[Flashback] The treasure of the cat kind

[Amir Delion]

If Amir got a coin every time once of them ended up in the other's arms, poisoned with who knows what, and the other had no idea what to do... Well, it wouldn't be a good source of income, but probably enough to pay for drinks they really deserve after that. But it didn't get much easier with time. Whatever they breathed in only acted on cats, but was clearly much more serious than simple catnip sort of drug.
- I'm here! Do you want me to hold your hand? Should I put you down?
There was clearly no point in asking what the heck she was talking about.
Alice didn't hear. She seemed to be kinda conscious, but was completely in her head, and Amir couldn't even understand whether she was in pain or just had a bad trip.
Other cats... Who knows if they felt better, but their reaction was less spectacular. Rimmer seemed to be fully unconscious (at least he was breathing normally), Max kept staring at one point for quite a while
Amir couldn't tell how long it took until the compound started releasing it's hold on cats. Alice looked with somewhat of awareness and finally accepted Amir's hand. Max went out of the stupor, tried to catch some imaginary mouse, fell flat on his stomach and raised his head with an awareness of somebody who at least suspects he isn't a cat. Rimmer sit up with his eyes still closed, they lowered his head on his hands, clearly feeling very dizzy.
"How are you? Does anything hurt?" The question was for everyone, but Amir didn't really hide that he was much more worried about Alice
"You got drugged. I mean, we all, but it didn't do anything to me... Anything I would be aware of, anyway. We also fell into some sort of... I don't really know where we are, really, looks like more than a simple pit trap, but I didn't have time to investigate"
"Fuuuck... I hope it's not what I think it is" - suddenly proclaimed Rimmer without raising his head.
"Huh?"
"There's an incapacitating agent... Thing? I don't know the right term... That works in similar way. It's not lethal and isn't gonna cripple you, so there's that, but it's... Really gonna ruin the next week of your life. I mean, it's synthetic, so I guess plants shouldn't produce it..."
"What it does?"
"About the same as... That, but hopefully not quite as much. Dizziness, coordination problems, also random hallucinations and... Other stuff of this sort."
"We need to get out of here. Get back to the ship, find you an antidote, or just wait it off, then try again, probably with masks or something... I don't really know how to get out of here, though."
"We should move on." - Max sounded as confident as always, but kinda lost at the same time. "It's... I don't quite understand, but it's some sort of a communication. Not AI, more like... A chemically encoded message of a sort. We need it to proceed. We are on the right track"
"You are just hallucinating still"
"Maybe. But... I had my share of interesting plants in uni. There's more to this thing than just that"