She had been doing slow laps of the quiet Promenade for at least an hour, pacing and downing multiple mugs of tea, some spiked a little harder than others. Anxiety was an unusual feeling for the Andorian, but she was riddled with it, her sleepless face taut with thought and concern.
She had fled her room after a quarter hour of silent staring and shivering, throwing on the first clothes she could get her hands on (without turning her back on the transmission screen) and hunkering down behind the bar at the Eel. She'd even powered up HJ, just to have some kind of company, and so that his panel was not dark. After a few hours of hiding out there, she took a mug to go and began wandering the Promenade.
She had almost managed to convince herself that she had dreamt the late night visitor on her transmission screen. The Cardassian architecture had inspired some kind of weird waking nightmare, fueled by the stress from Orb situation earlier in the week. Otherwise it just didn't make any fucking sense. None at all.
Regardless of how many times she turned it over in her head, it didn't change the fact that she was deeply, deeply disturbed by that faint and shadowed Cardassian face. She didn't want to get involved in this species-ist bullshit, or any kind of armed conflict. Was there fucking nowhere in any arm of the galaxy that she could go without something awful finding her?
And what was she supposed to do about it, now? Private transmissions did not keep records, so there might not even be any proof of what she'd seen.
She took a large drink from her mug, the heat threatening to burn the back of her throat, and the whiskey warming the tightness in her chest.
She was probably being ridiculous. Shake out the panic, brush it off. It was a glitch. She'd tell an engineering officer to check the signal routes to her room, and that would be it. But her gut refused to let her believe it.
Home 
