Proving Me Right
Posted on Thu Apr 30th, 2026 @ 11:53am by Maren Malbrooke
Edited on on Thu Apr 30th, 2026 @ 12:13pm
3,824 words; about a 19 minute read
Mission:
The Mysteries of Maren
Location: VIP Quarters, Deck 2, USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD003 - 1436 hours
Maren had been staring at the same line of text for nearly five minutes before she realised she had read it six times.
That annoyed her more than it probably should have.
The terminal was still open in front of her, layered with public records, historical summaries, partial archive paths, and the little fragments she had managed to pry loose from places the computer clearly thought she had no business looking. The PADD rested beside her hand, dimmed but not locked, still holding the copied case markers she had stolen from the ship’s restricted temporal files.
She should have felt pleased about that.
She had earlier.
Now the words on the screen kept sliding out of reach before they turned into anything useful.
Maren blinked hard and leaned back in the chair, pressing the heel of one hand against her eye as if she could force her thoughts back into order. Her head felt thick, not quite a headache but near enough to be irritating, with a strange pressure blooming behind her eyes and spreading toward her temples. The room felt too quiet and too loud at the same time. Even the soft hum of the environmental systems had started separating into layers, each one distinct enough to scrape at her nerves.
“Great,” she muttered. “Apparently reading’s too hard now.”
She dropped her hand and tried to focus again.
The text on the display sharpened, then blurred.
For a second, the terminal was not a terminal.
It was the shuttle console, cracked down one side, warning lights pulsing in ugly red flashes. Smoke curled through the cockpit. Somewhere behind her, her father’s voice cut through static, clipped and calm and much too far away.
Hold the vector, Maren.
She jerked upright so fast the chair shifted beneath her.
The quarters snapped back into place.
No alarms. No smoke. No Dominion pursuit. Just the terminal, the PADD, the quiet room, and her own breathing suddenly too fast.
Maren stared at the screen, heart hammering against her ribs.
“Okay,” she whispered, the sarcasm gone. “That’s new.”
Maren sat there for a few seconds longer, listening to her own breathing and feeling ridiculous about it.
It had been nothing. Stress. Lack of sleep. Too much information and not enough time to sort it into anything useful. She had crossed into another universe, broken into the ship’s computer, cried herself half to death over a woman who both was and was not her mother, and then somehow managed to spray water over a three-hundred-year-old walking bulkhead at breakfast. If her brain wanted to throw one weird little moment at her, fine. It could get in line with the rest of the day.
She drew in a slow breath and turned back to the terminal.
The text waited for her, normal and harmless.
For about four seconds.
Then the words seemed to slip sideways.
Not blur, exactly. Not enough to be a vision problem. More like the sentence had stopped agreeing with the moment it belonged to. A timestamp in the corner of the display flickered from 1437 to 1436, then back again so quickly she almost convinced herself she had imagined it.
Maren went still.
“Computer,” she said carefully, “current time.”
“Current time: 1437 hours.”
She stared at the display.
The timestamp flickered again.
1436.
1437.
1438.
A cold, uneasy feeling spread through her stomach. She knew computers. She knew systems. A Starfleet terminal could fail, obviously, but it did not usually fail like it was having second thoughts about linear time.
She pushed back from the desk and stood, maybe too quickly. The floor did not move, but for half a second she felt as though it had, as if the room had lagged behind her body and then caught up. Somewhere beyond the door, the emotional texture of the corridor brushed at her senses, but it came wrong too — a flicker of boredom from one guard, then surprise that had not happened yet, then boredom again.
Her throat tightened.
“Nope,” she muttered, rubbing both hands over her face. “Absolutely not doing this.”
Maren stood there for a moment longer, palms pressed hard against her face as if she could physically hold her thoughts in place.
It didn’t work.
The room felt wrong now. Not visibly, not enough that someone else would have noticed if they walked in, but wrong in the way her own senses reported it back to her. The quiet wasn’t quiet anymore. It had layers. Footsteps in the corridor that may or may not have happened yet. A distant voice through the bulkhead that sounded too much like a Dominion officer issuing movement orders. The environmental hum stretched thin, then deepened, then seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat.
She dropped her hands slowly.
The terminal display flickered again.
For half a second, the Starfleet interface became the shuttle console. Red light. Smoke. Damage warnings. Her father’s hand moved over the controls ahead of her, steady even as everything else fell apart. She could see the line of his shoulder, the angle of his head, the way he always looked calmer when things were going completely to hell.
Then it was gone.
Maren swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry.
“No,” she said under her breath. “No, stop it.”
A murmur brushed the edge of her hearing.
