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File #12

There was a loud knock at Yusa's door.

"What now..?" thought Yusa as he went to investigate. He had already spent a day completely lost in confusion about what he was doing in this new world and the constant distractions were not making this any easier for him.

He reached out, his hands slowly clasping for the metal door. Should he open it? He could easily tell whoever it was to go away while he figured this out in his head. "Nine years..?". None of this made any sense to him at all.

He steeled himself against whatever was waiting for him on the other side of the door. He was not going to figure anything out if he remained stuck in what looked like his home. The eyes of a familiar presence met him as the door slowly creaked open, with a rusty whine.

"Muraco..." Yusa was surprised to see him. His experience had involved waking up to find Doctor Tao hovering over him with a hypospray. He had been told the same version of events but he did not want to believe it either.

It seemed somewhat preposterous to him. To lose nine years of his life like that.

Muraco looked equally as confused. To be honest, all he wanted was to know that he was not alone, that he had not been the only person to wake up in an unfamiliar purgatory, unsure of what to do next.

"What's going on?" he asked Yusa as he walked inside the house.

"I don't know..." replied Yusa bluntly, unsure of what else he could say that would comfort him. "We were on the Warrior... there was some kind of explosion and I woke up here. They tell me that I cannot remember the last nine years."

"They told me the same thing... I even have a wife!" interjected Muraco, sitting down at the small table at the far corner of the house. The roof was much smaller than his home and was difficult to navigate in, probably due to his increased body mass.

Yusa looked at him in a confused manner. "... a wife?" he asked, his hands going to his fur under his face. "I always assumed that you..." he stopped, choosing his words carefully, the last thing he wanted to do was offend his only ally here. The only person who had as strange experience as what he was experiencing right now. "Liked men..."

"Stupid!" thought Yusa and for a moment he wanted to crawl into a hole with his terrible choice of words. It was an extremely silly thing to say but Muraco himself did not seem to notice or even seem that bothered by the assumption. Both of them had never really had a high degree of interaction outside work on the Warrior. They had never really needed to communicate, Yusa was the type of person that would have rather spend most of his time alone in his quarters, then socialising with the crew in the ship's lounge.

"I do..." replied Muraco with candidness. "Which is why I felt it was rather strange for me to have a wife. Could this all be some kind of trick?"

Yusa put his embarrassment aside and pondered the question as he walked to his own sink and poured some crisp, clean water into two glasses on the side. It was clear from the slightly disorganised state of the place that Yusa lived alone here, if he had lived her for many years.

"I don't know..." remuniated Yusa, being careful not to trip over objects scattered over the floor of his home while bringing Muraco the glass of water. "If it is a trick, it's one of the most elaborate ones that I've seen..."

Muraco took the glass of water. He had spent so long worrying about his predicament that he had completely forgotten how thirsty he had become in the warm summer sun. He poured it into his muzzle, gulping it down with considerable force.

"What did they tell you?" Muraco asked after he placed the empty glass back down on the table.

Yusa went on to explain, pretty much everything that Muraco had already been told. The both of them were conducting some sort of research at some alien ruins on this world when both of them had been rendered unconscious by some kind of field that had wiped out their memories of the last nine years.

When he had finished, Muraco only had one question on his mind. "Do you believe them?" he asked.

Yusa put the glass down, looking at him squarely in the eyes. "Not for a second..." he said. "There is too much wrong here... I cannot put my finger on it."

"Neither can I..." exclaimed Muraco, excited that finally understood the niggling feeling he had been having in the back of his head since he arrived here. "We need to find what exactly is going on here."

"Our priority has to be finding a way back to the Warrior" responded Yusa, who was more than happy to go along with Muraco's plan. It served him better than sitting here an accepting the reality that was presented to him.

"So... you don't know then?" said Muraco, his tone shifting into almost a depressing beat.

"Know what?"

"I saw the Warrior. It's a complete wreck, just over the ridge from here. It does seem like the ship did indeed crash on this planet."

Yusa looked disappointed at Muraco for a moment and indeed he had expected better of him then this. "Don't believe everything you see... it could very easily be fake..."

There was a small cool summer breeze coming in from the window that helped break up the humidity in the room itself while Muraco considered this. Perhaps Yusa was right and nothing seemed to be the way it appeared. Maybe this could explain the continuous "wrong" feeling that had been so elusive to pin down in the back of his mind.

