Where Is My Mind?

Posted on Fri Nov 13th, 2026 @ 6:22pm by Lieutenant Commander Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell

3,105 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: The Haunting of Deck 12
Location: USS Sunfire
Timeline: Current

She had barely cleared the observation lounge when she realized that determination was much easier to summon than composure. Her legs felt unsteady, her throat ached from screaming, and the lingering tremor in her hands made it difficult to ignore how thoroughly the experience had frightened her. She rubbed her palms against her trousers, trying to rid herself of the sensation of cold metal beneath her fingers. Somewhere beyond that imaginary bulkhead, her mother had been screaming for help, and Bonnie had failed her. The feeling remained lodged in her thoughts, repeating itself with all the persistence of a malfunctioning alarm.

You break everything you touch.

She quickened her pace, concentrating on the familiar details of the corridor rather than the images crowding her mind. The overhead lighting maintained its usual soft illumination, ventilation circulated conditioned air through the passage, and the deck beneath her feet carried the reassuring vibration of the Sunfire's machinery. She understood these things, knew the systems responsible for producing them, and could identify half a dozen components requiring adjustment simply by listening carefully enough. Unfortunately, understanding how something worked offered precious little reassurance when her own mind was clearly determined to manufacture different circumstances. “Right, Bonnie,” she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Let's try something revolutionary. Facts. Actual, verifiable, boring old facts.”

Her first concern was the Nile and the peculiar sensation that the Sunfire had been drawn toward the nebula while attempting to retrieve the derelict vessel. She remembered watching the crimson cloud expand across the observation window, although she could no longer establish precisely when that had occurred. Had the movement preceded her mother's appearance, or had the entire experience been contaminated by whatever caused the hallucination? She remembered the tractor beam, the navigational display, and the unusual vibrations through the deck, but she also remembered a Borg drone advancing through a corridor that had never existed. Each memory possessed the same sense of clarity.

Bonnie paused beside an auxiliary terminal and requested the ship's current navigational status. The simplified display confirmed that the Sunfire had moved closer to the J-class nebula during its retrieval attempt, although subsequent navigational changes complicated the picture. “At least I didn't imagine everything,” she murmured, examining the available readings before requesting environmental records from the observation lounge. Unfortunately, the information showed little beyond a minor power fluctuation and several sensor interruptions consistent with the increasingly unstable conditions surrounding the ship.

“Wonderful,” she whispered, tapping through another set of readings. “The patient is malfunctioning, the instruments are being uncooperative, and the engineer responsible for the repairs is apparently the patient. That's a lovely little design flaw if I've ever seen one.”

A warning tone interrupted her investigation as the ship's alert status changed, accompanied by the rising wail of the Red Alert klaxon. Bonnie straightened instinctively, her stomach contracting as the corridor lighting shifted and tactical indicators began updating across the terminal. Before she could examine anything further, the Sunfire lurched violently, throwing her sideways into the bulkhead with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs. Her shoulder struck the metal first, followed by the side of her head as she scrambled unsuccessfully for purchase against the wall.

The corridor tilted beneath her feet, and the familiar gray bulkhead beneath her palm became blackened and blistered, its surface radiating a terrible heat that made her recoil. Red emergency lighting pulsed through thick clouds of smoke while the clean scent of recycled air vanished beneath the acrid stench of scorched plasma. Somewhere beyond the haze, a woman screamed, her voice muffled by the grinding descent of a containment bulkhead.

“Mum?” Bonnie gasped, stumbling away from the wall as the scream sharpened into a familiar accusation.

Another violent shudder coursed through the ship, accompanied by the metallic crash of something striking a nearby support, and the damaged corridor dissolved as abruptly as it had appeared. Bonnie found herself pressed against an ordinary bulkhead beneath the flashing Red Alert indicators, her palm resting on cool, undamaged metal while the environmental systems continued humming around her.

“Saints preserve us,” she whispered, pressing a trembling hand against her aching shoulder. She could still smell burned plasma, although the sensation was fading beneath the ordinary metallic tang of a starship corridor. The transition had been instantaneous, convincing enough to make her body react before conscious thought could intervene. She cautiously touched her temple, discovering a tender spot where she had struck the bulkhead, and wondered whether the collision had triggered a neurological disturbance. A concussion could certainly produce confusion and visual abnormalities, although that explanation did little to account for her earlier experiences.

