Consciousness returned in a violent, gasping surge.

Corbin jerked upright as if dragged from drowning, his breath tearing from his lungs in sharp, ragged bursts. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was or even when. Light stabbed at him from above, and the world swam in doubling shapes that refused to align. The ceiling was wrong. The air tasted wrong. Even the hum beneath him, the regulated, constant murmur of a starship, felt pitched to some unfamiliar frequency.

His heart hammered against his ribs as he twisted, expecting, no, fearing, to see something standing beside the bed. Something tall, indistinct, shimmering like an idea given shape. Something that had pressed against him in the dark where his mind should have been alone.

But there was nothing there.

Only the soft rise and fall of a biobed’s monitors. Only the quiet, steady lighting of a private medical suite.

Yet the sense of being watched lingered like an afterimage burned into the back of his mind.

He sucked in a harsh breath, then another, fingers clawing at the bedding to ground himself in the present. His skin was slick with cold sweat, his pulse pounding so loudly it seemed to echo in the room itself. Memories, or visions, flashed in jagged fragments at the edges of his awareness. It was light without colour, sound without meaning, and something like a hand sliding across the surface of his thoughts.

None of it made sense. All of it felt real.

A shadow moved. Corbin flinched.

“Captain?”

Doctor Carrilion’s voice was soft, steady, impossibly gentle, yet even that familiar warmth couldn’t entirely cut through the lingering panic clinging to him. She came into view slowly, like someone wading through fog, tricorder already in hand. Her expression softened the instant she saw him conscious.

“You’re safe,” she assured him, her tone practised but genuine. “You’re back with us.”

Corbin blinked several times, forcing the room to anchor itself. Monitors to his left, vitals stabilising. His uniform was gone and replaced by a loose medical garment that felt thin and unfamiliar against his skin. The biobed beneath him hummed with its soft, diagnostic vibration. All of it was normal and recognisable.

But he still felt the echo of something cold lingering behind his eyes, like frost on a window that refused to melt.

“How long?” His voice rasped, barely audible. “How long have I been out?”

Carrilion didn’t answer immediately. She adjusted the settings on her scanner, the soft chirp of its readings filling the silence before she finally, gently replied. “Over two days, Captain.”

Corbin closed his eyes, the shock a physical blow. Two days lost. Two days where that presence, whatever it was, might have lingered, watched, waited.

The dread didn’t rise sharply this time.

It seeped.

It was slow.

It felt inevitable.

“Two days,” Corbin repeated, the words tasting unreal. He opened his eyes again, and the room steadied at last, but inside, he felt anything but steady. “What… what happened to me?

Carrilion studied him for a moment before answering, her expression softening in that careful way she used when delivering news she knew a patient wouldn’t like. She closed the tricorder with a muted click.

“Something made telepathic contact with you,” she said quietly. “Strong enough to shut down your conscious mind. We detected a low-level neurogenic field around you when you collapsed, but it’s still somewhat present, like the residual heat after a lightning strike. We’ve been trying to trace it ever since. We were considering a mind meld with you.”

Corbin swallowed. Hard.

“And the Ivalans?” he asked. The question felt far away, as if spoken by someone using his mouth. But he needed to know. He needed something solid to cling to. “What’s happening planetside?”

Carrilion hesitated. That alone told him enough.

“It’s gotten significantly worse, Captain,” she admitted. “The Doctrine has escalated to more violent demonstrations. New waves of people are entering trance-like states. Others are collapsing with no warning. Many of their symptoms mimic what happened to you. I’ll let Liz brief you on more of that when she arrives.”

Corbin’s breath hitched.

That sense of wrongness and of intrusion was no longer just his burden. The same set of questions still lingered. What was happening? Who was doing it?

“What about the crew?” His voice sharpened. “Anyone else affected?”

Carrilion placed a careful hand on his shoulder, the kind of grounding gesture she rarely used unless necessary.

“No. None of the other telepaths aboard have shown symptoms like yours. They’re normal.” She glanced back at his readings. “However, your psilosynine levels are elevated. Substantially.”

He felt hollow suddenly, as though his chest had been scooped clean.

“Doctor…” He dragged a hand across his face, trying to push away the sticking residue of that dream, vision, violation, whatever it had been. “What did I go through?”

The door hissed open as Carrilion answered. “You tell me.”

“Well, look who finally decided to rejoin us.”

Nelson stepped in with her usual blend of confidence and wry humour, arms folded, relief hiding behind the glint in her eyes. “Sleeping Beauty has awakened. Good to have you back, sir.” She turned to Carrilion. “How is he?”

Carrilion nodded toward the first officer. “He’s stable.”

“Stable enough to talk?” Nelson asked.

Corbin exhaled slowly. “I was just about to talk about what happened to me… at least what I can remember.”

