Redimō (Part One)

Posted on Thu Jul 6th, 2023 @ 12:39pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: Ray's House
Timeline: MD7 - 0200
2647 words - 5.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Finn immediately recognized the scent of oil and metal. She had spent plenty of time here fixing knick-knacks with her father when she was younger but hadn't visited the place in years. Quinn had gotten tired of having to drive to this old garage. They never took the transporter because the space existed in a physics research area where deep space research was conducted and as such, the use of most electronics was prohibited when in the zone due to interference with the sensitive equipment. Finn's parents had once lived here before she was born, and this garage was all that was left of the property.

"Does someone want to tell me what's going on? And why we're in the old garage? Better yet, why we transported here? Won't they have noticed the signal?" Finn looked at her dad.

"I masked the transport signal under some testing transmissions the research team is doing this week. We got lucky that this is an active week for them. They'll see some interference but nothing that should cause an alarm or make them come looking. As for the rest, I think you two better bring me up to speed first. Lieutenant P’rel? What happened? You don't look so good. If I know what happened, I may be able to help," Quinn had at least completed field medic training and kept up to date on it.

P'rel was aware she was becoming increasingly dizzy, not yet to the point of losing control but certainly noticeable and progressively worse; her heart rate had become highly arrhythmic. "Whatever was meant for Finnley, has regrettably been deposited into me instead. I suspect that Vulcan phys...phys..." P'rel struggled to finish her sentence as she held her temples in a futile attempt to dull the sharpening pain there. "I will be fine" she said, placing the pain in a separate pocket of her mind and closing it off.

Cameron looked to the Vulcan who was becoming rapidly more pale, and then to the other two; Colonel Keating being the direction of his attention for the moment. "You're not very good at this. The old garage she said?" Cameron scoffed, "Now I know where we are. How's the wife doing by the way?" he taunted.

"Finn, did you see what he did?" Quinn compartmentalized Cameron's comment. He would deal with that shortly. They needed to solve P'rel's problem first.

"Yes, I have the hypospray he used," she replied as she placed the device on a hidden console and commanded the computer to evaluate it. As soon as it spit back the makeup of the trace internal chemicals, Quinn replicated what he hoped would work as an antidote.

"Sodium thiocyanate, it should counteract the toxin. If not it'll at least slow its roll. Either way, we won't have much time," he injected the drug into P'rel's neck. "I wasn't planning to need anything other than the transporter. That combined with the replicator and the computer's analysis will be enough to make the science team come looking for what's been throwing off their signals. I estimate we have ten minutes."

"Feel any better yet?" Quinn grabbed P'rel's shoulder.

P'rel nodded silently, the intensity of the dizziness had begun to subside marginally. "I -" she began, when Colonel Keating turned his attention away from her.

"You son of a..." The Colonel hit Cameron, hard across the jaw. "Don't you dare threaten my wife." His eyes were lit with a flame of anger. "I don't have time for this right now but if one hair is harmed on her head, you will pay."

"Colonel" P'rel interjected, returning the gesture and placing a hand on his shoulder; "we have little time..." she exhaled deeply, trying to suppress the distinct feeling of unwellness. The Sodium Thiocyanate was certainly helping, but if Cameron's hypospray had been meant to induce a stroke in a human she was still in risky territory, even with superior Vulcan physiology.

Cameron grunted as his head shunted over when the Colonel's hand connected. Spitting blood, he doubled down; if he could get the man wound up enough to be a problem, it would take valuable time from them. "Thursday today Colonel. The day she guest lectures? Room 221B...Building...7...?" he laughed, feigning difficulty in remembering whilst trying to taunt another reaction. "Accidents do happ-"

This time Finn kicked him in the gut, interrupting his line of speech. "Keep your damn mouth shut."

"Thanks, sweetheart," her dad smirked. "Now let's get out of here. What do you say we give your Uncle Ray a visit?".

"He'll love that," Finn chuckled as her father set up the site-to-site transporter and calibrated it to deliver them to the remote section of California forest where her uncle resided. Ray was an old Marine friend of Quinn's that had been around since before Finn was born and therefore was more family than a friend—a skilled medic and all-around great guy, if not a little rough around the edges.

Alarms blared as they arrived. Ray had always enjoyed his privacy and had maintained early arrival warning systems to protect it. From what, no one ever really knew.

