[Cavan] Death in the Margins Pt 2

[Lynzie Austin]

Death in the Margins

The morgue was small, cramped, in deep need of a spring refresh and precisely temperature-controlled. Just the way Ellie liked it. The walls were lined with cold storage units, their soft hum a constant, comforting presence. On the central examination table lay Cassia Vane, her golden gown replaced by a standard issue sheet, her immaculate coif splayed back around her in brushed halo. Ellie had pulled back her own for the autopsy. 

Cassia looked smaller like this. Less like a queen. More like a patient. Ellie pulled on her gloves, the latex snapping against her wrists. She activated the overhead light, its harsh beam illuminating every flaw, every line, every secret the body still held.

“Alright, what are you hiding,” Ellie murmured to herself. She tapped the button on the holo-recorder. The small orb began its preliminary round on the body with a light whirring noise, a soft blue scanning light sweeping over the form methodically. The tricorder made synchronized beeps as it received data. 

“External examination shows that the neurotoxin leaves no outwardly visible traces,” Ellie exhaled gently. “There is, however, ocular hyperemia that seems to have occurred at time of death. The striations of color in the iris suggest that the toxin attacked the central nervous system within nanoseconds. Will verify on internal autopsy.”

Ellie’s fingers moved lightning fast with the ease of a seasoned professional, her voice steady and clinical for the recording. “No signs of defensive wounds. No contusions or abrasions consistent with physical struggle. Fingernails are intact, no trace evidence of a struggle or an assailant.”

She circled the table, her tricorder still humming. “The subject was found in a supine position, arms at rest, suggesting she was unconscious or unaware at the time of ingestion. The champagne flute found at the scene was half-full. Toxin concentration was highest in the stomach contents, indicating the poison was introduced via the beverage rather than inhaled or injected.”

*****

The runner halted outside of the docking ports of the entirely too bleak, entirely too dreary, and altogether entirely too drab looking deep space 14. If Ellie did not know any better, she would have assumed it was an occupied space port for beleaguered bean counters that all had to wear matching starched pigeon gray wing collar suits and clack keys in unison counting purported gunfire and retaliation without any emotion as though it was some Orwellian dream sequence. 

She shook her head in a futile attempt to dismiss the daydream–that had to be far fetched, it was a clinic within the walls. A chill ran across her skin that was impossible to shake off. Reynie met her gaze. “This isn’t exactly homey,” he said with a nod, getting out of the pilot’s chair and putting an arm around her shoulders. 

“There is something wrong here Aralim,” she whispered, putting her head into the crook of his neck. She inhaled slowly. “I—I do not feel right about this.”

He placed a kiss in her hair. “That’s a bit woo woo. You’re the one rushing in to fight Cthulhu. You’re the bravest person I know.”

“Bravery is sometimes idiocy masked as courage, we just do not realize it until the adrenaline wears off,” Ellie met his eyes once more. “I am not saying I will not go in there, I am saying there is just something wrong there and it is giving me—”

“Elinor fa Cavan, are you telling me it’s giving you bad vibes?” Reynie smiled a wolfish grin from ear to ear. “Raven of the GHOULS! Do you have the heebie jeebies?!” 

She inhaled slowly through her nose to measure her response. “Perhaps.”

Reynie’s grin softened into something more tender. He pulled her closer, his voice dropping from theatrical to genuine. “If you feel something’s wrong, I trust that. You’ve got better instincts than anyone I know. But we came all this way, and there's a dead woman who deserves answers.” He kissed her forehead. “So we go in. Together. And if a Wendingo is waiting, I’ll buy you time to run.”

“The place is probably crawling with skinwalkers,” Ellie mumbled under her breath before giving him a small smile. 

“There’s my girl,” he tipped her chin with his knuckle. “You ready for this?” 

“Ready enough,” she said reluctantly, tapping her sidebag. 

He offered his arm with a soft smile, Ellie looped her arm in gently. They walked through the airlock together, their footsteps echoing in the dim corridor beyond. The station's recycled air was staler than it should have been, their engineer must have been feeling a way. She could smell everyone and every single thing all at once. 

