Lingering Tendrils (Part 1 of 3)

Posted on 21 Aug 2023 @ 7:10pm by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Petty Officer 1st Class Ember Locksley

3,603 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 3, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 11, 1850 hrs

[ON]

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius had woken up in sickbay not too long ago. Approximately fifteen minutes if his internal clock was still correct. He'd surveyed his surroundings the same as the last time - before he'd been sedated again - but the medical bay didn't look any different than it had in the past. There were no dark red organic tendrils oozing out of the walls, waiting to take him to the other side. No abominable creatures projecting ear-curtling cries of pain and torture.

Sickbay was...quiet. Too quiet and too sterile. Darius fidgeted on his biobed while the remainder of his sedative wore off. He didn't want to be here. It was a sign of weakness for most former-Marines to spend extended periods within a room like this. He needed to get back into action. Pilot a shuttle. Perform some maintenance. Kill some Jem'Hadar. Save his crew from the horrors of the cold station. He still didn't feel right inside.

"You alright for a visitor?" a familiar voice as a familiar person entered the room. Sofie Ullswater, conscious and breathing, despite the best efforts of the cold station. She approached slowly, not wanting to startle. There was a warm concerned look on her face but she couldn't completely hide that she was still in pain. "If it isn't a good time I can come back later."

He turned his head to looked at the woman's face. The familiar plain science officer's features seemed hardened for some reason. More rugged. Yet her grey eyes appeared soft. "Ullswater..." he acknowledged with a sigh. "You're still alive."

"And so, it seems, are you. Somehow we both are." The words weren't all that confident. Sofie shook her head, she was barely managing to get her head around everything that was going on. Being back in the real world somehow didn't feel nearly as real as what had come before. "I heard they had to sedate you, that you weren't doing great. What was that about?" She asked as she reached the bedside, and then quickly added "Mind if I sit?"

Lamar scooted his legs and butt over to the side of the biobed, allowing the science officer a place to rest. "They sedated me, but...now I can't remember all of it," he confessed to her. "Part of me feels like this is wrong, but now I can see we're here on Galileo again." The biobed monitor suddenly displayed a spiking heartbeat before it returned to normal. "What happened to me? To us?"

"I don't know." Sofie could see in Lamar's face that he was looking for answers, answers she didn't have. Her answer hung in the air for a moment of silence. She wished she knew, wished she had something to say that could help the pair of them make sense of this nightmare. It didn't make sense though, nightmares never do. She sat, grateful just to be close by someone. "I can still feel it. It's still there inside me." She didn't even try to hide the fear in her voice.

He, too, could feel it as well. Sometimes it presented as a surge of sudden anxiety mixed with terror. Sometimes as a strange yearning to return to the cold station. Even now, laying next to the science officer, his fingers subconsciously fidgeted. "It's like a parasite. I can't control it or rip it out," he said with frustration. "This...is Galileo, right? I'm not being tricked again?"

Another question that she didn't have the answer to, at least not for certain. "I'm pretty sure I'm real, and I think you are too." It was somehow less than a week since the two of them had sat together at breakfast, before that Sofie had hardly ever spoken with Lamar and now, after all the pain and the chaos and the darkness, he was the one person on this ship she felt she could trust. "I don't remember us getting back to the ship. Do you?"

"I think I was on one of the shuttles when we evac'd," he tried to recall. He pulled his ripped uniform down to show her his torso wound which had been mostly repaired. "I remember it got me. That big one. Then I was trying to fly back through the asteroid field....then I woke up back here. Nobody told me what happened in between," he said in a lowered voice as if scared to discuss it out loud.

"You got hurt?" she was trying to piece together what he was saying, from what she did remember it was hard to say what was real and what wasn't. "In the transporter room..." She shuddered as she remembered that sound of metal scraping metal, she couldn't recall what it all meant though, just that that sound terrified her. The room was starting to feel hot again.

