Old Pains...

Posted on Mon Oct 16th, 2023 @ 3:22pm by Commander Kyle Reece

Mission: Season 6: Episode 4: Memory Lane
Location: USS Elysium, Commander Kyle Reece's family quarters
Timeline: MD 01 / 0214 hours
842 words - 1.7 OF Standard Post Measure

It was late night/early morning in Kyle Reece's quarters. While his children slept peacefully in their beds,their father was not so lucky.

Kyle had been tossing and turning for the past hour, his unconscious mind hyperactive while he lay there, soaked in sweat, as an old memory came back as a nightmare.

The abuse had gone on for what seemed like days. The Q had slammed the support beam into Kyle's chest over a hundred times. Each time, Kyle felt the excruciating pain of his chest being crushed and his heart being obliterated. Thus far, he had managed to hold his own against the assault.

"Why do you fight the inevitable, human?" The Q asked with boredom in its voice. "You must know that you can't beat us. We are the Continuum. We could wipe your miserable species out of existence with the simple snap of our fingers."

Kyle slowly lifted his head to glare at his enemy. "You..are..pathetic." He spoke with ragged breath. "You won't get what you want from me, no matter...no matter what you do!"

"We shall see." Q snapped its fingers and the scene changed. Kyle was no longer sitting in a Starfleet command chair. Now he was laying on what appeared to be a large wooden cross, his back to the fround, as he faced up towards the sky. His arms were stretched out to his sides and secured at the wrists. His legs were bound together and lashed to the bottom part of the cross structure. The area around him resembled a medieval Earth castle from what was originally called the "Dark Ages". There was a crowd of people standing in an open plaza all around him, jeering and screaming at him.

Q appeared at his right side, dressed in the garb of some kind of cleric from that time. It addressed the mob. "Good people! This pathetic creature has sinned against his masters!" The crowd booed and hissed at Kyle. Some even started to throw rotten produce at him.

Q peered down at Reece. "This is your last chance. Tell me what I want to know and this all ends now."

Kyle looked straight ahead into the sky above him. "Reece, Kyle. Lieutenant. USS Elysium. Starfleet. United Federation of Planets. Alpha-Alpha-Three-Seven-Zero-Gamma-Epsilon-Five." He braced himself for what was he knew was coming.

Q shook its head in disgust. "Very well." It turned to a hooded burly man and nodded. The man moved over to a table and picked from a selection of arcane and viscious looking blades. His picked one and moved over to stand next to Kyle's midsection. He then began to slice open Kyle's abdomen.

The pain shot through Kyle's body as nerve endings began to scream reports of damage to his brain. He sucked in ragged breaths as the butcher began to pull out his innards and cut them from his body.

After a few minutes of excrutiating pain, Kyle motioned to the Q to come closer.

"The creature wishes to say something!" It leaned over Kyle, placing its right ear close to Kyles' mouth.

Kyle snapped his head up and grabbed the Q's ear with his teeth. He bit down hard and before he could be stopped, ripped the ear completely off Q's head.

Q screamed in agony as blood squirted from the wound. The butcher grabbed a large axe, raised it above his head and brought the blade down to sever Kyle's head from his body.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The mom's jeers and cheers quieted to a dull roar, as all of Kyle's senses were focused on the blade that was about to split his flesh....

"AAAAGH!!" Kyle shot up in his bed, sweat pouring free from nearly every pore on his well-built body. His bedsheets were a tangled, sweat-soaked mess, wrapped around him as he sat there, his mind still racing from the stimuli it had just experienced.

After peeling the sheets from his body, he turned, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, putting his feet on the deck. For th next few moments, he sat there, just trying to calm his racing heart.

Finally, after a few long moments, he was calm enough to get up and move to his bathroom, where he stepped into the sonic shower. Once the sweat was blasted from his skin, he got dressed in clean shorts and a tank top. He then stripped the soiled linen from his bed, dropping it all into the reclamation chute.

Deciding to let the bed cool off as well, he moved out to the living room, pausing to quietly check on his children. After being relieved that they both seemed to be sleeping oea equally, he moved back into the living room and sat down on the couch. While he was tired, he was equally not wanting to go to sleep.

Picking up a PADD, he started to read over he schedule for today, feeling haunted by the Nightmare he just had.

~OFF~