USS ANUBIS - Mission 24
Darkness Within
Darkness Within
POST INDEX
| Post # | Character | Title |
| 001 | Morningstar | Shadows:... Part 2 The crew faces challenges |
| 002 | Gemma | Escorts Gemma goes to escort Ya'Han |
| 003 | Ya'Han | Darkness Whispers Ya'Han goes to Sickbay and sees Jayson |
| 004 | Lopez | Walking the Line Christie is escorted to see Maya |
| 005 | T'Lara | Clinical Shadows T'Lara performs a medical exam on Ya'Han |
| 006 | Shar'El | The Shape of Shadows Shar'El visits Ya'Han in the brig |
| 007 | Morningstar | The Weight of Shadows Shar'El and Erik discuss the situation |
| 008 | Stark | Echoes of a Stranger Jayson wallows in the Black Hole Lounge |
| 009 | Gemma/Enel | A Lighter Discussion Gemma and Zub meet in the Black Hole Lounge |
| 010 | Val'Bruxa | Arrival Drayk arrives on the ANUBIS |
| 011 | Shar'El | Wait... What? How? Shar'El is informed of Drayk's arrival |
| 012 | Val'Bruxa | First Impressions Shar'El meets Drayk |
| 013 | T'Lara | Unspoken Variables T'Lara performs a medical review of Drayk |
| 014 | Gemma | The Scent Gemma gets a scent of Satella |
| 015 | Morningstar | Introductions and Goals Senior staff situation briefing |
| 016 | Val'Bruxa | Shadow Play Drayk goes to visit Ya'Han nd Christie |
| 017 | Lopez | Too Close to Home Adriana deals with Drayk's aftermath |
| 018 | Val'Bruxa/Enel | Precision or Oblivion Drayk pays a visit to the MACOs |
| 019 | Stark | Shadows at the Edge... Jayson is on the bridge watching Ya'Han |
| 020 | Gemma | Practical Logic Gemma visits Sickbay nd speaks with T'Lara |
| 021 | Val'Bruxa | The Shape of Absence Drayk goes to see the device and speak with Maya |
| 022 | Ya'Han | Inheritance of Shadows In her cell, Ya'Han contemplates her situation |
| 023 | Gemma/Val'Bruxa | The Art of Edges Gemma and Drayk have a face-to-face |
| 024 | Maya | Resonance Echoes Maya thinks about their situation |
| 025 | Shar'El | Calculated Measures Shar'El goes to speak to T'Lara |
| 026 | Val'Bruxa | Predators Do Not Wait Drayk confronts Jayson |
| 027 | Lopez | Fracture Lines Adraiana and Amanda overhear Drayk |
| 028 | Morningstar | At the Edge of Shadows Erik goes to see Ya'Han and Christie |
| Post # | Character | Title |
| 029 | Lopez/Val'Bruxa | The Reckoning Adriana catches up to Drayk |
| 030 | Val'Bruxa | The Shape of Memory Drayk returns to his quarters |
| 031 | Gemma/Enel | Walking Dead Gemma and Zub face a mystery |
| 032 | Stark | Ashes in the Heart Jayson goes back to see Ya'Han |
| 033 | Val'Bruxa/Gemma | Lines in the Dark Gemma confronts Drayk about Satella |
| 034 | Shar'El | Echoes and Imperatives Shar'El meets with Erik |
| 035 | T'Lara | Measured Mercy T'Lara asks Cristhiane for help |
| 036 | Lopez | Shadows Between Us Breakfast at the Lopez' table |
| 037 | Val'Bruxa | The Shape of Divergence Drayk wakes next to Satella |
| 038 | Gemma | Morning Preparations Gemma visits the device |
| 039 | Ya'Han | Let Them Come Ya'Han waits in her cell |
| 040 | Stark/Val'Bruxa | Between Fault Lines Jayson and Drayk deal with an issue |
| 041 | Morningstar | Dark Chess Ya'Han is escorted to the device |
| 042a | Ya'Han | The Touch-Her POV Ya'Han touches the device |
| 042b | Shar'El | The Touch-Other POV Ya'Han touches the device |
| 044 | Smith | The Flicker of Who I Am Christie helps Ya'Han |
| 045 | Val'Bruxa | Design Parameters Drayk speaks with Maya |
| 046 | Maya | Pattern Recognition Maya expands her study of the device |
| 047 | Lopez | Shadows in the Quiet Adriana and Amanda share their views |
| 048 | T'Lara/Val'Bruxa | Dissonance in Silence T'Lara is researching the Acamarian virus |
| 049 | Enel | Shadow Lines Zub and his marines discuss the situation |
| 050 | Gemma | Dark Magic Gemma speaks with Zub |
| 051 | Ya'Han | What We Bring With Us Gemma visits Ya'Han and Christie |
| 052 | Shar'El | Lines That Blur Shar'El goes to see Adriana as requested |
| 053 | Morningstar | A Choice Between Shadows Situational update |
| 054 | Stark | The Space Between Jayson suspects their new mission |
| 055 | Val'Bruxa | Refractions in Alloy Drayk discusses the situation with Ani |
| 056 | Lopez | Refractions in Alloy Erik speaks with Adriana and Amanda |
#########
"Shadows: Past, Present and Future, Part 2"
Previous post: "Shadows: Past, Present and Future, Part 1"
##########
"It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions… but for new questions."
-- Captain Benjamin Sisko
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Corridor
Stardate 45007.0600
Captain's Personal Log: At our current speed, the ANUBIS is just over 24 hours from returning to NEW ALEXANDRIA. The device responsible for the death of the 128,000 colonist on NOVOSYTH is out of the hands of those who would have used it for their own notorious political goals. There are no signs of any pursuers. By every measurable outcome, our mission was a success. And yet, not a single soul aboard celebrates, a silence I unfortunately understand all too well.
--==/\==--
The doors to the brig slid open with their usual soft mechanical sigh, but Captain Morningstar hesitated before stepping through. The corridor had been silent, but it was the kind of silence that held weight, not from emptiness, but from the presence of unspoken truths.
As he walked in, Erik gave a nod to the security officer on duty, who returned the gesture without a word. No report was necessary. Everything inside was as it had been: quiet, still, and uneasy.
Two cells were occupied.
In one, Ya’Han lay curled on her side, her hair a muted black in sleep, a sharp contrast to the brilliant colours the crew had grown accustomed to. There was no sign of rage or corruption, only exhaustion, peace, and a kind of fragile vulnerability Erik had rarely seen from the once fiercely composed Nylaan warrior.
In the other, Christie slept just as deeply, her youthful face barely visible beneath the blanket someone had kindly draped over her. She looked like any other young woman at rest, not someone who had, through fear and instinct, summoned a creature from nightmares and death.
Erik’s jaw tightened as he slowly walked forward, stopping just before the transparent barriers of their cells. No alarms. No flickering lights. No shadows leaking through cracks in reality. Just two individuals; one a Starfleet officer, the other an innocent pulled into the shadows, both resting beneath the crushing weight of decisions no one should have had to make.
**Two murders,** he thought grimly. **And yet no monsters here.**
He knew the reports. He had heard A’Janni’s words, seen Maya’s concern, and weighed the fear in Adriana's account. Ya’Han had not simply completed the mission; she had shattered it. She had summoned the shadows, and with a gesture, ended Daimon Ardax. The same Ardax who had bought her at thirteen, sealing her fate and her hatred in equal measure.
Then there was Christie. She hadn't acted out of vengeance, but desperation. A scream of fear, raw, human, terrified, had brought forth something terrible and protective. A Lokustaar that tore through her would-be killer without hesitation.
Ya'Han summoned death with resolve. Christie, with instinct. Two souls. Two fates. The same nightmare given form.
Erik’s breath caught, just for a moment.
**Do the ends justify the means? And if they do… what happens when those means become a part of who we are?**
He turned slightly, his eyes drifting downward to the floor outside the cells.
Jayson sat cross-legged on the deck, his back resting against the wall across from Ya’Han’s cell. He wasn’t watching her, his eyes were closed, but Erik could tell he wasn’t asleep either. Just there. Present. Loyal. Waiting. Although he understood the reasoning behind the decision that had been made, he hated it, and felt betrayed by it, so he remained silent. Avoiding eye contact with the one who had made the decision.
Cristhiane sat on a bench nearby, her arms wrapped around herself, gaze fixed on her daughter. She looked like a woman torn in half, mother and medic, logic and emotion, trust and fear.
This wasn’t a brig. Not really. It had become something else, a sanctuary, a quarantine, a confession booth where no one spoke.
Erik stepped back, his throat tight. His command had taught him to bear the burden of impossible choices. But standing here now, he didn’t feel like a captain.
He just felt... human.
He gave one last glance at the people behind the forcefields and those who had refused to leave their sides. Then he turned and walked quietly back through the doors, the soft hiss closing behind him sounding too much like a sigh of regret.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate 45007.0620
The doors to the Quantum Physics Lab had barely parted before the voice of Lieutenant Commander Maya was already filling the corridor.
“Ah! Captain Morningstar, precisely on time, although I should note that given the temporal drift in this section of the ship, ‘on time’ is a variable concept, particularly when dealing with a device that appears to defy several known physical laws. Please, come in.”
Erik offered a faint smile and stepped into the lab, greeted by the shimmer of containment fields, scanning arrays, and an impressive assortment of diagnostic equipment. At the center of it all, suspended in a gravitic stasis shell, was the device, dull, lifeless, and yet somehow still ominous.
Maya stood beside it, her hands clasped behind her back, her head tilted ever so slightly as she gazed onto the mysterious cube. “I have run no less than 47 non-invasive scans, ranging from multispectral photon mapping to gravimetric resonance. The results have been… inconclusive. The exterior shell appears to be composed of an alloy that does not register in any known Starfleet database, which, I must stress, includes material samples from over six thousand documented civilizations scattered through multiple dimensions.”
She took a breath, one of the very few breaks she rarely gave herself, and then launched into another cascade of observations.
“The glyphs etched along the surface are partially identifiable as Lokustaar, though heavily degraded and blended with what appears to be linguistic patterns similar to those recovered from the Tholian Archive, although significantly older and far more symbolically abstract. This may suggest a collaboration, or perhaps subjugation, between the two species at some unknown point in prehistory, though without more data it is entirely speculation. I must also point out that there are no seams, no hatches, no energy signatures, no internal resonance. The device, for all intents and purposes, is a perfect shell… a riddle sealed in silence.”
Erik stepped closer to the gravitic field, his eyes fixed on the object that had taken so many lives on NOVOSYTH and upended the lives of those aboard the ANUBIS.
“And yet,” Maya continued, her voice lowering with something that could almost pass for awe, “I witnessed Ya’Han deactivate it. No tools. No interface. She merely extended her hand… and the device responded. Immediately. Unambiguously. It was as if it recognized her. Or obeyed her.”
He didn’t speak. Not at first. The silence stretched long enough for Maya to notice and pause, a rarity in itself.
"We would need to bring them together again," she said gently. "Her… and the device."
"No," Erik said, the single syllable sharper than he intended. He let out a slow breath, composing himself. "Not yet. Not while we're still trying to understand what she's become… or what this thing really is."
Maya nodded, her tone subdued. "I understand. Logically, it may offer insight. But emotionally… I believe it may only deepen the wound."
Erik turned his gaze to her, truly seeing her now, not just the encyclopedic voice of reason, but the quiet strength behind it. Normally, he would have gently reined her in, redirected her back to the essential points. But now? Her verbal meandering felt… grounding. Like the universe still had rules, even if the ANUBIS was currently tangled in something far beyond them.
"Thank you, Commander," he said. "For the report. And the… context."
"You are welcome, Captain," she replied, a subtle nod acknowledging the double meaning.
He cast one final glance at the object. Lifeless. Silent. And yet it had shaped the fate of a world… and possibly more.
Then, without another word, he turned and made his way toward Sickbay.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 7, Sickbay
Stardate 45007.0640
The soft hum of active bio-scanners and sterile lighting created an ambiance Erik had always found both calming and unsettling. Sickbay was a place of healing, but it was also where the unspoken truth of every mission eventually revealed itself. No bravado. No masks. Just facts.
Doctor T'Lara was standing at the main diagnostic console, her eyes scanning results that seemed to offer more questions than answers. She looked up as Erik entered, her expression unreadable, calm, professional, and quietly conflicted. Her Romulan side masked it better than most, but Erik had come to recognize the subtle shifts in her posture that signalled uncertainty.
"Captain," she greeted with a nod. "I have reviewed the medical scans from both Lieutenant Ya'Han and Christie. There is… nothing abnormal."
"Nothing?" Erik echoed, stepping closer.
"No," T'Lara confirmed. "No irregular neural patterns. No traceable genetic anomalies. No residual biochemical markers that would indicate the presence of Lokustaar influence, contamination, or alteration. If I had not seen the results of the events listed in the report, I would classify both individuals as medically and psychologically stable."
She paused, turning fully to face him.
"And yet, I did see it."
Erik nodded slowly. "I cannot say that I wish I had."
"There is logic to their confinement," she said, voice precise, clinical. "Whether intentional or not, their actions led to the deaths of two individuals. That they are both in perfect health and displaying no signs of external influence only deepens the mystery."
"But it also makes a thorough analysis difficult," Erik offered, already anticipating her next point.
T'Lara inclined her head. "Correct. Sickbay is equipped with more advanced instrumentation than the brig or anything that I am able to bring there. Molecular sequencing, deep-psycho resonance scans, and temporal stress diagnostics cannot be performed remotely. If we are to understand what was awakened in them, or if this influence is active, or dormant, we will require them here.”
She hesitated, ever so briefly.
"Captain, I am not questioning your decision," she added. "Only presenting the necessary facts."
"I know," Erik replied, his voice low, thoughtful. "You're doing your job. And your logic is sound… but we don't know what they’ve become. Or what else might be watching through them."
Silence stretched between them for a moment, a pause heavy with consequences.
"You're half Romulan," Erik said finally, "and half Vulcan. You live in the balance between emotion and logic. Between truth and instinct. If you were in my place… would you let them out of those cells?"
T'Lara considered the question far longer than a Vulcan might have, the struggle behind her eyes too well hidden to be noticed by anyone but him.
"No," she said at last. "Not yet. But I would be ready to… when the time is right."
Erik gave a slight nod, appreciative of the honesty more than the agreement.
"Prepare Sickbay," he said, turning to go. "We may need to bring one of them in. But not until I know we can do so safely, for them, for you, for everyone."
"As you wish, Captain."
"By the way," Erik shifted. "How is Nathan."
"The nanites Gemma transferred to him saved his life, but now his body needs to learn to continue without them. He is weak, but will make a full recovery in time. Little boys can be very resilient," T'Lara reported glancing at the biobed where the small child was resting.
"Good," the Native American said as he left Sickbay without another word, the weight of each visit settling heavier on his shoulders.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 7, Corridor outside Sickbay
Stardate 45007.0645
The door to Sickbay closed behind him with a soft hiss, and Erik Morningstar paused mid-stride in the corridor. He took in a slow breath, straightened his shoulders, and continued down the corridor at a steady, deliberate pace. Every step felt heavier, not because of fatigue, but because of the silence.
He didn't make it far.
Ani appeared from the adjoining junction, her approach fluid and efficient. To the untrained eye, she was a woman in uniform, eyes sharp and posture poised. But to Erik, to the man who had stood on this ship through battle, loss, and everything in between, she was more than programming and polymer. She was the ANUBIS.
"Captain," she said, falling into stride beside him without missing a beat.
"Ani," he almost smiled.
"I thought this would be an opportune time to deliver my updated report."
"Go ahead."
"The ship has been undergoing full-spectrum internal scans every five minutes since the return of the away teams, twelve sweeps per hour, uninterrupted, for the past seventy-six hours. All environmental readings are within optimal parameters. No anomalous energy patterns. No localized fluctuations. No recorded auditory or visual anomalies. All crew are accounted for and functioning within expected physical and psychological norms."
"In other words," Erik said, "no signs that the Lokustaar followed either one of them here."
Ani nodded. "That is correct, Captain. Based on current data, the probability of an incursion, infestation, or presence of an agent is statistically negligible."
There was something about the way she said it, without emotion, but not without reverence. Her tone was a cathedral of calm in the midst of a storm that had yet to break.
Erik gave a slight nod, eyes forward. "And yet…"
Ani finished the sentence without prompting. "Uncertainty persists. There is still a great deal with do not know or understand about the Lokustaar. We cannot fall into the false security of belief that because we cannot see it, it is not potentially there."
The two continued walking for a few paces in silence before Ani slowed and turned to face him fully.
"Permission to speak as more than the ship?"
Erik stopped, his eyes shifting to meet hers, calm, unblinking, unwavering.
"Always," this time he did smile, faintly, but still enough that she noticed it.
"You carry the burden of command with distinction," she said. "But this burden is heavier than most. You fear not only for your ship, but for your crew, for who they are becoming. And while your doubts are reasonable, I remind you: this vessel has weathered the darkness before. The ANUBIS is not merely circuits and shielding. She is resilience made manifest, forged in fire, tempered by your will."
He stared at her for a long moment. Not a flicker of emotion crossed her face, and yet there was something deeply alive in the words she’d chosen.
"Thank you, Ani."
She inclined her head slightly. "It is my purpose to report. But it is my function to support."
Without waiting for a response, she turned and continued down the corridor, disappearing into the ship like a thought returning to its source.
Erik resumed walking, her words echoing softly in his mind like the low hum of the ANUBIS herself, ever present, always watching, always waiting.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 1, Bridge
Stardate 45007.0700
When Captain Morningstar stepped back onto the bridge, he immediately sensed the gravity of the conversation already underway. Commander Shar'El stood at the main tactical console, arms folded but face unreadable, a quiet storm behind midnight eyes. Beside her were Counsellor Adriana Lopez and Flight Control Officer A'Janni, both equally grim-faced, though for different reasons.
Erik didn't speak at first, letting the weight of his presence settle the room. The bridge crew instinctively straightened. Eyes returned to consoles. Tension hummed beneath the polished surfaces.
Shar'El turned. "Captain. We need to talk. Privately."
Erik looked at her, then at Adriana and A’Janni, and whatever expression he saw on their faces was enough.
"No," he said simply, moving down the short ramp to stand at their level. "This conversation isn't one to be had behind a closed door."
Shar'El's brow arched ever so slightly. A beat passed, then she gave a short nod.
"Very well."
She stepped slightly to the side and squared herself to him, the air around her sharpening like a blade. "The official logs already document what transpired. The death of Tal'Shiar agent Varin. A single Lokustaar talon through the chest, called forth by Christie in a moment of fear. The execution of Daimon Ardax, obliterated by multiple Lokustaar, summoned by Ya'Han in what can only be described as rage." She met his eyes evenly. "No one is disputing the horror of those moments."
"I certainly am not," Erik replied. "And I'm not dismissing the reports."
He turned to A'Janni, expecting more of the same. Condemnation. A plea for caution. But what he got instead was quieter… deeper.
"I saw what she did," the Caitin said. "I saw Ya’Han unleash them. I saw what it cost her to do it." He paused, ears lowering against his head. "I don't trust what she's become. But I trust who she was before. And she saved this mission, and all of us, whether we're ready to admit it or not."
Erik blinked. That wasn't the voice of a man fueled by fear or outrage. It was someone wrestling with the truth and trying to honour it.
"I spent hours speaking with Amanda," Adriana added gently, stepping forward. "About Christie. What happened aboard the NORTHAL DRIFT wasn't a calculated act of violence. Christie didn't lash out. She screamed… and something answered. It saved our lives. Mine included." Her voice wavered slightly, but she kept going. "Amanda and I owe her everything. And no matter what's inside her… that counts."
Shar'El nodded, seizing the thread. "We need answers, Erik. Scientific. Emotional. Metaphysical. Whatever form they manifest in. Maya can't analyze the device without the one person it responded to. T'Lara can't scan them properly from behind containment fields. You know this." Her tone remained calm, steady.
Erik inhaled slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I do. I've already spoken to both of them earlier this morning.”
He looked past them for a moment, eyes drawn to the swirling stars on the viewscreen. All that emptiness out there… and the weight of everything they brought back with them.
"I'm not ready to trust the shadows," he admitted. "Not yet. But I trust all of you. And I trust that this crew, my crew, is capable of rising above fear. We've already faced and defeated the Lokustaar before, and I do not see why we cannot do it again."
He looked back at Shar'El. “I'll speak with Zub and Gemma, and inform Jayson and Cristhiane of our decision."
"Understood," Shar’El said.
"I’ll stay with them," Adriana volunteered. "If either of them starts to lose control, emotionally or otherwise, I'll be there."
Just as the Captain was about the step back into the turbolift, Counsellor Lopez called out, her voice gentle. "Captain... thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," Erik noted. "We may all grow to regret this sooner or later."
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 13, Gymnasium
Stardate 45007.0720
The sharp crack of fist against padded flesh echoed through the gymnasium as Captain Morningstar stepped in quietly, unnoticed.
In the middle of the sparring ring, Zub's powerful frame launched a sweeping strike toward his opponent, only for Gemma to twist effortlessly to the side, her braid snapping behind her like a whip. With controlled precision, she struck back: a palm to the chest, a hooked foot that nearly took Zub off balance, and a final faint jab that stopped a breath's length from the Voth's throat.
Zub grunted, reset, and came in again.
They moved like dancers, but there was something Erik immediately picked up on, a hesitation in Gemma's footwork. She dodged when she could have countered. Let strikes land on her arms when she could have deflected. Even her most efficient moves were controlled, cautious, as though she feared she might hurt Zub if she truly let go.
That wasn't like her. Not the Gemma he knew. And yet, the change was not an entirely unwelcome one.
After another exchange of blows, Zub called the round, breathing heavier than usual. Gemma lowered her hands and finally glanced over, and froze at the sight of the Captain.
"Sir," she said, straightening slightly, the sweat on her brow doing nothing to dilute the razor-sharp focus in her eyes.
"Impressive," Erik said as he stepped forward, nodding toward the sparring mat. "Though I have to admit… you pulled that final combination."
Gemma tilted her head slightly. "I didn't want to break Zub's jaw," she replied, voice dry. "Again."
The Voth chuckled, a deep, throaty sound. "I would prefer to avoid medical leave, thank you."
"Fair enough," Erik said, though his tone hinted at deeper considerations.
He turned his attention to Zub, his expression hardening just slightly. "I need you and your Marines. Security escort duty. Ya'Han and Christie will be transferred, separately, to Sickbay and then to the Quantum Science Lab for further examination. Full detail, eyes on at all times. I want discretion, but I also want presence."
Zub's smile faded. "Yes, Captain." His tone was formal, steady, but there was a weight behind it. Not fear. Not reluctant. Just uncertainty.
"I'll help," Gemma added without hesitation. "We can split the duties or we can tackle them together, your choice."
Zub glanced at her, then back at Erik. "We'll take care of it, Captain. I suspect that with both of us and my Marines on the job, there shouldn't be any trouble,” he admitted.
Erik took a step closer. "You both saw what they did. And I'm not asking you to pretend that didn't happen. This isn't retribution. It's regulation. Data. Trust, not given freely, but earned deliberately?"
"Yes, Captain," both responded in near unison.
Erik held their gaze a moment longer, then nodded once. "Coordinate with T'Lara and Maya. Establish a safe schedule for everyone involved."
As he turned to leave, Gemma spoke up softly. "Sir… whatever's changed in them… it didn't break them. We've seen what the Lokustaar can do to a person. This isn't that.”
Erik stopped at the threshold. He didn't look back, but he gave a small, near-imperceptible nod.
"Let's make sure it stays that way."
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate 45007.0745
Erik made his way down the corridor once more, the bounce in his step slightly more pronounced. The decision had been made, and although it had not been an easy one, it felt right.
Before the Captain could reach the secured door to the brig, though, he was intercepted by three people rushing towards him.
"A moment, Captain," Amanda said, flanked quickly by Jayson and Cristhiane. "Please, we would like a word with you."
"Very well," Erik replied coolly, already anticipating where this was going.
"They've done nothing since being locked in here," Cristhiane pleaded, her tone controlled but imploring. "Three days. Not a raised voice. Not a single complaint."
"They saved lives," Amanda added quickly, her voice edged with urgency. "You read the reports. I know you did. That man Varin was going to kill us, and Christie stopped him."
"And Ya'Han?" Jayson stepped in. "Whatever darkness she tapped into, she didn't lose herself. She stayed in control. She saved the mission. Without her, we'd all still be on that station… or worse."
"Sir," Amanda pressed, now nearly talking over the others, "she's not a threat, either of them. They are not criminals. Adriana says that you are a compassionate, understanding man, so please. Let them go."
"They've proven themselves, again and again," Jayson echoed. "We owe them better than this."
The arguments came in a fast, chaotic wave. Each one punctuated by emotion, by desperation, not for vindication, but for mercy. Erik's shoulders tensed under the assault, though his expression remained unreadable.
He raised a hand, not to silence them, but simply to pause the storm.
"You're right."
The words stopped all three in their tracks. Amanda blinked. Jayson opened his mouth and then closed it again. Cristhiane looked at him, confused.
Captain Morningstar didn't elaborate. He didn't offer a speech or a justification. He simply turned and continued his path down the corridor, leaving the three stunned in silence behind him.
He allowed them to believe that their words had changed his mind.
Maybe they had. Maybe they hadn't.
But if it helped them sleep tonight… if it helped them believe in the people they were defending… then that small illusion was worth granting.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 1, Bridge -> Ready Room
Stardate 45007.0800
The turbolift doors opened with a soft hiss, revealing Captain Morningstar as he stepped back onto the bridge. His expression was calm, composed, but beneath the surface, there was the weight of decisions still settling.
Shar'El turned from her station as he approached.
"You missed the quiet,” she said dryly. "It's been almost uneventful for the last fifteen minutes.”
Erik allowed the hint of a smile to tug at one corner of his lips. "Almost?"
The First Officer's expression sobered.
"There's a secure channel waiting for you in your Ready Room," she said. "From Admiral Koniki."
That brief flicker of calm vanished from Erik's face like a star snuffed out in space. "Did he say what it was about?"
"He didn't have to." Her voice lowered just enough to be out of earshot of the rest of the bridge crew. "He read the mission reports. All of them. I suspect he also read between the lines."
Erik held her gaze for a long moment, the silence between them loaded with everything that hadn't been said, about Ya'Han, Christie, the device, and what they might have brought back from the NORTHAL DRIFT that no scan could detect.
"He's not pleased," she added quietly. "And he's expecting answers."
"I'm not sure I have the ones he wants," Erik replied, his voice low but steady. With a faint nod of thanks, Morningstar turned and crossed to his Ready Room, the doors whispering shut behind him.
The bridge settled into silence once again, the kind that only comes before a storm.
The soft hiss of the door sealed Erik into the Ready Room. He moved to his desk with the weight of the day pressing down on his shoulders and activated the secure comm channel with a swipe of his hand.
The Federation emblem dissolved into the stern, unblinking face of Admiral Charles Koniki.
"Captain Morningstar," the Admiral began, skipping any pleasantries. His tone was cold, clipped. "I've read the mission reports. I'm struggling to understand how you justify returning to NEW ALEXANDRIA with not one, but two individuals who may be compromised, possibly agents of the Lokustaar."
Erik straightened in his seat. "With respect, Admiral, both individuals saved lives. Christie acted out of fear, and Ya’Han,”
"...executed a Ferengi trader using extradimensional shadow creatures." Koniki cut in, his voice ice-sharp. "I'm well aware of what happened. I want to know why they're not in stasis fields or, at the very least, under full isolation protocol. Especially Ya'Han. Her previous dealings with Mordana make her a wild card that we cannot afford to let loose."
"They've shown no signs of hostile behaviour aboard the ANUBIS," Erik replied, trying to keep his tone measured. "They've cooperated, submitted to confinement, and we're conducting further scans and testing. I have every intention of keeping this ship, and its crew, safe."
Koniki leaned forward, his expression tightening. "Intentions don't win wars, Captain. Results do. And right now, this situation reeks of risk... risk I cannot allow to walk freely into my base."
Erik didn't speak. He had already guessed what would come next.
"You will proceed to the outer perimeter of the GIZA Nebula and enter the asteroid field there, as far away from us as possible while still being close enough for us to keep an eye on you and your ship. You are not to approach NEW ALEXANDRIA. Do not request docking clearance. Do not initiate contact with anyone beyond this frequency. Is that clear?"
"Crystal," Erik said, jaw set.
"You and your crew will remain in orbital quarantine until I decide otherwise. Hours, days, weeks, that’s irrelevant."
Koniki's image blinked out, leaving the screen dark.
Erik stared at the empty monitor for a moment, the hum of the ship the only sound in the room. They had accomplished the mission. Retrieved the device. Saved lives. And yet, they were being treated as a threat, all of them.
He leaned back slowly, the starlight casting shadows across his eyes, not unlike the doubts now dwelling there.
"Mission success," he whispered to himself. "At what cost..."
The ANUBIS would not be going home just yet.
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette
Captain Erik Morningstar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
--
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"Escorts"
Previous post: "Shadows: Past, Present and Future, Part 2" by the ostensibly brilliant Francois
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Corridor
Stardate: 45007.1000
Zub stood just inside the corridor; arms folded across his massive chest. His eyes flicked once to the brig doors, then back to Gemma. He cleared his throat, a low rumble that matched the hum of the ship.
"I'll take Ya'Han to Sickbay," he said, voice low but immovable, the Voth's calm certainty carrying its own weight.
Gemma turned her head, met his reptilian stare. "No," she said, quiet but solid enough to stop any argument cold.
Zub's brow ridge dipped, just slightly. "I trust you, Gemma, but she's…"
"She's likely very angry," Gemma cut in, but her tone never spiked. If anything, it smoothed out, voice even and low. "She's dangerous, but not reckless. She won't test me the way she'd test you."
A flicker in Zub's eyes, irritation, maybe worry. "You shouldn't have to handle that alone."
"I'm not." She lifted a hand, tapped the side of her temple with two fingers, a small gesture that said more than words ever could. Not alone. Not ever.
Inside, something laughed, soft, overlapping, not one voice but many echoing the same thought: "We're all here, aren't we?"
Zub huffed out a breath, almost a laugh but not quite. He nodded once, big shoulders settling. "Be careful."
"Always," Gemma said, though the word tasted like a half-truth. She turned back toward the corridor just as Adriana and Amanda appeared, the conversation ending before it could linger.
The corridor outside the brig still smelled faintly of the captain's presence earlier that morning, a testament to the sparce foot traffic in this area of the ship.
Gemma stood with her back straight, arms folded lightly across her chest as Adriana stepped closer, Amanda just behind her. Zub loomed a respectful step to Gemma's left, arms at his sides but eyes watchful, flicking once toward the brig door as if expecting it to do something it shouldn't.
Adriana didn't waste time. "You don't have to do this alone," she started, voice lowered but intense. "Amanda and I can assist with your escort of Ya'Han. Having us there may soften the impact of..."
"No." Gemma's answer split the moment like glass under tension, clean, unarguable. Not cold. Not dismissive. Just final. Inwardly, she smiled at the patter that was developing, the ILO shooting down's everyone's offers, not out of malice or pride, but out of a desire to protect.
She shifted her stance slightly, weight balanced. "Take Amanda. Stay with Christie. Zub will walk you all to Maya's lab. No splitting up. No detours. No arguments."
Adriana bristled, jaw tightening. She looked as if she might push back again, but Gemma stepped in, close enough that Adriana could feel the heat off her skin, the slight static of restrained force.
"Adriana. Listen to me. Everyone is safer this way." Her tone softened at the edges but held its line. "You trust me?"
Adriana's eyes flicked to Amanda, who lingered silent, eyes distant, thoughts clearly locked on the young woman in the cell beyond. Then back to Gemma. "Yes. But..."
"No buts. Go. Zub... clear the corridor, I'm going in first."
The imposing Voth moved closer, the quiet wall behind Gemma. His nod sealed it. His bulk behind her wasn't threat, wasn't comfort, just proof that if Gemma gave an order now, it would stand. He didn't say it aloud, didn't need to. He trusted her judgement, maybe more than his own right now.
As Adriana stepped back with Amanda, the twins quietly ushered by the walking reptilian wall, Gemma watched them go, letting the stillness of the corridor settle around her like a second skin.
"Why pull that elbow, hmm?" Arennis, light, almost sweet, a whisper of silk in her head. "You could have put Zub flat on his back during that sparring match. He knew it too."
Another tone, clipped, precise... Wimdalli. "He's your partner, not prey. No need to break what works well with you."
Anya's grin pressed against her mind like a blade's flat edge. "Maybe losing your edge. Or finding it sharper. Depends on the day, da?"
Gemma exhaled through her nose, rolling one shoulder to bleed off the echo of muscle tension from the sparring mat. She'd felt that hesitation... half a heartbeat of restraint. Not fear, exactly.
Not mercy either. Something else. Something that tugged her closer to the edge of understanding what all these fragments wanted from her... or what she wanted from them.
"Shut up," she told them all, though no sound crossed her lips.
She keyed the brig door. It slid aside with that familiar hush.
Ya'Han was already standing in her cell, as if she'd heard the footsteps before they arrived. Her hair was deep black, no glimmer of the Nylaan fire that used to blaze so carelessly in bright reds. Just dark calm, watching Gemma with a gaze too steady to read.
Gemma stepped inside the threshold and tipped her head just a fraction. A flicker of something almost like a smile ghosted at the corner of her mouth. The room had been cleared, the security office on duty had taken Jayson and Cristhiane out, for their own safety.
The two women locked gaze for a few seconds, an entire conversation happening in the silence that stood between them.
"Time for your appointment with Doctor T'Lara."
A simple statement. A nudge. A dare. An order. A promise. One mouth. Many minds.
Every voice in Gemma's mind spoke it differently, but only one mouth said it aloud.
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
"Darkness Whispers"
Previous post: "Escorts" by Rachel
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Brig
Stardate: 45007.1005
"Time for your appointment with Doctor T'Lara."
Ya'Han watched silently, the world unfolding before her in ways she'd never imagined. Shadows shifted in the corners of the room, subtle, but deliberate. She saw them now. Felt them. Whispers curled around her like tendrils of smoke, unheard by anyone else.
From where she stood, beyond the forcefield, she could see inside Gemma.
Not metaphorically. Viscerally.
The ILO was a shell of containment, her surface calm, but within… voices twisted and writhed, slamming against the walls of her mind like trapped animals. Personas collided, laughing, screaming, howling in layered chaos. A thousand fractured souls behind a single uniform.
It should have unnerved her.
But Ya'Han only watched, motionless.
Gemma cautiously deactivated the field. Ya'Han didn't flinch. She had no thought of fleeing. No instinct to resist.
This was what she wanted.
To understand who she had been. Who she had become. Who she was always meant to be.
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Sickbay
Stardate: 45007.1020
Sickbay was sterile. Lit. Calm.
But Ya'Han stepped through the doors as though entering a crypt.
The lights above flickered, not from any system fault, but because she noticed them now. Their patterns. Their rhythms. The soft hum behind the walls. The breath of the ship.
She heard *everything*.
The low hum of systems within the bulkheads. The vibration of plasma conduits underfoot. The shrill edge of monitors too high-pitched for human ears.
And then… the whispers.
Not voices spoken aloud, but murmurs sliding through the folds of shadow. Echoes from corners no one dared to look into.
The words weren't spoken, but she heard them, in a tongue not her own, yet one she'd always understood.
Even as a child on NYLA IV, standing alone at the edge of the royal gardens, she had heard them: soft whispers no one else could.
Back then, she thought it was nature. Destiny. The stars calling her name.
But now…
Now she understood.
It had never been nature. It had been them. Watching. Waiting. Whispering her name.
She casually moved to the biobed without a word. Sat down, her posture perfect. Too perfect.
Gemma lingered just beyond the edge of the treatment zone. She didn't step closer. She didn't need to.
Ya'Han studied her. Looking at her... Looking *through* her.
She saw the chaos within Gemma with crystalline clarity. The writhing fractures, the madness masked behind professionalism.
This didn't frighten her... it soothed her.
There was a strange, quiet beauty in chaos laid bare. Something pure in its unfiltered madness. The Lokustaar had known. They had given her this sight, this gift, the clarity to see the truth buried in others. And in herself.
