Schism

[Annabelle O'Halloran 0]

Ordering the lights down to just 10%, Anna closed her eyes and leaned back in her office chair, willing the tablets she'd swallowed to begin easing the throbbing in her skull. The sudden, agonizing pain had struck without warning and it had been all she could do to escape the shuttle bay before it had brought her to her knees. It wasn't the first headache she'd had in the past few days but it was by far the worst. She was sure it was connected to the bracelet; the 'memories' that she occasionally experienced also seemed to be growing in strength--they were becoming increasingly more vivid. The one she'd had while at lunch with Will today had been so strong it had briefly replaced the reality of the mess and for a moment she'd been crouching over a dead animal with her knife in her hand feeling satisfied that her arrow had been true and they would eat well that night. It wouldn't have been so bad except for the fact that she'd then gutted the poor creature and eaten some part of it while it was still warm to 'honor' the kill. Maybe that was part of the reason for the headache--she hadn't eaten since breakfast.

 

Knowing that couldn't really be the explanation for the headache--and neither could the poor quality of sleep, she'd been getting, Anna thought about going to Sickbay. Even though the bracelet and the experiences associated with it were fascinating, it was becoming obvious that it was affecting how she performed her job. She wasn't able to concentrate and it seemed to be becoming less important to her that she do so. And now, it appeared that it was starting to take a physical toll on her as well. She'd managed to cover it today -- Jon and Kat had been busy talking and she'd been able to make an exit that couldn't be considered more than merely abrupt. If they'd noticed anything at all, no doubt it would be assumed she was just that eager to get going on the detailed examination of the probe. Which she was, actually...it was strange that the probe's data files were completely empty, she thought before another sharp stab of pain seemed to explode from the center of her brain and she passed out.

 

* * * * *

Jumping abruptly to her feet, she stood--completely disorientated as to where she was. Forcing her heartbeat to slow down, she realized she was alone and could hear--nothing. No obvious exit, this place was dimly lit--and the source of what light there was appeared strange, glowing weakly--the fire within gave out no warmth and was above her head. A table of some kind was in front of her and she climbed on it easily; it appeared sturdy and bore her weight while she reached above to investigate the curious fire, extending her fingers cautiously, to brush them against the glowing disk. Finding it cool to the touch, she exclaimed softly, surprised and puzzled. This made no sense. Where was she? Why was she here and...what was she wearing?

 

The cloth was strange though not uncomfortable, but the boots felt rather unyielding and were raised in the back under her heel in a way that made her feel a little off balance. They also were too low to protect her completely if a foe were to slash her behind the knee. She found she was able to move freely, however, and the garb would not impair her sword arm, but that begged another question... Where was her sword? For Hani to not be at her side should have meant that she had died--never would she allow herself to be taken. Unless...had they been betrayed?

 

Where were the others she'd been with? Intent on investigating her prison, she jumped down to the ground which was also strange. Not soft exactly, but it felt not like planking or stone and the covering on top of it was not an animal skin or like any woven material she was familiar with. She must have been captured, she thought, frowning as she tried to recall the last thing she remembered but nothing came to mind. They'd struck camp and moved out, planning to reach the nearest settlement by dark fall. But the details escaped her. Touching her forehead, she realized it was starting to ache badly and wondered if she'd been drugged. That would explain why she remembered nothing. What she needed to do was find a way out and barring that, be ready to attack her jailers when they returned. They'd made an enormous mistake in not chaining her, she thought. They wouldn't live long enough to regret it, she vowed, not caring much about what happened to her but determined to escape and help her clan. Since she'd lost her beloved Tjarn, she cared little about the life she had left and looked forward to the day that she would join him, knowing he would be waiting at the great gates of Ungandaril for her.

 

* * * * *

 

Caroline leaned through the door of the science offices and glanced around. The area was quiet and a quick glance at Anna's office door showed that it was shut -- uncharacteristic for the science chief, who never -- to Caroline's knowledge -- kept it closed. Caroline made a puzzled noise and withdrew her head into the corridor.

"Computer, confirm location of Lieutenant O'Halloran."

BEEP. "Lieutenant O'Halloran is in the Science departmental offices."

 

"Huh." Caroline cocked her head and stepped fully in from the hall. As there seemed no particular signs of major activity anywhere else either, she proceeded to the door of her friend's office and tapped her fingers to the chime. "Anna?" she called.

