Losing It

Posted on Thu Nov 26th, 2020 @ 7:09pm by Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant Commander Savin

Mission: The Shadow of Arachne
Location: Engineering
Timeline: MD-05 after "Red Handed"
1833 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Finnley followed Reed’s orders and returned to her quarters, yet it wasn’t very relaxing or restful. She couldn’t shake the images of the previous apparitions and encounters. So far she had tried reading her favorite book, listening to classical music and watching reruns of surfing competitions. Hell, she even lit a candle, but nothing worked. Ready to give up, FInnley looked at the clock. An hour had passed. Reed said ‘some rest’. One hour classifies as some right? She thought as she got up, straightened out her uniform and grabbed a padd from the table. Having satisfied the doctor’s requirement, in her mind at least, she left her quarters and made for engineering.

The hum of the engines was soothing as Finnley arrived. She started a standard set of diagnostics and then walked to the CEO’s office to look at reports. The office had sat empty for days, since the CEO had been out of commission. It seemed empty and cold. Broken glass littered the desktop from the photos that once lined the surface with memories from the CEO’s life. Finnley wiped the glass to the floor and respectfully placed what was left of the photos in a drawer before sitting down and diving into the pile of padds containing the latest engineering updates.

One padd stood out from the rest, placed on top of the pile. It was Savin’s. He had stopped by and requested some updates for his speech to text algorithms which she had completed a few days ago. With everything else going on, Finnley had forgotten to let him know it was ready.

“Keating to Lieutenant Savin,” she tapped her combadge to inform the counselor that his equipment was ready.

Alerted by the vibration on his combadge, Savin pulled out his old PADD and reviewed the message that was relayed to it. "Savin here, go ahead lieutenant."

"I have your upgraded padd ready in engineering if you'd like to pick it up." Finnley responded.

"On my way." Savin put his PADD away and made his way over to engineering. "Lieutenant Keating?" he called out as soon as he entered the usually busy hub of the ship. It wasn't a place he visited often, since he really had no business being here.

“Over he…” she stopped mid sentence and got up from the desk, remembering that there was a reason he needed a padd with speech to text. Finnley walked over to Savin and handed him the padd. “Here you go lieutenant. It should work better than the last version. Sorry it took me so long to get it to you, it’s been sitting on the desk for a few days and I just forgot to let you know it was ready.” She confessed. Repairs had been going on non-stop in engineering and a padd update had been the last thing on her mind.

"It happens," Savin answered brightly as he pulled out the old PADD and handed it to her, before putting the new one in his pocket. "Perhaps you can find a new use for this one?" He smiled at her. "I understand things have been busy here, and my old one did still function."

Finnley smiled, “I’m sure I’ll find something to do with this o..” She was cut off by an alarm. Furrowing her brows she looked to the side and stepped to the console. Finnley’s concern grew as she realized power was surging in the core and quickly started to implement the procedure to bring it back down by sending the excess energy through the deflector array, but something was blocking the rerouting protocols.

The numbers continued to climb. No one else seemed to notice, but engineering was also more empty than usual with much of the crew tasked with repairs in other areas. She had never seen a cascade failure happen this quickly without warning before and if she’d had the time to think about it, she may have realized that perhaps this scenario was also a hallucination. But there was no time for logical thought processes, there was only time to react.

Unaware of the alarm, Savin started back towards the door when suddenly all the lights in engineering went out. He froze in place, a cold chill running down his spine. "Lieutenant?" he called out, turning around and taking a careful step back towards his point of departure. His hands outstretched in the hope of not running into anything.

Keating looked back at Savin when he called out, but she didn’t have time to help him. The lights had gone out as EPS conduits blew, unable to handle the power load. Flickering lights had become almost common place since the Athena had sustained extensive damage, but this scenario was different than the others. The surge had penetrated into the warp core and it was going to overload, leaving them only one option. Eject this core and hope the other two remain stable. Had most of the engineering crew not been busily working on repairs or had the lights not gone out someone might have been able to stop the, in reality, unneeded ejection. She entered the sequence of ejection commands as the console's came back up with emergency power.

