Docked at Narendra Station for repairs after a brutal engagement near Andoria, the USS Rubins welcomes back two familiar faces. Dr. T’rana Jauin, now fully recovered from their injuries, returns from a medical stay at Station 8. With them is their close friend, the wounded Lt. Commander Biras, still on limited duty after their battle recovery.

In a private arrangement with Admiral Shelby and Captain Thophres, T'rana's former provisional commission to Starfleet has been quietly formalized. Rather than making a public announcement, the Captain elects to play a mild prank and delegates First Officer Commander A’lya Childs to greet the new crew members—among them, an official Starfleet officer assigned to the Rubins as Chief Medical.

A'lya sends a heartfelt apology to T'rana for their loss of position and the assurence that they will always have a home on the Rubins if they wish it. On the reveal of the subterfuge as T'rana exited airlock with the newer crew members, the assembled Senior Staff greeted them warmly, celebrating their survival and return.

Meanwhile, low-level system anomalies began surfacing aboard the Rubins: lagging interfaces, scattered comms errors, and strange substitutions of cheerful chimes and musical beeps in place of standard computer responses. Small items and tools went missing during repairs, only to be found later. No visual disturbances occurred, but Chief O’Brien and a dedicated Starfleet R&D inspection team initiated an investigation. As the first prototype of the Pathfinder-class, the Rubins was under heavy scrutiny during its post-battle performance review.

When the pressures of the Captain’s exam and mounting administrative demands set in, Captain Thophres placed Commander Childs in charge of resolving the glitches. At first, the interference seemed minor—until Dr. Jauin returned to Sickbay to update Biras’s records and inspect repairs. From that moment, anomalous behaviors across the ship began to escalate.

Lieutenant Commander Taollow Feluthe, Chief of Security, encountered a malfunctioning holodeck program—an unfinished Wadi game he had been playing before battle stations were called. The scenario had been altered, combining its original mechanics with tactical maneuvers pulled directly from the Rubins’ recent fight. Taollow, still disconnected from the ship’s systems due to his injuries and operating from his mobile chair, noted that the “glitches” echoed patterns from the battle itself.

Based on an incorrect reading showing a 'juvenile' signature on board, Commander Childs put study into if any children were found on Nerendra Station, discovering that a handful of merchants had family with them, as well as the lead cook of the Klingon forces on station had two small children and his mate on board. A few more Klingon officers and one human diplomat (single parent) had children aboard the station.

Concerned for safety, the engineering and repair teams were evacuated, and the ship was quarantined and disconnected from Nerendra's network. As the three senior officers investigated, their jokes about the ship being “haunted” gave way to more concrete concerns. In the Jeffries Tubes, Commander Childs discovered that security failsafes had activated prior to any serious cause - over protectively. Her work in Engineering confirmed that the ship’s core code was undisturbed, but responses to commands were being subtly warped: transformed into game-like behavior or reacting with paranoia as they passed through the ship’s bioneural gel systems.

The team theorized that the trauma of the battle—combined with the direct neural links Taollow and T’rana had used—had left ghostlike imprints on the ship’s neuro-gel packs, like nerve endings recalling pain.

Faced with rising instability in their presence, Dr. Jauin and Chief Feluthe reconnected to the affected systems through their implants. There, they encountered not a malevolent program, but reactive routines that expressed fear—fragmented, concerned. The “glitchling” did not manifest as visible entities but communicated through audio, data shifts, and PADD messages.

Dr. Jauin made the call to disconnect the affected gel pack cluster, preserving it for study as a potential emergent intelligence. Commander Childs, as the senior officer in command, endorsed the decision. Chief Feluthe refused to reenact the battle game his interface offered, offering compassion instead: “All games must end.”

With the crisis stabilized, Commander Childs began updating Chief O’Brien and the R&D team, recommending that any compromised bioneural systems be replaced.

As the Rubins powered down affected systems for additional inspections, the "screen" pulled away in empty Sickbay — where a lone console flashed the Starfleet insignia, accompanied by a soft chime that meant, `"Game paused"`