There was something about fresh air. It just hit differently than the recycled stuff. Although Lepia IV’s villages left much to be desired, once he got beyond the dilapidated buildings and ailing fields, the place appeared pristine. Save for a few flowers wilting a bit too early in the season, Lieutenant J.G. Anders saw no visible signs of the menace lurking beneath the surface as he jogged through the rolling hills under the early morning sun.

Footfall by footfall, he was making a good pace, measured but brisk, the type he could maintain for a marathon-length run or more. Or at least the sort of pace he should have been able to maintain for those distances. But today was not one of those days.

Not even five kilometers in, it began to hit him.

It started in his legs, a burn that shouldn’t have set in so early. It was the sort of pain you expected at the end of a competitive ultra, but this wasn’t that. Not even close. His pace was tempered, and his breathing was steady, yet his legs pained as if his lungs couldn’t get enough oxygen to them.

The Kennedy‘s Chief Security Officer instinctively slowed up, as if to give his body a moment to recover, but it didn’t help. Instead, it just got worse. His arms began to tingle, and he grew increasingly lightheaded. Finally, for fear of keeling over, he came to a stop.

What was going on?

Lieutenant J.G. Anders pulled out his tricorder and waved it over himself. As he looked at the readings, one number popped out. Why was his heart rate barely 100 beats per minute? Sure, he hadn’t been pushing hard, but even for a runner in peak condition, that was too low.

“Odd,” the lieutenant said to himself, but then he shirked it off. As a runner, he knew that sometimes you just needed to push through, and so, with one foot in front of the other, he got moving again.

Not that he got far.

He just couldn’t maintain his usual stride, and he felt tired. It wasn’t the sort of fatigue you felt after a hard run though. This was something different, a deep sense of exhaustion like his body had just decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Maybe he just needed to stop?

He drew up at a fork in the trail and scanned himself, but before the readings even came back, he’d forgotten why he had the tricoder out. He shook his head, trying to clear the thick fog that’d overcome him. Oh yes, vitals. That was what he was checking. He looked back down at the tricorder. It reported a mere 60 beats per minute, and his blood oxygen had cratered to a measly 92%.

What the hell was going on?

For a moment, he started to panic. But then he didn’t care anymore. He oscillated back and forth between those two states of mind. Something was definitely wrong, but also, whatever…

Finally, Lieutenant J.G. Anders tapped his combadge: “Hey, Kennedy transport. Anders here.”

“Calling so soon, Jay?” came the response from the transporter chief, a young woman who’d just seen him pass through her pad a half hour prior.

“Just not feeling it today,” Lieutenant J.G. Anders sighed, struggling to get the words out. “One to beam up.”

A few minutes later, following an all-too-laborious walk from the transporter room, the young man found himself seated on one of Lieutenant Krer Feyir’s biobeds in sickbay.

“I’ve never seen you voluntarily sit before,” the Bajoran doctor volunteered as he ran the hand scanner over security chief, telemetry streaming back to the medical tricorder that he held by his waist. “And you say you went for a run this morning?”

“Yes doc,” Lieutenant J.G. Anders replied, a bit of irritation in his tone from just wanting to get this over with so he could go lie down. “Just like I do every day.” It was a routine of his to get some cardio in every morning before he started a shift, and since they’d moored over Lepia IV, he’d taken to running through its untouched backcountry rather than his usual holodeck program.

“And have you been wearing any respiratory protection?” Doctor Krer asked. The team analyzing the fungal blight had communicated that they had no definitive reason to be concerned about inhalation risk, but that out of an abundance of caution for the potential, they were encouraging, albeit not requiring, those spending long periods of time down on the surface to consider respiratory protection.

“No,” Lieutenant J.G. Anders shook his head. “But where I was running, it’s not like their decaying fields. Out there, it’s untouched. Nothing rotting, and super fresh air.”

“I see,” the doctor nodded, but he didn’t sound convinced, and a moment later, a tap of his combadge confirmed as much. “Kennedy sickbay to Ingenuity ops. Priority request.”

Over on the Ingenuity, the response from the ensign rounding off the night shift at operations came quickly: “Go for Ingenuity operations.”

“Can you send Dr. Verhoeven over here?” 

“Stand by,” the ensign replied as he scanned the duty roster. “Lieutenant Commander Verhoeven is scheduled to start his shift at 0900. Is there a message I can pass along when he gets on duty?”

The doctor looked back at the chief, and then down at the tricorder. If he understood what he was seeing, this could not wait. Not with other members of their crews still planetside. “Negative, Ingenuity. This is urgent. I need him over here now.”