Expelled and Evacuated

Posted on 04 Nov 2013 @ 8:18pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & EMH Mark X-C "Shirley" & Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm

3,196 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 04 - Exodus
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 06 - 1420 hrs

[ON]

As Lilou's wounded body was turned to particles to hurtle through space, Zaren had one final thought. Rather, Selik did. The Borg had done a mediocre job of putting Them back together again and They had begun splintered and only become more discombobulated with the various attempts to drain them of memories... A ride through a transporter might just be the last thing they ever did. Cheerful. Very cheerful...

The next thing she knew she was on something hard in a bright room. Too much light. Too white. Too much noise. She rolled clear and huddled to the side of the thing, clutching her stomach and exhaling sharply at the pain that twist and duck had elicited. She couldn't recognize anything; what was the name of the thing she'd landed on? Where was she landing from? Why were her hands so small? Who was she? Was she a she at all or was that a latent memory like the taste of copper? Her face was warm and wet, something was dripping into her mouth, and her heart was doing its best to claw its way out of her chest by sheer force of will.

With Galileo's crew still so severely depleted from their recent battles, the EMH had been left operational now for a substantial period of time - nothing that it's program couldn't cope with, but not exactly the frequency of use that Starfleet had originally intended.

As the transport cycle completed, the hologram waived to a pair of orderlies to move the patient onto a biobed, following behind before picking up a tricorder and beginning to pass it over the Trill hybrid's body.

Forms without faces reacted, moving towards and away from her like pieces on a chessboard. Words she couldn't recognize tumbled from their mouths. The ground refused to stay still, so she plastered herself to the thing she'd fallen from. There was a noise she couldn't stand on repeat, right next to her ear, some kind of plaintive half-screaming panting gasp that repeated again and again. One of the faceless things came near and she scrambled back, like a crab - what's a crab? - fumbling desperately for something to use as a weapon. She found something small, soft and hard - how could something be soft and hard at the same time? - and brandished it. Still the sound wouldn't stop. Stop. Stop. She couldn't think. Couldn't focus. There was something she was supposed to be doing. Hiding? No. They'd found her. Who?

Her toes curled as she physically experienced the memory of the roar of electricity through her brain, veins, nerves... Why? Where had they taken her? "Anomaly. Stream core blueberries," she said, shaking. "Twin coupling scruple tea Kipling flute? Frogs go one red. Anomaly."

"The universal translator must be having an interesting time..." The hologram muttered as the readings from the tricorder began to be absorbed by it's optical subroutines. There were several anomalies in the Lieutenant compared to her last medical, DNA sequences had been altered, severe blood loss, the residual signature of some inactive nanoprobes, but most shockingly, there was a symbiont present.

"Lieutenant Peers - I am this vessel's Emergency Medical Hologram - you are aboard the Galileo - please remain calm whilst I see to your injuries."

She could hear the words, but they were muddled, discombobulated as though spoken through some kind of bubbling stew. Still, there was something in the tone that was non-threatening, even if his words made no sense. "Anomaly," she repeated slowly, blinking hard to try to clear the green cross-haze and allow her to see the face coming towards her. "Plasma truce drudgery cake. Frogs go one red."

The EMH cocked it's head at her inability to form sentences correctly - it took only a few moments for the hologram to access the Starfleet Medical database and cross reference with the various institutes on the Trill homeworld to come up with a diagnosis.

"Lieutenant I understand this must be frightening for you - please do not be alarmed. It seems that the implantation of your symbiont has been done slightly less carefully than it should have been. I need to stabilise your isoboramine levels...the aphasia should wear off soon."

Nodding to the orderlies to back away, the hologram tapped the controls at the side of the biobed and deployed the sensor and equipment laden semi-lunar board from within the medical unit's chassis, watching as they clipped into place above the Lieutenant and began the process of analysing her body.

"Isoboramine levels are at 48%....administering intravenous isoboramine - 10mg every 15 seconds."

She shivered as the drug was released into her bloodstream. The quaking of her hands calmed almost immediately and the rushing sound of her ears eased somewhat. Relieved, she licked her lips, "Coffee orange robust-" A flash of faces, foreign hands manipulating medical equipment as she guided them... she was a doctor? Some kind of doctor. That didn't seem right either. Something was wrong with her stomach? Had been wrong? We are Zaren, she'd said. "Go noise Zaren," she murmured as the memories began to surge forward, wave by wave, dousing her in the experiences of five lives lived, hundreds of years of wars and loves and struggles and hopes... she swam through them, dizzyingly at first just trying to remain afloat, but it became easier. The drugs, whatever they were, were working. The Cube. She'd been abducted. Yes. And escaped. Was rescued. They were still there. "Bread wince!" she remembered with a jolt. "Fresh washing yellow-" No, she'd told them about the child, she remembered now. They knew. Markos, they'd said. Markos was looking for the child, and Barel. And the others. Good. She lapsed back against the biobed with a grumble, "Useless. All fork bumblebees and I miss out on all the graffiti." She rubbed a hand over her face and stopped as she felt the... attachment. Panic spurred through her system and was immediately wrenched away, tackled as though to the ground and shoved back. No time for panicking. What is, is. Just stay still and let the experts do what they can. "Nice sunset for a surgery, right?"

