Things that make you go....hmmm

Posted on Mon Sep 26th, 2016 @ 6:32am by Commander Bertrand Cuprum

Mission: Do Not Follow
Location: Security Quarters

Bertrand was exhausted. He had been working almost non-stop since the first encounter in the Golum expanse. He couldn't afford to allow himself time to think, at least not till they had everyone back in Federation space.

He fumbled at the door pad to his room and all but fell inside. His room was the usual chaos. Clothes thrown on the back of chairs, plates left on bench spaces when he hadn't been bothered to even walk them back to the... thing... that gave food and took rubbish. His hazy brain search for the word replicator as he fumbled with his clothes.

He made it to the bed, dumping his filthy yellow uniform on the ground. He was asleep before he hit the pillow.

He felt like he had woken up only a second later, though the clock told him it had been over seven hours. He groaned and reached for his pants.

They weren't there.

He opened his eyes and saw the pants were just a bit further away than he expected. He had rolled over every morning for weeks and found his clothes by feel. This morning, it just required a little more effort. He picked them up, sniffed them and dumped them in the waste recycler. According to the captain he was supposed to be wearing "command red" as Acting XO anyway. He hated the colour.

He decided to have a shower first. He stepped into the shower cubicle and stopped. Something didn't feel right. He looked around but couldn't quite work out what it was.

he shook his head. Paranoia wasn't something that sat well with an investigating officer.

The sonic shower woke him up and he felt much more refreshed. He glanced in the mirror and gave a start. The image was him alright but it looked.

His eye engaged. It was not obvious to most, but the arm was not the only thing he had lost to the Borg and the replacement implant had a number of specialized functions. It didn't take long to find the hairline gap in between the mirror surface and reflective backing. There was nothing slotted into the gap now, but something had been. A very fine tool had been used to probe the mirror looking for... what? Cracks? Secret stashes?

He stepped out into his bedroom again and began to run the investigator's eye over the scene. They were there; tiny clues that someone had searched the place. Piles of clothes had been moved and returned to almost the same shape. Items had been lifted and returned to the same positions but if you knew what to look for you could see they had moved. Cupboards that he never used had been opened recently.

Someone had been going through his room, and very recently, possibly while he had been sleeping.

But why?

He dressed quickly making a mental note to get security to run a check on the sensor logs of the last 12 hours in his room and the surrounding deck. He, unfortunately, would have other work to do.