Death: Nothing Personal

Posted on Fri 7th Oct, 2022 @ 7:05pm by Renato Solis & Lieutenant JG Kellian Michaels & Arik Telsamvi & Makila i'Hartelhai

2,164 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: The Hunted
Location: Brown Sector
Timeline: MD-5, 0630 hours

"Healer!" Young Arik called out to her as she walked down the corridor. "Healer. I need your help"

"Arik! "

"Come, please honored healer."

"Arik, what's so urgent..."

"I daren't say. Just....just come please." Reaching out boldly, he grasped her hand. He was afraid, deeply afraid and he needed her to do something. The transference made her wince and nod. Still grasping her hand and tugged her along behind her. They went down into the Brown Sector, and past the Dawnstar. Winding around the tunnels whose apertures were getting smaller and smaller, ending up deeper into Brown Sector than she'd ever been before and Makila had lost where she was going. She did not like being lost down here, and the nerves were beginning to affect her.

"Arik, where are you bringing me?"

"I'm not even sure I should Healer. It's an unaffiliated area, technically."

"What does that even mean?"

"It's hard to scrape a life from this area, especially when someone is unaffiliated. The factions bring safety, but also danger of a more violent end." The young man shrugged and continued. "I promised Momma that I wouldn't gang up. She was a Scarlet, and Papa died before she did...so they didn't force her to do anything you know?"

"I know. I don't like it though."

"No one likes it Healer, but we survive."

"Some of you..."

Arik made an odd gesture and Makila felt the plea from him, a prayer for safety perhaps? His emotions in that moment were very strong and Makila felt deeply saddened for the boy. He was growing she noted, for he was taller than the first time he'd come to wake her from a dead sleep. His ankles showed white under his tattered trousers.

"In here Healer. There's..." he gulped, visibly afraid "There's a shade here."

"Please tell me you don't mean..." She trailed off when Arik pulled the door open. There was something, more than one something in the corner of the room. A faint glow of greenish light, just a pinpoint illuminated what looked like a bed. There was a form on it, it moved but not in the way something alive would. Then, it hit her. The odor was a physical presence when the door opened, but she bore it stoically biting her lip. The smell was that of death, ancient and merciless. Sharp, sweet and cloying and the scent made her want to vomit. The smell of it was vaguely familiar, and she couldn't place why.

"Oh mercy..." she whispered after a moment her hand covering her mouth. It took swallowing a few times before the feeling eased. Arik wasn't so lucky and she could hear him sprint down the hallway retching up whatever he'd eaten that day. Tears welled up in her eyes at the despair that permeated this area. Whomever had been living here was dead, and for a while.

"Dr. i'Hartelhai to Lieutenant Michaels." Please be awake. Please don't let me wake you with this.

A moment later, her comm device chimed. Michaels to...Dr. i'Hartelhai. What can I do for you, Doctor? Kellian's voice asked through the speaker.

"I need you...in your official capacity to my location." His voice soothed her, even despite the situation and she tucked that tidbit away in her mind for the future. She'd need to think on THAT, but not now.

A pause. I'll be there right away. I see you're pretty deep into Brown Sector, Doctor. What is the situation? Kellian asked.

"I am not entirely certain, and I do not wish to disturb the scene without you. I might suggest bringing a respirator mask." She had hers out, and was considering using it as the scent of death and disease was not fading from their sharpness in her nostrils. It was a tiny one that she could place on the bridge of her nose and it would filter the air coming to both mouth and nose with a filtration field.

I'm getting odd readings from there, Kellian said over the commlink. Are you in immediate danger?

"I do not believe so." Makila answered "Arik?" she directed the inquiry to the boy

The young man returned looking shaky and green but now in control of his stomach at least. There was sweat on his brow and he played with his dirty hair for a moment. "No healer, I would not bring you into danger in that fashion. I have more honor than that" His voice cracked on the last word and Arik looked affronted at the betrayal of his body.

"I'm on my way," Kellian said and broke the connection.

* * *

Kellian frowned at the computer screen he'd been reading when Makila's call had come in. The scan of her vicinity had shown high concentrations of cadaverine and putrescine in the air, but Makila hadn't mentioned finding a body. As she was a doctor, that struck him as odd. For her to report that she wasn't certain what she had found when the smell had to be obvious was odder still. Also, the readings had seemed...off, somehow--unusually elevated levels of the biogenic amines and too much background energy in the room. He tapped his combadge.

"Lt. Michaels of Starfleet Security, to Brown Sector Constabulary. Come in, please."

Brown Sector Constabulary here. What is it, Fleet? a bored-sounding voice inquired.

"Courtesy call because of jurisdiction," Kellian replied. "I've been requested to come down there to investigate an unspecified situation in section N-46. I suspect a body. Can you keep the dogs off?"

A body? Kellian heard a moment of fluent swearing. Yeah, come on down; we'll shoo Yolo away from the lifts. We're not equipped to handle a body; I don't care how good Renato is--and we don't need that stinking up the place, either.

"A possible body," Kellian corrected him. "We'll be there in about ten minutes."

Make it sooner, and I'll buy you a beer, the voice said. Somebody'll meet you at N-46. Dieklin out.

Kellian went to the main forensics lab and glanced about for Muffet. He walked over to her.

