Enough is Enough

Posted on Thu May 18th, 2023 @ 6:36am by Lieutenant Sovas Nyseth & Lieutenant Dr. Daniel Brasken
Edited on on Thu May 18th, 2023 @ 6:37am

Mission: In-Between (S1:E4-S1:E5)
Location: Sick Bay - CMO Office
Timeline: Mission Day 4 at 0900
1945 words - 3.9 OF Standard Post Measure

ON

The data across the screens were fascinating as Daniel reviewed the information his monitor had recorded from the Operations officer. Having been on the bridge, he had first-hand experience with how these readings had played out in real-time. The surges of adrenaline and cortisol were quite frankly massive, which would account for the behavior during a crisis. Not that that was of a particular surprise, considering the initial scans.

Far more fascinating were the brainwave patterns. The spike of fear response was not initiated by Sovas himself but by the secondary pattern that was influencing the officer. It didn't feed off the released chemicals but seemed to match the patterns of Sovas' own brain and during the spikes of fear grew in intensity. It didn't stay large for long past the chemicals being processed by the body, but it also did not go back to it's previous size. Somehow with each spike the pattern grew a bit after gorging.

If the officer had been in a less important position, Daniel might have been tempted to let this play out a bit further and see what precisely would happen. That was his goal today would be to remove it from the more valuable officer without destroying it altogether.

A quick touch to the comm panel on his desk before saying, "Lieutenant Sovas, report to sickbay immediately."

Sovas dropped the dumbbell he had been holding almost the instant the call from Brasken came through, causing it to clang loudly on the floor as the other members of the crew working out gave him narrowed glances at the faux paux the half-Vulcan had pulled. He decided to grab a quick shower before heading to sick since he'd been trying to work himself to exhaustion, and he was certain he reeked.

From there Daniel made his way to one of the private medical bays and started preparing for Sovas' arrival.

So it was that Sovas was all but dashing down the corridor to Sickbay as he wanted to see what the doctor wanted to see him so urgently about. His stomach was churning, filled with nauseating butterflies as he tried to keep his mind from wandering and producing the worse case scenarios. The nurse directed him back to the private bay and entered as he looked around for Daniel.

"Doctor?"

"Over here, Lieutenant." Daniel called from the medical bay. He was now dressed in a surgical covering with a set of gloves in a sealed container in his hands. The bed had multiple trays of tools around it, with a couple of larger devices currently on the back wall with hoses and cables connected to them. One hand left the package to gesture at the bed as he smiled warmly. "Please, have a seat."

Daniel had purposefully not informed Sovas about the procedure because a semi-sentient creature might be able to know what was coming and find a way to fight back better. Then he could to circumvent such complications the better.

Sovas was apprehensive, his eyes moving to the package as he felt the entity inside of his head sharing that apprehension, though beyond that, he couldn't tell what the creature was feeling about this. "So it seems you came prepared with surprises."

"Nothing you need to be concerned about. Please have a seat so I can run some further scans." Daniel stepped aside to let Sovas do as he was instructed.

The half-Vulcan moved to lie back on the bed as he felt the presence inside his mind doing what he called shifting when something had caught its attention, and Sovas was back in sickbay seemed to have drawn the entity's interest.

Once Sovas was settled, Daniel attached the different devices and turned them on. He brought up monitors that Sovas could see to show the scans like a routine diagnostic procedure and started to hum softly as he did so. There were a decent amount of connections to be made around the head and neck, that Daniel took his time and watched the monitors as he did so.

The Operations Chief lay there watching Brasken work, taking his scans and humming to himself, though he began to get a feeling to dread. Like something was wrong but he couldn't put the finger on why as he looked around as if he could find the reason for his unease, but it had settled in the pit of his stomach like a lead weight, and he could feel his chest growing tight. Each breath he took didn't feel like it was enough and each subsequent breath started coming deeper and faster. "Doctor...I...I don't feel right."

"So it would seem..." Daniel frowned at the readings and picked up the pace. The last of the cables attached quickly before he loaded a hypo spray injected it into Sovas' neck. "This is going to feel a bit strange now. Computer, initiate program parasite one."

The lights in the med bay dimmed slightly as a forcefield and bio dampening field shimmered into place. The dampening field being focused on the area directly around the bio bed and lastly a near skin tight force field appeared around Sovas. "That should keep you in place while the medications...there we go!" The readings spiked as his cocktail started making it's way through the lieutenant. It was designed to stress the body, making it work harder and harder without the physical exertion to back it up.

