Mirror in the Bathroom

Posted on Mon Jul 7th, 2025 @ 5:59pm by Lieutenant JG Kate Kono

4,039 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: Wounds From the Mirror
Location: The Bathroom
Timeline: Before counseling meeting with Ben

It was early morning and the ship’s hallways yawned with a new kind of loneliness, the kind that starships reserved for the tired and over-caffeinated. Lieutenant Junior Grade Kate Kono, half a head shorter than most of her crewmates, she had a walk—regulations said one thing, but she had her own—where her boots barely seemed to touch the polymer flooring. There was a skip in her gait, if you looked close enough, like she’d already gotten the morning’s good news and was itching to spread it.

Trailing a half step behind, Ensign Jane Looper carried herself with the practiced stoicism of a woman who had already heard the day’s bad news and was bracing for the next round. Jane was tall, a study in vertical economy, with the kind of posture that implied she’d spent her formative years standing at parade rest. Together, they formed a moving dot in the security feed: blue-shouldered science officer and gold-trimmed command, an unlikely pair even by starship standards.

“I’m telling you,” Kate said, her voice carrying just enough for the corridor mics to pick up, “Ben actually synthesized real coffee. Not the replicator stuff. Arabica. He grew it in a hydroponics drawer behind environmental control.”

Jane snorted, pushing the bathroom door with the back of her hand so it hissed open before them. “No one is growing anything behind environmental. If they are, it’s not coffee. It’s probably mutating.”
“He gave me a cup,” Kate persisted, holding out her hand as if she could still feel the heat of the mug. “It was perfect. It was... real.”
The bathroom on Deck Fourteen had the kind of antiseptic elegance Starfleet insisted upon: broad, echoing expanse, metallic surfaces somehow both reflective and soft. The hum of the ship’s life support was louder here, but so was the gentle percussion of water, the faintest imitation of rainfall for creatures who once had trees and rivers. There was a row of stalls, privacy assured by the Federation’s highest standards, and a mirror that seemed to promise a more heroic version of yourself with each glance.

Jane flicked a look at the mirror and stuck out her tongue. “Next you’ll say he’s making cheese in the weapons locker.”

“He’s not a cheese guy,” Kate said, peeling her sleeve just enough to check the faint blue script of her subdermal chronometer. “He’s a breakfast guy. He made eggs. Like, actual eggs. Don’t ask me how.”

The stalls opened with a gentle, deliberate whir, each movement a feathered sigh. Kate slipped into one, Jane into the next. The conversation continued through the walls; privacy was sacred, but not at the expense of good gossip.

“I still think you’re hallucinating,” Jane called, her voice echoing off the recycled steel. “Last time I had real eggs, I got salmonella. Hydroponics or not, you know those birds have attitudes.”

Kate laughed. “Ben doesn’t have birds. He just... makes things happen. I don’t know how he does it, honestly. Maybe he’s got a transporter trick.”
A pause. Jane’s voice went softer. “You two are sickening, you know that?”

“Sickeningly cute, or just sickening?”

“Both. Billy never made me breakfast.” There was a clatter as Jane fiddled with something on her side. “He just sent memes from his posting in Berlin. You ever dated anyone who lived on a planet?”

Kate considered. “Yeah, when I was in High School and we both lived on the same planet.’”

A sympathy groan from Jane. “Classic.”

A long silence, punctuated only by the distant, constant rumble of the warp core. Kate let her mind drift, as she often did in the lull between shifts. She tried not to imagine Ben’s hands on the delicate roots of a coffee sapling, his smile when he poured her a cup, the earnestness with which he had promised her a ‘better morning.’

“You ever think it’s weird?” Kate asked, voice quieter now. “How every ship is a little city, and the minute you step out, you’re all alone again?”

Jane considered. “Not weird. Kind of necessary. If everyone loved everyone, there’d be a lot more murders.”

Kate giggled and rested her chin on her hands while her elbows rested on her knees. “Security officer’s perspective.”

“I’m pragmatic,” Jane said. “But I do get it. You want something real. Even if it’s just breakfast.”

