Emergence: Collision Course
((OOC: There is some moderately explicit torture contained herein. Nothing too shockingly graphic, but.))
_______
?Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.?
~Sigmund Freud
?He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.?
~Neil Gaiman
_______
He's headed back from sickbay carrying a PADD detailing the issue. Somehow he's been contaminated by some sort of radiation. It doesn't appear to be affecting anything around him, just himself. The source of it is somewhere in his skull, but they've got no way of neutralising it aboard the Enterprise. Until they can get to a starbase, he's confined to quarters and relieved of duties.
Scott understands the rationale behind it, can even appreciate it as something he'd order for any of his crew, although he rather hates being essentially useless. That's the last thing he quite recalls as he turns down the corridor to his room. Then his mind goes blank, the PADD drops to the deck-
_______
He wakes up, head still pounding like an all-percussion orchestra is doing a 13 city tour of his brain, and groans. He's hungry, no doubt about it, but since Ilya and Piotr are either on shift or elsewhere right now, he's not sure how he's going to get food aside from ignoring the doctor's orders and going to the mess hall.
After a bit of internal debate, he finally decides that malnutrition won't help him any with this, so he gets out of bed. It takes him a little longer than normal to pull on his uniform and boots, but he's not leaving this room in pajamas.
Pain lances through Scott's skull, like one of the members of that orchestra took the mallet for the gong and struck the back of his head with it, and he drops to the deck-
_______
It's a fairly routine sort of day for him. He spends the morning in his lab, working on some transporter theories. Mostly trying to figure out how to keep a pattern from degrading the longer it's held in the annular confinement beam, to see if a transporter can't be used as a form of stasis in the event of an emergency. Then there is 'lunch' with his lord admiral, mostly him sitting there while Archer talks, nodding and paying attention and responding verbally where indicated, and being quiet while the other man eats. The afternoon, though, promises to be interesting.
They've caught someone connected to the terrorist attack on one of the fleet yards, and brought him in for questioning. Since initial questioning indicated that the terrorist is both very important and very stubborn, they'd decided to immediately escalate to Starfleet's Chief of Interrogation.
After lunch he heads down to the interrogation deck, mostly ignoring the salutes he receives and noting the fact that he seems to be disturbing everyone he passes. Admittedly, it's not every day he walks around with a huge f*cking grin on his face, but that's no reason for a commander or two to go very pale when they see him. They should have more self control than that.
A peek into the room through the external monitors reveals a grizzled sort of man, likely in his 40s? 44 to 47? and with a face like stone. He can't wait to crack that fa?ade. He beams, punches in his access code, and all but bounces into the room. Hello tiny little wear to the stone already at the widening of the man's eyes. "Hi!" Yes, he even f*cking chirps, a bright and cheery greeting. Can't start off on the wrong foot, now can he?
"Thought I was going to get the Chief of Interrogation." The man's tone is positively derisive. Scott keeps smiling as he heads over to the wall behind the man, deciding which instrument to use first. No, no one does expect a very peppy young ensign, which is part of why he lets his enthusiasm for his work show.
He returns, holding up a set of antigrav wristcuffs. With a bit of bouncing, he undoes first one wrist restraint and attaches a cuff, then the other. The two cuffs are locked together, set at a specific amount of antigravity, and activated. The man grunts in pain as his wrists are jerked upwards, the cuffs trying to lift his entire body and failing since the man is still strapped securely to the table at abdomen, thighs, ankles, and across his upper arms and chest. Scott watches amusedly as he tries, and fails, to pull his arms back down.
"So, care to start talking?" His tone is conversational, polite, like he's asking if maybe this terrorist would like a cup of tea. How very rude that he gets spat at in return! Scott tsks and shakes a finger at him. Then he reaches over and taps the controls on the antigrav cuffs, adjusting the settings. The man's arms jerk up further with a satisfying crack and a beautiful spray of blood when the metal securing his arms cut into his flesh. The man somehow growls out a no, but makes no other sound. Rather impressive fortitude, that. Scott almost admires it.
He goes to select something else, idly licking some of the blood that splashed up onto his face off his lips. He grabs a knife, frowns when he gets a report of a sharp increase of chroniton radiation. Before he can react, there is a warning piercing his brain, and then the knife drops to the deck-
_______
Sensors on the Enterprise would register a sudden flare of some sort of radiation at the time security cameras showed Lt Cmdr Montgomery Scott disappearing into thin air; one second there and the next? not. The only sign he'd been in that corridor at all a PADD laying abandoned on the deck.