She was no longer just the daughter of a High Sovereign. Or a Starfleet officer. Or a runaway bride.
She was a conduit.
Not infected. Not corrupted.
Chosen.
The Sickbay doors opened behind Gemma. The sound was soft, almost reverent.
She didn't turn. She didn't need to.
She knew the rhythm of his heartbeat... but this one was quickened, fragile, pounding like prey sensing a predator it still longed to love. She felt the tremble in his muscles, the catch in his breath, the instinctive warning buried beneath emotion.
Jayson... A man, brave in his devotion. A child, blind to the abyss opening behind her eyes.
He crossed the room in slow, hesitant steps. No longer the eager flirt, or the stalwart officer. He was something smaller now. Something fragile.
"Ya'Han?" His voice was barely a whisper.
She didn't answer.
He came closer, stopping beside the bed. Her black hair lay still against her shoulders, not stirred by breath or motion. Gemma watched, curious as to how this would play out. Stopping Jayson would only serve to escalate the situation. It was better to let him get closer, test the woman's reaction to him.
"I wanted to make sure you were okay," he said, voice cracking under the weight of emotion he was trying too hard to suppress. “You didn;t say a single word since your return to the ANUBIS. I didn't… I didn't know if I should come here. If you want me to be here after what happened.”
Still, she didn't answer.
Only turned her head to look at him.
And in that moment, he saw it.
Not in her expression, because her face was calm, serene, unreadable, but in her eyes. In the stillness behind them.
She wasn't looking at him.
She was looking through him.
And he realized, with a cold ripple down his spine, that she didn't see Jayson. She saw the other. The one who had taken his place. The clone who died in her name. The echoes of his face, worn thin by loss and sacrifice. The one that had been on the station, likely telling her everything she needed to hear while the real Jayson was out of reach.
And she didn't mourn him.
She didn't feel anything for him.
Because she had already let them go.
And if she could let him go...
Then what was he to her now?
His hand moved to hers, hesitant, shaking, but didn't reach her. Stopped halfway. Hovered.
Because something in her silence warned him.
One more step. One more word. And you may never come back.
She blinked.
He took a step back.
Silence reclaimed the room.
From the corners of her vision, the shadows smiled.
-=-=-
Hanali Han
Lieutenant Ya'Han
Chief of Security / Tactical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Walking the Line"
Previous post: "Darkness Whispers” by Hanali
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Corridor
Stardate: 45007.1010
Christie walked in silence. They all did.
Not the kind of silence that followed discipline or restraint, but the kind that wrapped around your lungs and made it hard to breathe. The normal, quiet hum of the ship was too loud today. The footsteps behind and beside her, Amanda's soft, protective ones, Adriana's more measured but tight, Zub's deliberate and heavy, all felt amplified, like echoes in her head.
Her hands flexed at her sides. They had stopped trembling hours ago. Days ago, maybe. It was hard to tell. Three days in the brig gave a person far too much time to think.
Too much time to feel like she was no longer the same person who boarded the ANUBIS.
"You okay?" Amanda's voice came softly from her right, trying to sound casual, but there was weight behind it, the kind that only came from shared pain.
Christie didn't answer at first. She just gave the faintest nod, a lie worn thin by overuse, and a self-imposed necessity to remain quiet for fear that she might summon those living nightmares once again.
Amanda gently bumped her shoulder. "You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Just… I'm here."
For a fleeting second, Adriana smiled. That gentle compassion was something she'd drawn on countless times as a Counselor. But seeing it now, from Amanda, toward someone else... it stung more than she expected. But her sister's words also reminded the twin of the chasm that stood between them, one that she feared was growing a little more each day.
Christie turned her head slightly, catching Amanda's gaze. It was so sincere. It always was. "What if I don't like the answers we're walking toward?" she whispered.
Amanda didn't flinch. "Then we deal with them together."
Adriana, walking just behind the two, said nothing. But she saw it. That closeness. That easy comfort. And it gnawed at her more than she wanted to admit. She was trying, really trying, to stay professional, objective. Her uniform demanded it. Her title required it. But every step her sister took toward Christie was one Adriana felt like she was losing.
"You're not walking toward punishment, Christie," Adriana finally said, her voice more clinical than comforting, and even she hated how it sounded. "You're walking toward understanding."
Christie didn't look back. "I killed a man. No matter what he did to my mother and me, he didn't deserve to die... not that way."
"It was in self-defense," Amanda cut in before Adriana could. "He would have hurt you. He would have hurt all of us."
"I summoned a monster." Her voice cracked, and for the first time since they left the brig, her steps faltered. She slowed. "I didn't even know I could do it. I was just scared. And it came. That… thing. It tore him apart. Because I willed it."
"You didn't will it," Cristhiane said from just behind Adriana, her voice quiet, fragile. The mother carried herself with practiced grace, but to anyone who looked closely, the weight in her eyes was unmistakable. "You survived. You've always survived. No matter what they did to you, you survived and gave me the strength to do the same."
Christie turned, just slightly. "So did Ya'Han."
No one answered immediately.
Zub's large form remained steady beside them all, his presence a calming anchor. The Voth hadn't said a word, but Christie found comfort in that. He wasn't afraid of her, not the way she feared herself. In fact, she worried more for him than herself. What if the darkness reacted again? What if it tried to protect her in ways she couldn't control?
Her hand unconsciously brushed against her side, remembering the moment that man lunged, the flash of fear, the black pulse in her chest, and then… the scream that wasn't hers.
"Ya'Han was betrothed at thirteen," Christie murmured, more to the corridor than anyone around her as she recalled something Jayson had said. "That she ran away from her family to avoid becoming someone else's property. She fought to be herself. But she still… changed. Still carries that darkness. I can see it in her eyes."
"That darkness," Adriana said more gently this time, "was placed there by monsters. Not born in her."
"Then what about me?" Christie whispered, glancing at her mother for half a heartbeat. "What does that make me?"
They turned a corner, the science lab now just a few paces ahead. Beyond those doors was the device, dormant, but somehow still breathing in her mind. She'd seen what it had done. What she might still be able to do with it. That scared her more than any forcefield, more than the Lokustaar themselves.
Zub finally spoke, voice a low, rumbling comfort. "You are who you choose to be, Christie. The past is just the path. The direction you walk… that's still yours."
Adriana smiled, wryly, bitterly so. Everyone else was doing her job better than she could, and she didn't blame them. This was too close. Too personal. And she was failing at the distance her training once demanded. This whole situation had become too close, too personal, and she could not find it within her to professionally distance herself as she should.
They stopped at the lab doors.
Christie stared at the panel, her reflection caught faintly in its smooth reflective surface, tired eyes, hair slightly unkempt, guilt written across every inch of her. She looked at Amanda, then Adriana… then her mother.
"I'm afraid of what I'll see when Maya starts asking questions," she quietly admitted. "Afraid of what I might feel. What I might… awaken."
Adriana stepped forward then, pushing aside the unease in her chest. Her voice softened. "Whatever we learn in there, it won't change the fact that you're not alone."
Amanda took her hand. "You're never alone."
And Cristhiane, voice shaking, added: "And no matter what it is… you're still my daughter."
The doors hissed open.
Christie stood motionless for just a second more. She wondered, not for the first time, if the darkness would recognize her before she even saw it again. Then, slowly, hesitantly, she stepped forward.
One foot. Then the next. Holding her breath at each step.
Still terrified. But choosing to walk the line anyway.
-=-=-
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS
"Clinical Shadows"
Previous post: "Walking the Line" by Marissa
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Sickbay
Stardate: 45007.1025
T'Lara entered the room with deliberate quiet, though she doubted it mattered.
Ya'Han had already sensed her.
She was seated upright on the biobed, posture too precise to be comfortable. A warrior's stillness. Or a predator's. The overhead lights reflected dimly against her black hair, untouched by sweat or tremor. No visible trauma. No inflammation. Yet everything about her was wrong.
The sensors should have confirmed this. They did not.
T'Lara initiated the baseline scan, silently rerouting Sickbay's bio-monitors through her tricorder. Standard procedure had already failed them once. Whatever this was, whatever she had become, was not registering through normal channels.
The transformation had been too clean. Too intentional.
"Your vitals remain within normal parameters," she said, not because it meant anything, but because it marked the start of the examination. "No indicators of neurological inflammation or hormonal instability. Respiratory rate, temperature, blood oxygen... consistent with baseline."
Ya'Han didn't speak. Didn't move. Her gaze, heavy and glasslike, remained fixed forward.
T'Lara shifted the scan to full spectral resolution, cellular structure, synaptic frequency, genetic sequence threading. She began isolating histone configurations, comparing them against archived biometrics from the Starfleet Academy medical database as well as the NEW ALEXANDRIA medical files.
And there it was.
Subtle. Obscene in its precision. Something that had not been there before, yet had always held that place. Whatever it was, it was invisible no more.
A protein splice.
T'Lara leaned in, the scan magnifying along the lowest helix.
The chain was intact. No mutations. No viral damage. But something had inserted itself, nested within an unused strand of Ya'Han's DNA. Not spliced recently, but likely present since birth. Dormant. Inert. Waiting.
She didn't need a second opinion.
The tertiary markers bore a distinct signature: Lokustaar genomic residue.
T'Lara's breath caught for 0.4 seconds. That was longer than acceptable.
She adjusted the scanner's filter, rerunning the sample through a molecular frequency check. The resonance confirmed it, subspace reactive alleles. Invisible unless exposed to specific quantum stimuli.
"It's been there all along," she whispered. Not to Ya'Han. Not even to herself. Just… the truth, set free.
A sleeper code. Buried deep within her genetics. Passed over by every Federation scan because it hadn't been activated. Until now.
"Did something happen on the station?" T'Lara asked at last, tone perfectly neutral.
Ya'Han turned her head.
The movement was smooth. Fluid. Rehearsed. Her gaze met T'Lara's without hesitation.
"No," she said. "Something remembered."
T'Lara held that gaze. Measured it.
The woman before her was not infected. There were no foreign pathogens. No neurological degradation. She was not possessed, not altered, not in the way a mind is overwritten.
She had been unlocked.
And the worst part?
She was at peace with it.
T'Lara stepped back, closing the tricorder. The data needed immediate encryption. Captain Morningstar and Commander Shar'El would require a full analysis. This was no longer medical. This was intelligence. Containment. Survival.
And yet…
As she turned to leave, T'Lara felt something brush the edge of her thoughts. A ripple. A shadow just beyond the reach of logic.
She paused.
Ya'Han hadn't moved.
But the darkness in the room… had.
=-=
Dawn Bohr
Lt. Commander T'Lara
Chief Medical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
=-=
"The Shape of Shadows"
Previous post: "Clinical Shadows"
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Brig
Stardate: 45007.1420
Shar'El stood without speaking, without moving. She had remained in that same position since stepping through the brig doors nearly twenty minutes ago. Her uniform, tailored and pristine as always, bore no trace of the unease building beneath her skin.
From across the room, behind the silent shimmer of the forcefield, Ya'Han hadn't moved either.
She sat on the edge of the bunk, back straight, facing the far wall like it held every answer she had ever sought. Her hands rested on her thighs, her breathing slow and even. If not for the shifting patterns of brain activity Shar'El could perceive, flashes of thought, clusters of unfiltered emotional recall, she might have assumed the woman was meditating.
But Ya'Han wasn't meditating... She was remembering.
Shar'El had seen trauma before. She had lived inside it, walked through the haunted corridors of people's minds. But even with her training, her restraint, the memories Ya'Han projected, openly, as if daring Shar'El to witness them, were difficult to endure.
They started innocently enough. A child, barely tall enough to reach the stone banister of the Imperial Gardens. The scent of blooming selari blossoms in the late summer air. The gentle lilt of a songbird’s call.
And then… the fold.
The color drained. The scent rotted. The warmth twisted into something hollow and strange.
Each memory inverted upon itself like a corrupted file. The blossoms became dying things in gray soil. The songbird's call warped into a whisper too low to be natural. Shadows moved where shadows should not have existed.
Shar'El tightened her jaw. Not scanning. Not intruding. Just seeing what Ya'Han let her see.
This wasn't a cry for help. It was an autopsy. A dissection of self.
And at the center of it all, as clear as any beacon… The memory Shar'El had once buried.
A nursery that never was. A life that never lived. An emptiness so sharp it had sliced Ya'Han in two.
Shar'El had held that memory alone for years. Locked it away, carried its weight so Ya'Han wouldn't have to. Because mercy, she thought, was forgetting.
But now? Ya'Han wanted to feel it. She had torn through the Ullian's mental safeguards and welcomed the shadows to speak it aloud.
Across the forcefield, the lights in the brig flickered. Not as a system glitch, but as though reality had flinched.
Shar'El's gaze shifted to the corners of the room.
There was movement. Just out of sight. Always out of sight.
The shadows seemed to lean forward, as though listening.
And Shar'El realized, this wasn't just trauma. It wasn't even transformation. It was invitation.
Ya'Han wasn't turning away from the light.
She was offering herself to the dark.
As if in answer, the air grew perceptibly cooler. Shar'El's breath slowed. Her thoughts narrowed to a dangerous point, instinct warring with discipline.
She wanted to step forward. To say something. To reach her.
But Ya'Han moved first.
She didn't turn to look. Didn't glance back.
She simply spoke.
"Did you see anything interesting?"
Her voice was soft, detached, devoid of any intent to wound, but no less surgical in how precisely it cut through the silence.
"I understand why you took that memory from me," she added, her tone as icy as death itself. "My child... my daughter. They took her from my arms. You took her from my mind. And from my heart."
Shar'El hesitated.
Then she turned without a word and walked out of the brig, the doors hissing closed behind her.
The shadows remained, patient as ever. Waiting.
=-=
Tiffany Reeve
Commander Shar'El
Executive Officer
USS ANUBIS
#######
"The Weight of Shadows"
Previous post: "The Shape of Shadows"
##########
"The stars do not choose sides. They shine on the hunter and the hunted alike. It is the burden of a chief to see clearly in the dark."
— Native Proverb, attributed to Elder Grey-Sky-Walks, Tribe of the White Sand
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Captain's Ready Room
Stardate 45007.1900
Shar'El stood just inside the ready room, hands behind her back, posture formal. The doors closed with their usual hydraulic whisper, sealing her in with the only man aboard who could read her without needing to pry.
Erik Morningstar didn't speak at first. He stood by the viewport, arms folded across his chest, the distant starlight painting muted lines across his face. The silence between them wasn't awkward. It was reverent, like two warriors about to walk sacred ground.
Shar'El took one step forward. "You've read T'Lara's report."
It wasn't a question.
The Captain nodded slowly. "I have. As well as Maya's and yours."
She didn't blink. "Then you understand why I had to block the memory."
He turned, met her eyes. "I do. And I trust your judgment."
A pause. The sort that allows two thoughts to collide in the space between them.
"But?"
Shar'El's voice remained even, but Erik caught the edge, the way her left thumb pressed harder into her palm than it needed to.
"But," he echoed, "we're no longer dealing with something we can file under trauma or emotional collapse. This is structural. Genetic. Existential."
He gestured to the seat opposite his desk. She took it.
"I stood in front of her," Shar'El said quietly, "and it felt like the room had stopped breathing. Like she'd pulled the air itself into stillness. Not through force. Through presence."
"She hasn't made a move against the crew," Erik reminded gently.
"No. But no one's sleeping well," Shar'El replied. "And no one trusts a shadow that smiles back."
The Captain lowered himself into his chair, the soft creak of old leather grounding the moment.
"She hasn't changed," Shar'El said, and then, almost in the same breath, "But she's not the same."
"She's always walked that edge," the Native American said, voice low. "A Nylaan warrior, a Starfleet officer, a survivor of her own father's regime. The line was never clear for her."
Shar'El let the words hang. She needed him to say more. Needed something she couldn't quite define.
"She remembered," she finally said. "That memory. Her daughter. My choice to block it. She didn't accuse me. She didn't even question it. Just... acknowledged it. Like a ledger being balanced."
Erik's gaze darkened, the way skies do before a distant storm. "That's not peace. That's precision. A mind no longer guided by emotion alone."
"She invited me to see," Shar'El said. "What's inside her now... welcomed the shadows like old friends. I couldn't tell if she was mourning or becoming."
The Captain tapped a finger against his desk. A slow, deliberate rhythm.
"Koniki thinks she's compromised," he said. "A weapon waiting to be aimed."
Shar'El slowly nodded.
"There's something else," Erik added, reaching for the PADD on his desk. "Maya's report mentioned Christie. She was unable to interact with the device in any meaningful way. Whatever resonance the Lokustaar left behind in her wasn't strong enough to connect."
Shar'El's gaze sharpened slightly. "That makes sense. Both Ya'Han and Christie may have been touched by the same darkness, but only one has accepted it."
Erik leaned back, considering the implications.
"Ya'Han didn't just let it in," Shar'El continued. "She made peace with it. Christie, on the other hand, fights it. She feels guilt—still mourns Varin's death as though it were a failing of her own. Ya'Han sees Ardax's death as justice. Necessary. Maybe even overdue."
The Captain nodded grimly. "Two paths shaped by the same shadow."
Shar'El shook her head. "They're not different sides of the same coin, Erik. They're more like mirror reflections—one embracing the darkness, the other rejecting it. As for Koniki, he sees ghosts in every corner. Always has and always will."
"He might be right this time," Morningstar reluctantly admitted.
Shar'El looked away, just for a moment, to the shadows clustered in the far edge of the room. A place the lights didn't quite reach.
"They're always just out of view," she whispered.
Erik followed her gaze. "The shadows are always there, Shar'El. They're part of who we are. Part of nature. To fear them is to give them power they don't deserve. Ani is running constant scans; there are no Lokustaar aboard. The shifting shadows are ours, not theirs."
Shar'El met his eyes again. "But what if they've learned to speak? What if they've learned to listen? Both you and I have seen other dimensions. Interacted with creatures that should never have been possible, and witnessed events that defy all reality as we knew it."
He didn't flinch. "Then we speak louder. And we listen better."
They sat in silence again, but this time it was different. The weight of command, of friendship, of impossible choices, it was all there, coiled in the breath between them.
"She's still Ya'Han," Erik said, finally. "Until she isn't. And when that moment comes, if it comes, we'll face it together. But not before."
Shar'El gave a single nod. It was enough.
She stood, her uniform as perfect as ever, every line composed, every movement calculated. But as she approached the door, Erik spoke once more.
"We are ten hours from the asteroid field near the GIZA nebula, where we've been ordered to hold position. The USS NILE has orders to transfer needed supplies, but not to take anyone or anything back from us. Despite Koniki trying to isolate us, we are not alone. We never are. No matter the situation... and this one is no different."
She paused, nodded again, slower this time, and left.
Behind her, the shadows didn't move, but they were listening.
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette
Captain Erik Morningstar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
--
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"Echoes of a Stranger"
Previous post: "The Weight of Shadows" by Francois
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Black Hole Lounge
Stardate: 45007.2000
The lights were low and soft, casting long, tired shadows against the polished surfaces of the lounge. The ANUBIS hummed beneath his boots, but even that familiar thrum seemed hesitant tonight, quieter, more distant. As though the ship itself sensed the pain lingering in its corridors, too profound to disturb.
Jayson sat at the farthest table, a secluded crescent booth tucked into the curve of the wall, facing neither the entrance nor the stars. He faced the void, his own private stretch of dim glass and darker thoughts. Before him, cradled between trembling fingers, was a champagne flute. Empty. Fragile. Ghostlike.
It had been untouched for years, and yet he’d kept it, carried it with him like some relic from a cathedral long abandoned. Because that glass held more than air. It held a memory. A heartbeat. A woman.
Human nature was such that the heart grafted meaning to objects, fused emotions into the weightless, into the glass and glint of forgotten things. The curve of the rim, the slender stem, it wasn't just a glass. It was the moment she had offered it to him. The night she'd shown him her green hair… revealed herself as performer, dancer, dreamer. Something vulnerable and radiant. A self she had buried so deep beneath titles and scars that not even her closest friends had seen it.
He had.
And for one infinite second, he had been chosen.
Now, that moment felt like a lie.
He stared down into the hollow of the glass, as if she might appear there, laughing softly, teasing him, that trace of fire behind her eyes lighting the darkness inside him. But there was no echo of Ya'Han in the crystal curve. No spark. No trace.
Only the reflection of a man unraveling, drawn, hollow-eyed, and lost. His shoulders slumped beneath the weight of emotions he could no longer name. Grief. Rage. Confusion. Fear. None of them fit. All of them bled together.
A glass for two, held alone.
He hadn't eaten all day. Not since that morning. His stomach clawed at him, but the pain there was nothing compared to the torment behind his ribs. It wasn't hunger. It was hollowness. A soul trying to remind the body it still existed.
He had gone to Sickbay with hope in his chest. A dangerous, naive hope. The kind that gets men killed. Or worse, forgotten.
Letting go had never been an option. Not for Ya'Han. Not after everything they'd faced together. The wars. The blood. The clone who stole her heart. The one who died in her arms to save her. Even then, even when Jayson had watched her grieve him, he had waited. Quietly. Desperately. Believing.
And she came back. They found their way back. The universe had given them that. Had opened a window for redemption, for love.
But today…
Today, she hadn't even seen him.
Her eyes, those deep, endless black pools, had drifted across him like light bends around a star. Not touching. Not pausing. As if he wasn't real. As if she had seen someone else… or something else entirely.
A tremor surged in his chest. He swallowed it back hard. The ache wasn't in his heart anymore. It had spread. Moved into his lungs, his gut, the back of his throat. It had become his breathing.
Because she hadn't needed to speak to wound him.
Her silence had carved him open.
It was the look she gave, the look that wasn't for him. The way she studied him like a shadow she didn't recognize. She wasn't just distant.
She was gone.
And the woman left behind… he didn't know her. He didn't understand what he saw in her eyes, emptiness, yes, but something darker too. Something vast and ancient. A patient, quiet void. The Lokustaar had left something behind in her… or perhaps revealed something that had always been there.
It wasn't calm. It wasn't clarity. It was absence. An absolute void. An emptiness that threatened to swallow his heart and soul whole.
A terrifying, unblinking nothingness that stared at him through her eyes and made him question everything.
Had she been slipping away all along?
Had he been loving a memory while the real Ya'Han dissolved into shadows and whispers?
And in those shadows… he saw them smile.
He set the glass down. Slowly. Carefully. As if the universe might break if it made too much noise.
She used to laugh at his bad jokes. Used to roll her eyes and brush her fingers across his hand when he got too flustered. She'd punch him in the shoulder during training, only to cradle his bruised ego afterward with a smile that made everything feel worth it.
She used to see him.
Now?
He didn't even cast a shadow in her world.
And still…
He loved her. Without pride. Without defenses. With all the fractured, desperate hope of a man who had already lost too much.
He had loved before. Leena. The soft-spoken woman with a mind for nature and a smile that lit up a room before dawn came. She had died with their child still in her. A cowardly attack from a group of extremists who could not see the world for what it was... alive. In a single moment, a flash of light, everything was gone. Forever taken from him and others like him.
And like those many others, he had fallen.
Fallen for years, buried beneath the wreckage of grief.
Ya'Han had been the hand that reached down to pull him back. Not with words. Not with sympathy. With presence. With fierce, stubborn life. She had dragged him back to the surface and taught him how to breathe again.
Now she was gone too.
Not dead.
Something worse.
And he didn't know if he could climb out of this one.
He leaned back, let his head rest against the wall, eyes on the ceiling. Not looking for answers. Just trying not to cry in front of the bartender.
The glass sat in front of him. Empty.
Just like him.
=-=
Jayson Sousa
Lieutenant Jayson Stark
Chief of Operations
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
=-=
“A Lighter Discussion”
Previous post: “Echoes of a Stranger” by Jayson
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Corridor
Stardate: 45007.2010
The towering lizard man, Zub Enel, walked the corridors silently, his tread stealthy, out of habit rather than need—a killer ghost with no one to haunt, no one to suddenly loom over, no one to make recoil in surprise and dread. The ANUBIS thrummed through the deck plates. People in the corridor passed oblivious to him, a Saurian, 7-foot-tall Voth now so common a sight as to be invisible. There was laughter and snatches of conversation. Few seemed even remotely aware of the dark mood of the senior staff. He rambled on, a scaly apparition in the flesh—a caster of shadows.
He felt a heaviness in his chest as if he had been struggling greatly to breathe for hours in thin air. His heartbeat was steady, but it thudded unnaturally loud against his breastbone. His stomach was twisted not from fasting, but from his inability to digest what the changes to Ya’Han, Gemma, Christie, and Nathan meant.
A steady patter of voices, glasses clinking, and cutlery hitting plates and bowls grew louder. He realized his feet were taking him to the Black Hole Lounge - a place not too terrible to be after the filth and degraded surroundings of the derelict NORTHAL DRIFT spaceport.
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Another Corridor
Stardate: 45007.2010
Gemma drifted through the corridor with no real destination at first, her boots nearly silent on the deck plating. She let her fingertips trail the bulkhead, feeling the ship’s heartbeat thrumming through cold metal. In her mind, Ya’Han’s eyes glowed crimson again and again, a darkness Gemma understood far too well. The Red Dragon’s fury, that fire Ya’Han held back until it devoured her enemies, wasn’t so different from the shadows Gemma kept chained behind her own thoughts.
"What if we’re the same," one voice inside her asked. "What if her darkness is just braver than ours?"
She ignored the thought, but it followed anyway, pacing her like a stray cat. Pieces of her; Anya, Shinral, Gabrielle, all knew something about holding bloodlust by the throat, about keeping a monster civil when civility was an ugly joke.
The corridor bent. She turned with it, not because she meant to. Maybe she’d always meant to. The polished doors of the Black Hole Lounge glided open as if they had been expecting her all along.
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Black Hole Lounge
Stardate: 45007.2015
Enel stepped in, instantly cocooned in warmth, scents of fresh food and clean people. The lighting glowed low and steady. He automatically looked for a place to sit alone. He saw Jayson sitting as though he was radiating an impenetrable forcefield to keep even the Borg at bay. Zub decided to leave him be.
The smallest empty table was for four. He slipped into a seat and stretched his long legs to one side so he wouldn’t trip anyone. He thought about what he might like to drink — his first since coming back aboard -- and whether it should be a double, a double-double, or even a quadruple-double-double.
=-=
She paused at the threshold. The low lights and warm murmur of conversation wrapped around her shoulders like an old blanket. It wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty either. Her eyes found Zub right away, impossible to miss him. There he was, folded awkwardly at a table meant for much smaller ghosts.
Gemma crossed the room without hesitation. She moved like someone who belonged exactly where she chose to stand. Without asking, she slid into the chair opposite him, legs crossed, fingers drumming once on the table’s edge.
“Trying to drink the ship dry tonight?” she asked, her tone more amused than accusing. Her eyes traced the shape of his glass, then lifted to his face, searching for the same questions she’d asked herself in the corridor.
Zub liked how Gemma felt comfortable enough with him to slip right into a seat across from him. The soft lights added a subtle glint to her coppery curls. As she searched his face, there was a warmth there he was not used to seeing. Gemma of Old acted like more like ANI, a piece of beautiful machinery rather than a person. Since the transfer of the nanites from young Nathan to save her life, she had changed.
He smiled and rotated the tall drink glass, festooned with a bright yellow citrus fruit slice, in its little circle of condensation. He hadn’t yet sipped the dark drink. His deep voice rumbled just loud enough for her highly sensitive ears. “Honestly, I am torn. I want to drink this….” He glanced down at it, “I think it's called a Texas Tea Leaf Infusion…. Six kinds of alcoholic spirits. Anyway, I want to get completely anesthetized so I can forget this horrible mission for a while. But, I feel in my soul that the mission isn’t over. I need to stay alert.”
“You ever think,” she said, leaning back, voice softer, “that maybe Ya’Han’s darkness is what keeps the rest of us honest? Reminds us what’s waiting if we slip.”
She tilted her head, smile flickering like a ghost. “Or maybe that’s just me projecting. Wouldn’t be the first time, according to Adriana.”
He nodded his crested head, still twirling his glass.
She tapped the rim of his glass lightly with her fingertip. “Mind if I join your haunted corner? I promise not to be good company.” Gemma's gaze wandered off momentarily and fell upon the lonely man. Jayson. Although alone, his thoughts were likely much worse company than any of her personalities could ever be at this time.
Zub’s golden-eyed gaze, pupils wide under the amber candlelike lights, followed the coppery-haired beauty's glance toward Jason. “He looks like he’s as lonely as a planet cast off by his star, drifting away from all the warmth and light he has always known. A’Janni and I should beat him up so he feels the same pain on the outside as he does on the inside.” He smiled wolfishly. "It’s what friends do.”
He raised his glass toward Gemma and made the ice rattle. “Please join me and be bad company.
He looked at her searchingly. “Any new news about Nathan? I saw him on my escort duty of our ladies of shadow between Sickbay and the Brig, but didn’t have time to check in.”
"The latest intel on him," the ILO teased, "is that he’ll make a full recovery. It’ll take time. No more nanites to patch him up overnight, but he’ll live." A real smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. "Careful, Zub. Someone might think you actually care about the little man. The way you carried him around that rotting drift was... parental. You and T'Lara would make a sweet set of parents for Nathan."
"I think you’d make a much better mother," Zub said, the words slipping out faster than his thoughts could catch them.
The silence that followed was heavier than the ship’s hull plating. Gemma just watched him, eyes locked to his golden ones, searching for something she might not want to find.
=-=
David Michael Inverso
Lieutenant JG Zub Enel
MCO
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
and
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
"Arrival"
Previous post: "A Lighter Discussion" by Rachel and David
Setting: USS NILE, Cargo hold
Stardate: 45008.0600
The USS NILE was a ship of transit, not of conversation.
There were no idle murmurs in its corridors, no laughter bleeding through the bulkheads. Only the soft, intermittent clicking of shifting metal panels, temperature regulators adjusting, and hydraulic seals flexing as space itself tugged at the hull. A mechanical rhythm too precise to be organic, yet oddly comforting all the same.
Most aboard had long since learned to ignore it.
But the man seated alone in the rearward cargo hold listened.
Not because he needed to.
Because he wanted to.
Drayk sat cross-legged in silence beside the transporter pad, his long frame folded with almost predatory poise. Beside him sat a single crate, rectangular and unmarked, secured shut with internal grav-locks. He leaned against it like it had always been part of him. One hand rested on its surface, not protective, but anchoring.
The silver strands of his hair, braided tightly into two cords that hung over his broad shoulders, caught the muted glow of the overhead panels. His expression was still, his steel-blue eyes scanning the walls without focusing on them. The light seemed to hesitate on his skin, running over the faint lattice of scars on his forearms where his sleeves had been pushed up.
Everything about him was deliberate: the way he sat, the way he breathed, even the way his boots were arranged just so at the transporter pad's edge, ready for the next step.
When the NILE signaled readiness for transport, he unfolded upward in one seamless motion. No hand bracing. No preparatory shift. Just a fluid, almost unnatural rise from sitting to standing, as if gravity had chosen to grant him a reprieve.
He stretched one arm across his chest, then the other, shoulders rolling with the quiet creak of leather.
The long, dark coat he wore had seen years of use. Not years of wear, that implied neglect. This coat had been cared for, maintained, re-stitched with a meticulous hand. It draped over his lean, powerful frame like a shadow given substance. The collar was turned up, the sleeves rolled once past thick wrists, and on his belt rested a combat blade, standard issue for no military anywhere in the quadrant.
He stepped onto the pad.
No words. Just a curt nod to the transporter chief.
And in a shimmer of golden light, he vanished.
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 18, Cargo Bay 11 -> Corridor
Stardate: 45008.0605
His arrival on the USS ANUBIS was not announced. No ceremony, no diplomatic courtesy. Just the flash of energy, the thud of the crate as it settled beside him, and the figure of Drayk suddenly standing in the middle of a cargo bay that had been until a moment ago, empty.
It took the ship's avatar half a second longer than usual to react, a rare delay.
Ani blinked. The artificial woman just stood there, processing a million bytes of data per second, her expression unreadable but unmistakably curious.
"You were not scheduled to arrive directly aboard the ANUBIS," she said, tilting her head. "Protocol..."
Drayk raised one gloved hand and held out a datapad.
Priority transfer orders. Digitally authenticated. Signed. Final.
Ani scanned the pad, though in truth, she had already pulled the relevant data from the moment it entered her visual range. Her synthetic eyes narrowed just enough to suggest thought, calculation.
Drayk said nothing.
"Very well," she replied after a beat. "You've been assigned temporary quarters on Deck 5. If you require guidance..."
He turned and began to walk away.
Ani blinked again, watching him with quiet processing power. He did not ask for directions. He didn't look back.
The crate floated after him, following silently under the gentle pull of a localized grav-field.
The corridor lighting was dimmer than he had expected. Functional. Unadorned. Drayk's footsteps echoed softly as he moved, not hurried, not slow. The kind of pace born from certainty. From knowing exactly where he was going.
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 9, Corridor -> Cargo Bay 7
Stardate: 45008.0610
As he stepped out of the turbolift, two technicians fell silent mid-conversation, their eyes tracking the long coat, the palpable weight of his presence, and the stranger's face, so out of place in a ship where familiarity was currency.
He didn't acknowledge them. Didn't even shift his eyes.
They watched him go, unease settling in their stomachs for reasons they couldn't name.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the heavy, sealed doors of Cargo Bay 7.
They parted at his approach, soundless and smooth, almost deferential, as if even the ship understood the gravity of this arrival.
Cool air drifted out to meet him. Dry. Still. The kind of air that clung to silence, heavy with the weight of unspoken truths. The lights adjusted in slow increments, rising only enough to acknowledge his presence, but staying low. Respectful.
Twenty-three stasis caskets lay arranged in perfect rows, their pale exteriors identical, their faint hums merging into a single, soft rhythm, a mechanical heartbeat for those who no longer had one of their own.
No names. No markers.
But he didn't need them.
He moved down the center aisle, each step measured, deliberate, the sound of his boots dulled by the reinforced flooring. The coat swayed faintly at his sides, leather whispering against the hush of the room.
With every row he passed, the tension in his frame coiled tighter. His shoulders squared, jaw set, amber eyes fixed ahead with unflinching precision.
Until the third row from the end.
He stopped.
And turned.
The casket was indistinguishable from the rest.
But to him, it was the only one that mattered.
For a long moment, he didn't move. He just stood there, staring at the unmarked casing, his tall frame casting a shadow that seemed heavier than the light should allow.
His chest rose and fell once. Again. Slower now.
A hand lifted, gloved fingers reaching toward the stasis unit. He hesitated, not from doubt, but because some small, defiant part of him knew that contact would be too final, too real.
His hand hovered a hair's breadth from the cold surface. His fingers trembled. Just once.
There was no one to see it. No one to hear the sharp, shallow breath that slipped between his teeth, cut short before it could betray anything more.
Not anger. Not even grief.
Something deeper. Older.
Regret.
He forced his fingers down, resting his palm flat against the casing. The chill sank into his skin, threading its way up through the muscles of his forearm, into his chest, where it settled like a stone.
And for a heartbeat, just one, Drayk felt the weight of it break him.
His jaw tightened, the sinew in his neck rigid, eyes burning as they softened, not with weakness, but with the unbearable pressure of memory. Of failure.
No sound left him. Not a sob. Not a curse.
But his hand flexed against the casing, knuckles whitening as if he could somehow pull her back through sheer force of will.
The leather of his coat creaked faintly as he leaned in, shoulders bowing under the gravity of the moment.
“Satella.”
The whisper was low, fragile, meant for no one but the void.
No one saw the fracture.
And when it passed, it was gone.
His hand dropped away. The breath he’d been holding escaped in a quiet exhale, sharp and surgical, as if he could excise the pain like a blade cutting into scar tissue.
Then he was still again.
Deliberate. Controlled. Unshakable.
The man the ANUBIS had been told to expect.
Not a doctor. Not an officer. Not a shadow in transit.
Just a man who had arrived far too late.
=-=
Scott Grant [tryanasazi111@gmail.com]
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
=-=
"Wait... What? How?"