"How bored are you at the moment?" Kellian asked. "There's a body--I think--down in Brown Sector. Dr. i'Hartelhai from the Dawnstar Clinic requested we have a look. Interested, or is this something you can't interrupt?" he asked, glancing at the test she was performing.

Muffet Langston looked up from the results of a uranium-lead series she was running. "Nothing that won't keep," she answered, shutting down her equipment. "Let me get a field kit." she waited for Kellian to step out of her path and then picked up a fresh shoulder bag containing what she'd need. She felt like she was doing enough stepping around Kellian lately; she didn't need to do so, literally. "Let's go," she commented, turning back to face him.

Kellian also retrieved a field kit and walked with her. "I scanned the area where she called us from. It's pretty bad, almost 8000 ppm of cadaverine and putrescine in there." He shook his head. "Thank you for coming; I just wish it weren't likely to be so extremely unpleasant."

"That's the job, though, isn't it?" Muffet asked, her voice becoming a touch bitter. "No one ever invites us to an ice cream social, or to chew fruit-flavored sugar wax. No; no one wants to spend time with a giant spider unless there's something else, something more horrible and unpleasant to distract them from the extra legs and eyes."

"I have noticed the woeful lack of invitations to wine and cheese parties," Kellian agreed. "Once people find out you're a forensics specialist, they react in one of two ways. Either they're fascinated to the point of obsession, or they don't quite know how to talk to you, even if you're not a giant spider."

Muffet wasn't sure at what point she'd veered from the professional to the personal, but Michaels had clearly not picked up on it. Already regretting the whole discussion, she handed over a breath mask and paid attention to where they were going.

"Thanks," Kellian said and accepted the breath mask from Muffet. "For such a cosmopolitan starbase, there ought to be plenty of people here who wouldn't mind talking with you or becoming friends with you. I mean--I don't consider myself that unusual a guy. If I can see how fine a person you are, others ought to be able to see it, too."

Muffet just started at him for a long moment. Did he seriously just give me the "you're great, just not for me" speech? she thought incredulously. What's next? "I love you like a sister"? "So," she said aloud, "Corpse."

Now we're back to strictly business? Kellian thought. If this keeps up I'm going to get whiplash. "Corpse," he agreed. "Except Makila--Dr. i'Hartelhaii--didn't say there was one, despite the air quality readings in the room. So I am beginning to think corpse and whatever it is she can't explain."

* * *

Makila had yet to get all the way in the room. Arik was right in a way, there was a psychic spillover here and she was having to reinforce her mental defenses. She was unpracticed and sloppy about it but it worked. "Arik."

"Honored healer?"

"Tell me what is going on here"

"There is a shade here...it kills in the darkness and leaves people marked. They go mad and they vanish. I do jobs back here and...". The boy gagged, swallowed and met her with eyes swimming. "It's never smelled like that or....moved like that.".

"When was the last time you were here?"

"When the Scarlet second cut the power. 6 days?"

"I thought it was unaffiliated...."

"It is, healer. But that doesn't mean it is untouched. No one claims it so all may walk here."

Makila pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered under her breath in Rihannsu.

Renato had been asleep, Hasskin wasnt feeling well and Renato had applied his gentle touch therapies to soothe the lad's troubles. The call startled them both. He was dressed in an instant, the community center was never short of a mother awake at any hour, and he left the surrogate son he never wanted to chase a shadow in the night.

The lights had been disabled deliberately, and now he was wishing the damned emergency fluorescents would stop flickering their melodic hum void of pitch, in sync with a maddening strobe. The call was in the 800 block, 2243 was a rough area all around. The people here struggled for work, or hid from the law, were forgotten, or in many cases, left all alone. He checked once again and made sure the palm stunner was charged as he entered the corridor in a clip. The smell was enough to cause complete misery. There was however, information here. Something had died; the sickly-sweet smell of death hit him like a wall, to the point of almost overpowering the scents of body odor, traces of joy dust, old vomit, and less savoury scents.

"What do you mean, it leaves people marked?". Makila was exhausted trying to get information out of the boy.

Arik gestured to his face, making a dotting gesture with thumb and forefinger together. "Marked. Purply-red and then they become like....old cheese."

"What is a shade?" Renato had been observing silently from afar, and broke his silence to ask.

Arik shuddered and looked pleadingly at Makila who laid a hand on his shoulder. "Deep breath, Arik." The doctor instructed and Arik obeyed without thought. The boy visibly calmed and a line of pain appeared briefly between her eyebrows.

"It's a shade, a spectre that steals people's minds. They go mad, and no one misses them until the factions come looking for the lost."

Renato dared not go any closer, then. His eyes took in the dark room, the stench of sickness was pressed onto him. His telepathy was mostly close range and touch based, but the feelings he got were void. This shade wasn't intelligent as best he knew, it would require more than observation. He wanted to ask for more, but Kellian had made it procedure to have the scene secured first. Building trust meant practicing restraint, the station could provide tools for the investigation. As though summoned, he heard footfalls of an adult and child. Kellian, but who was with them?

It felt like Arik wasn't telling her all of what he knew. But, the sound of approaching footsteps stopped her from questioning him at length. She could do that in privacy later. Looking up, she saw the strong silhouette of Kellian and the other sound was associated with a very very large spider. That could only be his Arachne friend and coworker Muffet if she remembered the name correctly. Swallowing hard, she murmured "The cavalry has arrived."

 

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