Before she could consider the matter further, a sharp crash echoed from farther along the corridor, followed by a startled cry and the clatter of something heavy striking the deck.

Bonnie hurried around the junction and discovered a young engineering ensign sprawled against the wall, surrounded by fragments of a shattered service panel. She recognized him as Larkin, a junior technician who had spent several weeks assisting with the Sunfire's extensive repairs. She also remembered reassuring him after he had connected a diagnostic coupler backward, producing an impressive shower of sparks and an impressive expression of horror.

Larkin was clutching his left arm against his chest, blood seeping through the torn fabric near his forearm. A jagged section of panel casing lay nearby, its exposed edges still twitching against a damaged mounting bracket.

“Larkin! Don't move just yet,” Bonnie called, dropping to one knee beside him while casting a wary glance overhead. “Can you hear me? Look at me, and tell me where it hurts.”

“Arm, ma'am,” Larkin managed through clenched teeth. “Something came loose when the ship moved. I tried to dive out of the way.”

“Right, well, let's leave the acrobatics to people who enjoy that sort of thing.” Bonnie gently examined the injury, noting the steady bleeding and the way he guarded his forearm. “Did you hit your head? Lose consciousness? Do you feel dizzy at all?”

Larkin shook his head, wincing as the movement tugged at his injured arm. “No, ma'am. Just my arm, I think.”

Bonnie reached for the emergency medical kit recessed into the nearby wall, but her fingers faltered as she released its retaining catch. For one terrible moment, she heard her mother's voice whispering through the edges of her concentration.

You break everything you touch.

She froze with the kit in her hands. What if she misjudged the injury or overlooked something important? She was exhausted, possibly concussed, and experiencing hallucinations, hardly an ideal combination for someone attempting to help an injured colleague. Another tremor passed through the deck, however, and the blood spreading across Larkin's sleeve reminded her that hesitation could be every bit as dangerous as a mistake.

“Right,” she murmured, withdrawing a sterile dressing. “Pressure first. Then we'll see what sort of trouble you've managed to get yourself into.”

She pressed the dressing firmly against the wound, guiding Larkin's uninjured hand into position while retrieving the compact medical tricorder. Its scanner hummed as she passed it over his arm, displaying stable vital signs and suggesting localized soft-tissue damage without an obvious fracture. Bonnie checked the readings twice before selecting a compression bandage and securing the dressing in place.

The familiar sequence of assessing a problem, gathering information, and applying a practical solution gradually steadied her concentration. Her hands continued trembling, but the bandage held, and Larkin's discomfort appeared to ease.

“There we are,” Bonnie reassured him, checking that his fingers remained warm and responsive. “You're going to have a nice bruise, and Medical will probably lecture you about standing beneath unsecured equipment. I'd recommend blaming the ship. Works for me... most days.”

Larkin managed a weak smile, although his attention drifted abruptly toward the empty corridor behind her. His expression changed, the color draining from his face as he focused on something Bonnie could not see.

“Ensign?” Bonnie prompted, following his gaze toward the junction.

“Sorry, ma'am,” he whispered, blinking several times. “I thought... I thought someone was standing there.”

Bonnie turned toward the passage, studying the flickering lights and scattered debris. The corridor was empty, although the sensation of being watched prickled along her neck, raising the tiny hairs beneath her collar.

“Probably someone heading to their station,” she offered, more for her own reassurance than his. “Come on, let's get you to Sickbay before this feckin' ship decides to throw another piece of itself at us.”

She helped Larkin rise, positioning herself beside his uninjured shoulder and making certain he could stand without dizziness. As she gathered the medical supplies, Bonnie slipped the tricorder into her pocket, intending to return it once they reached Sickbay. The young ensign leaned against the bulkhead while adjusting his balance, and she watched him with a small measure of satisfaction. Whatever her mother's apparition had claimed, she'd managed to help someone without making matters worse.

Their progress toward the turbolift was slowed by continuing maneuvers and vibrations that rattled the overhead fixtures. At the next junction, Bonnie caught herself staring at a containment bulkhead, remembering her mother's screams and the terrible sensation of being trapped on the wrong side of a door.

“Commander? Are you all right?” Larkin asked, noticing her hesitation.

