He closed his eyes. “You and I will meet and talk to her together. We’ll get to the bottom of this, and go from there.” He took a long, deep breath. “Let’s go ahead and get this over with.”
He called Parker over the intercom, and they agreed to meet in the Atrium. Lennon arrived first and waited patiently. He came in with Parker a few minutes later, and she drifted in the air between Lennon and Matthews. “What’s going on?” She asked nervously.
“Maria, we just want to talk about your behavior recently. There have been some events recently that concern us.”
She crossed her arms and her face went cold. “So the two of you are going to gang up on me, is that it?”
Matthews spoke with a stern voice. “I am required to counsel you, Maria. Because this is an official meeting, I am bringing Lennon in as a witness, and as another female.”
Parker huffed.
“Maria, we are not trying to attack you,” Lennon interjected, and then lowered her voice. “We’re trying to help you.”
She relaxed slightly at Lennon’s voice. “Fine,” she said, “What do you want to talk about?”
“We are concerned about your relationship with Dish,” said Lennon.
Parker’s eyes narrowed. You told him, they said. She spoke in a whisper. “I can’t get pregnant.”
“Exactly, Parker. You’re playing with fire.”
“You don’t understand,” she continued. “I can’t get pregnant.” She looked into Lennon’s eyes for a long time. “It’s a personal medical condition. One that actually worked in my favor during the selection process.”
Lennon did not know what to say. As the medical officer, she should have known about such a condition.
“It was need-to-know,” explained Parker. Nothing about it affects my performance. It… was a choice.”
Matthews stepped in. “Parker, that aside, I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous it is to the mission for you to get involved in a relationship.”
“It’s over,” she said curtly. “There is no relationship.”
“What about your other behavior? Like the dancing?” Lennon asked. “It would be best to not pursue relationships… the dancing could have caused a lot of problems, you know—there are a lot of lonely people here.”
“Capsicum,” she said, and looked blankly to the side.
“What?” Lennon and Matthews asked at the same time.
She leaned her head back and laughed, a full laugh, as if she were full of amusement; neither Lennon nor Matthews understood the humor, or the source of her mirth. “Neither of you has any clue,” Parker hissed. “Especially you, Lennon. Look at you, with your smug appearance. You’re so separated, aren’t you?” She chuckled quietly, humming, and her voice lowered in timbre until it became relaxed and breathy, yet backed with a confidence and intensity that was not characteristic of her usual behavior. “You don’t hold any power on your own. No authority. You cannot stop me.”
Matthews stared at her, expressionless, as if waiting to see what she would do. She stared back, her face equally emotionless. Then she turned and began to leave.
At that moment, everything fell apart. Matthews moved in front of the doorway to keep her from leaving. Parker clutched the front of his shirt with her right hand and flung him into the wall with surprising force. As he hit the wall of the Atrium, plants broke free of the wall and floated across the room. Lennon dove forward and caught Parker’s ankle, as she attempted to leave once more, but Parker swiveled and kicked Lennon in the face. Lennon’s grip broke and she flew backwards with her nose burning and throbbing. Parker tore a fire extinguisher off the wall and lifted it over her head, preparing to smash it down on Lennon. Before she could do it, Matthews caught her from behind.
Lennon looked frantically around the room for something to help them. She swatted the floating plants out of the way and her eyes settled on a red, square panel by the empty mount for the fire extinguisher.
The square panel covered a fuse box. While Parker and Matthews struggled, Lennon flung the panel door open and pulled a fuse out from inside. Immediately, red strobes began flashing and an alarm went off. Lennon turned back to Parker.
Parker had freed her right arm, and in that hand, she was holding the fire extinguisher by the hose. She swung the extinguisher around in a wide arc towards Matthews’ head. Lennon dove forward and hooked Parker’s elbow in her own, stopping the attack. The extinguisher, driven by inertia, continued its curving path. The hose wrapped around Parker’s arm, but the metal canister still reached far enough to glance off the side of Matthews’ head. Parker growled, and with one hand, flung Lennon upside down against the ‘floor’ of the Atrium. The impact forced the air to leave her lungs, and she gasped for breath.
