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INT. HALLS OF THE USS CHARON
Michael’s gut turns. A traitor, like the rest of her.
The rest of her, plural. Michael Burnham, the xenoanthropologist. Michael Burnham, who bathes in red paint. Michael Burnham who, in her own universe, used that paint to join the rose garden. Who told herself it didn’t look like blood.
Michael Burnham who, in this universe, did not care.
Philippa’s guards watch Michael close, as though she may bite, as though she may shuffle them away in a sleight of hand which crowns herself queen. Only the finest for she who falls through the looking glass, into this hellish eat-or-be-eaten ever after, and feasts on Kelpien.
She and Saru traded barbs on the USS Shenzhou; tangled thorns on Pahvo. But even here, in this dark universe, his unstained petals gleam a virginal white — and mark him as prey. He is within the garden gate, yet stands alone.
His kin will not devour her from the inside out, like they should. They are not built for betrayal.
Michael is.
She is its bedfellow; its offspring. Brought to love thine enemy by Ash; to abdicate her very self by Philippa. And now, stripped of rank, uniform, red paint — brought to the gallows.
But to submit to Charon would be to betray Discovery; to set Michael’s ship and its crew forever adrift in his poisoned river Styx. From the palace, only Michael can lower a drawbridge between its banks. And she will. She must.
INT. THRONE ROOM — Enter MICHAEL
(A gob of ganglia is caught between two molars. She tries to tongue it out; suppresses a gag.)
Within Discovery blooms a garden for which the Queen would trample her own. Discovery’s spores foster microbiological culture, not xenoanthropological…
But — perhaps — treachery is not Michael’s sole constituent.
Perhaps Michael Burnham is of the mycelial network, too. Her veins, overpasses in its cosmic highway; her brain, a nucleus for its history, and how to steer atop it.
And the Queen will not sever that head which is its home.