The EMH frowned as he watched the isoboramine levels rise, albeit slower than he might have wanted. Touching a few more controls he increased the level of isoboramine administration.

Reaching back to the instrument tray, the hologram picked up a neural stimulator, and attached it to the right temple of the engineer's head.

"Miss Peers I am going to try and stabilise your brain functions - just keep talking, I need to be able to see the effects on your aphasia of the change in alpha wave activity."

"I don't hangglide that's my mousse any more," she said thoughtfully. Why was it that every time she was told to talk, she could think of nothing to say? "I can't window- I can't window the cheeses and there's something- they-" The drugs felt like cool streams running just beneath the hot sands of her face. "-did to my eyes. To one of them." She shuddered, not liking the glimpses of pain and that tiny, whirling metal tool in her mind's eye.

"There we go...I can see the problem now. I just need to align your neural frequency to the spectral equivalent of the stimulator and we might be getting somewhere...."

The doors to sickbay swished open and the Orion captain walked in, still feeling a bit woozy but wanting to check on her retrieved crew member. The was much anxiety in her as she approached the biobed, and she politely stopped behind the EMH to not interfere with his work. "How is she?" Lirha inquired.

"Captain? Nice to see you on your feet ma'am but I believe you were assigned light duty and rest by the Chief Medical Officer? Nevertheless....Miss Peers is no longer Miss Peers...I have already taken the liberty of upgrading her personnel file to Lilou Zaren..."

The hologram indicated towards the instrument panel on the biobed which displayed clearly the two sets of life signs within one body, and the isoboramine levels which continued to rise, albeit slowly.

"I think I can solve the mystery of what happened to Zaren's previous host..."

Lilou Zaren?, Lirha incredulously thought. What had happened to Raifi? The realization slowly dawned on her that something must have occurred to the tattooed man causing his body to no longer be able to hold the symbiont. But what? Botched assimilation? Trauma? And why was Zaren now inside of Lilou?

"Previous host...Raifi. Yes, please explain." she quickly nodded, wanting to know what had happened according to the doctor. Was the FNN journalist still alive?

Zaren turned her head so that she could see with her living eye. "He's one of them. I tried to tell Kita and the others, but it's all such a muddle still..." She ran her tongue over her teeth. "I don't know if I managed to say it clearly."

The hologram had been about to start speaking, or at least engage it's verbal subroutines as the enginner spoke over him. Glancing back to the medical readouts the hologram was pleased to see her neurotransmitter levels were back to 77%.

"Indeed...I am afraid the symbiont shows trauma consistent with a rather speedy and inconsiderate removal and implantation process. It's a wonder either the lieutenant or the symbiont survived at all. Luckily my database includes all relevant medical texts from the Trill Symbiont Commission so there should be no lasting damage."

Lirha did her best to process all of the information being told to her. Lilou had just informed her that Raifi was...assimilated? At least, that was what she had interpreted from her statement. Her stomach crunched with pain, remembering his fun and extroverted personality and the chat they had had in the mess hall not too long ago. It deeply saddened her to hear of his plight, but she also hoped the rescue team she had sent would soon be able to deposit him in sickbay as well.

"I understand," she said softly to Lilou, trying to let her know she had not forgotten about her previous host. It was very strange talking to both the symbiont as well as the person, especially with Peers who now apparently had a joint consciousness with Zaren.

Lirha turned her attention to the EMH and listened to his expert diagnosis. "That means she and the symbiont will recover?" she asked hopefully, not the most medically knowledgeable person on the ship. "She is half-Human, I believe...will she be able to sustain Zaren?" she wondered out loud, glancing back and forth between Lilou and the doctor.

The hologram looked a little troubled for a moment, if he had been human it would have looked something like a mix of shock and distraction. Tapping a control on the biobed, the EMH brought up a strand of DNA.

"The Borg have performed a feat of genetic engineering beyond anything I have ever seen, they have effectively inhibited the human elements of her genome that would prevent a stable bonding and enhanced those areas of her Trill DNA that is beneficial - in effect they have made her more Trill."

"Very kind of them," Zaren murmured with a half smile. "I'm not sure we could manage another change of scenery at this time. How did you figure out how to transport past their shields? My rescuers mentioned something about some kind of cloak?"

The concept of becoming more Trill was fascinating, but Lirha hardly had time to appreciate the medical value of such a procedure. Instead, she was still concerned with Lilou and Raifi's well being. Stepping around to the other side of the biobed, she laid a green hand gently on the woman's shoulder and looked down at her. There were what looked like burn marks around her temples as well as a large Borg optical implant which appeared to replace her left eye. Splotches of dried blood could be seen on her hands, and though Lirha could not see beneath the bed's scanning board, she assumed the sight was not pretty. It pained her to see her engineer like this, and she couldn't help but feel a strong sense of guilt and responsibility.