Abrams stuck his head through the doorway. “Wha-?” was all he said before Dish pushed him out of the way, roughly, and caught Parker around the abdomen from behind, pinning her arms to the side in a bear hug. Abrams finally understood what was going on and he and Lennon clutched onto Parker’s legs to keep her from kicking.
Parker had unbelievable strength. “It was like holding down a rampaging elephant,” Abrams would later say. It took all four of them several minutes to get her to the point where Lennon could give her a shot of sedative. She stuck it in the back of Parker’s thigh, which made her irate, but the medicine quickly took effect.
While she was unconscious, they tied her arms and legs with extra shirts and then backed off, their hearts beating and their bodies glistening with moisture from exertion.
“What in the world was that?!” shouted Abrams, as he flipped a switch to reset the alarm. Matthews wiped his forehead and then shook his head. He had a large bruise on the right side of his forehead that was sticking out like a golf ball. Lennon touched his shoulder, and then gingerly touched his face. “Are you ok?” she asked.
“I should have protected you. I’m sorry,” he said. He looked at her with concern. “Did she hurt you?” He touched her hand, and Lennon suddenly felt overwhelmed, flustered, and blushing.
“I… ah, I’m fine,” she said, touching her nose. It was beginning to swell, but it did not seem to be broken.
“She's actin’ crazier than a sprayed roach,” Dish panted while he looked around the room. He gestured at Lennon’s face and noted, “You’re gonna get a black eye from that.” He grunted and then looked Parker over. “Hey, what’s that?”
Parker arched her head back and she moaned softly. Her body squirmed as if she were still in a fight, only in slow motion. Dish, however, was looking down at her feet. She was wearing white ankle socks. On the side of her left ankle, the sock stretched around a lumpy, egg-shaped bulge.
Matthews leaned over and pulled her sock out to reveal a plastic bag. He plucked the bag out and whistled. “What are these, Lennon?” He threw the bag to her.
She caught it and examined it. Inside were about a dozen pale blue pills. “I don’t know,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I’ll have to look it up.”
“Do that,” commanded Matthews. “I don’t want her untied until we determine the cause of her behavior and what those pills are. Dish, Abrams—let’s work out a schedule between the three of us to guard Parker while Lennon tries to figure out what’s going on.”
“Right, ok,” said Abrams, slipping into a British accent again. “I suppose I’ll start first.”
“I ain’t leavin’ either,” said Dish, “not for a while anyway. That was weird. She’s what, a hunnert’n five? And it took three men to hold her down ’till Lennon could jab ’er? Uh-uh. Not right.”
“I need to log this,” Matthews said. “Call me if anything happens.” He moved out of the room.
Abrams scanned the fuse box. “You removed the fuse to the O2 sensor. How did you know to do that? That’s probably the only fuse you could have pulled that would have caused us all to come over.”
“I don’t know,” Lennon said weakly. “In all honesty, everything was happening in slow motion. I might
have read every fuse in there and picked the right one, for all I know. On the other hand, I could have just guessed. It’s a blur right now.” She sighed, and using the key around her wrist, she opened up a metal cabinet opposite the viewing screen, above the rats. In it were several dozen plastic containers of various medications. “I need to find out what kind of pills these are.”
Parker moaned, her voice slurring. “Lennon,” she mumbled.
Lennon turned to her. Her eyes were dim, and her eyelids were heavy. “Lennon,” she said again, and then chuckled slowly. “Sum Pereginus, Lennon capsicum... Homo praesumitur bonus donec probetur malus.” Her eyes rolled back into her head, and then she seemed to gather a sudden moment of lucidity. She snapped her head forward and glared at Lennon with an angry snarl. “Mors ultima linea rerum est!” she screamed, and then fell into unconsciousness.
