Resonance Part II
Posted on Sun Jun 22nd, 2025 @ 8:35pm by Senior Chief Petty Officer Dex Ravaro
Edited on on Sun Jun 22nd, 2025 @ 8:43pm
2,658 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
Episode 2 - The Sins of History
Location: USS Artemis Various Locations
Timeline: MD013 1600 hrs
He would give it a day. No need to rush. He already knew the layout of Harlow’s quarters. Knew the standard sonic shower model, the diagnostic override codes. He had used this method before… twice. Silent, quick, untraceable. The perfect storm of plausible malfunction and overlooked detail.
Accidents happen.
The corridor was quiet, just the faint mechanical hum of life support and the occasional murmur over comms. Dex always liked this part of the ship — away from the bridge, away from the living pulse of command. Just steel, circuits, and silence. Places no one really watched.
He rounded the corner and spotted him.
Ensign Harlow was crouched by an open access panel, sleeves rolled up, muttering to himself as he wrestled with a relay junction. He hadn’t noticed Dex yet. His posture was all nerves and over-focus, the type of green tech still trying to prove he belonged.
Dex waited a second longer, then stepped forward.
“Afternoon, Ensign,” he said, voice smooth as silk.
Harlow jumped slightly, turning with a startled smile. “Chief! Uh, hey… didn’t see you there. Just trying to trace a faulty subprocessor in the EPS grid. Nothing major.”
Dex crouched beside him, casually. “Ah. Blaming the circuitry again. It’s always the tech, never the techie.” He gave a light chuckle, just enough to seem good-natured.
Harlow laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, well… you know how it goes.”
Dex reached over and flicked a tool in the Ensign’s kit absently, his tone conversational. “I do. I really do. Long days, short tempers. People bump into things. Knock over drinks.”
The Ensign’s smile twitched, just a hair.
“Oh… yeah, again, sorry about that,” Harlow said, clearly remembering. “Didn’t mean to—”
“No harm done,” Dex said, cutting in just a shade too smoothly. “Didn’t even stain the tray.”
He smiled again, that same disarming curve of his mouth. The same warmth. But his eyes… they lingered just a fraction too long. Measured. Hollow.
He stood slowly and dusted his hands, like the moment had passed.
“Let me know if that junction gives you trouble. I’ll put in a word with Ops. We can’t have your quarters losing climate control next, can we?” His tone was light. Teasing.
Harlow blinked. “Oh — thanks. Yeah, that would suck.”
Dex gave him a nod and turned to go.
”That would suck.” Dex repeated in his mind, almost amused. ”No climate control. No working shower. No skin left on your skull.”
As Dex walked off his mind began to reel. ”He smiled again. That cheap little smile people use when they’re unsure if they’ve done something wrong. That smile told me everything I needed — he remembers the bump. He wonders if I do, too.
He thinks he got away with it. He thinks kindness means safety. It’s always the smile before the scream.
One more hour. The grid’s already rerouted. The safety interlocks will fail on cue.
And all anyone will hear is the shower cycle.
After all… accidents happen.”
The door of Ensign Harlow’s quarters hissed open without complaint.
Dex stepped inside with the calm assurance of someone who belonged anywhere — because, officially, he did. Chief of the Boat. Trusted. Respected. Authorised. His access was legitimate, his cover story irrelevant. No one questioned a man who kept the lower decks running smooth.
The entry was logged. Three seconds later, it was gone, overwritten beneath a perfectly timed water purification report from hydroponics. Neat. Clean. Invisible.
He whistled as he moved.
The tune was low, a wandering little thing without rhythm or key. It danced through the air like steam, completely at odds with the act about to unfold. But it helped him focus. Kept his hands steady. Made the scene feel domestic.
He moved around the room with idle curiosity, trailing a gloved finger across the desk. A holographic photo shimmered faintly. It was Harlow grinning with two others in a sunlit clearing. Dex paused and tapped the image twice, lightly. He never understood why people kept these little anchors. Memories turned brittle when you stared at them too long.
The sonic shower stood waiting in its alcove.
He crouched with fluid grace, still humming as he popped the access panel and connected to the diagnostic relay. The screen came alive. Routine maintenance mode. No alerts.
His fingers flew across the interface — quick, precise, methodical. Frequencies were tuned to sub-harmonic resonance; energy output increased just enough to strip tissue from bone without tripping environmental sensors. The safeties were disabled. The system wouldn’t even realise what it was doing until long after the cycle was complete.
