Lieutenant Commander Vernon Reid stood alone in a turbolift car as it made its way through the network of shafts between the station’s Main Infirmary and the command deck. He was pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to rationalize the results of the tests he’d asked Doctor Vreen to perform on his children. He didn’t doubt the veracity of the results, rather he dreaded the implications of them should his newly formed theory actually hold some manner of credibility.

His former boss had made a statement that she, being the pragmatic Zakdorn she was, felt perfectly reasonable to assert even if the evidence was circumstantial at best. Her methodical and sometimes brutally tactical approach to medicine had proven effective in enough cases while Vernon had worked with her that its lack of empathetic framing was little more than an absence of window dressing. At times, however, Vernon lamented that the frame was bare and that it displayed in stark contrast things that he wasn’t emotionally prepared to tackle.

The low thrumming of the lift slowed steadily, the decrease in volume signaling that Vernon was about to reach his destination. The soft swish of the doors prompted the man to step out into the corridor, taking just a moment to orient himself as to which side of the deck he’d been brought to before turning down the corridor toward Commander Novak’s office. The mosaic crystal wall came into view as he made his way along the soft curve of the deck before finally stopping at the closed door.

Reid’s hand hadn’t even made it all the way to the chime panel when the door parted with a lazy hiss to reveal Commander Mira Novak sitting at the far end of the room behind her desk. Vernon took the sudden removal of the barrier between them as a good sign to enter and took the liberty of doing so without her having to say a word. The distance between them diminished quickly as he crossed the room and opted to stand before her desk rather than sit immediately, as was his usual habit.

“What do you need, XO?” Mira asked as she leaned back a bit to look up at his face.

“There’s a problem…” Reid said before his expression shifted slightly, “Or rather, there could be a problem depending on what we might be able to dig up together.”

Novak’s lips immediately curled downward, “Am I to assume this has something to do with your report this morning?”

Reid gave the woman a curt nod, “It does.”

“Explain to me how your investigation has evolved into a problem,” Mira requested, motioning for the man to take a seat.

“Jak and I reviewed the security footage, looking for any clues that might have proven or disproved the details my daughters relayed to me. We didn’t catch a single frame of whoever it was they saw, not even a hitch in the feeds that could have suggested tampering or anything like that,” Vernon began.

“And this… lack of evidence does… what, exactly, for this case?”

Vernon allowed himself a small smile, “At face value, nothing. But what we didn’t catch actually makes what we did find all that much more bizarre.” Mira’s only response was to indicate for him to continue, which he obliged. “Ella mentioned that people were walking around the person, and we found evidence to support that very thing. There was a void in foot traffic, roughly a size that would allow for a single person of modest dimensions to walk along the concourse unobstructed, that moved casually along like whoever it is was taking a leisurely stroll.”

Mira’s frown deepened slightly, “And how did you come up with this hypothesis?”

“I had Jak run a sightline analysis on both my daughters and the people around this void. Everyone else was purposely avoiding any sort of contact with whatever this being is, while Anna and Ella were focused almost exclusively on it,” Reid clarified.

“You didn’t leave it solely at that, I hope,” Novak said pointedly.

“We did not,” Vernon shook his head. “Holv and I went down there personally and I asked about seven or eight people about their recollection of the day’s events. Their answers were all eerily similar and it reminded me of something like mass hypnosis.”

“How so?” Mira’s lips had morphed into a full grimace of displeasure at the suggestion of someone manipulating a large group of people in such manner.

“My conversations followed the exact same pattern. They’d deny anything was wrong, then they’d get confused, and finally they would realize that they had noticed something being abnormal and wondering why it didn’t feel weird in the moment even though it was. Seven or eight people having identical reactions isn’t coincidence, it’s a pattern. And the implications of mass hypnosis led me to grab the only two people I could bring to sickbay without much in the way of explanation…” Reid summarized.

“You had your daughters examined?” Novak sounded a little confused.

“I did, yes,” Vernon nodded, “Partly because they were easy targets for an effortless continuation of my investigation, but also because I had evidence that they, like the rest of the people I’d talked to, have been manipulated into seeing things as well.”

