The Shape of a Frightened God

Posted on 03 Jul 2026 @ 3:05pm by Lieutenant Commander Aev Flammia & Captain Sabrina Corbin

1,527 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Time After Time
Location: Sherman Oaks
Timeline: Coincides with Jailbreak

[Sherman Oaks]

Aev continued to follow the strange, intense emotional signal tugging at the edge of his senses. It did not belong to anyone on the away team, and it did not feel entirely human. The sensation was difficult to explain; he only knew, instinctively, that it was different.

Ahead, the street curved into a quiet cul-de-sac lined with homes. Low rooftops, trimmed lawns, narrow driveways, and boxy parked cars gave the scene an unsettling familiarity, made stranger by the absence of any true life around them. Aev did not know if the presence he felt was the “boy” they were searching for, but there was a good chance it was connected to this place. This environment. Whatever it actually was. He glanced toward Ignis, who followed a few steps behind him in his humanoid form. “What do your sensors show?” Aev asked. “Do you detect any life signs here?”

Ignis’s expression shifted. His eyes brightened faintly, his attention turning toward the houses ahead. “No life signs. Not in the conventional sense,” he said. “No respiration, no cellular metabolism, no bioelectric pattern consistent with a living humanoid.” He paused, tilting his head slightly. “But I am detecting something now. A new signal. Faint, intermittent, and patterned.” His gaze settled toward the end of the cul-de-sac. “It appears to be coming from one of the houses. So, naturally, we are approaching the suspiciously empty suburban home with the not-quite-life-sign inside. Very Starfleet of us.”

Aev frowned at Ignis, but the strange emotional wave pressing against his senses suddenly intensified. They continued toward the house together, only for the front door to open and bring them both to an abrupt stop.

A young, fair-haired boy stepped out and looked at them.

Aev felt nervous tension radiating from the child, but beneath it was something distinctly wrong. On the outside, the boy appeared human. What Aev sensed from him was not. “Ignis,” Aev said quietly, keeping his eyes on the child. “The boy. I do not think he is human.”

Ignis’s gaze fixed on the child, his expression sharpening. “No,” he said after a moment. “He is wearing the shape convincingly, but the pattern underneath is wrong. Whatever he is, Lieutenant, he is not a human boy in the biological sense.”

“No,” Aev said, though he could not feel any malicious intent from the child. He moved slowly down the concrete path toward the front porch. The child descended the brick steps with the same cautious hesitation, and they met halfway in the yard.

Aev lowered himself to one knee, bringing himself to the boy’s eye level as he would with any frightened child. “I am Lieutenant Aev Flammia of the Federation starship Arawyn,” he said gently. He sensed a trace of fear from the boy and forced a small, reassuring smile. “You do not have to be afraid. We are not here to hurt you. We are simply confused.” His expression softened, though his voice remained careful. “I can tell you are not quite human. Who are you?”

The boy looked at Aev for several seconds without answering. His eyes were trying to be blue, but they did not quite manage it. Beneath the color, something moved: distant points of light, too deep to be reflection, too ordered to be chance. He glanced once at Ignis, then back to Aev, as if the question had reached him from two directions at once.

“I am Aster,” he said finally, his voice small and careful. “Juvenile Stage Four of the Meridian.”

His hands curled into the sleeves of his windbreaker, holding the fabric as though that might keep it from changing again. For a moment, the faded blue jacket flickered into something darker, edged with silver seams, before settling back into place.

“I was supposed to observe,” he added. “I was not supposed to change anything important.”

“I see. Well, it is nice to meet you, Aster,” Aev said, keeping his tone calm. He could feel some of the tension beginning to ease from the boy. "What do you mean by observe? Can you tell me what is happening here? What happened to my fellow crew members?”

Aster looked down at the grass between them. It bent away from his shoes as if unsure whether he had weight.

“I made the evening stay because they said they liked it,” he said. “Then they were afraid. I tried to fix the hurt child, but that made them more afraid. Then the windows opened. The Klingons. The Romulans. The Veylith.” His eyes lifted toward Aev again, bright with stars and panic. “Your people came after. I tried to put the street back.”

His breath caught, and for a moment the house behind him shifted, its white siding becoming something darker and taller before snapping back into place.

“I did not mean to take them,” he said quickly. “The correction made a holding frame for two of your people. It is borrowing from them, from what they know, so it can stay stable. They are not dead.” He swallowed hard. “But they are not where you left them, and I do not know how long it will hold.”

“What happens when the holding frame collapses?” Aev asked. He kept the concern from reaching his expression, though it pressed hard against the edges of his control. He was not certain how the boy-creature would react if he felt that sudden wash of emotion radiating from him, so Aev forced himself inward. He drew on the discipline Jorik had taught him, gathering his fear and urgency behind a deliberate psychic shield of calm.

For a moment, his Vulcan upbringing showed more clearly than anything else: the steady posture, the measured breath, the refusal to let panic become another variable in an already unstable situation. His gaze remained on Aster. “And what are the Veylith?”

Ignis had been silent longer than was usual for him. In his humanoid form, the stillness looked almost unnatural. The golden light in his eyes shifted faintly as he looked from Aster to the house behind him, then back again, his expression losing its usual playful edge. “A holding frame borrowing cognition from two Starfleet officers in order to maintain local stability,” Ignis said, his voice quieter than usual. “That is not a prison. Not precisely. It is closer to scaffolding made from memory.”

He stepped closer to Aev, his attention still fixed on Aster. “And if that scaffolding fails, the question may not be where they go. The question may be what parts of them the frame decides it still needs before it lets them go.” His tone softened when he addressed the boy. “Aster, we need you to be very specific. When you say it is borrowing from them, do you mean memories, neural patterns, emotional impressions, or identity structure?”

Ignis glanced briefly at Aev. “Because I suspect we are not dealing with transport displacement anymore. We are dealing with a reality correction that has mistaken sentient minds for structural supports.” Then, after the briefest pause, Ignis added, with only the faintest edge of his usual dry humor, “Which, for the record, is exactly the sort of architectural decision I object to on both ethical and engineering grounds.”

Aster looked from Aev to Ignis, and the fear in him sharpened at the precision of the question. Ignis had named it too closely. The boy’s hands curled tighter into his sleeves, and for a moment the grass around him flattened in a perfect circle, as though pressed down by invisible glass.

“If it collapses before I anchor it, they will not go back cleanly,” he said. “The frame is using pieces of them to understand what shape to be. Memories first. Then emotional impressions. Then identity structure, if it becomes unstable enough.”

His voice grew smaller with each answer, but he kept going, as if stopping would make the words worse.

“It was supposed to borrow only enough to keep them alive. A soft frame. A waiting place. I can hold it for now, but I should not try to repair all of it while I am frightened. That is how I made it wrong the first time.”

He looked toward the sky, where the Veylith had come through.

“The Veylith are not weapons. They are travelers. Living ones. They move between gravity wells and remember paths by singing them. They came through because I opened too many windows. If they are frightened, they will try to flee, and if they flee through the wrong opening, it could tear more of this apart.”

Aster looked back at Aev, and for the first time there was something in his expression beyond panic. Not confidence. Not yet. But the shape of a child who knew the answer existed and was afraid of what it would cost to reach for it.

“I can put things back,” he said quietly. “Or I can call someone who can help me do it properly. But not if everyone keeps pulling at the edges at the same time.”

[To be continued]

Lieutenant Aev Flammia
Chief of Security
USS Arawyn

&

Aster
The Meridian (apb Sidra]

 

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