Ensigns Derechinsky and Aznaev (or Ilya and Piotr, depending on who you asked) would enter the room they shared with Ens Montgomery Scott to find it empty; the covers on his bed rumpled and one of his uniforms missing. Sensor readings would show some sort of energy, possibly radioactive, and there would be security footage of no one entering or leaving the room between the two ensigns leaving to go on shift and returning.
The cameras inside the interrogation chamber would reveal that Ens Scott simply winked out of existence. There were no sensors capable of revealing trace radiation within the room, however, tricorder readings would indicate that there had been a flare of powerful energy just prior to the time of disappearance.
However, there was nothing to show what had happened in one room in the Red Dragon Inn.
_______
The room had the air of one abandoned quite suddenly. The wardrobe was full of clothing. There were toiletries in the bathroom. Drawers, not all full, but with many items stored within. Deceptively small pouch that looked the right size for carrying money and not much else. Silver braids tucked in next to a sewing kit. Protein nibs. An oversized hamster ball off in a corner. A fluffy white tribble fast asleep on a pillow. A transporter taking up a good portion of the floor.
Boots next to a bed. The bed rumpled, clearly slept in. The covers looked as though whomever had been under them had been teleported out, because instead of being flung back or tugged out of the way, they merely had crumpled, like there had once been something under them and then nothing.
The room felt empty. Not the sort of empty you'd get from an uninhabited room, nor from even a room where the occupant had rather suddenly left. The kind of empty even worse than that of a room long left to the ravages of time. The empty you got when you walked into a room someone had died in.
If there was anyone who could operate a tricorder and had one, they'd note that a rather large burst of some sort of energy had gone through here. Maybe the right tricorder, or a being sensitive to such things, would reveal that it was chroniton radiation.
Only the universe knew what had happened, that the burst of radiation had catalysed what was occuring to the young man that had been asleep in that bed just moments prior. What had held the man there had snapped, sending the aspects of him, combined reflections of two men, back to where they'd come from, and breaking the tenuous connection to a third. What it had not accounted for was the possibility of the threads snapping so soon, in the middle of them being unwoven. What it did not yet know about was the cosmic whiplash.
((OOC: There is some moderately explicit torture contained herein. Nothing too shockingly graphic, but.))
_______
?Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.?
~Sigmund Freud
?He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.?
~Neil Gaiman
_______
He's headed back from sickbay carrying a PADD detailing the issue. Somehow he's been contaminated by some sort of radiation. It doesn't appear to be affecting anything around him, just himself. The source of it is somewhere in his skull, but they've got no way of neutralising it aboard the Enterprise. Until they can get to a starbase, he's confined to quarters and relieved of duties.
Scott understands the rationale behind it, can even appreciate it as something he'd order for any of his crew, although he rather hates being essentially useless. That's the last thing he quite recalls as he turns down the corridor to his room. Then his mind goes blank, the PADD drops to the deck-
_______
He wakes up, head still pounding like an all-percussion orchestra is doing a 13 city tour of his brain, and groans. He's hungry, no doubt about it, but since Ilya and Piotr are either on shift or elsewhere right now, he's not sure how he's going to get food aside from ignoring the doctor's orders and going to the mess hall.
After a bit of internal debate, he finally decides that malnutrition won't help him any with this, so he gets out of bed. It takes him a little longer than normal to pull on his uniform and boots, but he's not leaving this room in pajamas.
Pain lances through Scott's skull, like one of the members of that orchestra took the mallet for the gong and struck the back of his head with it, and he drops to the deck-
_______
It's a fairly routine sort of day for him. He spends the morning in his lab, working on some transporter theories. Mostly trying to figure out how to keep a pattern from degrading the longer it's held in the annular confinement beam, to see if a transporter can't be used as a form of stasis in the event of an emergency. Then there is 'lunch' with his lord admiral, mostly him sitting there while Archer talks, nodding and paying attention and responding verbally where indicated, and being quiet while the other man eats. The afternoon, though, promises to be interesting.
They've caught someone connected to the terrorist attack on one of the fleet yards, and brought him in for questioning. Since initial questioning indicated that the terrorist is both very important and very stubborn, they'd decided to immediately escalate to Starfleet's Chief of Interrogation.
