How I Got Here: "The Telling Worm"
28 Aug 2024Columbuss
Commander Justin Estok. Stardate 27-AUG-3310."She's no good to anyone if she can't remember who she is..."
Parasites, they take. They never give. The first thing you notice being taken is your balance. Twelve hours after exposure and suddenly, you don't feel so sure on your feet. Twelve hours after exposure and, your inner ear, it won't stop ringing. Twelve hours after exposure and that thing in your head that tells you which way is up, it shuts off.
This is how it starts. You can't see it happening, but this is the parasite attacking your cerebellum. You can't feel it, but this is the parasite climbing up your brain stem and releasing tendrils that start to invade the prefrontal cortex, feeding off of the nutrients it finds there. Your pupils, they begin to dilate and, twelve hours after exposure, you might have to blink hard before finishing the sentence you were so sure made sense.
The Likopo Cerebral Trematoda was named for the planet it comes from, the part of the body it infects and the family of parasitic worm it belongs to. Likopo, the third planet in the Imperial Fehu star system, first discovered the creature during it's initial founding, where the locals gave it the more common name, "The Telling Worm". Transmitted through the consumption of local wildlife, it wasn't long before the local Imperial government had to declare the outbreak a "medical emergency".
Twenty four hours after exposure and cognition starts to decline. This is the parasite's tendrils infecting the frontal lobe of the brain. Motor function starts to suffer. Social skills, as well as social awareness, they start to diminish and impulse control becomes a problem. Many patients, they liken the experience to being severely intoxicated. The pain is minimal but the effects, they don't subside. They only get worse. Forty eight hours after exposure and you start to experience irregular breathing patterns. Your heart rate changes and you start to sweat. Sleep is illusive. Unpredictable. And your speech, it went out with the frontal lobe almost ten hours before.
After five, or so, days of steep mental decline, the parasite has enough control over the human brain to manifest it's own actions. So much so, that limb function is no longer voluntary. Many of the earliest victims to The Telling Worm were found dead, outside of their homes, from exposure, only to be subsequently eaten by the local wildlife, which was the parasites main goal. Consumption of the remains means consumption of The Telling Worm. Consumption of the remains means another host. Being eaten is how The Telling Worm survives.
Since the discovery, medical technology has made a lot of advancements in dealing with The Telling Worm. Most all inhabitants of Likopo are given a vaccine at birth that prevents Telling Worm infection. Should infection occur, a simple inoculation can clear it up and kill the parasite before it causes any major damage. Typically, cases in which the infection is discovered and treated within 72 hours are curable without any major side effects. What's really interesting is what happens between the first twelve and first twenty four hours after Telling Worm exposure.
For an eight hour period, after your balance has started to go and the ringing in your ears won't stop, Imperial medical professionals noticed a steep decline in the patients aptitude for deception. Patients were predisposed toward telling the truth, almost as if they had no choice. This is the part of the story where discovery and ambition collide. The part of the story they tend to leave out. This is the part where we willfully forget that some Imperial scientist on Likopo saw the credit value in a parasite that, for an albeit brief window, can coerce a person to tell the unbridled truth, regardless of the possible ramifications. Ramifications like loss of higher brain function, permanent cerebral damage and death.
The human pretense for weighing the risks against the rewards never ceases to amaze. The ancient battle of rationalizing between "potential loss of life" and "the greater good". All of it, a lie we tell ourselves when stood on the line between discovery and fortune. Between integrity and wealth. Between what we tell ourselves and what we actually believe. We like to think we're capable of contributing to the betterment of mankind despite ourselves, but in the end, we're just human.
Imperial intelligence eventually outlawed the use of The Telling Worm as an interrogation technique. A decision that took a lot longer to make than you might think. The use of The Telling Worm in interrogations became a foot note in the intelligence community and a major discovery for the scientific one. For the general public, it was a myth. So old that it was almost a legend. With each passing year the truth of the discovery faded away until The Telling Worm was nothing more than an after thought. A memory. An interesting tidbit to be used in trivia games at space port bars throughout The Bubble. Long gone were the laboratories and control groups filled with patients clawing at their eyes and ears in their final moments. Forgotten were the windowless rooms and observation chambers that saw countless people suffer and die while the scientists watched on from the safety of protective glass.