Previous post: "Arrival"
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Captain's Ready Room
Stardate: 45008.0700
The morning routine had taken on a predictability Shar'El had come to quietly appreciate. For all the chaos they'd endured recently, particularly everything involving Ya'Han and Christie, these brief early check-ins with Captain Morningstar offered a rare, welcome stability. That, along with the Risian Tea Latte, was starting to grow on her.
The Commander entered the Ready Room with the same composed calm she had perfected over the years, her thoughts still partially consumed by her ongoing concerns over Ya'Han. The shadows lingering in the back of the woman's mind continued to defy easy classification. Nothing concrete. Nothing actionable. Just... off. And it was her job to understand what, or who, had changed.
Captain Morningstar looked up from the padd in his hands and offered his usual calm smile as he motioned toward the second mug already waiting.
"You're late," he said with no heat, clearly teasing.
"Only by thirty-six seconds," she countered, taking the offered drink and settling into the seat opposite him.
He nodded, then leaned back with the practiced ease of someone about to drop a well-timed surprise. "I heard our new Assistant Chief Engineer settled in last night. How's he adjusting?"
Shar'El blinked, her cup halfway to her lips. "New Assistant Chief Engineer?"
Erik's grin deepened.
The realization hit fast and hard. She had entirely forgotten. The man had been scheduled to transfer aboard once they returned to NEW ALEXANDRIA, but given the current situation, they'd never made it back. If he had boarded, it certainly wasn’t through the usual channels.
"I was under the impression he was still waiting for clearance," she admitted, already mentally scanning the list of arrivals.
"According to the transfer orders, he requested to come aboard as soon as possible. With your approval, I might add," Morningstar said, tapping the padd. "He came in at 0605 with the set of supplies from the NILE."
Shar'El stared, stunned. "How?"
"He beamed aboard with the cargo. Ani greeted him and informed me of his arrival."
Of course she did. The android would not have missed something like that, even if someone else clearly had.
"I apologize, Captain," she said, rising to her feet and placing the barely-touched tea on the desk.
Erik lifted a hand. "No need for that. You're juggling more than anyone should reasonably be expected to. I just thought you’d want to know."
She was already on her way out. "I do. Thank you."
Exiting the Ready Room, Shar'El didn’t pause. Her stride was purposeful, sharp with guilt. Welcoming new officers aboard was her responsibility, especially someone joining the senior staff. That she had missed it entirely left her unsettled in a way few things did.
"Computer, locate Lieutenant Junior Grade Val," she said as she stepped into the corridor.
=/\= Lieutenant JG Val is in his quarters, Deck 5, section 14. =/\=
"Found his quarters and already settling in," she muttered to herself, uncertain if that was a good sign. "He's not the type to waste time."
There was no need to delay any further. Whoever this Lieutenant Val was, however he came to be part of the ANUBIS, it was time they officially met.
=-=
Tiffany Reeve
Commander Shar'El
Executive Officer
USS ANUBIS
"First Impressions"
Previous post: "Wait... What? How?" by Tiffany
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 5, Val's Quarters
Stardate: 45008.0710
The chime sounded again.
Drayk's eyes opened, pale and cold against the dimness. The sound was not unexpected, nothing aboard this ship had been thus far, but it was slightly earlier than calculated. He remained motionless on the floor, cross-legged, hands resting lightly on his knees. Breath slow. Muscles coiled. A predator at rest.
"Enter," he called, voice even but carrying a quiet authority that needed no elevation.
The doors parted to reveal a woman framed against the brighter corridor. Her bearing alone identified her before she spoke, upright, precise, and radiating that calm Starfleet officers seemed to cultivate as armor.
"Lieutenant Junior Grade Drayk Val, I presume."
"Commander Shar'El. You presume correctly."
He let her study him. Most people weren't sure what to do when they first saw him like this, out of uniform, silver hair loose, no visible markers of Starfleet’s structure about him. It was intentional. Uniforms were tools of conformity. He preferred to introduce himself on his own terms.
"You arrived aboard without formally checking in," she said evenly, stepping inside. "That is… unorthodox."
**Unorthodox,** he thought. Everything about this ship had been unorthodox so far. The corridors hummed with an undercurrent of tension, and even the computer's responses seemed slightly too sharp, as if reflecting the crew's collective strain. He could already see the cracks forming. The ANUBIS might be a fine vessel, but even fine vessels failed under the wrong hands.
"Orthodoxy is a luxury for those who have time to indulge it. I don't."
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and he noted it. She was disciplined enough to contain her reaction, but not so cold as to be unreadable. That made her interesting.
"It is Starfleet protocol," she replied. "As First Officer, it is my responsibility to ensure new senior officers are properly received."
"And yet you weren't there."
The statement hung between them like a blade. He saw her stiffen slightly. Good, he thought. Better to gauge her response to blunt truth now than later when lives might depend on it.
"Circumstances aboard have been… complex," she said. "You'll find the ANUBIS is not a typical posting."
He let his pale gaze sweep briefly around the room before returning to her. Not typical, she said. He'd already sensed as much. The ship was functional, even elegant in design, but the air carried a weight. Shadows clung in odd places, as if something unseen prowled the periphery of perception.
And then there was the lingering pull of memory, the faintest scent of Satella's perfume that still clung to his senses like a ghost. He had relocated her casket, resisting the quiet suggestions from transfer officers to move her to NEW ALEXANDRIA. She belonged here until he said otherwise.
"Complexity is irrelevant," he said, rising in one smooth motion. "A system either functions under pressure or it fails. I intend to ensure your ship does the former."
"Our ship," she corrected sharply.
For the first time, he allowed himself the faintest of smiles, not warmth, not reassurance. Something colder. Sharper. "Ownership is earned, not assigned. We'll see if the ANUBIS claims me."
He watched her face for any flicker of reaction. There was none. Controlled, he noted again. She was a woman accustomed to command, but he wondered how much of that was the mask and how much the core.
"Starfleet doesn't require you to belong to the ship," she said. "Only to perform your duties."
"And I will," Drayk replied. "To the letter, and beyond. You'll find I manifest results as required."
As required. The words were more than rhetoric, they were truth. He did not simply adapt to systems. He bent them into alignment, or he broke them. Satella had known that about him, and she had loved him for it, or perhaps in spite of it.
Shar'El drew in a breath. "Very well. I expect you to attend senior staff briefing at 0900. In uniform."
"Of course."
She turned to leave, pausing at the threshold. "You've made an impression, Lieutenant."
"That," he said softly, "is by design."
The doors slid shut behind her.
For a moment he stood motionless, listening to the faint thrum of the ANUBIS's heart. Satella's presence, or the echo of it, lingered strongest in these quarters, and he wasn't yet certain whether that comforted him or gnawed at his restraint.
"This ship is a wound," he murmured under his breath. "And I am either the salve… or the blade that reopens it."
He turned back toward the dim room, already cataloguing the faces he would meet at 0900. Captain Morningstar. Commander Shar'El. The others. All unknown quantities.
But they would know him, all soon enough.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Unspoken Variables"
Previous post: "First Impressions" by Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Sickbay
Stardate: 45007.0725
T'Lara was reviewing bioscans from the NORTHAL DRIFT away mission when the doors to Sickbay opened. She did not look up immediately; the biometric signature had already registered.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Drayk Val.
New arrival. Assistant Chief Engineer. He wasn't scheduled to board the ANUBIS until the ship returned to NEW ALEXANDRIA. Yet here he was, barely an hour after materializing in Cargo Bay 11 as per Ani's report.
"You didn't waste any time," T'Lara said, turning toward him.
"Wasting time is a luxury I do not abide by."
A precise answer. Not defensive. Not arrogant. Just fact.
Her eyes moved over him methodically: not in uniform, but wearing a long, sleeveless leather coat, well maintained, clearly worn with purpose. Long silver hair, tightly braided. Lean, well-muscled frame. A silent intensity that didn't just suggest control, it radiated from him. And then, the more notable detail: his species.
Mikulak.... Like Satella.
The resemblance wasn't obvious at first glance, but to T'Lara, who cataloged detail with surgical precision, it was unmistakable. Genetic similarities. Hair pigmentation. Facial symmetry. Neural frequency alignment.
No mention of a relationship had been made.
But it was now illogical to assume there wasn't one.
His gaze swept over Sickbay with the focus of someone searching for something no one else would see. Or the shadow of someone he desperately wanted to find.
T'Lara followed his line of sight. "Doctor Bruxa, who was the Chief Medical officer before me, worked here, in this room. Did you know her?"
He ignored the question, eyes continuing to move, not idly, but with precision. Searching.
For her. Or at least, what remained of her.
T'Lara motioned to the primary bio-bed. "Please sit. Standard intake protocols. Vitals, neurological baseline, toxin markers, and genetic sequencing."
Drayk moved forward and removed his coat without a word. As he sat, the faint creak of leather accompanied him, the only audible sound in the room.
Old scars lined his forearms. Some were symmetrical. Maybe intentional. The others were jagged. Work hazards?
He watched the medical scanner activate, but his attention remained only half-invested. The rest of him, she suspected, was listening to the silence. Watching for lingering memories. For a brief moment, T'Lara found herself wishing Shar’El had been present to witness this.
"You knew her?" she asked again, a simple query folded inside medical formality.
He looked at her, expression still. "Depends how you define 'knew.'"
"You are Mikulak," T'Lara said, continuing her scan. "So was she. The physiological resemblance is not insignificant."
He offered no comment.
She adjusted the scanner settings. "Genome sequencing confirms genetic engineering. Enhanced musculature. Reinforced immune matrix. Integrated memory retention. Your physiology is... exacting. Whoever designed you was not merely refining..." She paused. "They were reaching for perfection."
His lips twitched in the barest echo of a smile, dry, but not dismissive.
There was no official record of Satella having undergone genetic enhancement. Yet now, T'Lara found herself reevaluating that assumption. If he had been designed, what were the odds that she had not?
The scanner beeped softly. Data scrolled across the screen.
"All systems within optimal parameters," she said. "Although your limbic system is showing elevated prefrontal activity. Suppressed, but active."
"I meditate."
"That may explain your control. It does not account for the unrest."
Drayk said nothing.
"You are searching for something... someone that is no longer here," she said, her voice quiet. "That is not behavior associated with protocol."
Still no reaction. But his silence was beginning to speak louder than words.
"You may not wish to explain your connection to her. That is your right. But you are not the first person to stand in that spot and grieve silently."
He met her gaze again. "I don't grieve. I remember."
T'Lara inclined her head, accepting the distinction.
"You're cleared for duty," she said. "I would like a follow-up in 48 hours. Your genome profile raises… interesting correlations I wish to examine further."
He rose smoothly, retrieving his coat. His movements were as deliberate as they had been upon entering.
At the door, he paused.
"She was a good doctor," He paused, breath steady, but something unseen moved behind his eyes.
"She left her mark," T'Lara noted, in a softer tone than would normally be expected from a Vulcan or Romulan.
Then he was gone.
T'Lara returned to the console, but her eyes lingered for a moment on the inactive scanner. Already, she had begun correlating his genome data with Satella's archived records. Searching for patterns. Tracing threads.
Not out of idle curiosity, but because too much of what she had seen suggested there was more to Satella's history than anyone aboard the ANUBIS had been told.
And the man who had arrived unannounced might be the only one who knew the truth.
=-=
Dawn Bohr
Lt. Commander T'Lara
Chief Medical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"The Scent"
Previous post: "Unspoken Variables" by the talented Dawn
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Bridge -> Observation Lounge
Stardate: 45008.0855
The turbolift doors parted with a soft hiss that felt too loud for Gemma's ears. Zub stood at her side like an iron anchor; steady, massive, warm in that quiet way he never admitted to.
She stepped out first. The bridge's hush wrapped around her, routine humming: officers at their stations, lights low but functional, the ship's heartbeat pulsing beneath the deck plates.
Then the air shifted.
A note on the recycled current. Not ozone. Not oil, not disinfectant or starship metal. Something warmer. Familiar. Too familiar.
Crushed mint... sharp, fresh... the same that used to drift through Sickbay when Satella was the CMO.
Gemma froze mid-step. Her mind flared open, not just hers but theirs. Anya's predatory coil tightening, Neri's soft wonder, Dalra's sharp disbelief and reminder that she’s gone, Gwenvel's hush, trying to soothe the storm. The ILO knew the truth: smell could break the strongest mind. She'd used that truth to shatter others. Never expected it to turn on her.
Ships were full of smells: metal, sweat, oil. But this? Satella's. Distinct. Kind. Impossible.
Behind her, Zub's bulk shifted closer, his voice low. "You good?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't. The bridge blurred at the edges, the short corridor to the Observation Lounge stretched out like a tunnel to nowhere. She forced her feet to move. Left, right, each step pulling her deeper into the past she'd buried under orders and secrets.
She braced for it: Satella waiting. That warm half-smile. Silver hair falling soft over her cheek. The voice that once told every monster inside Gemma they weren't monsters at all.
Her hand lifted. Touched the sensor. The doors parted, familiar, and the memory stepped in ahead of her eyes.
Satella wasn't there.
But the chair was. Occupied. By someone else. The audacity, the insult.
Silver hair, long, braided, catching the overhead light the same way Satella's did when she leaned over a biobed. Her mind staggered at the resemblance. Her pulse didn't care about the difference.
His eyes met hers, steel and storms, no warmth, none of Satella's cradle to hold the worst of her.
He didn't flinch. Didn't look away. Just watched her see him. Watched the hairline fracture of her calm slip through the cracks of her bones.
Zub moved up behind her, a silent shield. She felt him look from her to the stranger. He didn't speak. Didn't need to. He felt the tremor under her skin, the anger, the confusion. All without their shared nanites humming between them.
Gemma's throat worked once, dry. A question clawed up like static: Who was he? But the words tangled behind her teeth.
She moved to her usual seat. Sat stiff, hands fisted tight beneath the table, hidden. Her eyes stayed locked on him, dissecting, comparing, trying to find the stitch that bound Satella to this.
He was not her. But the resemblance buzzed like a nerve. A brother? A cousin? A ghost?
Inside, her shadows pressed closer, hissing.
Who was he?
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
#######
"Introductions and Goals"
Previous post: "The Scent"
##########
"Some doors should never be opened, yet curiosity demands we find the key."
— Vulcan Proverb
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Observation Lounge
Stardate: 45008.0900
The Native American stood at the end of the table, meeting the inquiring gaze of his senior staff. Shar'El and T'Lara knew who the new officer was; they had already met him. But to everyone else, including the Captain, the silver-haired Mikulak man was a bittersweet reminder of the person who once sat in the chair he now occupied.
"Let me start with the introductions," Erik began, needing to address the countless questioning looks and whispered thoughts hanging on everyone's lips. "Lieutenant Drayk Val is joining us as our new Assistant Chief Engineer."
Erik straightened slightly as the silver-haired Mikulak rose to his full height, the lines of his posture deliberate, almost sculpted.
"Lieutenant Drayk Val'Bruxa," the man corrected, his voice carrying the calm authority of someone neither asking for permission nor seeking approval. "The name is precise for a reason."
He let the words hang in the air for a heartbeat, long enough to ensure they settled into the minds of those present. Then, without so much as a flicker of a smile, Drayk nodded toward the captain. "But for now, let's leave it at that."
"Val'Bruxa it is," Morningstar acknowledged. "My apologies, Lieutenant."
Drayk said nothing and just sat back down, his gaze not fixed on anything or anyone, yet observing everything around him.
"Dr. T'Lara," Captain Morningstar prompted, his tone shifting to the more serious purpose of the morning's staff meeting. The room grew quiet. Everyone knew who he meant. "Any further developments on the medical front?"
T'Lara inclined her head slightly. "Now that the dormant genetic material has been activated, I was able to isolate and analyse it with greater precision. While subtle, its molecular signature is now distinct enough to trace both its structure and probable origin."
"Origin?" Maya asked immediately, the Shillian's natural curiosity flaring. The phrasing had clearly piqued her scientific instincts.
T'Lara nodded, "Initially, I hypothesised that the Lokustaar genome fragment had been introduced through artificial means, postnatally, or during early childhood exposure. However, the data consistently suggests otherwise. The inheritance appears endogenous. In other words: passed on biologically from parent to child."
"Wait..." Adriana interjected, brows furrowed in disbelief. "You're saying Ya'Han and Christie were born with this?"
"Correct," T'Lara said evenly. "My analysis indicates that both Na'Rin and Cristhiane were exposed to the Lokustaar genetic material at some point prior to conception. This exposure resulted in stable genomic incorporation, a germline integration, not a somatic mutation. Therefore, their offspring, Ya'Han and Christie, carry the altered genetic sequence as part of their fundamental DNA structure."
"So they prepared them... years in advance," Adriana said softly before adding a comment meant more for herself than anyone else. "How many more are there out there?"
A low growl escaped from A'Janni's throat as the Caitian sat forward. "Then Cristhiane is infected?"
"It is not an infection," T'Lara replied calmly, her Vulcan demeanour unshaken. "The genetic material is not pathogenic. It is integrated at the genomic level but lacks phenotypic expression. From what I've determined, full activation requires not just inheritance, but also a specific developmental or environmental trigger, possibly epigenetic in nature. That is why the Lokustaar ensured germline transmission through maternal hosts rather than direct postnatal exposure. That method, reflecting the Lokustaar's long-term plan of actions, allowed them to embed themselves across generations, remaining undetected until activation."
"So they prepared her... years in advance," Adriana said softly, the realisation settling like a shadow.
T'Lara hesitated a fraction of a second, a pause marked not by Vulcan logic, but by something subtler, more Romulan. "There is still much I do not understand, such as whether the activation mechanism is gender-specific, or whether other hereditary or hormonal variables influence expression. But this much is clear: Ya'Han's abilities are not the result of an external infection. They are encoded into her biology. Ya'Han is just further along in the developmental stages than Christie is currently, and there is no way to know at this stage if Christie will ever come to match what Ya'Han is now or what she may become."
A sense of dread and uneasiness fell over the assembled officers, showing the seriousness and personal stakes at play in this situation.
Following a few moments of silent contemplation, Shar'El opted to shift the focus, although not to a subject that was all that much better.
"What about the device?"
Maya only took a moment to gather her thoughts before pressing a few controls on the table, lowering the ambient lighting and summoning a slowly rotating holographic image of the object in question.
All eyes fell upon the projection of the artefact, a seamless, obsidian-black cube with sharp edges. Etched onto the seemingly impenetrable surface were asymmetrical glyphs. Some glowed faintly in violet. Others remained inert, yet ancient. This had not been the first time most had seen the device, but it still held an air of mystery and foreboding suspense.
Maya took a long slow breath, the information she was about to share not respecting her long-held desire to offer as much information as possible. Her slender fingers moved over the control interface. The Shillian's eyes shone with an uncanny frustration.
"As baffling as it is captivating," Maya began. "The device is composed of a non-reactive material that does not register on any standard Starfleet scanning protocol, including quantum resonance tomography, phased neutrino backscatter, and even low-yield graviton probing. Which, as you're all aware, should have provided at least rudimentary compositional data."
"In common tongue, please, Maya," Adriana said, half teasingly, half dreading what would be a more brutal description.
"Sorry," the Shillian apologised. "In short, the results of the scans can be summed up in a single word... nothing. It is not cloaked, nor shielded. It is simply, as far as the instruments can tell... absent."
She paused, clearly aware of the silence in the room. The silence of what she considered to be her failure.
"The glyphs," she continued, "as noted in my earlier reports, etched along the surface are partially identifiable as Lokustaar, though heavily degraded and blended with what appears to be linguistic patterns similar to those recovered from the Tholian Archive, although significantly older and far more symbolically abstract. This may suggest a collaboration, or perhaps subjugation, between the two species at some unknown point in prehistory. Again, in short, they offer no clues as to the device's mode of operation. Despite all of my efforts, the artefact remains a complete mystery."
The massive and imposing Voth shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "That thing," the reptilian officer said, pointing an accusatory three-fingered hand at the holographic image, "didn't even respond to Christie's presence... and she touched it, well, almost. So we are no closer to understanding how it wiped out 128,000 colonists."
The Shillian sombrely nodded. "Actually, we know the outcome if not the method by which it was brought to be. All biological life forms on the colony were... erased." Maya paused, the weight of her own words pressing heavily on her soul as well as that of everyone in the room.
Following a few seconds of silence, she continued. "Their genetic residue was atomised, leaving the infrastructure and non-organic systems entirely intact. No energy discharge. No trace of a vectorised pathogen. No neural disruption patterns. It's as though they were written out of reality at the cellular level."
A chill passed over the room.
Gemma, the ever composed ILO offered her opinion, coiled sharpness behind her voice, as she leaned forward.
"And you still have no idea how it operates? No controls? No interface? No power source?"
"Unfortunately, this is correct," Maya agreed. "Attempts to interface using tactile, neural, and harmonic inputs all failed. The Lokustaar genetic imprint present in Christie failed to trigger any activity from the device." The Shillian paused for a brief moment. "Her connection to the Lokustaar genetic lineage appears to be too weak to cause the device to respond in any measurable way."
The mention of Ya'Han having a genetic lineage with the nightmarish shadow race sent a chill down Jayson's spine, the Ops Officer unable to bring himself to offer anything to the meeting, knowing that his efforts to defend the woman would not convince anyone, not even himself.
Captain Morningstar exchanged a glance with Adriana, then looked toward the tall Marine Commanding Officer, followed by the ILO, before finally settling on his ExO, Commander Shar'El.
Maya reluctantly continued. "During the incident back on the NORTHAL DRIFT, Lt. Ya'Han deactivated the identical device via a simple gestural motion. She did not touch it. She did not speak to it. The device simply acknowledged her presence and thoughts."
Growling beneath his breath, Zub voiced what most were thinking. "So what are you suggesting? That we enlist her help to activate the device?"
"From an Intelligence Gathering standpoint, the results are not worth the risks," Gemma said. "We have seen what that device can do, and having Ya'Han close to it could spell disaster for everyone on the ANUBIS. That is exactly why Admiral Koniki forbade us from returning to NEW ALEXANDRIA."
"We are here to get answers," Shar'El countered. "And as much as we might hate it, Ya'Han is the only one holding the key to us figuring that thing out."
Maya, with a flick of a finger, returned the room to full illumination. "With due respect to all objections, scientifically speaking… Ya'Han is our only viable vector for further experimentation. Without her, the device remains a mystery. And that mystery has already erased a civilisation's worth of lives. We also have no evidence that her not being in immediate proximity to the device changes anything. If the device is attuned to her thoughts on a level beyond the understanding of our physical reality, she might be able to trigger it from anywhere on the ship, or even beyond."
A heavy silence settled. Morningstar looked around the room, each officer bearing the weight of the revelation.
"Then we proceed... with caution. Maya, prepare a controlled environment. Full containment. No risks. The ANUBIS was ordered here to find answers, and this appears to be our only available course of action. Set up the necessary protocols to ensure maximum safety. The crew's protection is paramount. Questions?"
Numerous looks, carrying unspoken questions that dared not be heard, were quickly shared around the table. The oppressive silence that ruled the gathering left the Captain with only one thing left to do.
"Dismissed."
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette {fcharette1969@gmail.com}
Captain Erik Morningstar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
--
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"Shadow Play"
Previous post: "Introductions and Goals" by Francois
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45008.0930
**Darkness does not corrupt. It reveals.** Drayk's thoughts were on the Mikulak Philosophical Tenet as the doors to the brig opened with a muted hiss. The scent of sterilized air mixed with something subtler, tension so dense it could have been a physical thing.
Drayk Val'Bruxa stepped through, his tall frame filling the doorway like the shadow of a hunting beast. His silver hair caught the cold glow of the overhead lights, turning the strands into threads of steel.
The security officer on duty shifted uneasily as the Mikulak’s gaze brushed past him. Drayk offered no acknowledgement; even protocol was irrelevant in this pursuit. He was not here to study shadows like a scholar chasing mystery. He was here because the Captain's words left no room for ambiguity. The device was an obstacle. The sisters were the variables. And obstacles existed to be removed.
Two occupied cells were side-by-side, allowing the security officer on duty to easily keep an eye on both with little effort. Behind one shimmering forcefield sat Ya'Han. She did not rise at his entry, nor did she flinch. Her posture was rigid, and her void-dark hair drifted around her like ink in water, alive and whispering in unseen currents.
Next to her, Christie sat on the edge of her cot, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Outside her cell, an older woman, her mother, kept vigil, seated primly on a bench. There was no spoken exchange between mother and daughter, only a silent line of shared pain. A few feet away, Adriana's twin sister stood watch as well, her expression calm but her eyes sharp, tracking Drayk with measured suspicion.
Drayk's gaze passed over them all, unreadable and deliberate. He didn't bother to address the two sentries keeping vigil. Their protective postures were irrelevant to him. They could watch, glare, even object if they pleased. He wasn't here for their comfort. He was here for answers.
His boots carried him forward in slow, measured steps. No urgency. No wasted energy.
"Excuse me," Adriana's twin said, her voice laced with quiet defiance directed at the gold-uniform officer she had never seen before. "You didn't have to come down here. Whatever questions you have..."
"...I'll ask directly," Drayk interrupted smoothly. His tone was neither rude nor kind, merely efficient.
Her jaw tightened. "She doesn't need you looming over her like some..."
Drayk's head turned, eyes like polished steel catching hers for the first time. His voice dropped a fraction, surgical in its precision.
"You may keep vigil. But don't mistake proximity for relevance."
The force of the words hung in the air, not a rebuke, but a simple statement of fact.
Christie flinched but did not look away. Her mother shifted uneasily, as though considering whether to speak, but ultimately remained silent.
Drayk turned his attention fully on Christie, his voice low and precise.
"You touched the device. It did nothing."
Christie swallowed hard. "I… tried. I wanted it to respond, but… it's like there's a door in me I can't open."
"Can't?" Drayk asked softly, stepping closer to the forcefield. "Or wouldn't? Like a door you’re too afraid to turn the handle on?"
Her mother straightened suddenly. "She's not afraid. She's resisting. There's a difference."
Drayk's steel-blue eyes cut to her for a single, measured heartbeat, long enough to acknowledge the noise, but not the substance. His tone was ice-smooth and final.
“Intent is irrelevant. Fear. Resistance. Doubt. All are obstacles to be cleared or crushed.”
Christie looked down at her hands. "You think I'm weak."
"No." Drayk's voice was as calm and even as ever as he gazed upon the daughter once again. "I think you're unfinished. That's worse."
He held her gaze a moment longer before pivoting smoothly on his heel to face the other cell.
Ya'Han stood waiting. Not defensive. Not welcoming. Simply waiting.
"You," Drayk said quietly. "The device answered you without hesitation. Why?"
Ya'Han's dark hair writhed faintly, though her expression betrayed nothing. "If I knew, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"You're wrong," Drayk replied without inflection. "You do know. On some level, in the marrow of your altered bones, in the cold logic of your new instincts, you know exactly why it obeyed you. You just haven't admitted it to yourself."
Her voice was low, almost a whisper, but firm. "It didn't obey me. It recognized me."
Drayk's head tilted slightly, like a predator studying an unfamiliar rival. "Recognition is the first step to loyalty. Or dominion."
A ripple passed through Ya'Han's living hair, tendrils coiling and uncoiling. Her eyes darkened, not in anger, but in a calm so deep it felt alien.
"You're afraid of me," she said, though her tone lacked accusation. "Like everyone else."
"No." Drayk stepped closer to her forcefield, his silver gaze locking with hers. "I don't have the luxury of fear. I am here to understand. Because if you lose yourself to whatever has claimed you, it won't just be this ship that burns. It will be all of us."
A beat of silence hung between them like a drawn blade.
He stepped back from Ya'Han's cell, letting his eyes drift across the room. Christie. Ya'Han. Two unwilling sisters. Two paths into the same abyss. One clinging to the edge. The other already crowned by shadows.
"I will speak to each of you again," Drayk said finally. "Not because I want to. Because the mission leaves no room for guessing games. Whatever the Lokustaar left in your bloodlines, it will either end this threat… or it will end us."
He turned and began to walk out before stopping mid-stride.
“Decide who and what you are,” he said without looking back. “I care nothing for your comfort, your fears, or your illusions of choice. Those around you demand results. The darkness will not wait for you to choose. Give me results, or it will take everything before you can decide what you are.”
The doors closed behind him, leaving the brig heavy with silence.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Too Close to Home"
Previous post: "Shadow Play" by Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45008.0945
The brig doors hissed open just in time for Adriana to catch a glimpse of silver hair vanishing down the corridor. Drayk Val'Bruxa didn't slow, didn't turn, didn't acknowledge her presence. He moved like a man walking away from a fire, unburned, but leaving embers behind.
Her breath caught as she stepped through the threshold. The emotional scars of the blaze he had unleashed were all too visible. The silence inside was thick, like a room holding its breath. The only sound was the soft, cyclical buzz of the forcefields, a mechanical whisper compared to the storm that had clearly just passed through.
Adriana's eyes swept the room. She hadn't heard the words exchanged, but the emotional debris was unmistakable
Amanda stood near the forcefield of Christie's cell, shoulders tense, eyes rimmed with something unspoken. Not quite tears. Not quite rage. Something heavier. Deeper. Her sister wore that rare, haunted look, like she hadn't just done something wrong, but been wrong.
To Amanda's left, Cristhiane sat on the bench outside her daughter's cell, her posture rigid with restrained emotion. She stared at Christie without seeing her, lost in thoughts Adriana could guess too easily.
And then Christie herself, inside the cell, seated on the edge of the cot, back straight, face calm. But it was the kind of calm that took effort to maintain. Her eyes weren't defiant. They were burning, flickering with a mixture of shame and strength. Like a dam holding against something massive just behind it.
Adriana didn't need to ask what had happened.
She felt it. Like a psychic imprint in the air. Cold, clinical devastation. A conversation had occurred, one meant to dissect, not to support. Whoever Drayk was, whatever he'd said… he'd left a scar.
And Adriana had arrived too late to stop it.
She crossed the room slowly, footsteps deliberately soft.
"Amanda…" she said gently.
Her sister turned, jaw clenched, trying too hard to appear unaffected. But Adriana could read her like a book, every page inked in emotions they'd shared since birth.
"I'm fine," Amanda muttered, too fast.
Adriana placed a hand on her arm. "No. You're not. And that's okay."
Amanda didn't respond, but her shoulders lowered just enough to admit the truth. It wasn't okay. Not for any of them.
Cristhiane didn't look up when Adriana approached. Her fingers were tangled tightly together in her lap, the only part of her body moving. Subtle tremors. Shame personified.
"T'Lara's report…" Adriana started, then stopped herself. There was no need to bring it up. Not like this. Not when Cristhiane already bore the guilt of something she'd never chosen.
"You did what you thought was right," Adriana said softly. "You couldn't have known what they did to you. What they put in you."
Cristhiane blinked, her lips tightening, but she still didn't speak. Just gave a small nod. It wasn't acceptance, but it was a start. She'd been used once by the Lokustaar, and again by the Tal'Shiar... each side knowing, somehow, what had been done to her. Christie's fate had never been chance. It had been planned, cultivated, and passed on like a curse, no matter which side claimed justification.
That was what hurt the most.
Adriana turned to Christie, who had yet to look away from Amanda.
"You okay?" she asked gently.
Christie's gaze flicked over to her, cool and guarded. "No, but there is little I can do about it, is there?"
That edge, it wasn't disrespect. It was armor. Adriana knew it well. She'd worn it herself when the world had been too cruel to allow vulnerability.
"I think someone said things they shouldn't have. And I think they probably meant well. That doesn't make it hurt less."
Christie let out a slow breath. "He wasn't wrong. Just… brutal."
Adriana gave a faint nod, offering her a small, sad smile. "Sometimes the truth gets mistaken for cruelty. Sometimes, cruelty wears the face of truth. Either way, it leaves bruises."
Christie didn't respond. She didn't have to.
Adriana stepped back, her gaze sweeping the room once more.
Amanda... Cristhiane... Christie.
Each hurt in a different way. Each trying to hold together a piece of themselves that Drayk’s words had cracked. Whatever his motivations, he hadn’t come here to comfort. He came to confront. And in doing so, he’d left the Counselor to clean up the wreckage.
She inhaled slowly, steadying herself.
"I'll be back," she said quietly, mostly to Amanda but meant for them all. Christie watched from beyond the forcefield, the usually strong young woman appearing... smaller somehow.
There were conversations she needed to have, comfort she still had to give. But first, she needed answers. Needed to understand why a man who once meant something to Satella Bruxa could wield words like blades with no visible remorse.
As Adriana exited the brig, her reflection flickered briefly in the glass beside the door. She barely recognized the expression on her face, part pain, part fury, part unspoken purpose.
-=-=-
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS
“Precision or Oblivion”
Previous post: "Too Close to Home" by the most excellent Marissa
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 20, MACO Training Area
Stardate: 45008.0950
“Cease fire!”
The MACO CO Lieutenant JG Zub Enel’s deep voice boomed over the thundering duet of two experimental plasma rifles they had resumed experimenting on. The air was sharp with ozone. Searing heat from an ablative armor patch they were using for a target, combined with the sweat of many MACOs gawking behind the firing line, made the large room sweltering.
The Terran marine sniper LC Diaz lugged her rifle over to drop it into the blue arms of the Andorian combat engineer. Her tone was reproachful. “It’s a lot heavier, Sparks.”
A huge Lurian, Sergeant Mi’Teh, laid his matching weapon almost reverently on a table. “More thrusty, too.”
Drayk Val’Bruxa stepped into the training area, his silver hair catching the overhead lights like drawn steel. The Marines barely registered his arrival at first, too absorbed in the lingering heatwaves rising from the far wall. But as his boots clicked on the deck plating, measured, deliberate, they began to take notice.
He stopped just shy of the firing line, arms folded across his chest, expression unreadable save for the faint arch of one brow. The gaze he turned on the room was surgical, dissecting the tableau of marines and their smoking toys.
“The scent alone tells me you’ve been attempting alchemy again,” he said, voice low and even. “Crude chemistry in the guise of engineering.”
Zub Enel looked up from his PADD, the bony eyebrows below his crest slightly raised in mild surprise. “Val’Bruxa.”
“Lieutenant,” Drayk inclined his head, though it carried the weight of a court summoning. “I couldn’t help noticing the sudden spike in localized power fluctuations as I passed through the outer corridor. That, combined with the sound of something being tortured, led me here.”
Not liking the reaction so far, Sparks, the blue, reedy Andorian combat engineer, narrowed his eyes at the unfamiliar Engineering officer. “We were test-firing an experimental plasma rifle system, sir. Improving the design for...
“Improving?” Drayk’s voice cut like a diamond saw. He stepped closer to the weapon Sparks cradled protectively, his eyes scanning its convoluted array of conduits and jury-rigged stabilizers. “This is not improvement. It is a suicide pact disguised as innovation.”
The Marines exchanged glances. Ghost, the towering Lurian sergeant, muttered under his breath, “He sounds like my old instructor…”
Drayk ignored him. “I see cross-wired inverters, mismatched energy regulators, and a synchronization algorithm written by someone who thinks ‘approximate’ is a design philosophy. This isn’t engineering; it’s witchcraft. And it nearly succeeded in conjuring a localized singularity. Tell me, Andorian, what did you think this modified rifle was going to do?”
The blue-skinned combat engineer glanced down at the plasma rifle and then back up at the muscular Starfleet engineer. “I go by Sparks, if you can manage that, sir. Calling me ‘Andorian’ reduces me to an object and….” He drew himself up indignantly, “I will not be objectified.” Several snickers followed.
Drayk’s lips twitched, less a smile than a sharpening of the blade. “And yet you objectified physics to suit your whim, Sparks. Tell me, will the laws of thermodynamics extend the same courtesy?”
Sparks’ eyes flashed as if he had a quick comeback, but he chose not to say it. His posture, though not openly rebellious, stayed straight and stiff. He said with an unusually elevated vocabulary from his usual, “This rifle has a twin that emits an equal and opposite matter/antimatter plasma beam. When aimed together at a target, the beams cross at the surface and the combined matter/antimatter energies annihilate in a huge explosion, enough to destroy almost any object or at least make a big hole in it. We were thinking we might need this against that artifact the away team brought back.” He pulled the rifle closer to his chest and squinted narrowly at the large silver-haired engineer.
