Possession - J.M. Dillard [74]
“Really?” He shrugged. “I can’t feel anything.”
“No, you might not,” she said solicitously, lifting the scanner toward his face. “Let me just make sure it’s nothing more serious. It’ll only take a minute to fix. Good thing the captain’s late.”
As Riker held still, permitting Crusher to steady his face with a skilled, delicate hand, he noticed an odd sight in his peripheral vision: La Forge, grinning with delight.
What’s so funny about a broken blood vessel? Riker wondered, but put the distraction aside as Crusher ordered, “Now look straight into my eyes, Will.”
He complied, but as his eyes met her soft brown ones, he found himself staring into them hypnotically, pulled in by her gaze. Her pupils expanded, glowing, swirling with shimmering colors—colors so beautiful, so mesmerizing, he wanted never to look away. He frowned, staring harder, just as her fingertips grazed his cheek, and a sudden sharp shock raced through his system.
When Picard finally entered the conference room, he did so just as Commander Data, Lieutenant Worf, and Counselor Troi were taking their seats. After a nodded acknowledgment to the crew, he moved to the head of the table. To his right, Will Riker sat, blinking and touching the corner of his eye; the commander seemed rather pale.
“Everything all right, Number One?”
Riker nodded and gave a rueful smile. “Broken blood vessel. Dr. Crusher just gave me a little medical aid. My vision’s a little blurry, that’s all.”
“It’ll pass in a moment,” Crusher assured the captain.
Picard nodded. “Fine, then let’s get down to the business at hand, shall we? And I’m sorry to say a bad business it is. I’d planned on briefing you with the autopsy results Dr. Crusher obtained and the information we might have received from trace evidence in Ten Forward. However, the reports contained little information to help us understand this perplexing tragedy.” He turned to Crusher. “I assume you have nothing new to add?”
“No, sir. Not at this time.”
“Well,” Picard continued, “we may already have the critical information we need to get to the bottom of this dilemma. And that information has come from Starfleet.”
“Then you have finally received the communiqué about the Vulcan epidemic?” Data asked.
“Correct,” Picard told him. “You should know that the communiqué actually arrived yesterday, but was somehow rerouted and archived before I could see it.” Intercepting Data before he could painstakingly explain why this was impossible, the captain held up a hand and continued. “As I suspected, the Federation was not nearly as circumspect as the Vulcan authorities, and there was a great deal more pertinent information about the epidemic in Starfleet’s communiqué.”
Picard glanced around the table, weighing what he was about to say to his staff. “Based on this information, combined with the data already provided by the Vulcans, I have reason to believe that the violence aboard the Enterprise marks the beginning stage of the same epidemic that so profoundly affected both a starship crew and the planet Vulcan eight decades earlier.”
Crusher leaned forward on the table, her expression one of confusion. “May I ask how you came to that conclusion, Captain?”
“From your autopsy report, Doctor,” Picard explained, as he turned and brought up a display on the nearby terminal screen. “Eighty years ago the medical staff aboard the affected starship documented this very peculiar pattern of brain damage from both living and dead victims of the madness.” He pointed to the multicolored image of a human brain. “You see there how the blue color resonates through the frontal lobes into the amygdala? Almost in a starburst pattern? Very unusual. In fact, the computer could not match this pattern with any other known malady involving the brain. It indicates a very specific progression of memory loss. Typically, victims of the disease, once cured, have no memory of the period during which they were infected.”
Picard touched a control on the table that caused the screen to split and show another brain scan. “And here, from your autopsy information,