'I feel like I'm right in the middle of a war zone,' Lieutenant Reiv thought to himself, thinking of home back on Bajor. The lights all around him continued to pulse red, a constant reminder of the ship's condition status.
Reiv had reached a four way intersection and was peering off to his left, when suddenly a battle cry erupted from his right. He barely had time to spin around to confront this new threat, when an apparently deranged crewman struck him full on with a chair, sending Reiv sprawling to the deck. As the crewman was about to strike again, Reiv fired his phaser and struck the man. The man wavered somewhat, despite Reiv's phaser being set on 'heavy stun,' so Reiv fired again, and a third time, before the man dropped his chair behind him and slumped to the ground.
Reiv leapt to his feet and assumed a crouched position, with his back to one wall, as he surveyed the intersection. Another voice, this one much more recognizable, broke the silence. "That was very impressive Lieutenant," Yilaan said, her voice seemingly carried on the wind, coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Reiv gasped and spun about frantically, but he couldn't see Commander Yilaan anywhere within range of his sight. The all too familiar cackling laughter greeted his efforts. "Where are you Commander?" he said, half-shouting.
"You should know already. Can't you feel it?" her voice came back.
"Feel what?" Reiv asked. In a moment he experienced a major head rush, making him dizzy, and temporarily throwing him off-balance. He caught himself against the wall with one hand as he tried to shake it off; more cackling laughter followed.
"I'm right with you, just as I'm with every person on this ship," Yilaan informed him.
Reiv gritted his teeth and forced his eyes to focus on the hallway. "And what will you do with us once you're done playing puppeteer, Cecilia?" Reiv asked angrily as he began to make his way down the corridor again.
"Reiv Garon, you're too clever for your own good sometimes."
"Tell me something," Reiv continued, ignoring her quip as he checked rooms and intersections as he went, "what did this to you? Do you know?"
"Did what to me? I've never felt better," Yilaan replied.
"Come on, I don't seem to recall you or any other Betazoid I've met being able to control people the way you are, especially over sizable distances," Reiv replied, purely in an effort to keep her talking and her attention focused away from whatever Jevor might be up to. He didn't dare think about this of course, but that had been his silent plan from the moment Jevor told him he was on his own. "What's been happening on this ship, to you and most everyone else?"
"A glorious awakening of the mind and the spirit," was Yilaan's answer.
Reiv grunted, "I don't know about you, but it seems to me that you're putting more minds and spirits into permanent slumber than you are waking them up."
"As with all things, those able to adapt, flourish. Those that don't, die," she stated matter-of-factly.
"You are cruel," Reiv replied bluntly.
"Don't mistake practicality for cruelty," Yilaan chided.
"An amoral attitude if there ever was one," he stated flatly, after being momentarily startled by someone down one side corridor who was on their stomach, staring at him with unblinking eyes. "Who made you the arbiter of who lives and who dies?"
Yilaan laughed at his question. "Why, the Prophets, of course," she said lightly. Reiv growled angrily that she should name the Bajoran Prophets in such a manner, but that just made her laugh even more. Realizing this, Reiv forced himself to calm down as he continued his methodical search of the deck.
"The Prophets would never instruct anyone to behave as you are behaving," Reiv replied.
"What makes you so certain? Are you a Vedek? You don't resemble the Kai, that's for sure."
"How do you know what the Kai looks like? You've never seen our Spiritual Leader before," Reiv smirked.
"You have."
As he rounded a corner, he saw Yilaan on her knees next to Lieutenant Ivanovna, running her fingers through the Lieutenant's hair, much as a mother would caress her daughter. All the while Ivanovna sat limp and unmoving, staring into space.
"So good of you to join us at last," Yilaan said in a frighteningly soft voice.
Lieutenant Reiv felt another head rush, which caused him to close his eyes tightly as both hands went to his head. Wincing as he felt the pain in his head increase, he forced his eyes open. Falling to his knees and struggling to maintain consciousness, he tried to aim his phaser at Yilaan, but was unable to hold the weapon steady enough to get off a clean shot. Moments before he fell on his stomach and lost consciousness, he could've sworn he saw someone else appear, a shape that felt familiar, but one he couldn't quite place.