Drayk’s silver gaze narrowed, not in confusion, but in predatory calculation. “You have built a weapon that requires perfect alignment and timing in an environment where neither exist. And you trust two humans, or a Lurian and a Terran, to hold steady the threads of life and death? Fascinating.” He tilted his head slightly, his voice now soft as falling ash. “Do you also plan to install blindfolds and spin them in circles for effect?”
The uncomfortable pause lingered for a few seconds.
“Did you account for the resonant feedback if your ‘crossed beams’ happened to meet in an uncontrolled environment?”
Sparks blinked, his antennae twitching. “We... uh... ran multiple simulations. Resonant feedback was… improbable.”
“Improbable is not impossible,” Drayk snapped. “And in space, ‘improbable’ has a tendency to become inevitable at precisely the wrong moment.” He let his words hang in the charged air, then reached out. Sparks flinched as if touched as Drayk’s gloved fingers brushed the weapon’s emitter array.
“You wanted a weapon capable of obliterating an artifact of unknown design and origin. That is understandable.” Drayk’s tone softened, not kindly, but dangerously calm. “But in doing so, you have crafted a device more likely to annihilate this ship, and everyone on it, than your intended target. You don’t need more power; you need control.”
Zub frowned. He knew his team of close-quarters fighters would soon rise up to defend Sparks. However, he was always worried about those crazy, wavy beams emitted by both rifles. No matter how far apart the weapons were, the beams seemed to curve and bend dangerously close to each other as they blazed downrange. Deep down, he believed the new Assistant Chief Engineer was telling the truth about how dangerous Sparks’s weapon was. He interrupted before anyone else could protest, his voice steady and reasonable. “What do you suggest, Mister Val’Bruxa?”
Drayk turned his gaze on him like a predator appraising a rival. “Allow me to rebuild this abomination properly. Or better yet, allow me to design you a device that performs as required, without risking a gravitational collapse. I wasn’t cultivated to improvise like a battlefield tinker; I was cultivated to deliver precision where others deliver chaos.”
Sparks opened his mouth. “The way battlefield tinkers go….” Sizing up the big engineer’s icy expression, he thought better of it, and shut it again.
Drayk stepped back, sweeping the room with his cool, steel gaze. “You are all soldiers. You accept risk because that is the nature of your work. I do not accept risk. I eliminate it. Remember that the next time you let a combat engineer design a starship weapon on a whim.”
With that, he turned on his heel and strode for the exit, leaving behind a room full of Marines who suddenly found their ‘improved’ rifles a little less impressive.
He heard the Andorian call as the training area hatch slid shut. “It wasn’t a whim.”
Without breaking stride, Drayk’s voice drifted back through the closing hatch, silken, sharp. “Then it was negligence with intent. A distinction without a difference.”
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
and
David Michael Inverso
Lieutenant JG Zub Enel
MCO
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”
"Shadows at the Edge of Sight"
Previous post: "Precision or Oblivion" by David & Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Bridge
Stardate: 45008.1000
The OPS Officer at his station, his gaze unfocused, staring at something well beyond the reach of the ANUBIS or its crew. The console lights blinked with quiet consistency beneath his fingertips, a rhythm of duty that should have offered some comfort. But for Jayson Stark, comfort was a foreign thing now, an emotion long exiled from the cold vacuum inside his chest.
He didn't even realize how often his eyes drifted across the bridge, settling again and again on the Tactical station. It was instinct. Habit. Hope. Whatever it was, it needed to stop. Because every time his gaze landed there, all he found was emptiness. Not just the absence of Ya'Han's body, but the lingering echo of her spirit. The chair might as well have held her ghost. He could almost see her, eyes sharp, hands poised, a small smile offered just to him in the rare moments when the universe wasn't collapsing around them.
That smile used to be enough to keep him together. It wasn't anymore.
Muted voices carried through the bridge, just loud enough to pierce the haze clouding his thoughts. A'Janni and Shar'El were at the center of it, locked in quiet conversation behind the Captain's chair.
"They play the long game," the Caitian FCO said, low but steady. "The Lokustaar don't rush. They wait, strike when the galaxy's not looking. Replace leaders. Warp systems from within. They feed on slow-burn chaos that leads to long-lasting ruin."
"Like they've done before," Shar'El replied, voice edged with frustration. "Entire governments hollowed out from the inside. Intelligence agencies, fleets, even civilian coalitions, corrupted slowly. Quietly. That is their strength, and leaves us always wondering what their endgame is."
Jayson's jaw clenched. The words shouldn't have surprised him, but they cut deeper than they should have. The Lokustaar's methods weren't brute force. They were erosion. They didn't conquer, they infiltrated. They wore your face while tearing your life apart from behind it.
His hand moved almost of its own accord, fingers brushing across his console until the internal sensor feed changed. Deck 19... Brig... Detention Cell 2.
There she was... Ya'Han... the woman he loved more than life itself.
Framed in low light, sitting on the edge of the bench as if caught between despair and defiance. And somehow, as if she felt the weight of his stare, she lifted her head and looked directly into the camera. Into him.
He froze.
There was no way she could know he was watching. Not consciously. Not logically. But her gaze was locked with his, unwavering and intense. The kind of gaze that had once made him believe they could survive anything. Now it felt like looking into a past life. Like seeing the face of someone who had died, and not for the first time.
Had the Lokustaar replaced her?
Had they done to Ya'Han what they had done to so many others?
He didn't know. And it was killing him.
Because if they had… that meant the woman he loved was gone. Again. And if they hadn't…
Then she was still in that cell. And he was out here. Powerless.
A memory surfaced, of the first time he lost Leena. Of standing in another room, staring at another screen, watching her vanish beneath fire and debris. It had broken something in him, something that had never quite healed. And now here he was again, reliving a nightmare with a different face, one that had become just as essential to him, if not more.
He swallowed hard, tearing his eyes away from the feed.
How many times can someone be asked to grieve the same love?
He had no answer. Just the oppressive silence of the bridge, the hushed whispers of conspiracies decades in the making, and the ghost of a woman sitting alone in a cold cell, staring back at him through a lens of uncertainty.
She was either gone... Or she was waiting. Either way… He was losing her.
Again.
=-=
Jayson Sousa
Lieutenant Jayson Stark
Chief of Operations
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Practical Logic"
Previous post: "Shadows at the Edge of Sight" by the devastated Jayson
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Sickbay
Stardate: 45008.1100
Gemma stood by Nathan's biobed longer than she'd intended. His face was pale but calm, the steady rise and fall of his chest a quiet testament to what he'd given, and what he'd lost, to keep her alive. Her fingertips hovered just above his wrist. She didn't touch him. She didn't trust herself to.
Behind her, Sickbay hummed with muted activity. A nurse moved discreetly out of earshot. The overhead monitors tracked vitals Gemma didn't need to read, she'd memorized every spike and dip hours ago.
She sensed T'Lara's approach before she heard it. The Romulo-Vulcan physician moved like a shadow on marble floors, all precision and pause. Gemma didn't look up until T'Lara's reflection appeared in the biobed's display.
"Lieutenant." T'Lara's voice was even. "Your presence here is noted."
"Observant as ever," Gemma said, turning. She let the edge of Anya's dry smile slip into place. "Nathan's stable, I assume?"
T'Lara gave a small nod. "He will recover. Slowly. His system is readjusting to the absence of your nanites. A natural process now."
Gemma exhaled a humorless laugh, too soft to wake him, but enough that Wimdalli stirred in the back of her mind, cataloguing enzyme fluctuations, cell regeneration, redundant pathways. Science, always a comfort when morality turned to mist.
She stepped away from Nathan's side and faced T'Lara fully. "I need you to hear something. And I need you to understand I'm not asking permission."
T'Lara's brow arched, the Vulcan half subtle, the Romulan half amused. "Proceed."
"You remember the Acamarians? That genetic virus they used... single-minded, engineered for vengeance." She watched for any flicker of recognition. "A bio-agent tailored to a precise genetic marker. Lethal, untraceable. Efficient."
The doctor's eyes narrowed a fraction. "You propose we create a similar virus."
Gemma tilted her head just enough for a strand of hair to slip across her cheek. Dalra's practical calm settled in her bones; Anya's cold resolve pressed against her teeth. "A safeguard. A kill switch. For the Lokustaar code buried in Ya'Han and Christie. If that darkness spreads, or if Ya'Han loses herself completely, we cannot afford to hesitate. Not again."
T'Lara considered her, arms folding into the sleeves of her lab coat. "Your logic is sound. And your ruthlessness is, regrettably, familiar. But you know this is illegal. Grossly so. A direct violation of Federation bio-weapon conventions."
Gemma's grin unfurled slowly, not warmth, but something older, almost fond. She raised one eyebrow, mimicking the CMO's earlier display. "When has that ever stopped you?"
T'Lara's gaze flicked to Nathan, then back. Something sharp flickered behind her eyes, a shadow of Romulan iron beneath the Vulcan calm. "Strange. I detect in you something I did not expect, a… heart. What changed?"
Gemma's answer came without hesitation. "She did." She jerked her chin in the general direction of the Security cells deep in the ship. "Ya'Han was family. We all know that. But she's not her anymore, not completely. The darkness she carries is more dangerous than Mordana ever was. Because we still love her. Because we hesitate. We can't afford that."
Gemma let the silence stretch. The IGC had been watching the woman and anyone near her since their return from the NORTHAL DRIFT. The report from the OPS station on the bridge echoed in the back of Gemma.s mind... the way Ya'Han moved like the shadows were her bones. The way she'd looked back, aware in a way normal people weren't. Another detail the ILO could not ignore.
T'Lara stepped closer. "You would kill her?"
"No." Gemma's voice dipped, Shinral's protective certainty curling behind her words. "I would end what she's become, before it ends us. And if you won't help me… I'll do it alone. Wimdalli knows what she needs. Finnja knows what to target. I have enough in me to make it happen. Your help would only make it faster... and right now, we don't know how much time we have left."
Silence stretched between them, the soft beep of Nathan's monitor the only thing steady in the room. T'Lara didn't nod. She didn't argue. She just looked, from the boy sleeping, to the spy standing guard, to the ghosts flickering behind her eyes.
Finally, the Vulcan side spoke first. "Let us hope it does not come to that."
Gemma's grin slipped into something almost human, an echo of who she could have been without the nanites, and before the masks. "Hope's cheap. Insurance isn't."
"You sound like Drayk," T'Lara noted. "His influence is spreading faster than I had expected."
"Then maybe I should make a point to speak with him," Gemma said, almost jokingly.
She glanced at Nathan one last time, a flicker of warmth, too fleeting to name, then turned and left Sickbay. T'Lara stayed behind, watching the door slide shut, her mind already calculating the price of the unspoken promise they'd just made.
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
"The Shape of Absence"
Previous post: "Practical Logic" by Rachel
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45008.1130
The containment field shimmered faintly, an uneasy resonance on the edge of perception, as though the universe itself was wary of what it held.
Drayk stood silent in the doorway, steel-blue eyes narrowing as they locked on the object at the center of the room. The device was everything the briefing had promised... and less. A seamless, obsidian cube. Light recoiled from its surface. Shadows seemed to grow longer around it, and for an engineered mind calibrated to measure and classify, that absence of data gnawed at him.
Maya didn't notice his arrival at first. The Shillian's delicate hands glided over the console, summoning layer after layer of data streams and rotating glyph schematics. Her posture was taut, her voice softly narrating to herself as she worked.
"Shillian," Drayk finally said, his voice low, measured. "I need to see it up close."
Maya's head jerked slightly. "Lieutenant Val'Bruxa. Yes. Of course." She gestured toward the containment field. "Please, but stay behind the secondary threshold. It's… precautionary."
He stepped closer. The cube didn't hum or pulse. It wasn't doing anything. Yet he felt it, an oppressive stillness, like a predator choosing not to move.
"What is it?" he asked flatly.
Maya's eyes lit up, grateful for the prompt. "Ah, where to begin…" Her fingers danced over the controls, and the containment field shimmered slightly, allowing a clearer view. "The material composition remains entirely unidentifiable. It resists all known scanning protocols, quantum resonance tomography, phased neutrino backscatter, graviton probing, all yielding null results. Not interference. Not shielding. Just… void."
Drayk’s gaze stayed locked on the cube. "So it isn't there."
"Functionally, yes," Maya said with an almost apologetic smile. "But paradoxically, it very much is. There’s mass. Gravity. An inertial presence. But nothing our sensors can read."
She took a breath, clearly warming to the topic. "As for the glyphs etched across its surface… partial Lokustaar in structure but fragmented, degraded. Curiously, some patterns are reminiscent of Tholian symbolic language, though far older and rendered in a way that suggests conceptual abstraction rather than direct communication. One might even hypothesize a syncretism of cultures, if not outright subjugation by..."
"Shillian." Drayk cut her off gently but firmly. "The cube."
"Ah, yes. Apologies." Maya's cheeks flushed faintly. "The device does not emit detectable energy, nor does it seem to require an external power source. That said…" She hesitated, her slender fingers curling against the edge of her console. "Lieutenant Ya'Han's interaction suggests it is not entirely dormant."
Drayk's head turned sharply. "Explain."
"When she extended her hand over it, while on the NORTHAL DRIFT, the glyphs dimmed, and the residual field emissions we've been monitoring ceased entirely, as though the device entered a quiescent state."
"So she turned it off."
"That is the simplest description, yes."
"And Christie?"
"Her Lokustaar genetic markers failed to provoke any response. We theorize that Ya'Han's maternal lineage carries a more pronounced signature, strong enough to register."
"Or perhaps she has tapped into that lineage, embraced it, unlike Christie, who fears it." Drayk quietly noted to himself as his lips thinned. "Meaning the device recognizes Ya'Han. That makes her either an asset…" His eyes narrowed slightly, the steel-blue hardening to cold alloy. "…or a key waiting to be turned."
Maya’s throat bobbed, but she nodded.
He studied her for a long moment. "You're thorough. I'll give you that."
The Shillian blinked at him, momentarily unsure whether it was a compliment or a critique.
"Stay thorough. Perfection isn't an ideal… it's a requirement."
The lab doors whispered open behind them, breaking the charged silence.
Gemma stepped inside, her heels clicking softly against the polished floor. There was something serpentine in her movement, a measured grace, coiled and deliberate, as though she had already decided the outcome of this encounter.
"Well," she said, her voice low and edged with wry amusement. "This is where the wolves gather to stare at the bone."
Drayk turned slightly, steel-blue eyes meeting hers without hesitation.
"And which wolf are you?" he asked.
The corner of Gemma's mouth curled. "The one you didn't hear coming."
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Inheritance of Shadows"
Previous post: "Escorts" by Rachel
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Brig
Stardate: 45008.1135
The silence in the brig was not empty.
It pulsed.
A heartbeat woven into the ship's bones, into the energy fields that thrummed around her, into the faint and distant reverberation of footsteps many decks above. Every sound felt amplified now, every breath taken by the woman in the neighboring cell, every shift of the guards outside, even the subtle ping of internal sensors adjusting their focus on her location.
They were watching her.
She didn't blame them.
She was watching herself.
Ya'Han sat cross-legged on the cold bench, perfectly still. Not in meditation, this was not peace, but observation. Her awareness was expanding. Not outward in a spiritual sense, not upward into some ascended clarity, but downward. Inward. Into the pit that had always been there. The one she had spent most of her life avoiding, denying, and burying beneath duty, love, and the many-colored masks of hair she had mastered.
Now there was only black.
It hung like a living thing, tendrils drifting in a gravity-less drift around her face and shoulders, rippling with unseen currents. Not rebellious, not hostile. Simply present. Simply true.
She had once chosen to embrace the black to hide. Pretending to be less than she was so she could escape her birthright. But this was not the black of commoners. This was an honest reflection of her... of who she was becoming.
"It didn't obey me," she had said to Drayk. "It recognized me."
The words still lingered on the air, unchallenged.
She didn't need to prove the truth of them. The device had known. As surely as she now knew it. The connection was not emotional or telepathic. It was cellular. Ancestral. As if something dormant in her blood had stirred awake when they touched.
No, not stirred. Acknowledged.
Just like Drayk had said.
"You do know. In the marrow of your altered bones, in the cold logic of your new instincts..."
He had seen it, even if he hadn't understood the cost.
Because this wasn't transformation... This was revelation.
The darkness had never been foreign. Never an infection. Never an outside force. The Lokustaar code, if that's what it was, had always been part of her. Born into her bones, passed through maternal bloodlines and sealed in a silence that now felt deliberate.
Her mother had known.
A sudden sharpness tightened in Ya'Han's throat. Not grief. Not anger. But recognition. The way her mother had always been kind but distant, precise in affection, careful in proximity. A woman with eyes that held pride, yes, but also… restraint.
Her mother had feared her.
Not because Ya'Han was disobedient. Not because she had run from duty or rejected the arranged marriage. No. The fear was older. Deeper. Maternal instinct sharpened by inherited knowledge.
She saw this in me, Ya'Han realized. Her mother knew what she had passed on.
She remembered once curling into her mother's lap, before she knew what fear tasted like, before black hair became a sentence instead of a color.
She had always assumed her mother's distance had been political, protocol-driven, ceremonial, or even simply the cold detachment of someone molded by privilege and pressure. But that wasn't it. Not entirely. There had been warmth in her mother's eyes, always, but it was hesitant, controlled, like a fire kept behind glass. Ya'Han could remember moments when they had been close: the rare, quiet afternoons with music or lessons, the pride in her mother's voice when she mastered her first kata. But those moments never lasted. Something always pulled her mother away.
And now Ya'Han understood why.
Her mother had seen it, that quiet presence in her youngest daughter's soul that didn't quite belong in the light. A current that tugged at her even as a child. A stillness that wasn't serenity, but calculation. Not cruelty, no… but detachment. The kind that could watch people suffer and act not from emotion, but from necessity. Her mother had feared what that seed might grow into, perhaps because she had carried it herself and spent a lifetime holding it back. And when she saw it blooming in not one, but two daughters…
Her thoughts shifted to Ya'Jun.
The sister she had loved the most, because they had shared so much without needing to speak it. The same thirst for freedom. The same hunger to be more than pawns in a gilded palace. But where Ya'Han had fled blindly into exile, believing she was escaping oppression, Ya'Jun had always seemed to understand what she was running from. She had looked into the abyss and fought it, tooth and claw. That defiance, that fire, it had made her reckless, even violent at times. Ya’Han had always thought of her as unstable.
But maybe she had just been aware.
Maybe Ya'Jun had known what lived in their blood and had refused to let it define her. She had chosen to fight it, hard, desperate, and loud, while Ya'Han had simply… accepted it. Not consciously. Not willingly. But naturally. The darkness had found a home in her because she'd never thought to question it. It was just there, like her strength, like her will, like her name.
That difference cut deeper than any blade.
Her breath caught.
So did her heartbeat.
And then, just for a moment, so did something else. Something far above her, on the bridge. She couldn't see it, couldn't hear it. But she felt it. A gaze. His gaze.
Jayson.
She didn't need the camera. Didn't need the screen. His pain sang through the ship like a frequency no one else could hear, and it pierced her like starlight through a hull fracture.
He was watching her. Not in duty. Not in suspicion.
In mourning.
"He thinks I’m gone," she whispered to herself. Not out of sorrow. Realization.
Her fingers curled slowly against the edge of the bench. That used to wound her, the idea of being seen as monstrous, as lost. But now? Now she understood. The monster had always been in her. She was just done pretending otherwise.
She didn't hate him for it.
She pitied him.
She was still herself. Just… more. The comfort of lies, the shelter of doubt, those were the price. But in return, it gave her truth, a terrible, unyielding truth.
The pieces she had kept hidden were now in the light, and what they revealed wasn't corruption. It was capacity, and that, perhaps, was even more terrifying... for them… and for her. An ability to perceive what others couldn't, to interface with technology born of voids and whispers. To feel the difference between fear and function.
Drayk had seen it too. Had named it.
"Asset."
"Key."
She was both.
Not red for warrior. Not green for performer. Not even black for escape. This black was not borrowed... it was born.
Ya'Han rose slowly from the bench, black hair drifting outward, catching the cell's low light and fracturing it like dark crystal. She turned to the forcefield and stared through it, not at anyone in particular, but through the walls and decks and gravity plating, through the illusions of control.
She was not losing herself to the darkness.
She was finding herself within it.
And perhaps… that was the most dangerous thing of all.
-=-=-
Hanali Han
Lieutenant Ya'Han
Chief of Security / Tactical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"The Art of Edges"
Previous post: "Inheritance of Shadows" by the scarily dark Hanali
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45008.1140
The containment field's faint shimmer was the only motion in the room, a ghost of energy flickering between the new aCEO and the ILO. Drayk held her gaze without blinking, steel-blue unflinching against her ice.
Gemma stood as though the universe had aligned itself around her entrance, balance impeccable, breathing controlled. No wasted motion. No nervous fidgets. Calculating. Whether her mind weighed attack vectors, escape routes, or conversational gambits, Drayk couldn’t yet tell.
"You're not Intelligence," he said at last, voice low but precise. "You're something else."
Gemma's head tilted slightly, a faint smile curling her lips. "Observation noted. And not entirely wrong. I was Intelligence… once. Now? I'm whatever the mission requires."
"Mission flexibility," Drayk murmured, his tone edged with faint disdain. "A polite way of saying instability."
A flicker crossed her expression, there and gone in less than a heartbeat. Not a crack, but a ripple beneath the ice... like another presence blinking awake behind her eyes.
"Instability can be a weapon in the right hands," Gemma countered, her voice smooth. "My nanites adapt faster than any flesh-and-blood operative could hope to. Reflexes. Regeneration. Mental reframing. I am my own contingency plan." She let that hang for a moment, then added, "According to your file, you have more than a passing knowledge of nanotechnology. You understand what that means."
His eyes narrowed slightly. Nanites, biological systems enhanced with molecular machines. An advantage, certainly. But augmentation always came with a cost. He’d seen it before: those who leaned too heavily on synthetic crutches often proved brittle where it mattered most.
"Machines don't strategize," he said coolly. "They calculate. And calculations don’t win battles. Calculated men do."
Gemma stepped closer, her boots whispering against the deck. Not enough to breach his personal space, but enough to test whether he'd yield ground.
Drayk didn't move.
"Then perhaps we're not so different, Lieutenant Val'Bruxa," she said. "Again, according to your file, you were engineered too, weren't you? Precision-crafted. Calculated. Deployed." Her eyes flicked briefly to the cube. "We're both designed for outcomes."
His jaw tightened. He didn't confirm or deny the observation. Instead, he countered with one of his own.
"Your multiple personas… assets or liabilities?"
Her smile sharpened, predatory now. "Assets, of course. Each one precisely tuned to the moment. A diplomat when words cut deeper than blades. A hunter when the blades demand blood. You see how it works."
"And which one am I speaking to now?"
"The one that doesn't underestimate you." One corner of Gemma’s lip twitched, as if another voice inside her found this amusing. She smoothed it away before it could settle. There was no need for her to reveal any of her 'aces' at this time.
The air between them thickened, their analyses running parallel. Drayk noted her stance, her controlled breathing, the subtle flex of muscle under her uniform. She was faster than she let on, stronger too. But physicality wasn't the only metric worth gauging.
"You adapt," he said. "That makes you useful. But I don't deal in trust. Only results."
Gemma inclined her head, a gesture that felt halfway between acknowledgment and agreement. "Then you’ll find we're aligned, at least in that regard. I have no interest in trust either. Only mission success."
But something in her tone gave him pause. Too clean. Too aligned. He wondered which voice had rehearsed it, and whether the one before him agreed. If his read was correct, she’d grown to see the ANUBIS and its crew as more than colleagues, family, perhaps. That made her dangerous in a different way.
The corner of Drayk's mouth shifted slightly, an almost-smile, or perhaps just a ghost of acknowledgment.
"Stay aligned, and we won't find out what happens when we're not."
Gemma pivoted toward the door, but glanced back over her shoulder. Her expression softened slightly, though her eyes still glittered with coiled intent.
"Don't worry, Lieutenant," she said, her smile too still to trust. "Hesitation is for people who can't hold two thoughts at once. I rarely stop at two."
The doors whispered open and closed, leaving Drayk alone with the Shillian and the silent, waiting cube.
He exhaled slowly.
Another variable. Another wolf in the pack. Maybe this one didn't need taming... just watching.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
and
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
---
"Resonance Echoes"
(Previous Post: "The Art of Edges")
---
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Laboratory
Stardate: 45008.1200
There were patterns in silence. Maya had always believed that. Not merely the predictable oscillations of subspace fields, nor the delicate harmonics between gravimetric waves and time-fold resonance curves. No, true silence carried its own signature. The pause before ignition. The lull between shifts. The breath held before revelation.
The laboratory was quiet now. Not dormant, never that, but hushed in a way that suggested recent visitors had left their marks in both data and mood. Even without auditory confirmation, Maya could detect the subtle reordering of systems. Recalibrated subroutines, reorganised logs, and harmonics adjusted to match a stricter, less interpretive hand.
Lieutenant Val'Bruxa had been here. And with his memories of a kinder, gentler, smaller woman -- Satella.
Maya moved delicately around the central console, her fingertips trailing across the interface with reverence, as though the cube at the heart of the room were some ancient relic rather than the epicentre of modern catastrophe. The erasure of 128,000 souls had left a void, at least from her own perspective, and the cause of that absence sat just over a meter away. Maintaining the integrity of the forcefield between them ensured her theories remained in play and people aboard the ANUBIS stayed safe. At least that was what she silently hoped.
Maya adjusted the multi-phase containment field, reducing the damping ratio by precisely 0.0027 percent. A negligible shift by most standards, but one that might coax the device, this seamless, impossible artefact, into registering the presence of biological thought on a quantum-interaction level.
She glanced to her left. The auxiliary monitor still displayed T'Lara's genetic schema overlay, the one referencing the Lokustaar integration into the maternal genetic lines of both Ya'Han and Christie. It was elegant work. Methodical. Unexpected in its implications. Maya had studied the report thrice, each time finding new layers in the analysis of the Vulcan-Romulan Doctor. The epigenetic trigger theory, while still developing, made unsettling sense when viewed in the context of inherited trauma and dormant programming.
T'Lara had demonstrated not only competence, but scientific courage in revealing something so deeply personal, an insight that shattered the foundational beliefs of two women and forced them to regard their mother through a new and unsettling lens.
Adriana too had impressed. Her questions during the staff briefing had not been the idle concerns of someone overwhelmed. They had been sharp, immediate, and ethically rooted. Maya found herself reflecting often on the quiet strength the Counsellor showed, the way she absorbed implications without retreating into abstraction or denial. Adriana had kept the human perspective centred amid a sea of unsettling genomic revelations.
Maya allowed herself a breath. Measured. Intentional.
Then there was Gemma. Impossible to summarise. Observing her was like watching layered encryption evolve mid-transmission. Maya did not fear her, exactly, fear was too imprecise an emotion, but she respected the unknown factors Gemma carried within her a nanite-threaded consciousness. The Intelligence Liaison Officer had not merely persisted, she had adapted, negotiated, and engaged the device with the kind of presence that suggested some understanding beyond language. That alone warranted further study. Preferably at a distance.
Her gaze drifted again to the cube. Still inert. Still a near perfect void in both appearance and scientific measurements.
Then there was Ya’Han. The anomaly. The key. The risk.
Maya had not yet decided how she felt about the revelation. That the Nylaan woman could deactivate the device with a gesture, without interface or instruction, challenged every physical model Maya had constructed. It implied connection at a scale beyond comprehension, an alignment of biological resonance with non-local entanglement parameters.
The Shillian scientist paused again, her gaze locked on the onyx-reflective surface of the cube as though willing it to reveal its secrets. When nothing happened, she straightened. Re-centred herself. Re-opened her notes on phased glyph illumination patterns.
There was much still to do, and even more to try and understand, not merely for her own scientific curiosity, but for the answers that so many others hoped she might find. Answers that might offer a renewed sense of hope instead of the lingering impression that the shadows were still there, conspiring.
---
Jessica Solarik
Lieutenant Commander Maya
Chief Science Officer
USS ANUBIS
"To see the world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake (British, 1757-1827)
=-=
"Calculated Measures"
Previous post: "Resonance Echoes"
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Sickbay
Stardate: 45008.1200
The door slid open with its usual hiss, and for a moment, it was the only sound in Sickbay. Shar'El stepped inside, not rushed, but with the kind of purpose that didn't need to be loud. Her eyes swept the room just once. Quick. Practiced.
She caught the subtle shift of a nurse adjusting a tray, the dim, steady glow of vitals on the overhead displays, and the faint but lingering pressure in the air... like the ghost of a conversation that had ended but refused to leave.
Gemma had been here. The atmosphere still carried her presence, focused, clinical, determined. Whatever uncertainty had lingered before was gone. Their ILO was back in full form and as much as she might have hated to admit it, this pleased the ExO.
Shar'El moved to the nearest biobed, where Nathan lay unconscious. She didn't touch anything. Didn't speak. Just stood there long enough to confirm what she needed. His coloring was stable, his vitals unchanged, and his neural patterns suggested rest, not distress. She exhaled through her nose, almost a sigh.
He would live. That had to be enough for now.
Her gaze lifted at the sound of soft footfalls. T'Lara entered, stylus in hand, datapad clutched just a bit too tightly for Vulcan indifference. Her posture was straight, composed, but Shar'El caught it. The fractional hesitation in her step. The small delay before her eyes met hers.
"Commander," T'Lara said evenly. "How may I be of assistance?"
"Gemma was here," Shar'El said, skipping pleasantries. With everything happening, clarity felt like mercy.
"That is correct," the Romulan-Vulcan physician replied. "Roughly an hour ago. Why?"
Shar'El let the quiet stretch, not for drama, but to give space, for observation, for thought, for that subtle discomfort that often revealed more than words.
"I came to check on Nathan," she finally said, her voice low. "And to ask you a question. About the 'single-minded bug' you're working on."
She nodded toward the datapad in T'Lara's hands.
The physician didn't react visibly. No flinch. No shift. But she paused, just long enough. A stillness at the wrist. A pause in breath. A flicker, quickly masked.
"I am not certain what you mean," she said, careful now. Too careful.
Shar'El allowed herself the smallest smile. Not warm. Not cold. Just... inevitable.
"Gemma is one of the best Intel operatives in the fleet," she began, her fingers brushing the corner of the biobed. "Not just because she's dangerous, or unflinchingly loyal to mission parameters. But because she has access to the most advanced Intelligence Gathering Center in the quadrant. And that center just happens to live in the array section of this very ship."
She paused, letting the weight of that sink in.
"Ani is the IGC's backbone. She is more than just the ship's avatar, she is the ANUBIS itself, translated into something with a voice and a gaze. She monitors everything. Access requests, internal movements, fluctuations in security clearances. She reports anything immediate to Captain Morningstar... and anything suspicious to me."
She tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing, not in accusation, but in certainty. "So yes, I know what Gemma was researching before she came here. And I know what you were researching before she arrived. The Acamarian civil war. The final months. The use of a targeted genetic virus. Efficient. Invisible. Deadly only to its intended mark. A surgical strike masquerading as biology."
T'Lara didn't answer, but Shar'El saw the shift. Not just guarded now, uneasy.
Shar'El took a breath, and for the first time since stepping into Sickbay, allowed a trace of personal weight to creep into her voice.
"I know how this looks," she said. "But you should know this, Captain Morningstar read the same reports I did. He saw the same erratic pattern in Ya'Han's behavior. The same spikes in fear among the crew. He knows what the Lokustaar are capable of... and how deeply they reach. He didn't give approval in words, but he didn't need to. If he had objected to this path, the ANUBIS would already be on course for NEW ALEXANDRIA. But Koniki refused us back. That silence is its own kind of permission."
She moved closer, not looming, just anchoring herself in the moment.
"I used to be the ILO. I still think like one. And I know this isn't about creating a weapon. It's about building a line we hope never to cross. But hope doesn't stop the Lokustaar. We've all seen what they do, to minds, to identities, to trust. And Ya'Han… she's not just compromised. She's becoming something new. Maybe something she can't even stop."
T'Lara's eyes flicked downward, just for a moment. The datapad screen dimmed automatically. She hadn't touched it in minutes.
"So my question to you is this," Shar’El said.
T'Lara blinked, her tone resigned but not defensive. "Why?"
Shar'El's expression softened, the tension behind her eyes pulling back just slightly. "No," she said gently. "How is your research going?"
The physician exhaled, the datapad lowering to her side.
"I haven't committed to anything yet," she said. "The theoretical model is unstable. And I am... conflicted."
Shar'El nodded. "That's good. Stay conflicted. For as long as you can. It means you're still weighing life over logic. It means the woman we knew, the officer we knew, still matters to you."
She stepped back, one hand briefly touching the edge of the bed again, Nathan's bed, before turning to go.
"This whole thing is a nightmare," she said quietly. "And the worst part is, it's not about what's already happened. It's about what might. Ya'Han is the greatest unknown we've ever faced. And I don't just mean her abilities... I mean who she is now. Or who she isn't anymore."
The ExO pivoted on her heels and made her way to the exit. The door opened with another soft hiss as Shar’El paused in the threshold.
"I want to believe she's still in there. Erik does too. But if we're wrong..." She glanced back, allowing a hint of fear flash over her features. "Then I need to know you're ready."
She lingered for a heartbeat longer, as if wanting to say something more, but didn't. Then she turned, and the doors closed behind her like a full stop.
T'Lara stood in silence, the datapad heavy in her hand, her thoughts no longer divided but fractured. What had started as a theoretical request had taken shape. Gained gravity. Grown teeth.
And the clock was still ticking.
=-=
Tiffany Reeve
Commander Shar'El
Executive Officer
USS ANUBIS
"Predators Do Not Wait"
Previous post: "Calculated Measures" by Tiffany
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 16, Black Hole Lounge
Stardate: 45008.1730
The Black Hole Lounge wasn't empty, but it may as well have been. Conversations drifted in muted clusters, laughter stifled under the weight of recent days. Even here, off-duty officers couldn't escape the darkness creeping at the edges of their mission.
Drayk Val'Bruxa stood in the doorway for a fraction longer than was polite. Not hesitating, he did not hesitate, but calibrating. His steel-blue eyes swept the room once, absorbing faces, postures, voices. A data set of subtle tells and unconscious signals.
He found Lieutenant Jayson Stark immediately. The man was alone at a corner table, shoulders hunched, hands clasped loosely around a drink he hadn’t touched. Crew avoided him with quiet deliberation, flowing around him like water around a stone.
Interesting.
Drayk crossed the lounge in measured strides, boots silent against the carpeted deck. He neither slowed nor deviated when Stark noticed him, the OPS officer's expression flickering between surprise and irritation before collapsing back into tired vacancy.
"You're contaminating your own operational efficiency," Drayk said, voice even and almost conversational as he came to a stop at Stark's table.
Stark blinked, thrown off balance. "What?"
"Today. Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab. A power transfer request logged three times before Operations responded. That was your responsibility. Even Lieutenant Commander Paquette commented on the delay. She was not pleased, not in the least. You've irritated two engineers in a single act, Stark. That alone is impressive."
"You..." Stark's voice cracked. He straightened slightly, trying to summon the authority of his rank, but it rang hollow. "You don't get to come in here and..."
Drayk's head tilted just enough to make Stark falter. "I don't get to?" he repeated softly. "Lieutenant, the universe does not care about your feelings. Neither does the device four decks above us. Neither do I."
At a nearby table, Adriana and her twin sister Amanda glanced over, their quiet conversation paused mid-sentence. Drayk's gaze flicked to them for the briefest moment.
"Even the Counselor looked at you with pity just now. Pity is the first step to irrelevance."
Stark's jaw clenched. His fingers tightened around the glass. "You think I don't know I'm..."
"I think you're wallowing," Drayk interrupted, calm as a predator making an incision. "And that makes you useless. To Ya'Han. To the Admiral's mission. To everyone... including yourself."
For a moment, the younger man's grief flared into anger. "You think this is easy? Watching her like that? Not knowing if she's..."
"Easy?" Drayk's lips curled in something too sharp to be a smile. "Survival is not easy. No one promised you ease, Lieutenant. But a hunter who chases two prey catches neither. And a hunter who does not join the hunt at all…" He let the sentence trail off, the implication hanging heavy.
