Chapter Text
The first official symptom was sweat.
Not the clean exertion of a workout or an overheated Jefferies tube, but a persistent dampness that clung to skin no matter how low Environmental Controls were set. Crew members tugged at collars, rolled sleeves past regulation, wiped their palms on duty pants with distracted irritation.
By the time the Doctor noticed the pattern, it was already everywhere.
Janeway noticed it when she caught herself loosening her turtleneck in the middle of the bridge—two fingers slipping beneath the fabric at her throat, seeking air like a reflex. She froze, acutely aware of Chakotay’s presence at her side, the way his gaze flicked toward her hand and then away again, deliberately.
She dropped her arm, heat blooming across her cheeks.
The temperature reading on her console insisted everything was normal.
It wasn’t.
She could feel it pooling beneath her skin, a low simmer that had nothing to do with the air. Her uniform felt heavier by the hour, woolen and suffocating. Sweat traced an unfamiliar path down her spine. Her pulse refused to slow.
“Report,” she said, and her voice sounded thicker than usual.
“Deck Five reports two more crew relieved from duty,” Tuvok said. “Disorientation. Elevated heart rate. Excessive perspiration.”
“Another fainting spell in Engineering,” B’Elanna added from her work station, scowling. “No injuries. Yet.”
Janeway nodded, but the word yet echoed unpleasantly. The bridge lights seemed too bright. The hum of the warp core threaded itself through her nerves.
She wanted—irrationally—to sit down.
Instead, she forced herself to stand straighter, shoulders tight, jaw clenched.
Chakotay shifted beside her. He’d removed his jacket sometime in the last hour; she hadn’t noticed when, only that the sight of his bare forearms now kept pulling at her attention like static. A sheen of sweat darkened the fabric at his collarbone.
He caught her looking. Neither of them spoke.
Sickbay overflowed by mid-shift.
Not with emergencies—no blood, no burns—but with crew who couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t cool down, couldn’t explain why their skin felt too tight or why they couldn’t stop smiling and trembling at the same time.
The Doctor paced, baffled, tricorder sweeping again and again over bodies that insisted on abnormality while producing nothing diagnostic.
Soon even the Captain was in Sick Bay.
“Your temperature is elevated,” he said for the fifth time, frustration creeping into his voice. “But your immune response is negligible. Your endorphin levels, however—”
“Doctor,” Janeway said, gripping the edge of the biobed as another wave of warmth crested through her abdomen and chest, dizzying and strange. “If you don’t know what it is, tell me what it’s doing.”
He hesitated. “It appears to be… stimulating. Inconsistent circadian rhythms. Heightened emotional responses. Mild euphoria followed by irritability.”
“Mild,” B’Elanna muttered from the next bed, peeling her jacket off and tossing it aside like it offended her personally. “Feels like my nerves are on fire.”
Janeway swallowed hard. She’d already removed her own jacket, draping it over a chair she didn’t remember walking to. The turtleneck followed soon after—unthinkable on a normal day, but now she couldn’t tolerate the way it trapped heat at her throat. Cool air kissed her skin and she shivered despite herself.
The Doctor noticed but said nothing.
Quarantine protocols failed within hours.
Crew assigned to separate decks kept wandering—drawn by nothing they could articulate. Conversations stretched too long. Hands brushed and lingered. Tempers flared and then dissolved into laughter that came too fast, too loud, like a release valve blown open.
Senior staff briefings were postponed “until further notice.”
Officially, it was because too many department heads were indisposed at once.
Unofficially, no one trusted themselves in a room together.
Janeway knew she should order one anyway. Knew command required visibility, cohesion. But every time she imagined sitting at that table—Chakotay across from her, Tuvok watching too closely, B’Elanna vibrating with barely contained aggression—her chest tightened and the heat surged until thinking became… slippery.
So she stayed in her ready room as the Doctor suggested, door sealed, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled up past the elbow like she was someone else entirely.
The starfield outside the viewport shifted and blurred.
She pressed her palms to the cool glass, breathing slowly, sweat slicking her skin. Her thoughts kept circling the same points, never quite landing. She felt good in an alarming way—light, almost buoyant—until the feeling tipped suddenly into something sharp and restless.
A chime cut through the haze.
“Come in,” she said, too quickly.
Chakotay stepped inside and stopped just at the threshold.
He’d shed his jacket entirely now, turtleneck clinging darkly at the collar and down the spine. His cheeks were flushed, eyes bright in a way that set off quiet alarms in her head.
“Sorry,” he said. “I should’ve—”
“No,” Janeway interrupted. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t.
The room felt smaller with him in it. Warmer. The air between them hummed, charged and heavy. Janeway became acutely aware of the sweat at the nape of her neck, the way her skin seemed tuned too finely to every movement he made.
“You’re not answering hails,” he said gently. “The Doctor wanted—”
“I know what the Doctor wants.” She dragged a hand through her hair, damp strands sticking briefly to her fingers. “Everyone wants something.”
He took a step closer before either of them seemed to realize it had happened. Stopped. Hesitated.
“You should rest,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“So should you.”
A beat.
Chakotay laughed softly, a sound edged with something like disbelief. “I tried.”
The silence stretched—not empty, but full of sensation. Janeway’s heart pounded hard enough she could feel it in her throat. Sweat traced slow paths down her ribs. Beneath it all, a persistent, almost giddy warmth curled low in her abdomen, unsettling in its insistence.
“I can’t think straight,” she admitted, surprising herself with the truth. “Everything feels… louder.”
His gaze flicked to her mouth and away again. “Yeah.”
The ship shuddered faintly as power fluctuated somewhere deep in its guts. Neither of them moved. The moment balanced on a knife-edge, taut and unbearable.
Janeway broke first—stepping back, turning away, gripping the edge of her desk like it was the only solid thing left.
“This isn’t sustainable,” she said. “The crew—”
“I know,” Chakotay replied, just as quietly. He didn’t retreat. “But running protocols and giving commands won’t fix it if we don’t understand what’s happening.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. The fever pulsed again, bringing with it a dizzy rush of warmth and an almost inappropriate surge of well-being that made her want to laugh or cry or do something reckless.
When she turned back, he was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him.
Neither of them mentioned it.
They stood there, sweating, unsteady, caught in the gravity of something unnamed and growing—while elsewhere on Voyager, the crew drifted through overheated corridors, quarantine lines blurred, and the ship carried them all forward with a sickness that felt, disturbingly, like desire.
And no one knew how to stop it.
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