Communications were seemingly down as she tried to give the bridge a status update after ejecting the core. Failing to get a signal through to anyone, Finnley grabbed a flashlight and then ran over to Savin. She placed the flashlight in his hand so that he could see once more. “Major power surge took out the lights and the core had to be ejected. I’d have come over to help you sooner if it wasn’t for that. Communications seem to be down. I’ve tried hailing the bridge a few times now.” She brought him up to speed.

Unaware the item in his hand was a flashlight, it remained dark for the Romulan counselor and thus he was unaware the chief engineer had spoken to him. He flinched as he was touched, slapping the hand that had given him the flashlight away in reflex, dropping the item in the process. "Lieutenant?" he called out, wondering why he wasn't even sensing her. What was going on?

“I’m right here!” She said, frustratingly knowing that he wasn’t hearing her. Finnley grabbed the flashlight off of the ground and turned it on. She waved in front of him in the light to grab his attention.

Unease was visible on the counselor's face as he stood rooted to the spot, hands slightly raised as if to ward some unseen monster off, or prevent himself from walking into something should he dare to take a single step. Disoriented, unable to see or sense anything, Savin took a small step forward, breathing harshly as he did so. "Finnley?" he called, resorting to the woman's first name. "Why is it dark... where are you... why can I not sense you?"

“What do you mean dark? I have the flashlight shining right on me!” Finnley exclaimed, though Savin didn’t seem to notice. She reached out once more to touch him, unsure of what else to do. There was no other way to communicate with him if something had caused him to lose sight. Right before her hand reached his shoulder, the lights came back on.

Relieved, she looked around to check that the crew was ok, but the crew wasn’t there. Instead, the only beings buzzing around in engineering seemed to be Breen. What the hell? Finn cursed and quickly grabbed Savin, pulling him towards a jefferies tube.

Feeling the hand that grabbed his, Savin steeled himself for a mental barrage of emotions as he was swiftly pulled into a blind run. "What happened? Where are we going. Who is this?" Despite the expected barrage, none had come, which frightened the Romulan counselor even more. No sight, no ESP... what was going on? Why had he suddenly lost it all? His breath quickened as he stumbled along, having to trust whoever was herding him to keep him from running into things or tripping over items.

Finnley practically shoved Savin into a jefferies tube and pushed him to start crawling until she felt they were a safe enough distance away from the Breen infested main engineering. Pausing for a moment, she tried to think of a way to communicate with the counselor who seemed to be both blind and deaf. Touch was the only reasonable sense left to exploit, but how? She wondered.

Morse code, the answer came in the form of a memory. It was something her father had taught her years ago, but it wasn’t used very much anymore. Yet, it was the only option she could think of. She put a hand on Savin’s shoulder, almost as a warning and then started tapping away. Short, short, long, short, she started tapping ‘Finn’ on the Romulan’s shoulder, hoping that by some miracle he understood the code.

The tapping startled him, it made no sense until he realized there was a pattern to it. But what did the pattern mean? Part in rapid succession, part with pauses in between. But what was this person trying to tell him? He was breathing fast now, disoriented and afraid. "What is going on?" he asked again, "where are we?" He didn't recognize anything which he touched with his hand. He felt nothing beyond mere touch when the person touched him. The counselor sat frozen, unwilling, and somewhat unable to move.

Finn let out an audible groan, frustrated that morse code was not in Savin’s knowledge base. She knew that he likely needed to go to sickbay since she had no idea what could’ve caused his sudden loss of sense. However, a large portion of the ship could be controlled from engineering which, in her mind, was now in the hands of the Breen. Not to mention she needed to get in contact with the bridge to let them know what was going on, assuming they didn’t already know. Perhaps she could get comms and do something to help in one of the other engineering rooms, she thought.

Completely reliant on the person with him, Savin had no idea where they were going. He didn't understand why, from one second to the other he had lost both his sight and his ESP. it was frightening and worrying. "I need sickbay," he finally said, "I need you to take me to sickbay. Something is wrong, indeed to know why."

With her mind made up to get to saucer section engineering first and sickbay later, she nudged the counselor to keep moving. Savin begrudgingly obliged, having not much choice in the matter, and together they crawled. All the while Finnley hoped that their destination would be filled with the Athena’s engineers and not the Breen.