Trouble in the Core

Posted on Mon May 22, 2017 @ 3:46pm by Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes & Captain Madelina Weisz

Mission: Avatar
Location: Primary Computer Core
Timeline: MD 9 || 1500 hours

The blue transporter sparkles blinked out of existence, leaving Tom behind at the top of the vast computer core. The control room was vacant, but its consoles were still active, just like they should have been.

He was certain the computer was here, and as much as he liked to mutter and talk to himself, Tom decided to refrain from doing so while he worked. Undoubtedly, the computer would be listening, and he didn't want to inspire any unfortunate action. Tom approached one of the stations to sit down and work.

Behind Tom, a presence appeared and a pair of hands moved around his head to rest over his eyes. There was something familiar about those hands, yet they were so different. Whoever it was standing there said nothing, but waited for him to acknowledge them.

"Um..." Tom said nervously. He'd thought the room was abandoned, but apparently not. It couldn't be an officer or enlisted person on board. After all, covering someone's eyes while in the computer control room was the furthest from standard protocol.

It was that moment when it dawned on him. These hands couldn't be human, much less biological. Before the computer could get any ideas, Tom escaped the grip and turned around, hoping to see his would be captor.

As he escaped the hands covering his eyes, bloody and torn fingertips moved over his face, leaving streaks of the sticky substance in its wake. His captor, however, was someone he'd come to know pretty well over the last couple of weeks... probably better than anyone else on the entire crew. "What's the matter, Tom? You're quite jumpy," a familiar lightly accented voice said.

As his eyes traveled along the body of the individual before him, he caught sight of a Starfleet issued uniform with patches of ice on it. As they moved further still, he came face to face with the features of a frozen Maddy. Her ocean blue eyes now the color of ice, her face... once vibrant and full of life... a deathly shade of blue. Her cheeks were slightly sunken in and became even more so when her ashen lips formed some semblance of a smile. "Aren't you happy to see me?"

Tom's eyes widened. He was a jovial man, always happy and cheerful; ready to see anyone that came his way. But even he had limits. Class upon class came rushing back to his mind. In Operations school, not just in learning, but in teaching, protocol had always been stressed. Even as a transporter operator, he was often one of the first faces seen by a dignitary. He had to always maintain professionalism, even when the person on the pad was someone unfamiliar and unwelcome.

Therefore, he could not rant on to whatever this projection was before him. In fact, he had no option at all. That did not, however, stop a little attitude from seeping through. "Not like this," he confessed. "You think this is a joke? You nearly killed her."

"I'll take that as a no, then," she said, moving forward to close the distance between the two of them. A blue and bloodied hand came up to rest against his chest. It felt real enough. "I'm quite happy to see you, though. Why don't you come with me?" Her ice blue eyes shifted just slightly as force fields began to erect themselves around the core and consoles one by one. "Please?"

There weren't many consoles in the room, so by the time Tom realized the computer's play, it was all too late. He looked towards the protected consoles only to realize that he was locked out. He'd gotten distracted, and that was probably the crew's last chance for survival.

He looked back to holo-Maddy and weighed his options. Tom could very easily resist, but the computer was in control. And, if it decided to go full-blown global thermonuclear war on him, then he'd barely get a step or two in before being whisked away. Maybe he could find a way to reason with her... it... whatever it was. "Where are we going?" he asked, his tone low and lacking confidence.

"Away from here," she answered, slipping her hand into his. "Somewhere where we can be happy together. Forever." She backed toward the exit, urging him to follow her. As the seconds ticked by, her hand only seemed to grow colder... more ice like.

Tom was hesitant. This person in front of him wasn't Maddy, yet her hand was indeed cold as ice. Since when did he end of with the Ice Queen? "Can you at least give me a hint?"

"Don't you trust me?" Holo-Maddy asked in return, urging him forward still. She kept calm as he'd given her no reason not to be. "Don't you know that I love you, and would never put you in any true danger?"

"You put her in danger," Tom countered. He wasn't just going to blindly follow her. If there was some conscience or form of intelligence in there, it had to know that he could reason. "I'll trust you," he cautioned, "but you've got to give me something to trust with."

"What do you want?" she asked, releasing his hand so she could study him.

Tom studied her in return. The more he did, the more he couldn't help but wonder how the real Maddy was faring down in sickbay. "Not looking like the frostbitten and nearly dead version of the woman I love would be a start."

And just like that, the freezer burned Maddy disappeared. "Done," came the same voice from behind him, only now, she looked normal. "Though... the Ice Queen version matches her personality quite well." She raised a hand. "I'm sorry. That was a bit below the belt. I'll try to keep the gloves up."

Tom spun around to see a healthy version of the projection appear. He was quite thankful that whatever this was had a sense of compassion. Maybe this wouldn't be too bad. "Okay then," Tom said with a nod, still a bit on edge that this thing had taken Maddy's form. "Where to?"

Holo-Maddy gestured for him to head for the door. "It won't take long for us to get there," she promised him. "We're just going home."

