I can’t stay there.

I need to leave.

I should tell them, but I can’t…

Simple, easy picking, but useless. Rixx locked eyes with the man, and slowly drew his attention, offering a simple mental command. ~Focus. Why can’t you stay in there?~ Climbing upwards to pick the riper and harder to reach fruits of his mind.

Slowly the man’s bottom jaw trembled and he started to try to focus his thoughts.

You should leave, it’s not safe…

And then a burst of mental static entered the conversation. Just like that, his mental ladder shattered, taking him back to the ground, picking up only the scattered sludge of surface thoughts that the man left laying around.

Slowly, Alcyone turned toward Rixx. She didn’t know what he was trying to do, but she could tell that he was doing something. It felt wrong. It made her uncomfortable, and without realizing it, she took a step away from him. A physical distance. 

Rixx took in a breath and turned towards the girl. Woman by human standards, girl by Rodulan ones. And here he was at an impasse. She didn’t seem to realize her ability, but she recognized his telepathy even if she didn’t understand it.

Could he continue? Yes.

He could flay this young man’s mind, and sift out every thought in his head, and then the Starfleet officers would probably unceremoniously phaser him into a fine powder if they were merciful, or phaser him into unconsciousness and lock him into some sort of telepathically blocked cell so he could slowly drive himself mad and waste away to nothing if they were cruel. And he believe that they would choose the latter assuming it was the kinder of the two.

So that was off the table. He enjoyed his freedom and realized the consequences of unleashing his telepathy to its full extent. But moreover, he valued the scarce few relationship he had with his own people over anything. And finding Alcyone was a strange and rare treat. So while he could ignore her discomfort, he was also fairly certain that if he did she would turn her back on him. And he couldn’t bear to lose one more possible connection to his people after he had lost so much.

So that, too, was off the table. He pulled his telepathic suggestion back. The terrified young man stared at River. “You probably should leave, it’s not safe here.”

“Not safe?”, River, who had picked up on the man’s distress, Rixx doubt and Alcyone’s apprehension, asked.

“There’s a malfunction, I’m going to go get an engineering team, and I don’t like the emissions.” the young man answered with too much panic for a normal malfunction.

Maybe it was his fault? Maybe those emissions were affecting his brain?

Rixx leaned over towards Nestira and murmured, “I think it’s someone not something inside causing the malfunction.”

But he couldn’t prove that to Starfleet without admitting that he was plucking thoughts from the man. And if he was reading this team correctly their talkative diplomatic officer was a Betazoid and he suspected she would be doing some sort of empathic or telepathic read of her own, crude thought it may be.

Nestira gave a nod. She was a lot more subtle than Rixx, trained in ways to guide conversations to where she wanted them.

“If you allow.”, she said to River, but didn’t get further than that when a scream too low for ears, more felt than hard, passed through them.