A/N: Thank you SnidgetHex for reviewing!

Chapter 7

After securing Rios back in the med bay behind the force field, Raffi found herself essentially acting captain of La Sirena. Which was not a very comfortable feeling, considering the circumstances. Cris had been medically locked out of all command codes, so he wouldn't be escaping again, and Emil opted to keep him sedated for the moment while the rest of them tried to figure out where to go from there.

They had returned to the bridge to resume their efforts in trying to track down where Rios had been taken for this brainwashing. Agnes had brought out her PADD, and between the call Cris had supposedly placed to her during the summit and the transporter beam that'd brought him back, they were able to trace the signals to Titan.

Raffi activated Enoch to take over the helm and turn the ship around to head back to the star system. But the scans they did upon arriving said nothing was there.

"Let me do some recalibration," Soji said at the operations station.

They all waited as her fingers deftly flew across the console.

"Here," she eventually said. "An anomaly in the readings. Could be from a cloaking device."

"Looks like a good place to start," Seven said.

Soji stood up quickly. "Let's go."

Elnor drew his sword. "I am coming with you."

"Great," Raffi said. "Field trip."

"Raffi," Picard interjected. "You are in command of the ship now; you should stay on board. Plus, you are the closest to Rios. If anyone can help get through to him, it's you."

Raffi's lips thinned. As much as she wanted to go down there and find those bastards that had so horribly messed with her best friend, she knew Picard was right. "Alright," she consented.

She followed Seven, Soji, and Elnor across the deck to the armory next to the transporter pad. Only Seven and Soji loaded up on weapons, while Elnor was content to use his blade.

Raffi stood by the control console and looked at the three of them. "Find something."

Seven gave a resolute nod as they were wrapped in swirling lights and dematerialized.

"I'll man the station," Picard said.

Raffi nodded and made her way down to the med bay where Agnes was sitting in dour silence. "We have a lead," Raffi told her. "Seven, Soji, and Elnor have beamed down to look into it."

Agnes gave a small nod. "Do you think this can be undone?" she asked despondently.

Raffi's heart constricted. "I'm not giving up just yet." She waved at Emil. "Wake him up."

Emil walked through the containment field and injected a stimulant into Cris. His waking was the same as last time, groggy at first, but once he realized where he was, he was off the bio bed and moving in agitation once more.

"Picard and Soji won't be coming in here," Raffi told him. "You don't have to worry about them trying anything."

Cris rolled his eyes. "They're playing the bigger person, how noble."

"You expected them to come in and mess with your memories, right?" Raffi replied. "They haven't done that, though."

"I've been knocked out twice," Rios retorted. "For all I know, they tried it already but for some reason it didn't work. Maybe Vandermeer helping me break the false memories made me immune."

Raffi shook her head, dismayed at how thorough the Romulans had been. She decided to try a different tact. "What was Vandermeer like?"

Cris's expression instantly softened at the mention of his former captain. "He was the man I remembered, before those horrible lies were implanted that made me think he was a cold-blooded murderer."

Agnes stood up and came over to stand next to Raffi. "You said he showed you what really happened on the ibn Majid. How?"

"He had a holo recreation."

Raffi frowned. "Then how do you know that's the truth? It could have been a falsehood too."

"He was there."

"Did he take you to a holodeck?" Raffi asked.

Cris shook his head. "It was in the room."

So that was how they'd done it, a hologram. Raffi almost opened her mouth to tell him that was what he'd seen, but she knew challenging that part of his belief wouldn't go well.

Emil cleared his throat as he passed by and lowered his voice. "Visual reinforcement along with a special drug combination would have made his brain more susceptible to the reprogramming."

"You're the one who's nothing but programming," Rios snapped.

"Why didn't Vandermeer come back with you?" Raffi asked, trying to redirect him again. "Exposing the synths with an eyewitness everyone thought was dead would have gotten their attention."

"Come on, Raffi," he said in exasperation. "You know the answer to that better than anyone. There are agents planted throughout Starfleet, just like Picard. Just like the Tal Shiar. We have to root them out first."

"Which Vandermeer could help us do," she pressed. "Does he know who the plants are? Did he give you names?"

Rios shook his head. "No, he didn't." He walked up to the edge of the force field. "But we can work together to stop them. Once you two are free from Picard and Soji's influence." Cris's eyes softened again. "I'd love to introduce you to Alonzo."

"I'd like to meet him too," Raffi replied. "Maybe you could get us in contact so I could find him and he could help me like he helped you."

"I don't have a way to contact him. But he'll come for me when he realizes I was captured. And you and Agnes can come with us."

