The Wake Up Call

Posted on Wednesday March 27th, 2019 @ 11:22 hours by Mayterial Droz & Ares Onasis & Colt McCormick

Mission: Pixie Dust
Location: Infirmary
Timeline: MD02 - 0545 Hours
1919 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure

“Open your eyes, Miss Onasis.”

The words were hollow, almost dream like as Ares felt the warm Greece air shift into the hard cold air of the Infirmary. But as the woman’s sight revealed the bare grey ceiling to her, she still smelled the salt of the Aegean Sea. She was no longer home wrapped in Adam’s arms. Her tears were still damp, her eyes still producing the tears that disclosed the truth of what she had been hiding all along. It took her almost a full minute to process the scene around her. Colt was standing by her side, his hand interlocked with hers. She couldn’t bare to look at him just yet. It would only cause the icepick to stab her once more in her heart. Instead she looked down at the straps of the biobed holding her in place.

Her lips turned into an involuntary smirk at the thought of what she had done to deserve to be restrained. “If I promise not to kick your ass will you get these fuckin’ straps off of me?” Her voice was gruff and quiet but still able to portray her dry sense of humor.

For a moment Mayterial hesitate, sure Ares had awoken from the rather deep dream state but whatever had caused it was not dealt with. Then again the hallucinations she was having didn't seem overly aggressive or in danger of causing harm on others or herself. It made her wonder what had happened to cause the physician to strap her to the bed. "Sure. Hold on." She reached out and started unstrapping Ares. Whenever their skins touched she got another wave of emotions and stray thoughts invading her mind. When Ares was released she immedately took a step back, not to avoid a swing from the Quartermaster but just to try and ground herself, away from all the emotional conflict Ares was having over the whole ordeal.

Ares sat up slowly, trying not to pass out from the pounding headache she was feeling against her temples. Her head was swimming and it felt like her brain was bouncing all around. Her entire body felt sore and heavy as if she had just been tossed around by a tornado. She looked around, still seeing the bright white bits and pieces of her parent’s guest house blended in with the dull empty Infirmary. It was making her eyes cross. The emptiness from leaving Adam once again clung to her chest making it hard to breath. She wiped the leftover tears from her eyes before she had the courage to look at Colt. He was standing there looking helpless… with a wet shirt. Her eyebrows furrowed in curiosity and the woman did what she did best: mask her emotional turmoil. “What happened to you?”

Colt, mixed up in his own head with how he needed to react next without scaring the poor girl, gaped his mouth open slightly as he looked down at the still damp white shirt he had put back on at May’s request. He had actually forgotten what had happened to him. “Oh, you know,” he looked back up at Ares as his lips flipped up into an awkward embarrassed smirk, “just feel like I’m walking through a fuckin’ desert or somethin’.” He was hesitant to take a step forward, not wanting to risk an emotional outburst. “You alright?”

Ares’s eyes went dull as she tried to prevent the tears from bursting out again. She nodded slowly. “Yes, I’m alright. That was trippy as fuck though.” She looked over at May. She couldn’t look at Colt for too long just yet. Her eyes were still blending him and Adam together. But he was feeling like he was walking through a desert? The Infirmary was actually quite chilly. “What the hell is going on?”

"When I find out you'll be the first to know." May looked around and walked back to the cupboard that held the medicine. "This is by far the worst launch night of a ship in recent history." At least the painkillers were taking a bit of the edge off. She needed an inhibitor for her rampant telepathy. She started to rummage through the medications until she came across something that seemed familiar, Acetaminophen, that should relieve some of the pressure. She plugged it into a hypo and set the correct dosage before applying it to her neck.

Ares ran her fingers through her damp hair. Geez, she really had been all over the place. “How long was I out for?”

Colt looked at May, then jumped in to answer. He felt the urge to keep talking to her, not wanting to get forgotten about after being mistaken for a dead husband. “A couple of hours at least…” His sentence was cut off by a sudden bush of ice-cold wind that shot across his skin. The burning sensation was replaced by a piercing shower of frost covering his entire body. His entire body began shaking.

“Colt, are you ok?” Ares slid down from the bed as she reached out towards him. “You’re shivering.” Adam’s words of acceptance for them quietly passed through her mind.

Colt was stunned for a moment as he realized what was happening. Ares, who had gone through what could only be described as a living nightmare that caused her to slip into a near coma, was making sure he, Colt McCormick, was alright. He opened his mouth to speak but had trouble forming a response. He swallowed quickly, feeling his teeth chatter against one another and he wrapped his arms around his chest in an effort to control their shaking. “Oh, I’m… I’m…” The words were stuck against his throat.

