me—"
"I do not wish to discuss that possibility."
"—if something happens, tell Tasha everything. Not the stuff I can't explain. Just... the stuff about the training, the research, what we've learned. She deserves to understand."
Data's eyes held his for six seconds. The longest sustained eye contact the android had ever initiated in Cole's experience.
"Nothing will happen to you. I will ensure it."
"You can't ensure—"
"I can ensure that you are as prepared as possible. And I can ensure that you do not face whatever is coming alone." Data straightened. "This is what friends do."
The words echoed—the same phrase Data had used in the cargo bay after the projection breakthrough, the night he'd agreed to keep Cole's secret. The repetition wasn't accidental. Data didn't repeat himself without purpose. It was a promise, delivered in the only language a being without emotions could use to express something that looked remarkably like love.
---
[USS Enterprise-D — Cole's Quarters — Day 108, 2130 Hours]
Tasha found him on the floor.
Not collapsed—sitting. Cross-legged, back against the bulkhead, eyes closed, hands resting on his knees. The meditation posture he'd adapted from the Traveler's teaching—not the formal discipline of Vulcan logic but the fluid awareness of a consciousness learning to exist on the spectrum between thought and energy.
"You weren't at dinner." Tasha stood in the doorway. Off-duty clothes—the simple civilian outfit she wore when she wasn't being the Security Chief. The distinction mattered. The uniform was armor. The civilian clothes were Tasha.
"Lost track of time."
She sat beside him. Close enough that their shoulders touched—the casual contact they'd developed since the observation lounge, the physical language of two people who'd stopped pretending proximity was accidental.
"Data told me you collapsed in the cargo bay."
"Data needs to work on his discretion."
"Data has exactly the right amount of discretion. He told me because he's worried." She turned her head. Her eyes found his in the dim quarters—blue, direct, carrying the particular intensity that had first appeared over Saurian brandy and had been growing since. "I'm worried too."
"I'm fine."
"You're pushing yourself to breaking." Her hand found his—the right one, the palm that still carried the faintest trace of the Lore phaser burn, new skin slightly smoother than the surrounding tissue. "You train every night. You eat like you're fueling a shuttle. And you have this look—like you're counting down to something."
Cole's throat tightened. The meta-knowledge pressed against the inside of his skull: Vagra II. Twelve days. A pool of black oil that will try to kill you. The woman sitting next to you dies in the original timeline and you are the only thing standing between that future and this one.
"I can't explain it." Not a lie—he genuinely couldn't, not without revealing everything. "Something's coming. I can feel it the way I can feel energy fields—not specific, not clear, just... present. Wrong. And I need to be strong enough to handle it when it arrives."
"Strong enough for what?"
"To protect the people I care about."
Tasha's hand tightened on his. The pressure was deliberate—not gentle, not romantic, but the grip of a woman who'd survived things that would have broken softer people and had decided that holding on was the only strategy that mattered.
"You don't have to do everything alone." Her voice was quiet. Not soft—Tasha Yar didn't do soft. But the edges were rounded, the military precision relaxed into something more human. "That's what a crew is for."
"Some things—"
"No." The grip tightened further. Almost painful. "Whatever you're preparing for. Whatever you think is coming. You tell me. Before it happens. Not after. Not during. Before."
He turned to look at her. This close, in the dim light of his quarters, with her hand locked around his and her eyes holding a fierceness that had nothing to do with combat and everything to do with the terrifying vulnerability of caring about someone in a universe that liked to take things away—she was the most important person in his existence.
"I promise," he said. And meant it. And knew, with the particular clarity of a man running out of time, that the promise was already broken. Because telling her before meant explaining how he knew, and explaining how he knew meant revealing everything, and revealing everything meant losing the identity he'd built from the wreckage of someone else's life.
Tasha leaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled like the industrial soap the Enterprise stocked—utilitarian, impersonal, and somehow the best thing Cole had ever smelled.
"Whatever it is," she said, "we face it together."
He closed his eyes. Twelve days. The countdown continued.
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