Coffee Break
Posted on Mon Sep 5th, 2022 @ 7:00pm by Isabella Cerin & Commander Martin Sorenson
Mission:
Between Realities
Location: Unnown World; Vesta Diplomatic Offices
4319 words - 8.6 OF Standard Post Measure
Once the shock had faded a bit, Izzy had made a trip to the supply closet in her office and pulled out the spare outfit she always kept there (mostly because you never knew when a quiet day you thought you'd be hiding at your desk doing paperwork turned suddenly into 'first contact with alien king' or 'video call or holo-presence meeting with three assistant secretaries'). Unfortunately in this case changing into it actually meant changing into rather less comfortable clothes than she'd been wearing, having originally gone with a casual pants and t-shirt combo easier to move in for the anti-Tholian stakeout. Either way, at least the blouse and dress slacks were free of Jem'Hadar blood. A trip to the diplomatic complex's bathroom to wash her arms, face, and neck and dunk her hair in the sink fixed most of the rest of it, and she clipped the damp hair back up in a sloppy bun and ducked back out to let Kairishana in to do the same. It was a short walk back to the area she'd come from by the safe...But she never quite made it. One moment her steps were across carpet, the next moment...Dirt?
"What the frak..." An alien sun she wasn't familiar with hung halfway set in a sky Izzy didn't recognize, shedding its light on a collection of pre-fab buildings, and beyond those, large tents that stretched further than she could see.
A somewhat scruffy-looking doctor stepped out of one of the tents and lifted his face to the sun, stretching his back after spending the last hour bent over biobed. When he looked down again, he blinked, looking just shy of a double take as he took in the woman a few paces away. "Izzy, isn't that a little formal for talking to kid about contacting family in the Federation?" Martin asked, brows lifting and mouth hitching in a half-grin. "Or do I some kind of noble in exile as a patient again?"
"...It was what was clean." Izzy said, shrugging and managing to keep any visible expressions of her shock to an ever-so-slight parting of her bottom lip and widening of pupils and once again playing for time in her answers, like she had the last time she'd 'gone somewhere': With any luck, she'd be able to just ad-lib things until she faded back into her own plane of existence. At least she was still wearing sensible shoes...Those would have stood out big time otherwise in...wherever this was. Possibly one of the refugee camps that had dotted the Federation's outlying areas where it had once bordered the RSE. Whatever Martin was doing here, he looked rather too rough around the edges - not to mention the lack of uniform - to be here on fleet business, though the well-worn emergency kit hanging on his hip - and the symbols plastered on the building he'd just left - would seem to indicate he was a doctor, still, in whatever divergence this was.
The doctor's head cocked to the side as he took in the dress clothes and damp hair. Had the camp kids been pranking people with 'color balls' again? Possible certainly; kids would be kids even - maybe especially - when stuck in a refugee camp with limited options. "Heh. Well, if you need to get whatever paint they've concocted out of your regular clothes, Naveesh keeps asking if can..." he ducked his head, clearing his throat a little, "...do anything to repay me. It'd be almost a relief to be able to ask her to handle your laundry."
Izzy noted the name and shifted the weights of possible locations in her mind - the reference to nobles in exile would argue for the space along the Romulan border; but Naveesh was an Orion name. Perhaps they were somewhere where exceedingly disputed space had emerged; one of the little pockets in or around the former neutral zone or otherwise where the Klingons and the Romulans had clashed in a mashup up of both civil and inter-empire conflicts; and as a result the other occupants of nearby space - not only those in Romulan or Klingon worlds but also of nearby single system colonies and independent bases once used as illicit trade route stopovers - had been caught up in the fray or driven out by it. "Though at that point I'm sure everyone would be wondering what I now owed you." she quipped; that one was likely to be true after a fashion regardless of whether most of the camp had emerald skin or had pointed ears.
"Oh God..." Martin slapped a hand over his face, then drew the hand slowly down to pull at his chin. "I must be tired - hadn't even thought of that. I guess you're own for laundry then." He flashed a quick smile. "The last thing we need is Sarith thinking she ought to take a knife to either of us."
