A Glow Stick in Sickbay

Posted on Fri Jun 20th, 2025 @ 11:56pm by LMH & Captain Björn Kodak & Lieutenant Ezhr Delja & Lieutenant JG Gwenwyn Marwol

Mission: Seven Souls
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 1813

[Sickbay]
[USS Sojourner]
[MD 1: 1813 Hours]

The doors to Sickbay slid open with a hiss, a gust of cool air mingling with the sterile, recycled atmosphere. The room, already bustling with the aftermath of the Kazon attack, became the center of two urgent crises.

First through the door were two crewmen, their uniforms streaked with soot and blood, struggling under the weight of Chief Engineer F’Rar. The engineer’s uniform was scorched, plasma burns marring the fabric and the skin beneath. Her breathing was shallow, her form unsettlingly still. The crewmen guided her onto the nearest biobed, quickly stepping back as the medical staff moved in to take over.

Barely a moment passed before the Sickbay doors parted again. This time, Crewman Ryland entered, his own face pale and streaked with grime. Draped over his shoulder was a Kazon warrior, his form heavily armored with a strange, metallic sheen that seemed to shift and shimmer under the emergency lights. Ryland half-carried, half-dragged the Kazon to an adjacent biobed, easing him down with a grunt of effort.

“He was in the secondary computer core,” Ryland reported to whoever would listen. His voice was raw, every word dragged out through grit and adrenaline. “The others are dead. This one barely held on. Had to set the phaser to kill—stun did nothing.”

The Kazon’s breathing was ragged, his eyes flickering with a dull awareness. His armor, unlike any Kazon standard issue, bore the oily sheen of some unknown material, its surface seeming to warp the light around it. His lips moved, a breathless whisper escaping—“Subrek.”

A voice suddenly came over the comm, linking Sickbay and wherever the ship's First Contact Specialist currently was. "t'Nai to Marwol and Delja. We just heard about the injured Kazon. The Captain and I want you both to focus on getting him stabilized and trying to glean whatever details from him you can. We need to know where Subrek's headed next. Keep us informed. t'Nai out," the XO closed the channel.

Like every crisis, Sickbay was the first room to get overcrowded within the first hour of said crisis. People injured by the boarding parties or engineering crews flooded in and Gwenwyn had to get the emergency cots placed in the corridor just so there were more beds to treat people in. The Kazon guest, came when Gwenwyn was kneeling down beside a cot administering burn treatment to an engineer. At first he thought it was another body they came to dump and quickly chased after it, while pursing the Kazon, Commander t'Nai came over his com badge...

Bio bed 2 had opened up, and the Kazon had been settled into the bed. Biobed 1 & 2 were just an examination table with an advanced internal scanner built in, the scan only took a few seconds to run. Red across the board. He was a category red patient now... life-threatening injuries. "You defiantly killed him" Murmured Marwol to Ryland, the Kazon needed emergency surgery, unlucky for the Kazon the on-call trauma surgeon was already in the only surgical operating room performing trauma surgery. "Stabalise him and induce a coma," Marwol ordered and the Nurses and junior doctors around him fluttered into action.

Delja arrived in sickbay not long after receiving t'Nai's call. Despite how crowded the room had become, he had no trouble identifying his target. He approached the biobed opposite from where Marwol was standing. As he did so, his gaze swept over the Kazon laid out on it, taking in the man's hair, face, and body armor. It was immediately apparent to Delja that their 'guest' was in no condition to be answering questions yet. Even with his limited first aid training, he could tell they were going to have to deal with the Kazon's injuries first if they wanted more information. "How can I help," he asked.

"Not unless you're secretly a trauma surgeon with a spare surgical biobed," Marwol remarked to the man at the bottom of the bed who he presumed was Delja, he stretched his hand to the stranger "Dr Marwol" He introduced himself. "He's been muttering 'Subrek'. He needs trauma surgery but," nodding to the closed surgical suite at the top of Sickbay "We only have 1 Trauma team and 1 surgical biobed and it's occupied, and I've not gotten around to looking for the surgical wait list. We're putting him in a medical coma, with the hope that our drugs take effect to a Kazon overwise, he won't last long breathing on his own." And with another nod to Ryland, "This is his attacker," Gwenwyn noted in case the FCS (First Contact Specialist) wanted to interview him.

The Xanosian processed this new information quickly. It was not good news. He doubted whether they would be able to get much from the Kazon in his present state, but given what Marwol had just told him, the likelihood of them having another chance anytime soon seemed...slim. He would just have to give it a shot and hope for the best. Straightening his shoulders, Delja put as much authority as he could into what he projected toward the barely-conscious man. "Identify yourself," he demanded.