Lennon shivered.
Parker awoke and struggled briefly with her restraints. “Why am I tied up?” she asked accusingly, her eyes wide and scared.
Dish glared at her. “I’m tellin’ ya, she’s lyin’ like a no-legged dog!”
“I’m not talking to you,” Parker said to Dish, purposely looking at Lennon instead.
“You don’t ’member tryin’ to clock the Major with a fire extinguisher, darlin’?” Dish said, sneering.
“Easy, Dish, let me talk to her, alright?” Lennon interjected. He huffed and waved his hand.
“No, darling, I don’t,” replied Parker.
“Well, maybe you should,” yelled Dish, and moved towards her.
“Dish!” Lennon called. “Please, I need you to be responsible right now. If you can’t control yourself I will make you leave.”
“I’ll tell you right now, I better leave,” he said as he left the room. “I’m thinkin’ it’s ’bout time we should be seriously thinkin’ ’a floggin’,” he called back from the other room, referring to the prior discussion about corporal punishment by the crew.
“What are these?” Lennon asked, holding up the pills.
Parker’s face went pale, her mouth dropped open, and she stammered, “I… ”
“Parker, you need to be honest. The sooner you are honest with us, the sooner we can get back to normal routines.”
Parker lowered her head and began to cry. “They’re mine,” she sobbed. “I stole them. You leave the cabinet unlocked while you work in here, and sometimes you leave for a few minutes. I took them.”
“Why?” Lennon insisted.
Parker looked at Abrams suspiciously. “Does he have to be here?” she asked.
“Can you give us a minute?” Lennon asked Abrams.
“I’m not going far,” he said, with a long, somber look at Parker. He moved out of the Atrium.
Parker whispered, so that Lennon could barely hear her over the fans. “Do you remember what I told you about how lonely I have been?”
“Of course.”
“Well, it’s been getting worse. I’ve still been having those feelings. Not only that, but they are getting worse. I couldn’t function, Rebecca. I needed something. I took the first thing that I could see in the cabinet. I don’t even know what it was.”
“Parker, I could treat you! Why would you keep something like this a secret? Why would you need to steal medicine when I can prescribe it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and began crying again. Her shoulders moved up and down in great heaves. Unable to lift her arms because they were tied behind her, she wiped her nose on her shoulder. “I was just too ashamed.”
Lennon put her arm around Parker, and Parker fell into her embrace. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to give you a black eye.”
Great. So it had turned into a black eye. “I have one more question, Parker. Do you know Latin?”
Parker sniffed and wiped her nose. She gave Lennon a strange look. “I’m a geologist, Rebecca. Why would I learn Latin?”
“So you don’t know Latin?”
“No, of course not.”
“Do you know any languages?”
“Not really. I know some words in Tlingit, and some in Haida. Not enough for a conversation. Why?”
“You were speaking in a language that sounded like Latin.”
“Couldn’t be. I don’t speak a word. What did I say?”
“Um… capsicum, I think.”
“Oh, I know that one. That means ‘pepper’. It’s where ‘capsaicin’ comes from, which is the main ingredient in the pepper spray that I carry. Back on Earth I carried it, anyway.” She hesitated. “That doesn’t mean that I cut up those plants, Lennon. I don’t know why I would say that word. It was probably just the drugs.”
Lennon said nothing.
“You believe me, right? I didn’t do it.”
Lennon sighed. “I honestly don’t know, Parker. I don’t know why anyone would have done it. Yet someone did, and I can’t think of why.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” she insisted. “I would have remembered it.” Her voice became silent and sullen.
Lennon did a complete medical and psychological exam. She found nothing wrong with Parker, other than an elevated amount of the drug in her system, which was a drug that could have led to any sort of psychological side effects if taken improperly. And it had indeed been taken improperly.