Context - and a decent degree of cultural knowledge - combined with tidbits from Izzy's first involuntary foray into...whatever was happening...to make her take a chance on the next remark based on a likely potential lay of the land when one considered them all. "Either of us? Try both of us, probably. As for the first part though, that can probably be solved by upping your blood caffeine level..."
Martin nodded. "I was planning on it anyway since I was 'ordered'," he didn't make air quotes but they were clear in his voice, "to take a break. C'mon, I'll buy you a cup of whatever's coffee-like today," he said turning toward the cantina, then paused. "Unless there's someone you need to see. What brought you over to this side of camp anyway?"
"Just taking a walk to burn off some steam." Izzy said with a shrug and pushed the door of of the prefab pop up with food smells wafting from it open, stepping through. "Too damn many idiots in the galaxy."
The latter was a sentiment the doctor could easily agree with. The first statement, however, struck him as enough out of the ordinary to give it a weight of underlying context; Izzy was not one to wander the perimeter of the camp without reason, most especially in one of her few good outfits. "I take it the need to blow off steam involves some particular idiot or idiots," he replied as he retrieved coffee from large urn near the door. "I'm no counselor, but I've gotten pretty good at listening if you want to unload."
"Somehow you always manage to seem less threatening than I do, yeah..." Izzy draw up a coffee of her own and considered rapidly what she might say here that was both general enough but also likely, given the sorts of stories she'd heard over the years. "Mostly just getting fed up with the fact that how any set of papers turns out appears to depend at least as much on whose desk it crosses than it does on its merits or its proper completion." She paused and took a chance, given the rest of how this all seemed. "Never fully understood how fed up people got with the bureaucracy till I saw it from the other side."
Martin offered her a sympathetic look, but chuckled. "I guess you never develop immunity for that." He took a sip of coffee, studying her over the rim of his mug. The number of times they'd shared this particular complaint was approaching infinity, so for it to have driven her to a walk around in dress clothes this occurrence had to be really egregious. Or she was deflecting. "It must have been really bad this time. Good story at least?" he prompted.
"Not really. I think it's just..." Izzy made herself hesitate, like she was uncertain or slightly embarrassed by the admission about to be made. "...Stuff stacks, you know? Eventually it just reaches a point where the same damn thing just overflows your ability to not want to slap people. Straw that broke the camel's back, my grandpa likes to say." Izzy had two living grandmothers, but only one living grandfather, on her human side; and Mike Hammond was a wealth of pithy-yet-appropriate sayings he'd gathered in his near-century of life to date. "I mean, Sarith would suggest the solution to that is to slap them; but Federation law nonwithstanding, that doesn't tend to work over multiple lightyears, anyways. Izzy took a sip of the coffee and grimaced slightly. "Keep hoping they'll improve this too, but guess not." She waved a hand at the mug sardonically. "If you want to settle up with Naveesh, get her to get us some decent coffee..."
He had been nodding along sympathetically, but at the last remark brought Martin up short. Izzy knew Naveesh had been sold as child so her family could buy food. The remark may have been said jokingly, but it was an extremely tactless one. And the Izzy he knew was anything but tactless. Now other things came to his attention - make-up disguised the skin tone on her face, but her hands were pale and soft-looking; more like someone from a core world or a ship.
Martin set his mug on the table, hand dropping to the emergency hypo he kept a pocket. If she'd caught his surprise and was Syndicate or Tal'Shiar he was probably already dead, but he might be able to hit her with the sedative so the couple Romulans in here had a chance to take her. "I would never ask her that," he said evenly, easing the hypo into position to hit her from under the table. "Which Isabella Cerin would know. What have you done with her?"