Not from the room.
Not exactly.
Compliance transfer authorised.
Her head snapped toward the door.
Nothing.
Just the closed panel. Smooth. Clean. Starfleet grey.
Then another voice, low and distorted by memory or distance or whatever her brain was doing to her.
Telepathic assets are to be secured intact.
The blood drained from her face.
For a second she was not in the guest quarters anymore. She was fourteen again, wrist burning under a restraint field while someone with a calm voice called her emotional instability a risk factor. She was fifteen, listening to her father argue in a voice so controlled it terrified her more than shouting would have. She was sixteen, standing in a corridor too narrow to run through, knowing that if they got their hands on her properly she would become another file, another regulated thing, another person taken apart because of what she could feel.
Like her mother.
The thought hit harder than the voices.
Maren’s breath hitched.
Not Tarelle of this universe, not the woman in the logs with her soft voice and terrible goodbye. Her mother. Her real mother. The one who had been taken when Maren was too young to understand that gone could become a whole life. The one her father had promised was still out there because the alternative had been too cruel to give a child.
Her chest tightened until breathing hurt.
“No,” she said again, louder this time, but it wasn’t clear who she was talking to anymore.
The door chime did not sound.
No one was coming in.
But she felt them anyway.
Not the guards outside as they were now, bored and alert and probably wishing she would stop causing trouble. Something else layered over them. Jem’Hadar discipline. Cardassian satisfaction. The cold, clipped certainty of people coming to take her somewhere she would not leave as herself.
Maren backed away from the terminal, her shoulder brushing the wall.
Her hand flew to the door controls.
She locked them.
Then locked them again, overriding the standard privacy seal with every guest-level security option the room would allow. It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough against Starfleet or Dominion or anyone who really wanted in, but the act of doing it gave her something to focus on.
A system.
A task.
Something that didn’t ask her to feel anything.
Her fingers moved quickly, too quickly, pulling up the manual panel beside the door and forcing an additional internal latch into place. It was not designed as a barricade. Barely worth the name. Still, it clicked, and the sound hit something desperate inside her.
The room shifted.
For one breath, the quarters were gone and she was in a holding alcove with white light above her and restraint fields cutting into her wrists. Someone was speaking on the other side of a screen. Someone was saying her father’s name like leverage.
Tyler Malbrooke remains at large.
Her stomach dropped.
Cooperation will improve his outcome.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word breaking before she could sharpen it. “Don’t talk about him.”
Then she blinked and she was back, standing by the door with her hands shaking.
This was not the computer.
This was not the room.
This was her.
That thought should have helped. It didn’t. It only made the panic sharper, because if the thing betraying her was inside her own head, there was nowhere to run from it.
Maren pressed her back against the door and slid one hand down along the seam as if she could keep it shut through will alone. The emotional noise beyond the bulkhead surged again, too many minds, too much proximity, each one dragging echoes behind it until the present frayed at the edges. The guards outside were confused now. She could feel that clearly. One of them had noticed the lock change. The concern came a heartbeat before the movement did.
Then came the knock.
Exactly when she already knew it would.
Maren flinched hard.
Her pulse hammered in her throat. The room was too bright, then too dim, then wrong again. Somewhere in the mess of it all, her father’s voice cut through, calm and urgent and impossible.
Maren, listen to me. Lock it down. Don’t let them take you.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Dad?” The word slipped out before she could stop it, small and frightened in a way she would have hated if anyone heard.
For a moment, the silence after it was worse than the voices.
Because he didn’t answer.
Not really.
There was no hand on her shoulder. No steady presence at her back. No clipped instruction from the cockpit, no familiar shape standing between her and whatever came next. Just a ghost of his voice made out of fear and memory, and the awful, bottomless realisation that she did not know whether he was alive, dead, captured, or still looking for her in a universe she might never see again.
Her eyes burned, but she swallowed it down so hard it hurt.
The knock came again.
Not Dominion. Not a breach team. Just the guard outside her door, probably asking if she was all right.
But Maren couldn’t hold the difference steady anymore.
She pushed away from the door and stumbled back into the room, eyes darting toward the terminal, the viewport, the shadows under the desk. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, not because she had a plan, but because her body remembered fighting better than it remembered being afraid.
“No,” she whispered, trying to breathe through the rising pressure behind her eyes. “You don’t get me.”
Her voice cracked on the next part, smaller and more honest than she meant it to be.
“You don’t get him too.”
The knock came again.
Maren stared at the door like it had become something alive.
