The fog was just beginning to part over San Fransisco. As it lifted, the outline of the Golden Gate Bridge poked through the wall of white.
Somewhere in a rundown side of the city was left buildings still standing from before the Eugenics Wars. One of these, an unassuming tenement block barely still standing, was being visited by a person of great importance this morning.
Kynthia Alena arrived outside just before the turn of 8 AM. She stepped off the shuttle craft with a grim look on her face. Pinned to her red uniform collar, bouncing with each step, were two bars of Full Admiral rank insignia. She stopped to look up at the crumbing building and frowned.
The inside of the tenement was worse than the outside, and smelled of decades of collected filth. A stairway ran from the first floor up. Alena ascended upwards, the steps creaking as she went. The second flood was lit by rays of sunlight coming through the yellow-stained windows at the ends of the hall. The Admiral walked down the hall, looking at door numbers as she walked. Three from the end, on the right side, she stopped - room number 46.
She knocked. There was no answer. Again she knocked. She waited longer, but still no reply came. She put her ear to the door and listened. Inside was a faint sound of someone muttering to themselves, and scratching. She knocked again, this time loudly.
"Admiral Alena of Starfleet Security, I'd like a word with you," she yelled. The muttering stopped.
A momentary delay led to the door opening. Behind it stood a large Bajoran man, poorly dressed and looking distressed.
"Commander Mau, I presume?"
Mau's face sharpened. "Not any more," he shouted and slammed the door.
Alena waited a moment, and knocked again. "Mr. Mau, Starfleet needs your assistance with a matter which I believe only you are capable of," she yelled through the door.
There was a moment of silence, then a reply. "If you wanted me, you shouldn't have fired me."
"I did not fire you, the Engineering division placed you on psychological leave. You choose to leave Starfleet. That is not why I am here, though. There has been a murder at Starfleet command, and we have detected subspace signatures which suggest that phasing was used to carry it out."
The door opened again.
"What exactly were these signatures? Standing beta waves, or theta radiation?"
"I'm not a scientist, commander. All I know is that those who are said it was a sign of phasing- you are the resident expert on phase cloaks and countering them," Alena answered.
"And warp optimization, and transwarp, and temporal anomalies, and anti-borg weapons, but you never thought of that when you fired me." Mau grabbed the door again and attempted to slam it, but Alena stopped him.
"What happened, happened. I cannot undo it. If you help me, I will do everything in my power to reinstate you to Starfleet Engineering. I need you, commander. You're the only person who can solve this mystery, hopefully before someone else is hurt."
Mau turned around and walked back inside the apartment, leaving the door open. Alena followed behind him. Mau's apartment was in total disrepair, but most shockingly, every flat surface and some round ones were covered in writing. Diagrams, mathematical formulas, and cryptic phrases covered every inch of accessible wall; anything that would hold a marker was covered in haphazard and seemingly meaningless information.