 

* * * * *

She tensed at the soft ringing sound and then felt surprise that her captor would announce her arrival in such a way. 'Anna' meant nothing to her--perhaps the guard was conversing with someone else. That would be good, they would be distracted -- perhaps it was not realized that she was already awake. Maybe their drug was weak, she thought edging closer to the end of the room, anticipating how the guard would reveal herself. She hefted the only object she'd found that had any weight to it, and even though the glass globe was a feeble weapon at best, it might shatter and cause a deeper injury and after all, she would have surprise on her side. It was a confusing object; when she'd picked it up, colors had exploded inside of it and almost surprised her into dropping it. Reaching the end of the room, she struggled to remain upright, hoping the guard would come in soon; her head felt like it was being cleaved in half. The drug must still be within her, she thought and pitched forward, the ball of glass slipping from her fingers and triggering the door as it rolled forward.

 

* * * * *

Anna caught herself as she stumbled, wondering distractedly what she'd tripped over as the door slid open and the light from the corridor spilled into her office, illuminating the holographic paperweight lying on the floor in the doorway. "Oh no," she cried, immediately bending to reach for it, so worried that it might be damaged that she didn't think to wonder why it was there.

 

Caroline blinked as Anna almost stumbled forward into her, but caught herself and bent to something on the floor with a cry of dismay. The counselor raised her eyebrows in slight concern. "Everything alright?"

 

Finally registering the pair of legs standing in front of her just as Caroline spoke, Anna jerked her head up and for a moment had no idea what to say. The last thing she remembered was sitting down at her desk; how Nova Starburst had ended up on the floor way over by the door was a total mystery. The important thing, however, was that the headache was gone and the smile she managed was one of relief. "Yes, it is, Caro." She stood up abruptly. "I...I bumped this off my desk and am just so relieved it's not broken," she explained, cradling the globe protectively and starting to feel confident that maybe that was exactly what had happened. "It was a gift from Will."

 

"Oh, of course," Caroline answered agreeably, stepping through the doorway and letting the door shut behind her, realizing as it did so that the room was nearly completely dark. "I'm glad to hear it's alright, then." She moved to one of the chairs on the near side of the desk and leaned against it, watching her friend in the dimness curiously. "I was wondering how things were going with the probe, but...I take it you weren't working?"

 

"Computer, raise lights to normal level," Anna instructed as she made her way back around her desk, the dim lighting no longer necessary since she didn't feel like her skull was on the verge of splitting open. "I had a headache and the light was making it worse," she explained offhandedly, setting the paperweight back on its stand before taking her seat. With the workscreen folded down, there was nothing but a couple of PADDs on the desk and for the life of her, Anna didn't see how it could have been knocked off its stand, let alone hit the floor without breaking, make it under the chairs in front of the desk and then all the way to the door.

 

"I did the initial scans of the probe in the shuttle bay after Jon Shamor and I returned and I've since dispatched a forensic team to the lab for a thorough evaluation and possible file retrieval," Anna replied to Caroline, though her eyes remained on the paperweight as a deep frown creased her forehead.

"Sounds like things are moving along nicely," Caroline said, the statement carrying just a hint of a question, since Anna's expression seemed to give the lie to the idea that everything was going entirely smoothly. She paused, then added, gently but pointedly, "But something's on your mind."

 

"The immutable laws of physics," Anna said dryly and then finally turned and smiled at Caroline from across the desk. "The probe is a mystery. It's Federation and is probably the one sent out originally to investigate the possibility that this system was a destination for one of the hundred changelings -- but, there is a problem -- the data files on it have been wiped clean."

 

"Meaning...someone accessed it before us?" Caroline asked, trying to follow the train of logic appropriate to the situation. "Or could that have happened without outside interference?"

 

"It's really too soon to tell," Anna answered, making an effort to focus on the conversation, trying to martial her thoughts into something that made sense. She now realized she must have blacked out earlier. It was the only thing that explained how she'd gotten from the chair to the door without remembering how or why she'd done so.

 

"The probe could have encountered some sort of space weather--been the victim of an ion storm or possibly a solar flare," she continued. "There are also two gas giants in this system and so we'll have the cosmologists on staff taking the data from the examination and running it through their scenarios. It's just...strange. The casing has what looks like impact damage from hitting the side of the mountain we found it on but I didn't see external evidence of any of the possibilities I just mentioned."

 

"Odd," Caroline offered, cocking her head to the side as she absorbed all of this. "Well, I look forward to hearing what the true story was, when your team sorts it all out. It's too bad there's nothing immediately clear to latch onto, though; I know Commander Swan was brought out here for a very specific type of data that, from what you're saying, doesn't seem to be apparent?" She carefully skirted around a tone that might indicate any of the concerns she felt about Kat being there at all; that wasn't for this conversation.