He waved his arm somewhat gingerly at her, feeling the uncomfortable tightness in the muscles, ligaments and tendons in his upper torso where he'd been impaled. "It's nothing. I'll be fine." Such was the way of the now-defunct SFMC and its warrior-like cultism. Some habits died hard for Lamar. He though back to the transporter room. He couldn't remember anything about it. "You've got to fill in the gaps for me, Ullswater...."

"I don't remember what happened." There was a urgency in her voice now. She stared down at her hands, the pain was coming back as bad as ever "I can't fill in those gaps for you. And if I don't know and you don't know..." She could smell the coffee that had scalded her hands, she coughed as hot smoke filled air collected her throat. "We're still there, this isn't real."

The heart monitor at the back of his biobed started spiking again. He started to realize that his lingering skepticism and intuition was probably correct. They weren't on Galileo. He leaned up and close to her ear before speaking quietly yet firmly. "I've known it all along. We need to get out of here. Before they put us - me - under again."

"The others, Blake, Warraquim, Vansen, they haven't realised." Sometimes fear drives us to action. The crew was in danger and Sofie knew that she and Lamar were the only two people capable of saving the mission, and her fear was telling her just what they needed to do. "So we need to act quickly before we lose them. The two scientists are being kept in the brig. Its their fault that this all happened and the telepathic one she's controlling it, she tried to kill us." Superfluous, too far gone, I can hear your murder thoughts the words echoed through the ensign's head.

Sofie's grey eyes, filled with certainty and desperate intent, darted over to Lamar's. "Something has to be done. We have to do it."

He lowered his voice to barely above a whisper while bringing one of his hands in a cup around his mouth to shield his words from the medical officer who was lurking in the nearby office. "The armory's here on Deck 3. Same for the brig." He flicked his eyes to the nearby corner of sickbay where a small, concealed Jefferies tube was located. "It's all on this same deck. But we can sprint there faster than crawling," he strategized. Escaping through the main door in sickbay would give them a head start, but also make them vulnerable to any other crew member-creatures that might be lurking in disguise. "What do you think?"

"Remember when they came from the walls?" How could either of them forget? "It wouldn't be safe in the tubes." The ensign screwed her eyes shut and massaged her forehead as she pondered the options. Maybe the fear was giving her clarity of purpose but clarity of thought was still a way off. "Nobody has confronted me or stopped me in the corridors. Perhaps it still thinks that we've fallen for the illusion which means it's going to keep up the show. We'll get to make the first move, so maybe we can just walk down to the armoury as if it's any other day on Galileo. We just have to make it look like we don't know."

Nodding slowly to her, he non-verbally agreed with her suggestion. He wasn't an expert at deception but the thought of being back in one of those confined tubes with no escape route made the hairs on his dark skin stand up. "Okay. So we get some weapons...maybe they work or maybe it's still an illusion? Then where do we go...a transporter room? The shuttlebay? How do we get out of here?" The first part of their plan seemed sound, but it needed an objective. An endgame.

"We deal with her and the illusion falls apart, we're back on the Cold Station." Even knowing that this was all an illusion the thought of going back to that place almost made her want to stay here. This fake Galileo hadn't got all that horrific yet. "Then we have the rest of the away team again, we make our way back to the shuttles and we find the real Galileo."

"So..." Lamar started thinking with a bit more strategy, "we should go to Engineering then? If we can blow up this illusion's power core, then it'll revert us back to the cold station where we can find the the other teams. Right?" The logic seemed sound in his own mind but Ullswater was the scientist. She had a much better grasp on the intricacies of whatever hellscape they were dealing.

"Alright, we start at the armoury, find some weapons, then to the brig to take care of the scientists and we have the warp core as our exit strategy. It's a plan, I like it." It was a plan, a real plan, a we're about to save the day and everyone will love us kind of plan. Sofie stood up and offered her compatriot a hand up "You ready for this?"

He nodded then took her offered hand and grunted as his legs swung off the bed. There was a sudden blood-rush to his head which made him momentarily dizzy, and he grabbed on to Ullswater's shoulder to steady himself while trying his best to appear 'natural'. "Oh, Ullswater," he said somewhat loudly, "Thanks. I am so hungry. I haven't eaten a good meal in days. And you," his eyes flicked back and forth nervously, "cooked for me in your quarters."

