Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dr. Solomon Kane (Research & Development) in Quarantine Bay 4- Flesh and Blood and Bone

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton (Scientist) in Quarantine Bay 4- Flesh and Blood and Bone

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Alexis Kane (Assistant Chief Medical Officer) in Quarantine Bay 4- Flesh and Blood and Bone
Posted by… suppressed (6) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Dalton proceeded to read a page about basic genetics. “Cool, going back to my biology roots. Gene expression is the process of turning the information encoded in the gene into a function, producing proteins or non-coding RNA that ultimately effect phenotypes. Which is how we get my dazzling blue eyes. Though I will say that I will miss the electric vibe I had going on. Not going to miss how any damage that happened to the ship I felt as some type of pain though, so I’m glad to be done with that nonsense.”

~Corinne Dalton

Kane grinned at Alexis. “Always with the full attention to detail. Someday I’m gonna have you just wing it for once.” He watched all the readings while the testing was going on and then said “Huh… normally I’d expect some cognitive fatigue, considering how much of a draw moving and learning your body is taking… but there is no indication.” He looked back at Cori and said “Pay close attention to your body for a while with regards to fatigue. That may not register right away with your brain.”

Kane, R&D

Alexis looked at him, “Noticed that too?” Of course he did. They would have to keep a close eye on her until she was adjusted. She glanced at Kane, “We winged our wedding. There is no excuse to ignore details.”

Cori nodded. “I should also note that I did that diagnostic you suggested before you left and there are a high number of discrepancies. I was able to fix some, but there are lots I couldn’t figure out. Most are really tiny things though, like as we discovered no knowing my favourite colour. I’m expecting those memory gaps you mentioned to be a result of those discrepancies.”

~Corinne Dalton

“Let’s start with basics. When and where were you born? Where did you grow up? What were the names of your parents?” Alexis listed off.

“Trick questions… sort of. I was born in 2361 on Hakton Seven to Alise and Quenton Ballard, but I grew up on Ajilon Prime with Kent and Janey Dalton who adopted me when the freighter I was on with my birth parents crashed. I was two.” Kip and Janey were her parents, even if they too were dead.

“We should go over your cover story as well and decide who is the exception to it, because I can think of a couple people of the top of my head,” she said, nodding to Alexis and Solomon to fill Dalton in.

Captain Myqian, CO

“Basically, you were kidnapped. He will give you all the particulars,” she nodded her head towards the other Kane.

Kane, AMO

“Not even basically.” Kane said firmly. “You were. Off the Saracen. By a heretofore unknown individual or agency who used you to prove they could diplicate a conciousness and store it in an artificial matrix. It was your conciousness. Your body and mind were gone, and was going to be used as a kind of template. But we thankfully intervened and that never happened. We then brought your back here, and voila… Corinne Dalton, Lieutenant in Star Fleet Sciences, is alive and well. And those that would maybe want to try and see if they could duplicate this work are going to want to go to the criminal mastermind that concocted it. So they can go after them, and leave you to recover from your harrowing experience.” and he winked at her. “So… everyone gets what they want… or thinks they want. You get your life back and are free to pursue your own future. The shadowy-types have someone to focus on other than you, and all of us get someone to buy us drinks for the rest of our lives.” Suddenly Kane’s eyes went wide and he started cussing… loudly and very explicitly. He turned and punched the cryotube. “&%$^@ $%!@&$<÷!!!!” he yelled. “How could I be so fucking stupid*!!!” and he looked down at his bloody hand, already swelling.

“Solomon!” Dira shouted, moving closer to the man, but not all the way. You didn’t throw yourself in front of an angry person- that was just stupid.

Dalton startled on the bed, but managed to hold on to stop herself from falling off.

Alexis on the other hand was not phased by the outburst and got right in front of him, grabbed him by the wrist, and made him sit down on the nearest surface. She opened her tricorder and ran it over his hands while muttering about him getting hurt after coming into her sickbay. She walked away and then returned with a dermal regenerator/bone knitter to take care of his hand.

Kane shook his head. “If your consciousness on the Saracen was a copy, and we rescued the real you from the bad guy…” and he looked at Dalton with a look of utter regret.

“You here now would have no knowledge of what happened on the Saracen after you died.” he said softly.

