Chapter Text
“You want me to do what?” Dr. Leonard McCoy asked incredulously.
“If you don't have time, that's fine of course.” Science Lieutenant (junior grade) Isodora Li said. She was standing with the very particular straight backed stance of someone who had been told multiple times that they needed to be more confident in addressing their superior officers. Or maybe she was just scared of him, he didn't know, it was hard to tell. “But an extra set of hands would be really helpful in getting everything done on the time-line we are currently working with, especially with your expertise.”
“That's-" McCoy was immediately cut off by Dr. Geoffrey M'Benga’s smooth interruption “-an excellent idea, thank you Lieutenant.”
McCoy turned to stare at his colleague in outrage. M’Benga, not looking up from the file he was studying, continued, “ We were actually just talking about how badly integrated most of the Medical Staff is with the rest of science division. This is a wonderful opportunity to begin to remedy that, especially as Dr. McCoy is supposed to be spending this shift training anyway.” He finally looked up at McCoy, and pinned him with a stare that clearly said please go along with this, I have a plan. McCoy bit back his comment about being a doctor, not a prepubescent lab tech, and sighed.
“It'd be my delight Li.” He said with as little sarcasm as he could manage.
“Oh, wonderful!” Li said. “Because we really have way to many mice for me and Pascal to get through by ourselves. He's setting up, and I'm heading to get the mice, would you mind meeting us in the Virology section of the Genetics lab, maybe grab a quick lunch first? Thanks!” She didn't wait for a response before darting out the door.
McCoy turned to M’Benga, who had gone pack to studiously doing paperwork. “Care to explain?” he asked.
“Well, you really should spend more time working with the Science division.” M'Benga said. “And this would even technically count as practice hours for you, so its a good use of a training shift.”
“Uh huh,” McCoy said, crossing his arms. “And?”
“And,” M’Benga admitted, “I think something weird is going on with her, and I'd appreciate someone checking it out.”
“Ah.” He thought for a moment. “Do you even know what kind of weird?”
“Not a clue.”
“Not even a hint? Something for me to work with?”
“I don’t think Spock has realized anything is going on?”
“That’s incredibly helpful Geoffrey, thank you.”
M’Benga didn’t dignify that with a response.
McCoy sighed.
__
Pascal, as it turned out, was a Fibonian ensign with a nervous tendency towards cracking jokes. He and Li were clearly close, and from the sound of it, their current project was his first shot at ‘managing’ a component of Li’s larger research.
McCoy was welcomed into and then ushered away from the open plan lab into a narrow, claustrophobic, over-glorified closet with two fume hoods dominating most of the space. The fume hoods kept the air circulating though, and kept the temperature down, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
After quickly checking that he knew what he was doing, they pulled out the mice.
Technically they just pulled the cover off their cages, because Pascal had spent the morning retrieving them from the super secret mouse house Science had (and shared with Medical), but they pulled the cover off with enough of a dramatic flourish that McCoy rolled his eyes.
Their harvest target, he was informed, were the brains, but they were also taking livers and heart tissues for the purpose of being thorough.
According to the records McCoy had pulled up, Li was officially a virologist who had gotten into genetics, whereas Pascal was a geneticist who was going into neurology. Theoretically.
Whatever their career trajectories, at the moment they were running some kind of experiment where they were testing a “totally-not-genetic-engineering” treatment where they infected the mice with an synthetic virus which delivered an RNA payload meant to cause a cascading shift in the production of certain cellular products when the mice were exposed to a trigger chemical. The specific virus they were using was the true novel element of the therapy; apparently, it targeted the brain with ease. There was, Pascal told him, a possibility it cold be used to treat certain age related diseases as well as more acute brain injuries like concussions.
Privately, McCoy thought however well it might end up working, it had a snowball’s chance in hell at getting past an ethical board. The Augment War had left some deep scars, and whatever his opinions were, it was impossible to deny that there hadn’t been a virus-vector used in a clinical treatment since.
But he wasn’t about to spoil the kids’ day. So he settled in to kill some mice.
He sat down at on of the hoods and got to work. They make an efficient team - Pascal anesthetized the mice and passed them to him and Li, who perfused them and harvested the brain, heart, and liver. Pascal had been considerate enough to set up boxes of tiny, carefully labeled specimen jars, already filled with fixative, for ease of use. Then they would pass them back to Pascal, who would weigh them on a carefully zeroed scale and record it all on a spreadsheet. McCoy had to hand it to him, he was more organized than half of Medical’s lab monkeys.
They quickly settled into work. Strains of Cassandrian opera could be heard coming from the main lab, but their lab was quiet except for Pascal muttering to the mice as he anesthetized them. Li and Pascal occasionally exchanged a few words that were clearly a part of a larger conversation they had been having - something about in-group loyalty and a behavioral psych paper - but overall perfusing the mice took too much focus to allow a conversation. McCoy didn’t care much, though he did found the paper they were discussion interesting - if slightly out of their fields of study.
McCoy meant to do more nosing into whatever was wrong with them, but he had forgotten how exhausting large scale mouse harvest was. And this was a huge harvest - over thirty animals, with only three pairs of hands, and one of them a loan.
“Hey,” he said, a thought occurring to him. “Some of these are different experimental batches, right?”
Pascals head shot up with a burst of energy that could have only been driven by fear. “Yes.” He said. “Have you have been putting organs in the wrong jars?” He asked the question with the kind of desperate, resigned fear of a man who knew Kobushi Maru was, and yet was taking it anyway.