***
Unfortunately for the hapless Lieutenant, the Bristol's Andorian Chief Engineer was not having any better luck. Commander Jevor had felt the tug of Yilaan on his mind, but he'd fought it off, or so he assumed, as he still retained command of his faculties. He'd felt bad for a fleeting moment about sending Reiv after Yilaan alone, but had shrugged it off as the turbolift had arrived at his destination. 'Better him than me,' he thought with a snide grin. 'Rank has its privileges.'
Jevor managed to avoid tripping over three crewmen as he made his way down the corridor to Sickbay. He found the two door guards slumped on the floor and was assuming the worst as he readied his phaser. Entering the main Sickbay cautiously didn't help Jevor avoid what awaited him, for the minute the doors closed behind him, a crewman jumped out from behind an operating table and shot him in the chest with a phaser. Jevor staggered momentarily, recognizing his assailant as none other than Ensign Tanner, the young man he'd chastised earlier during repair work. He noted the twisted ironies of that fact as he dropped to the deck and lost consciousness.
***
Doctor Giovanni, too, had felt the touch of Yilaan's mind on hers, but that was some time ago. The Bristol's Chief Medical Officer had thought quickly and erected several force fields in parts of Sickbay before finding that multi-phasing a 'bubble' designed to ward off bio-hazards set up a sufficient electrical interference so as to block Yilaan's mental probe of the ship. Her instinct told her, however, that her time was likely limited; a personal visit from Yilaan would no doubt break through the shield and finish her.
Once the force field was in place in one of the labs, Doctor Giovanni had moved the bed containing the unconscious captain into the protected space; Ensign Julie Bradley of Security, being the only guard to not abandon her duties in Sickbay, accompanied her and provided protection. The doctor had thought about waking the captain at that time, but decided to hold off and let him rest more while she scanned the ship and tried to come up with a medical solution to the rash of violence that was plaguing the ship. Having him release Aenesthrizine gas was an easy fix, but it did no good if she had no solution to solve the overall problem. She could've ordered the gas herself, but she knew Yilaan could countermand it, or any other computer order she gave; except those that pertained directly to Sickbay that is.
As a precaution, the doctor locked both the main Sickbay door and the lab door, and kept an open comm-link to the Bridge so she could eavesdrop and be kept quietly apprised of the deteriorating status of the ship. She'd overheard Reiv and Jevor's conversation and intent, but when twenty minutes had gone by, she'd assumed the worst; confirmed when the computer told her that both men were passed out in the turbolift and had not even made it to Deck 15. She sighed as she continued to quietly run tests and formulate theories.
In her experiences, Doctor Giovanni had heard of certain degenerative disorders in full Betazoids which involved projecting their emotions onto others; that would explain the sudden rash of violence on board the ship, but the only known disorders she could come up with after consulting the ship's computer were ones due to old age. Yilaan was about a third as old as the typical victim of such disorders normally was. Not to mention the fact that none of them explained her sudden ability to take over people's minds. She sighed again and rubbed her eyes and she checked on the results of some tests the computer had run for her while she'd done her search.
"How's it going?" Ensign Bradley asked quietly from her crouched and relatively hidden position by the lab's door.
"Well, it would help if Commander Yilaan was actually lying in my Sickbay so I could run tests on her, instead of my hypothetical grasping at straws," Giovanni said, smiling ruefully. "However, I think I'm making progress. I'm having the computer test a typical Betazoid brain work-up against some of the foreign particles I've discovered we've picked up from Rysa. Aside from this flu, I'm detecting something strange in Cargo Bay Three, on the Bridge, and in some crew quarters; traces of something like a preservative I think, and something else I can't quite identify. So, basically anything out of the ordinary in combination with an unlimited number of other things out of the ordinary, along with those things found ordinarily aboard ship, in infinite combinations, starting with the most likely first and working towards least likely," Giovanni rattled on. "All again compared to a typical Betazoid brain work-up, modified by Yilaan's last neural scan, all on file of course," she finished finally.
"Sounds like you've got it under control," Bradley said neutrally, keeping her eyes trained on the door and on a viewscreen she had set up inside the lab to monitor main Sickbay. Not that she'd been paying attention to Giovanni's speech much after 'I think I'm making progress' of course; Bradley was simply nice enough to follow up with encouragement after the doctor had stopped talking.
