Commander Mira Novak stared out into the darkness of space from her bedroom on Starbase 11, her gray-green eyes not quite in focus as if she were in a trance. Novak barely remembered falling asleep the night before, her mind reeling as it struggled to sift through all of the nascent thoughts that had flooded in from her communion with The Watcher. And now that she realized she was awake and standing at her window, Mira wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten there. She sucked in a breath suddenly as the fog that had been clinging to her mind finally began to abate, and looked around her room as if searching for someone she had been certain would be there.

Only the furnishings inhabited the compartment before her eyes, and for a fraction of a second, Novak felt a ripple of disappointment, though she had no idea why. She turned to look out of the window one last time, catching the edge of the planet just beginning to move into view as the station made its lumbering journey around M-11. Mira shook her head to clear away what fog remained and pushed herself to make ready for the day ahead.

Novak’s morning routine carried on without incident, her uniform was donned, her hair was brushed, and all that she normally did in preparation to start the duty day happened exactly as it always had. Her routine had been as immutable as the stars themselves… and yet Mira couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she’d not done something or hadn’t remembered something that wasn’t part of her routine. It wasn’t until she walked out into her large reception area in her room that she noticed something out of place. The desk she had relegated to a simple ornamentation had the old model LCARS display booted up, the screen scrolling text that would spell out what appeared to be a sentence or two before the characters vanished again, only to repeat the process all over again.

Novak’s eyes narrowed as she moved slowly up to the device that she had no memory ever using, let alone moving it so that it was impossible for her to ignore upon leaving her bedroom. Once she was close enough to read the text, her lips bent into a frown as she read the scrawling text.

YOU WROTE THIS. IF YOU DON’T REMEMBER, GO TO SICKBAY… scrawled out in yellow lettering against the black background of the otherwise blank screen. Mira could feel her chest tightening uncomfortably as she watched the text vanish and return a few heartbeats later. Her hand darted to the control panel on the bottom of the display, her fingers stabbing at the shutoff command. Novak could hear her heart thundering in her ears as she pulled her hand away, trying to calm herself down after realizing she’d acted out of sheer panic, something she hadn’t done in a great many years.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” Mira muttered to herself, looking down to find her still slightly extended hand shaking.

For the briefest of moments, Novak had expected someone to answer her question, the drumming of her chest only growing more intense when it didn’t happen. Again, Mira looked around her quarters, seeking someone or something that wasn’t there nor ever had been. Her shaking hand went to her chest, her fingers gathering the fabric of her uniform in an effort to somehow physically restrain her wayward heart and scattered emotions. When she finally managed to regain a semblance of control over herself, she made up her mind…

Commander Halda Vreen had arrived in her Sickbay at the precise moment that her shift had been due to start, something that had always occurred that way and something that would always occur in just that way. Her punctuality was one of the few things that one could say was predictably Zakdorn, even if her chosen occupation was anything but. And just as she did each and every morning, Halda was going over the reports from the staff that had been attending the facility during the previous shift to ensure she was aware of anything and everything that had taken place, even if nothing at all had occurred.

When the doors to her office parted, Dr. Vreen expected to see a nurse or another member of her staff to appear through the doors. What greeted her eyes instead was the sight of the station’s new Commanding Officer, and she did not look much better than she had when she’d paid her last visit. Upon closer scrutiny as the doors to her office slid shut behind the woman, it appeared that she was actually worse than she’d been on her last visit.

“Are you having another flare-up?” Halda asked as she rose from her desk, her hand already sinking into the pocket of the teal overcoat she was wearing to grab her medical tricorder.

“No,” Novak denied flatly, the confidence in her denial bringing Vreen to a sudden halt. Mira took a few more steps inside the room before half-stumbling in a chair sitting just a few feet away from the doctor’s desk. Halda watched as the woman struggled to contain a tremor that looked to ripple from her head all the way down her body. Vreen snapped her tricorder open and began running a scan without another word.

The tricorder registered the spasms in her muscles, noted her elevated heart rate, adrenaline, and other chemicals that would have been understandable if the woman had just survived a firefight or some other life-threatening event, but the lack of an alert status made such event seem highly unlikely. What had actually caused such a visceral reaction in Novak remained, at the moment, a mystery waiting to be solved.

“When did you start experiencing these tremors?” Halda asked as she continued to scan the woman sitting in front of her.

“They only happen…” Mira paused to suck in a calming breath, “When I stop focusing on the meditative chants my mother made me learn when I was younger to help me with… emotional control…”

“Meditative chants?” Vreen asked with a hint of skepticism in her voice.

