Chapter Four; Scindo
Scindo. Verb. 1. Rend, cut to pieces 2. Tear in rage/grief 3. Divide, split
"Data!" Crusher gaped, startled, as the android entered the medical bay, his eyes darting.
"Hello, Doctor. Might I have a moment of your time?"
"O-of course!" She put down her PADD and ushered him into her office, motioned for him to sit. "What can I do for you?"
The android took a breath. "Might I see the bodies recovered from Commander Maddox's ship?"
Crusher's eyes widened. "Why?" She blurted. Data averted his gaze.
"I thought that, perhaps, it may help to give me a sense of closure."
"Right." Crusher leant back in her seat. "I can understand that. But, are you sure? How are you, in yourself? I wasn't expecting to see you up and about so soon."
"I am... as well as might be expected, under the circumstances." Data's hands were fidgeting in his lap, two fingers tapping on his palm. "Might I see them? Now?"
Crusher frowned. "Does Deanna know you're doing this?"
"I have not asked her." His fingers sped up. "Please. May I?"
She sighed, pushed herself up. "I'll come with you."
In the morgue, she pressed a few panels. Four pods slid from the walls with a gentle hiss, their climate-controlled interiors housing the corpses recovered from the Aerie class ship that Maddox had stolen. Data steeled his nerves and gazed through the small window of the first coffin, into the face of the Romulan guard. His hard expression was pinched, frail and fragile looking in death.
"I never even knew his name." He murmured.
"We don't know much about them ourselves." Crusher said quietly. "Their computers were locked down tight, the Romulan government have denied all knowledge. We're holding the bodies to take back to headquarters to let the experts see if they can get any more information."
Data sighed and moved to the second pod. Another Romulan, female. He wondered bleakly if these two were married also, as Maddox had been. He moved across to the third pod, looked at the readout on the small panel, and froze when he looked through the glass.
"There must be some mistake!" He cried, looking up at Crusher in shock. She shook her head sadly.
"No, look again. That's Sarah Maddox."
"But..." Data looked again at the pale face of the woman, her dark hair limned with frost. She had delicate lips, a high forehead and prominent cheekbones. He could see her dark eyelashes lying across her cheeks, her eyelids closed as if in sleep. Looking closer, he could see the ruptured blood vessels in her face, evidence of her struggle for life. He shuddered.
"He made the android to look like her." He whispered. "Why?"
Crusher sighed. "Another question we will never have an answer for."
"Was she... he said she was..." Data couldn't bring himself to say any more.
"About thirty five weeks." Crusher said softly. Data brushed his hand across the frosted glass.
"The child would have survived." His voice was flat and emotionless. "If I had not... If we had been faster..." He bowed his head, then straightened and moved to the last pod. Lying in state was the android, and he looked up at Crusher.
"Where are the others?"
"This is it." She waved her hand. "The only bodies on board."
Data felt his head spin. Only two guards. He could have overpowered them easily, even without Lore's help. He remembered the hologramatic trickery, the meddling with his perception of time.
He looked down again at the android. She was a perfect facsimile of Sara Maddox, down to the softly pouting lips and dark lashes. No blood in those painted-on veins, though, no lungs or brain to be deprived of oxygen. But dead, all the same.
"Do you think you could fix her?" Crusher asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.
"I could." He murmured, before shaking his head bitterly. "But for what purpose? She would learn, and grow, and she would begin to question. And one day she would ask me; why this face?" He looked up at the doctor. "What could I tell her? It is better that she never knows."
"All adopted children ask those questions..." Crusher began, but Data shook his head violently.
"She would find out, one way or another. Trust me." He quirked a bitter smile. "I helped to build her. She would be intelligent enough to piece together the puzzle. It would devastate her. This is... less cruel."
"You could give her a chance." Crusher said quietly. Data looked down at the android.
"Please, leave." He whispered. Crusher squeezed his shoulder briefly before quietly leaving the morgue.
"Hello, Data."
Data didn't raise his head as the counselor entered the morgue, stayed staring down at the android in the coffin.
"You've been here for some time." Troi said gently. Data didn't move as he answered.
"Three hours, fourteen minutes, fifty two point five nine seconds."
"I think it's time for you to come away." She drifted over to put a hand on his arm and he shuddered at her touch.
"Someone must mourn for her."
"And you have. You will. I know that you won't forget. But you don't have to stand here to remember her. Come away now."
Data drew a trembling breath and allowed himself to be lead back into the main medical bay and into Doctor Crusher's office, where Troi sat him on the couch and seated herself behind the desk.
"Geordi came to see me." She said, and paused a moment to see if he would respond. He had laced his fingers together in his lap, was tapping his left index and middle fingers spasmodically on the back of his right hand. She bent her head a little to look into his face.
"He was very concerned for you. He would like to see you, if you want. Would you like that?"
"I have nothing to say to him. He does not understand."