Kate liked that. She imagined what Jane looked like on the other side of the partition, how the blue glow of the ship’s lights probably softened the hard edges she wore for the world. “You know, you’re a better therapist than you let on. Which reminds me, I’m almost late. Ben and I have a meeting with the shrinkie in a few minutes.”

“I only bill for thirty minutes,” Jane said, her voice dry as bone. “But for you, I’ll make it forty-five.”

“Lucky me!” Kate said with a giggle.

“So, when do I get to meet this breakfast wizard?”

“Maybe tonight,” Kate said, tucking her uniform shirt into her pants and adjusting her collar. “He’s making something called ‘omelets.’ Replicator can’t even spell it.”

Jane laughed from the next stall over. “Sounds dangerous. I’m in.”
The next time the ship’s lights flickered, Kate was almost about to open the automatic doors which would also flush the toilet automatically, the warmth of her laughter with Jane sticking to her like static. At first, the stutter in the illumination was just another quirk of the Washington—a blip, a reminder that even in the Federation, nothing was ever as seamless as the brochures promised. She glanced up at the ceiling, expecting the usual trickle of emergency lumens to snap on. Instead, she found herself plunged into a dark that felt less like an absence and more like a presence—a liquid thing, settling into every crevice.

“Yeah. Probably just environmental. They’ve been doing system checks all week.” Jane’s voice, said from the other stall, sounded too casual.
Kate was about to reply when the ship’s auxiliary lighting kicked in, a sickly amber strip along the wall, not nearly bright enough to push back the shadows. Kate blinked. Her dark eyes adjusted. The bathroom had taken on a submarine quality; every sound was amplified, every shadow stretched long and mean.

She checked her wrist, but her chronometer was dead—nonessential. She fought a small, sudden panic. This was Starfleet, not some half-lit ghost ship. But then again, wasn’t that the point? They’d been trained for the best and the worst, sometimes both before breakfast.

“See?” Jane’s voice, a little louder now, echoing against the metal.
“Probably someone tripped a relay. I’ll file a ticket later.”

Kate smirked, but something about the silence felt hostile. She listened, really listened, and heard it: the softest hiss, like breath over a comm line.
Then, the slow grind of the automatic bathroom door sliding open.
Kate’s mouth opened to call for Jane, but something in her gut twisted and told her to wait.

Footsteps. Heavy ones, too heavy for anyone she’d expect. A wet, slapping sound, as if the boots belonged to someone who didn’t care to muffle their presence. The steps paused, then resumed with measured, deliberate progress.

“Kate?” Jane’s voice, smaller now.

Kate tried to answer, but the words got stuck. She ducked low, pressing herself against the cool metal side of the stall. The footsteps stopped. A click, a whir. Then, the unmistakable whine of a power cell charging.

Phaser.

Jane heard it too. “Hey!” she called, bluster born of panic. “You can’t be in here with machinery!”

There was a cough—almost a laugh—then a streak of blue-white light carved a molten line through Jane’s stall door. The acrid scent of scorched polymer stung Kate’s nose. She heard Jane scream, a noise that snapped off like a branch in a windstorm.

Kate’s mind raced. She hadn’t even zipped her uniform pants. Her muscles tensed, her recent holodeck drills flooding back. She listened for the attacker. Silence, save for the faint pop of cooling metal.
There was another scrape, the slow deliberate peel of the phaser beam through another stall door. Was the killer checking them one by one? Kate pressed herself flatter, wishing she could melt into the deck.

Time dilated. Seconds stretched. The amber light flickered again, and in the reflected glow of the mirror, Kate caught a glimpse from under the stall, a massive blue figure, shadows rendering the features grotesque. A Bolian, she thought with a jolt. Not just any Bolian—she recognized the pitted ridges and silvered brow of a veteran, the kind who solved problems with violence, not words.

Another stall door hissed open. Jane’s lifeless arm lolled into the aisle, uniform sleeve smoldering where the phaser had clipped it. Kate swallowed bile.

The Bolian paused, cocking his head as if listening for her heartbeat. Then he spoke, voice as cold as the gamma quadrant: “Come out. I’ll make it quick.”

