[2381] Operation: Firewall

November 07, 2024, 06:09:55 PM

Stardate 57680.35
April 28, 2381
2000HRS

[Ensign Jaya Thorne | Holodeck 01| Deck 8 | Vector 02 | USS Theurgy]

Ensign Jaya Thorne woke up to a sharp ringing sound in her ears. The sound perfectly synchronized with the painful, throbbing pressure which seemed to originate from her temples and somehow spread throughout her entire forehead to link up with increased intensity just behind her amber eyes. When the brunette Denevan tried to open her eyes, her already bad case of tension headache only got worse; for a brief moment, it felt like her eyes tried to burst out of her skull through her barely opened eyelids. It drew a painful gasp from the Assistant Chief CONN Officer’s chapped lips and she immediately squeezed her eyelids shut once more before bringing her right hand up to shield her eyes from the light.

Or rather, she would have if her wrists hadn’t been bound to the bench she was sitting on. Surprised to find that her wrists were bound this time, Jaya briefly struggled against her binds in an attempt to slip out of them, but she couldn’t muster the strength to even properly raise her sore arms and the chafing of the metal handcuffs against her already painful wrists caused her to give up relatively quick. Instead, the Ensign let out a deep sigh and, ignoring the painful protests of the sore muscles in her neck, slowly tilted her head backwards in an attempt to alleviate some pressure from her forehead.

It were the kind of movements which drew attention onto her though because, mere moments after her feeble attempts at slipping out of her binds, Jaya could hear a voice coming from directly in front of her. ”Hey, you. Ensign.” While she attempted to regulate her heavy breathing, the brunette Ensign slowly opened her eyes as far as the pain allowed her to. The searing pain immediately flared back up but Jaya managed to fight through it and, through her eyelashes, could see a young, blonde-haired man staring back at her. He was wearing a red Starfleet uniform and his hands were similarly bound. Out of habit, Jaya quickly looked at his collar to see what she was dealing with and saw the two gold pips of a Lieutenant attached to the right side of the man’s collar. ”You’re finally awake.” While he spoke, the Lieutenant’s voice was friendly enough and Jaya just barely managed to present the man with something that somewhat resembled her signature smirk. Everything was sore, painful and hurting; even something as routine as smirking was painful at that moment.

For a brief moment, Jaya closed her eyes once more to ease the pain. Even though she was just barely gazing through her eyelids, the light almost felt like it was burning through her eyes and into her skull. It didn’t seem to bother the Lieutenant in front of her though, as he paused just briefly before continuing, but now on a somewhat more remorseful tone. ”You were trying to cross the border, right?” Taking a deep breath to prepare herself for the pain to come, Jaya slightly opened her eyes once more to look at the Lieutenant. Contrary to before, his face now held a more serious expression which matched the tone of his voice. ”Walked right into that Cardassian ambush, same as us…” The Lieutenant tilted his head to the left and Jaya could hear the distasteful undertone in his voice. ”…and that thief over there.”

Jaya slowly followed the Lieutenant’s tilt and, fighting against the sore muscles in her neck, turned her head to the right just far enough to see a dishevelled man wearing dirty civilian clothes. Just like her wrists and those of the Lieutenant, the wrists of the thief were bound to the bench in front of him. The haggard expression on the man’s battered face betrayed that he’d been through a lot even before the obvious beating he’d clearly received quite recently. In response to the Lieutenant’s voice, the man spit onto the floor of the transport before mumbling something that Jaya could barely interpret as ”Damn you, Starfleet.” As he spoke, the thief turned his attention towards her and the sheer hatred on the man’s bruised face was enough to make the hairs on the back of Jaya’s neck stand up straight; there was no doubt about it that this was a dangerous man and a part of Jaya actually felt relieved that he was restrained. ”The Stormlands were fine until you came along, the Cardassians and their Vex cronies were nice and lazy.”

While she was listening to the thief, the transport they were in was suddenly rocked to the left. Almost out of instinct, Jaya held her breath and tried to remember what would happen next. This was the second time she’d played through the opening sequence of Operation: Firewall after all. The first time she had been so preoccupied with her own physical condition that she failed to pay close attention to her surroundings, and that had cost her dearly. Game over. It was the beauty of this program and the reason why it had become so popular amongst the enlisted since someone found it in the library; the higher science behind it was lost on Jaya, but the program somehow tricked the mind to make a player believe that they were truly injured and, as such, forced anyone who played this program to fight both a physical and mental battle.

As Jaya was holding her breath, she heard how the thief continued talking as if nothing was going on. ”If they hadn’t been looking for you lot, I would’ve been halfway to Andor by now.” The thief spit on the floor once more, adorning the already dirty floor of the transport with a combination of phlegm, blood and what looked like one of his molars. In response to the thief, the Lieutenant spoke up once more but on a somewhat more solemn tone; almost as if he had accepted his fate. ”We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief.” Jaya remembered those words from her first playthrough and, suddenly remembering what was about to happen, felt how the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up straight. Ignoring the painful protests of her bruised body, she began to brace herself like she’d learned during flight training. She pulled against her binds to tighten them as much as possible and leaned forwards as if bracing for a crash landing. It caused both the Lieutenant and the thief to fall silent and look at her in surprise but, as if on cue, she could hear a loud banging against the transport’s interior wall followed by a cold and disdainful voice. ”Hey, shut up back there!”

Twenty-one…

Twenty-two…

Twenty three…

And then it happened. A loud explosion ripped through the transport and threw the heavy vehicle onto its side. Jaya, who had been bracing herself for this particular event, felt how she was suddenly thrown backwards against the wall behind her. This time however, unlike the previous playthrough where the simulation had abruptly ended (most likely because the sheer impact with the wall had broken her neck), Jaya managed to survive. Regardless, the Assistant Chief CONN Officer felt how the air was painfully forced from her lungs and her legs immediately went numb as a burning feeling, emanating from her tailbone, raced up her already sore spine.

Given how the simulation had ended right there the previous time, there was nothing that could have prepared Jaya for what happened mere moments later, when the transport rolled onto its roof before flipping over once more and coming to rest onto its other side. At some point, while she was thrown around, the restraints that bound her wrists to her chair snapped free; sending her rag dolling through the back of the transport before coming to rest with her legs across the thief and her head resting onto the chest of the Starfleet Lieutenant. While she painfully groaned in response to her painful… well, everything, she could feel the Lieutenant’s laboured breathing before he began to cough directly into her brown hair. Behind her, somewhere where her feet were at that moment, Jaya could hear how the thief also grunted before summarizing their predicament in the only way it could be summarized.

”Fucking hell…”