TRANSMISSION: START
Mission Control Station
Incoming message from Seeker 3. Receipt time 1701z, 1301 mission time
Subject: Weekly physical and mental health report, week 12
From: Dr. Rebecca Lennon, physical and mental health officer, Seeker 3
----
Crew status: Healthy and functional
Individual status:
Lt. Colonel Nicholas Quesen—Deceased
Major Jonas Matthews— Within acceptable norms.
Captain Justin Petri—Within acceptable norms.
Dr. Maria Parker—Restricted from mission duties for three days. See notes.
Dr. Rebecca Lennon—Within acceptable norms.
Kyle Abrams—Within acceptable norms.
----
Crew observations:
Dr. Maria Parker has been suffering from feelings of depression and loneliness. Dr. Parker attempted to self-medicate and this led to a psychologically unstable state where she presumably blacked out. During this time, she attacked two crewmembers and had to be restrained.
----
Recommendations:
Dr. Parker has been removed from mission ready status and assigned to quarters for three days so the medication can clear her system. The first twenty-four hours will be under close surveillance. If her condition stabilizes after the three days is completed, she will be returned to mission ready status.
End of report from seeker 3.
TRANSMISSION: END
Day Ninety-One
The buzzing sound was enough to wake Lennon from her sleep. She cranked the small locking lever to the left and slid open the door to her sleeping area. Parker was climbing out directly across from her.
“What is that alert for?” Lennon asked. So many things could cause an alarm to sound that it was sometimes hard to tell why an alarm was sounding without investigating.
“I don’t know,” Parker answered groggily. They dressed and left the Women’s Quarters, Parker a little more timidly than Lennon, since her reinstatement to mission ready status was to take place on this morning, four days after the incident in the Atrium.
As she left the Women’s area, Lennon heard banging to the right. It was coming from the Men’s Quarters. She pulled herself down the small hallway and looked inside.
An amber strobe light was rotating above Abrams’s bunk and an alarm was buzzing incessantly. It was the CO2 sensor. Dish and Mathews were ineffectively hammering at the door to Abrams’ sleeping area with a can of peaches, which were a special treat that had taken some engineering to make edible in space without making a very large mess.
“He locked it,” shouted Dish, “
Help us find something to get it open with.”
“Hey, where’d you get the peaches?” asked Parker.
“Parker, if you don’t stop talkin’ right now…” Dish fussed. She pouted and turned away.
“Anyways, ain’t you s’posed to be locked up?” he asked.
“No,” Parker retorted, hands on her hips.
“Matthews,” Lennon shouted, “Come with me right now.”
“Take Parker,” he said, without looking up.
“Sir, I need you.”
He gave her a long look and then followed her. “Where are we going?”
“C2,” she panted, as she used the rungs to pull herself as fast as she could through the ship. “There are spare keys but it takes two of us to open the safe.”
“You and me are the two?”
“Yep.”
“Why me?”
“It’s the Health Officer and the Commander. When we formalized the change of command after Queasy died, you were automatically granted access.”
“How do I do it?” he asked as they entered C2.
She flipped down the foldaway keyboard and began typing furiously. “Type your access code,” she said, “The same one you use for the ship’s computer. I’ve already entered mine.”
He typed a series of keys and hit enter. The computer beeped and a panel popped open. Lennon snatched a key from inside and shut the panel. Together, they raced back to the Men’s Quarters.
“Move over,” Matthews ordered Dish, who was kicking the door, which did nothing more than repeatedly propel him into the opposite wall. He moved out of the way so that Lennon could get through with the key.
“You got a key?” Dish asked. “Oh, that’s great. Wonderful. Why do I bother lockin’ anything up?”
“Nobody locks anything anyway, Dish,” Matthews contended. “I don’t know what Abrams was thinking, locking his door like that.”
“That’s not the point,” Dish sulked.
Lennon was having difficulty getting the key to go in. She wiggled it around, but it would not enter into the lock at all. “I don’t understand,” she whispered to herself.
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