A/N: Thank you SnidgetHex for reviewing!
Chapter 5
Raffi watched in dismay as Emil sedated Rios and he collapsed unconscious to the floor. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded.
Soji looked shaken as she clamped a hand over her arm, which was bleeding. "He tried to kill Picard and me."
Everyone blinked incredulously at that.
"Captain Rios would never do that," Elnor said, sounding like a confused, kicked puppy. "Is this an imposter?"
"I don't know," Picard answered, turning to Emil. "You activated downstairs because you detected something wrong with Rios?"
Emil nodded, mouth pressed into a thin line. "My sensors noted a foreign chemical in the captain's brain the moment I was brought back online."
"Hold on," Raffi said with a frown. "You were offline?"
Agnes let out a small sound that drew everyone's attention to her. She was looking at Cris in confusion.
"Elnor and I wanted the Hospitality Hologram for something, but he wasn't responding," she said. "So I checked the system and found all the holos had been disabled. I thought it was one of the glitches Cris said he was dealing with, so I fixed it."
"The captain disabled us as soon as the ship's systems came back online," Emil said.
"Wait," Raffi interjected, "the whole ship was offline? When?"
"I have yet to sync with the computer," Emil replied. "My first concern was, well, this." He gestured to the unconscious captain still lying on the floor where he'd dropped.
"Your timely intervention saved our lives," Picard told Agnes. "If the EMH hadn't activated when it did, Rios very well would have shot us on the spot."
Raffi shook her head, still in denial over what she was hearing. "This doesn't make any sense." She was willing to believe Elnor's imposter theory, which was not at all comforting.
"I suggest we get Rios to the med bay and figure it out," Seven put in, reaching down to pick him up. Elnor moved in to help, and together they carried him down to the lower deck. Everyone followed.
After laying him on the bio bed, Emil waved for them to back up out of the alcove, and then he activated an isolation field. With Rios secure, he turned to Soji.
"What is the nature of your injury?"
Soji moved her hand away from her arm. "He stabbed me with a tool or something."
"What exactly happened?" Seven asked.
Emil grabbed his medical equipment, and while he treated Soji's wound, she and Picard recounted the events leading up to and through Rios attacking them out of the blue.
Emil frowned thoughtfully. "Was the captain acting strange before that?"
"No," Raffi said. But a few of the others were sharing uncertain looks.
"He was a bit short with everyone," Elnor put in.
"Nothing seemed overtly wrong when we got back on the ship," Agnes added. "But…when I talked to him a few days ago, he had seemed…distracted. I don't know. We didn't have a visual link. He said it was just more glitches."
Emil finished using the dermal regenerator on Soji and then walked through the force field to begin a medical scan of Rios. "Well, I can tell you this is Captain Rios and not an imposter," he began with. "But there are traces of multiple chemical agents in his system."
"What kind?" Seven asked.
"I'll have to run some more scans."
"I'm going to check the ship's logs," Seven said and went to one of the consoles in the room.
The rest of them stood around anxiously while Emil and Seven worked.
"There was a glitch in the computer ten days ago," Seven reported. "The ship then went completely dormant until yesterday when a transporter beam infiltrated the deck. Shortly after that, everything powered up and a course was laid in for Earth."
"Are you saying Cris wasn't on the ship at all?" Agnes asked.
"It doesn't look like it."
Soji went over to peer at the screen, then nudged Seven aside as she apparently spotted something. "I recognize the string of coding in this glitch—it's Romulan."
Raffi's blood ran cold.
"Romulans were here?" Elnor asked.
If the Romulans were behind this…that would explain why Cris had only attacked Picard and Soji. But that didn't explain how he would have been coopted into doing something like that in the first place.
"We'll have to ask Rios," Picard said. "Doctor?"
"I've never seen this neurological agent before," Emil responded. "It's a combination, in fact, and they have altered parts of the captain's brain chemistry significantly."
That sounded bad, really bad.
"Wake him up," Picard ordered. "We need to speak with him."
Emil walked through the force field and loaded a hypospray with a stimulant, which he then injected into Cris's neck.
Cris woke groggily and lolled his head around in confusion. Then like a shot, he surged off the bio bed and staggered against the wall, glaring at everyone in anger…and, Raffi recognized, fear.
She walked up to the edge of the alcove. "Cris," she said in a calming yet worried voice. "What's going on?"
He flicked a look at Picard and Soji.
"You attacked them," Raffi pressed. "Why?"
Cris whipped his gaze back to her. "Because they've been the real enemy all along."
Raffi blinked. "What?"
"We've been played, Raffi. The synths still plan to subjugate all organic life in this universe, and those two are at the forefront of it!" He jabbed a finger at Soji and JL.
Raffi gaped in stupefaction at the declaration.
Picard stepped forward. "Rios, you know that's not true."
"I've seen the truth," he retorted. He jerked a pleading look around at Raffi, Agnes, Elnor, and Seven. "Listen, they've been manipulating us. You've all been influenced by a synthetic chemical."
"Captain," Emil interjected. "You're the one who's been infected with a chemical agent that's affected your brain's processing functions."
"You've been reprogrammed to side with the synths," Cris snapped. "Get the hell away from me. I won't let you rearrange my mind again."
Usually Emil didn't back off under Rios's temper, but this time he did, exiting through the isolation field. Cris's eyes narrowed as he realized it was there.
"Cris," Raffi said, trying to keep her voice level. "Where have you been the past week?"
He looked at her then with such emotion that she was stricken. There weren't many times she'd seen that deep into his soul, but this was one of them.
"With Alonzo," he said.
Raffi frowned. Who…? She straightened as it hit her. "Wait, Captain Alonzo Vandermeer?"
Cris nodded. "He's alive, Raf. The synths faked his death in order to take him captive, but he escaped."
Raffi was utterly dumbfounded. "Honey, you saw him die."
Cris shook his head and began pacing in the alcove. "They implanted fake memories so I wouldn't go looking for him."
"Captain Rios," Soji spoke up. "You were with the Romulans. The glitch in La Sirena's system is Romulan code."
"They knew who you were all along," he snapped at her with such vitriol that it stunned them all. "The Destroyer." He then strode toward the edge of the containment field. "Are you Jana?" he demanded.
Soji's brows rose dubiously. "What? Jana's dead."
Cris shook his head and jabbed a finger at her. "That's just what the synths wanted me to think. But Alonzo showed me what really happened on the ibn Majid."
"And what was that?" Picard asked.
Rios shot him a scathing glare. "The synths kidnapped my captain and then Jana dug into my head to make me think Vandermeer was a cold-blooded murderer who shot two innocents and then himself right in front of me." He turned back to the others with a beseeching look. "The synths have been manipulating us from the start. We have to stop them before it's too late."
Raffi stared at her best friend in shock. How could he say all this? How…how could he believe it?
"I suggest we speak outside," Emil said quietly.
They all cast worried looks at Rios as they headed out of the med bay.
"Raffi," he called, pleaded, making her pause and look back. "Purge the synth code from the EHs. Then you'll see."
She could only gaze back at him in bewildered sorrow before turning her back and following after the others.
"What did the Romulans do to him?" Agnes asked, voice cracking.
"Some very thorough brainwashing," Seven answered.
"I concur," Emil said. "I can't say what methods exactly were employed, but combined with whatever drugs were in his system, that is my diagnosis."
"So how do we undo it?" Raffi asked.
Emil shrugged his eyebrows. "I have no idea."