Just When You Thought it Was Safe

Posted on Mon Jan 4th, 2016 @ 11:01pm by Lieutenant Commander Michael Darwin & Ensign Reva Madhava & Suresh

* Reva’s and Desta’s Quarters *

“Come on,” Reva growled as she crawled along the floor near a bulkhead in the living room. “Kahuna! I’m going to pull your legs off when I catch you!” She was irate because Kahuna had decided he wanted to chase down his own dinner, so he’d released four hissing roaches in the living room. He’d then failed to catch even one and Gilroy had refused on the basis that she didn’t need to be cleaning up after the male. Reva, however, knew that if those things mated and laid eggs... oh gods, she didn’t want to think about the outcomes there.

Well excuse me, came Kahuna’s sarcastic reply. I’m an apex predator! I have to learn how to hunt at some point!

“You are not an apex predator!” Reva shouted and winced as the door chime sounded even as Kahuna petulantly replied, Am too,. Surely OPS and Engineering couldn’t already know that she had roaches on the loose in her apartment, could they?

Getting up, she spied one of the roaches, shouted and dove for it. She missed and, for the moment, gave up, since the door chime rang again. “Yeah, yeah! Enter! Just don’t let the roaches out!”, she called.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” came Suresh’s voice as he entered and the doors closed behind him. He looked down at the crouching Reva and cleared his throat. “There’s one on the coffee table.”

“Augh!” She jumped up, spotted it and leapt for it. “One down!”, she crowed in triumph then cringed as the thing’s legs scrambled for purchase on her hands and it started hissing like a partly-open pressure valve. “Oh gods... where’s the box!?” She looked around for it, even as her shoulders tried to bury her ears and she looked like she might puke. “White box with little holes in it...?”

“Got it.” Suresh grabbed the box and was across the room in three strides. He held it open for her to drop in the roach, then closed the lid. “Umm..how many more?”

“Ugh,” she shuddered as she rubbed her hands on her body. “Three. Oh that’s just wrong! Kahuna, you’re on your own for a moment!” She held up a hand to Suresh, went into her bedroom and screamed. A moment later, she came back out, looking calmer. “Hi, Suresh. What are you doing here?”

“You here by yourself?” A moment later he realized how creepy that could sound. “What I mean is, if the rest aren’t home, do you mind if I bend your ear for a few?”

“If anyone else was home, I’d have made them get out here and help me wrangle these roaches! Oh... except the spiders. There are two of them around here somewhere, but one is incompetent at hunting and the other refuses to hunt them.” There was a bit of bitterness in her voice. “So, yeah, you can bend my ear, if it’s okay that the spiders hear it, too.”

“That depends, will they repeat it? It might involve some classified information.” Despite how funny the sentence sounded, it was clear he was serious.

Reva looked around the apartment then said, “Hey, Gilroy, Kahuna, go in my bedroom, would you? And don’t listen in.” She shrugged at Suresh. “They take direction rather well, but I’ve found that you can’t quite trust their judgment.” Mental confirmations came from both spiders as they went into her bedroom. “Have a seat. Anything to drink?”

Suresh shook his head, then took a seat. “I have a meeting at Saturnalia later, so nothing right now.” He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “It’s about Six.”

Reading his body language, Reva frowned and sat down as well. “What about Six? Is she okay? I know she’s back from ... wherever Niro took her.”

He nodded. “They are, but there were some problems. Darwin had been hit by a disruptor and rather crudely repaired. Lt. Bajun had a run-in at Gallitep and Six...well...Niro tried to wipe her memories...of us.”

“Is Darwin okay now?” She asked that before the rest of his statement sunk in. “Niro... wiped... oh dear. Wiped completely?” Reva knew that Niro could, if he wanted to, wipe a person’s memories right down to birth if he wanted to.

