It had been about two months since Ensign Fayth had departed from the Europa and through most of it, Ashlyn had been alright. Less social than usual and more work-focused, but not unhealthily so, she also seemed to have lost some of the vibrancy of her emotions. To the psychically inclined, her thoughts were muddled and sounded like static, but they were still loud in comparison to most. Her defenses have gotten better, but not in the way expected, she’s still working on the more common blocks that people use that keep all but the deepest mind dives out.

Today, however, was all wrong. Ashlyn’s emotions were all over the place, she couldn’t focus on her reports and was snappy or standoffish to other security personnel. It took one of her colleagues to get her to understand that something was wrong and she needed to take care of it before she did something stupid. She apologized for her behavior and wrote up the report to Lieutenant Abrams with a request for a personal ‘mental health’ day to get her head straight, stating that she’d be willing to take up someone’s shift and work extra duty to make up for it.

After turning in the report and request, Ashlyn let herself wander the corridors not wanting to return to her room where a less accepting roommate awaited. The engineering team had wasted no time after Sharah left to go in and reset that half of the room to its original configuration. Within the week NEnsign Kien had moved in and was immediately put off by the tube configuration that took up half the room. Within a few days, Kien had become incredibly vocal about how odd Ashlyn’s mannerisms were and her selection of off duty activities. Kien was one of the reasons Ashlyn threw herself into more work, it was an excuse to not return to her room where she would continue to be judged by the Science Team member. It was evident to Trenton that she couldn’t trust her, by the third week Kien had taken to sharing rumors with friends back home, exposing secrets to strangers that didn’t live on the ship. It made her smile when Trenton climbed down from her sleeping space in the tubes to make her presence suddenly known. The girl panicked, but she had no interest in dealing with her.

Ashlyn stopped when she was confronted with a door that didn’t open automatically like most. Taking a moment to get her bearings, she realized she was outside the Counselor’s Office. Well, it made sense and this was the appropriate place to bring her troubles for help. Unfortunately, when Ashlyn checked the time, it was hours still before the Counselor would be in. Considering that she was going to have to turn in that paper soon on the proposal for the security algorithm updates, Ashlyn went ahead and opened the door, bypassing the security with a tetrahedron algorithm that trapped the locking mechanism in a logic loop, allowing her to open the door. Once inside, Ashlyn removed the algorithm and locked the door again before settling into one of the couches. Now she was in a quiet space alone where people wouldn’t find her which gave her time to process her emotions. At least until the counselor came in and would likely chastise her for breaking an entering.

• Ensign Ashlyn Trenton
  Security, USS Europa