The guards were still outside. She could feel them through the bulkhead, but not cleanly anymore. Their concern came through bent and distorted, dragging other things with it until she couldn’t tell what belonged to them and what belonged to memory. Jem’Hadar discipline. Cardassian satisfaction. The cold, patient certainty of Dominion officials who never shouted because they never had to.
Her breathing came too fast.
“No,” she whispered. “No, you’re not doing this.”
The terminal flickered behind her, still open to the files she wasn’t supposed to have found. Case numbers. Archive paths. Proof that this ship knew more than it had told her. For one second the screen was Starfleet blue and silver. The next it was Dominion grey, clinical and flat, with her name filed beneath telepathic regulation status.
Her stomach turned.
A voice brushed the edge of her hearing.
Subject Malbrooke remains non-compliant.
Maren spun toward the sound, but the room was empty.
The door chimed again, and this time the voice from outside came through muffled but real. One of the guards. Asking if she was all right.
Her mind translated it anyway.
Open the door. Compliance will improve outcome.
“Shut up,” she snapped, though she didn’t know if she meant the guard, the voice, or her own head.
She moved because standing still felt like surrender. Her hands went to the terminal, pulling up the local grid with quick, shaking precision. The guest access was shallow, but the room systems were still systems: lighting, privacy lock, environmental cycling, terminal power. She didn’t need control of the ship. She only needed noise. Sparks. Confusion. A few seconds where they weren’t the ones deciding what happened next.
The computer chirped softly.
“Warning. Local power routing exceeds recommended safety threshold.”
“Good,” she muttered. “Recommend harder.”
The lights pulsed once, then again, too bright and too dim in ugly succession. She grabbed the terminal casing with both hands and wrenched hard. It didn’t give the first time. The second time, plastic-composite cracked. The third came with a sharp snap that sliced across her palm as a jagged strip tore free.
Pain flashed hot through her hand.
Blood welled immediately, dark against her skin, running into the crease of her thumb. She barely noticed except to tighten her grip until the shard bit deeper.
The lock panel by the door flashed amber.
The guards had started an override.
Maren backed away, holding the broken casing low at her side. Her eyes were fixed on the door, but she wasn’t seeing Starfleet grey anymore. She was seeing a detention threshold. White lights. Security fields. A corridor where people with calm voices said her mother’s name like a warning and her father’s name like bait.
“Don’t come in,” she said, voice shaking harder now. “I mean it. Don’t fucking come in.”
The door opened.
Maren struck before either officer crossed fully into the room.
The first hit wasn’t physical. It came out of her like a pressure wave, a violent burst of fear and rage and memory that slammed into both guards at once. The nearest officer staggered into the doorframe, his eyes losing focus as her panic dragged through him: burning wrists, Dominion cuffs, Tarelle being taken, Tyler shouting her name through smoke. The second officer cursed and dropped to one knee, one hand clamped to the side of his head as if he could hold his own thoughts in place.
For a heartbeat, she had the opening.
She bolted.
The shard flashed as she went through the gap, fast and low. The first officer recovered just enough to grab for her wrist. She twisted away and cut him across the forearm, not deep enough to maim, but enough to open fabric and skin. Blood spotted the sleeve of his uniform.
He swore and fell back.
The second officer lunged from the side and caught her shoulder, but his grip was bad, thrown off by the psychic shock still buzzing through him. Maren drove her elbow back into his ribs and shoved another empathic surge into him at the same time, crude and uncontrolled, all panic and desperate refusal.
His emotions spiked in response. Not fear this time. Anger.
Hot. Sudden. Not entirely his.
Maren felt it bloom before he moved.
She jerked away from him, but not quickly enough. His hand caught her by the front of the jacket for half a second, then slipped as she twisted. He lost the hold, stumbled with her momentum, and in that split second of confusion and amplified rage, his arm came around hard.
The back of his hand caught her across the jaw.
The blow snapped her head sideways and sent her stumbling into the wall.
For a second the room went white around the edges.
Blood filled her mouth where her teeth cut the inside of her cheek. She hit the bulkhead with her shoulder and slid half a step, breath punching out of her in a strangled sound. The guard froze almost instantly, horror cutting through the anger as if he had woken from it.
Maren didn’t see apology.
She saw confirmation.
They had touched her. Hit her. Hurt her.
They were taking her.
Her face crumpled for one terrible second before rage covered it again.
“See?” she shouted, voice raw and wet with blood. “See, this is what you do. You say help and then you grab and you hit and you drag people away!”
The first officer slapped his combadge, still clutching his bleeding arm. “Security team to guest quarters, emergency assistance required. Suspected telepathic assault. Subject armed and resisting.”
Subject.
The word went through Maren like a blade.
