Michael and Ash stepped into engineering, noting the lack of any visible damage to the spore drive. Cadet Tilly looked up as they came in, relief visible on her face.

"Oh thank god you're here," she said, walking over to them. "I can't seem to find any trouble with the drive. As far as the computer is concerned, we are exactly where we should be." She gave them a pleading look, as if she was worried they wouldn't believe her, and fidgeted her hands in concern.

Ash placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Slow down Cadet. Tell us exactly what happened during the jump. Try to describe everything in as much detail as you can remember."

Tilly nodded and looked down at her feet, thinking. "Well, we were starting the jump as we would any other time," she began, "Doctor Culber was here overseeing the jump, with Lieutenant Stamets current condition and all…," Tilly said, her train of thought drifting.

Ash gave her shoulder a light squeeze, bringing her gaze back up. "Hey, I know it's hard but we need you to focus. How did Stamets seem?"

Tilly cocked her head to the side a little. "Well, a little spaced out I suppose but he's been different ever since he injected himself with the DNA. He was a little excited, he and Doctor Culber were talking about some vacation they wanted to take when we got to base." She looked at Burnham. "Everything was going normally, I placed the spore capsule into the drive and the jump was progressing well, until something went wrong with Lieutenant Stamets." Tilly gulped and pressed on. "It happened so fast. One second everything was great, and the next Lieutenant Stamets was on the ground and he seemed to be in some kind of… distress. He was muttering some nonsense and… his eyes, there was something wrong with his eyes," she said, pausing to compose herself. "The Doctor and one of the other technicians whisked him out of here right away. I hope he's okay. He'll be okay, right?" Tilly asked hopefully, looking back and forth between them.

Ash and Michael shared a concerned glance. Michael stepped over to the panel that operated the drive system and pulled up the systems log for the last jump. She felt Ash's presence behind her left shoulder as he came to observe. Michael scrolled down through the records from just a few minutes prior. She focused on the coordinates that had been inputted. As far as the system was concerned, the Discovery had arrived at the desired location.

"Wait, what's that?" Lieutenant Tyler asked, pointing at a line of text directly following the one she had been reading. Michael followed the path of his finger as her traced the words. She blinked and moved her head back, trying to make sense of the string of letters and numbers, roughly 20 characters in total.

"I have no idea," she said, shaking her head. "Tilly, do you know what this line here means? The one immediately following the coordinates?" Tilly came around to join them in front of the panel and Ash stepped to the side a little to offer her a closer look. Tilly read the text, mumbling the letters and numbers as she did so, before standing up straight. She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders.

"I didn't write that code," she said with certainty, "and I've never seen any kind of coordinate system that uses values like these. If that's even what they are."

Michael nodded. "Agreed, these values appear to be nonsensical, in that, they lack a recognizable pattern and appear to be unrelated to any known orientation system used." She crossed her arms and cocked her head a little to the side. "Nonetheless, this could be important. We should take note of it and see if Lieutenant Stamets can make any sense of it."

Tyler stepped forward and pulled a PADD from a pocket of his jumpsuit to copy down the text. As he slipped the PADD back into his pocket, he turned to Michael. "We should go to the Medbay and try to talk with Lieutenant Stamets. Cadet Tilly, do you have everything under control here?"

Tilly nodded in assent. "As much as possible I suppose, given the circumstances," she said, her voice wavering slightly. "I hope Lieutenant Stamets will be okay."

Ash gave her a smile and reached up to give her arm a reassuring squeeze. "Hang in there soldier." Tilly gave him a grateful smile in return before turning and making her way over to a panel next to the spore drive.

As Michael watched her go, she felt a little envious of how easily and readily Ash was able to provide emotional support and reassurance to Tilly. He connected with others, and understood them, in a way that was still so far beyond her grasp. Of course, almost as soon as she had felt it, she reeled her train of thought in because envy was one of the more unnecessary human emotions, and logically, lead only to dissatisfaction. She had learned that lesson well, during her years of training on Vulcan, as she watched the other children grasp and master concepts that she struggled so hard with. Every night she would go home complaining about how difficult school was, after being teased by her classmates in their logical and aloof way, and every time Sarek would reproach her for letting her "emotions get in the way". She was now struggling to maintain what so many years of training had instilled.

"Burnham," Ash said, pulling her from her train of thought, "we should get going."

Michael blushed. "Right. Let's go."

The Medbay was quiet, just as engineering and the Bridge had been. It seemed everyone was still in a state of silent disbelief, almost as if time had paused while the Discovery struggled to find its bearings. At the far left corner of the room was the only occupied bed, and was currently inhabited by an unconscious Lieutenant Stamets while Doctor Culber and an aid hovered over him. As Michael and Ash entered, Culber turned to greet them with a weary and tired face that was pulled into something of a friendly smile.

"Sorry to disturb you Doc," Ash said, apologizing as they came to join them around the resting Stamets. "How's he doing?"

Doctor Culber sighed. "Honestly? We don't know yet. The white matter in his temporal lobes appears to have been reorganized in some fundamental way." He looked down at Stamets. "There's activity, but the patterns are abnormal. He was awake when we brought him here but he didn't seem to be aware of his surroundings until we attempted to scan him. At that point he became distressed and we had to sedate him."

He looked back at them with a hint of anger on his face. "I told him that there was too much risk in activating the spore drive again. His brain activity was abnormal even before the whole fiasco with the Ship of the Dead, and this time he really has pushed himself too far."

Michael, suddenly feeling uncomfortable given that she had a large part to play in that strategy, tried to divert the conversation.

"Is there any chance his…condition will reverse itself with time?" she asked, hopeful.

Culbers face slipped back into a mask of worry and fear. "There's no way to tell. Unfortunately we're all a little out of our league right now. We'll have to wait until he wakes up and take it from there."

Michael looked over at Lieutenant Stamets face. He looked peaceful as he rested. She brought her hand up to lightly place over his where it rested for a moment. Culber watched sympathetically. Ash observed with curiosity.

"I'm very sorry," she said to Doctor Culber. He nodded gratefully.

At that moment, Lieutenant Ash Tyler's comm badge beeped and Captain Lorca's voice rang out clearly.

"Lieutenant Tyler, Specialist Burnham, we need you back on the bridge. Immediately."

Ash and Michael shared a concerned look.

"Something the matter Captain?"

A moment of silence lapsed.

"We have company."