"Not so far," Anna answered and debated for a moment whether or not to tell Caroline about Kat's outburst in the shuttle bay and settled for saying, "She ended up being scrubbed from the mission to bring the probe up from the planet and she wasn't too happy about it." An understatement if ever there was one, she thought, recalling Kat's response to Ridire which sounded at the time as if it had crossed the border into insubordination. She hadn't overheard the XO's side of things but then Kat had joined Shamor and herself, and she'd been all apologies. Presumably she'd been the same with Ridire.

 

Caroline raised an eyebrow slowly, hearing something in Anna's tone beyond the matter-of-fact which made her curious. "No, I can imagine she wouldn't be," she said non-committally, waiting to see if the other woman would elaborate.

 

"It was out of proportion to what might be expected from being pulled from a mission that consisted only of ferrying an item from one location to another and I'll come right out and say it, though I wouldn't except for the fact that you are the ship's counselor, Caro. I've seen Kat Swan upset before but always with a good reason. The way she acted in the shuttle bay was irrational--maybe even paranoid."

 

Caroline cocked her head backwards, considering this. "I don't disbelieve that," she said carefully, straddling the line between validating Anna's opinion of the situation and maintaining Kat's privacy. She herself had noted or been informed of several manifestations of the recently returned officer's direct, somewhat guarded, highly attenuated air as regarded much of her dealings with the Reaent crew -- her skeptical reaction to the Changeling-detector armbands, her fascination with, of all things, the goat which Anna had picked up on sensors during their initial sweeps of the planet they currently orbited. Given the rather secretive manner in which Kat had arrived to begin with, Caroline had to wonder just what she'd been told by Starfleet HQ. "I imagine her situation feels somewhat unstable to her -- she is now the returning outsider in a crew in which she used to hold a highly respected post."

"That's true," Anna replied, nodding in agreement, "And even though I don't know all the details, I do know she's been through hell in the past few months and re-orientating to being back in the field might take some getting used to. It was just a very strange reaction to something that wasn't very important. Well, important seeming to me, at any rate," she amended, reminding herself that no doubt there were nuances to the situation that had escaped her. It also didn't help that she was distracted by her own perceptions feeling somewhat skewed lately. As if in answer to her thoughts, Anna felt the beginnings of another headache coming on and again thought maybe it would be a good idea to get to Sickbay, but then again, she had to get to the lab to oversee the probe examination. She'd make a point of going afterwards she told herself.

 

"I'll keep it in mind when I next speak to her," Caroline said, nodding. "I'm sure she had no intention of offense, but it is a strange situation for everyone involved. Thank you for bringing it to my attention." She watched Anna's response, hoping that the response would give some measure of reassurance that her concerns were being listened to, but if anything, Anna looked more distracted than ever. "Are you OK?" Caroline asked after a moment's pause.

 

"Yes, I'm all right," Anna managed a smile. "Just feel like that headache might be coming back. Not a big deal, but I also have to get down to SciLab 4. That's where the probe is now. Hopefully, a more detailed examination will reveal why its files have been erased."

 

Caroline nodded, her expression growing somewhat concerned. "You should talk to Deb about that -- or take a break," she said, shaking her head slightly. "I'm sure no one would hold it against you if you delegated; a bad headache is no picnic."

"I'll probably stop by Sickbay after I check in with the lab," Anna answered. "We can't really move forward until we find out everything we can from the probe. The forensic team is already assembling and getting ready to start preliminaries--they're going to work with Engineering."

 

Satisfied with this, Caroline nodded again, straightening from her position leaning on the back of the chair. "Well, just as long as you look after yourself at some point. It's easy in our line of work to sacrifice personal comfort for the job -- even when we don't have to." Her lips quirked wryly, and she added, "Believe me, I know." She jerked her head towards the now-open door of the office to indicate her own departure. "I'll be out of your way so as not to delay you; perhaps I'll see you later."

 

"You're never in the way, Caro," Anna smiled, even though she understood what Caroline meant. "And I appreciate the good advice." She stood up, thinking she really wanted nothing more than to get back to her quarters and sleep, but that could wait till tonight. She was certainly tired enough that she doubted she'd have any of the dreams. No doubt she would feel better tomorrow after a good night's sleep. There probably wasn't any reason to go and bother Debbie. "Maybe I'll run into you later--things get interesting in the lab, I may just break away long enough to grab something from the mess for dinner. If that happens, I'll give you a comm."

"Sounds like a plan," Caroline said with a smile.

Edited August 16, 2011 by Annabelle O'Halloran