The Eyes Have It

Posted on 17 Sep 2020 @ 10:25am by Captain Mallory Thorne & Lieutenant Callisi Veera

1,962 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Ab Intra
Timeline: MD 01 ~ 1800 hours

Mallory Thorne was confused.

This headache seemed to have only gotten worse as time passed, and she was vaguely aware of security officers showing up in her ready room. They said they needed to take her...somewhere, but she was hazy on the details. She assumed it was sickbay, because they had noticed how much she was suffering and needed to see the doctor. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad after all? But just as she had that thought, pain spiked her skull.

It wasn't until she was walking through the doors of the cargo bay, seeing others of the crew here, that she realized that she had no idea what was going on...on her own ship!

She turned to ask the security officers who had walked her here, but they were already gone and the doors were shut. She tried to leave, but the doors wouldn't open. She tried to override, even if it seemed to take forever to remember her code...but the computer said...something about being locked out and not recognized. So, she stared at the door in confusion.

"You're locked out." Callisi offered, a hand on her head. "We all are." a quick assessment of this person she hadn't met before spoke what she was worried about. This was the captain.

"Before I was removed from the bridge, your Ship Second made mention of transferring control to the bridge, and that the ship was their's." a pause, "They also mentioned my crime as being resistant to their mind control." is that what the constant ringing in her head was? The neverending twinge of pain behind her eye? She had almost gotten used to it by this point, it had gotten to be so everpresent that it might as well be an emotional state.

"I have a few concepts as to whom else might be affected, but if they're rounding us everyone resistant to their influences, then I'd wager that everyone else in this cargo hold is guilty of the same crime: Free Will." then the rabbitess realized something.

"We've never formally met. I awoke while you were presumably on planet. My name is Callisi Veera, ma'am. I'm part of your Ops team. I suspect Madalene is under their influence." a pause, "Or she's grossly undersocial."

There's a rabbit on my ship?

That was the first utterly inane thought that wound its way through the throbbing in her mind as Mal turned to face the owner of the voice that was offering something by way of an answer. A few brain cells caught up after a moment, however, and she recalled this crew member's file. Even if they hadn't met, she remembered her from...before. Mal couldn't put the pieces completely together, but some were there.

"Lieutent Veera, yes," she said. "Captain Mallory Thorne. I..." She pressed her fingers to one temple. "I fear I've been...ill. I have this terrible headache and have clearly missed something. I don't even recall what they said when they brought me here." Now threading around everything else was shame.

You're the captain. How did you get here? "Mind control?" she repeated aloud. "Only some of the crew. I wonder if this headache I've had has something to do with that..."

"Behind your eye?" a pause, "Eyes?" she corrected herself, and put a finger to her own temple. "About here? It's been happening to me for almost the entire time I've been awake. It ebbs and flows, but when it arrives it's almost too intense to bear. I shut my eye tight, too tight, and press against my temple until everything stops hurting, or stops hurting as much, but it never really goes away."

Mal nodded, just a little, and frowned thoughtfully. "Yeah, it's right behind my eyes," she agreed curiously. "It kind of feels like there's times when something is trying to... It's like something is drilling into my skull. Does your feel like that?"

"Different bones, same pain." she cited. "Though there are times it eases up. I've tried to go to sickbay three times, and everytime I get within twenty feet of those doors, the pain is intense enough to almost blind me." a pause, "Based on that, I can guess that the pain is the attempts by these, Tokodamaru or whatever they are, to gain a foothold. To command us."

"If it still is happening now, with us imprisoned and this ship in their control, then I imagine these creatures are naturally beyond the range of our sight." a pause, "If only we had an engineer."

The captain began to look around the cargo bay and the persons inside it, trying to locate if she recognized any of them as engineers. In doing so, however, the pain increased. She kept going despite that. "Like someone trying to break into our heads," she murmured. "One that doesn't want us going to sickbay. I knew I should have gone many times but got sick at the thought..."

Callisi could only nod, her hand pressed hard enough against her temple to cause her fingertips under her fur to go white. "I... I have a prosthetic eye. An engineer might adjust it's visual range to see if they can be.... seen..." whatever her idea was, someone or something didn't want her having it. "I ... I hate the damn thing, but... if it helps... then I'll accept it for the moment."

"Good call," Mal said, although her headache started throbbing harder at the same time. Someone didn't want her hearing the idea either, it would seem. She spotted a young Bolian that she was pretty sure was in engineering. "Him," she said, nodding at the nervous-looking blue man. "He's an engineer. I'm pretty sure."