“Thankfully, no, I don’t think he had the time to put into it. They discovered that he blocked them instead of erasing them. The effect was the same, initially. She has no memories of any of the good things, no memory of the wedding either. She did recall the Xerena incident. He left that intact.” His voice was bitter. “Seyla suggested I talk to you.”

Reva blinked at him. “Seyla suggested you talk to me? Why? Did she say why?”

“No, unless it’s that she didn’t want me using her as a sounding board. Not that I would, but you do need to know what’s happened and why she hasn’t been around.” He shrugged, then suddenly surged from his seat and dove to the floor. “The box!”

She screamed - it wasn’t, after all, all that long ago that she and Suresh didn’t get along. Granted, she was the one who hadn’t liked him, but either way, she wasn’t expecting him to go diving for the floor. Then she recalled: hissing cockroach. The hissing coming from his hands reminded her. She scrambled for the box and opened it, pushing the one in there back. “Drop it in!”

The errant roach was contained and he sat back down, giving his hand a look. He’d wash them later. “Well, that’s two down. Where were we before I dropped to the floor?”

“Ah... you were telling me why Seyla told you to talk to me.” She felt his queasiness about his hands. “Wanna wash them in the kitchen sink?”

“Thanks.” He rose, belatedly recalling she was part Betazoid, and moved off to the kitchen. “I know she’ll want to see you as soon as she can. She’s up in Intel right now, in her alcove.”

She followed him, holding the box in one hand. “I don’t have access to that floor, but I’ll contact her.” She touched his shoulder and started to say, “It’ll be okay; at least she has...,” when his underlying anger came across through her touch. Taking a breath, she finished, “...the memories, even if they’re covered or hidden.” She withdrew her hand, but the anger remained and boiled up. “Oh. Niro needs to die.” It wasn’t just Suresh’s anger pushing her to say that; it was her own and Riley’s. She wondered how Darwin felt. “Darwin...? How is he?”

“Not very happy about any of it.” He nodded as he dried his hands. “I tend to agree with you though.” He filled her in on the visit to Archadia with the boys. “Eli is hoping that the regeneration cycle will help with the stuff he couldn’t get to. So am I.”

“That makes four of us, then.” Reva walked back to the living room. “So what are you doing about Niro?” She shook herself. “I’m sorry, I forgot for a moment - you’re not the one who’d do something about him.”

“You’re wrong.” He returned to his chair and sat back down. “But I don’t want to get into that, for your sake.” He paused a moment. “It’s not that I don’t trust you Reva, I just don’t want you tangled up in something that could cause you trouble. Despite our situation, I am still over a line you shouldn’t cross.”

“I see,” she nodded and curled her legs under her as she sat on the couch. “Do you ever talk to Robart?”

Her question got a smile from Suresh. “I do as a matter of fact. We have found that we have quite a bit in common. Why do you ask?”

"Idle curiosity," she replied, glad he wasn't a telepath. "Has he taken you for a warp ten ride?"

“Not yet. I’ve been a little sidetracked and Robart and I had other business to attend to that have kept us on the station. Well, when I wasn’t on Archadia.” He stopped and pointed to the portal’s window seat. “Number three.”

She twisted around to look then, shouting, ran over to grab at the thing. She missed and it scurried into a thin opening. "Crap...," she growled. "You should make the time. It's an experience. And it's amazing how far he can get you in just a few minutes."

“Maybe once things settle down with Six we can all go,” Suresh suggested. “I know seeing his ship and experiencing warp ten would fascinate her.” An idea occurred to him suddenly. “You should see what she did to Niro’s ship to repair the damage while they were gone. I haven’t yet, but she gave me the details. You’re engineering, won’t they be going over it?”

"What she did to Niro's ship? How...? Oh shit, did she use her Borg tech?" Reva's eyes sparkled with interest. "I'll have to talk to Louie, see if he can get me on that team." Her other boss tended to still assign her to scrubbing environmental filters. "Unless Intel decides to keep the ship under wraps."