"So what should we do?" asked Muraco, after a few seconds that felt like an eternity of thoughts within his own mind.

Yusa, ever the scientist took a moment to lay out all the information he was aware of. He wanted to compare Muraco and his own experiences and form a hypothesis. Muraco explained how he had been approached by Counselor Mewsin... well this world's Counselor Mewsin in order to lead some kind of rebellion against Administrator Tempest.

Mewsin blamed Tempest for the crew not attempting to leave this planet, despite having access to the shuttlecraft and became convinced that somehow, the crew of the Atlantis was manipulating him in order to keep the crew here.

"I do find it odd how the various members of the Warrior crew have all apparently aged. Even you and I..." theorised Yusa as he continued to talk, closing the window to make sure that there were no ears listening to their conversation. "...while the crew of the Atlantis. Who should all be long dead since now, have not."

Muraco nodded in agreement. Indeed, that was strange and it may have been one of the causes for why he felt so weird about this place. He had obviously noticed it on a subconscious level and his brain had been trying to tell him for quite some time.

Yusa continued, his voice cutting through Muraco's thoughts like a knife. Maybe this was just what he wanted to hear? "The only consistent viable that we have..." Yusa continued to speak as the professional scientist that he had been on the Warrior. Muraco had become convinced...

This was his Yusa. The one that he had served with for so many years.

"... is that we were both investigating these ruins. Perhaps if we returned, we could uncover some more answers?"

"Get off me!"

Somebody shouted in the street causing Yusa and Muraco to snap out of their thoughts for a moment, Yusa rushing to the window to see what all the commotion was about. He looked to Muraco who rose up from the slightly small chair, being careful not to bang his head on the ceiling and rushed to the door without saying a word.

Muraco quickly followed him into the harsh light of day. His gaze was met with the sight of two officers, still dressed in Starfleet security uniforms, one from the NX era and the other from the Warrior leading out a woman into the street forcibly.

Yusa and Muraco instantly recognised the security officer in the modern Starfleet uniform, both of them caught dumbfounded by seeing the familiar face.

"Strato!" called out Yusa, rushing over to him to see what the scuffle was about, the human protesting loudly as she was dragged out of the house by the NX era security officer who had easily restrained her. Yusa instantly recognising the patch on his arm, a distinctive shark that had been extinct for over two hundred years...

"MACO or Military Assault Command Operations..."

MACO had been a United Earth organisation that had existed during the 2150's, prior to the establishment of the United Federation of Planets. They had been a common sight on many Starfleet vessels of that era, including the Enterprise NX-01. Following the establishment of the Federation, MACO had been disbanded and absorbed into Starfleet with their reputation as an efficient military force becoming a historical footnote.

"Mr Yusa... Mr Muraco..." nodded Strato as watched this woman struggle furiously with her captors, proclaiming her innocence as she was dragged from her home. "I suggest you stand back for your own safety."

"What is going on here?" demanded Muraco, distressed to see a human female treated in this manner. The concept of fair and honest treatment was not lost of him and the brutality of this arrest made him wonder just what kind of justice system existed in Warrior's Rest.

"This woman and her husband are responsible for crimes against the state..." replied Strato with a cold emphasis to his voice. He had changed much from the young officer that Muraco and Yusa had first met on the Warrior.

"Bullshit!" screamed the woman as she was being forced down the street, and forcibly bundled into a waiting shuttle.

Muraco was surprised, this was the first time he had seen a shuttlecraft since he arrived here. Were they all used in this kind of manner? "We must be allowed to leave!"

"Stop it... you are hurting her!" commanded Yusa.

"Administrator Tempest had decreed that it is too dangerous for anyone to attempt to leave the planet." replied Strato coldly. Yusa could tell from his expression, one that he had seen so many times before that he certainly enjoyed having so much control here. "The last rebel shuttle that tried it was crushed as soon as it attempted to leave the atmosphere. Therefore this woman is being taken into custody for her own protection."

"They're lying!" screamed the woman as the interior of the Type 9 Shuttlecraft closed in around her.

The shuttle rear hatch slammed shut behind her as the shuttle prepared to fly, its nacelles blazing to life in a whirl of blue and red.

"We cannot afford to lose good shuttles because of crazy escape attempts..." Strato turned to his two former crew members. Finally it had hit home to Muraco why access to the shuttles was so restricted and why the Warrior crew had not continued to try to escape over the last nine years.

They had not be permitted to leave.