…
Malcolm waited in the Armoury for Hoshi, pretending to be busy looking at a PADD. But his azure eyes drifted continually towards the door. Finally, it opened.
Hoshi, still dressed in her uniform despite being after the end of her shift, walked in.
"OK, what is this about?" she whispered to him, looking around to make sure that they were alone.
Malcolm noticed and replied, "The current shift is in engineering working on increasing the… nevermind. I will try to explain this whole thing to you. But to tell the truth, I am bit confused myself."
Hoshi nodded, and sat down on one of the large grey boxes.
"One of the qualities which makes me an excellent security officer is my ability to sense when something is wrong. That, along with being paranoid and enjoying explosions." His humour fell flat on its face.
Malcolm kept on talking, regardless, "And lately, despite the quiet nature of these past weeks, something has started bothering me. At first, I thought that it might be that we had been infiltrated. However, it seems that that is not the case. I found out that…"
The door opened again. I should have locked it! But that would have attracted attention, Malcolm thought, before quickly grabbing a practice pistol for Hoshi. The crewman nodded at the two officers and went over to a panel to work.
Hoshi walked over to Malcolm's other side, so that he cold see the crewman more clearly. But she tripped on some sort of tool on the floor, tumbling into Malcolm's arms. He fell onto his back.
"Are you alright?" she immediately asked. The crewman rushed over, and offered to get help, but Malcolm insisted that he was fine. Who wouldn't be fine with the object of any man's desires? And Hoshi had yet to move from on top of him.
"Are you alright?" he asked in return. She smiled, before rolling off of him and started to laugh.
"I'm sorry," she said to Malcolm's bemused face.
"I don't understand," Malcolm replied, starting to become concerned that Hoshi might just have gone mad.
"It's just that, well, you looked so funny. As if you were happily asleep dreaming for a second."
Malcolm got up, before pulling Hoshi up. Their hand lingered together longer than they should have.
"Sir, are you sure you shouldn't go to Phlox?" asked the crewman, who was still standing next to them.
"We're fine," said Hoshi and Malcolm in unison.
Malcolm resumed, trying to act normal, "You still need to improve your accuracy rating. I thought it was fine, but it turns out that some of the data I had given the computer was incorrect. I am sorry, Ensign, but we will just have to go back to the cargo bay and do some more work on your skills."
Hoshi took his hint and walked out with him. But before they had left, the comm. chirped.
"Phlox to Sato."
Malcolm and Hoshi looked over at the crewman, but he gave them a look of innocence.
Hoshi walked over to the comm. and answered the call.
"Sato here."
"Ahh, Ensign. It appears that you may have come in contact with a dormant pathogen. It may have become active recently, and could then spread to anyone you have touched. Please report to Sickbay immediately."
"I should come with you, in that case," said Malcolm. They walked out of the armoury to sickbay.
The crewman started laughing loudly. He was going to have some great gossip for tonight's poker game.
…
Gossip can spread like wildfire…
