Post 404: We're On Our Own

Stardate:70819.1445
Title: We're On Our Own
Author: =/\= Zanh Liis
Scene: Main Conference Room, Independence
Time: Current- Indy is nearly in transporter range of Earth
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Zanh Liis was sitting in the chair at the head of the long conference room table, waiting for the senior staff to arrive. She fiddled with the chain on her earring, unaware she was doing it, as she always did when she was lost in thought.

She had reviewed the events of a day or so ago in her mind a hundred times. The fact that Jariel had been able to speak when he was hosting one of Grace's previous personalities had thrown her a lot farther, a lot faster than she imagined anything could anymore.

It seemed that after the telepathic memory transfer, he just began speaking vocally again as if it was just as natural as breathing- as natural as speaking used to be to him. But as soon as the memories of Sachal Grace were returned to February, Jariel was once again mute, left to try to explain to her that he himself had no idea how or why this occurred- and neither did Dr. McKenna.

Jariel tried to explain to Liis that he believed the Prophets were only punishing him, personally and specifically- and therefore it made sense that the being known as Sachal would have use of the voice of his body. It wasn't the body that the Prophets were angry with, Jariel insisted. It was his pagh that was the problem.

Liis had denounced all of that as paranoid hogwash and promptly returned to her quarters- alone.

She hadn't seen him for a day since. She'd been too busy having secured subspace conversations with old colleagues at Temporal Investigations. Unfortunately, the only input she'd gotten from the agency had, in the end analysis, been maddeningly unhelpful.

Salvek was back in uniform and on duty this morning, and he greeted her as the first to arrive for the meeting.

"You do not look well, Zanh Liis." he observed.

"Thanks, Salvek. Appreciate that."

"I am merely concerned for your well being. You have been working far too many hours the past several weeks. You have not had time to recover from the medical procedure you required recently and you have already consumed 40 ounces of coffee today, and it is not even twelve-hundred yet."

She raised her cup and saluted him with it. "And I'm just getting started."

"What is it, Zanh Liis, that has your nerves so frayed?"

She reached under the table, into a small suitcase and pulled out the temporal compass she'd been carrying around with her for what now seemed like forever.

"This thing. You know it's really, at the end of the day, pretty damned useless."

"Explain."

"Fox Margolis and her security entourage contacted me at oh four hundred this morning. It seems that her mysterious visitor appeared again, only for a moment, last night. She was sleeping and opened her eyes to see him standing at the foot of her bed. Then he vanished."

"Perhaps she was having a nightmare?"

"No." Zanh said without doubt. "Corbinsky is the kind of nightmare you can only have when you're wide awake. And he's our problem now." She indicated the compass. "I spoke with TI. They told me that they won't be rendering us any assistance. Seems, according to them, 'history has placed this crew in this place at this time for a purpose.' she rolled her eyes. "I hate when they tell me that. That means that we're going to have to deal with this on our own, trying to catch a phantom genius with the technology of today. This does not reassure me, Salvek."

"What are Corbinsky's intentions?"

"Well it's obvious he has an unhealthy fascination with our famous operations officer. Beyond that, I just don't know yet. The compass should have registered any activity happening temporally within a large radius of the ship. But the logs show absolutely nothing."

"Perhaps, if I might take a look at it," She knew that look in his eye, it meant that he was already dreaming up ways to improve the range and power of the device.

"At this point, I don't see why not. Since they've left us to our own devices," she said, handing it over to him, "We're on our own."

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=/\= Zanh Liis
Acting Captain
USS Independence NCC-90791