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Kiersten sits at the table at the center of the room behind the one way glass with what looks like the remnants of exploded circuitry still imprinted on her face. The temporary black tattoo and of smoke and burned wiring climbs the length of her face, starting at her chin and ending somewhere inside her hair line. The jet black streaks of the explosion were accentuated by tiny pink and red pock marks; entry wounds from whatever panel blew up in her face during the final moments of the fight. Across her left cheek, the black soot is mixed in with the red in a long smear where she tried to wipe the blood away. Her choppy, platinum blonde hair, always so meticulously sculpted before, was now black and grey from whatever explosion sent bits of fire and circuits into her skin.
At the table, the fingers of both of her hands are intertwined as a length of firm black plastic connects her arms at the wrist. Between them, the plastic loops through a small opening in the tabletop, keeping her arms pinned and motionless, aside from the occasional involuntary tremor. Her head hangs down between her shoulders for a moment before she glances over at the one way mirror and defiantly lifts it back up, careful to avoid the jagged piece of steel jutting out from the neck line of her suit from where her helmet snapped off. Clearly a learned behavior from the scratch marks in her cheek. She blinks, hard, a couple of times, before her neck goes limp again. She lifts her chin slightly, toward the door to the room. Her eyes are rolled over and black. Pupils dilated and hyper focused. Still, she seems aloof and despondent.
"She still isn't talking?" I ask Toro, holding the lit cigarette between my fingers over the ash tray before giving it a little flick. The greyish black above the burning red tip fraying off and settling down with the rest.
"Not to us," Toro replies, tapping at the monitor in front of him to pull up the clock. "Not yet. It's been about... fourteen hours since we gave her the worm. These things tend to go easier when the target recognizes the questioner."
"When did you find her?" Finn asks from half a step behind us.
"Not long after the Dawn Ancillary was destroyed," Toro replies. "It was Darkwater's last stand."
"How long do we have with her?" I ask.
"I can buy you about fifteen minutes," Toro says, tapping at the screen again and disabling the security cameras in the room behind the glass. "Anything more and command will want to know why the security feeds were out. Nothing she says 'under the worm' is admissible anyway, so we'll have to rely on legal means to find out what we'll already know. Our arrangement, yours and mine, it's strictly off the books, as agreed. For your purposes, she should tell you what you want to know. I'll tap on the glass when time's up. She can't go too much longer untreated. She's no good to anyone if she can't remember who she is."
Turning back to the glass, Kiersten is still at the table, her head hanging down between her shoulders as a long strand of saliva stretches out from her lips, hovering in the zero gravity of the room in long rope like strands, before detaching and forming a series of small, liquid orbs that take on lives of their own, floating away and about the room.
"Have you ever... spoken... to someone while they were... like this before?" Finn asks, never taking his eyes off of her.
"No," I reply. "Just try not to ask any leading questions or be suggestible in any way. She won't respond to anything that she can't tell the truth about."
We push through the door, Finn going first and me entering a moment after. Once inside, the Imperial legionary standing in the corner of the room gives us a nod before heading for the door and closing it behind him. Finn and I approach the table. The sounds of our mag boots fills the room with audible clicks as the heel meets the steel bulkhead but Kiersten never so much as looks up. Finn stands at the head of the table while I take a lap around the prisoner, her head still hanging lifelessly from her body. As I round her chair I can see the strap securing her body to the seat is still tight.
"Kiersten," Finn says. "Kiersten Morrow?"
She twitches a bit but her head doesn't rise. As I make my way back to Finn, I lean in and tell him to ask the question in a full sentence. He clears his throat before leaning down to try and draw her eyes up to his, but to no avail.
"Is your name Kiersten Morrow?" Finn asks, followed by a long pause. Kiersten takes a noticeable breath before responding with one word. Drawing it out in one long breath.
"...yessssss."
"Do you know who we are?' Finn asks.
Kiersten slowly raises her head, bringing her face into view. Her eyes are closed and saliva is still running down her chin. When her head finally stops moving, she slowly opens her eyes. They're black and dilated. Lifeless, almost as if someone else was behind them. Someone other than the woman I'd known and worked with for the past few months.