Mira raised a hand momentarily, “Hold on, I thought you said the girls could see the thing. How were they manipulated if they had eyes on it the entire time?”

“Remember when I said they ran into a dead end and the being just vanished?” Reid probed meaningfully.

“Vaguely,” Novak admitted while leaning forward just slightly.

“Holv and I went to the exact spot they claimed was blocked off and found a long corridor sitting there, as unobstructed as the corridor outside. That’s when we looked at the footage of that part of their chase and saw Anna run her hand along thin air like a wall was sitting right in front of her. That is why I knew they’d been manipulated,” Vernon concluded.

Mira’s frown seemed to somehow get even deeper, “What did the test results tell you?”

“That what they saw was real, and that whatever it was can create powerful illusions that people just… believe. But the psionic signature they leave behind doesn’t show up anywhere in the medical database. It’s like this thing came out of nowhere… or somebody made a lot of effort to erase them from memory,” Reid said, his voice hardening as he spoke.

A look of realization rippled on Novak’s face and she pushed herself back into her chair. Based on everything that the XO had just said, a ‘problem’ might just be the understatement of the century… and they’d only made it two years in to the current one.

“Computer, seal this office. Authorization Novak Epsilon-Two-Seven-Seven-Gamma,” Mira ordered after giving the matter some thought.

“Acknowledged,” the main computer droned before pausing about a heartbeat, “This compartment is now sealed.”

Mira brought up her holographic terminal and made a command level query of the station’s medical database, retrieving the scans that had been taken of Reid’s children. Vernon watched as the results, though inverted for him, flashed up on her screen. Novak then made a request for the release of sealed information pertaining to the species that inhabited the nearby Talos system. The request was flagged immediately, and a request for clarification as to the necessity of the information popped up, eliciting an annoyed huff from Novak.

She set about explaining, verbally, why she was making the request and submitted it. The window shrank down into a multifaceted circle that spun at varying speeds as if to visually simulate the computer processing the request. Seconds stretched into full minutes before the screen finally flashed back open and information feeds began to scroll from left to right and down the length of the screen.

“Looks like your investigative thoroughness made the difference,” Mira pointed out with a tiny smile of amusement as the records began to ‘un-redact’ themselves. Novak then moved the scan pattern to the archival information, and the computer took a grand total of three seconds to return a response.

A perfect match.

Vernon groaned and sank into his chair, while Mira steepled her hands in front of her chin and began to digest the implications of said match. Novak’s eyes lingered on the last fragment of information in the record that read ‘last contact, 2267’, with a note that stated that the civilization occupying the planet was to be ‘monitored but not approached’.

Mira felt herself snort at the phrase, her sudden exhalation drawing a quizzical look from Reid.

“It states very plainly that we should not approach them. But not a single word about what we should do when the reverse becomes the case,” Novak answered Vernon’s silent question.

“So what do we do about this?” Reid asked, pushing himself back up out of his slump.

Mira couldn’t help the sigh from escaping her lips. As much as she wanted it to be otherwise, she didn’t have an answer for the man readily available. This wasn’t a straightforward situation, not from how it all started to where they were now. It was extremely likely that, had the Reid twins never encountered their mysterious stranger, Novak would have remained ignorant of the fact that there was a being with telepathic prowess so refined that they could pass through her station unnoticed and unchecked roaming the corridors.

“I don’t know that we have any means to do anything at this moment. Nothing in the files speaks about their method of diplomacy… or if they’re even open to it. No hints as to their motivations, their culture, or even how they might have gotten here in the first place. For all we know, they aren’t actually here at all,” Novak finally responded to the question she’d let hang in the air for so long.

“I can assure you Commander…” A vaguely masculine voice echoed through the room as if summoned by her statement. “I have been here for quite some time.”

Mira watched as Vernon visibly stiffened, and as her eyes drifted upward, she beheld a being almost exactly as the Reid twins had reportedly described them standing less than a meter behind Reid’s chair. The most chilling thing about it was that something in Novak’s mind told her that this person had been there the whole time.