Callisi nodded, and made her way over to the Bolian indicated. Hesitantly, she sat down next to him, and her slow motions weren't due to pain. They were due to something else. Something that hurt a lot more than just searing nerve pain.

"Promise me." she started, looking the engineer in the eye. Her one, good eye shineless... reflectionless... a matte painting of a window into her soul. "Promise me when you see it, you'll still see me." a pause, "Don't be impressed. Don't tell me how beautiful it is."

"D... don't see it. Just.. please."

The young engineer didn't really understand what was happening, still unnerved as he was from being dragged down here in the first. "O..o...okay?" he said, eyes swinging from the bunny girl to the captain and back again. "W...what do you want from me?"

"I... I want to know if ... maybe whatever is controlling the crew is something that we just can't see." she explained. "I ... I have a prosthetic eye. It's, well it's..." she took a breath, then shook her head, her body language started to slump while her ears started to lose that rigid uprightness they held. "No, no it's alright. It's a lot to ask someone all at once. Don't worry, it's my fault." another deep breath, another pause, "I'd rather you not have to see it." her ears drooped as she hid behind her shame of the matter. Hesitance. Shame. Pride. All that, and a broken eye.

Looking at the captain, the Bolian received a nod. He turned back to the bunny girl. "You want to see if the eye can be adjusted to see things that a biological eye can't?" he asked cautiously. Although nervous by nature, he was pretty bright and picked up on things fairly quickly once any surprise he felt had passed.

Callisi gave a quick nod, and then hesitantly reached up to remove her eyepatch. Beneath it was a contrast of appearances. Her orbit was heavily scarred, as though whatever it was that destroyed her original eye was large enough to also damage her orbit. Minor, almost invisible scars from the surgical procedure that gave her her prosthetic were there as well, but the star of the show was the aforementioned prosthetic eye.

Built of a metal with a gentle blue hue, the eye sat in a cradle that filled the cavity left behind by her previous eye. Smooth motions, almost silent, with each motion of her living eye perfectly mirrored by the prosthetic. A blue spot of light indicated the eye's point of view, which irised open or closed with the same eerie precision with the rest of the device. Everything about this was machined to precision.

It was elegant, from an engineering standpoint. A piece of literal alien technology, with an aesthetic unseen in the Federation. This was a work of art.

He did not forget what she asked, no matter what the engineer in his head had to say. He resisted any urge to comment about the aesthetics and just examined it. "This does not look like Starfleet Medical's work," he commented instead. Staying with the practical. "Can it be removed or do I need to work with it in place?"

"It's not. It's a Dalacari design. A... a drone eye." she said, softly. "I can't remove it from the housing outside of a medical suite. There's ... connections I can't get to." her voice was soft, tender. Hardly the confident voice she was before. This was her, fully exposed.

She appreciated his professionalism.

This really wasn't the way he'd expected his day to go. Dragged off to cargo bay for who knew what reason and now working with a mechanical eye of origins he knew nothing... "Alright," he said with a slow nod. "You're more familiar with the design than I am, so how should I start examining it to potentially make these changes?"

It dawned on Callisi, at this moment, how little she knew of the maintenance of her own prosthetic. She regretted not paying more attention, though in her defense, she was screaming in pain while it was being explained to her.

"I... I'm very familiar with the design, but... but beyond routine maintenance, I must admit I know little about the workings. I keep a file on maintenance in my quarters, but that's of no help here. I apologize."

"It's alright," the young engineer managed with an uncertain smile. "I'm willing to at least take a look at it and see if maybe it's something that we can--"

He didn't get to finish.

The doors to the cargo bay opened and everyone looked, expecting to see more of their fellows being tossed inside. There were indeed two security guards walking in, but they didn't have anyone with them. Instead, they seemed to be looking for someone. The woman with them in the teal collar pointed at Veera.

"Her," she declared, and the guards made their way toward the small group.

Mallory, headache and all, inserted herself between them. "What do you want?" she demanded.

"Out of the way," the larger of the two goons demanded. Mallory didn't, instead repeating her question. A backhand across the face removed her from the problem, and by the time she was back on her feet, the guards already hand their hands on Callisi's arms and were dragging her toward the doors.

Callisi knew it was trouble from the moment they walked in. When she was singled out, pride demanded she return her eyepatch to its place. That cost her moments. Moments the Captain gave back to her in the form of her protest. Moments she squandered. Moments that cost her movement. She was grabbed roughly by the arms, and dragged across the floor of the cargo bay, squirming and resisting, but unable to get her feet under her.

"I am a Daughter of Ts'usu!! I will walk with my head high to my fi--" and the doors closed. She was gone.

 

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