Kate’s hands shook, but she drew in a breath. If she ran, she was dead. If she stayed, she might be dead. She tried to calculate odds, but fear clogged the math.

“Don’t do this,” she heard herself say, the words scraping their way into the room. “You don’t have to—”

The Bolian fired again, this time arcing the beam across the divider just above her head. Kate felt the heat, saw the panel melt and drip, a syrup of molten alloy. The attacker advanced.

Kate did what she always did when things got impossible: she moved. The petite Asian rolled under the stall with ease and landed with a jolt in the next cubicle. The phaser swept overhead, scouring the wall just behind her.
“
Running makes it fun,” the Bolian called, sounding almost gleeful. “Nobody ever just sits still.”

Kate’s feet slid on the tile. She ducked low again, angling herself so she could see his shadow through the gap. He was methodical, careful, not reckless. If he was a killer, he was a professional one.
She heard the deep, satisfied exhale of a man who knew he’d already won.
“Come on, little Starfleet. Your duty shift has come to an end!”

But Kate didn’t plan on giving him the satisfaction.

She willed herself to breathe slower, to shrink her world down to the space under the stall. She reached for her comm badge, but it was gone—lost or vaporized, she had no idea. The only way out was through.
She braced herself for the next shot, eyes fixed on the gap beneath the divider, waiting for the instant the Bolian’s boots appeared. When they did, she’d have to move. Run, scramble, anything. But she had to be ready.

The bathroom stank of ozone, singed skin, and fear. The only thing Kate Kono had left was timing.
She counted the seconds.
One.
Two.
Three—

The next phaser blast turned the stall door into slag, and Kate rolled under the divider as the molten metal rained down behind her. The heat grazed her calf, but she didn’t scream. She landed hard, tucked her chin, and dove into the farthest stall.

She heard the Bolian’s chuckle, low and cruel. “You’re better than most,” he said, almost admiring.

Kate gritted her teeth. If she survived this, she was going to kill Ben for making her drink that much coffee before her shift.
She glanced around, looking for anything—anything at all—that she could use as a weapon or distraction. Her eyes darted to the toilet tank, the sanitation chemicals, the metal hinge of the toilet paper roll. Not much, but maybe enough.

The Bolian’s footsteps grew louder. “I’m coming,” he said, singsong.
Kate pressed her back against the stall and waited, heart hammering.
She would not die hiding.
Not today.

Silence, now, except for the tick of cooling metal and Kate’s ragged breathing. Her calf throbbed with the bite of a burn, the air stung with more than fear. The Bolian was methodical—she heard him take two measured steps, pause, then two more. She knew this type: security dropout, probably mercenary. Smart enough to wait her out, dumb enough to enjoy the waiting.

Her own mind ran loops. She’d need to do something. He’d be expecting her to try a comm trick, maybe crawl through the ceiling. He was watching for movement—maybe watching for the flush of the toilet, a false alarm—but that was amateur stuff, and this killer was no amateur.

The Bolian’s shadow interrupted the amber slit beneath the stall door. Kate tensed, curling up as small as she could get, willing herself into invisibility. She heard the mechanical whirr as the phaser powered up again, different this time—a slow, deliberate charge.

He called out, voice a cold rasp: “I almost respect this, you know. Most officers beg.”

Kate said nothing. He wanted a response, and she wouldn’t give it to him. She counted the seconds, timing his pattern.
One.
Two.

He fired. The blue-hot beam carved a smoking gouge just above the lock, melting it in a spray of liquid chrome. It missed her by centimeters. She saw the light and smelled the burning; she bit her lip and tasted blood.
He fired again, a little lower. She heard it cut through the support bracket, and the door sagged inward, half liquefied. He must have been expecting her to dive out—but Kate was already rolling, pushing herself up with both palms and springing toward the hinges instead of the opening.

“Nice try,” he called, more to himself than to her. She heard the scuff as he prepared to kick down the broken door, phaser still humming.