“Captain, grab a blanket and another shirt if you can find one,” Ares grabbed his arms and began rubbing against them with her hands in an effort to bring them warmth. As she looked at his bewildered eyes, she felt a ding of an idea pop up. “Colt, are you seeing anything out of the ordinary? Smells? Anything?”

All Colt could do was shake his head from side to side. He wasn’t.

Ares then looked over at May. “You run into anyone else on the way here?”

"They have a tendency to keep running into me." May looked over at Colt, "Did our Bajoran Master-at-Arms report in? I sent him down here" Something very strange was going on here, Ares was having the most vivid dream May had ever experienced, the MaA was certain the spoonheads where coming to get the ship back, Alexandria was terrified of non-existant kittens. She shook her head a bit, which made the headache slowly return, "I can't focus, keep getting flashes and unintentional connections with people." She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Colt turned slowly towards May, his teeth still shaking from the ice breeze that pierced his skin. He shook his head from side to side as quickly as he could. No, he hadn’t seen whoever that man was, or anyone else for that matter, in the Infirmary.

Ares, who had found a blanket before the Captain even acknowledged her request for one, wrapped Colt up as tightly as he could and made him sit on the biobed where she had been just minutes before. The colors from her parents’ guest home were still blending with the Infirmary and it took everything the woman had to remind herself that it was just… a dream. A hallucination. “Anyone mention hitting their heads or anything?” She looked at Colt who couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. “You didn’t before you found me, right?”

Colt shook his head again. “N-n-n-n,” he tried to answer but gave up after feeling the O frozen solid inside of his throat. He was afraid he would choke on it.

“Is the blanket helping at all?” Ares’s brows crinkled together, running her hand across his forehead and through his short and slightly dishevelled hair. His body temperature felt normal, not too warm and not too cold.

Colt didn’t say anything. It was taking too much effort to even sit up while trying to not freeze to death.

Mayterial felt the hairs on her body stand up and she could swear that a cloud of her breath was visible, "Who switched off the heat?" She rubbed her hands over her arms and looked over at Colt. He was even colder than she was. But she hadn't even touched him. "Oh, hell no." She hugged herself closely as she headed for the exit, "Something is definitely not right here. I'm going to need to get some more medics down here."

Ares reached around Colt, feeling his trembling hand against her waist. He was beginning to wonder if he was actually going insane. He had been on the ship for less than 24 hours and already his life had been knocked upside down. The woman looked at the desperate face briefly, and gave him a small reassuring grin that they were going to figure out what was going on. She then tried to focus on the comm panel but her mind was still blurring her imaginary world with her real world, making the panel impossible to see completely. She squeezed her eyes tightly together and fought against her imagination.

It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real…

It worked, at least for now. Upon opening, her eyes finally processed the entire panel as she opened up the comm ship-wide. “Onasis to any medic who can understand this. Please report to the Infirmary.”

She shut the comm off and looked back at May who had been inching herself away from Colt. “Captain, when you talked to me, did you see what I was seeing, or did you just hear my thoughts?”

"I was in there with you." May moved her hands to warm herself up with the friction. She felt her heartbeat starting to race and slight panic gripping her, "I have to go. I have to get out of the room with him." She stepped backwards towards the doors and out of the bay when they opened to her automatically, almost tripping over the slight threshold, "I have to get Volok."

Ares furrowed her eyebrows slightly. She took a step forward to go after her but felt Colt’s hand wrap around her arm. Turning around, she saw his tightened and shivering face moving from side to side at her. “Colt, I need to help her.”

He continued to shake his head. “She’s a Betazoid, right?”

Ares nodded slowly at him, not quite understanding where he was going with his question.

“Whatever we’re going through... I think she’s going through it too.” He tilted his lips up slightly. “It would be best if maybe we stay here and wait for others to show up. Maybe,” he swallowed roughly as he tried to relax his stiffened freezing body, “we can try to figure it out.” It had a lot of different meanings for Colt.

Ares, feeling a bit overwhelmed and confused about everything, tightened up the blanket that was wrapped around him to try to give him some comfort. “I think you’re right.”

Colt tried to smile through the pain. “I usually am.”

[OFF]

Mayterial Droz
Captain

&

Ares Onasis
Quartermaster

Also starring:
Colt McCormick (NPC)
Passenger
(As written by Ares)