Outbreak: Training Edition - Part 5/5

Posted on Thu Jul 10th, 2025 @ 10:45pm by Lieutenant JG Lovisa Montague & Chief Warrant Officer Alexion Wylde & Lieutenant Astrid Nyx & Crewman Mateo Gardel & Petty Officer 1st Class Leon Inaros & Crewman Raine Ni-ya

2,543 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: To Boldly Go
Location: Holodeck 1
Timeline: Day 10 - after the crew board Fenrir

PREVIOUSLY

"Science team!" Astrid called. "We're going to catalyze a holographic energy matrix. Take a hologram and use the transporation system to solidify the pattern enough so that it reads like living tissue. Then, as soon as this thing leaves Veenhold we'll pull the whole construct into the pattern buffer. That'll give us time to analyze it in greater detail. Maybe even find a way to communicate with it." Or finish beaming it into space, if we have to, she added silently.

ON - CONTINUED:

Mateo didn’t move at first. Doctor Wylde’s words landed with clinical precision—efficient, almost detached—but the implications settled like weight across his chest. Kill the host. Force the transfer. Resuscitate. He could follow the logic. But logic wasn’t always enough. His gaze tracked the neural scan hovering above the console, Veenhold’s cognitive map still pulsing with unnatural energy. Synapses glowed with something that didn’t belong—and yet had made itself belong. Anchored not at the edges, but at the core.

He moved to the console, but not to build anything. Not yet. His fingers hovered over the controls, motionless. “The brain stays active for a few minutes after cardiac arrest,” he said, his voice flat, almost distant. “But degradation starts right away. Neural patterns collapse, memory structures begin to fragment, ion channels fail. If that thing is embedded—if it’s integrated with Veenhold’s executive function—we’re not just forcing it out. We’re unraveling the system it’s using to exist.”

His eyes shifted briefly toward Doctor Nyx. “How long does he have to be dead before it lets go? And how long can he stay that way before we can’t bring either of them back?” His jaw tightened. “We only get one transfer window. And if we miss it—if we push too far or wait too long—we’re not just risking Veenhold’s life. We’re erasing a sentient structure we haven’t even begun to understand.”

He exhaled slowly, deliberately, and stepped back. “I can help simulate a lure. I can create something viable. But I won’t initiate something that requires the death of a sentient being as its opening move.” His tone remained even, but the restraint in it was sharpened by principle. “This isn’t just a parasite. It hasn’t destroyed him. It’s communicating—through patterns, through behavior, through structure. That may not be how we’re used to talking, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t saying something.” He looked back toward the screen. “Ending a life to save one might not be a zero-sum equation.”

Then, more firmly, more humanly: “You asked us to treat this as a first contact scenario. So let’s start acting like it.”

He paused. Just long enough to let the thought finish forming before it left his mouth.

“Because if this is a lifeform—and we kill it before it speaks—we won’t just lose a crewmember.” His voice softened, but didn’t waver. “We’ll lose who we are in the process.”

"And if we do nothing, we could end up losing both of them anyway," Alexion pointed out, a single shoulder rising in a hint of a shrug. It wasn't that he was particularly determined to try it out, he was just the kind of person that hated standing around talking instead of *doing*. "Either way, we'll definitely lose our patient if we don't try something soon. At least if we hold it in the pattern buffer, it buys us more time to figure out the next step. Unless someone can figure out how to communicate with it, we're running out of options."

Lovisa frowned as she looked across to Mateo, remaining silent, but her eyes full of regret and anxiety, because like Gardel, she worried about the risk of causing unintentional harm to this lifeform. Perhaps it was the ultimate difference in science and medical playing out, but she found it hard to play the numbers game in terms of risk, rather than finding a perfect solution.

Mateo didn’t look away from the screen, but the strain tightened across his shoulders, visible now in a way he didn’t bother to hide. “I’m not saying we stand here and let him die,” he said, his voice low but carrying a rawness beneath the control. “But we can’t treat this like a numbers game. Veenhold’s not a calculation. And neither is whatever's inside him.” His hands curled into a loose fist at his side before forcing themselves open again, steadying. "If we rip it out without understanding how it's anchored, we’re not just risking the life we know—we're gambling with a second one that’s already trying to survive."

