Coming Apart At The Seams Part I
Posted on Fri May 29th, 2026 @ 11:36am by Lieutenant Addison Talbert & Major Hastios Eilfaren
Edited on on Fri May 29th, 2026 @ 11:40am
2,049 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
In The Nick Of Time
Location: Sick Bay - Deck 4 - USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD009 1452 Hrs
Sickbay doors opened on chaos.
Maren came through them restrained, bloodied, furious, and fighting like every pair of hands on her belonged to someone dragging her back into a Dominion facility. Two security officers had her arms. Another had her legs. A fourth was trying to keep her from twisting hard enough to break something that belonged to her rather than them. It was not elegant. It was not clean. It was the brutal, practical work of carrying someone whose whole body had decided that if she stopped fighting, she was already lost.
“Doctor Talbert!” one of the officers called sharply as they crossed the threshold. “We need assistance!”
Maren bucked hard enough that one of them nearly lost his grip on her shoulder. Her hair had fallen loose around her face, dark and wild, half-sticking to the blood at her mouth. Her jaw was swelling where she had been struck, one cheek flushed red with impact, and blood from her cut palm had smeared across the restraint around her wrist. Tears streaked her face, but there was nothing soft in her eyes. She looked terrified enough to tear the ship apart with her teeth if it came to that.
“Get the fuck off me!” she screamed, voice raw and cracked from shouting. “Let go!”
The restraint field hummed against her wrists.
That sound did something terrible to her.
Her whole body jerked as if she’d been burned, panic punching through her so violently that one of the officers cursed and tightened his hold. Sickbay fractured around her. Clean overhead lights became the white glare of a regulation chamber. Biobeds became examination slabs. The soft hiss of medical equipment turned into the whisper-click of Dominion scanners warming up, hungry and precise. Every polished tool became something designed to measure, cut, record, correct.
“No,” she spat, twisting against them. “No, no, no, I’m not going back in the chair. I’m not letting you scan me. I’m not one of their files!”
One of her boots caught a tray stand as she kicked out. Instruments clattered across the floor, metal ringing against metal, and the sound cracked through her like a weapons alarm. She lashed out again, not with her hands this time, but with everything inside her that had no shape left. A jagged psychic pulse tore outward, hot with fear and rage and half-remembered restraint fields. A nurse stumbled back with a hand to her temple, suddenly pale, while another crewman froze mid-step as if some piece of Maren’s terror had hooked under his ribs and pulled.
The lead security officer, bleeding from a cut across his forearm and looking like he’d had the worst afternoon of his career, forced himself to keep the brief clipped and useful. “Patient experienced an acute episode in guest quarters. Locked herself in, overloaded local systems, damaged terminal casing and fashioned a weapon from the housing. Two officers injured. Suspected temporal narcosis with telepathic or empathic projection. She’s conscious, combative, and not distinguishing us from hostile forces.”
“I can hear you, you absolute prick!” Maren snapped, twisting toward his voice with blood on her teeth. “Don’t stand there doing the report voice like I’m not fucking here!”
Then she saw Addison.
Only she didn’t.
For a heartbeat, the doctor’s face warped under the pressure in Maren’s skull. Blonde hair became smooth, pale skin. Concern became an amused, delicate smile. The blue of Starfleet medical twisted into Dominion order, all softness turned clinical and cruel. A Vorta stood where Addison should have been, eyes bright with the kind of pleasure that never looked like pleasure in official records. The kind that lived in gentle hands, sterile needles, polite voices, and the promise that the pain was only distress because the subject lacked discipline.
Maren went still for half a second.
Then the scream came out of her like something torn loose.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked, fighting so hard the officers had to readjust around her. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”
The hallucination smiled wider.
Or maybe Addison didn’t smile at all.
Maren couldn’t tell anymore.
“You’re going to stick me full of suppressors,” she gasped, words tumbling fast now, too fast, too frightened. “You’re going to scan my head and write down what I am and call it treatment. I know how this works. I know what you do to people like me.”
Her eyes were locked on Addison, wild and wet and utterly convinced.
“You don’t get to fix me,” she shouted, voice breaking around the fury. “You don’t get to make me quiet!”
Another psychic wave burst from her, rougher than the first, less directed and more desperate. It carried flashes with it this time: a child’s wrist trapped in light, a man’s voice shouting through a sealed door, Dominion grey walls, a mother-shaped absence, the smell of ozone and fear. The pulse rattled through Sickbay hard enough to make the nearest monitor spike and shrill in protest.
Maren twisted again, breath tearing in and out of her, still restrained, still conscious, still trying with everything she had left to make herself impossible to take apart.
The call of her name roused Addison from her study of notes set on her desk. The next sound made her rise quickly from her desk.
It only took a matter of moments for Addison to take in the situation, already moving.
The cries of pain both from a nurse and Maren, noting the struggles of the security guards, four of them trying to keep hold of the young woman from thrashing about. Maren's wild eyed gaze. This added more emphasis to her movement. Maren needed to be calmed in a short matter of time.