"Understand what?" Troi cocked her head to one side, regarding the android with her dark eyes. He turned his face to her.
"You would not understand either." He said, and his voice was devoid of emotion, but she could sense them swirling in his mind. Anger, guilt, grief, love.
"I can try." She said mildly. He scowled.
"You cannot understand, because you will judge me by your own invented standards, just as Geordi does." Guilt, shame, fear, anger.
"I won't judge you, that's not my place, I'm here to listen."
"I remember Omicron Theta." Data spat. "I remember my brother, and I remember our love, and Geordi cannot accept that it is possible for me to love more than one being." Anger, frustration, anger.
"I'm sure he understands that the love between siblings is different than that between romantic partners."
Data barked a bitter laugh. "You do not understand. My love for my brother has no such boundaries. I know every inch of him, every circuit, every particle." He glared at Troi. "I fucked him. I fucked him before, when we were innocent and young and perfect, and I fucked him here, on this ship, in his cell, broken and bitter and angry. My love for him has no limit, and I swore I would do all in my power to keep him safe, and I brought him here, and you killed him." Anger, anger, anger.
Troi was doing her level best to project an outward appearance of calm, but Data knew that he had rattled her, he could hear her heart pounding, could measure the increase in her body temperature.
"Does that excite you?" He asked suddenly, and she gasped in shock. "Do you like the thought of Lore and I in a passionate embrace..."
"Stop!" She cried. "Data, please! This isn't like you, to be so crude!"
"Crude?" He snapped. "I am speaking of love! Pure and true! The only two members of an entire species..."
"But, you were raised as brothers, you said as much." She was struggling to regain her composure, and Data sneered.
"You still cannot comprehend, you are so locked into you biological interpretation, so blinded by human morals..."
"They are your morals too! Would you abandon..."
Data exploded to his feet and brought his fist down into the desk, smashing it in two with a driving hammer blow. Troi threw herself back onto the floor with a shriek.
"How can I be expected to explain anything if I am never given the opportunity to complete a sentence?" He shouted. "You dare to speak to me of human morals, after everything that has been done to me and my kind? You insist that human morals should be sufficient, but I. Am. Not. HUMAN!" He grabbed the terminal and ripped it from the shattered desk to send it spinning into the wall, before whirling once more to the shocked counselor, baring his teeth in a snarl. "How can you claim to know what is best for me, what is right? You do not know how I think, how I feel!"
"Data..." Troi drew herself up, leaning against the wall for support. "I do know how you feel. I may not understand what it's like to be an android, but I understand that you feel betrayed and abandoned, I do understand that. Please, I need you to calm down, I just want to talk to you."
He glared at her, his golden eyes glowing, and she was shockingly reminded of Lore. Then his expression softened, his eyes lost their feral gleam.
"I am so frightened." He murmured. "I have ruined everything, over and over again. I have lost everything, I have killed innocents, I have destroyed my career. What am I meant to do?"
Troi closed her eyes briefly and drew a calming breath.
"The first thing you need to do is ask for help. I am here to help you. You have to trust me."
"Please..." He whispered.
"Put your hands where I can see them!" Barked a voice, and Data whirled to see two security personnel, phasers drawn and aimed. He snapped his head round to glare at Troi.
"You are asking me to trust you, while I have weapons aimed at me?" He growled. She shook her head, waved at the guards.
"Please, no, it's fine, everything is under control, please go!" She said desperately. Data took a swift step towards her and the guards raised their phasers again.
"Don't move!" One of them shouted, and Data's lip twisted.
"I know now what you were doing." He whispered to her, his voice lethal. "You were trying to trick me, to lull me into a false sense of security so that I can be captured and deactivated and dismantled, just like my brother. How can you ask me to trust you, when all you organics do is lie and manipulate and betray?"
"Data, that's not true. I didn't know that security had been alerted, I promise. Someone must have heard a noise and called them. I didn't know. I need you to calm down and think rationally. If I had wanted to capture you, I could have done it in the morgue. You had your back to me, I could have deactivated you, but I didn't, because no-one wants to deactivate you. No-one's going to harm you." She turned her dark gaze to the guards. "I will not allow it."
The guards slowly lowered their phasers, and Crusher appeared, stepping in front of the security detail with her arms folded.
"As you can see, the situation's under control." She said calmly. "So, off you go, out."
The two guards looked at each other, then at the CMO, who was regarding them icily.
"Yes, sir." They backed slowly from the medical bay, their eyes fixed on the android until the last moment. As the door his shut, Data allowed his legs to give, and he slumped heavily to the floor amid the shattered remnants of the desk, his breath rasping in and out. He wrapped his arms around himself and his fingers twitched and tapped compulsively at his own shoulder. Crusher looked questioningly at Troi, who nodded reassuringly, although the counselor's face was pale. Crusher backed away, although she kept one eye on her office as she went about her duties.