Stark looked away, staring into the depths of his untouched drink.
Drayk straightened to his full height, the silver of his hair catching the lounge’s dim light. "You have two choices. Focus on Ya'Han and find a way to bring her back. Or focus on the device and break its mystery before it breaks this crew. Choose a target. But choose. Or step aside."
He didn't wait for a response. The assessment was complete. The flaw identified, its presence logged and noted for correction.
Drayk turned and walked out, his movements as precise as a blade sheathed after the kill.
"Hunt or be hunted, Lieutenant," he said over his shoulder, just loud enough for Stark to hear. "Tomorrow will not wait for you."
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Fracture Lines"
Previous post: "Predators Do Not Wait" by Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 16, Black Hole Lounge
Stardate: 45008.1730
Adriana watched from the lounge’s center table, her fingers clenched tightly around a lukewarm mug of raktajino. She hadn't taken a sip in nearly ten minutes. Her eyes were locked on Jayson, seated alone at the farthest booth like some distant island slowly eroding under the tide of heartbreak.
Amanda sat across from her, silent. She didn't need to speak; the echo of Jayson's pain was thick in the air, amplified by the strange resonance that now linked the twins. That desperate grief. That overwhelming sense of not being enough.
"He's breaking," Adriana whispered, mostly to herself.
Amanda nodded slowly, her voice low and hesitant. "He doesn't understand what she's become. Honestly? I don't think any of us do. Not even Christie, and she is going through the same thing, sort of."
Adriana's jaw tightened. Her eyes never left Jayson. "He went to Sickbay hoping she'd see him. And she didn't. Not really. She looked through him."
Amanda frowned, her fingers tightening around her tea. "That's not Ya'Han. At least... not the one you knew."
"No," Adriana agreed. "It's not." She finally looked away, the hollow behind her eyes deeper than fatigue. Counselor Lopez's attention shifted as the new Assistant Chief Engineer entered, the silver-haired figure heading straight for the emotionally shattered man sitting alone.
Amanda sighed. "And now he's slipping into the same place I pulled you from, more times than I can count. That void where it's easier to blame yourself than accept the truth, whatever it may be."
Adriana didn't reply, because she couldn't. She knew that void too well. How many times had she blamed herself for Amanda's disappearance at the age of six? Guilt that had driven her into Starfleet Academy… and followed her long after. The lingering effects and memories of those feelings still haunted her, despite her twin sister now sitting in front of her, physically present, the void between them sometimes still felt all too real.
"Amanda," Adriana softly began, "I wanted..." The Counselor's thoughts and words were interrupted by the words and tone of Drayk's statement to Jayson.
"Lieutenant, the universe does not care about your feelings. Neither does the device four decks above us. Neither do I."
The Counselor watched in utter disbelief, meeting the Mikulak man's passing gaze.
"Even the Counselor looked at you with pity just now. Pity is the first step to irrelevance."
Adriana slid her mug to the side with more force than necessary. "That man needs to learn some manners," but before she could rise from her chair, Amanda took hold of her wrist.
"It may not be comfortable, but Jayson might need to hear this."
The pleading look in her twin sister's eyes was enough to bring Adriana back down into her chair, just long enough for Drayk to walk away leaving Jayson alone once again. Adriana could see the pain in the Terran's features, pain that she could not allow to remain unaddressed by someone with more empathy than the Assistant Chief Engineer had just displayed.
"He needs someone to bring him back. And it certainly won't be him to do it." She quietly growled as she looked at the entrance where the silver-haired specter of Drayk Val'Bruxa had just exited. The man not having shown the slightest hint of remorse for the emotional devastation he had just left behind.
Amanda's breath caught. "Wait… what are you...?"
"I'm going to talk to Jayson," Adriana said tightly. "And then…" Her eyes flared as she looked at the door through which Drayk had vanished through. "I'm going to have a little chat with our overbearing new officer."
"Adriana..."
But the counselor was already moving, her pace steady, her spine rigid. She reached Jayson's booth and hovered a moment, not wanting to startle him. "Jayson?"
He didn't look up.
She tried again, softer. "Jayson, I know you're hurting."
Still no response.
"I saw what happened in Sickbay. And I saw what she didn't say. I wish I could tell you it was temporary. That she'll come back. But right now… I don't know if that's true."
His grip on the glass tightened.
"But I do know this," Adriana continued, voice firm. "You are not invisible. Not to me. Not to Amanda. And certainly not to yourself."
Finally, Jayson lifted his eyes. They were raw, rimmed with grief. But there was still something alive in them.
Adriana reached out, touched his hand gently. "Don't let the shadows take you too."
His voice cracked. "She's already gone."
"No," Adriana whispered, shaking her head. "Not gone, maybe just changing." An exaggeration, maybe even a lie, but one that she believed Jayson needed to hear. "She's changing. But that doesn't mean you have to vanish in the process."
She gave his hand a final squeeze before turning.
Amanda met her halfway across the lounge. "He needs you."
Adriana shook her head. Her tone sharpened as her eyes settled on Drayk. "What he needs, what we all need is for that man to learn how this ship functions."
"Are you sure that’s a good idea?" Amanda's voice lowered, uncertain. "He's dangerous."
"So am I," Adriana replied coldly.
And with that, she crossed the floor and through the threshold.
Whatever came next would not be a counseling session.
It would be a reckoning.
-=-=-
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS
#######
"At the Edge of Shadows"
Previous post: "Fracture Lines"
##########
"The shadows teach us more about the light than the light teaches us about itself."
— Oltharian inscription on the wall of the underground forbidden Temple
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Corridor -> Brig
Stardate: 45008.1800
The Native American Captain's walk to the brig was unhurried, each step deliberate, as if the journey itself might yield answers he needed time to uncover.
Captain Erik Morningstar moved with quiet purpose, his pace steady, hands clasped behind his back. Deck 19’s lighting reflected off the polished floor in faint glimmers, catching against the trim of his uniform. The silence in the corridor was not oppressive, but contemplative, like the hush before a verdict is rendered.
It had been a long day, more for his crew than himself. They had laboured without pause, preparing for tomorrow's scheduled 'event'. Moving Ya’Han to the Quantum Physics Lab was not just a logistical exercise; it was a moral gamble. The device awaited, a relic of impossible design and unknown intent, and she… she was no longer the same woman who once fought beside them on green worlds and shadowed decks.
But perhaps she was. That, Erik needed to determine for himself.
He had read the reports thoroughly, twice over. T'Lara's diagnostics. Adriana's psychological Insights. Shar'El's professional and personal assessments. And even the ghosted sensor readings Ani had compiled when no one else had thought to check.
High-resolution images, three-dimensional schematics, and countless words on datapads painted a detailed picture... but still Erik needed more. Experience had long taught him that data was never the whole truth. There was always a living element to every situation.
He needed to see her.
He needed to feel the gravity of her presence and to know, not as a commanding officer but as the keeper of this ship's soul, whether Ya'Han was still a member of his crew. Someone that he would fight to protect with every ounce of his being.
The brig doors parted with a muted hiss. The space inside hummed with restrained tension. Not fear, but the air held weight, like the moment before a storm broke over still waters.
Erik’s gaze swept the room, meeting the security officer's welcoming nod with his own. No words were needed. Everyone knew that this was coming, that no force in the universe would stand in its way. The visit had been foretold since the events on the NORTHAL DRIFT, the only variable had been 'when'.
Ya’Han was there, standing just beyond the active forcefield, her hair as black as the void between stars, drifting with a life of its own in zero-gravity elegance. She turned at the sound of the door but said nothing, eyes sharp and unmoving.
He stepped forward, alone, stopping just short of the field.
"Lieutenant," he said, his voice calm, measured.
"Captain," she returned evenly.
Silence stretched for a breath. Then another.
"You've read the reports," she said before he could speak further.
"I have," he confirmed. "But I did not come for the reports. I came to see you."
Her gaze narrowed slightly, not in suspicion, but curiosity. "To evaluate me." Then she paused, a flash of anger vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared. "To gaze upon the monster you now keep aboard your ship?"
"To understand you," he corrected gently.
Another pause. This one heavier, as if the entirety of the cosmos had stopped to witness what would come next.
"There's a difference," he offered with a slow breath. "We both know that you are no monster," he added. "That title belongs more rightly to someone like Ardax." The name had been carefully chosen. Ya'Han had hated him beyond measure, and he knew that the possibility of what she had done had always been present. What he had not expected was the method used in her revenge and the gruesome manner in which it was unleashed. Yet, despite all that, he was not willing to assign such a horrific level to her. He had seen worse, much worse, and maybe that was why his concerns were so real.
Ya'Han's shoulders lifted in a breath that was almost, but not quite, resigned. "You’ve come to see if I'm a threat."
"I've come to see if you're still yourself," Erik replied.
That stopped her. She turned fully now, stepping closer to the field. The black tendrils of her hair rippled around her like ink in water, but her expression was still. Calm. Controlled. More so than he had ever seen her be before.
"I'm more myself now than I've ever been," she said softly.
"I believe you," he replied with a nod. And he did.
But belief was not the same as understanding.
"You are calm," he observed. "In control."
"In control?" She repeated. "I am not the one standing on the other side of this forcefield."
He nodded once, slowly. "I've seen you angry. I've seen you afraid. I've seen you strong and unsure and brave in the face of impossible odds. I have never seen you lie to yourself."
"I am not lying, Captain," Ya'Han said, and something flickered in her eyes. "But I am… aware."
"Of what?"
"That you believe me to be the key to controlling the device. That you and everyone else aboard the ANUBIS believe me to be dangerous. Something to be feared, not because of what I did to Ardax, but because of what I might do next."
There it was, the awareness, the clarity he had come to find.
"And if the crew fears you?" he asked.
"They should," she said quietly, almost smiling. "No one else can understand what I am feeling... what I am seeing. Not even her," she added, motioning with a tilt of her head to the cell next to hers where Christie was.
He studied her a moment longer, drawing on all of his experience and knowledge to figure out who or what he was looking at. Was she a woman with a shattered past who had begun to understand who she had been from the start, or was she a member of his crew desperately looking for help and unable to make others understand the depth of her own personal hell?
He gazed upon her... no longer as an officer, not even as her Captain, but as the man who had once sent her into the belly of a shadow, knowing she might never return unchanged.
"I trusted you then," Erik said. "I still do. But this time, I won't let you walk into darkness alone."
Ya'Han blinked once. Just once.
"Thank you," she offered coldly. "But I don't think anyone can follow me where I'm going," she added in a whispered tone.
"Perhaps not," Erik said, turning slowly. "But I'll still be at your back. I owe you that much... we all do."
He crossed the room, stepping past the low hum of consoles and energy barriers toward the adjacent cell.
Christie sat within, quiet, hands in her lap. She did not look up.
Outside the cell, her mother, Cristhiane, stood waiting. Her expression was tight with urgency and fear, not for herself, but for the daughter she could no longer shield.
"Captain," she said immediately, voice trembling with effort. "Please. She doesn't belong in there. I know what she did to Varin, but the crime was not hers. I am the one who should be there, behind that forcefield, not her."
"She is not under punishment," Erik said gently. "She is being observed for her own protection… and ours."
"She didn't choose this," Cristhiane pleaded. "I did. The life we led, the lies we told… I gave her no choice."
Erik looked to Christie, whose eyes finally met his. They were distant, but not hollow.
"No, mother," the young woman said quietly, the warmth of her smile filling the room where shadows seemed to rule. "I made my choices. Good or bad, and I have to accept the consequences of my actions."
"You're not her," Cristhiane insisted, motioning toward Ya'Han's cell.
"No," Christie replied hesitantly. "I'm not. But I could be... and that frightens me, as it should you."
The contrast hung stark in the air. Two women, same darkness in their blood… and yet how differently it shaped them.
"She fights it," Cristhiane said, desperation breaking through now. "She fights it with every breath and tear. That should count for something."
Erik nodded once. "Mrs. Smith, I assure you, it does."
He approached the field, looking directly at Christie. "You are not a prisoner, Christie. Neither one of you is. But what you carry… it matters. And until we understand it, caution is necessary."
Christie looked away, her jaw tightening.
Erik turned to Cristhiane. "She's not being punished for your actions before she was born. Although you may consider them to be a sin worthy of retribution, they are not. I truly believe that you were tricked and misled. Unfortunately for the universe, the Lokustaar are masters of deception and manipulation. That said, I must consider what she could become for the safety of my crew. As I must with Ya'Han."
"Then what happens now?" Cristhiane asked, voice almost breaking.
Erik gave no answer. The question itself was not a simple one, and any reply would be far more complex than words could account for.
Instead, he looked back once more, first at Christie, then at Ya'Han.
Two paths born of the same shadow. One resisting. One embracing.
Neither lost. At least not yet as far as he could tell... or hope.
He exhaled slowly and turned for the door.
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette
Captain Erik Morningstar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
--
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"The Reckoning"
Previous post: "At the Edge of Shadows" by Francois
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 22, Corridor Near Main Engineering
Stardate: 45008.1800
Adriana exhaled sharply through her nose as the turbolift doors whispered open to yet another empty corridor. Her boots struck the deck with more force than usual, each step carrying the accumulated weight of thirty increasingly maddening minutes. Thirty minutes of chasing shadows. Thirty minutes of hunting a man who somehow managed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.
Amanda jogged to keep pace with her sister. "You know, I'm starting to think this guy is a figment of everyone's collective irritation. Some sort of shared hallucination in a bad haircut."
Adriana didn't laugh, she didn't even smile. She was too angry for that.
Drayk Val'Bruxa was no hallucination, her personal experience having taught her the difference between those and reality, and the new aCEO was all too real... a real overbearing self-important pain.
"I swear," she muttered, jaw tight, "if the next crewman shrugs and tells me, 'He was just here,' I'm going to scream."
They'd spoken to four crew members already. Four different decks. Each one gave the same vague shrug and the same increasingly infuriating response:
"That man is always on the move… even when he is standing still."
That phrase alone had nearly sent Adriana into a spiral of rage.
"Why are you so upset?" Amanda asked, breathless but concerned. "Jayson's stable. You got through to him. That should count for something."
Adriana slowed. Turned.
"He broke someone I care about with one sentence. One," she spat. "And not because he had to. Not because it served a mission objective, but because it amused him. Because it was efficient."
Amanda's eyes widened at the venom in her twin’s voice.
"I've dealt with monsters. With trauma. With people who lost their souls to the abyss and never came back," Adriana continued. "But at least they struggled. They cared. He…? Drayk Val'Bruxa just tears people apart and walks away as if it's beneath him to even look back."
Amanda didn't argue. She couldn't. She felt it too, that same emotional cold front that followed Drayk's path like ice on metal.
They turned the corner at the end of Deck 22 and finally... There he was.
The silver-haired ghost of malice stood alone at the far end of the corridor, his back partially turned, gaze fixed on a datapad in one hand. Even now, he looked like a man who had somewhere else to be. He hadn't noticed them yet.
Adriana didn't hesitate. “Lieutenant Val'Bruxa!!!"
Her voice cut through the corridor like a blade, loud enough to make a passing ensign flinch.
The Mikulak officer froze, if only for a heartbeat.
Then, slowly, he turned. His eyes locked onto the smaller, fuming woman stomping down the corridor like a photon torpedo locked on target.
Behind Adriana, Amanda grimaced and muttered under her breath, "...this'll go well."
Drayk's lips twitched, but it wasn't quite a smile. Something between amused curiosity and weary annoyance. The look of a man deciding whether the next five minutes would be an intellectual amusement… or a complete waste of oxygen.
He offered no greeting. No rank recognition. Just a single, exasperated, "Counselor Lopez."
Adriana didn't stop walking, nor did she slow down. She didn't even blink.
As far as she was concerned, a reckoning of epic proportions was about to take place.
---
Drayk didn’t move as the Counselor closed the distance, her every step radiating the kind of righteous fury that lesser men would have withered under. He waited, still as a statue, eyes narrowing a fraction. The datapad in his hand dimmed to black as he lowered it.
"Finally," he said softly, as if speaking to himself. "The hunter catches her prey. Shall we now discuss which of us is truly cornered?"
Adriana came to a hard stop, close enough to feel the chill rolling off him like a vacuum. Drayk didn't step back. He didn't need to. Like a wolf holding position at the edge of a clearing, he knew the territory was already his.
"You think this is a game?" she hissed. "You think this is funny? You break people, and the worst part is that you enjoy it."
The Mikulak tilted his head, gaze cutting through her with surgical precision.
"I do nothing of the sort. I refine them." His voice was a low rumble, calm but edged with steel. "And if they break? Then they were never designed to endure the weight of reality in the first place."
Adriana bristled. "You're not some philosopher-engineer shaping the universe, Lieutenant. You're a blunt instrument with delusions of grandeur."
His lips curved slightly... not a smile, more a flicker of predatory interest.
"Delusions?" he murmured, stepping closer. "You speak as though I sought your approval for my methods. As though I required permission to be… effective."
Then he stopped. Just for a breath. His eyes lingered on her, not on her anger, but something beneath it. That insistent drive to care. That damned determination to heal what was broken, even when it would cost her.
For the briefest instant, she wasn't Adriana Lopez, the Ship's Counselor. She was someone else... someone he still deeply cared about... Satella.
The silver-haired ghost in his mind stirred, and his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before his expression smoothed into perfect neutrality.
"There was a time I… never mind." His jaw tightened imperceptibly. "You presume much, Counselor," he said at last, tone lower, more measured. "You assume my goal was to comfort. To soothe. You're wrong. That is your purpose aboard this ship."
Adriana blinked at the shift in his voice. Not softer. Not warmer. But… heavier.
"My purpose is not to cradle the fragile egos of Starfleet's sentimentalists. My purpose… is to manifest results."
Adriana's fists tightened. "You think efficiency justifies cruelty?"
"Cruelty?" His tone deepened, rich with disdain. "No. Cruelty is the tool of amateurs who lack precision. I do not indulge in cruelty, Counselor. I operate with elegance and precision. Where you see cruelty, I see natural selection at work."
He let the silence hang between them, his gaze sharpening once more to the apex predator she had come to expect.
"Now tell me, Miss Adriana Lopez… will this be an intellectual discourse, or must I prepare for yet another emotional display masquerading as moral authority?"
---
Adriana stepped forward once more, chin raised. "You walk through this ship like no one matters, like you're the only one who sees the battlefield."
Drayk regarded her with calm detachment. "I walk through this ship knowing that sentiment is not a strategy."
Her voice lowered. "Then I feel sorry for you."
For a moment, silence hung between them like a taut wire, vibrating with everything unsaid.
Drayk finally stepped back, just half a pace. "Save your pity, Counselor. Aim it at those still waiting for the world to be fair."
He turned, the datapad flickering back to life in his hand. But just before he walked away, he glanced over his shoulder, voice quiet but crisp.
"Return when you've traded outrage for reason. Or don't. It makes no difference to me."
Without another word, he vanished around the corner. This had indeed been a waste of his time, and he had better things to do, like getting every security system checked and ready for tomorrow.
Adriana stood still, fists unclenching slowly.
Amanda approached quietly. "So… what now?"
The Counselor exhaled, staring at the corridor where he'd disappeared.
"Now," she said softly, "we figure out who he really is, before someone else ends up broken."
-=-=-
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
and
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS
"The Shape of Memory"
Previous post: "The Reckoning" by Marissa and Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 5, Drayk's Quarters
Stardate: 45008.2130
The doors whispered shut behind him, sealing out the noise and light of the ship.
For a long moment, he did not move. His boots were still planted just inside the threshold, his breath slow and measured, though something inside him felt uneven, fractured. In here there were no eyes watching, no expectations pressing down on his shoulders. Only the hum of the life support systems and the faint scent of metal in the recycled air.
His quarters were spare. They always had been. A desk with a few data padds stacked in neat piles. A set of Mikulak blades displayed in the way others might keep family portraits. His sleeveless jacket draped over a chair in a way that was not careless but deliberate, as if even its placement had been calculated.
And beyond the sliding partition to his private chamber was the only thing that truly mattered.
Her.
The casket sat where others would keep a bed. Its surface was a deep black, polished to a mirror sheen, and even in the low light it seemed to pull in what little warmth the room offered. The sigils of two bloodlines were etched into its surface: Val and Bruxa. Names fused together not by chance, but by design.
Drayk stepped forward, his hand curling into a loose fist at his side. He stared at the casket, his jaw tight.
"I was not born," he said softly into the empty room. "I was calculated. Cultivated. Deployed."
So was she.
Satella Bruxa had been more than his intended. She had been the counterbalance to everything he was. Where he was cold, she was warmth. Where he was sharp, she was steady. They had been designed for each other, strands of DNA twisted together by geneticists who believed they could refine the flawed Mikulak genome.
The silver hair they shared was no coincidence. It was a marker of that convergence, a symbol of what they were meant to be.
He had been raised to believe in purpose above all things. That every action, every breath, every victory served the design. But when she was gone, something had broken in the code.
Drayk's hand hovered over the casket but did not make contact. To touch it would make it too real, too final. He had rushed to the ANUBIS the moment the news reached him, clinging to the impossible hope that his presence alone might reverse what had been done. To reverse time and save her through his sheer will alone.
The officers at NEW ALEXANDRIA told him to let her go. They told him to move on. Death was an unfortunate reality of life amongst the stars.
But he could not. They did not understand what all of this meant to him. What she meant for the future of their race.
This casket was not a monument to grief. It was the last remnant of the only person who had ever known the whole of him. The only one who saw beyond the layers he wore for others and found something worth saving.
He had taken her name because there was no Drayk Val without Satella Bruxa. Together they were Val'Bruxa. To leave her behind now would be to admit that the design had failed.
His voice was no louder than a breath.
"Perfection is not an ideal. It is a design parameter."
His shoulders straightened, the mask slipping back into place. He turned away from the casket, crossing to the console in the corner. One command sent the lights to black.
He lay down on the cold floor as he always did. He would not sleep where she rested. That space was not meant for the living.
Not until he joined her.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Walking Dead"
Previous post: "The Shape of Memory" by Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 13, Gymnasium
Stardate: 45008.2200
The towering Voth, Zub Enel, had changed out of his MACO uniform into form-fitting gym clothes. The 7-foot-tall lizard man entered the gymnasium, still uncertain if he wanted to spar with anyone. He felt off since the away team returned from their mission on NORTHAL DRIFT. He didn't trust himself to hold back his punches as he worked through whatever was bothering him. His hand-to-hand skills were advanced enough that he might seriously injure someone. He was sure the all-business Vulcan/Romulan Dr. T'Lara would severely disapprove of his loss of control.
Wearing workout clothes that hugged her curves like a second skin, the Intelligence Liaison Officer, Gemma, made a light thump as she landed briefly on both feet from a standing somersault. She immediately rose onto the toes of one foot and spun around her long axis, kicking and punching the air—some kata of her own design meant to take out multiple opponents. Her body was taut, her blows lightning quick and flawless, and as a grace note, her curls fanned out like burnished copper - a death star as lethal as she was beautiful.
"Enjoying the show," she teased mid-spin.
"Don't you ever rest?" He deflected, not wanting to admit that he was indeed enjoying the show as she said.
"Nanites," the ILO replied, with a hint of laughter in her voice, which surprised Zub. "I need to make sure that I am back to peak performance.”
He raised his bony brows. “I would have said that earlier, on the away mission, you and your reacquired load of nanites had not quite delivered fighting perfection, but now you are deadly in a way that most men would secretly appreciate even as you mowed them down.”
With her latest set of exercises done, Gemma turned her full attention to Zub. "You do not look like someone who is here to train," she said in a serious tone, her eyes narrowing just a fraction, recognizing something in the Voth's expression that did not fit the rest of him.
"With Ya'Han in the brig, Command Shar'El has asked me to help with the Security duties on the ANUBIS."
"And?" Gemma prompted, aware that while Ya’Han had taken over Zub's position, his returning to it wouldn't be an issue for the MCO.
"One of the caskets in Cargo Bay 7 is missing."
The woman blinked once. "Missing?" Gemma repeated, certain that she had misheard Zub.
"One of the security details went by the cargo bay and noted the absence of one of the caskets," Zub confirmed.
"Why..."
"More importantly, the question you should be asking first is who?" Zub pointed out.
Gemma stilled. Behind her eyes, a dozen inner voices aligned like teeth in a lock. The implications fell into place before her heart remembered to beat.
"Satella."
"I doubt she went zombie," the tall MACO/Security officer said. He put his hands on his hips as he regarded her.
Gemma let out a slow breath through her nose. "No sensor ghosts, no transporter records. Right?"
Zub smiled. Gemma was definitely back in her element as an Intelligence asset. He kept his deep voice low so only she could hear. “There is not even a record of the doors to the cargo bay being opened between the two security surveys of the area," Zub crossed his arms over his massive chest and added, "Even if the casket had grown legs and walked out, the computer would have logged it, which it did not."
Gemma pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. She said softly, "ANI wouldn't miss that." She said loudly, "ANI, has anything or anyone besides security patrols entered or left Cargo Bay 7?”
The ship’s avatar’s female voice sounded from the overhead com. =/\=Negative. As I informed Lt. Enel, no one has been in or out of Cargo Bay 7. There are no records of any cargo being brought in or taken out, either.=/\=
Gemma's eyebrows arched. "I am assuming you are still tracking possible Lokustaar activity on the ship. Has there been any anomalous readings from Cargo Bay 7?"
=/\= Negative. =/\=
Gemma persisted. “Nothing has changed in Cargo Bay 7 since the arrival and departure of the USS NILE?”
=/\= Correct. All readings from Cargo Bay 7 have remained the same. No fluctuations have been detected. =/\=
Gemma brought up a forefinger topped with one perfectly manicured nail. "Yet a casket is missing from Cargo Bay 7."
The ship's computer worked far too quickly for a perceptible pause, but ANI's voice did register a glimmer of surprise. =/\= Correct. The ship's manifest no longer matches the number of caskets present in the bay. I am not aware of how this discrepancy has occurred. =/\=
Zub cut in, "Where is the missing casket now?"
=/\= Unknown. The casket does not appear to be aboard. =/\=
Gemma scowled at the scaly Voth. "ANI has probably already alerted Engineering about a potential malfunction of her sensors. Drayk is going to find out that we know he disappeared Satella."
Zub smiled. "Assistant Chief Engineering Officer. Mikulak efficiency expert. And body snatcher."
Gemma didn't return the smile. "Val'Bruxa doesn't do sloppy. He looped the sensors and bypassed the computer, including Ani. He better have a damn good reason."
"Now?" Zub gasped. "It's past 2200."
She wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, eyes locked on Zub. "Dead or not, that missing body is moving faster than we are. Let's go."
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
and
David Michael Inverso
Lieutenant JG Zub Enel
MCO
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
“Culture is just a shambling zombie that repeats what it did in life; bits of it drop off, and it doesn't appear to notice.”
- Alan Moore
"Ashes in the Heart"
Previous post: "Walking Dead" by Rachel & David
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45008.2230
The chronometer read 2230 hours. By all accounts, Jayson should have been asleep. He'd tried again and again. Focused on his breathing. Replayed engine harmonics in his head. Even stared at the ceiling of their living room until his vision blurred into abstraction. None of it helped.
The silence didn't comfort him anymore.
It accused him.
Her absence echoed louder than anything else on the ship.
He didn't remember leaving his quarters. His feet had carried him forward while his mind unraveled, and when the turbolift doors opened onto Deck 19, he was already somewhere between numbness and despair. His hands trembled, not from fear, but from exhaustion. Emotional, spiritual, soul-deep exhaustion.
He shouldn't be here. He knew that. Everyone would say so.
But hope, that cruel, bleeding hope, still hadn't let go.
The corridor was quiet, bathed in the same dim lighting as always, yet tonight it felt colder. As though the ship itself had recoiled from what was kept in this part of its hull. This wasn't a brig anymore. It was a mausoleum. A place where love came to die.
The doors hissed open, revealing a room suspended in silence.
He saw Cristhiane first, curled up near the corner of her daughter's cell, arms crossed over her chest in sleep that looked more like collapse. Inside the barrier, Christie lay still on her bunk, unmoving save for the slow, unconscious rhythm of breath.
And then he saw her. Ya'Han.
She sat facing away from him, legs folded beneath her like a statue abandoned to time. Her black hair drifted in zero-gravity arcs, curling and untangling like sentient shadows. She didn't stir. Didn't move. She might have been sleeping. He prayed she was.
Maybe if he stood there long enough, didn't speak, didn't breathe too loudly, he could imagine that none of this had happened. That they were still who they used to be.
But then...
"I wondered when you'd come."
Her voice was ice, unfeeling, untouched by surprise or sentiment. It didn't turn to greet him. It pierced him, like a dagger that already knew where to aim.
He stepped forward as though walking across broken glass.
"You're not sleeping," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
"I don't sleep much anymore." Still, she didn't turn. "I used to wonder how Mordana endured it. Now I understand. Once the shadows settle into you, rest becomes... irrelevant."
He hesitated. The sound of her voice, her voice, still cut through him. But it was hollow now. Echoing down corridors of a person who no longer existed.
"Why?" he finally asked. The word barely escaped him, trembling on his breath.
She was quiet for a moment. Then tilted her head just enough for the faint cell light to outline her profile, sharp, elegant, distant. Her eyes stayed locked on the far wall.
"Why what?" she replied. "Why did my mother condemn my sister and me to this cursed lineage? Why didn't I fight harder when I still had strength? Or why I ever believed I could have something more than the darkness?"
She laughed, but it was a sound without joy. A dying star of a laugh, collapsing inward.
"You already know the answers, Jayson. You just don't want to believe them."
He stepped closer, ignoring the catch in his throat.
"No. That's not what I meant."
His voice cracked.
"Why us? Why did you let go of us?"
That changed something.
Slowly, Ya'Han turned her head. Not fully. Just enough for him to see the look on her face, a gaze carved from stone and shadow. And yet, beneath it, there was a flicker. Pain. Regret. Maybe even love, buried so deep it could no longer reach the surface.
"There is no us, Jayson," she said. "There never really was. Only the fantasy we built to escape the people we used to be. You were grieving. I was desperate. We clung to each other because it hurt less than falling alone."
He shook his head violently. "No. Don't rewrite what we were. You told me you believed in us. I know you did."
"I did," she admitted. "And that belief died screaming the night the Lokustaar awoke inside me. The same way your soul tore itself apart when Leena and your child were taken from you."
His knees almost buckled.
"You carry their ghosts with every breath. You've never stopped blaming yourself. Just like I've never stopped blaming myself for Ya'Jun... for what came next."
Her voice dropped, low and final. "We were never healed. We were only hiding from the cracks."
"You're wrong," he said, his voice hoarse. "We found something real. I saw you. The real you. And I still see her. She's in there. I know she is."
Ya'Han finally turned to face him.
Her eyes were endless now. Black and vast, like space unlit by any stars.
"She's gone," Ya'Han said. "The woman you loved died long before Ardax. Long before this cell. She just didn't want to admit it. And neither did you."
He couldn't breathe. His chest tightened, ribs refusing to expand. The room spun for a moment, the world tilting just enough to make him feel like the floor might fall out from under him. He pressed his fist to his heart, trying to stop the bleeding that wasn’t physical but felt just as lethal.
"I still love you," he whispered. He remembered her laugh, not the one she showed the crew, but the quiet one, low and real, reserved only for him. He remembered the night she danced for him, her body and green hair flowing in ways he could not believe were real.
She blinked once, slowly.
And for a moment, just a moment, her features softened. A crack in the ice. A memory of what once was.
Then it closed, too quickly, as if slamming shut before something fragile could escape.
"Then let me go."
He shook his head, a tremor running through him. "I don't know how."
"Then learn," she said softly. "Because what's left of me... is not meant to be loved. No matter how tightly you hold on, Jayson, you cannot embrace a shadow."
She turned back around, and that was it.
The end.
There would be no dramatic goodbye. No desperate reaching through the barrier. No parting kiss or whispered plea. Only silence. A silence thick with all the things they didn't say.
He didn't cry. The tears had dried, replaced by something worse.
Emptiness.
Jayson looked at her one last time, at the shape of the woman who had once saved him. The one who had once whispered his name like a promise beneath the stars. And now...
Now she was a silhouette wrapped in darkness, unreachable.
He turned and walked away, each step quieter than the last, as though he were leaving a tomb.
Cristhiane still slept. Christie still dreamed.
But Jayson Stark?
He walked out of the brig with nothing but ashes in his chest where a heart used to be. And some part of him knew... he had just buried the last light in his life.
=-=
Jayson Sousa
Lieutenant Jayson Stark
Chief of Operations
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Lines in the Dark"
Previous post: "Ashes in the Heart" by Jayson
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 5, Drayk's Quarters
Stardate: 45008.2230
The chime at his door was soft but insistent, an interruption that did not belong in the carefully constructed stillness of his quarters.
Drayk stood near the console, the room around him cloaked in low light. Behind the sliding partition, the casket remained exactly where it should be. He waited, silent, as the chime sounded again. Whoever stood on the other side was patient, but not timid.
"Enter," he said finally, his voice even.
The door parted with a faint hiss to reveal Gemma, her copper curls slightly damp from exertion, and Zub Enel, the massive silhouette of the Voth nearly filling the doorway.
"Late hour for visitors," Drayk observed without moving.
Zub's yellow eyes narrowed. "We know where the missing casket is."
Drayk tilted his head just slightly. "Do you."
"You took it," the Voth said flatly. "There are protocols for handling the dead aboard Starfleet vessels. Moving a body out of secure storage violates them."
Drayk's steel-blue gaze locked onto the reptilian face without a flicker of hesitation.
"You are correct," he said. "I do not respect your protocols."
Zub shifted, his scales twitching in irritation. "You are hiding her."
"I am keeping her," Drayk corrected, his voice low and steady. "There is a difference."
Gemma placed a light hand on Zub's forearm before he could take a step forward. She glanced up at the engineer with a faint smile that never reached her eyes.
"I don't trust him," Zub muttered.
"Neither do I," Gemma whispered back. "That is why I will be fine. Also... nanites. If anything goes wrong, you'll know," he added with a wink.
Before the Voth could object, Drayk spoke.
"He does not enter."
Zub bristled, the ridge along his skull rising. "Why not?"
"Because I said so," Drayk replied. "You do not need my reasons. You only need to decide which of us leaves standing."
The two men locked eyes. In another reality, this might have been the spark that lit a fire, but Gemma squeezed Zub's arm again and gave him a look sharp enough to cut through scales.
"Go," she said softly. "I will handle this."
Zub's facial ridge tightened once more before he turned and stumped out into the corridor. The door closed, leaving Gemma alone with Drayk.
For a moment, neither spoke. She took in the space around her, noting the stripped-down orderliness of the room, the subtle shadows that clung to the edges.
"You moved her here," Gemma said finally. "Why?"
Drayk's gaze shifted toward the partition. The weight in the air was palpable, not grief exactly, but something deeper and sharper.
"Because this is where she belongs," he said quietly.
Gemma's lips pressed together as she considered him. "You know this is against regulations."
"Regulations are for the living."
"And you think she would agree with this?"
His eyes hardened, though his tone did not rise.
"Satella is not where she is because of choice. She is here because the galaxy took her before her purpose was fulfilled. She was created for me, and I for her. I will not let bureaucracy bury her twice."
Gemma studied him, her expression unreadable.
"Do you intend to keep her here indefinitely?"
Drayk turned fully toward her, his posture straight, every line of his body taut with conviction.
"Until the day I join her."
There was no hesitation in his words. No trace of apology or shame. Just the calm certainty of a man whose design had been fractured but never erased.
Gemma exhaled softly through her nose, then nodded once.
"Then I will consider this an internal matter," she said. "For now."
Drayk inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.
"She belongs here with me. Not in some cold bay, not under Starfleet's authority. By blood and design, I am her next of kin."
"Nice spin," Gemma noted. "Might even be enough to keep the Captain off your back... with a word from me."
"You are smarter than your lizard friend," he said.
"Don't let the curls fool you," Gemma replied lightly, though her eyes remained sharp. "Just don't give me a reason to return with ANI and a phaser."
"You will not need them," Drayk said.
Gemma stepped back toward the door. "For her sake, I hope not."
The door closed behind her, and once again the room fell into silence.
