Rio's Encounter

Posted on Wed Feb 18th, 2026 @ 2:32am by Civilian Federation NPC & Lieutenant Rio Kholin MD

1,062 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: 7. Guile
Location: Deep Space Nine
Timeline: 2439-08-13, 09:00

The 09:00 station "morning" was a sensory assault of artificial amber light and the smell of scorched raktajino. The Promenade was thick with the usual traffic, except for the Klingon warriors from the Qel’Poh boasting of past glories and harried Starfleet technicians rushing toward their shifts.

Lezku Opra moved through the throng with a predator’s focus, her hand gripped tightly around a heavy, lead-lined courier case. To any passing security detail, she was merely delivering "radium-painted curios" to a niche collector. In reality, the shard in her ear was vibrating with a low, hungry heat that made her teeth ache - a direct response to the volatile, shielded cargo she was carrying toward the lower cargo bays.

She was cutting a jagged path toward her clandestine appointment when she nearly collided with a woman heading toward the Enterprise's Docking Ring.

It was a Starfleet doctor. Even in the chaos, the woman stood out; she had copper-colored hair and a smile so bright it felt like a tactical flare. But as they locked eyes, the shard in Opra’s ear didn't just throb - it gave a high, thin whistle, like a radio frequency trying to find a station that had been decommissioned decades ago.

Opra stopped dead. She didn't have time for this, but the "thinness" coming off the doctor was a glaring dissonance she couldn't ignore.

"You’re heading back to your sterile halls, Doctor?" Opra rasped, her voice cutting through the ambient noise like grinding stones. "You look like you’ve scrubbed the night right off your skin. It almost makes the lie believable."

Rio stopped, quite confused by the strange woman she had almost bumped into.

"Pardon me!" she said in apology for the near collision but she might have meant "Pardon me?" as well, being a query about what the woman had said.

"I know you," Opra countered, stepping closer. She adjusted her grip on the heavy case, the shielding barely dampening the frantic thrumming within. "You walk like someone with one foot in a grave you’ve never visited. Those spots on your neck... they aren’t just markings, Lieutenant. They’re a rhythm that stopped halfway through the first verse. You’re looking for a melody in your medical journals, but you’re carrying a silence from Trill that’s louder than any of your machines."

"One foot in a grave? Whose grave do you mean?" Rio asked, thinking to herself ~What the?~ but buying in anyway.

"You’re running to it," Opra corrected, her flint-gray eyes narrowing. "You smile too much. It’s like watching a holofilm with a flickering power cell—pretty to look at, but I can taste the copper of the break underneath. You’ve spent years stitching other people together so you don't have to look at the tear in your own fabric. Most doctors hide behind a mask; you hide behind a light. But lights cast shadows, Rio, and yours is shaped like a room you walked into when you should have stayed on duty."

"I don't know you and I don't understand any of your cryptic words and metaphors. A holofilm with a failing powercell?" she put her own interpretation on those particular words. "I smile too much? How can that be a fault. Copper underneath? What mask? I am really conf....." Kholin protested.

"I deal in things that aren't there anymore," Opra interrupted. Her earring gave a sudden, sharp tug, pulling her gaze toward the empty air behind Rio’s shoulder. "And you think you’re a singular point in the dark. You’re wrong. The air around you hums with a twin frequency. It’s faint, but it’s there. There’s a ghost-pulse beating in time with yours somewhere else in this sector. You aren't nearly as alone as you’ve convinced yourself to be—you’re just looking in the wrong mirror."

Rio opened her mouth to reply but was totally baffled. "A ghost pulse?"

Opra shifted the heavy courier case, the "curios" inside singing a song of cold, metallic weight. She didn't have another second to waste.

"You didn't come to the Enterprise for a challenge, Doctor. You came because a ship is always moving, and you think if you go fast enough, the things you left behind won't catch up. But space is a circle. You’re just carrying the betrayal into a bigger room."

~Betrayal?~ Rio caught the idea behind that one at least. "What bigger room? You clearly don't think that is all behind me? I do... well I did - I mean, it must be..... ?"

Opra reached into her vest, pulled out a small, uncharged piece of Trill volcanic glass, and pressed it into Rio’s hand.

"Take it. It’s just a rock. It won't tell you who your father was, and it won't tell you why your 'best friend' was a snake. But if you hold it long enough, maybe you'll stop being the 'sunny doctor' and start being the woman who’s actually standing here. She’s much more interesting than the mask."

With a final, sharp nod, Opra shouldered past the stunned doctor. She had a General waiting in the shadows of a cargo bay, and the weight in her hand was beginning to demand her full attention.

"Wait, please...." Rio called to the retreating back of the odd woman but to no avail.

Thoughts and an overload of questions swirled around the CMO's head. ~It won't tell me who my father was?~ she wondered as she turned the glass rock in her hand, studying it with great curiosity.

~What's so wrong with the sunny doctor who shouldn't smile so much? and why do I need to drop that mask - what mask? I'm not a fraud......... wait, am I?~ she wondered silently standing inexplicably still in the busy thoroughfare. That last thought was very worrying but then, come to think of it, Rio was pretty sure that everything the strange woman with the odd earring had said had all been more than worrying!

~And how had she known so much about me?~ The most important question finally landed and Rio began to continue on her way, completely absorbed in her encounter and none the wiser for any of it.... well not yet at least.

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