The psychic wave from Maren, put Addison to her knees, feeling the anguish of Maren, Gritting her teeth, the doctor's hand reached up, gripping the solid steel top of the counter she was near. Pulling herself up she gave out a slight groan, her eyes watering from the pain.
Hypospray, hypospray, her hand opening a drawer where they were kept, plus tranquilizer. The first examination of Maren, had provided information and having suffered from the girl's first onslaught there had been something prepped. A tranquilzer just enough to calm her down.
The flashes of memory which pulsed out from Maren, gave Addison only a glimpse of some type of hell the girl had gone through. She had to quell the storm that was going through Maren and was radiating out to those here.
It wasn't easy to get around the bucking and writhing Maren, and the four men who were keeping her restrained. She had to give the hypospray from behind. With quick hands, a pressure of the hypospray--
The hiss of the hypospray cut through the noise.
Maren heard it before she felt anything, and the sound hit some deep, ruined place in her mind that no amount of Starfleet lighting could soften. Sickbay twisted again. The hands holding her became harder. The white around her became too bright. Addison behind her was not Addison anymore, but a shape with a Vorta’s smile and a needle full of obedience.
“No—” she gasped, twisting violently against the officers holding her down. “No, don’t you fucking—”
The dose entered her system.
For a second she fought harder, not weaker. Her whole body arched against the restraints, boots scraping against the deck, shoulders straining as if she could tear herself apart before she let them quiet her. The psychic pressure in the room spiked one last time, hot and jagged and full of panic, a desperate flare of fear that carried the flash of a restraint chair, Dominion grey walls, and a girl’s wrist burning under a field she could not break.
“You can’t make me quiet!” she screamed, voice cracking around the words. “You don’t get to take that from me!”
Then the tranquiliser began to pull at the edges of her.
Not enough to take her under. Not all at once. Just enough that the storm inside her started losing its shape. The violent psychic spillover dulled, the raw pressure drawing inward until the room no longer felt like it was tearing open around her. Maren felt the change and panicked at it, because to her it did not feel like help. It felt like control.
Her eyes searched wildly for Addison, though she still wasn’t seeing clearly. “Don’t take it,” she pleaded suddenly, the rage falling away so fast it left only a frightened girl underneath. “Please. It’s mine. It’s the only thing that’s mine.”
Her breathing hitched, rough and uneven. The fight began to drain from her muscles in reluctant pieces, though her fingers still flexed against the restraints as if some part of her refused to stop looking for a way out. Blood from her split lip had smeared along her chin, and tears cut through it as she stared past everyone at something none of them could see.
“Dad,” she whispered, small and broken now. “I didn’t let them. I tried.”
Her body sagged slightly in the officers’ hold, still conscious, still trembling, but no longer strong enough to turn terror into motion. Her head shifted weakly against the restraint of hands and arms around her, a final thread of defiance flickering under the haze.
“I’m not an asset,” she muttered, the words thick and uneven as the medication dragged her back from the edge. “I’m not… I’m not...”
A pained expression mixed with compassion could be seen on Addison's face.
"Take her to the bio-bed, please." Addison giving instructions, not that they needed any, it was more of an auto-response. She felt a little bit unsteady, but seeing the distress that Maren was suffering, her discomfort faded away.
"There, there, I won't be taking anything from you, Maren." her tone being soothing, well, hopefully soothing to her.
Once Maren was placed on the bio bed, "remove her restraints." Addison ready to put up the forcefield around the biobed, once they were clear.
The biobed was worse.
Maren felt herself lowered onto it and immediately tried to twist away, though the movement had almost no strength behind it now. Her limbs felt heavy and strange, her thoughts dragging through thick water while panic still clawed uselessly underneath. The room would not stay still. Addison’s voice reached her from somewhere nearby, soft and meant to soothe, but Maren’s mind kept trying to turn it into something else.
The restraints came off.
For one stupid, breathless second she thought that meant escape.
Her wrists pulled free and she jerked them toward herself, cradling them close against her chest as if expecting the skin there to burn. There was no Dominion field biting into her scars now, no compliance chair, no cold voice counting down a scan cycle. Just Sickbay. Starfleet blue. Medical light. Hands moving back.
Then the forcefield snapped into place around the biobed with a low shimmer.
Maren froze.
Her eyes widened, and whatever little relief had started to form broke apart immediately. The panic came back, but softer now, trapped under the sedative and exhaustion, making her shake rather than fight. She pushed herself up onto one elbow and reached toward the edge of the field, stopping just short of touching it.
“No,” she rasped, voice hoarse, still thick from the tranquiliser. “No, don’t… don’t put me in a box.”
Her gaze flicked from Addison to the security officers and back again, wet and furious and frightened all at once. She hated that she sounded scared. Hated more that she could not make herself sound anything else.
“You said you weren’t taking anything,” she muttered, curling her hands back toward herself, wrists held close like damaged things. “Then why am I still locked up?”
A Joint Post By:
Maren Malbrooke
Civilian, USS Pioneer
Lieutenant Addison Talbert
Chief Medical Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
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