Ullswater watched him stumble a bit and instinctively moved a hand to support. It gave her pause for a moment: was Darius up to this? Of course he was. This was do or die. She steeled herself with the words Commander Blake had spoken maybe only half an hour before: Be your best. I don't believe for a second that sitting down and dying is your best, Ensign. "Its okay, really, something I'd do for any friend in this situation." In her mind she willed the ex-marine to please have a bit more subtlety, with a bit of a glare she offered him an arm for support and tried to lead by example with a more conversational tone "Come on, let's get you over there."

He followed her lead as she led him to sickbay's exit doors. Shifting his large arm around her shoulder, he squeezed the side of her bicep to let her know he was secretly engaged and pursing their objective. He'd noticed her expression...maybe this time he wouldn't talk as much. "After you," he mumbled.

Sofie's face turned to satisfaction. If they could trust each other to each do their parts of this they were going to get through. "Don't worry about it, just leave this to me. You've been through a lot." Really meaning I'll do the talking. As they reached the doors she took a glance over to the Sickbay office just in case. Locksley, one of the ship's doctors or at least a replica constructed by the Cold Station monster, was sitting there. Sofie's first instinct was to call out but right now perhaps it was best to just avoid interaction if possible.

The movement caught Ember's eye though and she lowered the screen of her research and made her way over to the pair. "And where would you be heading?" she asked with a small, bemused smile as she folded her arms and looked between them...and then up and down their bodies, her quick eyes taking in the state of them.

Ullswater smiled, that confident calm well practiced smile that had got her out of much stickier situations that this many times before "We're just going to grab some food, thinking we'll head to a more relaxed environment and talk. This away mission, it was a stressful one." She gave Darius a pat on the head, an almost comical gesture given how much taller he was than her "Don't worry, I'll bring him back in one piece."

"It's a nice idea, but Lamar hasn't been discharged yet," Ember gave a half smile, as if to say 'that's the way the cookie crumbles'. "Why don't you go and get some food for the two of you and bring it back here for him. There's enough space for now."

"It will be fine Doctor Locksley." Remember, she isn't a real person. Ullswater could feel her heart beating faster and the pain in her hands getting worse as a morsel of fear churned up to the surface, but she kept her smile and her voice remained calm "Look, it will be good to stretch our legs and maybe we want to get a bit of privacy after everything we've been through. Really, what's the harm?"

"Well, potentially quite a bit," Ember pointed out lightly, shaking her head with a small smile as she looked to Lamar. "Come on, Spartan," she motioned to him, her eyes sparkling with a note of amusement. "Back to bed. I won't even make you lie down, but you're still under observation and you need to stay here until you're discharged."

The fear was gripping tighter at Ullswater's throat. They could try to make a run for it but then the creature would realise that they knew what was going on. They needed to keep up the deception as long as possible to give them time to get to the brig, but that meant taking a route that neither her not Darius wanted to take. "I'm sorry Doctor, you're right, of course. If anything were to happen then..." She shook her head apologetically "I'll bring some food, we can have it here."

Turning her attention to Lamar the ensign got up on her tip toes and gave him a hug. She held him tight for a moment, despite the fact it was a ruse it had been a while since she'd had a hug and it meant something. Then she leaned with a whisper "Go through the tubes, I'll meet you on Deck 3." She pulled away and looking between the two of them gave them both a cheery smile "I won't be long, alright?"

Darius returned the hug, tightly around her back and shoulders before she pulled away from his arms. She was all he had right now and he didn't want to lose her. He swallowed an uncomfortable lump in his throat at the prospect of dying here with her on the station and being transformed into whatever the creatures now were. Inhuman demons. "I'll be waiting," he managed with a weak smile, looking into her gray eyes one last time. He turned away from her and back to the projection of Ember. "Fine, I'm going," he feigned capitulation then walked back to the biobed where he sighed and sat back down on the padded bed.

Ullswater knew this wasn't the best plan but it was going to have to work. The thought of the Jefferies tubes filled her with dread and as she walked out of sickbay she could only imagine that Lamar was not at all keen on the idea either.