She reached the stall’s side wall, pushed off it with both feet, and launched at the door from the side. As he booted the panel inward, Kate shoulder-rammed the upper half, which was now a fused, razor-edged slab of hot metal. The angle and weight caught the Bolian by surprise. The phaser went off, scoring the ceiling, but Kate’s full-body shove sent the door’s molten edge square into his cheek.

He screamed—a real, animal sound, and not the kind she’d ever heard from a Bolian. His face took the hit, blue skin instantly searing to a shiny, bubbling black. Kate barely ducked in time as the phaser, now on reflex, fired again and blasted a hole in the deck plating behind her. She let momentum carry her through the gap, using the stall wall as cover, and tried to scramble upright.

The Bolian staggered backward, one hand to his face, the other waving the phaser in wild arcs. He looked even more dangerous now: half his head a raw, smoking mess, eyes wild. “You little shit,” he growled, voice wet and shredded.

Kate scanned the room—her options were still garbage. The only exit was behind him, and he was still between her and freedom. There was no way to overpower him in a straight-up fight. She needed to out-think him.

He lunged, phaser aimed one-handed. She rolled again, this time aiming for the row of sinks. She felt a glancing blow to her shoulder—another near-miss, more heat and pain—but she hit the floor and skidded on the coolant-streaked tile.

“I told you,” he said, limping after her, “nobody gets away.” He raised the phaser, grinning with a mouthful of blood. “I’m on a ROLL bitch! On a ROLL! And you aren’t going to stop it!”

He fired again, and the mirror above the sinks shattered, raining glass everywhere. Kate felt a sliver slice her cheek, but she ignored it, focusing on the next move. The hand dryer was built for battlefields—chrome, heavy.
She yanked it off the mount, a move that took her back to last week’s holodeck training. It came loose in her hands, sharp wires trailing like veins.

The Bolian was on her before she could aim. He tackled her, his body weight crushing, one hand going for her throat. Kate slammed the dryer into his face, hard. The wound on his cheek sizzled where metal hit flesh. He howled and dropped the phaser, which skittered under the row of urinals.

Kate gasped for breath, vision swarming with stars. She drove her knee up, connected with something soft, and bought herself a second. He punched her square in the mouth; she tasted blood and a shard of broken tooth. She thought about Ben, about never seeing him again, and rage surged up.

She jammed the hand dryer into the wound again, twisting, and the Bolian howled even louder. This time, he stumbled back, and Kate scrambled upright, diving for the phaser.
She got there first.

Her hand closed around the grip, sticky with something hot and red. She aimed it at the Bolian’s chest, her own hands shaking so badly she could barely keep the weapon up.

He saw the look in her eyes, and for the first time, there was something like fear in his. “That thing’s on overload,” he panted, voice half gone. “You’ll kill us both.”

Kate grinned, blood-slicked and grim. “Let’s see who’s faster.”
She fired, point-blank.

The phaser blasted the Bolian back, burning through his uniform and into his chest. He collapsed, gasping and twitching, but somehow not dead yet—Bolian physiology was a nightmare.

The room filled with the smell of ozone and cooked flesh.
Kate slumped against the sink, her breath ragged, shoulder and calf on fire. She was alive. She didn’t know for how much longer, but she was alive.
She looked at the Bolian, who tried and failed to push himself upright.
“Why?” she asked. The question came out more desperate than she meant.

He wheezed, blood bubbling. “Orders,” he spat, then grinned. “And you.”

Kate staggered to her feet, every muscle screaming. She picked up the phaser, checked its settings. Overload, just like he said. A timer blinked red.
She looked at the corpse of Jane, the ruined bathroom, the mess of her own face in the fragments of the mirror.
She would not die here.

Not today.

Kate’s world shrank to the narrow perimeter of pain and motion. The Bolian should have been dead—she’d shot him straight through the sternum, watched the discharge arc and tunnel into blue flesh—but the bastard was still moving, pulling himself up on the half-melted divider with a snarl that sounded like an engine eating itself.

He was on her before she could re-aim the phaser. His weight crashed into her, pinning her shoulders against the row of sinks with enough force to crater the steel. Kate screamed, but the sound came out thin, her windpipe compressed by his meaty forearm. The other hand, still smoldering, wrapped around her wrist and began to squeeze. The pain was volcanic, and for a second the whole room went white.

