STAR TREK - NEMESIS

STAR TREK - NEMESIS *TO BE REVISED WITH MORE DETAILS AT A LATER TIME*
CHAPTER TWO - ENTRAPPED IN THE TURBOLIFT

Early the next morning, Deanna Troi was alone on the turbolift, headed for the bridge.
It had taken her some time, after the incident with Shinzon, to reestablish a sense of mental security. The situation had proved even harder for Will Riker, to know that his own caresses had taken on the feel of a stranger's--to know that his very touch had terrified his own wife. He had worked hto dto deal with his hatred of Shinzon, lest it causes her more pain, but Deanna had insisted he express it. There was no point in trying to hide his emotions, after all; and at last he had admitted to her ruefully: "Here I call myself civilized. But all I want to do is kill him with my own hands for what he and his viceroy did to you."
She'd tried to make a joke out of it: "I like my men a bit primitive." But Will had been too upset to bring himself to smile at her joke.
So Deanna had prepared herself, in case of a second attack; she had been so used to opening herself mentally and emotionally to impressions that she researched and began to practice the old Betazoid techniques for shutting herself off from the thoughts and impressions from others around her. It had comforted her--and, more important, it had comforted her new husband--Will Riker too.
But that morning on the turbolift, she was entirely unprepared for the second and more savage attack from Praetor Shinzon, his voice calling her by her most private name, "Imzadi."
A mere second before, there had been nothing in front of her but empty air and the sleek turbolift doors. Now Shinzon stood before her, spreg hig his arms. There had been no sign of intership beaming--no sound, no materialization effect. This was another case of telepathic projection and violation of her mind.
Deanna's voice was thick, shaking with anger, "You're not here," she said it as much to herself as to him.
"Very logical, Deanna," he said as he moved closer towards her; she pulled away --from his image, she reminded herself--but the turbolift left no room for escape. Shinzon continued, "But your heart doesn't constrain itself to mere logic..."
He slid a palm sensuously down the side of her bare, milky white flesh of her neck, over the curve of her shoulder, then inside of her uniform to her waist. He pulled her to him even closer than she had been previously.
She fought him back mentally, knowing physical contact and effort was meaningless in an encounter like this one. Shinzon was not here, but instead still aboard the Scimitar. The Shinzon that she saw in front of her was not him but a telepathic projection from Shinzon's Reman Viceroy. She was alone in the turbolift...
Yet the image, the feel, of Shinzon embracing her remained doggedly resistant to her effort to fight it off mely aly and still just as solid.
"Your heart longs to discover me. To know me..."
He kissed her full on the lips. The warmth of his breath, the softness of his lips, his skin, brushing up against her, seemed all too real. He drew back, his pale face flushed, his haze eyes bright with desire, "...to leave this all behind and be with me."
Shinzon shoved her roughly up against the wall with a passion verging on brutality.
Deanna realized at once what he intended to do to her, and shouted, physically and mentally, "NO..."
The image of Shinzon did not waver as he spoke to her through the telepathic link, "I can feel your desire, Deanna..." Shinzon breathed.
She closed her eyes. With her entire mind, her entire will power, she resisted the proje ima image of Shinzon in the turbolift with her.
The world around her began to dissolve, to bend, to transmute.
And she was now aboard the Scimitar, where Shinzon knelt before a small flame. She herself knelt across from him--but she was far taller than he. He looked so human, so small, so frail...
She looked down at her hands: huge, white, with elongated fingers that tapered to sharp claws.
Shinzon looked from the flame, "I can feel your hunger to know the Reman ways...the old ways..."
The world metamorphosed back to the turbolift aboard the Enterprise-E; once again, Shinzon pressed against her pinning her between himself and the turbolift bulkhead, whispering: "Don't fear what you desire..."
But she had broken through the barrier once; she had seen her telepathic violator, and knew it to be the Reman Viceroy, and not Shinzon. And so the arms that she forced away, mentally and physically, were not the human's, but the long, ghostly ones of the Reman Viceroy.
The image faded away, abruptly, Deanna was alone in the turbolift again as she sank to her knees trembling.