“Hmm? Yes, yes. Perfectly fine,” she replied, although her voice emerged with less conviction than intended. “Just checking the structural supports. Old habits, you know. Can't walk past a perfectly good bulkhead without wondering what'll happen when someone inevitably gets trapped on the other side.”

By the time the turbolift arrived, the ache in Bonnie's shoulder had spread toward her neck, and a faint throbbing had developed behind her eyes. She guided Larkin inside, requested the medical deck, and caught her reflection in the polished door. Her hair had escaped its usual arrangement, her face looked pale, and a reddish mark had appeared along her temple.

“Sarah's going to have my hide,” she muttered.

“Doctor Wilson?” Larkin asked.

“Mm-hmm. Told me to rest, eat properly, and avoid doing anything remotely stressful.” Bonnie offered him a crooked smile. “Apparently, nobody thought to inform the rest of the universe.”

The ensign chuckled, then winced as the movement disturbed his injured arm. Bonnie checked his bandage again before remembering the medical tricorder in her pocket. She withdrew the instrument, examining its compact controls with growing curiosity.

“Well, since you're already out...” she murmured, selecting a basic neurological scan and directing the sensor toward her own temple.

The tricorder chirped softly, collecting preliminary readings as she moved it across her forehead. Her heart rate was elevated, unsurprisingly, and her stress indicators were similarly unremarkable given the circumstances. The device also registered localized tissue inflammation near the impact site, enough to warrant a proper medical examination. What interested Bonnie, however, was an irregular pattern in the cortical activity readings. A brief increase in activity appeared across several regions associated with sensory processing and memory, fluctuating in a way she couldn't readily explain.

She frowned and repeated the scan, obtaining similar but less pronounced results.

“Well, that's interesting,” Bonnie whispered, comparing the two sets of readings. “Though interesting is generally what people say just before something expensive explodes.”

Larkin glanced toward the device. “Something wrong, ma'am?”

“Possibly. Or possibly nothing at all.” She tilted the display away, studying the fluctuating values. “Sleep deprivation, stress, a knock to the head... several perfectly reasonable explanations. Although there's that old saying, isn't there? Once you've eliminated everything impossible, whatever's left must be... highly inconvenient?” She frowned, trying to reconstruct the quotation. “Or improbable. Something about improbable being the truth.” Bonnie sighed, tapping the tricorder with her thumb. “Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. Feck it, you know what I mean.”

She saved the readings rather than attempting to interpret them further. Without a proper medical baseline and more sophisticated equipment, she couldn't determine whether the irregularities represented anything beyond her recent exhaustion and injury. Still, she'd finally collected a measurable data point, and the satisfaction of having something tangible to examine eased her frustration.

The turbolift slowed as it approached the medical deck, and Bonnie returned the instrument to her pocket, deciding that Sarah would undoubtedly have several opinions about her unauthorized self-examination.

Sickbay was already busy when they arrived, its ordinarily controlled atmosphere disrupted by injured crew members arriving from the ongoing engagement. Medical equipment chirped beneath hurried conversations, while the clean smell of antiseptic mingled with blood and scorched uniform fabric. Bonnie guided Larkin toward an available treatment area, explained his injury to a passing medical attendant, and reluctantly relinquished responsibility for his care.

She lingered long enough to confirm that the dressing remained secure and the young technician appeared more comfortable. Her mother's accusation surfaced again, although this time Bonnie found herself quietly resisting it.

You break everything you touch.

“Well, not everything. I didn't break that one,” she whispered, folding her arms as she watched Larkin receive treatment. She turned toward the medical station, intending to locate Sarah, when a fragment of conversation from a nearby biobed caught her attention.

“I know what I saw,” an unfamiliar crew member insisted, their voice trembling with frustration. “She was standing right in front of me, talking as clearly as you are now. I could even smell her perfume.”

Bonnie slowed, listening as the distressed patient continued.

“But she died years ago. I watched them bury her.”

The resemblance to Bonnie's own experience sent a chill through her shoulders, although she initially dismissed it as coincidence. Grief could produce remarkably vivid memories, and the circumstances aboard the Sunfire were hardly conducive to emotional stability.

Then another voice rose from farther along the room, strained and angry. “I was awake when it happened! I know I was awake!”