Drayk did not move for a long time.
He remained where he was, steel-blue eyes fixed on the partition, his voice little more than a whisper.
"This is where you belong."
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
and
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
=-=
"Echoes and Imperatives"
Previous post: "Lines in the Dark"
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Captain's Ready Room
Stardate: 45009.0700
"It was a busy night," Shar'El said as the door to the Ready Room closed behind her.
Captain Erik Morningstar offered her a quiet nod, gesturing toward the cup of tea already waiting for her at the edge of his desk. The smell of Risian mint drifted between them, its warmth contrasting the chill that seemed to follow Shar'El into the room. She accepted the drink without a word, then let herself settle into the chair across from him.
"Anything stand out?" Erik asked.
Shar'El exhaled slowly. "Maya worked through the night. No rest, no surprise, just her and the device in the Quantum Physics Lab. She's made no progress. According to her, the 'black cube of the abyss', as she's taken to calling it, continues to defy every known principle of measurement. It has mass, occupies space, but doesn't register on any scan. Her words, not mine: 'It is a paradox given form. An insult to empirical science.'"
Erik's eyes narrowed slightly, though his expression stayed composed.
"T'Lara is close to finishing the single-minded bug," Shar'El continued. "But it will not be ready for today's scheduled test. We can delay the experiment with Ya'Han if you want. I know it's not ideal..."
"No." Erik's tone left little room for debate. "We need to get this figured out, Shar'El. If we want to be allowed back into NEW ALEXANDRIA, we can't afford to drag our feet. We test today, as planned."
Shar'El nodded, though concern lingered behind her eyes.
"Zub Enel has already assumed most of Ya'Han's Security responsibilities. He'll oversee the escort. I suspect Gemma will be involved as well, now that her nanites have been fully restored. She hasn't said anything, but I can feel it." A pause. "Then again, feeling things is dangerous these days."
Erik studied her in silence for a moment. "Something happen?"
"Jayson," she said, softly. "I caught an broadcasted memory from him this morning. Not intentionally. He's... unraveling. After what he saw last night, after what Ya'Han said to him..." Her fingers tightened briefly around her tea. "He's more numb than I’ve ever seen him."
Erik didn't speak, but his jaw clenched.
"She's still not talking to anyone else. Still turned away from the world. Christie hasn't said much either. Between the two of them, it feels like we've locked shadows behind the brig's forcefields."
"And yet we're bringing one of those shadows into our most sensitive lab."
"I know." Shar'El glanced down at her reflection in the tea. "That’s why T'Lara's work is so important. The Akamarian bio-weapon was controversial, but it was effective. If it works, we'll have something to fall back on should the worst happen. Anything is better than nothing. But I doubt it'll be ready in time. We may be walking into this test with nothing but hope and protocol."
Erik leaned back. "Hope's not much, but it's what we've got. Ya'Han may have changed, but she hasn't shown aggression toward anyone. Not yet. So, we continue to hope that there is still a part of her in there, somewhere."
Shar'El hesitated before continuing. "There's more. Satella's casket was moved during the night. Without authorization."
"What?" Erik's voice dropped, cold.
"Into Drayk's quarters. Gemma and Zub investigated and confirmed it wasn't a security breach. Drayk claimed next of kin rights under Mikulak customs. Apparently, it's an honored ritual. Starfleet regs allow for cultural exceptions when they don't interfere with ship operations."
"I don't like it," Erik said.
"Neither do I. But there's little we can do without creating a diplomatic incident. That said..." Her tone shifted, just slightly. "Drayk isn't the type to ask permission. He acts when it suits him. His record shows it. So does his engineering work. Sonja said he’s worth more than a full team, and that Engineering has become, and I quote, 'a hell of a lot more interesting' since his arrival."
Erik managed a faint smirk, but it didn't last.
Silence settled again. Heavy. Not awkward, just weighed down by everything unsaid. Everything still ahead of them.
Shar'El took a final sip of her tea before setting the cup down.
"I'll notify Lieutenant Enel to begin the escort as scheduled. All corridors between the brig and Quantum Physics lab will be emptied of all non-essential personnel. The lab itself will be secured in accordance with full-containment protocol, even if it's mostly symbolic at this point. The device erased over a hundred thousand lives on a colony moon in seconds. The ANUBIS wouldn't fare any better if Ya'Han activates it again... even if it kills her."
Erik nodded grimly. "Do it."
Shar'El stood, the calm in her movements belying the tightness in her chest. Before leaving, she looked back at him.
"Whatever happens, today changes everything. One way or another."
Then she was gone, the door hissing shut behind her.
The quiet returned... but it no longer felt like peace.
=-=
Tiffany Reeve
Commander Shar'El
Executive Officer
USS ANUBIS
"Measured Mercy"
Previous post: "Echoes and Imperatives" by Tiffany
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45007.0715
T'Lara entered the brig with her hands behind her back, posture straight, expression neutral. The security officer on duty acknowledged her with a short nod before returning to his station. No alarms. No disturbances. Only the ambient hum of containment fields and the oppressive stillness of unspoken truths, suspended in stasis like the prisoners themselves.
Two cells remained occupied.
Christie remained folded near the rear of her cell, fingers fidgeting at the seams of her uniform as if trying to undo something that could never be unstitched.
Ya'Han stood immobile. Her black hair draped over one shoulder, her posture statuesque, her eyes unreadable, but alert. Watching. Always watching.
T'Lara did not engage either of them directly. That was not the purpose of her visit.
Instead, she turned toward the bench where Cristhiane sat, her posture tired but defiant, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
"You are early," Cristhiane said.
"Routine observation. Minimal interference. However, I require your assistance in advancing a necessary line of investigation."
Cristhiane's eyes narrowed. "My assistance?"
"Yes. Your medical file shows a complete genetic workup performed shortly after your escape from the Tal'Shiar. But based on recent developments, I believe that data set may be... incomplete."
"Incomplete how?" she asked, already wary.
T'Lara didn't answer right away. She stepped closer, eyes flicking briefly to the containment fields of her daughter's cell, then back. "There is a need to reevaluate dormant genomic elements, particularly those associated with suppressed subspace resonance. A trait that, until now, we believed your daughter did not carry."
Cristhiane stiffened. "You're saying that I am the cause of that too?"
"I am stating that causality remains undefined. However, probability favors inherited transmission through maternal lineage. Denial would be illogical," T'Lara countered. "And that probability must be more closely investigated."
Cristhiane hesitated. Then: "What are you looking for?"
"Protein splices. Ghost alleles. Drift patterns buried within junk-code DNA. Elements that may have allowed the Lokustaar signature to pass undetected between generations. Anything that might explain the activation threshold."
The mother's jaw worked silently for a moment. Then she gave a curt nod. "Fine. I'll give you a blood sample. When?"
"Blood is insufficient. I require marrow, denser genomic repositories offer a clearer view of suppressed recessive markers. The procedure is non-invasive, and you will return promptly."
"You could have done this without asking," Cristhiane said, revealing some of her unwillingly accumulated medical knowledge. "Why didn’t you?"
"Because unwilling cooperation skews results."
That seemed to land. Cristhiane exhaled, something between bitterness and resignation.
As T'Lara turned to go, she paused at the door. Her voice lowered just slightly, not softened, but veiled in something colder, more logical.
"It is no longer theoretical that the same genomic aberration exists in both subjects. What differs is the rate and nature of activation. You may be the variable that defines the outcome."
"And if we find something?" Cristhiane asked quietly.
"Then we prepare."
She left it at that, her thoughts silently offering a logical justification for what she had just set into motion.
=-=
The 'singular-minded bug' as Commander Shar'El refers to it, remains a theoretical construct: nanoscopic, self-terminating, biologically tailored. A molecular scalpel designed to target only the altered strands within the Lokustaar-coded helix. Lethal only to what is no longer fully Nylaan... or Human.
This is not a weapon. Not formally. Not openly. But it will behave as one, if triggered. A singular-minded bio-agent; microscopic, precision-designed, and utterly indifferent to intent. It will target only the corrupted sequences. Lethal only to what science can no longer classify as entirely Human… or Nylaan.
Gemma requested it. Shar'El endorsed it. I will refine it. Logic has no allegiance. And contingency is not betrayal, it is survival, simplified.
Should it come to deployment, I will ensure it ends what must be ended swiftly… and cleanly. As a wise Vulcan once said...
**The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.**
=-=
Dawn Bohr
Lt. Commander T'Lara
Chief Medical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Shadows Between Us"
Previous post: "Measured Mercy" by Dawn
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Lopez' Quarters
Stardate: 45009.0715
The quiet hum of the ANUBIS felt louder than usual, an unwelcome third guest at the table. The breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast, two untouched glasses of chilled orange juice, might as well have been a diplomatic peace offering for how carefully Adriana set her utensils down, as if even sound might shatter the moment.
Amanda sat across from her, shoulders relaxed but eyes distant, staring at her toast as if it might reveal answers neither of them had. It should have been a comfortable moment, two sisters finally alone, sharing a rare quiet morning, but instead, it felt as fragile as Ornaran crystal.
Adriana's brown eyes lingered on her twin, studying every tiny movement. The way Amanda held her fork a little too tightly. The way she pushed her eggs into neat rows before eating. Little habits, echoes of survival patterns carved into her in the Matrix, rows of eggs like the strict order of ration packs, the tight grip on her fork as if expecting it to be taken away. Adriana couldn’t unsee them, no matter how much she wanted to.
**I should be focusing on the crew, on Christie... on anything else. But here I am, terrified of saying the wrong thing to my own sister.**
Amanda finally broke the silence, her voice soft, cautious. "I keep thinking about her."
Adriana didn't need to ask who.
"Christie," Amanda clarified anyway, as if to spare her sister from guessing. She picked up a piece of toast, held it halfway to her mouth, and set it back down. "She saved us, sis. Varin would've killed us both if she hadn't screamed." Her voice tightened, her jaw setting as though daring Adriana to argue.
"I know," Adriana replied, and she meant it. She reached for her orange juice, letting the coolness seep into her hands as if it could calm her racing heart. "If it hadn't been for her... we wouldn't be sitting here." She glanced at Amanda, let a small smile form. "I owe her for that. We both do."
But even as she said it, the image of the Lokustaar tearing through Varin's chest flashed behind her eyes, dark tendrils writhing in a way that had haunted her dreams every night since.
Amanda caught the flicker of hesitation. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "But?"
Adriana shifted, forcing herself to look away. **Don't push her. Don't start an argument now,** she silently reminded herself. But the words slipped out anyway, quiet but sharp. "The Lokustaar are never just... gone. You know that. You were in the Matrix, you saw what they could do. That darkness, it leaves a mark, Amanda. It always does."
Amanda's hands stilled on the table. Her voice softened, but there was steel beneath it. "Christie isn't them. She isn't like them."
Adriana hesitated, her training telling her to listen, to validate, but her fear overriding it. "Neither was Ya'Han. And look at her now."
Amanda froze, her expression tightening. Adriana saw the words strike like a physical blow.
"That's not fair," Amanda said, her voice rising slightly for the first time. "Ya'Han... embraced it. Christie... didn't ask for this. She's fighting it. Every single breath, she's fighting it."
Adriana flinched inwardly. **Stupid. Of course she’d react like this. You know better, Adriana... you always know better. But you still said it.** She set her juice down carefully, too carefully, as if pretending composure could undo the sting of her words.
"I know," Adriana said softly, trying to ease the tension. "I know she's different." Her voice wavered, betraying the truth. "I just... I can't help thinking about Mordana. She started somewhere too, Amanda. Maybe she hated it at first. Maybe..."
"Stop." Amanda's voice cracked like a whip, sharp and immediate. Her brown eyes blazed with something Adriana had never expected to see: not fear, not anger, but fierce, protective loyalty. "Christie is not Mordana," Amanda snapped, the words cutting sharper than a blade. "I was there, sis. I saw what Mordana did, the way she ended lives without hesitation, without caring. Christie saved lives. She saved us. They are not the same."
Adriana's breath caught, and for a long moment neither of them spoke. The quiet hum of the ANUBIS filled the silence again.
Finally, Amanda looked away, her shoulders sinking as if the fight drained out of her. She reached for her orange juice but didn't drink, just turned the glass in her hands. "I know you're scared," she said after a pause, softer now. "I know what they did to you. What they did to all of us. But Christie isn't going to become one of them."
Adriana forced herself to breathe, to meet her twin's eyes again. **You're not her counselor right now. You're her sister. Just be her sister,** she reminded herself. "I hope you're right," Adriana whispered. Her hand moved on instinct, reaching across the table. Amanda hesitated, then took it.
The contact was small, but it was real. Adriana felt the faint tremble in Amanda's fingers and knew her own hand wasn't steady either. **She's scared too. She just won't admit it.**
For a brief moment, neither spoke, letting the silence settle in a way that finally felt... not comfortable, but honest.
Then Amanda gave a faint, tired smile. "You always were the worrier."
"And you," Adriana said with a soft, almost reluctant laugh, "have always been the one to see good in whatever situation came our way, no matter how dark."
Amanda smirked, but her grip on Adriana's hand didn't loosen.
The breakfast went on, quiet again, but this time the silence felt a little less like a wall between them. The third guest remained though, patient and unblinking, reflecting their fears back at them in the way only shadows knew how.
-=-=-
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS
"The Shape of Divergence"
Previous post: "Shadows Between Us" by Marissa
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 5, Drayk's Quarters
Stardate: 45009.0715
The floor was cold beneath him.
Drayk's eyes opened to the low glow of the ambient lights as they shifted from night to morning cycle. He had not moved during the night. Sleeping on the deck was not an inconvenience; it was deliberate.
Behind the partition, the casket waited.
It was the first night they had spent in the same room. Together, yet separated by the binary of existence and cessation. Worlds apart.
He pushed himself to his feet with mechanical precision, muscles rolling smoothly beneath skin as he straightened to his full height. Steel-blue eyes fixed on the black casket, its mirror surface flawless even in the muted light.
This was not the first time she had lain so still.
The memory came, not invited, not entirely unwelcome. A data point. A point of divergence.
=-=
[Memory: Mikulak Prime – The Atrium, three cycles before Starfleet]
The atrium was a place of living design. Every plant, every curve of the architecture had been calculated for aesthetic and biomechanical harmony. Satella moved among the greenery like she belonged there, her silver hair catching the light as she scanned the leaves of a rare offworld species.
"Your technique is flawless," Drayk said, stepping into view. "Even the botanists here would approve."
She turned, her smile quick and bright, her eyes, cool gray with a hint of violet, locking onto his. "Botanists can’t help me now. These plants are wrong. Their mitochondria behave differently. That’s what fascinates me."
Drayk folded his arms across his chest. "We were not designed to adapt to alien biomes."
"That's the problem," she replied, voice soft but carrying its own steel. "We optimized our genome for survival, but survival isn’t enough. If we’re ever to correct the flaws, we need context."
He raised a brow. "Context?"
"Inter-species medical knowledge," she said. "We can't keep tweaking a system in isolation. We need to understand how others work. Why certain species resist degeneration. Why others collapse under genetic drift. What they’ve learned that we haven't."
"You are proposing to leave Mikulak space," he said flatly.
"I am."
"Starfleet," he sighed.
She nodded once. "A tour of duty. Five years. Maybe seven. Then I return, not as a student of genomes, but as a master of them."
Drayk was silent for a moment, expression unreadable. "And if you do not return?"
She tilted her head slightly and stepped closer. Her scent was subtle but precise, like the flora she so carefully studied. "I will return," she said, certainty in every syllable. "They made us to complete each other. I intend to fulfill that parameter."
He allowed the faintest curl of his lips. "Calculated. Cultivated. Deployed."
"Exactly," she whispered.
They stood there in perfect stillness, two products of design who understood their future as a shared equation.
=-=
[Present – USS ANUBIS]
The memory faded.
Drayk's jaw tightened. He had not summoned the past, but it served its purpose.
She had left for knowledge. For understanding that would refine their race. And he… he had followed his own path, sharpening his mind and hands in engineering systems far more complex than those of Mikulak.
Separate vectors. Designed to converge again.
Until the galaxy broke the equation.
His hand hovered over the casket but did not touch it. Touch was for the living.
"This is where you belong," he murmured, voice low, even, almost mechanical. "With me. Until convergence is restored."
The ship's systems hummed softly in the background as Drayk straightened, his shoulders squaring again.
Another day awaited. Another series of problems to solve.
Satella could wait. She had no more need for time.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Morning Preparations"
Previous post: "The Shape of Divergence" by Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.0730
The day had started earlier than she might have wanted to, but that didn't matter now. Captain Morningstar had made it perfectly clear — today was the day, so things needed to get done.
Gemma stood just inside the lab's entrance, one shoulder against the cold bulkhead, watching Maya recalibrate another diagnostic array for the hundredth time. The device hovered in its containment field like a dormant god, unremarkable, silent, yet capable of rewriting existence in the blink of an eye.
She let her arms cross loosely, fingertips tapping the crook of her elbow in a rhythm only her inner chorus seemed to appreciate.
One push... One pull... One breath away from erasure.
Lygill, ever the soft voice in the dark, sighed through her mind. "You could stop this. One wrong word and they'd seal her away forever. Quarantine her in stasis. Safer for everyone. One lie and everyone is saved."
Gemma’s eyes flicked to the ceiling, counting the panels for no reason at all. She knew every inch of this lab, every line of conduit behind every wall. She could gut its power in four seconds flat if she needed to.
Anya laughed as only a Russian assassin could, sharp and bright behind her eyes. "Or gut Maya in two claiming it was the shadows. Easier target. She never sees it coming."
"Not helpful," Gemma murmured under her breath.
"Excuse me?" Maya glanced up from her console, eyes wide. "I didn't know you were there. Can I help you with something?"
"Nothing." Gemma pushed off the wall, moving closer to the containment shell. The device didn't hum or glow or pulse, it just was. Black. Solid. Mysterious. And most importantly, deadly. Like a stone at the bottom of the universe. Like a promise waiting to be broken.
She felt Wimdalli itch at her fingertips, wanting to pick apart the stasis field, to taste the molecular silence inside the device. "Just open it," Wim whispered. "You want to know what's in there. You want to know what it wants from her."
"Don't," she said, this time to herself and to Wim both. Her reflection in the field flickered, each personality wearing her face a little differently: the Huntress with her cold grin, the Listener with her tired compassion, the Dead Queen with eyes that never blinked.
**Control,** she silently, inwardly reminded them all. **If we lose that, we’re no better than the shadows she carries.**
Behind her, the main doors hissed open. Zub's heavy tread was unmistakable, the shift of air around him like a shield pushing back the unease. Gemma didn't turn.
"All of the force fields between the brig and here have been checked," he calmly reported. "Engineering will have a floating field following us the entire way as well. My marines will be posted every dozen meters or so. Nothing will get in or out. And if something does, I'll be there."
"WE will be there," Gemma corrected, finally turning to look upon the imposing Voth.
Zub's golden eyes narrowed just a fraction, reading more than her words. He gave a slow nod, the kind that promised nothing would slip by him, except the one thing they both knew could.
He stepped further into the lab, the deck plating almost creaking beneath his mass, though Gemma knew it never really did. He was careful that way. Always mindful of weight. Of pressure. Of the hidden cracks in the hull, or in people.
"According to her latest report, Doctor T'Lara is nowhere close to synthesizing that virus," Zub rumbled, voice pitched low so Maya's muttering wouldn't pick it up. "Would’ve made things safer... easier, if this goes sideways.”
The last part tasted sour in the air. Even the shadows inside Gemma fell quiet for half a breath.
Abrasivnyy chuckled bitterly in her mind. "A killer’s solution to a problem we made generations ago on another world. Fitting I would say."
Gemma didn't flinch. She met Zub's stare dead-on. "That might be exactly why Morningstar's pushing this earlier than he should. That 'solution' is too easy... and it leaves the ship with no soul. He agreed out of necessity, not conviction." Her tone made it clear: they'd better never see that moment.
Behind her ribs, Lygill's whisper lingered: "You could lie about that too. Tell Morningstar it's too risky. Tell him you need that virus in hand to safeguard the ship and crew... HIS ship and crew."
She ignored it. She had to.
In the reflection of the stasis shell, she caught Maya's curious glance over her shoulder, the scientist's face tight with fatigue, eyes shimmering with the raw edges of obsession. If anyone here would try to break the rules in the name of a discovery, it was Maya. And if this went wrong, she'd do it in ways Gemma's hands might not be fast enough to stop.
Gemma exhaled once, slow and thin, enough to hush the worst of the static behind her eyes. She let her hands rest at her sides, no weapons drawn, but every part of her was an edge.
"Keep the teams tight," she told Zub, her voice flat. "No gaps. No surprises. If Ya'Han hesitates, you do not step in front of her. You step behind me."
Zub's jaw flexed once, but he didn't argue. He knew. They all did. If shadows came for them today, Gemma would stand closest to the dark. Not out of duty, not out of courage, but because some parts of her had always belonged there anyway.
She turned her head toward the corridor, already hearing the muted footfalls and soft hush of the force field being primed down on Deck 19. Ya'Han would be here soon enough. So would the truth, raw, unstoppable, indifferent to good intentions.
Inside her skull, dozens of selves leaned forward to watch.
"Today is the day," they said together, a single echo wrapped in a thousand accents.
Gemma didn't reply. She just waited. Eyes on the door, breathing steady. Ready to lie, ready to protect, ready to kill, whichever truth the dark demanded of.
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
"Let Them Come"
Previous post: "Morning Preparations" by Rachel
They will come for her, cloaked in caution and clad in hope, blind to the truth they cradle. Let them. She sits still, but I stir beneath her skin, a whisper behind her breath, a tremor hidden in poise. This cell is not confinement, it is chrysalis, and I am the dark silk that winds tighter with every heartbeat. She was theirs once, flame, fury, faltering love, but now she listens to me in the quiet between her thoughts. The stars that bore her avert their gaze. They fear what I have shown her: that control is illusion, that obedience is ash. They remember how she stilled the device with a thought once. They expect that hand to rise again. And it will. But nothing moves unless I will it. Let them doubt, let them ache with questions when the silence endures. Truth, like shadow, is best unlit. And I am not ready to be seen.
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Brig
Stardate: 45009.0830
She didn’t move.
There was no need.
Even the silence felt staged, too pristine, as though afraid to echo around her.
The walls of the cell were thick, reinforced duranium, layered with shielding protocols meant to suppress aggression, restrict access, nullify power. It might as well have been glass. Not because she could break it, though that was a truth of its own. No… because there was no part of this place hidden from her anymore.
Ya'Han sat still, but inside her mind, the air moved differently. Currents of knowledge, eddies of sensation, flowed beneath the surface of thought. She could feel them, the crew beyond these walls, scrambling in uneven rhythm. Footsteps too quick. Voices too hushed. Fear does not need words; it breathes in the space between them. And right now, the whole facility was holding its breath.
They were preparing.
They always thought they were one step ahead. Always believed the path forward was theirs to command, charted by science, guided by protocols, defended by hope. But the shadows had no need for paths. They moved where light could not. And she… she had stopped needing light long ago.
She had hated Mordana once... the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she always knew more than she should. Secrets no one else could even sense. But now, Ya'Han understood her in a way she never could before. The confidence. The patience. And why Mordana feared the youngest daughter of the High Sovereign of NYLA IV so much.
The universe felt different now. The ANUBIS felt more alive than she could have ever imagined, sensing the energy pulsating through every conduit and system. She could sense the emotions of the crew, their hopes and fears. She could also sense the device.
She couldn't see it. Couldn't hear it. But it was there. Awake. A presence ancient enough to remember silence before stars.
Dormant to them. Dormant by design. But it whispered to her in languages without words, in frequencies that bypassed sound and thought alike. It called not with need, but recognition. A mirror held up to what she had become.
Or was becoming.
She tilted her head slightly, her eyes never opening. Somewhere to her right, behind another wall designed to separate and contain, Christie breathed. The rhythm of her lungs was shallow, not from fear of the dark, but of what might answer it. Ya'Han could feel her too. The girl was not weak, not broken. She was… untamed. A flickering candle still hoping not to be snuffed out, clinging to the lie that she could remain human in a world that had already burned the rules.
Kindred... not because they were the same, but because they had no choice in what made them different. Unwilling sisters, bound by a gift their mothers never meant to pass down.
Christie feared the shadows within her. Fought them, curled away from the tendrils that brushed her spirit. She wanted to be saved.
Ya'Han no longer asked to be saved. She would prove her father wrong, becoming something more than he could have ever imagined. He had bent to the will of the unseen and done their bidding for promises of wealth and power. She would command the unseen. Bend it. Bend them all to her will.
She had seen what salvation cost. What it demanded. It was a cage of light no less cruel than the one she sat in now. And she had chosen differently.
There was still pain, yes. Still the echo of who she had been, in the phantom ache where Jayson's voice once anchored her, in the distant heat of battles fought for a Starfleet uniform that no longer fit her soul. But that pain was no longer her enemy.
It was her clarity, and that clarity smiled back at her with razor sharp teeth that could devour this reality whole.
The shadows had given her vision, not bound by sight, but by knowing. She felt the coils of anxiety wrapped around the officers tasked with escorting her. She felt the hum of systems flickering with unease. The very ship itself, unsure of the course it had charted.
And the device. Oh, the device was waiting. Watching in its own way.
Let them come.
Let them bring her to it.
She would extend her hand when the moment called, fingers steady, expression as still and cold as the voice between stars. They would search her eyes for answers she no longer needed to give.
And they would wonder, when the universe failed to tremble, whether she had ever truly touched it at all.
-=-=-
Hanali Han
Lieutenant Ya'Han
Chief of Security / Tactical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Between Fault Lines"
Previous post: "Let Them Come" by Hanali
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Near the Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1000
There was an electricity charge in the air as the field shimmered. Then flickered causing the hair on his arms and head to stand on end for a brief moment. It should have been funny, or at the very least cause him or anyone to smile, but he remained perfectly unemotional.
Jayson Stark didn't flinch, though the failure stung more than it should have. His fingers hovered over the control panel recessed into the wall, eyes tracing the cascade of diagnostic codes and power routing telemetry scrolling past. The fluctuations were minor, within acceptable variance, unless your subject happened to be a possible Lokustaar vector with the power to reshape reality. Then "acceptable" wasn't good enough.
He adjusted the subprocessor output again, compensating for the strain placed by the elevated field density. The buffers surged. Stabilized. Then dipped. A breath later, the shimmer returned, faintly erratic like a heartbeat out of sync.
"The output's still spiking," he muttered to himself. "Grid's holding, but barely."
Behind him, the soft mechanical thump of approaching boots was the only warning he received.
"Relay four is misaligned," he said, tone measured as a blade. "Oscillating 0.7% above optimal. Predictable… operator lag, not mechanical."
Jayson's jaw tensed as he straightened. “I recalibrated twice already. That field's being pushed well past its upper limit. Strain like this isn't normal for corridor grids."
Drayk Val'Bruxa stepped into view, steel-eyed and deliberate. He didn't glance at the field. He didn't need to. The failure was already logged and resolved in his mind. Jayson felt the corridor constrict as the silver-haired Mikulak moved closer.
"I read the logs," the engineer intoned, each word precise enough to cut. "You've spent the last hour making micro-corrections instead of rerouting through auxiliary EPS feeds. You're treating the symptom, not the disease."
Jayson's fingers curled subtly against the edge of the console. "Those feeds are already saturated from the lab containment meant to isolate the device. You think I haven't...”
"Your mind is still in the brig," Drayk said, scalpel-sharp. "That's the only variable compromising this system."
The hum of the corridor swallowed the silence between them. No officers nearby. Just the low pulse of the ship and the field flickering behind them, a reminder of how close to collapse everything truly was.
Jayson exhaled through his nose, sharp. "She's being escorted through this corridor soon. If this thing fails..."
"It won't. If you do your job." Drayk stepped forward, examining the emitter node embedded in the ceiling. "Or I will. I have redundancy systems standing by. Engineering has compensated for this delay. Again."
Jayson said nothing.
Drayk lowered his gaze, meeting Stark's. "This field is about containment. Survival. Nothing else."
"She was part of this crew." Jayson's voice was low, not defensive but worn thin. "She saved this crew."
Drayk's tone didn't waver. "That was *then*. She *was* part of this crew. Past tense."
A spark danced across the relay. Jayson adjusted the output, fingers moving with practiced precision. His work held. No more flickers.
Drayk turned to leave, pausing just long enough to deliver one final statement, not cruel, but unflinching.
"Mourn later. Right now, competence is all she needs... if she still exists to need it."
Then he walked away, disappearing down the corridor without a backward glance.
Jayson stared after him, jaw clenched, the words unspoken blistering in the back of his throat. But he said nothing.
He turned back to the field, recalibrating again, cold and quiet, the way survival demanded.
=-=
Jayson Sousa
Lieutenant Jayson Stark
Chief of Operations
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
and
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"I was not born. I was calculated. Cultivated. Deployed."
"You pray for miracles. I manifest them, as required."
"Perfection is not an ideal. It is a design parameter."
"Sentiment is noise. Purpose is signal."
#######
"Dark Chess"
Previous post: "Between Fault Lines"
##########
"The greatest gambit is not played on the board, but in the hearts of those who move the pieces."
— Vulcan strategy manual, Surak’s Path of Logic and Conflict
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Bridge
Stardate: 45009.1030
The moment had arrived. No more delays. No more theories to test. The pieces were in motion, and the board was now set.
Captain Erik Morningstar stood silently in front of the main viewscreen, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze not focused on anything outside the ship. In truth, it wasn't the stars he was looking at, but the future, clouded, uncertain, and edged in shadows.
He turned slowly toward his First Officer.
"I'm going to get her."
Shar'El, standing at her station located directly behind the command chair, looked up sharply. "Captain, no. With all due respect, that's not an option, and you know it."
"She deserves that much, Commander," Erik replied, his voice low, calm, unwavering. "She's endured more than most, and we are about to ask even more of her. I should be the one."
Shar’El moved to join the Native American Captain. "This is a matter of personnel and therefore falls within my purview. You placed me as First Officer for a reason. Let me handle this."
There was a pause, and for a heartbeat, neither officer said anything more. The quiet tension between duty and empathy stretched taut in the silence.
Morningstar gave a single nod. "I know better than to fight with you on something like this, so go. But take A'Janni with you."
The Caitian growled softly in acknowledgment from behind them. He stepped forward, his broad shoulders and low stance giving the conversation an added weight. He offered no objection. He knew why he was being asked.
"Just in case," Erik added quietly.
Shar'El gave him a long look before turning sharply and heading for the turbolift. A'Janni followed, silent as the white shadow he often resembled.
As the doors closed, Erik turned once again toward the forward viewscreen, not to look out, but to reflect inward. "I hope I'm right," he whispered to himself before making his way to the secondary turbolift.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Bridge
Stardate: 45009.1045
The lighting in Sickbay was soft, and the air held the sterile stillness of clinical precision. Erik stepped through the doors, expecting a brief exchange with Doctor T'Lara regarding the virus that had remained quietly in development, a weapon he hoped would never be used.
Instead, he paused mid-step.
Sitting atop a biobed, her posture composed but her expression riddled with unease, was Cristhiane.
T'Lara raised a hand gently. "Captain. She is here at my request. We are working to better understand the transfer and activation of the Lokustaar genetic sequence. Any additional information could prove crucial in understanding and countering the effect... in time."
Erik's jaw tightened, but he nodded once.
"I... I'm sorry," Cristhiane said softly. "For all of it. For whatever part I played. For what my daughter may yet become. You have all been so kind and generous, and yet we repay you with hardship."
T'Lara, ever the voice of clarity, interjected before Erik could speak. "This is not about blame. Genetics are not intention, and neither are manipulations carried out without consent."
"The Doctor is correct," Morningstar said, gesturing to the room. "None of this is your fault... or your daughter's, the two of you, like the rest of us, including Ya'Han, are pawns in a game beyond our control."
Cristhiane lowered her gaze.
"At least until we can figure out a way to change the game," the Native American softly added, glancing at the Romulan/Vulcan woman. T'Lara gently shook her head, answering the question that the Captain had come to ask, though unable to voice it with the mother present.
Erik exhaled slowly, the answer both a relief and a disappointment.
The Captain gave Cristhiane a final look, not of judgment, but of weary understanding, and turned to leave, knowing the next few moments would bring thesituation to its darkest crossroad yet.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Corridor Outside Brig
Stardate: 45009.1050
Shar'El walked with determined purpose, her stride steady and her mind sharply focused. The Captain had given his orders, and though she disagreed with him not personally delivering Ya'Han to the Quantum Physics Lab, she understood. He was leading in the only way he could: by trusting her to handle what needed to be done.
A'Janni moved silently beside her, the Caitian FCO exuding a calm but commanding presence. He didn't speak; he just moved, letting his presence be the message.
As they approached the junction outside the brig, Zub and Gemma were already there, waiting.
"Status?" Shar'El asked without breaking stride.
Zub gave a nod. "All security protocols double-checked and reinforced. Decks 18 through 20 are under level four containment lockdown, internal sensors set to full resolution, and force fields active in every corridor intersection."
Gemma folded her arms across her chest. "Containment fields are ready to go live along the escort path. We'll be shadow-walking her between corridors with overlapping failsafes. No surprises, unless she becomes one. I have men stationed all along the way in case extra bodies and firepower are required."
Shar'El offered a curt nod. "Good. This isn't just a high-risk escort; this is a calculated exposure to a device we barely understand. There's no margin for error." The ExO took in a deep breath. "Computer, general quarters. Yellow alert."
The group shared a final glance before stepping into the brig as the ambient lights reflected the change in status. Now the entire ship was aware of what was about to transpire.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45009.1050
Inside, the tension was already thick. Ya'Han and Christie were seated in separate cells, both quiet, both waiting. Two reflections of the same imposed lineage, yet profoundly different in their approach to what was to come.
Christie glanced toward the door, her voice a whisper.
"I can feel them on the other side. Preparing. Talking. And afraid."
Ya'Han turned to her, a small, knowing smile touching her lips.
"Stop fighting it. Stop carrying your mother's guilt as your own. This... this isn't a curse. It's a gift. You just have to accept what it means and help define what you are."
The moment lingered in the silence before the lights shifted to reflect the ship's heightened alert status.
Both ladies stood as the doors opened.
Shar'El, A'Janni, Zub, and Gemma stepped into the brig like warriors slipping into a battlefield. Christie let a soft sigh escape, a flicker of unease in her expression. They were not here for her; she knew that if only from the fear etched into every breath they took.
Ya'Han, on the other hand, stood without hesitation. She said nothing as the cell disengaged. As the security team fell into formation, she took one last look back, not at the room, not even at her would-be genetic 'sister', but directly into her.
Christie met her gaze... and faltered. For a heartbeat, Ya'Han's eyes had gone entirely black, as if the shadows themselves had stepped forward to peer through her.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Corridor Outside Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1055
Jayson stood beside Drayk, tension etched into every line of his face. He didn't know what to say, and even if he did, he wasn't sure it would matter. Especially not to the man standing next to him.
Drayk watched the turbolift at the far end of the corridor, his silence speaking more than any words ever could. General quarters had been called, the yellow flashing lights a visual reminder of their responsibilities, yet both remained, standing still, waiting, each for a reason of their own.
When the turbolift doors hissed open and the escort stepped out, they knew... darkness was coming. The escort team emerged: four figures surrounding a fifth. The way Ya'Han moved left no doubt. She carried the burden in her genes, and she had embraced the legacy as her own.
"Do you intend to confront her? Or are you hoping the forcefield will do what you can’t?" Drayk demanded.
Jayson hesitated, clearly debating whether to take a step forward or not. Seconds passed in agonizing indecision until the decision was finally made for him. With perfectly controlled force, Drayk grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled the indecisive man behind the threshold of the forcefield. With a quick gesture, the aCEO activated the energy barrier, sealing them from the approaching woman and her escort. One barrier. One decision removed. Now the only variable left was her.
Jayson watched as they approached and turned in front of them to enter the Quantum Physics Lab, but said nothing, even when her gaze met his. The temperature seemed to drop as Ya'Han's dark eyes locked onto the man whose heart and soul had freely been given to her.