The Kazon's eyes were closed, though his lips continued to squirm in his mumbling. "You will...all die," came the raspy response. The beginnings of a laugh were stalled as the medically induced coma Marwol had mentioned took effect. Muddy brown features -- so rigid and fierce only moments before -- softened in their slack, sleep taking hold of the warrior. Perhaps the coma would have afforded the Doctor and his staff more time to address other patients but the Kazon's body, it seemed, demanded more immediate attention as it suddenly began to seize and convulse. Foam of some kind began to spill from the warrior's mouth as his body continued to writhe.

Sickbay was ablaze with alarms. "CODE BLUE!" Gwenwyn shouted, as Nurses and other Doctors rushed over, the Acting Chief Medical Officer pulled the tables on wheels away so the Kazon couldn't hurt himself or cause a mess, "Push Pyrocyte's," He instructed. Pyrocyte, while causing a heavy allergic reaction to Human Skin, was used in Kazon Blood and thankfully it was used in Ferengi blood too and stored on ships in case of Ferengi Crewmen.

A Nurse quickly stepped up and pressed a hypospray into the Kazon's leg, with the seizure ongoing, he could pull a drip out of him and hurt himself, the hypospray was the next best thing until he stopped his seizure. After the seizure, it was another cause of damage to assess.

Delja did not even need to be told what to do. He immediately backed away from the Kazon's biobed, yielding to the medical staff. They were going to need all of the room they could get trying to deal with the situation and, Delja's basic first aid training notwithstanding, he knew he was going to be more of a hindrance than an asset at this point. No matter how much they needed whatever information the Kazon could reveal to them, his choosing to stay would only mean getting in the way. And yet, that did not mean he was out of options...

While the team worked quickly to stabilize their patient, Delja turned his attention toward the individual Marwol had indicated earlier - Crewman Ryland. Although the man had long since removed himself to the sidelines, he had not left the room. Instead, he stood there...watching. If Delja could not get answers from their 'guest', then perhaps he could find out more from what one of their own. "Mister Ryland," he said, approaching the man, "Would you come with me, please?" He motioned toward the (currently) empty office nearby and proceeded toward it.

As Delja pulled Ryland aside, the Kazon warrior’s body jerked violently on the biobed, limbs flailing in chaotic spasms. Foam frothed at his lips, bubbling with each ragged, choking breath. Beneath his skin, just below the collarbone and along his right arm, faint lines began to glow—a subtle, pulsating light that shimmered like molten metal. The veins around the sites swelled unnaturally, throbbing with each erratic heartbeat. On the displays of the medical team’s devices, traces of thorium began to ping—radiation blooming in the bloodstream with concerning frequency. The Kazon’s adrenal levels surged to dangerous levels, far exceeding natural biological limits.

The body arched once more—tendons snapping taut—then collapsed into a violent shudder. His mouth opened in a silent scream, jaw locking wide before finally going slack. The glow beneath his skin slowly faded, leaving behind scorched subdermal tissue and the acrid scent of overheated metal mingling with burnt flesh. The Kazon warrior lay motionless then—vitals flickering but not gone. Whatever had been coursing through him had run its course, though. At least for the moment. But why was thorium coursing through his bloodstream?

As the Kazon became a glowstick, it caught the Nurse's eye, who poked Gwenwyn, and it too caught his eye. He started up at the machines around him, noticing the chemical known as 'Thorium' along with radiation levels, the stupidest thought entered his head. Had the Kazon evolved? "I want a full bloods & tox workup, get a tissue sample too, and a priest... I really don't like this."

As if on cue, the LMH appeared at Marwol's side. With Xex in hibernation he had stepped in as the surgical doctor for the time being. In his infuriatingly calm synthetic demeanor he asked, "I am not a priest, Lieutenant, but I am happy to help stabilize. What can I do?"

"I don't know," The Doctor replied truthfully. "He isn't Kazon anymore, that's for sure." With a scratch of his hair, trying to force his brain to work out an idea. An idea didn't come, but experience did. "Trauma surgery and into the isolation unit, we'll hold a departmental patient debrief afterwards... We really don't have a Chaplain onboard? Guess we'll need a hologram of Leslie Jordan instead." The hologram of Leslie Jordan was just to keep him sane, with a chuckle to himself.

The LMH, however, was not versed in either Leslie Jordan or humor for the sake of sanity and so his response was a slightly puzzled look followed by, "The holodeck is programmed with numerous religious personas, observances, and approaches to moral and spiritual support in keeping with the diversity of our crew. But I am unsure how that would help our patient at this stage. I do not believe we have anything that covers Kazon religious practices."

Though he may not have understood the humor he had learned when to cut off a tangent and turned back to look at the vitals displaying on the displays next to the Kazon's biobed. "I concur with your plan of action, sir," he continued, looking sidelong at Marwol. I am accessing the information we have regarding Kazon physiology from our data banks and from what we have learned in supporting Kaldri during her stay with us. There is no mention of Thorium. I'm concerned if we don't determine the source of this radiation before I operate I may cause more harm than good."

