Who You Are

Posted on Mon Mar 2nd, 2026 @ 4:59am by Captain Zseeq & Lieutenant Zhi'rev & Senior Chief Petty Officer Sethan MD

2,018 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Life
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: 2401-07-04, 10:00

Sethan preceded the captain into sickbay's main area and beelined for the quarantined away team. He paused before then, glancing back at the captain before settling his attention on the team before him. "There's a way to confirm that you are really you," he started slowly, visibly ill at ease. "You're not going to like it, but it's the only way."

The Vulcan paused again, a little longer this time before looking at the captain a second time. "This better come from you," he insisted.

The heavy atmospheric seal of the Sickbay Ward hummed with a low-frequency vibration, a physical reminder that the entire room had been transformed into a high-security vault. Zseeq watched as Sethan reached the edge of the ward and faltered. The Vulcan’s reluctance was palpable, a logical mind grappling with an emotional violation, but Zseeq had no such internal conflict. As Sethan turned back for the second time, his voice a strained plea for the Captain to take the lead, Zseeq stepped into the light. He moved with a calculated, rhythmic stride that signaled the end of the debate. He didn’t stop until he was at the very threshold of the quarantine zone, looming over the Away Team like a dark silhouette against the sterile glow of the ward.

"The Doctor is being polite," Zseeq said, his voice a rich, authoritative baritone that brooked no interruption. "I find that politeness, while charming, is a poor substitute for the truth." He let his gaze wander over the group, lingering a second too long on the mission lead with a look that was both an appraisal and a subtle, dark challenge. Even in the middle of a security crisis, the Deltan’s natural magnetism was a weapon he wielded with effortless precision. "You’ve lost days," Zseeq stated flatly, his tone turning cold. "You believe you're on time, but the calendar on this ship says otherwise. Right now, you are walking, talking contradictions. Our scans see machines, I see an attack, you see yourselves. These may all be true, but we have to find out."

He gestured with a sharp, decisive flick of his wrist toward Sethan. "The Doctor is going to perform a mind-meld on each of you. He is going to bypass your hardware and look for the 'fingerprint' of your consciousness. I know it’s uncomfortable, and quite frankly, if we were in a different setting, I’d apologize for the intrusion before taking you all to the lounge for a very long night of recovery."

His eyes flashed with a momentary, flirtatious spark as he looked at them, a hint of the man behind the rank, before his expression hardened back into the mask of the Saratoga's commander. "But we are not in the lounge. You are a potential threat to the Saratoga, and I do not tolerate threats. This is the only way back to your lives. If there is a soul left in those shells, Sethan will find it. If not..." Zseeq leaned forward, his presence pressing against the invisible line of the quarantine. "I suggest you prepare yourselves. Sethan, proceed. I’ll be watching."

The Vulcan doctor nodded, gesturing towards the guard to present the first of the patients. Before the guard could respond however, Zhi'rev stepped forward. "I'll go first," he announced without hesitation. He accompanied the guard to a nearby bed, well aware of the man's hand hovering near his phaser. A nurse approached as well, attaching a monitor to his neck.

Sethan bowed his head, not at all comfortable with the proceedings. He winced as the nurse attached a monitor to his neck as well. "I'm sorry," he whispered as he raised his left hand, spreading his slender fingers across the side of the other Vulcan's face. His skin felt different, almost alien to the touch, but he had no time to marvel over it.

As soon as his fingers connected, he sent his mind forth, diving deep into his husband's memories. He felt resistance to the intrusion, but also something else. He felt love and admiration and as he drove his mind forward, breaking through carefully built walls, loneliness and a desire to belong. enough.

A strong force drove him back and he staggered, falling down to his knees, gasping for breath as the meld was broken. Strong arms helped him back to his feet, but he felt depleted. "You said to look past my husband," he whispered, "but I can't. It's him in there, his soul, his essence. I feel it, I sense it. I saw things he told me about, but never wanted to show me." He drew in a staggering breath. "I can't do this again, if this is him, I have no doubt about the others."

The silence that followed Sethan’s collapse was absolute, broken only by the clinical hum of the bio-monitors. Zseeq didn't move. He stood with his arms folded behind his back, his posture as rigid and polished as the command deck of the Saratoga. His pale, striking features remained a mask of calculated observation. He watched the Vulcan doctor struggle for air, his eyes tracking the way Sethan clung to Zhi’rev, the very "threat" they were supposed to be quantifying. Zseeq’s jaw tightened. He respected Sethan’s expertise, but he despised the way personal sentiment could cloud a clear objective.

"You’re asking me to bet the lives of our crew on the strength of a husband’s intuition, Sethan," Zseeq said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low vibrato. He stepped closer to the transparent barrier, the light reflecting off his brow in a way that made his gaze seem even more piercing. "Logic dictates that if a machine can mimic a memory, it can mimic the emotion attached to it. It could show you exactly what you want to see to ensure its survival."