Kane, R&D

Cori shook her head. No… no. That couldn’t be the only

That was a big ask, for Corinne and everyone who knew her. Sure, some wouldn’t know the difference, but the woman before them would, and so would someone else on this ship. “So what now?” Myqian asked.

Captain Myqian, CO

“I’m not doing it. You can’t ask me to give up thirteen years of my life. The experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve known… all of that has helped make me the consciousness you transferred from that cube.” Dalton shook her head.

“We’re not going to ask that of you.” Kane said flatly. “We’re not going to do anything that would make you have to do that. Your life… that’s what We’re trying to get back.” He looked down at his hand and cursed again.

Squeezing her hand into a fist, she felt her nails dig in and it was strangely reassuring. “But maybe we don’t have to do that,” she said softly. “No one has to know where the body came from, and if no one knows, and say, I just happened to wake up in a lab somewhere and I was dying because something had gone wrong, but two doctors saved my life, well, I would just be grateful.” She took a steadying breath. “You are good at coming up with stories, I’m sure you can find a way to explain how you heard about a woman in distress. Maybe I did wake up in a lab, but left and starting having heart issues. You saved me and here we are on a medical ship now while I recuperate and figure myself out. Why you were there is up to you and you’ll have to tell me where that place was too.” She was trying to not panic over the iea that someone out there would come questioning her. But she could act this story. No one would have believed her if she tried to make up thirteen years of a life. She wouldn’t have believed her.

~Corinne Dalton

Kane, R&D

Finishing with his hand she pocketed the device and then Alexis handed him a PaDD with a stylus. The quite ‘recommendation’ that he draw. She looked at Dalton. “No we aren’t doing that. We aren’t going to take roughly the last decade away from you. We just need to carefully think through it. What we do not want is someone deciding they want to stick you in a hole and study you, or decide that they can use you. So for now, remember, you were kidnapped and the reintegration with your body has left your memories foggy. They will return as you get stronger. That will give us enough time to solidify your past.” She glanced up at the readings, “How do you feel about dogs?”

Kane, AMO

Cori was skeptical about the kidnapping idea, but in reality she had been. She’d been abducted right out of the Saracen’s computer, so it was true. She wouldn’t be lying and if she didn’t give any details, then she couldn’t be caught in a lie.

“I like dogs. I grew up on a farm and we usually had at least one,” Dalton said.

~Corinne Dalton

Kane drew, as he knew that is what Alexis meant. He concentrated on the picture, but he listened for a long time as ideas were bounced back and forth. After about ten minutes he said, seemingly out of the blue : “Ok. Dalton wasn’t the original target of all of this. The Saracen was. After all, no one would expect a starship to hijack itself.” As he spoke, he kept drawing. “The mastermind was just waiting for someone to die on board… Dalton played dice with Fate and rolled snake-eyes, so that was her. The protocols were pre-programmed into the system, so it was her consciousness that got yanked and integrated into the Saracen. Her body was taken and preserved to use as leverage to get Dalton to do what they wanted. I mean, c’mon… It’s a battle cruiser. Somebody would love to get their hands on a piece of equipment like that. To use or to sell, either way, and not germane to the story. The goal was to use someone, now her, to get the ship and do whatever they wanted to with it. But something went wrong, and for a while no one knew Dalton was there. By the time word got back, they had scrapped their plans and moved on to something else. So now they had to scramble. It took some time, but they managed to create the box and jam Dalton inside it and get her out of the ship. Now they were going to use the box as a kind of torture to force her into being compliant. Unfortunately for them, they stored the cube and Dalton’s body in an illegal gene-hacker lab that was already on Intel’s radar because of wholly unrelated matters. When Intel operatives,-” and he gestured back and forth with his stylus to him and Alexis, “- arrived to destroy the lab, we found the files for Dalton… her body… and the cube. Unfortunately we were so pressed for time we couldn’t break the encryption on the files in order to duplicate all of that, so we could only surmise from what we could see on the system. We rescued all the component pieces of Dalton, dropped her back in her body… and now look.” and he held up the picture he was drawing.

“A rhinoceros in a ballet tutu.”

Kane, R&D

Myqian quirked a brow, both at the story and the picture. She had seen him draw before, and knew he was talented, but she didn’t realize his skill also could trend towards the comical. “I mean, as far as cover stories go, it’s as good as anything else and actually has the function of explaining where we are at now.”

Captain Myqian, CO