Nelson raised an eyebrow and gestured with one hand. “Then by all means, Captain. Start talking.”

But the words wouldn’t come easily.

Because even remembering meant brushing against that thing again, the one that wasn’t light, wasn’t darkness, but something more profound.

Something that still felt present.

Somewhere.

Corbin pushed the heel of his hand against his brow, trying to will the right words into existence, but the memories scattered like startled birds, too many wings, too much noise, all beating at once. “All I can remember is the constant message we’ve heard over the last few days, and I’m sure whatever it is, is on Ivalan Two.”

“Well,” Nelson said with a sigh, “while you were busy enjoying your two-day nap, everything planetside went straight to hell.”

Corbin’s attention snapped into focus. “What does that mean?”

Nelson leaned against the nearby console, her expression darkening. “After Prime Curator I’Tareen recalled her forces from Ivalan Two, the Doctrine surged. Riots. Mass gatherings. Entire districts have shut down. The local authorities are scrambling, but the Doctrine’s influence has accelerated.” She exhaled sharply. “It’s not just street-level chaos. The themes behind it, the symbolism, have intensified. We can’t make heads or tails of it all.”

“Symbolism,” Corbin echoed.

Nelson nodded. “Across the Shackleton Expanse, similar cultural patterns are emerging. Unprompted obsessions with light. Blindfold rituals. Reports of shared dreams or visions, sometimes across entire communities.” She tilted her head. “Sound familiar?”

Too familiar.

“Starfleet Command thinks there may be a deeper connection,” she continued. “Not just cultural mimicry. Something underlying it. Something pervasive.”

Corbin felt the cold edge of truth slicing closer. “And let me guess, they want us to investigate whether this is connected?”

Nelson didn’t answer immediately. She didn’t need to. The silence carried its own weight. Eventually, she nodded.

“They agree it’s worth us staying to investigate to see if any of this is linked.”

Corbin looked at Carrilion. “Doctor, this neurogenic field, have we tried to scan for it on Ivalan Two?”

She shook her head. “Not precisely, no, the field is so low that we’ve not narrowed our search parameters.”

“You thinking we should?” Nelson quizzed Corbin.

“Yeah, there’s something about the planet that my…” He paused. “Experience, vision, dreams, whatever it was, makes me think there’s something down there we need to find.”

Nelson crossed her arms. “If there is something, the big question is: what’s generating it?”

Corbin lowered his gaze. He didn’t want to say it. Not until he could untangle what he had seen enough to make sense of it.

There had been stone. And corridors. And screams. And impossible structures spiralling downward.

And that presence.

Not a voice, not a face. A pressure that felt older than logic, older than the Ivalans, older than anything he could define. A presence that demanded surrender not through words, but through inevitability.

He swallowed. “My experience pointed toward. A location. A structure. A… focus.”

Nelson stared at him, unreadable. And then, with a slow nod: “All right. Then we’ll find it.” She looked at the Tyran doctor. “Carrilion, can you give the captain and me some privacy?”

“Of course, sweetie,” the Tyran physician replied brightly, snapping her tricorder shut. “I’ll be just outside if either of you needs me.” She glided toward the door, and it hissed shut behind her.

As soon as they were alone, Nelson’s expression shifted. The humour she’d been using to soften the edges fell away, replaced with something sharper. She was the first officer, not the friend.

Corbin felt it before she even opened her mouth. “I know what you’re thinking,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “That I’ve probably lost my mind from being unconscious for two days.”

“You went mad years ago,” Nelson snorted, the corner of her mouth lifting. “I just learned to work around it.”

The brief humour didn’t hide the concern in her eyes. She stepped closer to the bed. “Look, Rome,  I trust your instincts. I trust your telepathy. I even trust that infuriating gut feeling of yours that gets us into trouble and out of it in equal measure.” Her arms folded over her chest. “But you woke up, what, five minutes ago? And your first thought was to go down there. To a planet full of people being influenced by something we still don’t understand.”

He said nothing.

She pressed on, quieter now. “I wouldn’t be a good first officer if I let you sprint into danger without understanding what actually happened to you. Not whatever you felt. Not whatever you think it means. What you saw. What you heard. What you remember, exactly.”

Corbin rubbed both hands over his face, exhaling slowly. The memories were still jumbled, still shifting like half-formed images seen through water. But he knew she was right. Charging ahead without grounding himself would be reckless.

“What do you want to know?” he asked quietly.

Nelson gave him a look that was equal parts stern and softened by worry. “Everything, Rome. Every detail you can recall.”

He nodded, feeling the weight of the request settle onto his shoulders. “Then you’d best take a seat.”

Nelson pulled over the nearest stool and sat, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. She was ready, focused, braced to hear what he remembered.

Corbin shifted, trying to steady the tremor in his hands before he began recounting the fragmented pieces of the telepathic vision that still clung to him like frost.