"I...," she says, her fully dilated eyes beading in on both of us individually. "...know... you."
"Good," Finn replies in a soft, comforting tone. "That's good Kiersten. Real good. We have some questions for you. Is that alright?"
"You," she says. "Work... for... me..."
"Uhm," Finn shrugs. "That's right, Kiersten. We do. And we're here to help. We just have some questions."
"Ques...". She starts the word but doesn't finish it, letting her jaw hang open and saliva, mixed with a little blood, flow out of it. The saliva forms into more clear, pink orbs before the inertia from sealing themselves up sends them about the room like fireworks.
"Yes, Kiersten," Finn says to her in his best child like tone. "Questions. Who is The Purple Council?"
"Gang..." she says. "Cemiess..."
"A gang," Finn replies. "That's great, Kiersten. Really great. And are you a member of that gang?"
"...yesssssss."
"Excellent, Kiersten." Finn replies, still trying to keep his tone light and friendly. "Kiersten? Is The Purple Council responsible for The Nine Martyrs attack?"
"Nine... martyrs... no," she says, blinking slow and hard.
"Who is responsible for the Nine Martyrs?"
"John... Tyburn...," she replies. "Theta... Seven..."
"Did you work for him?" Finn asks. "Did you work for John Tyburn?"
"Work... no," she replies. "Friend..."
"A friend. Okay," Finn says. "And is the Al Mina star system familiar to you at all?"
"Al... Me... Nah...," she replies. "....yesssss."
"Do you know what happened there?"
"Ex... plo... shunnn..," she says, her neck going limp again.
"Kiersten!" Finn shouts. "Please! Focus, okay?! Was the explosion in Al Mina part of the Nine Martyrs?"
"Part... no...," she says. "Contract... funding..."
"And is John Tyburn responsible for the attack on Al Mina?"
Kiersten's head slings back as far as it will go, blood and saliva hurling from her mouth like the sling of a trebuchet, before she lowers her head again, back down between her shoulders.
"John... no...," she says.
"Who is?" Finn asks. "Who is responsible for the explosion in Al Mina?"
"Contact..."
"Who's contact, Kiersten?! Who's contact?!" Finn asks, his tone amplifying to illustrate his growing frustration. "Kevin Malloy? Rising Damp?! Who's contact, Kiersten?!"
"Damp... Rising...," she mutters.
"Rising Damp, Kiersten. Do you know that name?"
"Rising... Damp..." she says. "Me..."
Finn and I lock eyes, the information triggering us both at the same time. This was Rising Damp. She orchestrated this entire thing. It all began with her. The explosives. Ardulo. Nova Matella. It all started here. It all started with her.
"So you are Rising Damp?" Finn asks, trying to keep his angst for answers under control.
Kiersten nods robotically.
"So you are responsible for the explosion in the Al Mina system," Finn says, declaratively.
Kiersten nods again.
"Where did the explosives come from?!"
"Nine..." she says.
"The explosives used in Al Mina were from the same payload that was used in The Nine Martyrs," he says. "Is that what you're saying, Kiersten?!"
Kiersten nods.
"Who took them from that payload?"
"I...," she says, starting to drift away even further.
"Kiersten, stay with me! So you delivered them to Al Mina?"
Kiersten nods.
"Then who is Antoni Bianci?" Finn asks, more forcefully now. "Why was he killed?"
"Core... eee... urrrr...." she replies. "Dis... track... shunnn..."
"Killing a Federal magistrate and his family in Federal space," I say to Finn in a whisper. "It throws investigators off the scent. Suddenly a terror plot just looks like a political assassination."
A heavy thump is heard on the mirrored wall to the right of the table, followed by two more. Toro's signal to wrap it up.
"Kiersten, I have one more question," Finn says. "Please think really hard about what I'm about to ask you. Okay?"
Kiersten's head bobs back and forth. Her hands tremble and convulse inside their restraints making a surprisingly loud noise on the steel table.
"Who was your contact?" Finn asks. "Who hired Rising Damp to put all of this in motion."
"Con... tact..." she mutters.
"Give me a name, Kiersten. Please," Finn asks, pleading. "Give me a name."
"Con... tact...," she says with a whimper. "My.. low."