LT Gila Sadar - Fear Keeps Us Worried For the Future

[LT Gila Sadar]

((( OOC: Gila’s actions in the following SIM and the arc it will prompt for her has been discussed, planned and evaluated with staff. Please always remember to discuss longer, complex story arcs with your mentors! )))

(( Gila’s Room - Sadar-Aqila Quarters, Compartment 83, Sector 03, Deck 6, USS Artemis-A ))

Space was a never-ending void of blackness. There were no limits to space, space kept expanding and expanding into infinity, and sometimes, when Gila had a truly dark day, she felt like she might still fall over the edge and into a space beyond space. It had been a long while since she had one of those.

((( Flashback: SD240110.03 )))

(( Primary Sickbay - Deck 7, USS Artemis-A ))

Gila wanted to finish her sentence. She wanted to assuage any fears Kolya might have that he had been party to improper conduct by not stopping her from seeing the treatment through, and she wanted to distract him from the need she had to see his x-rays. But most of all, she was trying - and failing - to hide the torrents of emotions that passed through her face as she looked at Kolya’s scans.

Then looked again.

Then refreshed the image, just in case it hadn’t loaded properly, and looked at them again.

She felt like the ground beneath her feet fell away, her entire worldview shattering before her very eyes at the perfectly normal and ordinary x-ray in front of her. A perfectly ordinary Mizarian skull, elongated to the back, a hollow nape to allow for the nuchal folds to fall... And no abnormal bone growths... None.

Kolya didn’t have them.

He wasn’t like her.

((( Present Day )))

Guilt penetrated her like a sword, cutting through her where it hurt the most. She never thought she’d encounter something that had hurt her soul so thoroughly as that night many years ago, when she had stolen into Kolya’s room before she left Mizabet. She knew that if she had looked into his wide and hopeful eyes, everything that Gila thought wouldn’t survive without her, she wouldn’t be able to go through with what she had to do. Wishing the sleeping child goodbye while knowing he’d never recall how much that moment hurt her had been the worst thing she’d ever done, but now...

It was right in front of her, strikingly clear against the navy black screen of the PADD. An X-ray image of a skull, domed scalp, knotted ramial bones enclosing the brain cavity... Only the ramial bones were supposed to be hollow. They were supposed to be almost translucent against the starker color of the skull itself, as they had been on Kolya’s scans.

But these weren’t Kolya’s scans. These were hers. And she knew precisely why those ramial bones weren’t hollow.

((Flashback: Frontier Day))

(( Bridge - Deck 1, USS Kitty Hawk ))

Never had she experienced as debilitating a sensation as when her jaw came undone, suddenly falling away underneath the roof of her mouth to allow her to take a deep breath. The breath tasted like iron and sweat, of salt and adrenaline, and her tongue went dry as her mouth was open for an unnatural length of time, and she tried to close her mouth to combat the dryness, but only then realized that she felt her chin resting against her collarbone. She didn't have time to think of the fact that that's not where it was supposed to be, when she started choking. Long, serrated blades of darkened bone, glistening with saliva, shot forth at great speed, locking the shoulder joint of the exosuit in a brutal and lethal vice grip, tearing into the wires and plastic filaments that joined the shoulder to the central dome of the exosuit, and Gila fought to breathe, but all she registered was the thick rounded bones protruding from her gaping mouth. She saw the exosuit retract as it registered the serrated edges of the black blade tearing into the filaments, and as the two blades started crossing, pulling, dragging, Gila stumbled. But they weren't pulling her towards the exosuit, towards her doom, but rather pulling the exosuit towards HER, refusing to release the suit despite it's attempts at retreat, and the sensation of jagged bones grinding against metal vibrated through her skull, making her vision swim and her stomach roll with nausea, as she dropped the backpack holding the Ensign that she'd been holding up.

She reached for her mouth to attempt to remove the blades, when a thunderous clap resounded in the inner core of her body as a single metal arm fell to the floor, slipping out of the crippling restraint of the black blades that quickly swung back towards Gila. She wanted to scream, but couldn't - her jaw was still dislocated and her mouth still full of bone - as she saw the sharp edges fly towards her head at great speed. Only, they never touched her. Instead, they returned to the deep purple roof of her open mouth from whence they'd sprung to life in the first place, and Gila fell to her knees, trembling fingers locating her still dangling jaw...

One of Eleven: ::To Eleven:: Cancel separation.

Eleven of Eleven: Unable to comply. Damaged. Da-Damaged.

And upon her kneeling, trembling form looked the nightmarish form of herself, clad in black leather and looking upon her with cold and dark in her eyes. It represented all that she'd feared becoming for the better part of a year. And Gila knew, instinctively, that had this happened to a humanoid, to someone of flesh and blood, not metal and wires... They would be dead. And the self-fulfilling prophecy - the one her people had anticipated and shunned her for - would have become irreversible.

oO Gila Sadar. The First Mizarian Murderer. Oo

((( Present Time )))

She hadn’t truly believed them when they said that she was wrong. When they said that creativity and curiosity was the origin of all chaos, or when they looked at her with disgust whenever she demonstrated that she possessed those things. Somewhere deep inside, she’d always assumed that, maybe, they were wrong. Maybe her entire culture had just misinterpreted the ancient writings. And maybe, Gila almost laughed in sorrowful disbelief at that thought, she’d be able to do for her wayward people as Surak had done for the wayward Vulcans once upon a time. Guide them into a ‘golden age’.