Unsurprisingly enough, there was not a single person to greet them in the corridor when they entered. They followed the pathway down into the main thoroughfare which was much more of a spectacle than either one of them was expecting. Vaulted ceilings with a faux sky view hung overhead, bohemian style stalls lined the walkway. “This isn’t a Starfleet sanctioned fortune teller,” Reynie muttered to her. 

“They have sanctioned ones?” Ellie quipped. 

“What do you think Troi was on the Enterprise? Certainly wasn’t counseling anything,” Reynie lifted his eyebrow.

Ellie let out a soft snort laugh before regaining her composure. He squeezed her arm, then nodded toward a narrow corridor branching off from the main thoroughfare. “There. Section 7-C. That’s where the clinic is supposed to be.”

They left the bustling bazaar behind, stepping into a quieter, dimmer corridor. The stalls here were fewer, the clientele sparser. A Betazoid woman sat in a doorway, her dark eyes tracking them with unnerving intensity. A Tellarite mechanic scowled at them from beneath a broken freighter. A Klingon in worn leathers gave them a long, appraising look as they passed, then turned away.

“Friendly,” Reynie mumbled. 

“I do not think they approve of your badge,” Ellie whispered.

“Hey I don’t lord around here like the bronze five oh,” he said quietly, looking mildly offended. “Plus, I don’t even look the part!”

“Darling, we scream interlopers.” 

“My dear Raven, we scream ‘VIP tickets at a Cure revival concert’ not interlopers. It must just be good ol’ paranoia.”

“Then why are there not any people left in the corridor, Aralim? Got any deductions for me?”

He let out a long sigh. “Because we came in on a Federation coded vessel… we’re damned interlopers.”

“Ding ding ding.”

The corridor narrowed further, the walls closing in until the space felt almost claustrophobic. The air grew colder, the light dimmer. And then they saw it: a small, unassuming door with a faded sign above it.

Dr. Q. Woraht, M.D.

General Practice, Limited Services

By Appointment Only

“By appointment only,” Reynie read aloud. “Guess we should have called ahead…Good thing we're uninvited guests.”

Ellie beamed at him and pushed the door open, revealing a small, sterile waiting room. The chairs were worn, the replicator ancient, the air faintly antiseptic. A Bolian woman sat behind the reception desk, her blue face unreadable, she looked thoroughly unamused at them both. 

“Dr. Woraht is expecting us,” Ellie announced without any flair or tone to her voice. It was almost a perfect facsimile to a Vulcan to anyone who did not know any better.

The receptionist blinked in befuddlement. “I wasn’t informed he had any meetings today—”

“You are now,” Reynie flashed his seldom used badge. “Investigator Reynard with the Federation Investigation Unit. This is Doctor Cavan with Starfleet Forensics. We need to speak with him immediately.”

The receptionist hesitated, her gaze flicking to a door behind her. Then she stood, her movements stiff, and disappeared through it without another word.The door clicked shut behind her. The lock engaged with a heavy thunk. Ellie and Reynie exchanged a look. 

“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Reynie whispered.

 Ellie shrugged. “I would have to concur.” 

They waited in the silence of the waiting room, the only sound the hum of the replicator and the distant noise of the station beyond. Then the door opened, and a voice called out. “Send them in.”

The office was cluttered but organized, filled with datapads and medical texts stacked in precarious towers. A large gray metal desk commandeered the center of the room, its surface covered in PADDs and old-fashioned paper notes. Behind it sat Dr. Woraht. He was exactly as his file had depicted, a middle-aged Bolian with kind eyes and a blue hairpiece that sat atop his head like a misplaced crown. His smile was warm, professional, and utterly unconvincing.

“Doctor. Investigator,” he greeted as warmly as the portly Bolian seemed to be able to muster, considering he seemed more stressed than a mouse lost in a maze smelling gouda over the wall. He motioned to the chairs opposite the desk. “Please, sit.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” Reynie asked, pulling his note padd from his pocket. 