“Excuse me???” Izzy’s incredulous tone covered pushing herself back and up slightly as if in sheer shock at what was being said…and conveniently leaving her standing, now, and further from the man who was displaying a level of hair-trigger paranoia and/or caution that she wasn’t used to in the version of him she had experience with. This was getting out of hand fast; and she turned on one heel as if offended and out of patience, and stalked in a manufactured huff back out towards the way they’d come in, still frantically trying to figure out what she would do next when he inevitably followed her; when finally the bizarre tingling and fade that had brought her here started again, and her last sounds and sights of the other plane of existence as she faded out of it was the sound of the coffee mug she had still been holding slipping through her insubstantial hand and crashing to the floor in the doorway.
It was a surprise when the woman pushed back and stood to spin and rush away. All he could think, 'So, not Tal'Shiar...' But the thought was brushed away by the realization that she must have sensed what he intended. And that he couldn't let her disappear to carry out whatever she had assumed Izzy's identity to do. Hypo ready in hand, he hurried to catch her before she was too far from where struggle would bring at least some witnesses. Just as they passed she open doorway, he reached out and pressed the hypo ...and saw as much as felt the world around him change.
Frak If he'd gotten caught in a personal transport, Martin knew he was screwed, especially with nothing but a half-spent hypo for defense. A Martin in another timeline would've caught the woman simply because he'd never let anyone he sedated just hit the floor. This one caught her and pulled her close as a hostage/shield. Until he noticed the Andorian with diplomatic insignia and the guards Starfleet uniforms.
"What's going on? Where am I?"
A more experienced staffer - or possibly, a less forthright and forward species than an Andorian - might have hung back and let the Marines take the lead. Kairishana, however, instead pointed her antennae straight at Martin, noticing Izzy hanging limply in his arms held in front of him, and cut straight to the chase. "What the hell, doctor?!? How did you ever get in here, we have blocks set up against direct transport into this section - " Her voice suddenly cut off and those same antennae bobbed seemingly both resigned and stressed in the way one does when coming to the awful realization, with the only diplomat senior to her unconscious, that perhaps this is your circus and those are your monkeys. "...You aren't our Dr. Sorenson, are you?" she said rather more carefully than her first statement. "I don't actually know exactly what's happening; but whatever it is is the Tholians fault. People have been...crossing over, to or from other..I dunno, other somethings." Kairi's eyes and antennae alike zeroed in again on Izzy. "What happened to her? Give her to me, please."
Uh-huh. Martin's eyes shifted from the Andorian and around the room as he tried to process that. It did look like a diplomatic corps office, but Tholians? Dimensional crossings? Was this some sort of hologram triggered to confuse interlopers if more than a single agent transported back? Honestly the latter seemed like the more reasonable explanation (even if a small voice in the back of mind was saying he'd clearly spent too many years working around Romulans). Whoever was running this had researched Izzy well enough to know close associates to be able to throw that 'not our Dr. Sorenson' line in, but who and why and most importantly, where was the real Izzy? "She's not dead," he replied evenly, not releasing her. "I dosed her when I realized she was an imposter. Unfortunately, I appear to have gotten caught in your transport, so let's make a deal. You give me the real Ms. Cerin and send us back, and I'll give you the counteragent to wake her."
"Oh for frak's sake." Kairishana - who, unlike Izzy, or this doppelganger of the doctor's, had never lived among Romulans and therefore lacked the level of reflexive paranoia - sounded like she was rapidly reaching the end of her rope, which for Andorians, wasn't quite as long as it was for many species before it led to ending the talking and doing something. Around the room, a few of the Marines were shifting, surreptitiously assessing when and how they might get a good shot at the intruder without hitting Izzy. "I don't have the 'real Ms. Cerin' because you're holding her. Yours is probably still somewhere wherever the hell you came from. And don't expect me to explain the details because I don't know them; I'm a diplomat, not a quantum physicist."
The outburst seemed genuine, but then a well-programmed hologram would. Martin looked around desperately for some better option - the guards were obviously looking for an angle, and he assumed it was only because whoever programmed this wasn't the type to think of stun as an option that they hadn't taken the shot already. "And I'm a doctor, not some operative, but I'm not helpless. Or stupid. If you need a physicist to send me back, then get one. I'm not handing over your Cerin lookalike otherwise."
