"Bodie?"

Posted on Mon Apr 2nd, 2018 @ 2:14pm by Hermes (Mercury) & Akira Zhuri & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi

Mission: Curing the Black Blood
Location: Isolation, Sickbay
Timeline: Current

Nexi couldn't stop blinking! Vaemyn had come around to do some scans earlier, and for a while she seemed fine, but then she became shrouded in wispy darkness and once she started disappearing and reappearing, she couldn't stop! There was always a transporter chief on alert who had a continual lock on Nexi since the day she blinked outside the ship, and today the chief reacted quickly to the call that Nexi was on the move again, swiftly beaming Nexi back to the protected isolation ward where she continued to blink around the room uncontrollably. There were nurses standing by to tend to her once she calmed down, but they were unable to open the door and thus risk letting her loose on the ship, not until Nexi had stopped, and for now they could see through the observation window that Nexi was still going.

And this was how Akira and Hermes found Sickbay upon entering, a nurse by Nexi's door waiting for Nexi to exhaust herself and come to a stop so that it was safe to enter, and a bit of disarray in the rest of the bay from all of Nexi's blinking, with personnel cleaning up in the wake of this torrential episode.

Hermes gasped in surprise when he saw Nexi.

"I didn't realize it had gotten this bad," he said. Hermes walked up to the isolation chamber and put his palm on the glass. He was about to say something to Nexi, but then seemed to realize that she wouldn't be able to hear him. He looked at the wall console outside of the isochamber for a moment, found the control he wanted, and opened the intercom channel to the chamber. "Nexi, my dear girl, can you hear me? It's Hermes."

"Hermes?" Nexi replied, not recognizing the name at all. Then the shroud consumed her and she blinked across the room, then just as quickly appeared on the ceiling and falling to the ground, and just before she could hit the deck she blinked again, the momentum of her fall slamming her into the glass. "Bodie?" she said when she recognized his face. Her voice was raw, evidence that she had been doing a lot of screaming lately. "Bodie, you gotta get me outta here! They've done something to me, please, you can't... can't let me die in here!"

"Crap," Hermes said. "Yes, it's me, Bodie. Shh...there's a good girl. These people are your friends, just like me. They just want to help you. But you have to try and relax. Panicking is just going to make things worse. Oh, listen to me. I must sound terribly stupid right now. I'm just going to talk to Akira here and some of the Sickbay staff and see if I can't help you stay in one place. Okay?"

"No no, Bodie, don't go, I-" Nexi was cut off as she once again was shrouded in darkness and started blinking uncontrollably around the room.

Akira looked aghast at the sight of Nexi disappearing and reappearing in spastic jaunts. "This is terrible!" she said, clearly shocked by the state Nexi was in.

"It's going to be okay, Nexi," Hermes said. "Your old friend Bodie is right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Hermes turned to Akira.

"I assume there is a containment field," Hermes said. "Even if it's just a backup, in case of physical containment breech. Which console controls it? Quickly little one, before she ports somewhere dangerous!"

"The room is already secure," one of the nurses spoke up. "We can keep her in her room, but we can't suppress whatever she's doing, so she just jumps around in there until she exhausts herself."

Even knowing that Nexi was safely contained, Akira felt compelled to do as Hermes said and checked the controls for herself. "Being that active will put a strain on the containment field; I'll check the field frequencies and make sure the back up is ready in case of primary failure," Akira said as she tucked herself at console to work. All the while Nexi kept throwing herself around the room.

"I might be able to," Hermes said. He went over to the console and aimed his left wrist device at it and touch one of what appeared to be stones in the wrist piece, but were obviously controls of some kind. He hadn't wanted to let out that he could so easily hack the Hera's systems, but Nexi needed his help. It wasn't exactly clear to those watching him what he had done, but clearly he had learned something from it. "Alright, I think I can help here. I just have to run to my ship for a moment. Back in a flash! Well, two, actually."

There was, you guessed it, a flash, and Hermes disappeared. A moment later there was another, you guessed it, flash, and Hermes reappeared. In his hand was a a cubical device of some kind. He placed it on a flat surface at the top of the console controlling the containment field. There was a click as it locked to the surface. Hermes pressed a control on his belt device this time and the cube began to beep and hum and then flash different colors on it's surfaces, different colors on each of it's surfaces. Finally, the beeping stopped, and the cube seemed to find a color combination it liked. The containment field activated. Nexi blinked a few more times, and then the blinking stopped.

"And there were are!" Hermes said. "That should hold her, at least for a while. That was part of a device I used to corral a Q once. It didn't actually hold her as long as I wanted it to, but, while the Master was powerful, he was no Q. How are you feeling Nexi?"

Nexi collapsed on the floor. "Help..." was all she was able to say with pathetic whimper, and in response the nurses rushed in to check her vitals. Sunny and Mister Pickles were unable to blink in with the field now suppressing that ability, so they appeared just outside the room and entered through the door, worried about their master.

"Poor girl, she's exhausted," one of the nurses commented as together they lifted Nexi and got her onto the biobed. "Let's get her started on some fluids, and inform Nurse Ulfred and Lieutenant Vaemyn of her condition, they'll want to be updated." Personnel scattered to do as ordered, leaving Nexi with just the one nurse to continue monitoring her.

At the console, Akira silently studied what the cube had done to the containment field and was learning all she could from it so that maybe they could continue to utilize this trick after Hermes left with his neat little toy.

"Nexi," Hermes said. "It's Bodie. Are you feeling a bit better now?"

"Bodie..." Nexi said, barely coherent. "I can't... can't find an exit... Where are we? Where's the 'Star?"