"Geezes Uncle Ray, couldn't you tell it was us?" Finn asked as the Marine medic appeared with a phaser pointed in their direction.

"It's not really polite to intrude without warning with a couple of unknown guests you know. Who are these two?" He nodded towards P'Rel and Cameron.

"Lieutenant P'Rel and an ass," Quinn responded as he typed something into Ray's transporter. "I'll explain everything in a minute, I promise. In the meantime, the lieutenant here was injected with some sort of toxin. I may have slowed it down but I'm not sure it'll totally fix the problem, can you help?"

"Oh sure, I love working with Vulcans. They're so kind and never condescending or anything," he sarcastically bowed. "I suppose I'm at your service, this way." Ray motioned across the room.

"Superfluously so..." P'rel commented, irked that as a Doctor she was more than capable than the field medic who was basically trained to put a bandage on. She took a step and her right foot collapsed a little, only elevating her dizziness and causing her to reach out to the newest Keating for support. "though perhaps I am in error..." she added, moving off to a small medical terminal with "Uncle Ray". She looked around the room; the medical terminal, a transporter relay, a rifle stack on the wall and a locked armoury cabinet containing whatever this man had decided was too dangerous to not be out on display. Twisting her head the other way she saw a rack of personnel restraints, various electronic surveillance apparatus and nodes - conspicuously 'hidden' behind a stack of crates with Klingon writing stating something along the lines of a rough translation to 'DANGER: ACCIDENTAL EXPLOSIONS DUE TO MISHANDLING PREVENT ENTRY TO STO'VOKOR'. .

Finn's mother, Kacey, appeared only moments later, having been pulled from her guest lecture by Quinn who was unwilling to risk any harm to her even though he doubted the threats from Cameron. "Sorry, dear, Commander Cameron here seemed to threaten your guest lecture today so I had to take measures into my own hands," Quinn embraced his wife in a hug. "I'm glad to see you're alright."

"You could've just called and asked. Why are we at Ray's?"

'Ray' and P'rel moved back towards the main group, a series of hyposprays and she was out of danger, more or less. The stroke inducing serum had been delayed by her Vulcan physiology but it was still working, probably saved only by the dosage required to look like a genuinely natural death in a human. Her vascular constriction had began to lessen and the anticoagulants in her blood were preventing the situation from worsening, though she now felt exhausted and weak, and imagined she looked about the same as she felt.

"Actually, I'm still waiting on an answer for that myself. Lovely to see you Kace," Ray sauntered back into the main room and looked between Finn and Quinn. "Your Vulcan friend will be fine, it'll just take some recovery time. Now do you want to clue me in as to what this surprise party is for?"

"Basically there's this whole conspiracy," Finn started talking, moving her arms as she went. "You heard about the bombing at the academy right? Well now they're trying to blame the Captain from my ship and it's part of a deeper plot to destabilize the federation and blah blah blah, you get the point. Anyway, I turned myself in as a prosecution's witness to testify against him, which I didn't enjoy, and lie on the stand about supplying the weapon for the bombing in order to find some sort of in on what was going on. I was arrested and then Commander Cameron here so politely revealed himself in my jail cell. He knows more, we just need to figure out what."

Ray and Kacey stood dumbfounded at the oddly simplified yet mind-blowing news. Ray, being the paranoid old Marine that he was, knew this day would come. Kacey on the other hand was just taken aback that anything like this could happen and that her whole family had somehow gotten involved in the turmoil.

"Ray, I need to get a couple of the guys together. You know what to do," Quinn interrupted the silence.

"On it bossman. Make yourselves at home, I'll be back soon," he started to walk towards the door but gave Finn a slight nudge on the way out. "Good to see ya kid. You'll have to catch me up on your adventures later."

"Now," Quinn turned his attention back to Cameron. "Care to tell me a little more about what's going on? As you can see, you don't have much leverage anymore."

Pulling his hand away from his stomach and returning to an upright kneeling position, Cameron looked at the array of people before him. His biggest leverage stood before him, rendering him now unable to manipulate the Colonel directly. An idea - "Mrs Keating!" he called, as the wife started to move away; "Your husband and daughter are going to spend their lives in prison for this. You'll be alone. Forever. Convince them to end this, and I can make everything disappear".