"Know what? Fine." Kairshana bobbed her antennae: The doctor didn't seem to be making any aggressive moves besides perpetuating the standoff; and she assumed the Marines hadn't shot a stun volley mostly because they could mix badly with pre-existing sedation or chemical agents. If he did try anything, though, she had little doubt they'd take the risk and the shot, and in the meantime... "Go ahead and stand there. In a few minutes you'll go back to wherever you came from and this problem will solve itself. Which sure as hell beats the Jem'Hadar and Breen that showed up before you." She slightly waved one hand and indicated the bloodstains on the previously immaculate carpet; near the coffee stains that had only slightly proceeded them.
Ri-i-ight. He briefly eyed the bloodstains, then addressed whoever was running this show, undoubtedly listening from some other location. "If that's designed to make the skeptical surrender and ask for protection, it's a little over the top don't you think? Though the coffee stains are a nice touch, I'll give you that."
"Seriously dude? There's no magic-voiceover-all-seeing-eye-controller or whatever it is you think you're addressing. Honestly, this place is actually pretty well strung up with shit to prevent anyone observing or recording or listening in." Kairishana, in a fit of 'petty annoyance combined with caution in case the man did have a weapon', punched in a channel on the internal comms system, which, unlike the external one still under blackout, was working again. "Medbay, is Doctor Sorenson available?" She cut to the chase in a perhaps rather undiplomatic tone as soon as the line connected.
["Sorenson here. Please tell me you're not having weird reactions to a cloud of unknown pollen that suddenly flooded the office."]
Martin blinked in surprise. Given the Andorian's query when she tapped her comm, Martin had been somewhat expecting to hear his own voice - he'd said enough since arriving here for any halfway competent voice sampling program to reproduce it. What the voice said however was way outside of what he'd expected, especially in that he recognized the exasperated under current in that tone and its implication ...which seemed a bit beyond what an AI could reconstruct. Still, he wasn't accepting that Occam's Razor included random cross-dimensional excursions just yet. Not without testing this 'Dr. Sorenson'. "Have you checked the microgametophytes for potential breakdown to psychotropic compounds?"
["Of course I have. And whoever's doing the Martin impression: 1. Not funny. and 2. Are you sure you aren't affected?"]
He could almost hear the all-too-familiar overworked razor edge balance between concern and annoyance in what was more and more seeming like his own voice. "I'm Dr. Martin Sorenson. These people claim you are too, but I'm not letting my guard down for just a good impression."
A groan was audible over the comm. ["Kairishana, what is going on with whatever version of me you've got there?"]
"It's..." Kairishana's voice stopped fractionally for a moment in describing things, in another 'horrible realization being fully grasped that this is your circus and those are your monkeys' sort of way as she let herself process and allowed herself to grasp the technical name and nature of the situation at hand. "...A bit of a hostage situation. There's a guy here in civilian clothes who's you, but uhh, obviously not you. He has Izzy - she blanked out a couple minutes ago, and when she came back this guy came with her. She seems to be unconscious, and I don't see any weapons on him but he's paranoid as hell and won't hand her over even after I explained what I could of stuff, and seems to think we're tricking him or something."
There was pause of several beats as the Martin in medbay considered that, and in particular considered that at one point he'd been tempted to remain in Romulan space or join one of the border camps dedicated to the outpouring of refugees. ["Doctor, I don't know who Ms. Cerin is in your universe, but here she's our diplomatic officer. And a friend. So I'd appreciate it if you'd recall your Hippocratic Oath and let our people take care of her."]
"Nice try." The other Martin's eyes narrowed. "I'm assuming you're not Tal'Shiar or you'd have just killed me and your agent, so you must value her. There'll be no permanent harm, so long as you return the real Izzy and send us back."
If it had been video rather than voice link, they would've seen Martin facepalm. ["Right. Okay, you obviously don't believe I'm an alternate you. I get it; I saw a few things when I was working with refugees and you've obviously seen a lot more. So let me tell you something about yourself no infiltrator would have bothered to research. You like cheddar fries, and when no one's looking you have them with a lot more salt than's healthy."]