“Because of my… dual heritage,” Mira paused, though this time she appeared as if she’d just swallowed something unpalatable, “My emotions were a lot more intense when I was growing up. Fits of anger would see me putting holes in walls… or schoolmate into a hospital with broken bones. My mother found a Vulcan who understood a little about Romulan emotional control techniques and I was made to learn them. It’s been decades since the last time I had to use them…”

The Zakdorn nodded finally in understanding before asking, “How did you lose control of your emotions? You were in complete control of them during your last visit.”

“I had…” Mira paused and contemplated for the briefest moment whether to hide the root cause of her condition. The moment passed quickly, as the pragmatic part of her correctly pointed out that hiding anything at all might delay whatever aid she so obviously needed.

“I had a telepathic encounter with… something psionically powerful… and I think the experience did something to me… to my mind…” Novak finally confessed, the tremors assaulting her abating slightly.

The doctor hummed in a mixture of acknowledgement and realization, directing her tricorder to conduct a scan of the woman’s brainwaves to see what was happening there. The frown that tugged at her lips was even deeper than the normal look of general displeasure that Zakdorn generally bore with almost unerring regularity. The change did not go unnoticed.

“What did you find, doctor?” Mira asked, having surmised that the woman had discovered some hint or perhaps even the source of her malady.

“Your neural patterns are emitting trace amounts of subspace resonance frequencies, something that your brain shouldn’t be capable of doing. Whatever you came into contact with must, if these readings are correct, exert some manner of physical presence in subspace when exercising whatever telepathic abilities it possesses,” Halda relayed after going over the data not once but three times to make sure she was reading them correctly.

“Can you make it stop?” Novak asked firmly, her hands coiling around the arms of the chair in an effort to control the shaking.

“Possibly…” Vreen said with less confidence than she had intended, “There are a few medications that Betazoids and other telepathic species have created that might work, but because they are generally used for people who are telepathic or at least empathic by nature, I can’t guarantee that the treatment will be effective.”

“I’m not worried about guarantees, doctor, as long as whatever it is will allow me to function, I’m willing to try anything,” Mira retorted dryly.

With a curt nod, Halda turned toward her desk and approached the large dispensary that rested on the table behind it. She tapped several commands on the interface, bringing up the index of chemical composites the device was capable of creating. It took a few moments to find the one she was looking for since the medication was experimental and only just barely skirted to boundaries of acceptable to administer to patients. The device filled one of the hypospray ampules loaded into it with the requested compound and Dr. Vreen inserted it into one of the injectors sitting nearby.

“The drug is called Neuropraxaline, and it is still in the trial phase. Under normal circumstances, I won’t resort to such measures as a drug still in testing, but your condition warrants a level of… shall we say… adventurousness,” Halda explained.

“Fine… do it,” Novak said, leaning her head to one side to allow the doctor easier access to her neck.

The hiss of the medication being pushed into her blood stream filled Mira’s ears, and a moment later her head began to throb violently as if someone had taken ahold of her head and began to squeeze it. The pain lasted for what felt like an eternity, and then seemed to fade as if only the few seconds that had actually elapsed had been filled with discomfort. Novak blinked away the tears that had formed in her eyes and looked down at her hands, finding them to be as still as they usually were on any other normal day.

“I think… I think it worked, doctor…” Novak said hesitantly, as if testing the words to see if they might trigger the return of her symptoms if spoken too soon.

Vreen ran another scan of the woman’s brain, her tricorder chirping and humming as it performed its task. After a tense few moments, the Zakdorn snapped the device shut with a look of satisfaction tinged with relief.

“It would appear so,” Halda remarked as she stuffed the device back in her pocket, “But I can’t say whether the symptoms will return or not… And I don’t exactly feel comfortable handing you a loaded injector…”

“Then I will simply have to ask you to come to me should I have a relapse and can’t make it to Sickbay on my one,” Mira said, pushing herself gently out of the chair she’d been occupying.

“I suppose that will be acceptable, Commander,” Vreen said with a slightly perturbed look on her face.

“Thank you for your help, doctor,” Novak said, turning toward the door.

“Are you going to explain the details of your encounter before you go?” Halda called after the woman.

“For the moment, I don’t believe I can. It’s a… frustratingly complicated situation, and I don’t want to drag you into anything that may or may not end your career should it end up being a worst-case scenario kind of situation,” Mira said with her back still toward the doctor.

Novak took another step before finally turning around, “Once I know I’m not putting you or anyone else at risk by talking about what happened, I’ll make sure you’re among the first to know.”

“Very well, Commander,” Vreen said as she folded her arms, “I’ll leave it at that for the moment, but if your condition gets worse somehow, I will drag it out of you.”

“Acceptable,” Mira returned before finally leaving the doctor’s office.