[Habitat Ring]
Adeyemi was quite shamed to find himself being lulled to sleep. It was unusual, and he attributed it to his sickness. He was a solid eight hours a day man,never napped, and had once fallen asleep at a rendezvous point after an observation mission on Ios VII. He had always been able to sleep wherever, whenever, for the duration.
[Service Lift]
The old man had been stunned a handful of times, but sickness or doggedness had forced them into the kill shot. Or they had been ordered to kill and were fudging their orders on purpose. Either way, the man had taken a blast to the chest that reduced it to a cratered, smoking ruin. The admiral was glad Lyric could not smell and that his own nose was stuffed up. The scent must have been unimaginable.
"Neural Core," He said weakly, only to his companion, but the malfunctioning computer parroted a weak chirp in reply, and off they went.
"This isn't...proper, Mc...Lyric." He told her. "I stand on my own two feet, by the grace and power of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me be..."
His words were brave, and he made a feeble struggle in her strong grip. It did nothing. Sweat was pouring down his face at an alarming rate. He coughed and made a weak attempt to unbutton his uniform collar, as weakly as a kitten.
[Neural Core]
Analyn was napping.
In her dreams, something formless and colorless but for the faintest wisp of an angry red had crept into her quarters, the one she had used to share with Adeyemi. Under the sealed door, somehow, like a silent and deadly gas attack. It flowed closer and closer to her. Looking down, she saw she was wearing a pair of miniature Starfleet boots. The red mist curled around them at a deceptive speed. She lifted her foot; the mist followed. Up her leg with the black leggings, the pink skirt, the little jacket, into her mouth. She opened her mouth to scream--
She awoke suddenly, feeling the weight of her sickness drag at her body. Analyn did not understand why she could not respond as quickly as she usually did. Tears spilled down the tiny cheeks as, turtle like, she found her way off of her back onto a seated position.
The door to the service lift opened, and she cried louder, expecting the red mist that had choked her in her dreams. But it wasn't, it was two figured stepping out, one of whom she did not recognize, but the other...
"Mack 'Em?!" She piped out in a sickly voice. "What's wrong? Why is he...are you sick?"
The little girl stood with great effort, and sneezing and coughing and sweating, hazel eyes bright with her own illness, dragged herself over to the man and the woman emerging.
"...daddy? Daddy, wake up." Analyn said to him softly, hopefully, tears in her eyes.
[Neural Core]
Lyric made her way inside and carefully deposited Adeyemi's unconscious body on the floor next to ANaLYN. She wasn't sure if he had fallen asleep or passed out, and maybe that was a mercy. With a delicate motion, she loosened his collar so he could breathe a little easier.
"Just... let him rest, little one. He needs his strength." With a light pat to the hologram's head, she looked around the room. Monitors and computer equipment filled most of the room.
"I guess all of this is you, isn't it?" Lyric waved a hand around, but ANaLYN didn't answer. She had knelt down next to Adeyemi and laid her head on his chest sniffling.
"Computers don't get sick... They do get viruses though." The engineer talked to herself as she walked over to the main console and started to look through the files for something that could help. There were the typical systems scans and reports that showed much of 'her' operating systems were infected beyond the point where anti-virus software could clear them. She almost despaired, out of options when something in a report from 3 months back caught her attention. ANaLYN had a regularly scheduled total operating systems backup file saved. If she could restore the AI to a previous uninfected save state, 'her' antivirus protocols could be adjusted to flush the 'illness' from the rest of the station's systems.
With a renewed optimism, she attempted to open the neural bypass conduit access to swap in the backup file. However, due to increased security measures, someone had determined access to ANaLYN's brain required the security clearance of a captain or higher, and being a lowly crewman, she did not make that cut. Without verifying identity through a retinal scan and thumb print, the access panel would not unlock. For a changeling, this was only a moral deterrent though. With a quick apology to Adeyemi's prone form, she shifted to an exact replica of the Admiral.
Lyric put her... his hand on the screen and leaned forward for the bright flash of the scan, unblinking. The access panel released with an audible click and slid open. With a sigh, she shifted back to her normal form quickly. She hated to take another person's face, it felt dishonest, but it was necessary this time. She tapped her commbadge, balancing the backup file data stick on the palm of her other hand.
"McDaniels to Ops, I'm in the Neural Core. I.. I'm about to reset ANaLYN to an uncorrupted save and try to flush the systems. I don't know what reaction that might cause, but it seems to be the only option right now. I didn't want to not tell anyone." Quickly, she changed out the data stick, and returned to the main console, rewriting the anti-virus coding as the reboot protocol activated. The room shook and the lights flickered, but the power remained on.