Her own arrogance disgusted her.

It was right in front of her, laid bare without any kind of illusion concealing it or leaving any possibility for misinterpretation. She was wrong, and what was worse, she was so unequivocally wrong that even Kolya was unlike her.

And perhaps, that was what pushed her soul into the despair where it now writhed, her trembling body barely illuminated by the gentle blue light cascading onto her form from beside her.

For the first time since Kolya had first looked at her with wonder as she explained the concept of ‘stars’, she was truly alone. She would never be a Mizarian again. Now, all she could be was a monster. There was no bending or adapting to this. She carried within her potential for complete destruction of life, for the purest and most grotesque kind of violence, and that knowledge alone was enough to make Gila whimper with a hoarse throat burdened by primordial sin.

How could she possibly explain this? Come the morning, the scans would be available to every Doctor on the Artemis, and by evening, the entire Ship would know that they housed a monster in their midst.

How could Captain MacKenzie allow her presence on the Artemis if any exposure to danger made her a liability to not only any potential assailants, but also her comrades?

How could Commander Adea allow her existence in Sickbay if they had no inkling of whether she proved a danger to their patients?

How could she permit Kolya to remain by her side, if one day, she might hurt him? Or worse... Infect him?

oO Syrex: “No offence, but I didn’t want to end up like… you.” Oo

Gila felt her grasp on reality slipping as her dark thoughts started weighing her down, forcing her hands down, splayed onto the metal desk she was seated at. She needed a solution. Was there a solution? Could she amputate the mandibles? It was unlikely to be a surgery she could perform herself. Should she leave, run away? No, she’d already run away once. She had nowhere to run to anymore, and she had an obligation to the Artemis that she couldn’t disregard that easily, and she doubted she could convince Captain MacKenzie to strip her of her commission without a good explanation.

Would explaining solve anything? After all, the Captain had proved herself a very capable and logical person at times, and she’d gone to great lengths to assure Gila that she valued her opinion...

But recalling the ease with which the aliens wielded weapons made Gila pause. Would the Captain even truly understand why... She wasn’t a Mizarian, she wasn’t anything close to a pacifist, by necessity. One couldn’t shy away from hard choices once one took the center chair.

oO MacKenzie: “But, as a Starfleet officer, you also have to realize that my scope of responsibility stretches beyond any one person or group of people” Oo

Had Gila truly earned the right to disrupt the running of the Artemis with her own issues? She didn’t even know how these... The things had escaped notice during her numerous check-ups at the Academy.

oO Dakora: “I think it's important to understand the difference between a false report and, say– a report that isn't entirely complete.” Oo

Brown eyes widened with realization.

The mandibles hadn’t existed when she started her Starfleet service. Which meant Starfleet had scans of her skull on file that didn’t show them.

She stared down at the PADD before her, her brain lit up and sparking with so many thoughts and considerations, one would be forgiven for mistaking her brain for a malfunctioning console. Options remained for her.

She accessed the PADD, going into her own medical history, and it didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. Previous X-rays of her skull. No mandibles in sight. It wasn’t until she realized she couldn’t read the notes written by the academy doctors that she realized her hands were shaking so fiercely that the PADD almost rattled against the desk, and she hastily put it down, standing from her seat to pace back and forth.

oO What are you THINKING!? You realize what this would mean!? Oo

Breaking her oath as a Starfleet officer: to obey the laws of the United Federation of Planets and to abide by the principles it stood for. Breaking her oath as a Doctor: to base her practice on truth and justice in relations with patients and to society. Taking advantage of the trust placed in her as a Lieutenant by her Captain and her crew.

No, she couldn’t do it.

But, her anxiety persisted, overruling the conscience that was trying to reinstate the rule of logic in her. It didn’t have to be forever. Just until she understood it better. Or until they disappeared. That could happen, right? Maybe they’d disappear if she just didn’t provoke them for a while? Maybe it was just a middle-age thing. Like the human concept of menopause? If she wasn’t a ‘real’ Mizarian - she ignored the sting that notion left in her chest - she couldn’t be certain that her development would follow the standard.

The mandibles didn’t have to be permanent. And even if they were, she just needed no one to realize they existed until she knew more, until she knew how to explain them in the first place.

She walked back to the PADD left on the table, showing a Mizarian skull. A perfect skull. A skull void of imperfections and violence, of wrongness and sin. A skull that wasn’t her. The last pure evidence that, once upon a time, she had been right. Or, at least, looked right.

The haunting aquamarine light that remained the only lightsource beyond the PADD drew her gaze to the Caduceus-shaped lamp that rested by her bedside. Sil-net’s gift for her, to celebrate her and Kolya’s new beginning as a family.

What would he say? What would Kolya say?

With a heavy heart, burdened with fears and confusion, pushed to the edge of the known universe and staring into the space beyond space - an impossible abyss - she knew this was somewhere she’d have to swim alone.

oO I’m sorry Oo

And she turned off the lamp.

End Scene

LT Gila Sadar

Medical Officer

USS Artemis-A

A240006GS1