"Wha...what did you do?" Sovas questioned as his head began to feel heavy and there was a strange sensation of hyper-focusing but not being able to focus on anything in particular his vision began to dance but also seemed to become quite acute while his heart was feeling as if it were trying to beat its way out of his chest. He was sure they could attach power feeds to his heart in place of the warp core and they'd never notice a difference. He could feel his skin prickling.

"Doctor?" His voice sounded slurred to him but he didn't know if it really was or if it was an effect of the drugs as he suddenly grimaced and the forcefield snapped into place when he tried to reach up to his head. The pain continued as his breathing became labored and his hands grasped the cushion of the biobed. "H-hurts...pain...hot spikes..." He struggled to get out as his body was covered in a sheen of sweat. Daniel would be able to see that both Sovas' and the entities co-mingled neural profiles were spiking sharply while the shrill cardiac alert started to chime loudly in the room.

"F-Father...no...kill...fan...thorough...gray sky..." The half-Vulcan writhed on the bed, his words not making sense as blood began to seep from his nose. "Gravel trails with white flowers..."

"To put it simply...I've killed you." Considering the gibberish that was coming from the man, Daniel doubted that he had the wherewithal to understand what he had been told. Still though, it was time to get to work on a serious level. Daniel tightened the field around Sovas to restrict their movement further and brought up the bio bed's arms to cover him. Taking a tool with a long and thin protrusion, he pressed it against his patient's temple and then activated it, causing it to sink into the outer layers of skin and make contact with bone matter. A twist and pull later and the protrusion was fused to his skull, leaving the translucent probe sticking a few inches into the air.

The handle of the device proceeded to unroll a thin filament as Daniel reached over and plugged it into a tricorder that sprang to life with the pre-set energy production. From there he stepped back to watch the monitors and picked up some vascular repair tools. He would have to spend some time going through all of Sovas' veins and muscles to repair the damage that the drug was causing his blood pressure to do, but not too soon.

The forcefield snapped into place and flared as the half-Vulcan's body shook and spasmed on the biobed, his vitals fluctuated wildly between being a flatline, catastrophically low, or dangerously high. His neural readings weren't much better as Sovas' patterns and those of the entity separated before syncing back together, and when they synced up his other patterns briefly returned to normal like the entity was trying to counteract the effects of the drugs.

Daniel frowned at the brain waves as they almost synced up. That wasn't supposed to happen.

Somehow the creature was actually trying to save it's host...or at least the physical body of it. The doctor cursed under his breath and knelt down quickly to find the brain wave modulators. It took him a few moments that felt much longer before he grabbed them and stood up quickly. He placed them on the half vulcan's forehead quickly and activated them before proceeding to initiate a somewhat chaotic and invasive set of neural energy bursts. He needed to break the creature's hold so that it would flee Sovas.

Chaos was what the doctor received as Sovas' flatlined. Everything was in the red for him as his body jerked as the entity seemed to be trying to continue to counteract the effects drugs and now the modulators. Blood began to run out of Sovas' nose as the entity's pattern became more erratic, almost seeming like it was panicking at the death of its host. Again it tried in vain to resurrect the half-Vulcan before its patterns began to turn relatively calm. However, nothing else seemed to be happening as the entity's neural readings faded to near nothing as Sovas' vitals continued to chime about his physical state angrily.

Daniel sighed and shook his head before his hands flew over the controls. The entity was surprisingly attached to it's current host and it looked like he would have to find a better way to entice it out than simply the death of the current with artificial options nearby. He injected Sovas with a countering agent to the previous injection and all but turned off the bio dampening field before starting resuscitation procedures.

Sadly Daniel wasn't completely surprised this had failed but it was still unfortunate. The last thing he wanted was for the death of an Alpha officer on his hands, however. So he worked diligently until the machines finally stopped their alarms as his vitals returned, weakly at first and then gaining strength over time. Again he let out a disappointed sigh as he worked further and waited for Sovas to re-awaken.

Eventually, Sovas returned to the land of the living; the entirety of his body ached in a way that felt as if he'd been forced to fight for hours against a much larger opponent that had held nothing back. He groaned and weakly looked around before his gaze settled on the doctor. "Were you able to remove it?"

"Apparently not." Daniel replied before pressing a hypo to Sovas' neck, putting him under with a sedative. "I'll figure this out while you rest." He turned away from the bed and made his way to his office to start reviewing the data as the sedative kicked in and Sovas was no longer conscious.

As the sedatives began to take effect, Sovas felt himself drifting and he could feel the alien presence in his mind, it felt different, weak but threatened by the efforts that had been taken to try to remove it and as his consciousness gave way to the dreamless slumber of drugs, he wondered what might happen next.

END