In the Running: Resignation

Posted on 10 May 2022 @ 7:58am by Yuliette Marayan

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: OC, Security, Brig
508 words - 1 OF Standard Post Measure

Like the small surgery in her old clinic, the brig cell she was escorted into was dominated by cold metallic surfaces and vacant enough to evoke sterility, although much more dimly lit than the operating room. Yuliette didn’t turn around to watch the security officer engage the force field, although she heard the buzz of it snap on and caught the faint note of ozone in the initial power up. It must have been quite some time since someone had switched on that containment field.

She lay back on the cot in the manner of a patient who resigned to the hands of the surgeon on the operating table. Tangentially she knew the experience from her many times in view above the patient, attempting to smile with her eyes in comfort as the rest of her face was obscured by the surgical mask.

“It will be over soon, and you won’t feel a thing,” she tried out the words to herself, but found they made little difference.

The brig was cold. To be fair, it was as cold as most other places were, being adjusted for the temperate preferences of most natives of the Sol system. But between her mother’s tropical Risan blood, her Father’s Cardassian physiology, and her own upbringing in the Rho Saran desert climate, Yuliette outright disliked the cold. Wracked by shivers as she laid herself down flat, she greedily pulled the thin thermal blanket provided on the cot around her, swaddling herself tightly and fighting to keep all her body heat, while also hoping the compression of the blanket might calm her raw, long exposed nerves.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when she sensed the anesthetizing weight of sleep falling, she welcomed it. If she were asleep, she reasoned, she at least wasn’t suffering in the anticipation of her future execution on her homeworld and tormenting herself by wondering if she’d die by disruptor as the others had, or if the rebels turned statesmen might have time now for lethal toxins, electrocutions, or gas chambers. Or worse. Might they design a death for her in the fashion of the ones they rumored her father to have designed for the dissident miners organizing against the former state? While her stomach turned at the idea, she was stirred by disgust into empathy for those said to have suffered so, and didn’t wonder at such desire for revenge. Pain sought out pain as a salve for itself, even if it was no more justified than pouring acid on your own wound.

Each rise and fall of Yuliette’s chest inside the blanket warmed it, until she relaxed enough to fall asleep, resigned to her fate as a patient in the ethers was resigned to the knife. For years she had lived in luxury and ignorance while people had suffered under the very man who had doted over her. She thought, perhaps, she deserved whatever was meted out against her.

Let the Surgeon of Justice cut true.