"Our engineers managed to isolate the cube's internal security grid reset cycle and mask our transporter signatures using radiation feedback dispersal," she answered Zaren in regards to the beaming process. "Our teams are using a modified bio-signature cloak which Commander Holliday was developing before he was captured. If they managed to rescue you...then I assume it is working."

"Clever," Zaren murmured. They'd stopped the bleeding, why did she still feel so bloody awful? "Wait- Commander Holliday... Captain, they assimilated him. That means the drones on the cube know everything he did going in."

Lirha slowly nodded in agreement. The thought had crossed her mind while first looking over the bio-cloak's schematics in her quarters. "Indeed. And most likely the aliens on the surface, if they are able to control the Borg as they have demonstrated," she replied. "Fortunately, our engineers were able to take the basic concept and improve upon it, so while the idea might be common knowledge to the drones, the actual implementation is unique." She grinned at her own comment, remembering that uniqueness was the Borg's Achilles' heel.

"How are you feeling?" Lirha changed the subject, more concerned for Lilou's well-being at the moment than the intricacies of the technological device.

"I-" It was an interesting question and considering it was spoken outside of normal social interaction, Zaren tilted her head to the side and actually considered what the real answer might be. How was she feeling? She could feel her fingers and toes again. There was no more blood pouring out of her. And while she still could not see straight, she no longer felt as though she were swimming through a sea of consciousness. She was frustrated by her state of weakness and an inner battle raged over whether she ought to feel shame over her inability to contribute to the battle still going on or whether she ought simply to relax into recovery and allow those who were in the field to be there with her blessing and good wishes. Strangely, the latter won out. She was curious over the changes the Borg had accomplished in her body, yearning to read detailed assessments to understand how they had accomplished the feat. She was curious over the exact details of how the cloaking had been accomplished, too, and which engineers had expanded upon the plans Holliday had left. And- aliens on the surface? Controlling the Borg? She was grieving that even now Raifi was trapped, operating without singular will, as a puppet of the Borg. She worried for the men who had rescued her. She longed to throw herself headlong into battle to soothe the rage that still simmered within her over all that had happened to her. "I am Zaren," she said with a wrinkled brow. It was the most expedient answer she could think of, but she quickly realized that no one else could understand what all that meant. "I yearn to be whole and well so that I might return to duty as quickly as possible." She knew, of course, that that might be impossible. She was no longer Lilou Peers. No longer a Lieutenant. By Federation law, she was an entirely new person - a fact that was true and right in its own way, but sorely inconvenient at the moment.

The captain looked up at the EMH and gave him a knowing look which conveyed her desire for Zaren to stay in sickbay for a while longer to recover. Lirha could sympathize with wanting to return to duty as she herself had done recently after her reversed assimilation, but at the moment, Lilou appeared to have a least a couple days of recovery ahead of her. And the sight of that large Borg eye implant made her shudder.

"I understand," she sincerely replied in a quiet voice. "Our doctors will tend to you and have you back on your feet very soon. But for now, I would like you to rest and try to not worry." It was asking a lot to not be concerned, Lirha knew, but it was her best attempt to help Zaren feel relaxed in her current state.

Zaren nodded. "I'll go mad if I just lay here. I've had too much time the last couple days to stew in too many thoughts and memories. Give me something to do, Lirha. Some task. Even if it's the most monotonous thing on this ship. I need to be of use." She cleared her throat, "Plus, the last time I was laid up in a sickbay, I nearly went mad. Not the best memories."

It was a very strange experience for Lirha, talking to Lilou and realizing she was also speaking to Zaren at the same time. Two very different personalities from her experience, yet they now had seemed to combine themselves into one individual. She could sense both Raifi's pleasant enthusiasm and extroversion as well as Lilou's quietness and introversion.

"Well...maybe something light for you to start off with?" she tentatively agreed. "Perhaps I could give you a PADD and you could organize my holo-film collection? I have quite a large library and can never seem to find the movies I enjoy when I go looking." She smiled and tried to keep the mood a little less severe than it already was.

"Great," the Trill trilled. "Yes. Anything. Hey," she rested her hand on Lirha's arm. "Thanks, for coming to see me. If there's anything I can do to help from this biobed... well. You know where I'll be."

Reaching down with her own green hand and gently squeezing Lilou's, Lirha nodded in agreement. "I am happy to see you alive and well. I will leave a PADD with the doctor for you to work on when you get bored," she glanced up at the EMH to make sure it was alright with him, "and I will come visit you again later tonight. Right now, I must return to the bridge to assist our other away teams."

"Yes," Zaren agreed readily. They needed all the help they could get. "We'll pray for them. I will. Keep them in my thoughts." She blinked. "You know what I mean. Best of luck."

Lirha turned to the doctor as she stepped away from the biobed and gave him a concerned look. "Keep me updated on her recovery, please," she requested, then turned on her heels and headed out of sickbay, on her way back to the bridge.

"Of course Captain. Very well Miss Zaren, let's see if we can't realign those neural pathways of yours in record time."

The EMH replied, before picking up a neural probe and returning to his duties.

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

EMH Mk-X
Emergency Medical Hologram
USS Galileo

Lilou Zaren
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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