“Absolutely not.” McCoy said firmly, because he hadn’t, and letting the kid squirm was just mean. “I’m a doctor, not an ensign. “
“Oh thank goodness.”
“I just wanted to know why you had so many mice to harvest in one day. Even with me helping, this is ridiculous, and you weren’t even sure you’d have that.”
They both looked sheepish.
“No, whats up honestly?” he said.
Li busied her self with the mouse she was working on while Pascal looked down.
“We don’t have to get them all done today, technically,” he said. “Its just -” embarrassed, he started fussing over the mouse he had just anesthetized, pinching its foot to see if it was down properly. It twitched, he pulled up another 200 ccs of anesthetic to give it. “It upsets Mr. Spock” he mumbled quietly.
“That green blooded hobgoblin is getting all bent out of shape over your harvests?” McCoy asked, incredulous. “It seems like you all are doing a fine job to me.”
“No,” Pascal said quickly, “He’s really lovely about it, he hasn’t complained at all.”
“Not once,” Li added. McCoy was getting more confused.
“So he’s upset because?” he prompted.
“He doesn’t like to kill them,” Li explained. “He’s a vegetarian and all.”
“He says it doesn’t upset him.” Pascal said. “Except it really clearly does. A lot.”
“He’s sensitive.”
McCoy was temporarily rendered speechless. Li and Pascal seemed to take that as silent judgment.
“We know we should have realized the first time, but we were busy, and we didn’t know him that well then!”
“You should have seen his face, I still feel terrible.”
_____
“So did you figure out what they were up to?” M’Benga asked as McCoy stalked past the open door of his office.
“These things take time, Geoffory.” He responded, dropping off his PAD. “The situation is delicate.”
“So you have given up and are going to ask Uhura.”
“No!”
___
“Well,” Lieutenant Commander Nyota Uhura said, gesturing with on her fork. “You’ve come to the right place.”
McCoy was sitting across the table from Uhura and her salad, surrounded on all sides by three red-shirted and clean-cut communications officers who were all quite obviously telegraphing that he had their complete attention. The youngest one, a stocky Edosian, was visibly preening at being included in his and Uhura’s confidence. McCoy was beginning to regret coming over.
“I know I’ve come to the right place.” McCoy groused. “No one breathes on this ship with out y’all finding out. What I want to know is if you know anything.”
“Here’s the thing.” She said, spearing a cherry tomato. “The science people are weird. I know a lot of weird things about them.”
“Sure,” McCoy said, “But I was asking if you thought something was up with them in particular recently.”
“Do you have any details, or really anything to give us other than ‘they’ve been weird lately?’” She didn’t physically make air-quotes, probably because her tone implied them so perfectly any actual gesture would have weakened the overall effect. “Or is that classified information?”
“It’s not really confidential,” McCoy said grudgingly. “But they’ve requestioned some weird supplies lately, especially because according to Scotty, they haven’t asked for any equipment help. And they’ve been acting squirrelly.
Uhura shrugged. “As I was saying, the science people are always weird. But the problem is,” She paused. Her posse all leaned in slightly. McCoy was intensely reminded of his great-grandmother holding court from her white wicker rocking chair at summer parties.
“The problem is,” she continued, “they kind of have a reason to be so weird.”
One of her eager subordinates broke in, apparently unable to contain himself, “They had the worse losses of any division when Krall took the crew hostage, and even more left after that. The science people aren’t used to it - Science used to have practically no turnover, except junior researchers getting promoted out and new ones coming in. Most of our Science staff are decades younger than the fleet average, and have very little experience managing people, or being in command positions, or even being on spaceships. ”
“Wintson’s suggestion that they are reacting to a general sense of intradepartmental chaos has merit,” Uhura gave him a single nod of approval. The infant practically vibrated with excitement. Uhura continues, “-until you remember that their commanding officer is Spock. What else?”
“Nothing has officially happened to them recently,” one of the other pompadoured children broke in, clearly not willing to be upstaged by ‘Wintson’. “At least according to the official channels. No more publications than usual or anything.”
“And if they had made some kind of crazy new discovery, they would have been requesting way more specialized papers from us,” Wintson said, snatching back control of the conversation. He realized what he had said. “Don’t tell them we’ve figured out what it means when they do that.”
McCoy nodded graciously, and filed that tidbit away. He waited a minute to see if the last of Uhura’s ducklings, the Edosian ensign, had anything to add. The ensign didn’t say anything, just picked at his lunch.
“Huh.” McCoy said. “So essentially, you’ve got nothing.”
“We’ve got nothing.” Uhura agreed cheerfully. “But thanks for telling us! And do tell me what you end up finding.”
As she packed up her lunch and left, McCoy was struck with the distinct sense that he had been played.
The three young officers, clearly distressed that Uhura had left their Very Special Lunch, turned their collective attention to him. He grabbed his tray and left.
“Goddam infants,” he muttered under his breath as he stalked out of the cafeteria, the stopped. “Winston, right?”
“Yes sir?”
“What papers have they requested lately?”
____
“Quick question.” McCoy said, barging into M’Benga’s office. “Is Spock unaware that the two of them are running an under the table experiment with the goal infecting everyone on this ship with a loyalty bug, or is he just ignoring it?”
“They’re what?”M’Benga exclaimed.