His gaze broke from the neural scan and found Lovisa’s across the space between them. For a moment, the cautious defiance in Mateo’s eyes faltered, stripped back to something quieter, more human—a silent, pleading urge for her to speak, to stand with him if she felt the same weight bearing down on them both. He breathed out slowly through his nose, forcing steadiness into his voice as he looked back toward the console. "We need to move," he said, softer now. "But we need to move with the understanding that what we’re trying to save isn't just one body on that table."

"If it comes to it, who do you save?" Raine's question sounded harsh. It wasn't meant to be, it was meant to be pragmatic. This was Starfleet, they all had signed up for it knowing that sometimes...people died. Was their mission to preserve their own lives, or the life of whatever they encountered? She wasn't sure, so she asked.

"It can still be both," Lovisa replied softly as she glanced back to the table, having to remind herself this was just a simulation. But it still didn't shake away that slight sense of nausea in the pit of her stomach. She watched the man, still sat up, staring at them, his lips moving in the imitation of speech. "Would luring it over to a holographic host be safer for it? If we can mimic the crucial components it's reliant upon?"

"We'd have to mimic a complex nervous system, a functional brain...it isn't like holographic lungs or heart, there's a lot more going on and we'd have to do it in a short time," Inaros said as he looked over at the others. He had experience with holographic lungs from emergency medicine, but this was bigger. A lot bigger.

Raine looked at them, her head tilting to the side as she considered something. "Some planets have technology and biology interlinked," she said lightly. Her people were one of them. "We can try and use that and make something that...the entity might accept as a host body. Hologram, robot...person."

Astrid felt her heart soar at the tension spreading through the team. She hadn't expected this much investment, this much earnest care. But perhaps that was what she needed to learn still, as a CMO. Trust. Of course, there was still a decision to be made. She held her expression steady as she met the eyes of the assembled team.

"We can have the computer render something based off the latest EMH designs, they're complex enough that Starfleet's been considering walking them back for fear that we're starting to create beings capable of consciousness." That much was true. There had been cases already where holographic programs broke the barrier of consciousness -- or at least appeared to. A program that advanced could be fine-tuned to simulate a neurological structure.

"Or we wait. Scan it. Analyze the situation. Maybe find a way to detach it that's safer for it. But that certainly risks Veenhold's life." She raised a finger. "And remember, whatever this thing is, it might pose a risk to the entire crew if left unchecked. We have a duty to the ideals we swore to uphold... but we're also sworn to protect our fellow crew."

Mateo’s arms folded across his chest, not with resistance but focus, his weight shifting slightly onto one foot as if grounding himself against the pull of the moment. He hadn’t meant to fixate, but he couldn’t stop watching Veenhold—still seated upright, lips moving as if caught in some silent argument with the air. There was something haunting in the stillness of it, in the way life and un-life seemed to blur around the edges of the man. The patterns across his neural map still pulsed on the console behind Mateo like a storm frozen mid-surge, but it was the man—not the data—that held him. Not just because of what was happening to him, but because of how deliberately it seemed to be happening. This wasn’t a fluke. Something had chosen Veenhold. Something was staying.

He spoke at last, voice low but clear, eyes still drawn toward the biobed. “Assuming we can replicate what it needs, we still don’t know why it chose him.” His words were deliberate, carefully paced, as if thinking through them as he said them. “It could be compatibility—structure, pattern familiarity, access. But there might be something else. Something in him. In how he thinks. How he sees the world.” Mateo didn’t say it aloud, but he recognized the echo. Rigid structure. Routine. Repetition. The kind of brain that held tight to order, and left little room for chaos. He wondered, not for the first time, if that would make him a good host, too.

His gaze flicked to Doctor Nyx, then to Lovisa and Raine. “If we build a body that’s too complex, we might trap it. If we build one that’s too simple, we might offend it. Either way, we need to understand what it’s looking for before we offer it anything at all.” His voice softened a fraction. “Otherwise, we’re not building a solution—we’re baiting a cage. If we can isolate what it’s anchored to in Veenhold’s cognitive patterning, we might be able to recreate it artificially. Not perfectly—but close enough to invite it to choose.”

