"It barely scratched me..." Kirk protested. He hadn't quite considered the possibility that his body had been doing anything more than just lying asleep in his room yesterday, although he'd looked himself over before changing into his uniform, and hadn't found any worrisome sign of experimentation. If rearranging his organs was all they wanted with him, they could've done that on pretty much any other night, on pretty much any other occasion he'd passed out cold at the end of the night only to awaken to morning in new clothes, with his bandages changed.

Somehow he didn't think Bones would take this as justification for why Kirk was probably fine. He held up a hand to stop him. "Bones, not that I can blame you for wanting to see me with my shirt off, but I don't think this is the time for it. Anyway, we're not going to learn anything new by hunkering down in our rooms and staying out of—"

Kirk cut himself off at the strange flash of light behind Bones, and blinked in disbelief at the sight of a young boy now simply walking away from a half-dozen dead Landelian insects. And he wasn't the only one. The corridor had filled up with people in the last few minutes — prisoners, like them — and wherever Kirk looked, he could see monsters crawling out of the shadows for them.

And everyone was fighting back with ease.

"Holy shit." He gripped his pipe harder and turned, waiting for one of the creatures to come after them. Oddly enough, they seemed to be ignoring him and Bones. "Is this what the Code Red was about?"