Ember looked over to where Lamar had retreated, giving a half smile of apology, knowing it was no fun to be stuck in Sickbay. "How are you feeling?" she asked as she moved over to his bedside, watching him with genuine empathy. Usually, they'd have had the counsellor see him after the distress he'd been in when he'd come round, but with the counsellor still recovering from the away mission himself, all she could do was try and keep him calm.

Darius scratched the course dark hair on his head while avoiding eye contact with the cold station's projection of his most recent love interest. "Yeah...I'm okay. I'm, you know, trying to enjoy some time with my friend." His eyes discreetly shifted to view the nearby Jefferies tube which was the escape route Ullswater had directed him to. Then he looked back to Ember and her pretty features before giving a placating and deceptive smile. "Can you just let me go with the ensign? Please...Ember?" He spoke her name while trying to suppress the resurfacing memories the two of them had created on the holodeck just days ago.

"Not yet," she replied softly, shaking her head with regret as she glanced to check his readings. "You really haven't been very well, so we need to keep an eye on you for a bit longer. I know it's pretty rotten, but you're welcome to have visitors to help pass the time. I'll even play a game of I Spy with you," she teased gently.

He inhaled through his nose then let out a semi-measured breath. Again he glanced to the Jefferies tube then back to the fake woman speaking to him. "I need to go, now. Ullswater cooked for me in her quarters." His voice was now firm and dictative instead of passive. "I need to be with her. You know how it goes, right?" Time was ticking and the longer he was delayed, the more Sofie was in jeopardy without him.

"Easy tiger, she said she was coming back here with some food for you both," Ember reassured with a knowing look, folding her arms as she chuckled softly. "I know it's not exactly candlelight and roses, but I'm sure you can still have a nice time. Now, how's your chest feeling, do you need more painkillers?"

Darius was conflicted. On the one hand, he didn't want to hurt Ember or any form of her likeness. He knew she was not the real Ember he'd come to know yet instead a simple projection created by the cold station which copied her likeness. Most likely from his own brain when he'd be 'corrupted'. This sickbay...the entire simulation of Galileo, wasn't real, he repeated to himself. Ullswater would be in danger soon without him. She was real.

The conn officer stared the attractive medical officer in her green eyes one last time. "I'm sorry Ember, or whatever you are. I have to go." He rose to his feet from the biobed then stepped close to her before briefly closing his eyes. He was about to commit a terrible yet necessary act. He hoped whatever higher power or god which existed would forgive him.

Darius planted his right foot to the rear then squared up and cocked his fist. With a swift and savage motion, he punched Locksley square in her jaw with a compact straight right. The crack of his knuckles impacting her mandible echoed across the sickbay. The woman's head violently snapped to the side from the impact and a spray of saliva burst from her mouth.

Without any real talent or inclination for fighting, Ember hadn't been able to anticipate what he'd had in mind, let alone defend against it. Caught entirely off guard, the well placed hit connected so hard that she was literally knocked off her feet and was unconscious as she hit the deck.

Looking down at what he'd just done, Lamar's hands clasped the sides of his head. Shit! he exclaimed to himself, seeing the medical officer on the floor unconscious. Possibly dead. He knew his own strength and the power he'd put into that punch... Cold station projection or not, Ember hadn't deserved that. F--k, he cursed to himself again before looking around the sickbay to see if there was anything of use he could find. Aside from a multitude of hyposprays which he possessed only basic knowledge of, there were no weapons or instruments to help him and Sofie in their quest to return to the real Galileo.

The doors to sickbay hissed open then shut behind Lamar as he exited the medical bay. He glanced left then right down the corridor and observed a vacant pathway to the armory and security office less than twenty meters away. That was where Ullswater was supposed to be. Putting a genial smile on his face, he slowly walked down the corridor and into the armory alcove. When he turned the corner, he suddenly came face-to-face with Ullswater again.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

Ensign Sofie Ullswater
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

Dr. Ember Locksley
Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

CWO3 Lamar Darius
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Tarin]

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