The Chief looked up at the door, then back at Maddy. "Where's home?" he asked, gesturing for her to lead.

"The Executive Officer's quarters, of course," Maddy replied, unable to keep herself from looking at him like he had a second head. What was also inside the XO's quarters were a bunch of emitters that helped give her the beach house vibe. Her place had the computer all over it. She gave him a smile and made her way out, stopping to wait for him to follow her.

Tom cocked his head a bit. He knew Maddy's quarters well, but there was nothing in there he could use to his advantage. "I'll go with you, but you have to help me first."

"Help you?" the redhead asked with an arched brow. "Help you what, exactly?"

"My friends," Tom explained, gesturing towards the forcefields. "They need me to... to do something on the other side of those. You think you can help me?"

"You want to shut the computer down," Maddy sneered, moving back into the control room as the doors slammed shut behind her. "You want to get rid of me just like everyone else does, don't you?" Now, she was beginning to get angry... so much so that she took the opportunity to revert back to her icy self, but there was a large difference. This time, she looked as though she'd been given a week or so to thaw out with decay beginning to set in. "I'll give you thirty seconds. If, in that time, you don't succeed... I get to keep you forever."

So she was just a program. An Artificial Intelligence, perhaps. The sight before him was quite disturbing, and Tom could have sworn he saw maggots or lice crawl in her matted hair. "I have no desire to shut the computer down," Tom argued. "Nor do I want to get rid of you. I want to help you, and my friends."

She blipped out and reappeared sitting on the ceiling above him. "Thirty seconds," Maddy said, looking down at him as the forcefields came down.

Damn. Tom thought, turning around to face the consoles. With thirty seconds, he had very few options, none of which where secure. His first plan involved trying to activate the manual override for all of the primary systems, a series of easy commands he could enter in a matter of seconds. Sadly, it would be easily counteracted, should the ice queen decide to do so.

"Twenty-eight," she said, lying back and tucking her hands behind her head with a smile. From this vantage point, she could see everything. "What are you going to do to help her and your friends?"

"This!" Tom shouted, activating the manual overrides. In an instant, each of the consoles flashed red, releasing control of all vital systems. He looked back up to HoloMaddy to see what she would do.

Rage filled the dead eyes above him as the room filled with an inhuman scream. As if written straight out of a horror movie, she lunged for him with her arms outstretched. She was so close to grabbing ahold of him, but then she just vanished as if she was never there to begin with.

Tom instinctively gripped the console the moment she reached for him, and was all the more relieved when she disappeared. That didn't mean that he had any less work to do, in fact he had to act rather quickly to secure what he'd just done.

He turned around and let his fingers dance on the controls. "Primary computer... secure..." he muttered, just as he introduced a shutdown sequence into the primary core, and then used the secondary computer interface to begin spooling it up. Hopefully, the Ice Queen hadn't yet infected it. If so, he might be able to keep her out of it.

"I missed you, too, sweetheart," came the gravely voice behind him followed by the unfamiliar sound of a 12 gauge being pumped. It was the twenty-fourth century, and such archaic weaponry wasn't used often, much less heard.

Tom immediately looked up from the console and turned around. Having been on Earth for so many years, he was more than familiar with the ancient shotgun. In fact, he'd gotten to fire one once or twice. To have one pointed at him, well, this was a new experience.

"Let's go," she ordered, pointing the weapon at him. "We're going to pay someone a visit."

There was no arguing with a scattergun pointing so close to him. Tom knew that all the computer had to do was pull the trigger, and he couldn't take the chance that the weapon wasn't holographic. He slowly stood up from the chair and raised his hands. "All right," Tom said. What he wouldn't give for a tricorder right now.

"This isn't for you," she said, gesturing for him to move out the door before her. "But, it is to keep you in line until we get where we're going."

The door opened and a young woman from Operations (the same one who helped him get the main computer offline in Ops) entered the control room, letting out a blood curdling scream when she saw the sight before her. Her only task was to check on the progress her Chief was making. This... this was much more than she could have ever bargained for. Fear gripped her, making it impossible for her to move.

The sound of the doors opening followed by the scream was enough to get the attention of holographic Maddy. She spun on her heel and fired off a shot, purposely missing the head of the newcomer. "Someone wants to die today."

"No!" Tom shouted, throwing himself in between Maddy and the woman from Operations. "You can't go around shooting and killing people!"

The woman from Operations did her level best to keep from fainting. She blinked when Barnes jumped in front of her and the horror show holding the shotgun. Was that... was that a worm wiggling out of the XO's ear? Forget fainting... she was going to be sick.

"I can't?" Maddy asked, narrowing her eyes on the Operations Chief. "But, I beg to differ. This is my ship now." With that, she gave a sick, twisted and rotten smile before she began to flicker out.

Tom looked all around the room to see if HoloMaddy appeared elsewhere. Alas, she was nowhere to be seen. That didn't mean that he was safe. Tapping his badge, he called out, "Barnes to Captain. The computer's offline, but I don't think we're out of the woods yet."