He turned his gaze to Zhi’rev. There was no warmth in his eyes now, only the cold, weighing pressure of a man who had been handed a ship and refused to let it fail on his watch. He saw the "soul" Sethan spoke of, but he also saw the sensor readings that didn't add up. "However," Zseeq continued, his tone shifting as he began to pace the short length of the observation line, "I am not a man who ignores a successful probe. If you are certain - truly, irrevocably certain -that the essence of the man is intact, then we have a baseline."

He stopped pacing and looked at the rest of the away team, who were watching the exchange with a mixture of fear and defiance. The Captain was already three steps ahead, calculating the risk of a partial compromise versus the loss of his best officers. "Sethan, regain your composure," Zseeq commanded, though not unkindly. He reached out, his hand hovering just inches from the interface panel. "If you cannot continue the melds, we move to Stage Two. We won't rely on your empathy alone. We will cross-reference the biometric anomalies with the specific memory markers you just retrieved. If the soul is there, the math will back you up."

He straightened up and looked at the head nurse. "Keep the containment at maximum. I want a full synaptic mapping compared against their pre-mission logs within the hour."

Turning back to Sethan, Zseeq’s expression softened just a fraction, the sharp edges of his authority yielding to a brief moment of genuine, albeit demanding, support. "Go to your office. Drink something. Then, I want a full report on exactly what 'force' pushed you out of that meld. If it wasn't Zhi’rev, I need to know what else is living in his head."

"It was Zhi," Sethan answered flatly as he made for his office, using anything he could get his hands on to keep himself on his feet. He had felt the push, he had heard the mentally spoken word and he had certainly felt the love. He had no doubt whatsoever that the essence in that body was his husband.

He sat at the CMOs desk and buried his face in trembling hands, only looking up when a nurse set a cup of coffee in front of him. He knew that the beverage wouldn't give him the strength he needed, but he appreciated the gesture. "Thank you," he whispered, "I will be out again shortly." He took his time, finishing the hot bitter drink before making his way out again. He faced the stoic captain, trying to entertain a stoic façade of his own. "I know for certain that my husband is in there, what I felt and experienced can't be faked. He stopped me before a point of no return, because this is extremely dangerous. If you order it, I will do it to the others, but there's a tremendous risk to me as I already explained."

Zseeq stood motionless, his shadow stretching long across the sterile floor of the Sickbay. He watched Sethan with the detached scrutiny of a grandmaster evaluating a piece on a chronometer. The Vulcan’s insistence on "love" as a diagnostic tool was, to Zseeq’s mind, a charmingly archaic indulgence. In this moment, Sethan’s perspective was compromised by the very thing Zseeq had spent his life chasing yet consistently failing to secure: the absolute, unconditional bond of family. He felt a sharp, bitter pang of envy that he instantly crushed beneath the weight of his command persona.

"I do not 'order' my Chief Medical Officer to commit suicide, Sethan," Zseeq said, his voice regaining its sharp, intellectual edge. He stepped away from the barrier, pacing with a predatory elegance. "But I also do not command a ship based on 'feelings.' If Zhi’rev pushed you out to protect you, it suggests a level of self-awareness that is promising, yet it does not explain the discrepancy in the chronometers." He stopped and turned, his eyes narrowing as he looked through the transparent aluminum at the quarantined team. He saw the way they looked at him - with the same desperation for approval he often felt when he looked at the subspace terminal, waiting for a message from his son that rarely came. He understood that look perfectly. It was a weapon.

"You say what you experienced cannot be faked," Zseeq continued, his tone shifting into the persuasive, high-energy register of a man who was used to winning every debate. "But consider the Vorta. Consider the Founders. The galaxy is littered with the corpses of those who believed their 'essences' were infallible. I will respect your physical limits, Doctor, but I will not sacrifice the Saratoga to a romantic ideal." He walked toward Sethan’s desk, placing a hand on the edge of the console, leaning in just enough to invade the Vulcan’s personal space with his own overwhelming Deltan presence. "I will grant a temporary reprieve from the melds with future melds at your discretion. However, we will proceed with a recursive memory audit."

Zseeq straightened his tunic, his arrogance flickering back to the surface like a polished blade. "If they pass, I will consider the 'soul' verified. If not..." He let the sentence hang, the implication cold and heavy. He looked at the nurse. "Double the guard. And Sethan? I want the telemetry of that 'push' analyzed. If it was love, it will have a specific neural signature. If it was a firewall, I want to know who programmed it." He turned to leave, but paused at the doors, looking back at the quarantined officers one last time. For a brief, fleeting second, his expression wasn't that of a Captain, but of a son who had never been told he was enough.

"I want to believe it's you," he said, his voice barely audible above the hum of the Sickbay. "But on this ship, I am the only one who gets to be fallible. The rest of you must be perfect." The doors hissed shut behind him, leaving the Sickbay in a state of clinical, terrifying uncertainty.

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