“I can’t rightly say I do Investigator Reynard,” Wohart looked back and forth at them with a bit of confusion. “Louise! Would you bring our guests some tea?” His voice upturned in question as if asking the entire room for tea. However, the receptionist was far too caught up in a card game on her communications device to have heard anything. 

“It’s about Cassia Vane,” Reynie eased the Doctor in. “

“Yes? What about Cassia?” he clasped his hands.

“She passed away,” Reynie continued without showing his hand. “We just had some routine follow up questions about it, since she is young.”

“Oh no, Cassia,” Wohart put his hand on his mouth. “That’s terrible.”

“You were treating her for Caties Acebus,” Ellie said calmly.

“I am— I was, I suppose,” Woraht’s voice went from absorbing the information to clinician. “It’s a degenerative condition. The treatment is... complex. Cassia is—was a difficult patient. She didn’t always follow the protocol.”

“Why is that?” Reynie crossed one leg over the other, putting his chin in the palm of his hand; Ellie always marveled at his utter ease at making himself look comfortable in these situations—considering how he was using his body language in such a disarming manner it was practiced brilliance. 

“It was experimental,” Woraht admitted flatly. “Experimental treatments are not unusual in cases like hers. The standard protocols were not effective. I was trying to help.”

“So, one might say she was reliant on your treatment,” Ellie said. 

“That’s quite the claim, Doctor,” the Bolian’s pride looked beyond repair. 

“She is dead,” Ellie replied, keeping her tone even.

“What are you here for exactly?” Woraht’s eyes turned darker and sweat began to bead on his brow. “You’re not insinuating that her treatment had something to do with it? That’s a very serious accusation—” The silence stretched. Woraht's hand drifted toward a drawer in his desk.

“I wouldn’t,” Reynie said, his voice casual but his hand resting on his hip phaser. “Dottie is recording. Every word. Every gesture. If you’re reaching for something you shouldn’t, we’ll know.”

Woraht’s hand stilled. He leaned back, his expression shifting from warmth to something colder. “You’ve done your homework,” he said quietly. “But you don’t know the whole story.”

“Enlighten me, Doc,” Reynie gestured broadly. “I have time.”

Dr. Woraht leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath him. For a long moment, he studied them both—the investigator with his easy posture and odd choice of attire, the doctor with her steely Vulcan gaze. Then he seemed to make a decision.

“Ylena Vorsten,” he said slowly, “was my patient. Like Cassia. They both came to Maryaim Clinic within months of each other. Both were diagnosed with Caties Acebus. Both were young, scared, and desperate.” He paused, his eyes distant. “They became friends. Thick as thieves those two. They spent their nights writing together—stories, poems, fragments of a novel they planned to finish together. It was their way of coping. Of imagining a future they weren’t sure they’d live to see.”

Ellie felt something shift. “They wrote—”

“--Eternal Flame,” Reynie finished her thought. 

“Yes. The core of it, anyway. They worked on it for two years. Ylena was the better writer; more disciplined, more focused. Cassia had the vision, but Ylena shaped it. Gave it structure,” Woraht’s demeanor went bleak. “Ylena was not responding to the treatment, Caties Acebus tends to accelerate rapidly when it…”

“Goes into the vital organ tissue towards the end,” Ellie explained and looked at Reynie.

“Yes… ” the Bolian ran a hand down his face. “The girls had made some pact to have the book published. Cassia had the book published a few years after Ylena’s death, from what I understand it is very different from what was written within the walls of the Clinic, but I cannot speak to that.”

Reynie looked at him. “And Ylena?” 

“One of my biggest failures professionally. She died 8 months before that godforsaken book was even published,” Woraht’s set his jaw. “I had to tell Cassia. She was... she was devastated. We all thought she would honor Ylena's memory. I thought she would dedicate the book to her. But she didn't. She just... moved on. Grief works differently in some people though.”

Reynie leaned forward. “Did Ylena have any family? Anyone who might have known about the manuscript?”

The Bolian took a tempered breath and tapped his finger on the desk. “Ylena never had any visitors her entire visit, to my recollection at least,” he sat up stiffly, the chair squeaking beneath him. “The operation at Maryaim was barebones, unfortunately, we had two on site nurses and a sole resident, whose duties were that more of an orderly, to help me maintain the entire clinic.”

