When the Noise Stops

Posted on Tue Mar 24th, 2026 @ 1:17pm by Lieutenant JG Rowan Hale & Lieutenant Sarah Wilson

1,721 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Current

It had been 24 hours since Marie Batel had passed away and sickbay had settled into the low, steady hum that followed crisis. At least on the surface.  Biobeds were occupied but stable, monitors no longer screaming alarms but whispering data. 

Rowan was reviewing a set of readings when the hesitation registered beside him. 

"Sir?"

Rowan glanced up. A junior medical officer stood hovering and unsure.

"Go on," Rowan said.

The officer shifted slightly. "With Captain Batel..." he started, then stopped, as if reconsidering whether to continue.

Rowan didn't say anything, just waited.

"We could have kept her stable longer," he said eventually. "You said so yourself." There was no accusation in his voice, just facts.

Rowan held the officer's gaze for a moment, then nodded once. "For awhile."

The officer hesitated again. "Then why didn't we?"

There it was.

Rowan exhaled slowly, his hand setting against the edge of the console. "Because it wasn't my decision to make."

"But you could have," the officer pressed, a little more certain now. "You could've kept her alive long enough to.. Figure something else out."

Rowan's jaw shifted slightly at that. "Alive," he repeated quietly. "At what point does that stop being the same thing as living?"

The officer didn't answer. Rowan's gaze dropped briefly to the reading before looking up again. "She was aware. She understood what was happening," he said. "She made a choice."

"And you agree with it?" the medic pushed back.

Rowan didn't answer immediately. "I made sure it was her's." he said eventually.

The medic frowned. "That's not the same thing."

Rowan held that for a moment, then gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. 

"No," he said quietly, "It isn't."

The silence that followed wasn't resolved. The officer shifted uncertain again, before giving a small nod. "It's the end of my rotation." he announced stepping back and exiting sickbay. 

Rowan didn't move straight away. His attention drifted back to the console, though he wasn't really reading it anymore.  He didn’t look up when he heard footsteps approach several minutes later. 

“Still working?” Sarah Wilson asked, glancing up from the blood panel she was analysing.

The sample was from the Captain and showed a protein marker that hadn’t been there before. She had been musing as to its origin over the last few months and had hit brick walls.

“Temporarily,” he said.

He closed the monitor with a quiet gesture and turned slightly to acknowledge her presence.

"You're still looking at it," Rowan said quietly, pausing just for a moment. "Good. That's where the work is now."

His gaze shifted to the panel she was studying.

“Captain’s sample?”

He stepped closer, reading the protein marker without touching the display.

“It’s persisting,” he noted. He wasn’t alarmed, just precise. “You’ve ruled out residual tachyon exposure.”

It wasn’t really intended as a question, more an assumption of her competence.

“And it still doesn’t map to anything in the archive,” he continued, his voice lowering slightly.

Sarah stood, stretching her back and massaging the tired muscles in her neck. She turned to her superior with a wry smile.

“Let’s just say the Captain is a little lax when it comes to regular physicals. This sample was taken shortly after the time we were kidnapped and used as breeding stock, but before she temporarily died giving birth last year.”

Sarah shrugged.

“You’ll learn she’s a handful.” There was genuine laughter that followed. “She’s your problem now.”

Rowan allowed the faintest trace of acknowledgement. “I suspect she will remain a handful.” His gaze settled on the protein marker. “Which is precisely why she should keep the physicians who know her.”

There was a brief pause.

“You’ve been tracking this longer than I have.” He stepped slightly closer to the display. “What am I missing?”

“Oi, that’s not fair,” Sarah retorted in good humour before stepping back and crossing her arms. “Missing? I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out for months, not that there’s been much time to study it with the constant crises and being short staffed,” she admitted. “It appears to be somewhat inert.” She looked at Rowan with a curious eye. “How are your pathology skills? You take a stab at it.”

“I can still read a slide,” he said evenly, his eyes returning to the protein marker, studying the irregular banding with quiet focus. “If it’s inert, it’s either residual… or waiting.”

He stepped closer to the display, fingers hovering over the interface but not yet engaging it. “You’ve ruled out tachyon residue and contamination,” he said quietly. “Has it shown any response to stress markers? Hormonal fluctuations? Neural spikes?” He glanced briefly at Sarah. “Or does it simply persist?”