Gwenwyn agreed with the LMH, Thorium didn't belong in this man's body. "Honestly? I think the Kazon species is evolving." Then it hit him. "They're experimenting with gene mods." A look of shock and horror on his face as he continued. "Think about it. They're not bright enough to use it correctly, and with Federation expanding, criminal organizations have moved in too, while Intelligence is focused on foreign power intel gathering." But why? Why would they need to make themselves more powerful?

"That does seem to be a logical conclusion," the LMH concurred. "If this is a modification, though, it seems necessary to neutralize it before we can do anything else. There are tens of thousands of ways his generics could have been adjusted and our data will be insufficient to guess where to start."

With a shrug of the shoulders, Marwol simply replied with "...Guess we'll have to start with the banned implants in UFP but legal in Ferenginar." He had wanted the LMH to take the list reading while he juggled with reporting the mess the sickbay was in.

----

Meanwhile, Ryland had stayed quiet during the seizure, jaw set, hands clasped behind his back to keep them from trembling. He followed Delja into the office, exhaling only once the door whispered shut behind them. His back hit the wall as he leaned there, letting the weight of what he’d seen catch up to him.

“I didn’t think he was going to drop,” Ryland admitted in anticipation of the "What exactly happened?" question he knew was coming. “I mean, I hit him dead-on with the first stun burst—nothing. Just kept charging like I'd dishonored his sister or something," he said, his voice low and hoarse. "So I cranked the setting to kill. Dropped him, but even then…the phaser energy just kind of...dispersed or something? His armor shimmered. Smelled like hot copper.”

Ryland scrubbed at his face with both hands, then looked at Delja, eyes bloodshot and unblinking. “I was down in the computer core. He was already in there—tearing into the main relays. Real surgical. Like he knew what to hit. I think… I think he was planting something or trying to loop data out. When he saw me, he didn’t say a damn word. Just came right at me.”

"It's alright..."

The words were meant as an assurance, though Delja was well-aware it might not feel that way to Ryland (at least, not in the moment). Delja knew very little about the man's background. Yet, he also knew that it was rare (even for those trained in combat) to not be affected by an experience like this. Add to that the violence they'd just witnessed in the medical ward, and it wasn't hard to see how one might start to question their own decisions. "You did what you had to," the Xanosian continued, "to protect yourself and the ship. As for what he was up to, well...we will work that out."

Finding his gaze drawn inexorably toward the Kazon and his entourage of medical personnel, Ryland nodded absently in agreement. Then, as though realizing just what he was agreeing to, he jerked his attention back to Delja and swallowed audibly. "Yessir," he said, "actually sir, with your permission, I would like to return to the core. We don't know how much damage he did and I'm sure they'll need help with the repairs. Maybe there will be more information there."

----

"Sirs," the Trill nurse whom Marwol had tasked with getting a full workup on the Kazon finally spoke up from the other end of the biobed. "Tox work confirms it is-- was-- thorium but sirs," he hesitated, then flung the terminal's data into the air above the bed so they could all view it, "there is hardly any thorium left. It's like it's been... used up? Or processed? But no being I've ever heard of can process thorium. And that's not all." Collapsing the data, the nurse slid around the bed toward the Kazon's shoulder, where he enlarged the bed's diagnostics. "Something has burnt the subdermis here, and caused a severe dehydrating effect... and it seems to be spreading. We'll need to push fluids soon, or we risk even more damage."

Gwenwyn blanky started up, this was becoming quite the scooby doo mystery... Maybe they needed a paranormal investigation team. "Start IV drip & blood." But the idea that the Kazon had evolved kept going around his head. "LMH, are there any recorded medical events of humanoid species evolving?" With hopes they could rule evolution out of the question.

At this question the LMH's eyes... blinked... as if he needed a moment to wrap his head around the inquiry. "There are numerous records indicating humanoid evolution," he began. "Would you like a full list or are you looking for something specific?"

Marwol, however, didn't have the opportunity to answer as a set of emergency alerts went off across the room at the biobed where Lieutenant F'rar lay unconscious.

Reading the glances that flew between the assembled medical team, the LMH offered, "I will oversee stabilization of the Kazon." It was stated simply and with little flair, not a mandate so much as an acknowledgement that the Acting Engineering Chief was deserving of Marwol's attention over a nearly dead invader.

For the briefest of moments--much like the calm that comes with the eye in a hurricane--everyone was still, and then training took over and they scattered--each to the next crisis in a line of casualties that seemed as though it might have no end.

=/\= A Mission Post By =/\=

Lieutenant JG Gwenwyn Marwol
Acting Chief Medical Officer

Lieutenant Ezhr Delja
First Contact Specialist

LMH (played by Beth)

Crewman Ryland (played by Brad)

Various and Sundry Others (played by Heather)