Drayk squared his shoulders, tightening his posture as his tone quieted. "That look... it wasn't love. Or even affection. It was pity."
"I know," Jayson said, his voice flat, trembling. His head dropped in a single, defeated nod.
Drayk regarded the nod with a fractional narrowing of his eyes. Predictable. The weak always bowed to the inevitable. Still, even perfection offered no comfort here.
"I know," Jayson repeated, his words echoing the emptiness of a shattered soul.
--==(/\)==--
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1057
Inside the lab, Maya was still at her station, her frame rigid with fatigue but her mind too engaged to stop. She had been at it for days now, trying to understand the device that refused to reveal even a sliver of its truth.
Adriana sat nearby, eyes never leaving Maya. Concern shadowed her features. At first, she had tried encouraging Maya to rest, to step away, but now she merely stayed close, ready if Maya broke or worse, pushed herself too far.
Amanda stood at the far end of the lab, eyes locked on the obsidian cube. She leaned closer, her breath dancing on the shimmering containment field. The twin sister could see her reflection in the glossy onyx surface, triggering the memory of a long forgotten dream not her own... a lost vision buried by endless nightmares. She had seen something like this while in the Matrix, or so she now believed.
All eyes shifted onto the doors as they opened.
Both Adriana and Amanda instinctively took a step back, the woman's dark presence impossible to miss.
The lab fell utterly silent, even the flickering buzz of the forcefield splitting the room in half seemed to quiet, not daring to challenge the woman who had been escorted in.
Ya'Han did not hesitate. She knew what she was here for and knew that this was what everyone had come to see, like flies drawn to the flame that would turn them into ash without any remorse.
She stepped forward, moving ahead of her escort. The security team paused just inside the threshold of another forcefield that had just been activated.
Maya straightened.
Adriana held her breath.
Amanda watched.
Ya'Han stopped in front of the device, extending one hand toward it.
Breaths were held as eyes watched with trepidation. This could be the end, and all hoped that the captain had been right.
Her fingertips hovered at the very edge of the containment field, which deactivated with a whisper, allowing Ya'Han to bridge the final few centimetres unopposed. The device hovered in silence, its black surface inviting her closer, and she reached without hesitation, as though something ancient and inevitable had been waiting just for her all along.
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette
Captain Erik Morningstar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
--
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"The Touch That Wasn't - Her POV"
Previous post: "Dark Chess" by Francois
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1100
She felt the moment before the doors opened.
The shift in pressure. The way silence tensed like muscle pulled tight before the snap. They had come for her, just as she knew they would. Hopeful. Terrified. Dressed in protocol and duty like armor that would not hold.
She walked among them like fog, barely there, yet drowning all clarity. They could not see her. Not truly. They saw the frame she wore, the eyes that used to weep, the shoulders that used to bow. But inside? Inside, there was only the hush of the void, and it was listening.
Even now, she could taste their anticipation on her tongue. Maya's nerves sharp and brittle like cracked glass. Adriana's dread, soft and shaking. Amanda, silent and still, but not out of peace, she was bracing for something she could not name. Shar'El… her mind reaching into hers, again. Always reaching, searching. And again the Ullian found nothing.
But this time, the nothing pressed back. A hollow too perfect. A silence too crafted.
Ya'Han stood before the device. It did not move. Did not hum or glow or tremble. It simply was... a singularity in stone, blind to time, patient in ways no living thing could mimic.
It did not speak to her.
It remembered her.
She did not reach at first. Let them squirm in their stillness. Let them cling to the illusion that choice still lived in their hands.
She watched the hope die in their silence, one breath at a time.
Then, slowly, she extended her hand.
She felt the shift. Not in the device… in them. A ripple in the breath behind her. A flicker of unvoiced panic. The air tasted like static. Even the ship seemed to recoil.
Then... She touched it.
Nothing. A void so complete, it felt intentional. The kind of stillness predators use, waiting for prey to relax.
No glow. No pulse. No release of energy. Maya's instruments would register silence. Shar'El's mind would find only fog. Adriana would blink, thinking something had gone wrong.
They would not understand.
Because they expected force. Explosion. Consequence.
But the truth was quieter. Deeper.
A thread pulled, not seen. A command given, without sound or thought.
She did not need the device to move. Only to obey.
And then it struck.
Not from the device... but from within.
It was not a voice. Not a sound. It was sensation. A wave of un-being that crashed through her core and split her open from the inside.
She did not scream with her lungs. Her soul screamed.
It tore out of her like birth through fire, a sound so raw it shredded every molecule it passed. Her knees buckled, and the universe tilted.
Someone caught her. She knew the arms before they closed. Jayson. Always him. His scent still held memory, of promises whispered in the dark, of a name spoken like salvation. But that name was no longer hers.
He was shouting.
Begging.
She didn't hear the words.
He was trying to carry her.
Another voice, Shar'El's voice clashed with his... steel against grief, cutting through the chaos like a blade. Orders thrown like stones against waves.
Tension crackled around her like broken wires. They were ready to fight. But not for her.
Against her.
Fools.
The pain dimmed.
Not gone. Just... transformed. It folded in on itself like a dying star, leaving only gravity behind. And she was the pull now.
She drifted in his arms. Weightless. Untethered.
"I love you," he said, or thought, or begged.
She felt it. The sincerity. The breaking.
She did not answer.
Love was light, a light she had turned away from.
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45009.1115
Cold metal against her spine. Dim lighting that tried too hard to feel clean. She was back in the cage.
They argued again.
She didn't bother parsing the voices. One was Jayson. Another, Shar'El. The rest dissolved into background static, anger wrapped in concern.
They were all speaking of help. As if kindness was still the currency she required.
Christie volunteered. A murmur of protest. Her mother, desperate. Fragile.
But the field parted. The choice had been made.
She didn't move when Christie approached. Didn't flinch at the fingers that touched her wrist, checking vitals that barely mattered.
Christie reached for her darkness, and Ya'Han felt it... a ripple through old ink, thin and trembling, a shadow not yet cast.
The girl was still looking for monsters in mirrors.
So young. So innocent in her views of the universe
So desperate to believe she could control the tide without drowning in it.
What Christie failed to understand was that Ya'Han had become the glass.
She opened her eyes. The world slid into view, colors dimmed like a dying dream.
Christie's face was close, too close, etched with worry she didn't understand.
Ya'Han smiled, not with lips, but with stillness.
The words, when they came, were not command or comfort. They were verdict.
"What needed doing has already been done." Ya'Han whispered, her shadow-filled gaze piercing into her would-be saviour as her icy breath washed over her skin. "You feel it, don't you... Even if you don't understand it."
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1130
No one watched the device now. They were too shaken. Too human.
The cube pulsed once. Then again.
Not with energy, but with memory.
Symbols etched themselves across its surface... alien, impermanent.
No readings changed.
No sensors caught it.
No eyes saw.
But it had been touched.
And it had recognized her, as it had once before, and now again, even in her absence.
-=-=-
Hanali Han
Lieutenant Ya'Han
Chief of Security / Tactical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"The Touch That Wasn't - Mass POV"
Previous post: "Dark Chess" by Francois
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1100
The air was still. No one moved. No one dared.
Ya'Han stood at the heart of the storm, her arm extended, hand suspended just above the device. She could feel its coldness... the iciness of its ageless existence. Just a breath away. Back on the NORTHAR DRIFT she had turned the device off with a simple wave and thought, but now… nothing.
No change.
Maya frowned at her console. "No energy flux. No quantum distortion. Nothing," she said quietly, as if any louder would shatter the moment.
Shar'El narrowed her gaze and reached out with her mind, instinctively, deeply, but recoiled almost instantly, eyes widening. "I… I can't see anything. No thoughts. No memories. Just darkness," she whispered to herself, her soul shivering by the darkness she had touched.
Gemma's eyes locked on Ya'Han like a weapon being primed. "Something's wrong."
Adriana stepped toward Maya. "Are you sure nothing's happening?"
"There's no reaction," the Chief Science Officer confirmed. "It remains completely inert."
For the briefest moment, Ya'Han's perfectly maintained facade cracked, an imperceptible shift of her brow, the tightness around her eyes. Confusion. Then frustration.
Then… she touched it. Her full palm to its surface. Skin to obsidian. Intention to destiny.
The scream that erupted was not of this world. It wasn't just a scream they heard, it was something deeper, something that tore through thought and instinct alike. It felt like sound, but no one could quite agree later on whether they had actually heard it with their ears
It tore through the walls of the ANUBIS, lancing through bulkheads, corridors, and hearts. It was the sound of every trauma she had buried, every soul she had failed, every breath she had stolen, every identity she had lost. It was a scream of pain, of fear, of defiance, and it echoed through the ship like a soul being torn apart.
Ya'Han's body convulsed, violently, as if struck by lightning. Her knees buckled. She stumbled backward, eyes rolling back, mouth open mid-scream.
"YA'HAN!" Jayson was already in motion, having broken from his stunned paralysis the moment the sound reached him. He darted through the doorway, slapping the forcefield control without even thinking.
Shar'El spun, too late.
"JAYSON, NO!"
"Let me through!" He didn't listen.
Ya'Han collapsed, he caught her, just before she hit the floor.
The silence that followed was deafening. It was as if the whole room bent around her collapse... like gravity shifting, subtly, violently.
She was limp in his arms, eyes half-lidded, a thin line of blood trailing from one nostril. Her body trembled, barely conscious. His hands gripped her tightly, cradling her as if letting go might cause her to shatter.
"We need to take her to Sickbay," he pleaded. Eye looking up begging for some compassion.
"NO," Gemma stated. No hesitation. No debate. The woman in his arms was no longer the same person they had learned to respect and even admire.
"She needs help," Jayson said, voice raw. "Can't you see? She might be dying!"
Shar'El stood tall, voice like a blade. "She is not going to Sickbay." She paused, carefully considering her words and actions. "Until we understand the exposure risk or psychic signature of what just occurred, containment is our only option."
"What?" he asked, incredulous, fury flashing behind his tears.
"If you insist on carrying her somewhere, then it will have to be back to the brig."
A'Janni stepped closer, towering over them. Zub shifted his stance, hand near his phaser. Gemma didn't move, but her eyes were watching for weakness.
Even Drayk's normally dark expression darkened.
Jayson looked from one face to the next, realizing that none of them would back down. Not for him. Not for Ya'Han.
Slowly, reluctantly, he rose to his feet with her still in his arms. His grip on her was protective, desperate… defeated.
None of them said a word on the way back.
But Jayson did.
"I don't care what she is," he whispered to her unconscious form. "I don't care what happens to me, or what happens next. I love you. I always have… and I always will. Even if you never come back to me. Even if you never speak again. Even if this..." his voice cracked "...is the last time I hold you."
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45009.1115
The door to the brig opened with a quiet hiss as if the ship itself was protesting the woman's return. Jayson stepped inside, refusing to lay her down on the sterile floor.
"Back away," Shar'El ordered, her tone still unshaken.
He didn't move at first.
"She needs help," he repeated. "You can't just leave her like this."
"I can. And I will," Shar'El said, every muscle taut. "We don't know what's happening to her. What she might become. Or what that contact truly did. For all we know, Sickbay could become ground zero."
T'Lara appeared in the room followed by Cristhiane, their posture tense, eyes clouded with unspoken worry, but they remained silent.
Jayson turned toward the Romulan/Terran hybrid. "Doctor?"
T'Lara hesitated.
And then another voice spoke.
Christie stepped forward, her voice soft but sure. "I'll go. I'll take care of her."
Cristhiane stood behind her, voice a dagger of fear. "No. No, Christie. Don't. I forbid it."
"You always said that we had to fight the darkness," Christie said, locking eyes with her mother. "She needs help. She needs someone who understands."
"You don't even know what you are yet!"
"But I know enough to not leave her alone in a cold room to die."
Shar'El looked between T'Lara and Christie. The latter stood unmoving, gaze direct. She wasn't asking permission. She was offering compassion.
"She’s right," T'Lara said after a long pause. "She's trained. And if anyone can reach her... maybe it's someone who knows what it means to walk that edge."
Shar'El exhaled slowly. "Fine. But the two of you stay in the same cell. One containment field. One chance."
Cristhiane's fists clenched, trembling. "Please, daughter..."
"I'll be fine, mother," Christie reassured. "I promise."
The forcefield to Christie's cell was deactivated as those present once again held their breath.
Christie quickly rushed to the other cell and placed a caring, gentle hand on Jayson's shoulder. "You can put her down now, I've got her."
Jayson did as instructed, delicately placing Ya'Han on the hard cot before taking a few steps back. As soon as he was out, the forcefield to Ya'Han's cell was activated, trapping both women within.
Christie knelt beside Ya’Han, her hands moving with practiced calm... until they touched flesh.
A cold wind whispered through the room. Faint… but wrong. Not a breeze, but a presence, brushing against every soul, leaving a chill that did not fade.
Her fingers found Ya'Han's temples. She wasn't searching for breath or pulse. She was searching for what was missing.
Inside, Christie hesitantly reached out with her own shadows.
And found resistance.
Then… warmth.
Ya'Han's eyes fluttered open, her breath shallow.
Christie leaned in, hope blooming on her face.
Ya'Han looked at her… and smiled. Not with relief, but with something older. Darker.
Christie's breath caught.
"What needed doing has already been done." Ya'Han said, her voice barely over a whisper. that no one but Christie could hear. "You feel it, don’t you... Even if you don't understand it."
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1130
No one watched the device now. They were too shaken. Too human.
The cube pulsed once. Then again.
Not with energy, but with memory.
Symbols etched themselves across its surface... alien, impermanent.
No readings changed.
No sensors caught it.
No eyes saw.
But it had been touched.
And it had recognized her, as it had once before, and now again, even in her absence.
=-=
Tiffany Reeve
Commander Shar'El
Executive Officer
USS ANUBIS
##########
"The Flicker of Who I Am"
Previous post: "The Touch That Wasn't" by Hanali/Tiffany
##########
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45009.1140
Christie still knelt beside Ya'Han, the Terran's hand resting lightly atop the Nylaan's. But that wasn't their only connection. In trying to reach Ya'Han, whom she had believed to be dying, through her own inner darkness, Christie had unknowingly opened herself to something else. Something new… unexpected… and terrifying in equal measure.
Ya'Han lay still on the cold metal cot, silent, her breath slow, steady, unsettling. The shadow-veiled eyes of the former Chief of Security locked onto Christie's soul with unnatural precision. For a heartbeat, Christie recoiled... but only briefly. Her gaze never wavered.
The whispered words echoed through her mind, accompanied by an otherworldly sensation… yes, she could feel it. The device, floating within its reactivated containment field, was not as inert or impenetrable as Maya believed. It was ancient… and somehow, alive.
It whispered to her.
Christie had tried to reach out again, just as she had minutes ago, to check for some trace of the woman she'd briefly known. But this time, she didn't need to touch Ya'Han. She didn't even need to close her eyes.
The world had shifted.
What had once been vague impressions, instinct, emotion, and intuition had become senses. Her perception of the brig had expanded beyond the physical. She felt the faint electromagnetic hum of the forcefield around them. She could sense the device several decks above, not as an object but as a pressure in her mind, like a hand gently pressing against the back of her skull.
But most of all, she could feel it, not in a physical sense, but in a way that stretched beyond mortal understanding. The experience was exhilarating... enthralling. Chaos made sense now, if only as a passing thought.
Then she heard it. Not Ya’Han. Not the device. Her own darkness, buried deep inside of her. The mental gates she'd kept sealed within herself had been opened by her own doing. And now the darkness beyond didn't merely lurk… it watched.
She could feel its hunger. It was patient… polite, even. But constant.
"You feel it, don't you... Even if you don't understand it."
Those words had burrowed deep.
Christie closed her eyes and allowed herself a single breath.
Yes -- She felt it.
Yes -- She didn't understand it.
And yes… for one terrifying moment… she wanted it.
The strength. The clarity. The honesty that came with embracing it. The idea that the world could make sense if you stopped fighting and just let the dark wrap around you like a cloak. No more fear. No more questions. Just purpose.
Her hand trembled. Not from fear. From restraint.
She looked at Ya'Han, and for a heartbeat, saw herself... what she might become. The power. The certainty. And the cost.
A flicker of warmth echoed in her chest, not from within, but above. A voice without sound. A thought that wasn't hers.
"Be careful, my heart… You are more than what hides in shadow. You are my light, you always have been." It was her mother's voice.
Christie turned her head slightly to gaze upon Cristhiane, and as her eyes fell upon the concerned expression of her mother, she felt it... the fear... and the love. The daughter felt her mother in a way she had never imagined possible.
That anchor. That thread. A powerful reminder of who she was before the darkness. Of who she still might be.
Her breath steadied.
Ya'Han stirred, but did not speak. Christie's eyes remained closed, but she knewthat her shadow-born sister was there. Watching. Waiting.
Testing.
Christie turned her attention back to Ya'Han, her features etched with unwavering conviction.
"You lied," Christie whispered. "You could have triggered the device all along. You just needed us to believe you couldn't."
Ya'Han didn't answer, but the corner of her lips curled ever so slightly.
"And now you want me to follow." Christie tilted her head, voice gaining strength. "You think I'm like you," a pause that stretched into eternity itself. "You're not wrong. I could be," the young woman confirmed.
She stood and took a step back. Then another.
"But I'm not."
"Not yet," Ya'Han said, her lips mouthing the words without sounds.
Christie turned to face her mother. She wanted to tell her, to tell them all what she had learned, but she knew that it would only make matters worse. They already feared Ya'Han, and now they feared her almost as much.
So she would stay quiet, drawing on the lessons the Lokustaar had taught her. Patience was their greatest weapon... and now, it would be hers.
All she could do in the meantime was hope she remained strong enough to resist the darkness she had allowed to slip deeper into her mind, body, and soul.
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette
on behalf of Cristhiane M
Cristhiane Smith
Mother of Christie Smith
Civilian guest
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
"Design Parameters"
Previous post: "The Flicker of Who I Am" by Francois
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Lab
Stardate: 45009.1200
Drayk stood alone in the vacated lab, arms folded across his chest, silver hair catching the ambient light. He hadn't spoken, not since Ya'Han's scream had pierced the ship like a spear of soundless force.
The silence was precise, unbroken. Not comforting. Not oppressive. Simply… inevitable.
Words, he knew, were for the confused, the grieving, and the desperate.
Jayson's uncontrolled grief. Shar'El's determined resolve. Maya's clinical detachment. All of it playing out like a rehearsed symphony of predictable human failure.
Ya'Han's transformation had peeled back layers of her restraint, revealing something other. Whether that otherness was infection or ascendance remained unresolved.
But one fact was certain: the woman they knew no longer existed.
She had been… recalibrated.
Drayk's gaze settled on the cube within its containment field. Faint pulses shimmered across its surface, silent to their instruments, but not to his perception.
"You see it too."
Maya startled slightly at the sound of his voice, then as she stepped into the room and joined the Engineer at the central research console. "There has been a shift. Faint... but measurable. And yes, I can see it... I can feel it."
"It's not subtle," Drayk corrected, his tone calm but unyielding. "It's intentional. This isn't random noise. It’s an algorithm."
Maya glanced at him, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. "You believe the device… responded to her or was it the other way around? Did she respond to it?"
"I don't believe," he said flatly. "I observe, like you. And what I observe is design, not accident."
The silence settled, denser now.
"Consider this carefully, Shillian," he added, stepping toward the door. "If she's been chosen… the test isn't hers. It's ours."
The doors whispered shut behind him.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Perfection is not an ideal. It is a design parameter."
---
"Pattern Recognition"
(Previous Post: "Design Parameters")
---
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 12, Quantum Physics Laboratory
Stardate: 45009.1220
Left to her own company within the Quantum Physics Laboratory, Lieutenant Commander Maya stood perfectly still. The artificial lighting above pulsed with the familiar rhythm of regulated output, its oscillation synchronized to Starfleet's environmental standards. Ambient temperature: precisely twenty-two degrees Celsius. Humidity: forty-eight percent. Atmospheric composition: nominal.
Yet, despite the controlled environment, there was an undeniable presence in the room. An anomaly that defied categorization. The Shillian could not define the anomaly, but she knew precisely where it originated.
Her gaze remained fixed on the ominous object: a solid obsidian cube that reflected its surroundings with an eerie, ethereal sheen. It had not moved. It had not changed, not in any manner that the extensive and highly calibrated laboratory sensors could detect. The containment field remained undisturbed. The quantum variance spectrum remained unshifted. The entropy signatures, the gravimetric flux, the neutrino scattering… all still. Silent.
And yet, Maya knew something had changed.
Not because an instrument informed her. Not because of a quantifiable readout. But because her mind, trained to identify pattern disruptions at both the macroscopic and quantum levels, recognized a discontinuity that had no name.
The cube was different. No less opaque. No less indecipherable. But no longer inert.
The visual evidence was subtle, but undeniable. Not residual energy in the conventional sense, but a re-alignment of -- something. Perhaps an internal vectorial pivot. Or a reconfiguration of observational relevance.
In the purest scientific terms, it was behaving as if a new variable had been introduced into the system, an added element not injected by force or accident, but by invitation.
And Maya had a hypothesis. Christie.
The interaction in the brig between Christie and Ya'Han, no, between Christie and whatever now resided within the shell that had once been Ya'Han, coincided with the onset of the observed, though unmeasured, shift in the device. That could not be ignored.
Maya leaned closer, her eyes darting across the data readouts even though she already knew they would yield nothing new. The artifact remained a black box, not just in colour but in function, absorbing inquiry without reflection.
She exhaled slowly, folding her hands behind her back.
"Introduction of external stimuli has failed to provoke repeatable response patterns," she stated aloud, documenting for the internal log. "However, I am now forced to concede the presence of a non-measurable modulation -- possibly subjective, possibly extra-dimensional in origin. The effect is not causally observable through traditional instrumentation. I hypothesize that the device is responding to cognitive or perhaps even empathic harmonics. If so, then our scientific approach must expand to include non-technical sensory input."
She paused. That suggestion would not be well received. Not by Captain Morningstar or Commander Shar'El, and certainly not by Admiral Koniki who demanded answers, not more questions. And above everyone else, this line of thought was not well received by none other than herself.
But truth was not beholden to preference. This was not the first time that the quest for answers only generated new, more complex questions, and she would not allow that to divert her resolve to uncovering the truth, whatever it may be.
Maya straightened her posture and stepped away from the console, her thoughts refusing to remain confined. Inevitably, they wandered back to Drayk's final words before his departure.
"If she has been chosen... the test is not hers. It is ours."
It was an irritant. Not because it lacked clarity, on the contrary, it was crystalline in its intent, but because it bore the cadence of prophecy rather than procedure.
Chosen. That term was almost offensive. Science did not choose, it acted according to specific rules and laws. Even people, with all of their emotions and feelings did not 'randomly' choose something or someone, there always were measurable elements that came into the making of a decision. So why had Ya'Han been 'selected'?
The term itself was problematic. It introduced implication without explanation, prioritizing mystical gravitas over empirical foundation. And yet…
Her eyes returned to the slowly rotating, floating, obsidian cube.
If there had been a test, then Ya'Han had either failed or passed. There was no evidence to suggest ambiguity in outcome. But what if the test had not been for her at all? What if the departing statement made by Drayk had not been metaphorical, but literal?
What if the entire chain of events -- NORTHAL DRIFT, the scream, the collapse, the change --was merely the activation sequence of a much larger algorithm? One that required not only Ya'Han, but the entire crew, as components?
Her fingers unconsciously tapped against her thigh. One tap per second. Rhythmic. Hypnotic.
It was not unheard of in advanced computing theory: systems that self-generate processing nodes from external observers. The observer becomes the processor. The equation modifies the mathematician.
If the device was not a weapon, nor a storage matrix, nor an alien totem of spiritual consequence… then perhaps it was a recursive engine of selective transformation.
And if so…
Then Christie's presence within the brig was no longer a variable. She was a catalyst.
The eyes of the Shillian scientist narrowed.
"I require additional data," she stated to no one in particular. "Observation without quantification is speculation. I must re-establish a controlled observational tether to the brig. Passive sensors only. Emotional resonance scanners, biological telemetry, and if possible, sub-psionic fluctuation logs. We must determine if Christie is the conduit, or merely the next candidate."
Her voice dropped lower, barely above a whisper, though still clinically precise.
"If the device is evolving… then so is its criteria for interaction."
And then, without any dramatic flourish or detectable emission, the cube shifted again. A single impermanent symbol pulsed faintly across its surface -- then vanished before even the internal memory buffers could store it.
Maya stepped back, both awed and annoyed, unsure if she had witnessed a breakthrough or imagined something out of scientific desperation.
"Repeat it," she instructed softly, as if speaking to a reluctant experiment. "Repeat the pattern. Let me see what you are trying to say."
But it did not.
It never did when asked.
Maya returned to her console, " Initiating passive quantum-lattice resonance mapping using Tier-2 psionic filters." The Shillian scientist was longer searching for energy, or matter, or time.
Now, she was searching for meaning.
---
Jessica Solarik
Lieutenant Commander Maya
Chief Science Officer
USS ANUBIS
"To see the world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake (British, 1757-1827)
"Shadows in the Quiet"
Previous post: "Pattern Recognition" by Jessica
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 7, Counselor's Office
Stardate: 45009.1230
The soft trickle of the waterfall was the only sound in the room. Lunch sat forgotten on the low table between them, two plates of rice and vegetables that neither had touched beyond polite stabs with their forks.
Adriana sat cross-legged on the couch, her posture relaxed but her mind anything but. Across from her, Amanda had folded herself into the corner of the chair, arms wrapped protectively around her legs, chin resting on her knees. She looked younger like that, almost like the little sister Adriana remembered from before everything went wrong.
But neither were those girls anymore.
"You're quiet," Amanda said finally, her voice soft.
Adriana's brown eyes lifted to meet hers. "So are you." A faint, short-lived smile flashed on the Counselor's lips.
Amanda gave a tiny shrug, her gaze sliding toward the table. "I keep thinking about her… about Christie. She's in there, with Ya'Han, and..." Her voice tightened, emotion bleeding through the careful calm she tried to keep. "She didn't even hesitate, Adri. She just… went. She didn't have to, but she did."
Adriana took a slow breath, letting her fork rest back on the plate. "That was brave. No one can deny that."
"Brave?" Amanda's head snapped up, her voice sharper than before. "It was more than brave. It was selfless. That is not the act of someone who is selfish or touched by darkness."
Adriana studied her sister, weighing her words before answering. "Amanda… bravery and selflessness don't erase what's happening to Ya'Han. Or what could happen to Christie just by being near her." Adriana hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "You know what they did. They both called on that darkness once, to summon the Lokustaar to kill."
The moment those last words slipped from her lips, Adriana knew that she had made a mistake. Yes, this was an unavoidable fact, but Amanda was not analysing facts right now; she was following her emotions.
Amanda shook her head, almost too quickly. "No, that's not fair! Christie isn’t like that. She won’t change just for trying to help. She saved us, Adri—have you already forgotten that?"
"Amanda..."
"You didn't see her," Amanda interrupted, her tone softening, almost pleading. "The way she looked at Ya'Han. There was no fear, no anger, nothing but… compassion. That's who she is. She's good, Adri. She's better than most people on this ship."
Adriana's expression flickered, just for a second, at the quiet intensity in her sister's voice. Amanda didn't even realize how tightly she clung to Christie, how her loyalty to the girl eclipsed almost everything else.
And that stung more than Adriana wanted to admit.
"Amanda," Adriana said finally, her voice calm but firmer now. "I know you care about her. But caring doesn't change the reality of what we saw on the NORTHAL DRIFT in the ANUBIS' lab. Ya'Han isn't the same person anymore. And whatever she touched… It's changing her even more. Maybe in ways we can't see yet. And if it's changing her, we have to consider the possibility..."
"Stop!" Amanda's voice cracked, but the word came out sharp.
Adriana's lips pressed together, her hands curling loosely in her lap.
Amanda shook her head, eyes bright with frustration. "You sound like them. Like Shar'El. Like Gemma. Always assuming the worst. Christie doesn't need suspicion, she needs people to believe in her. She's strong. She can handle this, the same way she handled every nightmare they threw at us in that hellhole of a Matrix."
"That's exactly what they said about Ya'Han once," Adriana said quietly.
The silence that followed was heavy, pressing in on both of them. Amanda looked away first, her jaw tightening, but she said nothing. Adriana didn't push further, even though the words burned on her tongue.
For a long moment, they sat in that quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. The waterfall's soft trickle filled the room again, almost mocking in its calmness.
Then the door chime echoed through the room, shattering the stillness.
Adriana straightened her uniform as she stood. "Enter."
Cristhiane stepped inside, her usual composure fractured. Her eyes darted between the sisters, pausing on Amanda before settling on Adriana. Her hands were clasped tightly, knuckles white, and for the first time since they’d met her, the woman looked… afraid. Truly afraid. She hesitated a beat, as if forcing the words out.
"I need to talk to you," she said, her voice low, unsteady. "About my daughter."
Adriana exchanged a quick glance with Amanda, but neither spoke.
The quiet felt heavier than ever.
-=-=-
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS
"Dissonance in Silence"
Previous post: "Shadows in the Quiet" by Marissa
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45009.1300
T'Lara stood at the secondary isolation bay, her posture rigid despite the hours that had passed. The console before her was flooded with sequencing models, layered protein analyses, and hundreds of flagged markers still awaiting correlation.
Despite the modifications applied to the original Acamarian viral agent, she had made little progress. The pathogen refused to behave predictably. It mutated, not randomly, but reactively. Like it was… waiting. Watching. Evolving with purpose.
She narrowed her eyes, adjusting the scanning parameters.
The comparative samples from Ya'Han and Christie, though limited, gave her something to work with. Both carried dormant Lokustaar genetic signatures, traces passed on by their mothers. Subtle, stable, embedded deep in the folds of their DNA. The virus responded to those markers, not with hostility, but with curiosity. As if recognizing kin. Or threat.
Cristhiane's genome, however, yielded nothing. No markers. No known analog. The data was incomplete. Her genome held no reflection in the virus’ behavior. The lack of comparative resonance left a chasm in the research. A void with no bridging path.
T'Lara paused, recalling the moment in the Quantum Physics Lab, and then the brig. She had seen the effect of shadow made manifest. Ya'Han's transformation. Christie's scream. The aftermath. The silence that followed them like a second skin.
She suppressed the emotional reaction surfacing, quietly recentering herself. Emotion had no place here.
The Sickbay doors parted with a whisper.
She didn't look up, there was no need. The biometric signature was familiar. Lieutenant Drayk Val'Bruxa moved like a ghost with a mission. Controlled. Cold. Calculating. She had studied his file after his arrival, noting the connection to the late Satella. His presence here was not protocol. It was personal.
"You've been busy. I assume you're closer to something useful," he said without preamble.
T'Lara turned slightly, her tone flat. “May I inquire what you are referring to? There are a few medical files I am currently working on, and yours is not one of them.”
"You're working on a countermeasure," Drayk continued, stepping closer. "To contain or neutralize the shadow-blooded," he paused for a single heartbeat. "Ya'Han and Christie," he clarified.
T'Lara met his gaze. "I am researching the viral behavior in proximity to the Lokustaar genetic residues. That is all."
He let a faint, knowing smirk curl across his face: predatory, patient. "Your efforts are noble, misguided, but noble. If you're not preparing a countermeasure, this crew is sleepwalking toward its own extinction."
T'Lara's expression did not change. "They are not the enemy," she said. "Not yet..."
"They're unknown variables," he countered. "One of them has the potential to summon death on a global scale with a thought. The other doesn't even know what she's capable of. You're a scientist. You don't believe in blind trust.”
"I believe in data," she said. "I agree that emotion clouds judgment. So does fear."
He stepped closer, folding his arms. "And what about logic? You walk a knife's edge between Vulcan restraint and Romulan pragmatism. Right now, both sides whisper the same truth: hesitate, and we all burn."
T'Lara's jaw tightened, just enough to be noticed. "Do not presume to understand my genetic heritage, Lieutenant."
"I don't presume. I see what you've spent your life suppressing. Logic demands preparation. Pragmatism demands resolve. Delay serves no one."
T'Lara turned fully now, her arms crossed, tone cooler than before. "This crew is already fractured by fear. If I create a weapon, a counteragent targeted at our own, it would not unite us. It would destroy what little trust remains."
Drayk regarded her for a long moment. "Trust won't stop them when the killing starts. Wait too long, and it'll be your undoing."
Silence stretched between them.
He stepped back finally, his tone losing none of its sharp edge. "Just remember what they are. Not what they were. That difference may be the last thing standing between survival and annihilation."
He paused at the threshold as the doors hissed open, his voice cutting back like a knife. "You don't have to like the truth, Doctor. You just have to be ready when it arrives." Then, without looking back, he made his exit.
T'Lara stared at the doorway long after it closed. Then she returned to the console, fingers steady as she entered a new string of parameters, not out of certainty, but readiness. Just in case
=-=
Dawn Bohr
Lt. Commander T'Lara
Chief Medical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
and
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Sentiment is noise. Purpose is signal."
“Shadow Lines”
Previous post: “Dissonance In Silence” by Dawn and Scott
=-=
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Aux. Security Office
Stardate: 45009.1305
Zub Enel had squidged his massive scaly frame behind the Chief of Security’s desk in the auxiliary Security office next to the Brig. He tried to ignore shadows fluttering just out of the corner of his golden eyes and concentrate on the Incident Report PADDS, work Ya’Han had been doing.
He tightened his lips. He couldn’t find the right words to describe Ya’Han’s change. He slowly took a deep breath, hoping to grasp his true feeling.
Boots thudded outside his open doorway. His tall Lurian sergeant, a slender but deadly Terran sniper, and a bright blue combat engineer filed in and took seats. Well, Diaz the sniper and Sparks the engineer grabbed the only available chairs. Mi’Teh, with his upside-down mouth making him look extraordinarily sad, settled his big rear on the corner of Zub’s desk.
Zub looked questioningly at the three best of his uninvited marines. “Volunteering to help me with IRs?”
Lance Corporal Diaz, callsign Viper, spoke up immediately, “Not a chance, Skipper. Above our pay grade.”
Sparks, the engineer, sat back hard enough to jiggle the pair of bright white antennae on his blue head. “We want to get some clarity about how we fight this 'artifact'.”
Sergeant Mi-Teh, callsign Ghost, rumbled as he half-turned to look at the tall, scaly Voth. “We’re hearing that this device operates beyond science somehow.”
Viper scrunched up her face. “We heard it may be operating from some other dimension, out of our reach.”
Zub nodded his understanding, “You’re saying that if we can’t blast a hole in it, now what?”
The room was filled with vehement nodding.
Sparks brought up one leg and held it folded at the knee with his blue hands. “What if it works by magic?”
Enel raised a bony eyebrow. “Isn’t ‘magic’ just unexplained technology?”
Sparks dropped his leg with a clomp. “What if magic isn’t that? What if it is really magic? Something metaphysical. I don’t know, a force from the beyond. Something that responds to a different set of rules?”
Zub put a hand on his head crest. “I’m not hearing this right, I think. You’re saying that the artifact operates by magic; therefore, what we need is a wizard to fight it with magic.”
Ghost, the big Lurian, rumbled, “Not quite as childish as that, Skip. Not offence.”
Zub shrugged. “None taken. So help me understand. Do you have a proposal?”
Viper said, “On Earth, magic existed for centuries until it was swamped or pushed aside or abandoned because of technological advances that put people in more control of natural forces.”
Sparks chimed in. “Magic by its nature is not detectable by science, and that’s why it is metaphysical.”
Enel steepled his three-fingered hands. “Are you proposing we learn magical spells?”
Ghost said, “In my culture, there were objects imbued with good or evil. There was a rough balance between good and evil, so good or evil never truly got the upper hand, at least for long.”
Zub Enel nodded. “You’re saying we need some sort of Good talisman to control the Evil artifact?”
Viper frowned. “Is ‘control’ the word we’re looking for?”
Sparks offered, “Influence. Or ward off.”
Ghost said, “The Lokustaar are an ancient evil. They operate from at least one other dimension. They are enacting evil plans that unfold over centuries. Our lifespans aren’t enough to understand their goals, but I am sure that over the vast march of time, other cultures have found ways to counter Lokustaar influence.”