Raffi swallowed a burst of irritation. Leave it to the Romulans to cover all their bases. She couldn't find a single hole to poke in Rios's twisted logic.

She hoped the others were having better luck.

Soji held her phaser pistol at the ready as she rematerialized on the moon's surface a mile from where they suspected the cloaked facility was. The terrain was rocky as they made their way toward it, hoping not to set off any external sensors. But if they did, they were prepared and more than capable of handling whatever came out at them.

"It should be right here," Seven announced, holding a tricorder.

Soji adjusted her vision to a different spectrum. She could see the wavering ripples of the cloaking shield, but what she was trying to find was the energy output powering it. She roved her gaze along the wall until she spotted a red spot where a panel would be. Using that as her guide, she hacked into the power grid and disabled it. The cloaking shield dropped, revealing an outpost.

"They will have definitely detected that," Seven said, putting the tricorder away and raising her phaser rifle.

"Door's right here," Elnor called.

Seven stormed over and shot through the locking mechanism. Alarms sounded inside as the three of them made entry.

They were immediately met with a pair of Romulan guards that Seven and Soji easily gunned down. More came barreling down the corridor and a full-on battle commenced. Soji's and Seven's firing accuracy was unrivaled, and Elnor was a veritable whirlwind of blades, beheading the enemy left and right. They mowed down any and all resistance, until up ahead they spotted a Romulan dressed less like a guard and more like someone in charge. He pivoted and ran.

Soji bolted after him, her synth speed allowing her to catch up with him easily, and she grabbed him by the back of his coat and swung him around into the wall. She then leveled her phaser at him.

"You're going to tell me everything you did to Captain Rios."

The Romulan sneered at her, then bit down hard. Soji heard something crack like a tooth. Then he started convulsing.

Seven was suddenly there and yanking Soji away from him as he disintegrated with a scream that could have splattered her with the corrosive substance as well. She turned to look at Seven and Elnor in bewilderment. There were no more guards at present, just the intruder alert blaring.

"Stay on guard," Seven cautioned as they continued searching the facility.

They found a laboratory with lots of machines and equipment, including a medical chair armed with restraints, sitting empty. Seven went to the computer to search the files.

"Rios was here," she said after a moment.

Soji stared at the chair balefully, easily able to imagine its use, before moving to a counter with various vials of liquid substances. "Does it say what agents they used?"

"Yes." She read out three different chemicals, and Soji scanned the labels on the counter to pick each of them out. "Got them."

"I'm making a copy of their records as well," Seven said, which didn't take very long.

"Then we should get back."

"Should we search for Rios's old captain?" Elnor put in.

"He can't really be alive, can he?" Soji said skeptically.

"We might as well search the rest of the facility," Seven replied. "Make sure no other agents are hiding."

It wasn't a very large outpost, so the search didn't take too long, and they didn't find anyone. But they did find a room with meager furniture that was too large to be a simple crewman's quarters. There was also a full operations panel on the wall outside, which Soji started tapping.

"It's a holo suite," she said in confusion. There was one interactive hologram on file, so she pulled up the image without activating the personality subroutines.

An older man with graying hair and wearing dark gray materialized inside the room.

"Captain Vandermeer," Seven remarked.

"Then, he's not really alive?" Elnor said.

"No."

"Why wouldn't Captain Rios realize he was interacting with a hologram?"

"With the drugs they pumped into him, it's not surprising," Seven answered.

"We should go," Soji said. "Before that alert draws a Romulan ship to check on their outpost."

Seven activated her comm link. "Seven to La Sirena, beam us up."

"Acknowledged," Picard responded, and a second later the familiar whir of the transporter beam surrounded them.

They reappeared on the deck of La Sirena.

"Did you find anything?" Picard asked.

"Plenty," Seven replied, handing over the data stick to Elnor. "Get those to Emil. I'm going to alert Starfleet Security about the base."

Picard hung back as Soji and Elnor headed down to the med bay where they gave Emil the chemicals and data they'd taken.

The EMH took them and immediately downloaded the information into his terminal to look over. After a moment, he hummed grimly.

"What is it?" Agnes asked, her and Raffi turning away from the alcove where they'd been standing watch.

"These are nasty neurological agents," he replied. "But to combine them?" He sighed. "I've got my work cut out for me."

Soji glanced at Rios, who was glaring at her with the same hatred that Romulan who'd killed himself had. She wanted to tell him what they'd found down there, how they were right and it was the Romulans. But she knew he wouldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe her. Even if they took him down there, he'd probably be convinced she was manipulating his perception and memories.

So even though she wanted to stay and help, Soji swallowed hard and left the room. Her presence would only aggravate the situation.