You Are Not Real!

Posted on Sun Jun 21st, 2020 @ 5:26am by Cailus Griffin & Emilie Temple
Edited on on Tue Jul 7th, 2020 @ 1:31pm

Mission: Into the Wild
Location: Corridors
Timeline: Immediately after "Ghosts"

A Mission Post by Lieutenant JG Cailus Griffin & Emilie Temple
Mission: Into The Wild
Location: Corridors
Timeline: Immediately after "Ghosts"
Sat Jul 29th, 2017 @ 6:52pm


The reappearance of the Nyx apparition in the turbolift, the phantom captain's face distorted by an awful scream, had been a thoroughly disconcerting experience. The claustrophobic confines of the turbolift hadn't helped matters either, and both Cailus and Emilie were quite relieved to see the doors open to a brightly lit corridor. The ship's systems had clearly been driven haywire by the dark matter; while the Rec Deck had been dimly lit and plagued with malfunctions, Deck 6 seemed perfectly fine. Only the blinking red lights along the walls hinted that the ship was still in danger.

They were close to Sickbay now, and Cailus was content to drop Emilie off there and get back to work. The walk from the Rec Deck had been brief, no more than five minutes, but it still felt like longer. Even so, Cailus looked at Emilie warily, wondering just what kind of effect seeing her husband like that must have had on her.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" he said cautiously as they walked slowly, their pace restricted by Emilie's concussion.

"It's not real," She spoke aloud, repeating his earlier words. Though she hugged herself tightly as she walked, not quite believing it. "I'm just going to keep telling myself it's not real."

Cailus winced, fervently looking forward to getting Emilie to some help. It looked as if she was going into shock, and all things considered, he couldn't blame her; a civilian should never have to deal with such things. As she kept talking to herself, he was looking in front of them and behind, mindful of any more damned hallucinations or a more concrete threat. The corridor was well lit and perfectly ordinary but he was still loose and watchful, his right hand ready to draw the phaser in a flash.

Even so, when Cailus and Emilie rounded a bend and saw a woman leaning on a bulkhead barely a few meters before the main Sickbay doors, he froze. She wasn't particularly remarkable, really, certainly not a threat, yet Cailus could do nothing but stare.

"Mrs Temple," he whispered, the mystery woman having yet to notice them, "I'm going to need you to focus. Do you see a middle-aged human woman of Asian descent in front of us, wearing a grey jumpsuit?"

Emilie furrowed her brow, hardly concerned about the specific description of this woman and, in her stressed state, felt concerned that they had stopped walking. She just wanted to get to Sickbay and be healed, it was an inconvenient time for a test of her vision.

"Yes," She replied with a sigh, "I know I knocked my head, Lieutenant, but my vision is fine."

It was then that the woman noticed Cailus and Emilie, and her eyes widened in shock at what she saw. She immediately started towards them, focusing on Cailus and ignoring Emilie entirely, even smirking ever so slightly. Besides her hands, which had thin metal threads running over them, she was perfectly ordinary; they could even smell her flowery fragrance as she approached. The way she focused on Cailus was disconcerting, however, looking at the Security Chief as if he was impossibly precious.

"Hello," the woman said breathlessly, looking him over hungrily for a long moment. When Cailus didn't respond, frozen in place, she turned her attention to Emilie, smiling knowingly. "Sorry about him, he can be an idiot sometimes. How are you feeling?"

Emilie felt uneasy at Griffin's silent stiffness, but the woman appeared friendly enough and seemed to know him already, she didn't really want to enquire into his personal life. Most pressingly, Em was still in pain and she just wanted help. "Are you from Medical? I think I've broken my arm."

She indicated to the sling around her arm and moved a step forward, hoping the woman would be able to look at it.

The woman glanced down at Emilie's arm for a long moment, before smiling warmly at her. "I'm sure that Sickbay will be able to help you, my dear. They can fix silly little things like broken bones in ten minutes. The doors are just back there," she added, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder, before returning her attention to Cailus.

"My husband may join you there, actually," the woman said teasingly, and when he stiffened at her tone, she laughed, a bright and honest sound that carried easily in the corridor. "He looks like he's about to faint, doesn't he? Oh, I'm sorry Emilie, please head on to Sickbay. You really do look like you're hurting."

Emilie smiled to the woman and gave a small nod of gratitude, though she was impatient to get moving. Turning back to Griffin, she patted his arm, "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for me today and I..."

She paused, as if hearing something for the first time. Emilie looked between the woman and Griffin. "Your husband?" She balked in confusion.

Cailus was still unnaturally still, glaring at the woman before he finally spoke. "She's not real," he said coldly. "Harriet has been dead for twenty one years."