“It persists, as though waiting. Her body hasn’t rejected it, nor has it mutated in any way. A true conundrum. It’s just… there.” Sarah regarded Rowan again. “Is this your first time as Boss Doc?” She headed to the replicator and ordered a strong black coffee. “Want something?”

Rowan's gaze remained on the display, committing the pattern to memory before finally stepping back.

“My first time as Chief Medical Officer,” he said at last. “Not my first time being responsible for outcomes.” He gestured to the replicator with a slight shift of his head. “Black. No sugar.”

His attention returned to the protein marker. “If it is waiting, it implies purpose. Biological structures rarely persist without one. The question is whether the purpose is endogenous… or external.”

He glanced back toward Sarah again, measured but not guarded. “You’ve been carrying this case alone for months. That tends to distort perspective.” It wasn’t a criticism, just an observation. “Let’s assume it isn’t inert.”

A small beat.

“What would you be most concerned about?”

“I would be most concerned that someone has deliberately altered the Captain’s genome for a purpose, a purpose that we’re not aware of at this time.” Sarah sipped her coffee and leaned back against the wall in a casual manner. “Carried this case, and all the others. I’m just glad we have staff again so I don’t have to do it alone,” she admitted.

Hale considered that. “If it were deliberate,” he said evenly, “then the absence of mutation is not reassuring. It suggests stability by design.” His gaze shifted back to the display, studying the protein band as though it might answer him if he stared long enough. “Which implies intent.”

At her admission, something in Rowan’s posture shifted. It was subtle, but present. “You shouldn’t have had to do that alone.”

There was no overt sympathy in his tone. Just a quiet certainty.

“How long were you covering primary and secondary rotations by yourself?” he asked, taking a measured sip of his coffee.

“Too long. Several years. Medical staff were hard to come by after the war. We had some interns, junior medical officers, nurses, but no one who had been practicing medicine for more than a few years,” Sarah admitted. “I was never supposed to be CMO. I just kind of got it by default.”

“You are no longer doing it alone,” he said simply. Not grand or dramatic. Just fact. “We will monitor it together. Baseline comparisons, stress response mapping, controlled neural stimulus if necessary.” He stepped back from the display “If there is a purpose, it will reveal itself.”

His eyes flicked briefly toward her. “And if it was engineered… we determine by whom.”

“And we figure out why. What if it’s a genetic marker of some sort, something to pinpoint the Captain among others, a tag almost?” Sarah mused, sipping her coffee and relishing the rush of energy it provided her brain. “I’ve cross-referenced it with the Starfleet Medical Database and nothing even comes close to it.”

“A genetic tag would imply surveillance,” he said at last. “Or retrieval.” His gaze shifted back to the display, analytical rather than alarmed. “If it were designed to identify her, it would require a trigger mechanism. Passive markers rarely serve a function without activation.”

A brief pause.

“Has it demonstrated any phase variance under directed scan? Subspace fluctuation? Quantum resonance?”

“I… ah… I haven’t got that far yet,” Wilson admitted honestly. “Whilst it has been important, there was always a crisis to deal with.”

Rowan folded his arms loosely. “If it is a tag, then it is either dormant… or waiting.” He let the thought sit for a moment.  “And if it is waiting for a signal, we need to know what frequency it answers to.”

“We need more samples, see if we can trigger this protein to react to something, or make something else react to it,” Sarah replied after a beat. She sipped the coffee again, a plethora of possibilities flooding her brain.

“When you learned I was coming aboard as CMO,” he said evenly, “was that a relief… or an additional complication?” His gaze shifted toward her briefly. His tone remaining level and  undefensive. “You had been operating in the role without the title,” he said quietly. “And without adequate support. I would not have faulted you for preferring continuity.”

“Honestly, a bit of both. I didn’t have much time to read your profile before you got here. I was just hoping you weren’t some young hotshot hell bent on reinventing the wheel and advancing their career,” she snorted. “You are a welcome relief.”

Rowan offered the faintest smile.  “I have no interest in reinventing functional systems,” he said evenly. “And even less interest in career theatrics.” He set his coffee down on the edge of the console. “If something works, we keep it. If it doesn’t, we fix it. Quietly. I didn’t come aboard to replace what you built.”

His gaze shifted back to the protein marker. “I came aboard to reinforce it and to ensure you don't burn out maintaining it alone.”

“Can I keep you?” Sarah put on the puppy dog eyes, then stepped forward and shut down the computer monitor. “Let’s get the Captain back in the morning for some more testing, but you are three hours past your shift end,” she couldn’t help but add.

 

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