"I hope so," Giovanni replied simply. She worked running scans, running tests, and analyzing results for about fifteen minutes when the doctor was interrupted by an intercom chime.
"Commander Cecilia Yilaan to Doctor Marisa Giovanni," Yilaan called lightly. Giovanni gasped and she and Bradley exchanged looks. "Come on, Doctor, I know you're out there. You didn't think the absence of your hyperactive babble within my flock would go unnoticed did you?" Yilaan said angrily after Giovanni failed to reply. Giovanni made a face. "I may have to send someone down for you. Many people perhaps," Yilaan continued quietly after a short pause. "Or you could join me."
Giovanni gritted her teeth and kept working, trying not to be distracted, although she did have one fleeting thought; she found herself wishing they had had at least one Ferengi on the crew, since their minds couldn't be read by Betazoid telepaths.
"The die is cast then," Yilaan said simply, in response to Giovanni's silence over the offer of joining her.
Giovanni sighed loudly. "Dammit, come on!" she cursed at the computer, banging her fist on the table. "Ensign, be ready; we'll likely have company shortly," Giovanni noted sidelong to Bradley, who nodded in reply.
Several tense moments went by before a blood-curdling scream erupted over the intercom; it was Yilaan. Giovanni and Bradley looked at each other with eyes wide, wondering what the heck just happened. Then came a surprise; a different voice over the intercom, one that spoke with calm and clarity. "Yilaan is down," a raspy voice said simply.
Doctor Giovanni touched her comm-badge gingerly. "She is?"
"Yes Doctor."
"Lieutenant Reiv is that you?"
"Yes."
"How many fingers am I holding up?" the doctor asked.
"What do you mean? It's not like I can see you from Deck 15!" Reiv replied irritably.
Giovanni smiled and nodded at Bradley, "Sorry; I had to get you to say something more coherent to make sure Yilaan wasn't controlling you."
Reiv sighed audibly, "Acknowledged. It seems the commander wasn't able to influence you; have you been trying to find out what's going on on this ship during this time?"
"Yes, that's correct. How did you know she didn't get to me?" Giovanni asked, while Bradley relaxed her stance somewhat.
"Yilaan knew, and during my struggle I knew what she knew, and I saw what she did. Pretty revolting really; if I didn't know better I would've thought she had Cardassian blood in her veins," Reiv explained in a tired voice.
Bradley tapped her comm-badge, "Lieutenant, this is Ensign Bradley. I'm here with the doctor. If I may ask, how is it that you were able to throw off her telepathic control? When Doctor Giovanni checked with the computer earlier, it said you and Commander Jevor were passed out in the turbolift."
"I had help," Reiv replied simply.
"You had help?" Giovanni broke in. "Someone on this ship? What or who was it?"
"I'd rather not talk about it," Reiv replied. The sound of a phaser blast was then heard.
"Reiv! Are you alright?" Giovanni half-shouted over the intercom.
"I'm fine Doctor; despite the incapacitation of, shall we say, the Queen Bee, the hive still swarms with anger; I suggest you continue work on a possible solution to this mess."
"What are you going to do?" Giovanni asked.
"I'm going to try and secure the Bridge; we got a distress call earlier and we were on course to assist. I want to make sure our arrival will help, not hinder, our Federation colleagues; I'll bring the ship to a halt if necessary until such a time as a solution is discovered. Lieutenant Reiv out."
An hour then passed; Reiv retook the Bridge without much difficulty as most of the crewmen were either missing or incapacitated. Just as Giovanni was about to wring her hands in frustration, one of her computer-generated simulations came up positive. "Yes!" she screeched with delight, startling Bradley. "I've got an answer," she continued smiling, "and an antidote."
Giovanni pressed her comm-badge, "Giovanni to Reiv."
"Go ahead Doctor; do you have good news?" Reiv inquired.
"I do indeed Lieutenant. I have an antidote, which I intend to inject into the ship's air supply. Any problems?" Giovanni answered.
"Not on this end. What will the effects be?"
"It should put an end to the unfortunate situation on this ship, and it should do so fairly quickly; within fifteen minutes I'd say," Giovanni replied.
"Well done Doctor; distribute the antidote when ready," Reiv replied. "I'm sure everyone will look forward to your report."
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