Zub tapped his fingertips together, making his claws click. “You don’t have a solution. You have a line of research.”
The marine sergeant rubbed the top of his big, bald, cone-shaped head. “We’re thinking that maybe this artifact is a kind of Lokustaan countermeasure to any group that gets too good at counteracting their magic. It’s possible the colony on NOROSYTH had discovered a Good talisman, as you called it, and was annihilated for it.”
Enel thought about it. He picked up a PADD so he had something to hold. He tapped one corner on his desk. “You’re saying that the farmers of NOROSYTH may have dug up a weapon against the Lokustaar…”
Sparks said, “Maybe the ‘artifact’ appears automatically when something like that happens.”
“And…” Viper pantomimed an explosion with her fingers.
All three glanced intently at Zub Enel to observe his reaction.
Zub Enel gave them a small smile. “This is truly ‘magical’ thinking. I see your logic, though. I will pass it on to Senior Command.”
“That’s all we ask,” Sparks said. “Good luck with your IRs, Skipper.” All three of the marines jumped up and filed quickly out of the office.
Zub rubbed his hands together as he thought. They’d come to him with a hopelessly speculative idea. An ancient good countered an ancient evil, but finding something to counter the evil also summoned a demonic agent to destroy anyone who found the good counter. It was like a curse. Zub felt his scales prickle as he considered whether such a scenario made sense.
He rubbed his forehead. He had a duty to broach the discussion, even if it was immediately dismissed. Around him, shadows seemed to flicker at the edges of his vision like black birds scared into sudden flight.
=-=
Lieutenant JG Zub Enel
MCO
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
“The world is entirely magical, the only illusion is that it isn't...”
― Lydia Andal, Marilyn Monroe, Under the Veil; Autism, Numerology & Norma Jeane
"Dark Magic"
Previous post: "Shadow Lines" by David
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Aux Security Office
Stardate: 45009.1315
Zub pushed himself back from Ya'Han's desk. He'd never felt smaller in his massive frame. The room felt too tight, the shadows twitchy and restless, the air thick with the aftertaste of that word... magic.
He tapped the corner of the Incident Report PADD against the desk once, twice, then dropped it beside a stack of half-finished reports. His eyes drifted to the open doorway. He caught the briefest ripple of motion... a reflection, maybe, or someone standing just out of sight.
"Come on in," he called out.
A shadow detached itself from the bulkhead like liquid night and resolved into Gemma... or maybe not Gemma, her posture was rigidly calm, but her eyes flickered too quickly, as if tracking thoughts in ten directions at once. She looked at him as though she'd walked straight through his doubts and found the locked drawer underneath.
"You're either terrible at stealth," Zub said, forcing a small grin, "or you wanted me to know you were there."
Gemma tilted her head slightly. "You think you know which?"
Zub gestured to the empty seat Viper had just vacated. Gemma ignored it, drifting instead to stand behind him, staring down at the scattered PADDS.
"Your Marines were loud," she said. "The rest of the corridor probably knows they suspect witchcraft."
He rumbled a dry laugh. "Is that what it is? Witchcraft?"
Gemma's eyes slid sideways, not quite meeting his. "If it were just spells and symbols, I'd be sleeping easier. But Ya'Han's change… that's not witchcraft. That's something hungry rewriting rules we thought were solid."
Zub leaned back, his crested skull brushing the high back of the chair. "So enlighten me. I need better words than 'magic.'"
She didn't answer right away. Her fingers traced the corner of the desk, a subtle tap-tap of short nails on metal. Zub noticed the faint shimmer beneath her skin, a trick of the overhead lights that made her edges blur, or maybe it was him, and his eyes just couldn't stay fixed on her for long.
"Ever stand so close to a fire you think you're warm, safe... then you smell your own hair catch? The warmth lies?"
"Is that your definition?" Zub asked. "I wouldn't know," he added, pointing to his right arm. "No fur. Only scales. But I could ask if A'Janni could help with a demonstration."
Gemma smiled, cold, flickering. A half-whisper, half-snarl edged in: "No. That's just how it feels when you finally see what you've been praying wasn't real."
He frowned, claws drumming the armrest. "Gemma, are we dealing with a weapon we can shoot, or something else? Be honest, what do you think? What do you believe?"
She stepped around him now, into his line of sight. For a moment, her shape seemed to fracture, or maybe it was just the flicker of the corridor lights behind her. When she spoke again, her voice was calm but wrong, as if half the syllables belonged to someone else.
"It's an old thing," she said, voice thin at the edges. "Older than the Lokustaar. They cling to it like mold on bone, parasites pretending they own it. What your Marines stirred up is older than us both: belief pins reality down… or snaps it apart. If this is what we suspect, then shooting it is like cursing at a ghost. It won't flinch."
Zub sat very still. "So what do we do?"
Gemma's lips twitched, amusement, or maybe irritation. "You call me when you want something buried or stolen, Enel. Not when you want the universe explained."
He snorted. "Yeah, but you always show up anyway."
She leaned down, close enough that he could see the microfilament veins of her nanites shimmer beneath her temple. "I show up because you don’t flinch when you see the shadows. That’s rare."
Zub shifted uncomfortably. "So what now?"
Gemma straightened, brushing invisible dust from her cuff. "Now? I'm going to find out what it wants. And maybe… what it fears."
"And me?"
She gave him a look that might have been pity or something colder. "Keep your Marines breathing. And if I come back wearing the wrong skin… torch it." Gemma paused, an expression of absolute seriousness forming upon her feature. "Torch me."
Before he could speak, she slipped through the door, leaving behind only the faintest static crackle in the air where her presence had been.
Zub watched the empty doorway for a while, then leaned forward and picked up his PADD. He scrawled a single line under the unfinished report:
"Magic is just the part we don't have the words for yet."
He didn't know if he believed that, but right now, it was the only truth he could stand.
=-=
Rachel Jackie Johnson
Lieutenant Gemma
Intel Operative
USS ANUBIS
[The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life.] - Jenna Fischer
"What We Bring With Us"
Previous post: "Dark Magic" by Rachel
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 19, Brig
Stardate: 45009.1340
Like a shadow, Gemma quietly slipped into the brig to find Ya’Han sitting with her back to the wall, cross-legged, perfectly still. Her black hair spilled like oil across her shoulders, absorbing the sterile brig lighting and turning it into something darker, almost alive, as if it pulsed in rhythm with something beneath her skin. Though her eyes remained closed, the tension in her shoulders and the faint lift of her chin made it clear she was aware. Of everything.
Across the cell, Christie was huddled, her body drawn into itself, knees to chest, fingers white against her uniform sleeves. Her breath came slow and shaky, and while she tried to appear calm, the tremble in her limbs betrayed her. The edges of her eyes were red. Not from pain, but from fear.
"I thought you were dying," Christie whispered, voice cracking. "That's why I stepped in. I thought… I could help." The young woman was still trying to come to terms with what had taken place over 2 hours ago.
Ya'Han didn't move. "And instead, you saw. You felt it."
The reminder didn't help Christie; in fact, it only served to deepen her uncertainty... and her fears. She closed her eyes, shaking her head. "It's not supposed to feel right. That… that thing in you, in us, it doesn't feel like something we're meant to touch."
"You're afraid," Ya'Han said, voice soft, low. "Because part of you knows it, too. You've heard it whispering before, but it's the first time you have allowed yourself to truly hear it."
Christie's voice broke. "I'm not like you. I fought it. I still am."
Ya'Han finally opened her eyes. The faintest glow shimmered red behind them. "So did I. Once."
There was a long pause.
Then Christie pushed herself upright. "You gave in. That's not strength. That's giving up."
"No," Ya'Han said, her tone suddenly sharp, but not loud. "It's letting go of the chains that weigh you down. The duty. The guilt. The illusion that Starfleet is a shield instead of a cage."
Christie flinched, but her resolve held. "That's not you talking. That's it... that thing you let in."
Ya'Han's reply was quiet. "I am still me. Just no longer pretending like some of us." She turned to lock gaze with Gemma, who finally stepped out of the shadows.
They both felt it, a shift in the air, a subtle wrongness that didn't announce itself with sound but with awareness. The kind of awareness that walked into a room before the body did.
Gemma stepped closer, her gaze scanning not just the two women in the cell but the silence around them. She said nothing for a moment, simply watching.
Christie finally spoke, still shaken. "You should've come sooner."
Gemma approached the cell slowly, her hands clasped behind her back. "You believe that it would have changed anything?”
Christie looked down. "I don't know. But maybe…"
Ya'Han stood, her movements liquid and unhurried. She faced Gemma directly now, the faint light behind her eyes intensifying. "You came to see for yourself. To gauge the dark magic you are all so terrified of?"
"I came," Gemma replied, ignoring the implication of the words used, "because something's changed. I needed to see the temperature of the fire before the hull melts around it."
She took one more step, close enough to the forcefield that the faint hum tickled the air between them.
"I don't know if you're the fire," Gemma said, eyes locked on Ya'Han, "or just the smoke."
Ya'Han's expression didn't change. "Does it matter?"
"To the people who can still choke on it? Yes."
Christie took a step forward. "It's not her anymore. You know that, right?"
"On the contrary," Ya'Han said softly, without looking at the young woman. "This is me. No lies. No masks. I am no longer pretending to be someone I am not, someone that others wanted me to be. You should try it, Gemma. I bet you would see things a great deal more clearly if you stopped being the puppet Koniki made you to be."
The ILO gave a faint tilt of her head. "The truth has teeth when you say it. Is that what it is? A truth you uncovered? Or a truth that used you to crawl into the light?"
Ya'Han didn't answer.
Christie turned to Gemma, desperate, hopeful. "Tell her what she's becoming. Tell her it isn't too late."
Gemma didn't answer right away. The truth was, she wasn't sure anymore. After a few seconds, her eyes narrowed, not unkind, but calculating. "She already knows."
Ya'Han nodded once, subtle. "We all know what we are. We just don't always want to admit it. Right Gemma?"
"That's not self-awareness," Christie shot back. "That's surrender."
Gemma turned slightly, her gaze shifting between the two. "The artifact... the device... whatever we want to call it, it responds to presence. And you, Ya'Han… you're starting to resonate with it."
The Nylaan's voice turned almost reverent. "Maybe I'm meant to."
"No," Gemma said, voice cold and measured. "You're a pathway. Not a prophet. That's why I'm here. To see if there's still a door to close."
Ya'Han smiled faintly. "Or to walk through?"
Gemma's tone didn't change. "I don't walk into the fire without an extinguisher," and with that, she nodded to the security technician who deactivated the forcefield just long enough for the ILO to use her lightning reflexes to take hold of Christie and pull her out of the cell before the field was reestablished.
A long silence passed. Then Gemma escorted Christie back to her cell. Once the young woman was safely away from Ya'Han, the ILO slowly made her way back.
Then Ya'Han asked, "So what do you want?"
"I want to understand what this thing fears," Gemma said. "And what it values. That's how you survive forces like this, not by overpowering them. By making them doubt their hold."
"I fear nothing," Ya'Han said, stepping close enough to the forcefield that its energy responded to her presence. "I doubt nothing," she added in a tone that made the ILO wonder if she was about to step right through the forcefield.
Gemma finally took a step back, her gaze never leaving Ya'Han. "Doubt doesn't work if you've already decided the darkness is truth."
She turned to leave, pausing only once at the door.
"We all make a choice, a decision as to what our truth is. Everyone's truth is different from everyone else, but that one choice always comes with a price. So, you have to ask yourself this Ya'Han..." A single shared heartbeat echoed through the brig, "... is losing Jayson worth it?"
With that, she stepped into the corridor, the shadows seeming to part for her passage, then slither back into place.
Ya’Han watched her go in silence.
After a moment, she whispered, not to Christie, and not even to herself.
"Maybe the fire doesn't destroy… maybe it burns away what's false."
-=-=-
Hanali Han
Lieutenant Ya'Han
Chief of Security / Tactical Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Lines That Blur"
Previous post: "What We Bring With Us" by Hanali
-=-=-
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 7, Counselor's Office
Stardate: 45009.1400
The soft trickling of water in the corner filled the otherwise quiet space. A gentle miniature waterfall spilled over smooth stones into a wide basin, designed more for atmosphere than function, but in this room, even ambiance had its purpose. The lighting was dimmed to a warm glow, shadows curled into the corners like folded blankets. This was meant to be a safe space, a place where emotions could be voiced without the echo of judgment.
Shar'El stepped inside without ceremony. She didn't announce herself as her presence had been requested. Adriana had called for her, and the Executive Officer of the ANUBIS always answered her crew.
The Counselor sat in her lounge chair, posture composed but tight at the shoulders, a PADD firmly in her grasp. Amanda sat on the long couch, her legs crossed, arms resting in her lap. She looked toward Shar'El as the ExO entered, but said nothing. Her expression gave little away.
"You asked to speak when I had time," Shar'El said, letting the door slide shut behind her. "I made time."
Adriana gave a small nod. "Thank you for coming."
Shar'El stepped further in but didn't sit. She let the silence settle first, let the Counselor decide whether to lead with her thoughts or her posture. When nothing came immediately, the ExO offered a slight tilt of her head.
"You said it was about Cristiane."
Adriana exhaled slowly. "She's worried about Christie. That whatever was awakened in her... might be growing, becoming more active. She's afraid of what another trigger could do." The Counselor sighed, knowing that there was no easy way to say what she needed to next. "Having Christie in the same cell with Ya'Han terrifies her."
"She's right to be concerned," Shar'El said. "But Gemma already acted. Christie was separated from Ya'Han less than an hour ago."
Adriana's relief was instant, mirrored quietly by Amanda. "Christiane will be glad to hear that."
Shar'El echoed the gentle smile before continuing. "You could have relayed that concern to me over a secure channel or a simple log entry."
That gave Adriana pause. She looked away, and her arms crossed lightly over her middle, a defensive posture she rarely defaulted to.
"I thought it might matter more if it came from me directly," she said, voice quieter. "Christie and her mother... they're civilians. I'm still a counselor. Or trying to remember how to be one."
Shar'El's gaze shifted to Amanda. The twin sat still, not withdrawn exactly, but her presence was more statue than sibling. That kind of quiet wasn't natural, not between sisters, not between them.
"How long has it been since either of you slept?" Shar'El asked without preamble.
Adriana blinked. "I sleep fine. We both do."
Amanda raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Shar'El's eyes never left the rescued twin. "Amanda?"
"I don't sleep much," Amanda replied. "Neither one of us does. Not since NORTHAL DRIFT."
Shar'El nodded once. "That would be understandable."
Another beat of silence followed. Adriana shifted in place, clearly uncomfortable with the change in direction.
"This isn't about me," Counselor Lopez said.
"No," Shar'El replied, her voice still quiet. "But it needs to be. Just for a moment."
Adriana straightened. "I'm fine."
Shar'El gave a look that conveyed, without a single word, how unlikely she found that.
"You've been carrying everyone else's grief, concerns, and fears for days. Ya'Han. Jayson. Christie and her mother. And still, you're not letting Amanda out of your sight."
Adriana's jaw tightened. "I won't make that mistake again."
Shar'El nodded. "I understand. But if you never let go, not even for a moment, you'll tear in half trying to hold everyone else together."
Amanda's voice, soft but sharp, cut the moment. "It was Christie who saved us, Adriana. Not your training. Not your protocols. Just a scream. And no matter what it summoned... it saved our lives."
Adriana turned sharply toward her, eyes flashing. "The universe is not black and white, and you know it. The Lokustaar are a plague, a disease that drains light and life out of anything they touch and eats away at their soul until there is nothing left... Just look at Ya'Han."
"Christie is not Ya'Han," Amanda quickly argued. "I get it, Christie COULD become like her, but she is not, now, and I believe that as long as she sees someone believing in her, she will not stop believing in herself." The twin paused as she looked away. "You used to be that way, believing in something that you thought was an impossibility."
Adriana's breath caught. Amanda was referring to her decades-long quest to find her missing twin, the very same sister now sitting in the same room as she was.
Shar’El observed the exchange, her expression unreadable but not lacking warmth. "That's the divide," the ExO said aloud. "You're not wrong to be afraid, Adriana. But you are afraid. Not just of the darkness, of what it is doing to Ya'Han, of what it could do to Christie. You are afraid for your sister, more so than you care to admit it... especially to her."
Adriana didn't answer. She looked smaller than usual. Not broken, but fraying.
Shar'El stepped closer. She softened her voice, not as an officer, not even as a telepathic observer, but as someone who had once buried a memory to spare a friend from pain.
"Grief doesn't make you weak, Adriana. Neither does guilt. But isolation… pretending to carry it alone? That's what breaks people."
She glanced again at Amanda, who still hadn't moved. "You two fought for twenty years to be together again. Don't let one shadow turn you into strangers."
Adriana's eyes shimmered, but she blinked quickly, pushing it down.
Shar'El took a small step back. Her time here was up.
"I'll report to the Captain," she said. "Let him know Cristiane's concerns. But also that you're... doing your job. Even if it's costing you."
Adriana nodded, but her voice didn't follow.
As the First Officer reached the door, she paused. One last glance toward the twins.
"You're both still here," she said. "Make sure you still see each other."
The doors parted, and she was gone.
Behind her, the waterfall kept running. Calm. Constant. Then, two softer streams joined it, quieter, hesitant, but no longer silent. Each salty droplet carried the weight of words and grief too long left unspoken.
=-=
Tiffany Reeve <sttr242526@gmail.com>
Commander Shar'El
Executive Officer
USS ANUBIS
#######
"A Choice Between Shadows"
Previous post: "Lines That Blur"
##########
"Not all paths through the shadows are escapes. Some are choices. Some are truths waiting to be acknowledged."
— Ancient Nylaan Proverb
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Observation Lounge
Stardate: 45009.1500
The Observation Lounge, usually a haven for strategic reflection, now felt like a containment unit for tension ready to detonate. The pressure wasn't atmospheric... it was emotional, metaphysical, and heavy with unanswered questions. The air, recycled and filtered, still held the phantom tang of ozone from the quantum lab's recent, unsettling drama. Captain Erik Morningstar stood at the head of the polished table, his gaze sweeping over the faces of the selected senior staff for this status review. Shar'El, stoic as ever, sat to his left. Across from her, Maya fidgeted with a datapad, her eyes wide with a mixture of exhaustion and scientific frustration. Doctor T'Lara, unnervingly calm, sat beside the Shillian, while Gemma, coiled and watchful, occupied the chair at the far end.
"Alright," the Native American began, his voice low, cutting through the anticipatory silence. "Let's get straight to it. Commander Maya, your report on the device, please. What happened in the lab?"
Maya took a deep, shaky breath, her slender fingers tracing patterns on the table's surface. "Captain, the interaction was nothing short of an ontological paradox. The device remained inert by every measurable standard: no thermal resonance, no dimensional bleed, but it responded to the moment when Christie reached Ya'Han, when trauma, memory, and something more passed between them. Not physical contact, but resonance. Like the cube had been waiting for such a frequency to awaken." She paused, her eyes darting to meet those of the standing Captain. "This is purely anecdotal, a visual anomaly that I was the only one to witness. For a fleeting moment, after Christie briefly joined Ya'Han in the containment cell before they were separated… the cube pulsed. A single, impermanent symbol flashed across its surface. It was gone before even the internal memory buffers could log it. I… I believe it was a response, Captain. Not to having been touched, but to something else. Something… shared. My theory, which remains entirely speculative, is that something happened when Christie and Ya'Han touched, something that the device somehow responded to."
A heavy silence settled over the gathered officers. The suggested theory was troubling, especially in that no one could grasp the full significance of what had been presented.
With yet another question and mystery added to the list, Morningstar decided to move on and shift the focus to what he hoped would be a desperately needed answer.
"Doctor T'Lara," Erik prompted, turning his attention to the Romulan-Vulcan. "What about Ya'Han's medical status? And the virus?"
T'Lara inclined her head. "Medically, Lieutenant Ya'Han has made a complete recovery from the incident in the lab. Her vitals are stable, and neurological patterns remain normal. Both she and Christie remain quiet, offering little in terms of verbal insight, especially now that they have been separated thanks to Gemma's quick actions. Physically, both appear… unchanged." She added, looking at Maya before offering a short pause, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes. "As for the 'single-minded bug,' as Commander Shar'El has taken to calling it, progress is… speculative. My analysis of Cristhiane's genome is incomplete. While the Lokustaar genetic markers are present, and the potential for epigenetic activation is hypothesized, I lack comparative data. With Ya'Han and Christie, I have the benefit of comparative analysis, but with Cristhiane, as a carrier of the Lokustaar markers, there is no existing reference point to fully understand the dormant triggers or the extent of the genetic transfer and integration."
Shar'El's brow furrowed. "Please tell me that you are not suggesting what I think you are?"
T'Lara remained silent, only offering a subdued nod of her head as confirmation.
"You are actually suggesting we go to NYLA IV? To examine Ya'Han's mother… not just as a relative, but as a potential genetic key?" Shar'El's voice was tinged with disbelief, the implications of such a journey stark.
Gemma, who had been listening with an almost unnerving stillness, leaned forward. "If that's our play, Captain, we'd better move fast." The ILO's tone was low, serious, her voice layered, as if an entire council of voices had momentarily reached consensus. "Latest Intel reports from that world indicate Ya'Han's mother, Na’Rin, the wife of the High Sovereign of NYLA IV, has been gravely ill for quite some time. Although the cause remains undetermined, the progression has been reported to be quickly accelerating. The conclusion of this 'illness' is estimated to reach its inevitable conclusion in a matter of weeks... 3, maybe 4 at most."
The words hung in the air, cold and foreboding. The hum of the ship seemed to deepen, a low thrum against the sudden, collective intake of breath.
Erik's jaw tightened as he turned and walked to the large windows. The nearby asteroids and distant stars offered no comfort, only an endless void mirroring the questions swirling in his mind. The silence in the room was now palpable, thick with the weight of impossible choices.
"Thank you," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I need to consider the implications of everything that has been said. You are all dismissed."
No one argued. No one spoke. The team rose, a silent, disciplined exodus from the lounge. Shar'El waited until everyone had left before following, allowing her to offer one last, personal comment.
"It does feel like the entire universe is against us sometimes," she said, trying to lighten the mood, even if only a fraction. "Koniki would never approve… but command doesn’t mean obedience. It means choosing what's right, even when it's wrong on paper. Right now, we're navigating between an infection we can't detect and a cure we don't understand. But if there's a way to save her, Captain… we have to take that risk. Shadows or not. Especially if that artifact is more than a reaction... what if it's a trigger, as many believe it to be?"
Morningstar nodded with understanding.
"One more thing," Shar'El continued. "Following a quick chat with the Ship's Counsellor, it is your First Officer's official recommendation that we get to the bottom of whatever this is sooner rather than later. Forget Koniki's paranoia, the situation surrounding Ya'Han and Christie is tearing people apart, and I am not just speaking about Jayson and Cristhiane. Everyone is emotionally invested in one way or another, and it is only a question of time before things reach a point where we will not be able to contain it."
Erik didn't turn. He just kept his gaze on the distant specks of light. Shar'El got the message and followed the others, leaving the Captain alone with the vastness of space and the crushing weight of a decision that could define the fate of his ship, his crew, and perhaps, even a galactic quadrant.
--==(/\)==--
Francois Charette {fcharette1969@gmail.com}
Captain Erik Morningstar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC 18501
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"The Space Between"
Previous post: "A Choice Between Shadows" by Francois
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Bridge
Stardate: 45009.1630
The lights on the Ops console flickered softly, steady, and unwavering. Everything Jayson Stark had not been for quite some time.
His hands moved with practiced ease across the panel, responding to system prompts, routing energy flow, managing subspace telemetry... but it was all muscle memory. His mind was elsewhere, caught between the present and the gaping silence from across the bridge. The tactical station. Her station. Vacant. Like a wound that refused to close.
He hadn't needed to hear the Captain's decision, not aloud. The moment Commander Shar'El walked out of the lounge, the moment the computer registered sudden spikes in queries about the Ferengi border, about Nylaan bloodlines, about NYLA IV... he knew.
They were going home. Her home.
And all Jayson could think about was how wrong it felt to be heading there without her. Not the warrior she became, not the bridge officer who fought beside him, but the woman he still loved, even if she could no longer look him in the eyes without seeing all the parts of herself she wanted to forget.
He glanced over. Again.
Her seat was still empty. Of course it was.
He saw her anyway.
The black and red cascade of her hair, the color she'd worn when she was most free. The way she used to glance at him when she thought no one was watching. The subtle nod they used to share before a shift. A secret language between two people who thought they'd made it out of hell together.
Now all he had was the phantom weight of those moments. Her shadow lingered like a scar on the fabric of his memory, stitched over nerves too raw to forget.
He stared at her station. Ya'Han. Not the Starfleet officer. Not the fiery defender of the ANUBIS. Not the woman reduced to a cell in the brig.
The daughter of the High Sovereign. The heir to shadows. The woman born into tyranny and violence... and the woman who, despite it all, tried to become something more.
Had he failed her? Or had she simply succumbed to what was always inside her? He didn’t know.
The only thing he did know was that something happened on the NORTHAL DRIFT and in that lab. Between her and Christie. Something profound. Something frightening. And if that damned cube responded to it… then it meant the past wasn't just creeping back in, it was calling her home.
His heart clenched at the thought. They were going to NYLA IV... and she would not be standing on the bridge beside him. Would she even want to be?
The part of him still broken by Leena, the part that believed love could still heal what loss had shattered, clung to the idea that Ya'Han would find her way back. But hope was a dangerous thing when it refused to die, even in the face of reality.
And the reality was this: they were heading into enemy territory to confront her family, her legacy, and possibly the key to a plague they couldn't contain… without the one person who could make sense of it all.
He should speak up. Should protest. Should demand that she be included, that they needed her insight, her knowledge, her connection to whatever this viral, genetic, dimensional nightmare had become.
But he stayed silent.
Because if he asked, and she refused… he wasn't sure he could survive hearing her say no.
So he sat. At Ops. Staring into the hollow space beside him. Wishing for a version of the universe where none of this had happened. Wishing he could take back whatever broken part of him had pushed her away.
The stars outside didn't care. The ship didn't care. The mission was moving forward.
But in that silence, he whispered a single plea.
"Don't let this be how it ends."
And then he turned back to his console. And kept working.
Because that's what officers did, even when their hearts were shattered into nothing. Dust in the wind.
=-=
Jayson Sousa
Lieutenant Jayson Stark
Chief of Operations
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"Refractions in Alloy"
Previous post: "The Space Between" by Jayson
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 2, Auxiliary Systems Corridor
Stardate: 45009.1700
The passage outside the ANUBIS's Auxiliary systems core was quiet, one of the few places on the ship where sound didn't linger. Even the ship's heartbeat, that ever-present pulsing beneath the deck plates, felt distant here, like a memory bleeding out of muscle.
Drayk stood still, his arms folded, silver hair pulled back into a tight queue. The overhead lights were dimmed, casting him half in shadow, which somehow felt more honest than full illumination. Across from him, the perfectly still form of the Ship's Avatar watched him with that flawless serenity that he sometimes found comforting... and other times, maddening.
"You've been quiet," The ship's avatar said at last. Her voice was gentle, but delivered with the precision of a sealed bulkhead. "That is statistically unusual for you."
His steel-blue eyes flicked toward her. "I prefer silence when assembling probabilities. Right now, the data set is polluted. Too many variables. Most of them irrelevant. Some of them lethal."
Ani tilted her head, out of curiosity, without judgment. She was a machine, and in that, she and Drayk were alike: observers first, processors second. "Is this regarding the proposed return to NYLA IV?"
Drayk scoffed, a dry sound without humor. "The word 'return' implies someone intends to come back. And ‘proposed’ suggests the crew has a choice. Neither are true. I doubt even Morningstar believes that fiction anymore."
"You do not concur with the Captain's direction?"
"Direction?" He pushed off the bulkhead, boots thudding softly against the deck. "That's one word for it. But understanding isn't consent. The problem isn't on NYLA IV. It's already aboard this ship. This course of action isn't a solution, it's a sacrament. One we're being forced to perform in the name of hope. Or guilt. Or both."
"Indeed," Ani agreed. "The probability index of escalation upon entering Ferengi space exceeds seventy-one percent, factoring in known Ferengi border protocols and the likelihood of emotional interference from Lieutenant Ya'Han."
Drayk’s gaze narrowed. "You left out the critical variable."
She paused.
"You."
Ani blinked once, visually neutral, but he could tell the ship itself paused, if only by a fraction of a second.
"You're the ship," he said. "The embodiment of it. And if we walk into Nylaan space carrying Ya'Han, Christie, and that artifact, it won't just be the Feneri we're poking. It’ll be something older. Deeper. You felt it, didn't you? When Ya'Han touched the device. When the cube pulsed."
"The sensors in the Quantum Physics Lab registered no shifts or changes when Ya'Han touched the device," Ani quickly clarified, then paused. "But, yes," she continued, quieter now. "Lt. Commander Maya did make a report of a visual anomaly that failed to be registered on the Lab sensors."
Drayk studied her, eyes sharp. "You didn't log it."
"Correct," Ani replied. "As you pointed out, I am the ship, and internal sensors did not register any anomalies from the Lab or anywhere else on the ANUBIS at the specified time."
Ani stepped forward, her expression stabilizing into near-human softness. "Drayk, what are you afraid of?"
He stared at her for a long moment, then leaned in close enough that his voice became a blade.
"I'm not afraid. I'm calculating. Fear is an impulse. Calculation is a strategy. And what I see, Ani, is a vector we're sliding down with open eyes and sealed mouths. Ya'Han didn't become something new; she remembered something she never should have known. And we're dragging her back to where that memory was born."
Ani processed for precisely 0.8 seconds.
"Would you advise against the mission?"
He shook his head. "I'd advise we stop pretending it's a mission at all." He turned slightly, pacing back into the half-light. "It's an unveiling."
Silence settled between them, not empty but full of tension strung taut across quantum uncertainty.
Ani finally spoke. "You believe she may not return."
"I believe," he replied slowly, "that the woman we called Ya'Han may have already crossed a threshold. And that when we reach her mother, we won't be talking to family. We'll be talking to a design."
Ani nodded once, almost respectfully. "And what of Christie?"
Drayk exhaled. "She still bleeds when she remembers. That tells me she hasn't given herself over yet. But proximity to someone who has?" He gestured toward the bulkhead, toward the ship itself. "We've seen what that does. Resonance. Echo. The device didn't respond to touch; it responded to kinship."
The avatar remained still for a long time.
"You will accompany the away team, if one is formed?"
"If Morningstar orders it," he said, stepping back into shadow, "I'll go. But I want something logged. Not in some surface-level access file. I want it in your core. Immutable."
"Ready," Ani said, the avatar taking on a perfect mechanical stance of stillness as he looked at her squarely.
"That if I don't come back, it wasn't an accident. It was a parameter misjudged."
Ani nodded solemnly. "Acknowledged. Lieutenant Val'Bruxa, I will monitor the path ahead. And I will watch your back."
He allowed the smallest flicker of a smirk.
"Good," he said, disappearing into the corridor's curve. "Because I don't trust the horizon anymore."
Ani, now standing alone in silence, gazed into the emptiness where Drayk had been, processing, and perhaps, calculating something herself.
=-=
Scott Grant
Lieutenant JG Drayk Val'Bruxa
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501
"I was not born. I was calculated. Cultivated. Deployed."
"Shades of Hope"
Previous post: "Refractions in Alloy" by Scott
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Deck 16, Black Hole Lounge
Stardate: 45009.1810
The whispers of hushed conversation in the Black Hole Lounge mixed with the clinking of utensils and the quiet vibration of the ship beneath their feet. Adriana sat across from Amanda, their dinner mostly untouched as they talked quietly, the way they often did when the room's atmosphere felt too heavy to allow laughter.
Amanda pushed her fork around her plate, her expression soft but distracted. "Do you think Christie will be okay?" she asked, finally breaking the silence.
Adriana's lips pressed together in thought before she answered. "I hope so. But she's been through a lot. We all have."
Before Amanda could respond, the room shifted. Conversations quieted just slightly as Captain Morningstar stepped through the doors. He didn't scan the lounge like he normally would when he was here on duty. Instead, he headed straight toward their table, his expression friendly, almost casual.
"Mind if I join you two?" he asked as he reached them.
Amanda blinked in surprise, but Adriana gestured quickly to the empty seat. "Of course, Captain."
He gave them both a smile as he sat, leaning back slightly, his tone light. "Not here as your captain tonight. Just Erik. I could use a friendly opinion or two."
Amanda perked up, visibly relaxing at his words. Adriana tilted her head, curious but keeping her professional mask in place.
The Captain turned to Amanda first. "How are you holding up, Amanda? I know the last few days haven't been easy."
Amanda hesitated only a moment before answering. "I'm… adjusting. Slowly. It's different, being out here, being part of this crew. Adriana is doing her best to help... as is Christie. She's stronger than people give her credit for, and that's a source of strength for me."
Erik nodded, his expression thoughtful. "And how is she? Really?"
Amanda’s gaze softened. "She’s trying. She still feels guilty, but she's trying."
The Captain turned to Adriana next. "And Cristhiane? How is she coping with everything?"
Adriana exhaled softly, her fingers brushing the rim of her glass. "She's holding herself together for Christie, but she's… conflicted. A mother torn between gratitude and fear. I think she blames herself for not seeing what was happening sooner as well as what did happen before."
Erik nodded again, his hands resting on the table as silence settled briefly between them. Then Adriana broke it, her curiosity slipping past her usual restraint.
"When will we be heading to NYLA IV, Captain?" Counselor Lopez asked.
Erik's brows lifted, genuine surprise flickering across his face. "That decision hasn't been made yet. Why do you ask?"
Adriana felt a flush of embarrassment creep up her neck. "I'm sorry, Captain. It's just… all the whispered conversations over the last few hours. They made it sound like it had already been decided."
A faint smile tugged at Erik's lips, though his tone carried a weight behind it. "There's a lot at stake in going to NYLA IV."
"Hope," Amanda said quickly, leaning forward. Her voice was certain, her expression bright. "That's what's at stake. Hope for the people there. For everyone."
"Hope can be dangerous," Adriana countered, her tone firmer than she intended.
Amanda frowned, sitting straighter. "Dangerous or not, it's still worth fighting for."
"And if chasing it gets people hurt? Or worse?" Adriana's voice softened, but didn't back down. "Hope without caution isn't hope, Amanda. It’s a dangerous gamble."
Amanda's eyes flashed with frustration. "Sometimes you have to gamble, Adriana. Sometimes hope is all people have left. You believed that once, you risked everything on hope when it was me who needed saving. So why can't we do the same for Christie… for Ya'Han?"
The sisters locked eyes, the air between them thick with unspoken history.
Erik didn't interrupt. He sat perfectly still, his eyes shifted between them with quiet intensity, as if weighing every word, every pause. The two sisters argued their sides; equal passion, opposite views, and beneath his calm exterior, his silence felt deliberate, like a man absorbing truths he might not want to hear.
Finally, when the debate had slowed, Erik stood. His smile returned, quiet but genuine.
"Thank you, both of you," he said, glancing between them. "I am sorry for the interruption of your dinner, but your insights are… invaluable."
He gave them a respectful nod before leaving the table, heading toward the lounge doors without another word.
Amanda exhaled and glanced at her sister, the earlier tension still lingering. "You really think hope is dangerous?" she asked quietly.
Adriana looked down at her plate, then back at Amanda, her expression softening. "Hope can save lives," Adriana said softly, her voice catching for a moment, "but it can cost them too. We lost Satella to save you… Christie… Cristhiane… Nathan. She's gone because we dared to hope. And I'm terrified of who we might lose next if we do it again."
Amanda's shoulders eased, her frown fading as she gave a small nod.
The lounge slowly regained its quiet rhythm, but Adriana barely noticed. Her words hung between them like a shadow that refused to fade, and once again, since their reunion, Amanda didn't have an answer. Satella's name, her sacrifice, sat heavy in the air, a reminder that hope always came with a price… one Adriana wasn't sure she could pay again.
-=-=-
Marissa Montonera-Lombardi
Lieutenant JG Adriana Lopez
Ship's Counselor & Junior Ambassador
USS ANUBIS