P'rel moved close to Cameron and looked him in the eyes; "If I were not too weakened to mind meld with you, I would do so and extract every piece of useful information, before liquifying your brain...".

"But you are too weak" Cameron quipped back rapidly. "Mrs Keating?" he asked again, beaming a smug smile at her.

"I think you misjudge how interested in being alone I am. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have a Marine around when you're trying to do physics research?" Kacey smiled at Quinn. She of course wasn't interested in being alone at all but knew her husband well enough to not get involved. "I will however help you by giving you a piece of advice. Tell them what they want to know. I can't speak for everyone hear, but I can say you don't want to get on this one's bad side," she pointed toward her husband. "I'll make us some lunch. I'm sure Ray won't mind if I use his kitchen, assuming he has anything edible in the fridge. Let me know if you need me."

Finn chuckled. "Didn't really work out the way you hoped, eh? Now how much more of this runaround and desperation do we have to go through before you talk to us?"

Cameron watched as she disappeared further into the house, looking around again he admittedly didn't fancy his options; the Colonel, who looked like he could break a man's neck just by looking at him; the Vulcan, an unpredictable V'Tosh with a bad headache; and the engineer who had at this point nothing to lose... He sighed. "I assume I don't have the benefit of witness immunity then?". He spat out the latest accumulation of blood from his mouth onto the floor.

"Colonel Keating...please, encourage the prisoner to be more forthcoming..." P'rel said, not breaking her gaze from Cameron.

Quinn sighed, though only internally. Despite his gruff exterior he was totally soft on the inside and though he was willing to do whatever was necessary, he didn't enjoy it. He nodded towards P'Rel and then lashed out, grasping Cameron's head by his hair and pulling his other fist back. "I wonder how you'll look without all those teeth," he said in a low and threatening tone as he practically pulled Cameron's hair from his skull.

"Alright alright" Cameron winced, holding his hands up in a futile effort to shield himself from the enormous marine. "But this isn't going to end well for you. Any of you..." he said, menacingly nodding towards the door where Kacey Keating had disappeared through.

"Stop making idle threats and talk dammit," this time Quinn let his fist make contact. "We don't have all day!"

Finn watched, both in anticipation and horror. They needed the information, but she didn't particularly enjoy the way they were going about it. Glimpses of her time on the other side of a cell with her friend Tolbar surfaced and she winced as her father punched Cameron.

Cameron looked up at Commander Keating and grinned through broken bloodied teeth, he could feel he had a cut somewhere above his left eye as well, and his eyelid flickered from the drops of blood beginning to invade his vision. "I do" he said wickedly, wondering if he could hold out for long enough whether he might be found. Still, it was the middle of the night, and he didn't much fancy a whole day of this. There had to be some way to stop it, not least of all because whatever 'they' would do to him would be much worse if he talked. "We did this to her you know. On Rondac. And her friend. What was his name...?" he smugly smirked at the Commander.

Tolbar, Finn thought. She had finally started to heal and recover from her time on Rondac and lately, she had been so distracted that she hadn't even thought of the past. Now it suddenly rushed back like a massive wave and she felt sick. Was the uniform worth it? The words echoed through her mind as they had before.

P'rel stepped forward and placed a hand on Keating's shoulder. That cut her. Deeply. She almost felt it herself. She echoed the words she'd said to her friend before, hoping that their bond would manifest the message - 'it was not your fault'. She squeezed gently and moved Finnley aside, kneeling down to match the position of their prisoner, the laser scalpel from the medkit deliberately visible in her right hand.

"Have you ever seen your ulnar nerve...?" she asked, gently lifting his hand by the wrist and examining it. She ran a finger along the length of the outer edge of his hand and smiled; "would you like to?" she asked again, with an almost child-like earnest to her voice. "I may not have sufficient strength at present to empty your mind, but I guarantee you know that I have the willing, medical expertise, and motivation, to extract every primary nerve in your body until you talk...".

"You wouldn't..." he whispered, his stomach palpitating as the scalpel flicked on. His eyes locked onto the bright blade, before he looked past it to the Keatings. "You're going to let her?!" he practically pleaded. "Oh come on! Bad cop worse cop! Is that it!" the scalpel drew closer to his hand, now locked in the Vulcan's vice-like grip. "Colonel! Commander!" he bellowed. "Mrs Keating!".

Dun-dun-dunnnnnnnn