Her hand loosened; the phaser slipped, spun across the tile. The Bolian, face a mass of ruined tissue, gurgled something in his native tongue—she caught only the syllable that meant “worm.” It was the kind of insult that never needed translation.

She kicked upward, catching him in the ribs. There was a soft crunch, and the Bolian reeled back, enough for her to wriggle sideways and break the hold. She threw herself at the floor, rolled hard, and smacked into the cold metal base of the stalls. She heard the phaser’s overload tone: a flat, ascending note that quickened her pulse. Thirty seconds, maybe less.

The Bolian must have heard it too. He went for the weapon, but so did Kate. They both reached it at the same time, hands tangled on the grip, fingers scrabbling for control. The phaser rolled under the urinal, and for a sick second, the two of them were on hands and knees, wrestling like animals in the filth.

He got it first, swung it to bear—but Kate jammed her thumb into his eye, the good one. He screamed, and the phaser went off, burning a smoking line through the tile. She elbowed him in the throat, but he didn’t go down. He just kept coming, blind now, but powered by hate and the promise of finishing the job.

Kate tried to wrench the phaser away, but his grip was iron. She shifted tactics, letting go with one hand and using the other to pop open the weapon’s control housing. The Bolian laughed—a raw, burbling sound.

“You can’t stop it,” he spat. “You overload, you die too.”

Kate ignored him. Her fingers found the micro-actuator, slid it into bypass, and ramped the overload from low to max. The phaser’s tone went shrill, a banshee wail that made her teeth buzz.

“Bomb,” she said, breathing hard. “It’s a bomb now, asshole.”

The Bolian blinked his eyelids through vacant, punctured eyes, thrown by the desperation in her voice. For a moment, he faltered. She used that moment to drive her head into his, a headbutt fueled by every ounce of adrenaline left. The impact sent a flash of pain through her skull, but it was enough. The phaser tumbled out of his grip, bounced against the toilet bowl.

The Bolian tried to lunge, but Kate hooked his ankle and tripped him. They landed side by side, but she was quicker; she snatched the phaser, jammed it deep into the ceramic basin, and kicked the flush lever with her boot.
The overload tone reached its peak.
The Bolian’s eyes widened. “You—”

Kate threw herself backward, diving behind the line of sinks. The Bolian tried to scramble after her, but it was too late.
The phaser detonated in the toilet with a sound like the end of the world.

Porcelain, water, and plasma erupted in a geyser, shards slicing the air. The stalls disintegrated, walls shredded, the ceiling blackened with instant smoke. Kate felt the blastwave lift her, hurling her into the far wall. For a moment she lost all sense of body, of time—just motion and heat and the dull, heavy impact of her head on the deck.

Then silence. A thick, ringing, absolute silence.

The young, waterlogged, battered, beaten, and worn out little Asian girl opened her eyes at the carnage, not sure she’d survived. She was on her back, blinking up at the ruined lights, smoke curling overhead. The sinks were gone; the urinals were gone; most of the room was just wreckage. But she was alive. Every part of her hurt, but the pain was electric, proof she’d made it.

She sat up, tasted blood. Her ears were still ringing, but she could make out the shape of the Bolian, sprawled across what was left of the floor. His body was torn open, his face a ruin. Still, he tried to move, groping blindly in the debris.

She crawled toward him, not sure what she would do if he reached her. But as she neared, she saw life drain from him. His last breath rattled through his ruined chest.


Kate slumped against the wall, shuddering. She looked at Jane—her friend’s body slumped, still, in the corner, untouched by the explosion but so very dead.

She thought about Ben, about breakfast, about the day she’d just lost.
She thought about herself, about the weird little city in the stars that she called home, and about how even here, in the safest place she’d ever known, the universe still found a way to break you.

Kate crawled to the remains of the mirror, found a fragment, and stared at the bloodied, battered face staring back.
She grinned, through the pain.

She was still here.

She had not died hiding.

And tomorrow, if she was lucky, there would be coffee.

 

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