He slips out of the bed onto his knees, blindly groping for his pants and underwear. His glasses are somewhere on the nightstand, but he knows that even if he was wearing them, he wouldn't't be able to see anything. The room was pitch black, save the ever flashing, dim blue-red lights of the communication console. He pulls on his pants like some kind of death skin and feels for his boots under the bed, his shoulder blades and spine protruding from his back like pale glaciers, reflecting the periodic flashing of the lights. He grabs the leather boots and manages to drag onto his foot, sans a sock. Of course the leather, like everything else in the world, is artificial. Replicated from blank matter, just like virtually everything he touched.
At that moment, he doesn't't care to try to find his shirt, but only to try to get out of the apartment and back to his dormitory unheard and unseen. He has a test in warp theory a few hours and only cares to get some sleep. He almost reaches the door when he feels a strong, cold hand on his shoulder. The hand spins him around and pulls him closer, its owner kisses him deeply with putrid, alcohol drenched breath. "Now Mr. Sharpp" says the deep, christine and breathless voice " You know you can't outwit a betazoid, so do you actually think you can leave without kissing be goodbye?"
The boy twitches under the pressure of the hand, wanting to desperately to break free. "Sir..." he gasps for air, trying to hold back his impulse to fight, to run, to do anything but just stand there. It was a constant struggle. "Admiral Thiar... p-p-please, I need to go. I have cl-class in a few hours."
Milo's voice is meed and somewhat squeaky. For a moment he seriously considers biting the arm holding him against the wall. "You know what I like about you, Milo? You're completely terrified of me. So I know that no matter what I tell you to do, you'll do it. And no matter what I do to you, you will never tell anyone."
Milo can feel Thiar grab his wrist and place his hand on his genitals. He winces with disgust at the sensation as he is pushed onto the ground to his knees. "You better do what I say if you want to stay in Starfleet, cadet." the admiral snickers out loud. "I have enough information to have you locked up in a sanitarium for good, so get to it!"
Milo closes his eyes and tries to pretend he is elsewhere, he wonders how he even got himself into this to begin with. He seems to remember it having something to do with his mental breakdown. The good admiral was so "kind" as to become his mentor. Some job he was doing, as the cadet chokes back the rancid taste of flesh and the flood of memories from his childhood. The only difference between Thiar and Milo's own dear step father, was that the admiral had the foresight not to leave and physical marks. Not that anyone would notice, cadet Sharpp was covered in scars from electrical wires, hair brushes, and anything else handy. No one would know the difference.
Somewhere in the bowels of Starfleet Medical Headquarters, a young android, Doctor Lennox, pushes a body to the morgue for autopsy, his footsteps echoing through the silent corridors of the building, miles under the ground. After what seems like hours of pushing around the corpse, he reaches the door of the main morgue. The lights are dimmed and the room just as silent as the corridors leading to it. He transfers the corpse on the stretcher to a stasis shelf. It is a young Vulcan girl, no older than fifteen, her throat is slashed back to her spine. She has severe lacerations on her breasts and stomach. She is cut from her sternum to pubic bone, her entrails seemingly missing. As Lennox goes to close the stasis unit, he notices that her dead, mahogany eyes are focused on him. They are clouded over with a grayish film and are as still as stones. He shakes off the surge of electricity that runs down has spine and closes her into the unit. He turns and finds himself nose to nose with the human medical examiner, Dr. Stein. Her smile is warm and gracious as she greets the android.
"New body?" she inquires, studying the outline of the stasis unit door. "Yes sir," he says "I need to pick up the tissue samples for patient Kerish Haas. Are they ready yet?" He looks up at the doctor with a dumb expression. "Who?"
"Kerish Haas, the Bajoran girl? She died of head trauma from a shuttle accident, it was under suspicious circumstances."
"Oh... I believe that she was disposed of already."
"What! We haven't finished the toxicology reports yet! You don't seem to certain... perhaps I should check myself."
Lennox makes his way to the autopsy room, Dr. Stein right behind him. "Listen! You really shouldn't't go in there!" The android pushes his way through anyway and is stopped dead in his tracks as he looks straight ahead. Four guilty, blood soaked faces look up after him. All of them are doctors and technicians who work in the morgue, they are sitting around an autopsy table, in the center of which, lies what is undoubtedly the corpse of Kerish Haas. Skin is stripped from her body and her flesh is dangling from the hands and mouths of the vultures seated around her. Lennox is shocked and backs into a wall. He is not sure how to react exactly, but he knows that cannibalism is definitely considered a taboo, as well as a crime.
"What are you doing!" he exclaims in a fit of confusion and shock "You are eating the damned evidence! That is someones daughter! A murder victim, and you are eating her! This is sick!"
"No Dr. Lennox," Stein tries to explain "You just don't understand." He turns around to object but Stein happens to know where his deactivation switch is. She reaches behind his left ear and slides the small plate into place. "So" she says, standing over the unconscious android. "Anyone here know anything about cybernetics?"