He paused, his brow furrowing slightly. "Though there was something... unusual. Near the end, Ylena started receiving letters. Not from family—she never mentioned family—but from someone she called her ‘reader.’ She said this person had found her through an old writing journal that had been published in some small literary magazine years before. They’d become pen pals of sorts.”

Ellie exchanged a glance with Reynie. “Pen pals?”

“Ylena was always more comfortable with words than with people. She said this reader understood her. Understood the stories she was trying to tell,” Woraht's voice dropped. “She never told us who it was. But she did say something that stuck with me. She said, ‘They know what I’m trying to say better than I do. They’re helping me say it.’”

“I don’t suppose you kept the communication logs from Maryaim?” Reynie steepled his fingers and rested his unshaven chin. 

“Louise! Give these two all the records from Maryaim,” Woraht pinched the bridge of his nose. 

The receptionist looked at them both through the doorway like they had called her a gross insult. “Right away Doctor Woraht,” she muttered. 

Ellie locked eyes for a split second with Reynie, they were getting access a little too easily from what they were expecting. Whether that was Woraht attempting to ingratiate himself in their favor or simply to voluntarily disclosing evidence to them to make their lives easier—to simply avoid the tedious amount of paperwork. The flip side of that being that they did not have the necessary paperwork for said files either. Either way, something was not right in the state of Denmark. 

“If you would excuse me for a moment,” Ellie tilted her head in a gracious gesture, excusing herself from the office. Reynie lifted his brow. She slipped out of the office without another word, her footsteps silent on the worn deck plates. The waiting room was empty. Louise had to have disappeared into the back to fetch the files, which made Ellie wonder about the decorative computers on the receptionist’s desk, and the hum of the replicator was the only sound. She moved to a corner, her back to the wall, and raised her wristlet.

“Ura,” she whispered. “I need a favor.”

Ura’s voice crackled through the comm, laced with concern. “Raven? You sound like you’re in a supply closet. What’s going on?”

Ellie glanced at the door to Woraht’s office. “I am at DS14. Reynie and I are talking to a doctor who treated Cassia Vane. He is giving us access to files we should not have the clearance for. I need you to make sure our paperwork is in order before anyone asks questions.”

There was a brief pause. Ellie could imagine Ura rubbing both of her hands on her face. “How ‘not-in-order’ are we talkin’ Rave?”

“Oh, we do not have anything filed for this Ura,” Ellie grimaced. 

The silent shriek nearly rattled all the bones in her wrist, the look of pure dread in Ura’s face was beyond what Ellie had anticipated. “You’re putting me in a precarious position Rave,” the Bajoran let all her words out in one breath. “But, it isn’t not doable—you know that… so… Nikolai is going to have a coronary… you should have your boytoy there flex some credentials.”

Ellie nodded. “If I thought that would help I would not be asking the favor.” 

“Yeah… you’re right,” Ura sighed. “Medical access, yeah? Okay, that’s easy enough. Okay, give me five. Raven, be careful. Gapyong out.” 

She pulled her black cardigan sleeve back down over her wristlet, concealing it once more and returned to the office. Reynie’s eyes locked onto hers for the briefest of moments and a sparkle of mischief returned to his demeanor. “You were about to tell me more about the penpal,” Reynie pressed Woraht without seeming overly pushy—in fact, he seemed like he was more interested in something stuck under his fingernails than the question at hand as Ellie sat behind him. “Something about letters, yes?” 

The Bolian tilted his head in slight confusion. “Yes, Ylena was receiving handwritten letters from someone, she showed me one,” Woraht stared at Reynie. “Packages with sweets one time. One of the RNs said it was her Guardian Angel that was keeping Ylena going.”

“This one you saw,” Reynie stretched and cracked his knuckles. “What did it say?”

“That she understood the real ending, whatever that meant,” Woraht looked at Reynie and shrugged. “I will say this person was persistent.”

“What makes you say that?” Reynie raised an eyebrow.

“The letters kept coming after she died.”