That was...accurate and delivered in a tone he recognized as knowing the fact would be repeated to his disadvantage but there was no helping it. It was also something no one would have had reason to dig up for background on the off chance he got caught in an extraction transport. Martin's grip on Izzy lessened, but not completely. "I'm going to revive her," he said slowly withdrawing another hypo. "No sudden moves, and no one speaks until she confirms what you've said."
Kairishana nodded carefully at the man, keeping the commline open, and flashed eye contact with the nearest few of the Marines in what she hoped what a reasonable signal to watch but wait, antennae twitching with pent up anxious energy.
After resecuring his grip, Martin applied the hypo and waited as Izzy came around. "Who are you?"
Izzy, unfortunately, had a couple of aspects in her background that made her perhaps prone to react a certain way, in an unfamiliar grip and situation, when not entirely mentally alert: A combination of training or experiences from postings to Qo'nous and Romulus, and recent experience as a hostage of the Sons of Cheron or their offshoot fringe, reacted on instinct and brought one foot back and up to try and strike the man holding her in the groin. She wasn't very successful at it though, considering the amount of chemicals still warring in her system; and her first words hearkened back to that most recent experience, woozy enough to not be entirely aware and awake in the present yet. "You know perfectly well who I am, you took us." She mumbled. "And the Federation will never give you what you want for us, so you might as well give up."
The doctor knew someone coming out of sedative might not be at their sharpest - in fact, he'd counted on it to get something close to an honest response. But now he had moment of mental whiplash as he wondered if this person had disguised herself as Izzy not for nefarious reasons but for evasion, possibly to use her secure comm to send for help. "I didn't take you. These people did. I just got caught in their transport." He directed a hard glare at Kairishana and what he was now sure were fake security. "I don't know what you want with her, but someone will notice me gone soon, so I suggest you send us both back."
Kairishana was beginning to question her own sanity, as many ice-cake-layers of crazy as this guy seemed to have layered on top of one another regardless of what answers were given or not, and she sighed. “Since I’m assuming the rest of us are allowed to talk now; did you hear that all, doctor?” She called through the open commline before turning back to the other doctor. “I told you I can’t send you back; it just seems to eventually happen.” Antennae twitched a bit though; because this dude was taking rather longer to resolve than the previous incidents had.
["I did."] The degree of exasperation came through in his voice. ["Look, I know you have no reason to believe us, especially after Ms. Cerin came to confused about her situation. We've all been...through a lot. But we actually can't send you back. I would suggest releasing Ms. Cerin so that when it happens you don't drag her back with you. Though possibly holding her is why you're still here. I don't think anyone here has crossed to the same place twice."]
"...What..." Izzy blinked, having seemingly gone back to semi-limp and semi-conscious at best in the doctor's arms after her earlier moment of semi-awareness, and this time her eyes came into better focus; specifically on the blood-and-coffee-stained carpet, then, with a slight lift of her head, at Kairishana and a couple of the team Captain St. LaCroix had lent her, all of whom looked distinctly...stressed. "...Alright. Let me guess. Doctor?" She called out carefully to the unseen presence holding her. Unlike the earlier incident, she didn't make for any sudden moves, or any moves at all, yet.
"Yes." ["Yes."] Both Martins answered in unison.
"...Right. Should've seen that one coming." Izzy sighed, and her voice got a bit more solicitous. "The one in the room with me - if you'd mind letting go of me, it will probably help you get back to your home...and let me stay here, in mine."
It was all too confusing, but it was also becoming too convoluted to think it was a pre-planned deception. Cautiously, Martin released the Izzy lookalike, stepping back to give himself a little room to react if this all (very likely) went south. "I don't mean any harm. I just want to go..."
The doctor faded from view.
"And he's gone." Kairishana said after a momentary hesitation to really make sure. It was a beat beyond that even that the guards around them relaxed ever-so-slightly. "Thanks doctor. I'll let you get back to the pollen mess now." Kairi said to the open commline to the medbay, before reaching out to close it.