For her part, Harriet looked genuinely hurt at the accusation. "Cailus," she said, plainly hurt, "I understand why you think that, but-"

"You are not real" he hissed, cold fury emphasised in every word. "My wife died on a damned Borg ship and you are not her. Get the hell out of my head."

Slowly, completely forgetting that Emilie was there, Harriet's anger rose to match his. "And how do I know you're real? You look just like my husband, just like he was when I last saw him! How do I know you're not a dark matter phantom, Cailus? You died on that stupid ship of yours eighty eight years ago!" She stopped abruptly, breathing heavily, before curling her fists and regaining a measure of control. "Look, I know you must've seen our ship out there in the debris field, a Borg cube on your sensors. We saw you too, okay? One of our technicians managed to access our computer system, and when they saw that you were aboard, they sent me to talk to your captain and you, so we can work together to get out of this!"

It all seemed so logical, so feasible, that Cailus felt an awful temptation to believe her. She didn't look exactly the same as he remembered; her hair was cut short, she looked slightly older and the metal threads on her hands were completely new.

"They said you were taken," he said, hope beginning to creep into his broken voice, realising that after all, he knew virtually nothing about the Borg. "They said you were altered with...cybernetics. Changed somehow..."

Harriet snorted, crossing her arms. "Propoganda about the enemy, Cailus! Just like when you were so angry at the Klingons after you lost your hand! The Federation and the Borg have been at war for decades, so of course there's misinformation out there. Really, being with the Borg isn't as bad as they say. We have cybernetics," she explained, raising her metal-threaded hand for emphasis, "but that's it, not much more than your hand. There's no intrusion into our minds, no erosion of individual freedoms. They even reversed my physical aging, Cailus!"

Emilie watched the exchange with a sense of dread, which only grew deeper after Griffin had said his wife was deceased and this woman, despite how real she seemed, was just another apparition. She realized now there was some kind of sick game being played on the crew, a waking nightmare for them to live through. Emilie's vision of her husband had been sudden and horrifying, but Cailus' was especially personal and perverse.

She tugged on his sleeve, hoping to help him as he had helped her. Quietly but firmly, she spoke, "It's a trick, Lieutenant. Just like Nyx was. She's not real."

Cailus glanced at Emilie as she touched his sleeve, seemingly half-awake. He looked down at her arm in the makeshift sling, still quite plainly broken, and his expression hardened at the realisation. He'd just been standing there, talking to a blasted hallucination, while the captain's wife had been forced to wait, enduring serious pain. It was a severe dereliction of duty.

"My apologies, ma'am," he said formally, the usual steel back in his voice, but there was an undercurrent of raw anger that could be not denied. Cailus looked up and glared at Harriet, whose own fierce passion faded into sorrow as she looked back at her long-lost husband. "You are not real," he said firmly, repeating the same words he had spoken before, but now with brutal certainty. "My wife died twenty one years ago along with my daughter on a Borg ship in Earth's orbit. They are dead, and have been for a very long time. Now get the hell out of my way."

Cailus took a purposeful step forward, his left hand outstretched towards Harriet as if to wave her away. In response she took a step forward of her own, and in the space of a few seconds, she changed right before their eyes. Harriet's olive skin faded into a dull grey, her hair retreating rapidly into her skull, while her plain grey jumpsuit morphed with into alarming speed into a black alloy that formed an utterly alien kind of armour. Her right hand transformed into some kind of drill, making an unsettling machine-like sound as the drill spun, and thin tubules emerged from her chest to criss-cross her body, impaling her neck. Worst of all were her eyes: the right eye turned into that same dark alloy before sprouting into some kind of green eyepiece, while her left eye became utterly dead, lacking any of the wonderful vivaciousness that had so marked the woman once known as Harriet Suzuki.

The hyper-fast assimilation of his wife horrified Cailus, but for a brief moment, sheer panicked rage overrode fear. He stepped forward again and punched through her with desperate energy, his clenched fist driving straight through Harriet without resistance, and finally the phantom began to dissipate into a black mist before vanishing entirely. He stood there for a few seconds, his fist still stretched out, panting heavily, before finally Cailus regained control. He turned to Emilie, fists still clenched at his sides, working furiously to conceal his emotional torment.

"I'm very sorry ma'am," he said slowly, with a forced calm in a voice that was nevertheless shaky. "I shouldn't have allowed myself to become distracted. Sickbay is right there, ma'am, the doors ten meters ahead on our right."

Emilie had taken a step back, her heart racing in fear. Even though she had known the image was an illusion, the sight of a Borg drone in front of them was still utterly chilling. Letting out a deep breath, she reached up and gave Cailus a reassuring pat on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," She replied, looking back to the now empty air where the apparition had been. "Whatever is doing this to us, I'm sure you'll find it and put a stop to it."

Cailus nodded slowly as they finally continued on to Sickbay. "Yes ma'am," he said with bitter determination. "We will."