After lunch he heads down to the interrogation deck, mostly ignoring the salutes he receives and noting the fact that he seems to be disturbing everyone he passes. Admittedly, it's not every day he walks around with a huge f*cking grin on his face, but that's no reason for a commander or two to go very pale when they see him. They should have more self control than that.
A peek into the room through the external monitors reveals a grizzled sort of man, likely in his 40s? 44 to 47? and with a face like stone. He can't wait to crack that fa?ade. He beams, punches in his access code, and all but bounces into the room. Hello tiny little wear to the stone already at the widening of the man's eyes. "Hi!" Yes, he even f*cking chirps, a bright and cheery greeting. Can't start off on the wrong foot, now can he?
"Thought I was going to get the Chief of Interrogation." The man's tone is positively derisive. Scott keeps smiling as he heads over to the wall behind the man, deciding which instrument to use first. No, no one does expect a very peppy young ensign, which is part of why he lets his enthusiasm for his work show.
He returns, holding up a set of antigrav wristcuffs. With a bit of bouncing, he undoes first one wrist restraint and attaches a cuff, then the other. The two cuffs are locked together, set at a specific amount of antigravity, and activated. The man grunts in pain as his wrists are jerked upwards, the cuffs trying to lift his entire body and failing since the man is still strapped securely to the table at abdomen, thighs, ankles, and across his upper arms and chest. Scott watches amusedly as he tries, and fails, to pull his arms back down.
"So, care to start talking?" His tone is conversational, polite, like he's asking if maybe this terrorist would like a cup of tea. How very rude that he gets spat at in return! Scott tsks and shakes a finger at him. Then he reaches over and taps the controls on the antigrav cuffs, adjusting the settings. The man's arms jerk up further with a satisfying crack and a beautiful spray of blood when the metal securing his arms cut into his flesh. The man somehow growls out a no, but makes no other sound. Rather impressive fortitude, that. Scott almost admires it.
He goes to select something else, idly licking some of the blood that splashed up onto his face off his lips. He grabs a knife, frowns when he gets a report of a sharp increase of chroniton radiation. Before he can react, there is a warning piercing his brain, and then the knife drops to the deck-
_______
Sensors on the Enterprise would register a sudden flare of some sort of radiation at the time security cameras showed Lt Cmdr Montgomery Scott disappearing into thin air; one second there and the next? not. The only sign he'd been in that corridor at all a PADD laying abandoned on the deck.
Ensigns Derechinsky and Aznaev (or Ilya and Piotr, depending on who you asked) would enter the room they shared with Ens Montgomery Scott to find it empty; the covers on his bed rumpled and one of his uniforms missing. Sensor readings would show some sort of energy, possibly radioactive, and there would be security footage of no one entering or leaving the room between the two ensigns leaving to go on shift and returning.
The cameras inside the interrogation chamber would reveal that Ens Scott simply winked out of existence. There were no sensors capable of revealing trace radiation within the room, however, tricorder readings would indicate that there had been a flare of powerful energy just prior to the time of disappearance.
However, there was nothing to show what had happened in one room in the Red Dragon Inn.
_______
The room had the air of one abandoned quite suddenly. The wardrobe was full of clothing. There were toiletries in the bathroom. Drawers, not all full, but with many items stored within. Deceptively small pouch that looked the right size for carrying money and not much else. Silver braids tucked in next to a sewing kit. Protein nibs. An oversized hamster ball off in a corner. A fluffy white tribble fast asleep on a pillow. A transporter taking up a good portion of the floor.
Boots next to a bed. The bed rumpled, clearly slept in. The covers looked as though whomever had been under them had been teleported out, because instead of being flung back or tugged out of the way, they merely had crumpled, like there had once been something under them and then nothing.
The room felt empty. Not the sort of empty you'd get from an uninhabited room, nor from even a room where the occupant had rather suddenly left. The kind of empty even worse than that of a room long left to the ravages of time. The empty you got when you walked into a room someone had died in.
If there was anyone who could operate a tricorder and had one, they'd note that a rather large burst of some sort of energy had gone through here. Maybe the right tricorder, or a being sensitive to such things, would reveal that it was chroniton radiation.
Only the universe knew what had happened, that the burst of radiation had catalysed what was occuring to the young man that had been asleep in that bed just moments prior. What had held the man there had snapped, sending the aspects of him, combined reflections of two men, back to where they'd come from, and breaking the tenuous connection to a third. What it had not accounted for was the possibility of the threads snapping so soon, in the middle of them being unwoven. What it did not yet know about was the cosmic whiplash.