Torn and Shredded

Posted on Thu 2nd Nov, 2017 @ 11:39am by Colonel Horatio Drake & Commander Paul Graves PsyD

737 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: For The Uniform
Location: Deck 83: Main Sickbay
Timeline: Post-Bretagne

ON

It was that uneasy and troubling feeling that one gets when waking from a long nap that Drake was experiencing now. His eyes slowly opened, to a blurred and bright environment, his senses kicking into overdrive. Even though he had an instinctual feeling he wasn't in any danger, that feeling of panic still presented itself. He tried to pull himself up, only being half successful in the endeavour with every muscle feeling tense and stiff.

Paul watched as Drake awoke and felt his sudden disquiet. He reached a hand forward and touched Drake's arm. "It's all right, Colonel. You're back on Vanguard, in Sickbay. How are you feeling?"

Drake tried to swallow but his mouth and throat had never felt so dry - there was nothing to swallow. He started coughing and reached for the beaker on his bed side table. Paul obliged and helped him with it.

"Horrendous. The Bretagne, did we... there was someone else on the ship... the bodies were...". He was completely confused.

It had been a long night. By 30 minutes after the first missed check-in from the Bretagne, Paul had grown concerned. As the time stretched to the halfway mark for the next check-in, he'd consulted with Graham Winchester. When the second check-in was missed, he had ordered the Warspite to go out and determine what had happened.

Having to remain on Vanguard while the Warspite went off had galled him because he was sick with worry for Drake and Hunt both. They were too far away for him to sense with psionics, and upon their return he'd found them both in medical isolation and heavily sedated. Now Hunt had been medically transferred off of Vanguard, and there was only Drake, Dr. Addams' medical scans, and the mission logs left to tell him what had happened.

Dr. Addams had assured him that Drake had not suffered from hypoxia for very long, but it had been a near thing.

Drake took a deep breath and pulled himself up a little, his muscles felt like they were on fire. "We gained access to Main Engineering and managed to get some secondary systems back online. However primary communications and thrusters had to be access from the Bridge." He recounted the scene in engineering, the defence that the crew had clearly tried to put up to apparent intruders. He went onto to explain this to Paul and how the shuttle had seemingly been destroyed.

"It was soon after leaving Engineering that strange things started happening, we were clearly both in a heightened sense of anxiousness and I think I had a concussion from my fall in engineering. One particular body of a crewman had seemingly moved in the time that we were in engineering. I remember I had the overwhelming feeling that we weren't alone on the ship."

He struggled some more and took another sip of water. "I remember getting to the Bridge, it took us a little over three hours. I was in a fairly bad state at that point. We managed to retrieve some of the Captains' Logs... nothing seemed amiss, although she had started to note strange behaviours in some of the crew." He rubbed his eyes. "I was convinced that Hunt knew more than he was letting on... that somehow he had planned for my condition to become worse. I don't know if it was the concussion or I was suffering from paranoia for some other reason."

"It was a viral neuropathogen," Paul said. "They brought the two of you here in strict isolation. It stimulated your amygdala and various other parts of your brain, causing a neurochemical chain reaction that occurs when a person is deeply frightened. The result of it was that your body produced elevated blood glucose because you were afraid, and the virus fed off of that." Paul winced. "I gather it continues feeding and multiplying until a patient either dies of fear or dies because other infected people fear him." He paused. "When you arrived here, you were both so deeply unconscious that I could barely sense you. They had to knock you both out, to starve the virus."

Drake took a deep breath, regretting it almost straight away due to the pain his ribs were inflicting on him. He broke eye contact and his mind drifted... "An entire crew, who died by their own hands...". That was terrifying.

 

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