Bonnie turned, her eyes moving between the occupied biobeds and the medical personnel attempting to calm their patients. Fragments of conversation carried through the surrounding activity, describing people who shouldn't have been present and experiences that had felt entirely real despite evidence that they could never have occurred.

She recalled Larkin's sudden apprehension in the corridor, the laughter outside Sickbay, the impossible appearance of Dean in her bathroom, and the terrible reunion with her mother. Each experience had occurred under different circumstances, yet the similarities were becoming difficult to dismiss.

Children laughed somewhere behind her.

Bonnie spun toward the sound, discovering only a medical attendant moving between two biobeds. The laughter faded beneath the ordinary conversations around her, leaving her uncertain whether anyone else had heard it. Her fingers closed around the tricorder in her pocket. She whispered, “Let's have another look at you.”

Bonnie moved toward an unoccupied diagnostic station, where she retrieved her earlier medical baseline and compared it against the neurological readings she'd collected in the turbolift. Her current stress indicators were higher, and the minor inflammation near her temple was consistent with the collision, but neither finding interested her. Instead, she concentrated on the unusual cortical fluctuations, isolating them from the more predictable changes associated with exhaustion and injury.

The comparison revealed a brief pattern of heightened sensory and memory-related activity that had been absent from her previous medical assessment. The readings were incomplete, and she understood that a proper neurological examination would be necessary before drawing any conclusions. Nevertheless, something measurable had changed.

She initiated another short scan, watching the tricorder's display as the neurological readings settled into a relatively ordinary pattern. For several seconds, nothing unusual appeared, and Bonnie began wondering whether she had simply captured an artifact from the ship's increasingly unstable systems.

Then she heard the humming.

The familiar melody drifted faintly through the surrounding medical equipment, accompanied by the remembered smell of onions simmering in her mother's kitchen. Bonnie's breath caught as a painful longing tightened her throat, and the tricorder emitted a sharp diagnostic chirp.

She looked down. The cortical activity pattern had returned, its fluctuations rising above the values recorded only moments earlier. Bonnie swallowed, forcing herself to concentrate on the instrument rather than the melody. She checked its sensor status, confirmed that the recording was active, and watched the readings change as the humming gradually faded. The pattern diminished.

She remained motionless, staring at the display as the ordinary activity of Sickbay continued around her. There were several possible explanations for what she'd recorded, including the neurological consequences of recalling a traumatic memory, but the apparent association between the sensory experience and the abnormal readings demanded further investigation.

She saved the complete sequence, attaching timestamps and her earlier comparison data before securing the instrument against her chest. “Finally,” Bonnie murmured, feeling a fragile spark of professional satisfaction beneath her anxiety. “Something I can actually measure.”

Her gaze traveled across the occupied biobeds, lingering on the crew members who were struggling to explain their own experiences. She had no evidence that their neurological readings resembled hers, and the possibility of a shared cause remained only a hypothesis. Yet that hypothesis was now something she could test, provided Medical could obtain comparable scans and determine whether the apparent abnormalities were significant.

The Sunfire shuddered beneath another distant impact, rattling the equipment along the diagnostic station. Bonnie steadied herself against the counter, looked down at the saved readings, and considered the increasingly dangerous implications of what she'd discovered.

If similar disturbances were affecting people responsible for operating the ship's critical systems, the consequences could be catastrophic. What if the bridge crew was affected, the Captain, Dean?

She located the medical station's patient intake interface and entered a request for a neurological examination, attaching her preliminary recordings and marking the recurring sensory disturbances as the principal concern. The request would place her findings before the medical staff without requiring her to interrupt treatment of the injured, and the attachment provided something considerably more useful than a frightened account of impossible experiences.

Bonnie hesitated before adding one final note. Recommend comparative neurological scans for patients reporting vivid perceptual disturbances. Possible common exposure or unidentified neurological influence. Cause undetermined. Suspected telepathic neurological influence.

She submitted the report and looked down at the tricorder, the unfamiliar satisfaction of having produced a useful diagnostic result tempered by the realization that the evidence raised more questions than it answered. “Right, Bon-Bon,” she murmured, rubbing her aching temple. “Now we've got ourselves a proper mystery.”

Her expression darkened as she glanced toward the crowded treatment area. “And wouldn't it be lovely if the next clue didn't involve someone trying to kill us?”

TBC

 

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