SAFETY PROTOCOLS OVERRIDDEN
NEXT USER ACTIVATION: CLEANSE CYCLE TRIGGERED
Three minutes and twenty seconds of complete silence. The perfect kill: no sound, no signs of struggle, no residual energy discharge. Harlow would simply stop being alive.
Dex stood, brushed off imaginary lint, and reached into his pocket.
The first offering: a personalised micro-spanner, small and sleek, standard Starfleet issue, but subtly engraved with a symbol. Not listed in any crew manifest… but known. Recognisable. Traceable.
He knelt beside the replicator and gently slid the tool behind the lower housing panel, just visible enough to be found on a thorough sweep. An investigator’s golden ticket.
And then, for good measure, he pulled out a small glass vial. Inside it: a single strand of hair. Carefully collected, meticulously preserved.
He unscrewed the cap with a soft click and let the hair drift down onto the carpet near the entrance. Just on the threshold where someone might have leaned in… or stepped out.
It landed like a whisper.
Two pieces of evidence. Just enough to suggest intimacy. Access. Guilt.
Dex smiled at his reflection in the mirror. Adjusted his collar. Smoothed back his hair. Whistled louder now.
SYSTEM STATUS: NOMINAL
USER: ENS. HARLOW, L.
The ship would blame it on a fault in the emitters. A rare, tragic system failure. Unpreventable. Unfortunate.
And someone — someone else — would have a very difficult time explaining why both their tool and their DNA were found in a dead man's quarters.
Dex turned and left the room, still whistling, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft finality.
Dex’s inner monologue continued, ”The perfect frame doesn’t scream. It whispers. A little tool. A loose hair. Nothing dramatic — just plausible. Just enough for someone to trip over it at the wrong moment and fall into the pit.
They’ll grieve. They’ll investigate. And I’ll help them do both. I’ll offer comfort. Guidance. Insight. I might even suggest where to start looking.
After all... what kind of man would I be if I didn’t support the crew during a tragedy?”he thought to himself, a small curled smile forming as he walked away from the scene that would become Harlow’s final stop.
Ensign Leo Harlow let out a sigh as his door closed behind him. He rubbed at the tension in his neck, letting his toolkit clatter softly onto the small desk. The relay job on Deck 4 had taken longer than he’d expected, and someone had screwed with the junction labels. Again.
He tugged at his collar and walked toward the lavatory.
“Computer,” he muttered, voice half-hoarse, “start standard shower cycle — warm.”
He peeled off his uniform top, tossed it into the corner, and stepped into the small alcove. The walls were smooth and featureless. The low hum of the emitters started as usual, thrumming through his bones with the familiar, tingling frequency.
He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
It hit on the fourth second.
First was the disorientation — a wave of nausea that made him blink. Then came the pressure, not on the skin, but within it. Like his muscles were folding inward, like something inside his chest was vibrating too fast to be real.
He opened his mouth to speak, or to scream, but no sound came.
His legs buckled.
Pain wasn’t the right word… it was more like reversal, like everything that held him together had suddenly decided to stop cooperating.
His heart stuttered, convulsed, then went silent.
The sonic emitters continued to hum softly, vibrating at frequencies designed to purge every cell, every soft structure, from the framework of a man.
Harlow's body collapsed against the shower wall, and then slid to the floor in a barely audible thud.
Three minutes and twenty seconds later, the cycle ended.
The room fell silent.
Dex Ravaro sat in the dim corner of a crew lounge, sipping lukewarm tea. He glanced at the chronometer above the replicator.
17:54.
He smiled to himself. Not out of satisfaction. Not triumph. It wasn’t about those things.
It was about consistency.
He took another sip and set the cup down gently.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Maren Tyll had come looking for a spare plasma conduit Harlow had borrowed earlier that morning.
She hadn’t expected the smell.
It wasn’t smoke, exactly, it was more like warm copper and scorched ozone. She wrinkled her nose as the door slid open.
“Harlow?” she called out lightly, stepping inside.
No answer.
The lights were dimmed, just as he’d left them. She spotted his uniform top crumpled by the bed and a faint mist still drifting through the open doorway of the bathroom.
“Harlow, you alive in there?” she tried again, with a little more humour in her voice. But even as she approached, her stomach turned.
Something was wrong.
Then she saw it.
A slumped shape, naked, wet, but not wet from water, from something thinner. Redder. A faint glisten on the tiles. His skin looked raw, like it had been peeled, and his eyes were frozen open in silent confusion.
Her voice caught in her throat. She didn’t scream… not at first. She couldn’t.
