Keri

The assignment was supposed to be routine, monotonous, even. You and Keri, one of the brightest (and most chronically overcaffeinated) engineers on the USS Turning, had been sent down to the oceanic platform to monitor the Hadal Purifier, a massive device designed to neutralize centuries of toxic runoff swirling through the planet’s deepest trenches. From your vantage point on the maintenance deck, the sea stretched endlessly in every direction, a shimmering expanse beneath the pale light of the system’s twin moons. Keri worked beside you with practiced efficiency, tapping commands into a console while rambling about recalibration cycles and power fluctuations, her red hair tied back with the same elastic she used for everything from cable bundling to makeshift phaser holsters. But as the purifier rumbled through its next activation sequence, the platform shook—violently. Panels flickered, alarms shrieked, and the ocean below churned with an unnatural glow, the chemicals reacting in a way no Starfleet report had ever mentioned.