“They might but I figure they’ll still need an engineering team to check it out and document all the changes. From what Six said, they had a rough landing after they were pulled through that rift and took some damage. She repaired it and added a few improvements because they were in a small firefight trying to destroy some weapon...the thing that pulled them through the rift in the first place.” Suresh shrugged. “That’s all I know and I suspect all I will know about it ever.”

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'll look into it, Suresh." She wondered about the weapon... hell, she wondered about the whole situation. What had Niro done to them? "He's like a cancer, spreading amongst us and killing us off."

“No longer will he do that. Count on it, Reva.” He decided to leave it at that. “I’ll leave the rest for her to tell you. She should be out of regeneration in a few hours. However, on to better things. I understand congratulations are in order?”

"Congrats?" She looked blank for a moment then smiled, "Oh, yeah, Riley accepted my proposal." She grinned widely. "We haven't figured out a plan for the wedding, though." She recalled what she was supposed to have been doing: calling her grandmother to tell her the news. "You and Six will get an invitation, unless he convinces me to dash off to Archadia."

Suresh laughed at her last words. “There’s a lot to be said for that. We may be doing it again. Eli was able to get most of her memories back but the wedding seems to still be missing.”

"Missing?" She frowned. "Hopefully.... Well, maybe planning to redo that is a good idea. Eli's okay after helping with that? It Enarans take on whatever memories they remove? Or is the memory just gone then?"

“There was only one memory to be removed.” Suresh’s expression hardened along with his tone. “I wish there were some way to get it out of Eli’s head so he’s not cursed with it either. The rest were just blocks to hide her own memories.”

"Good." She was about to say more, but Kahuna suddenly crowed, I got one! I told you I'm an apex predator!, and the door chime sounded. Glancing at Suresh, Reva shrugged about Kahuna and answered the door, surprised to find Darwin there. "Looking for Suresh?"

"He's here?" Darwin was surprised and looked past her (easy for him, since he could just look over her head) towards Suresh. "Ah, by no, I'm here for you, Ensign Madhava."

Her shoulders slumped as she looked at him. "But I haven't done anything lately! And there's no way you know about the roaches yet!"

"Roaches?" He looked at Suresh, one brow lifted. "I'm not sure I want to know."

“You don’t,” Suresh answered. “What’s going on Dar?”

"Oh, Niro." He focused on Reva and said, "He's made a threat that we're taking as credible. He claims to have put a suggestion in your head."

Reva shrugged, "He claims lots of things."

Darwin gave her an exasperated sigh then looked at Suresh. "He claims the same thing for Six. I'm here to take you to Piper to get checked out."

Suresh was instantly on his feet. “What sort of suggestion?”

"It's Niro; take a guess."

"Is this like a 'we're going to kill the ones we love' suggestion?", Reva asked.

" I don't know! Raj told me to come get you," Darwin replied. "Come on."

“You need to let them check you Reva. I’ll come with you,” Suresh offered. "I can’t get to Six, Darwin. She’s up in Intel regenerating. It may be several hours yet because they are hoping the cycle will release the other memories…” He frowned at his next thought. “Call them and have them interrupt it. If this trigger is there, I don’t want it released.”

“None of us do.” Darwin put a hand on Reva’s upper arm. “We’ve called Eli as well. He’ll meet us in sickbay.”

“I should call Riley,” Reva said as she walked out with Darwin and Suresh.

“I can do that if you want me to, and make sure the spiders are stashed in the terrarium,” Suresh answered. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Thanks, Suresh,” Reva said.

Darwin suggested, “Just tell Riley that I’ve picked her up.” He grinned, letting Suresh know he was playing on Reva’s past with him.

Other times, Suresh would’ve laughed but with the idea of a mental time bomb looming over them, his sense of humour had taken a backseat to worry.

“I’ll meet you all there in a few minutes,” he said, and turned to gather up Iggy’s offspring.

***************************
Ensign Reva Madhava
Little Kahuna
Gilroy, Jr.
Suresh
Lt. M. Darwin