Then she stumbled backward and hit the comm panel with her palm.
“Security to Deck 4! Emergency in crew quarters — medical emergency! It’s… oh God, it’s Leo—he’s—he’s—”
Dex heard the alert as he stirred his tea.
He didn’t react at first. Just a slow blink. Then, as others around him turned toward the overhead announcement, murmurs rising in confusion, he stood with quiet authority.
“Emergency response team’s already on it,” he said to no one in particular, already moving toward the corridor. “Someone check if Sickbay’s responding.”
People nodded, grateful. Dex always knew what to do.
As he walked, he tapped his badge. “Ravaro to Security. Status report on the Deck 4 situation?”
The reply came back garbled at first, then solidified into grim clarity. “It’s Ensign Harlow, Chief. Looks like a fatal equipment malfunction in his sonic shower. Scene’s sealed, and we’ve got a medic en route. It’s… bad.”
Dex slowed his pace ever so slightly, though not enough to be noticeable. Just long enough to file the word fatal away like a note on a checklist.
He tapped his badge again. “I’ll meet you there. I knew the lad. Good worker. Wouldn’t want him to be left alone.” His voice was calm. Supportive. The voice of a seasoned senior NCO doing his duty.
Inside, he was thinking about the spanner.
And the hair.
En route to Harlow’s quarters Dex’s mind lit up with satisfaction,“The best part isn’t the death. It’s the confusion. The chaos. The flicker of suspicion before it has a name. That’s when the game begins.
I’ll offer help. I’ll listen. Of course I’ll grieve, because they expect me to. And every time someone looks away, I’ll steer the story just a little more.
Let the others find the body. I already buried the truth.”
The doors slid open with a hiss of finality as Dex stepped into the room.
Security had already cordoned off the bathroom area with a mobile privacy field. A junior medic knelt just beyond it, scanning what remained of Ensign Harlow with a wide-eyed stiffness that only came from dealing with death too fresh.
Dex paused just inside the doorway, hands behind his back, expression composed. Concerned. Measured. “Poor bastard,” he murmured, just loud enough for the security officer beside him to hear. “Didn’t deserve this.”
The security officer, a Bajoran ensign named Telan — nodded grimly. “System malfunction, they think. Safety interlocks must’ve failed mid-cycle.”
Dex stepped forward slowly, deliberately. His eyes scanned the room, cataloguing the scene he already knew by heart. The scorched trace marks near the shower panel. The faint smell of singed organic matter. The disarray of Harlow’s belongings that Dex had carefully left undisturbed.
And there it was… just visible beneath the replicator housing.
The micro-spanner.
Perfectly placed. Like it had been dropped in haste.
He let the moment stretch.
Then Dex turned to Telan “You might want to have Engineering check the sonic relays in this section. If this was a system fault, we’ll need to rule out grid instability.”
“I’ll put in the request now,” Telan said, grateful for the guidance. “Chief… if you’re okay with it, would you mind talking to the team in the lounge? A few of them were close to Harlow. They’re… shaken.”
Dex gave a solemn nod. “Of course.”
He turned to go, but paused… just long enough to lower his voice into something heavier. “And Ensign… make sure whoever’s combing this room logs everything. Even the small things. I’d hate for a detail to be missed if this wasn’t just a tragic malfunction. Miss Frost will want everything in your report. Summon Dr Canak to take custody of the body.”
Telan furrowed his brow slightly but nodded. “Understood.”
Dex left the room with the pace of a man carrying sorrow, with his shoulders squared, eyes just a touch hollow.
He stopped by a wall panel, out of direct view, and folded his arms. Took a long, slow breath. Not because he needed to calm himself, but because that’s what someone mourning might do.
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
It worked as he’d planned. Exactly. No alarm, no suspicion. Just grief and routine and an ever-so-convenient piece of circumstantial evidence waiting to bloom.
He whistled faintly under his breath. Just two notes, quickly swallowed. Then he turned and headed toward the lounge.
And all he could think was, ”They look to me now. The steady hand. The voice of reason. And when they come crying, I’ll hand them tissues. When they doubt the system, I’ll reassure them. When they wonder who to blame… I’ll guide their gaze oh so gently, with concern, with care.
And they’ll never see it coming.
Because monsters don’t hide under the bed in Starfleet. They wear rank. And they help clean up after the mess.”
A Post By
Senior Chief Petty Officer Dex Ravaro
Chief of the Boat, USS Artemis
Starfleet Criminal Investigations Unit
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