"We're on the USS Hera," Hermes said. "This is where you live and work now, with your sister and Enalia and Mal and Clio and T'Pral and Akira and Daytona. You're even a Starfleet officer of all things. The Wandering Star is secure, so don't worry about that."

"Fucking Starfleet?" Nexi tried to sit up, but the nurse monitoring her held her down, and Nexi was so weak it took very little effort at all. "Bodie, why would you let me join Starfleet of all the fucking things?"

Hermes chuckled.

"Well," Hermes said. "You didn't really ask for my opinion on the matter at the time. No one was more surprised than me to find you in Starfleet. Still, having met some of your friends here, I think it was a good choice for you."

One of the nurses returned with a IV stand and a bag of saline which they quickly set up and ran a line to Nexi. Nexi's only response was to grimace. "What's happening to me?" she asked of no one in particular.

"You've got a bit of an...infection," Hermes said. "You cut a very bad person and his blood got into a cut on your body. It's having some very strange effects. Some of your friends have since been infected, not by you, don't worry about that, but they're infected nonetheless. I don't want you to worry, though. We have a lead on a cure for the infection. As soon as the Hera is ready to leave, Enalia is taking you and the others to the planet where we think the cure can be found. And, if we're wrong and the cure isn't there, then I'll scour the galaxy until I find a cure. On that, you have my word."

"I don't want to die," Nexi said in a raspy whisper as tears welled up in her eyes. "The life we live... no one ever lives to retirement, 'cept maybe you... Always knew I'd die young, it never bothered me, but now... I don't wanna go, not like this..." Nexi turned her head to look at Hermes, the man that in this moment she only knew as her friend and information contact Bodie. "One of these days you'll have to tell me your secret, how you get your information and travel so fast, or how you got out of that standoff on Daneb IV unscathed."

"You're not going to die," Hermes said. "Not yet, anyway, and not like this. I've actually already told some of my 'secrets', but something happened and your memories are a bit mixed up at the moment. I can fill you in again, if you'd like."

"Yeah... that sounds..." Nexi trailed off and her eyes closed. Alarms on the biobed and the nurse's tricorder sounded off, then the wispy shroud of darkness surrounded her again, but the containment field protecting the room was able to keep her from moving from the biobed. The sensors didn't know what to make of her current state as she was not really here but neither was she entirely 'gone', she was stuck somewhere in between.

"Nexi?" Hermes said. "Nexi? Can you hear me?"

Hermes looked over at the cube with a worried expression on his face, as if it was supposed to be doing something and wasn't. He muttered a curse and began playing with his devices. The cube began to flicker again, and continued to flicker, as if it was searching for the correct frequency.

"Damn," he said. "The cube and Nexi's new found and completely uncontrolled abilities are having a pissing contest. I think...there! That will hold for a bit, and it should be able to auto correct now. I've linked the cube to my ship's computer, and I've directed my ship to pull alongside the Hera for the time being to make sure the link is solid. Nexi, can you hear me now?"

"Please tell me you'll leave this device here with us for a while," Akira muttered as she studied the new readings.

In the isolation chamber, Nexi resolidified and the shroud dispersed. "Bodie?" she said with confusion when she saw Hermes. "Where are we? I thought we were meeting on Deneb IV. Is the cargo secure?"

"Nexi," Hermes said. "That was all over quite a while ago. You're on the Hera now, where you live and work with your new friends and your sister. You're just having a really bad day. You're sick, but we're working on making you better. I've got something that I think will help."

Hermes reached into his pocket and pulled out a hypo and turned to the nurse.

"I'm going give her this," he said. "Don't ask me what it is, but it was designed for her and it should help stabilize her. Don't worry about opening the chamber."

Hermes touched a control on his belt and there were two flashes, one where he had been standing outside of the isolation chamber and another where he appeared inside the chamber. Before anyone could object, he injected Nexi. Then he took her hand.

"You should start to feel better soon," he said. "And I've got more where that came from."

The nurse had no objections; if this guy had something to help Nexi, then she desperately welcomed the assistance.

Upon being injected, Nexi gasped as the sudden sense of clarity she felt; the memories weren't coming back, but she had a sense that she knew what her friend was talking about, the infection and the missing memories, so she had no cause to doubt his words.

"Bodie?" she said. Her gaze seemed more focused, a sign that she was already more lucid. "Thank you," she said with relief as the contents of the hypo seemed to calm something within her. "Oh fuck, I feel... I feel like shit, and so tired," she said with a groan.

"When was the last time you got any sleep?" he asked. "You look like you've been awake for days. No offense."

"I... I don't know," Nexi replied. She had actually gotten some sleep the night before, not enough but some sleep was better than nothing, but the real damage to her was all that blinking, it taxed her body in ways that sleep alone could take ages to repair. "Fuck, feels like I ain't slept in weeks!" she said, then yawned. "You're not going to run off with my cargo if I fall asleep, will ya?"

Hermes smiled.

"If I did," he said. "You'd never catch me! The chase might be fun, though. Now, get some sleep. I'll sit here with you for a while and make sure everything is going as it should. If I'm not here when you wake up and you want me to catch you up, have someone find me."

Hermes looked through the window of the isolation chamber and found what he was looking for: a chair. He touched a stone on his belt and there were again two flashes. One when the chair disappeared outside of the isolation chamber, and another when the chair appeared behind Hermes, perfectly placed. The faux god sat down next to his young friend, her hand still in his.

"You're a good friend," Nexi replied with a lazy grin, her eyes drooping as sleep threatened to claim her, which it did a moment later.