Notes: There's a light coming...maybe not in this chapter, but it's out there.

Seska paced in front of the desk furious beyond measure at having to wait for Camet to arrive when he had summoned her. It was bad enough that her entire project was ruined, but now he was keeping her from completing the only work she could possibly salvage from it. As soon as she finished her report, she would make the Terran woman pay. Twenty-five would die for what she did, and it would not be a quick death. Seska promised herself that.

The door to the office opened and it was by sheer luck that she didn't run smack into Camet. She pulled up short from her furious pacing, ready to demand that she be allowed to return to the lab. Before she could speak, he grabbed her by the arm and practically threw her into the chair facing his desk. The action was stunning, and it suddenly occurred to her that her academic career was not the only thing she should be concerned about.

Camet dropped a PADD on his desk and sat down, steepling his fingers in front of him and staring silently at her. It was one of the oldest interrogation tricks in the book and yet she still had to fight the urge to squirm under his gaze. She hadn't done anything wrong. And yet…

"Is there a problem, Gul?"

"Yes."

She waited. He remained silent. She didn't have to take this. She wasn't a prisoner here. She couldn't be treated like one of his subjects. She got to her feet, intending to leave.

"Sit. Down."

Camet had deep connections to the Obsidian Order; he could likely treat her any way he felt and there was nothing she could do about it. He could easily make her disappear. She sat down.

She tried again. "I don't know what you are so upset about-"

"Don't you?"

"She's just a prisoner-"

His cold gaze hardened, freezing Seska before she could finish the rest of her thought. He gave her another moment, ensuring her silence before he picked up the PADD he'd brought with him.

"You ordered medical to perform a complete hysterectomy on Twenty-five," he read. "Would you care to explain yourself?"

Seska sought to control her temper. "She purposefully injured herself so that she would lose the fetus."

He waited for her to continue.

"My entire project was terminated by her ridiculous actions."

"Ridiculous actions? Yes, I would agree that ridiculous actions did indeed take place," he said. "Tell me, Seska, how did removing the subject's ability to reproduce help Cardassia? Hmm?"

"She aborted the fetus! There was no further information to study."

"You could have easily impregnated her again. Artificial insemination could have taken place as early as tomorrow. The subject could have been protectively restrained for the entirety of the gestation period so that we could study the fetal development of a Terran. But now…" He dropped the PADD back to the desk. "Now we have nothing."

"That's not true," she argued. "I still have the-"

"You. Have. Nothing!" He thundered, leaning over the desk. "You acted rashly and destroyed three years of my work. You are hereby dismissed from this program."

"What?!"

"You were warned, Seska," he reminded her, "and yet you still allowed your emotional state to dictate your actions." He shook his head. "Pathetic."

She was shocked. "Gul, no. Please-"

"You are not a complete waste of time, Seska." Camet softened marginally. "I understand your instructors in other areas are pleased with your work. I'm sure that eventually you will make a fine interrogator or field operative, but I'm afraid that the higher echelons of the Order will be forever out of your reach."

She jumped to her feet, more emotions than she could put name to fueling her movement. Camet leaned back in his chair, looking at her expectantly. There were many things she wanted to say to him, but only one mattered more than the rest.

"She's a prisoner," she snarled. "You treat her with more respect than you give me."

"Twenty-five has earned my respect; you haven't."

It was as if he had slapped her. "I am a Cardassian! Blood to bone. I would give my life for the greater glory of Cardassia."

"And given another year, possibly two, Twenty-five would have given even more than that." He shook his head. "She could've done more for Cardassia than you or any hundred other Order members could ever hope to accomplish."

Seska stared at him. "You expected to turn her into a spy for Cardassia?"

"Oh yes," he said. "She would have been perfect."

"Twenty-five is a trained vole reacting to stimulus. Nothing more," she said dismissively. She gestured in the direction of the medical bay. "But if you're so sure of her talents, she still lives. Go and retrieve your little spy."

"No, I don't imagine she'll ever be a spy for us now. Your actions have seen to that." He sighed. "It's my fault, really. I should have never let someone as careless as you handle such a valuable asset, but I thought I could use your project as a means to an end. Well, now we have the end and no means."

The comment stung, but she was still intrigued. "How would my project have turned her to us?"

"The loss of her child would've created a perfect opportunity to manipulate her at a previously untapped emotional level. Cardassia would've showered her with sympathy and kindness at such an atrocity."

Now she was confused. "But we were going to be the ones to take her child."

"A fact she would have never known. All she would've known is that the same Federation that gave her up for dead all those years ago, the same Federation that abandoned her to years of torture, were also the ones responsible for leading a military raid against a peaceful agricultural settlement, killing everyone in sight including her child, and leaving her, once again, for dead."

Seska stayed on her feet, but the implications of her actions threatened to send her to her knees. "But surely, you can still salvage her. The abandonment alone could serve as enough of a psychological platform-"

"No!" He slammed his fist against the desk. "No," he said, more calmly. "When she arrived here, she was young and eager. Malleable. I spent three years forming a bond with her and now that bond has been severed."

"Bond?" Seska asked. "You experimented on her. You used her to prove scientific theories."

"I tortured her," he said plainly, "and more importantly I broke her."

"Yes," she said, nodding. "You tortured her. How is that a bond?"

"Because I was consistent," he said. "Twenty-five was given rules; she was taught consequences of breaking those rules. She learned appropriate behaviors. She became conditioned to this life," he explained. "I never committed acts against her through emotion, and she relied on that. She trusted me."

"What about the experiments?"

"Twenty-five has a scientific background. She yearns for reason and fact. Cause and effect. If she was being caused pain because of punishment, she was told of her infraction. If she was part of an experiment, I would tell her when it began and when it was concluded. It helped her mind to form patterns. Expectations." He sat back. "Since the beginning, I've been forcing her to actively participate as often as possible. She's had to make choices. The choices were never easy or comfortable but by forcing her to choose, she was working with me. She was cooperating."

He shook his head. "And in two short months, you managed to destroy everything I've worked towards for three years."

"You keep saying that," Seska growled, angry again, "but you give me nothing in proof."

"I introduced you to Twenty-five as an extension of me. You had my power, my blessing, so by proxy you had the subject's expectations. Twenty-five expects punishments for disobeying established parameters; you punished her for imagined slights. She expects abuse to have reason and structure; you expanded her abuse arbitrarily. And lastly, most damningly, you exposed her to the one thing she had absolutely no defense for – other Terrans."

"You approved my plan to impregnate her using other Terrans."

"They were supposed to fuck, not have a conversation," he snapped. "Ideally, she should have been even more wary of other Terrans than she ever had been before, but you managed to bungle that too. You reunited her with him. You allowed him time to die in her arms. Now there was a true stroke of idiocy." He shook his head in disgust. "Not only did you arbitrarily kill one of our most resilient subjects, you allowed Twenty-five time to form an emotional bond, however brief, with someone besides me. He reminded her of who she used to be. You introduced an outside influence to a controlled subject and the entire experiment has blown up in our faces. Well done, Seska, well done. I don't think the Federation could've possibly set us back more than you have."

"Gul Camet, you must know that I meant-"

"Do be quiet, Seska. You've said quite enough already." He pressed a button on his desk console and the door to his office opened to reveal two security guards. "Seska, your access to this area has been revoked. These men will escort you out."

She glared at him. He raised an eyebrow, taunting her. They both knew the guards would be just as happy to escort her to a cell of her own as they would be to escort her out of the building. Seska spun on her heel and pushed past the guards and out the door. The last thing she saw was Camet turning on a video feed of Twenty-five's cell, ostensibly to check on his medically sedated but well-trained vole.

.