Raine let out a breath before she looked at the others. And then she grimaced. "We can map my brain," she finally said, looking over at them. "It's not hubris, it's logic. The EMH matrix is sophisticated, but we would need to ensure we don't have it connected to the computer's databases. It might also be too restrictive if this works and then we find we have to actually build a body for it. My people...spent time engineering ourselves to be able to interact with technology. All it means is that my neural pathways are closer to what a hologram matrix can emulate and still look real. We can then superimpose the last scans of Veenhold, so there's something familiar."

Leon looked at her for a moment before he frowned. "Like taking a blanket from the mother for the puppy to smell in the new home," he said quietly, glancing over at Doctor Nyx.

"It seems better than one of us offering ourselves up as sacrifice," Raine added quietly, reaching to awkwardly rub the back of her neck.

Astrid nodded. "Do it."


Some time later.

Astrid straightened slowly, the weight of tension sliding from her shoulders as Sickbay’s overhead lights steadied to their normal, comforting glow. The emergency was over. The biobed’s readouts settled into healthy greens and gentle pulses of amber, and Lieutenant Veenhold—alive, breathing, stable—lay still and resting. Astrid let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, feeling the difference in her chest as relief washed away the tight knot of worry that had lodged there since the scenario began. They had done it. They had worked together to solve the problem.

She turned to the far isolation alcove where the hastily generated brain-mapped hologram stood, its features that of the EMH Mk 2 standard medical hologram. Yet, inside that shell, the entity’s presence was unmistakable—rapid oscillations of light flickering behind the eyes, energy signatures dancing in precise harmony with the artificial neurons the science team had placed there. It had transferred cleanly, leaving Veenhold’s body the moment clinical death came and the lure of a viable new matrix appeared. Almost as if it understood that they didn't want to harm it. Astrid felt a rush of pride swell in her chest; the ridiculous complexity of the plan had translated into elegant execution, and every department had owned a piece of that triumph.

They were gone now, off to celebrate their victory. And celebrate they should. But she had stayed behind in the holodeck to think for a moment. To consider what this meant for the future.

She watched the hologram holding the alien for another heartbeat—pure subspace energy, curious rather than malicious, now cocooned in code and hardened light. Its story, revealed after its transfer, still haunted her. The computer simulation had weaved something incredible, there. An explorer from a subspace dimension totally unlike their own, it had traveled there to explore organic life. She laughed. First contact didn’t always come with phasers or protocol. That was the whole point, wasn't it? Starfleet was more than politics and firearms, or it wasn't worth anything at all. Empathy had solved this puzzle, pure and simple. And it made her feel incredibly, tearfully glad.

The scenario had closed well. The decision to ferry the visitor home. A subspace rift, distant but reachable, waiting not far away. It was all wrapped up with a neat and tidy bow. Something about that thought made her smile falter, if only for a moment. This was a simulation, after all. Real life could never be so tidy. And yet... she felt that she could trust these people now. Trust them to not just take the easy road, but to stay true to their training and their better natures even when things got tough.

When the holodeck programme finally dissolved into the familiar yellow-black grid, Astrid paused at the threshold, allowing herself one final sweep of the empty room. Pride warmed her. Yes. They had listened, challenged, collaborated, and delivered a novel solution that saved two lives and honored Starfleet’s best ideals in the same breath. She tapped her badge, voice calm yet undeniably pleased.

"Lieutenant Nyx here. The scenario is ended. I'm coming up."

And with that, she headed for the debrief—ready to commend every officer involved, and determined to carry this lesson forward: trust the team, trust the science, and never underestimate the power of a shared ideal.

OFF:


Lieutenant Astrid Nyx
Chief Medical Officer
USS Fenrir

Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Science Specialist
USS Fenrir

Dr. Alexion Wylde
Medical
USS Fenrir
(PNPC - Blake)

Lieutenant JG Lovisa Montague
Science Officer
USS Fenrir
(PNPC - Blake)

Crewman Raine Ni-ya
Science
USS Fenrir
(PNPC - Hanlon)

PO1 Leon Inaros
Nurse
USS Fenrir
(PNPC - Hanlon)

 

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