With permission reluctantly secured, it was time to visit Line Chief Jax, the lone survivor ever to return from Chorad IXa. The isolation ward lay on the edge of Chorad III’s capital prefecture, a tarnished copper and iron building seldom thought of and even more rarely visited. It housed only a single occupant, a man who received no visitors besides those there on orders. Every Choradian knew the fables of old, those of grievous possession followed by guaranteed death, and this looked as close to that as any had seen in living memory.

As Dr. Lisa Hall and Dr. Tom Brooks made their way into the facility, armed guards in full biocontainment gear stood at every junction, wary eyes tracking the curious pair through darkened visors. These two aliens from this so-called Federation carried no visible weapons and wore no protective gear. Did they really not understand? Among the Choradians standing watch, many worried if their protocols, their weapons, and their gear were even enough. Some had even suggested, both for his sake and for theirs, that it might be better to just kill him now. 

Unperturbed by myth and legend, Dr. Hall and Dr. Brooks made their way through a seemingly endless series of heavy bulkheads and decontamination chambers until at last they reached the heart of the facility. Past one final pair of sentries, they found themselves in an observation room looking through thick triple-layered glass into a barren medical bay that hosted nothing more than a biobed, a metal table, and a pair of rusted chairs. And their subject, Line Chief Jax.

“Welcome,” offered a Choradian who stood by the glass. He was dressed much like the others, head to toe in biocontainment gear, but his softer build and the lack of a sidearm suggested a different purpose to his presence.

“Thank you,” Dr. Hall offered cordially as she approached him at the window. “I am Lieutenant Commander Lisa Hall, and this is my partner, Commander Tom Brooks.” She looked through the glass at their subject, a young soldier sitting on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched, his head rocking back and forth as he muttered to himself. “I take it this is the patient?”

“To call him a patient is to presume I can heal him,” the Choradian doctor frowned, all too aware that he could do no such thing. “At best, I am a palliative nurse, my job simply to make his days slightly less unbearable until the end comes.” To accomplish this, he’d kept the line chief under near-permanent sedation, but now he’d been ordered to awaken the man. “I’ll admit he was far more at peace before I had to wake him for you.”

The line chief’s comfort was not Dr. Hall’s concern. Only the information in his head. “We’ll need to go in there and speak with him directly.”

The Choradian doctor’s eyes widened, and a dark look washed across his face. He had assumed the pair would speak to Line Chief Jax through the window. To go in there when the man was awake, if you believed the fables, was to invite demise. “I would advise against that. He can hear you from here.”

“It’s not the same,” Dr. Hall noted. For a patient in such a state of dissonance, she needed to be able to look him straight in the eyes to help pull him back to reality. “We’re going in there.”

“Do you understand what you are saying?” the Choradian doctor shuddered.

“He hardly looks in a state to be a threat to us,” Dr. Brooks noted nonchalantly.

The Choradian doctor hesitated, glancing back and forth between Line Chief Jax and the two visitors. “It’s not his hands we fear, Commander. It’s his mind, a doorway. The ancient ones once walked through such doors, burning through the soul until only the shell remained.” His voice trembled. “When the eyes stop seeing yet the tongue keeps speaking, that is how our ancestors knew that they’d taken hold.”

“We are aware of the risks, doctor,” Dr. Hall replied flatly. She had no time for ghost stories. Line Chief Jax had been exposed to temporal fragmentation unlike anything he’d been prepared for, and that was what had caused his present dissociation. Nothing more.

The Choradian doctor said nothing.

“If his mind is a doorway,” Dr. Brooks offered evenly. “Then someone has to look through it. His mind, and the lives of all those on your moon, depend on it.” So too did his opportunity to experience such a unique temporal phenomenon as had overcome Chorad IXa.

The Choradian doctor did not look pleased, but he had no choice. “I will permit it, but only because High Prefect Rho ordered it. Be aware, though: if you show even the slightest sign of being taken as he is, we will seal you in with him for the good of all.”