“No,” she said, and the sound was smaller than the fight in her body. Then louder, breaking open. “No, I’m not a subject. I’m not one of their files.”
The lights flickered violently as her field surged again. A glass on the small table cracked straight down the side. The terminal spat sparks from its exposed casing, filling the room with the smell of hot metal and burnt insulation. The empathic pressure rolled outward in jagged pulses, not enough to truly incapacitate but enough to make every thought in the room feel crowded with hers. Fear. Fury. The sick certainty of restraint fields closing.
The guards tried to hold position and wait for backup.
Maren didn’t let them.
She lunged again, not toward the door this time but toward the gap between them, trying to get past, trying to run, trying to find any corridor that did not end with a facility and a locked room. The first officer blocked her with his shoulder. She slashed wildly and caught the side of his hand. The shard snapped on impact, leaving only a shorter jagged piece in her blood-slick grip.
The second officer came in low, trying to avoid her arms, and she kicked him hard in the knee. He buckled but didn’t fall. She shoved with her mind again, instinct more than technique, and his face twisted as some echo of her terror hit him full force.
Then backup arrived.
Three more security officers came through the door with wider spacing and stun settings visible. They did not rush blindly. One covered the angle from the doorway. One moved left. One moved right. Trained. Careful. Not Dominion.
Maren couldn’t keep that distinction in place.
“There are too many,” she breathed, and for the first time the panic sounded younger than seventeen. “Dad, there are too many.”
The nearest officer called her name. Maybe gently. Maybe firmly. It didn’t matter. His voice became someone else’s.
Asset is unstable. Secure intact.
Maren screamed and threw everything she had left at them.
The psychic blast struck the room in a jagged wave. One of the backup officers staggered. Another blinked hard, phaser dipping for a fraction of a second as his own fear spiked out of nowhere. The first two guards were already pale and shaken, one bleeding, one with anger still souring the edge of his field. That was the reason they needed backup. Not because she was big. Not because she could overpower them cleanly. Because every time they got close, the room filled with terror that wasn’t theirs and memory that had teeth.
A stun beam finally clipped her shoulder.
Not a full hit. Enough.
Her arm went numb and the broken shard dropped from her hand, clattering across the floor. She tried to bend for it and another officer caught her from behind, locking one arm across her upper chest while avoiding her throat. She bucked hard, heel slamming into his shin. Another grabbed her wrist. She twisted, slipped halfway free, and left blood smeared across both their hands.
“Let go!” she screamed. “Get off me!”
A restraint snapped around one wrist.
The sensation broke something loose in her.
Old burn scar. New pressure. The hum of a field too close to her skin.
The quarters vanished.
For half a second she was back in Dominion custody, younger, smaller, wrist trapped in light, her father somewhere beyond a sealed door and her mother already gone.
“No, no, no—”
The second restraint closed.
Maren’s fight turned frantic.
She thrashed so violently they had to take her down to the floor to keep from hurting her worse. One officer caught her legs. Another secured her shoulders. She slammed her head back once and caught someone’s cheekbone, drawing a sharp curse. Blood from her split lip marked the deck beneath her. Her cut hand left red streaks across the floor as she clawed for purchase.
“Dad!” she cried, and the word tore out of her before pride could stop it. “Dad, don’t let them take me!”
For a moment, even through the struggle, the room seemed to flinch around that.
But they kept working. They had to.
Someone called for medical transport and warned Sickbay that the patient was conscious, combative, and experiencing severe temporal-psychic distress. Maren heard none of that clearly. She heard only Dominion voices filling the gaps between real words.
Prepare for regulation.
Telepathic assets are to be preserved.
Cooperation will improve paternal outcome.
“You don’t get him too,” she gasped, sobbing and furious and still trying to bite down on the fear. “You don’t get him too.”
They lifted her as a team, restrained but still conscious, still twisting whenever she found enough leverage. Her hair hung wild around her face. Blood streaked her mouth, her jaw swelling where she had been struck. One hand was wrapped in a field restraint, palm cut and slick red. The broken terminal sparked behind her in the ruined quarters, lights flickering over overturned furniture and the scattered evidence of a girl who had tried to turn a borrowed room into a last stand.
As they carried her into the corridor, she fought one more time, not with strength now but with sheer refusal, body jerking against the holds while tears and rage blurred together in her eyes.
“You’re proving me right,” she spat, voice cracked and shaking. “You hear me? You’re proving me right!”
The door to the quarters slid shut behind them on smoke, blood, and broken light, and Maren was carried toward Sickbay still conscious, still afraid, still listening for a father who did not answer.
A Post By:
Maren Malbrooke
Civilian, USS Pioneer
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