"How can you still have not seen any sign of that freighter? You've all been looking for days now!" Jean-Luc cried at his monitor, making the face of Captain Robins wince like a frightened child. "I don't understand it either, Picard, but that's my report. We've done eighteen sensor sweeps of the region searching for even the slightest clue of his whereabouts. Nothing's come up! We've even had the Cygnus and the Opal keep a weather eye out for reports of new spreads of the plague and there is simply zero to report on. It's like he dropped out of space completely."
"No. No he's out there.." Jean-Luc whispered distractedly. "Thank you, Captain." he continued, suddenly alert. "My ship will be docking at headquarters within the hour. I will file your report with mine and we will figure out what to do from here." Captain Robins gave a curt nod and began to turn away but hesitated. "Is there something else you wanted to say, Robins?"
"Actually, sir…" Robins began, looking wary. "About the sudden illness of your crewman…Ensign Harvey?" Picard leaned back in his chair and sighed with frustration. "Who told you about that?" Robins smirked. "Rumors travel fast, sir." Jean-Luc nodded, accepting this childish truth. "Anyway…I heard that it was done with a hypospray…and that you haven't found the culprit yet. I'm concerned for the well being of my crew as well as yours…you don't suppose this 'Lore' could have found a way to infiltrate us undetected and attack our officers, do you?"
Jean-Luc looked down at the perspiring face of his young, fellow captain. He understood his paranoia as well as his warranted worry and knew that if any solution was to be made for any of this, he needed to be sure that his colleagues remain in a good state of mind. Being that he was somewhat of a role model (though, he wasn't sure why.) he smiled gently down at Captain Robins and said "I don't think that's the case. We still aren't quite sure what's happened but the Ensign has been quarantined until she can recover and we still have security teams roaming the ship. I don't want you to worry about any intruders on your ship. You have a fine crew, and even if he was to get past your defenses, I know you'd all hold up very well."
Robins smiled with gratitude and after a final farewell and boat of thanks, he signed off. Jean-Luc looked up to find Deanna gazing down at him, looking weathered. "Deanna, when did you come in?" he asked, surprised.
"Captain, you were right about Heva." these words were enough to prompt a sudden release from his chair and he rounded his desk to face her. "Are you sure?" he asked, his tone soaked with urgency.
"Positive, Captain." Deanna replied, retrieving her tricorder from it's hoster on the back of her hip. "I had this running the whole time, the readings as well as what I felt from her confirm your theory. Somehow, Lore has found a way to control her from a distance. For a little while she seemed normal but I could sense that there was something blocking her consciousness from being dominant in her mind."
"What do you mean, Counselor?"
"What I mean is although Heva IS there, there is also something else. Not someone, something. It's almost as if there is an artificial personality implanted into her mind. The new personality has gradually adapted to its new surroundings and infected the rest of her mind so that it alone remains dominant. The Heva we know is fighting so hard to resurface."
Jean-Luc and Deanna shared a hard look before Deanna confirmed their worst fear.
"Whatever this is, it's strong and it needs to be stopped or we will lose Heva for good."
"And that's all we know about it so far. Lore has done something to alter Heva's behavior and he plans to make the change permanent. We don't know how and we don't know why. All we know is that we need to figure something out and fast or we are going to lose a great officer, and an even better friend…"
Jean-Luc finished the debriefing and let his last words echo in the minds of his senior officers. Each of them seemed to be off in a completely different world. Data, however, seemed more aggressive than he had ever been before as hestood and spoke first.
"What do we do?" his words struck low, fierce chords driven towards complete strength and sudden raw determination; just like the Data they all knew.
"We wait." Picard said flatly. "We wait to see what Lore has planned. Let things go as they had planned and just when he thinks everything is going accordingly, we will trip him with his own laces."
"But what about Heva?" Geordi asked. "Didn't you say that if we don't remove whatever is causing Lore's mind control we'll lose her? For good?"
"Yes. However Beverly and Deanna have both informed me that Heva has a particular interest in getting inside of headquarters. We have to assume that Lore is planning some sort of attack from the inside and he's going to use her. We'll follow her in and just before she goes through with the plan we'll stop her. By that time Lore will know she's in and will come back for her. That way we'll know what his plan was and we can use that as a means of capturing him. Make him think the plan went through and lure him in."
"What if that doesn't work? What if he expects something like this to happen and doesn't come?" Will asked. Data gave the Captain a strong, thoughtful look and both of them knew what to do without even saying it.
"He will come. Because I can guarantee that I have something to do with this. Whether or not we have realized it yet, I know that if I am there…he will not be able to resist coming. Knowing Lore, he will try to entice me into joining his conquest. When that happens, I can find a means of either apprehending him…or destroying him…" Data's words trailed away and suddenly Heva's face entered his mind again. His chest felt heavy and the strongest feeling of confidence washed over him. "Even if he had no intention of involving me to begin with…by kidnapping Heva and doing whatever it was that he did to her involved me."
Deanna smiled up at Data and Will pat him on the shoulder. Just then, the red alert siren resonated around them. Jean-Luc pressed his com badge and called to the bridge. "Picard to the bridge, what's the situation?"
"It's Commander Brookes, she's released an entire canister of the plague virus into the ventilation systems and beamed over to headquarters…O'Brien reported seeing her transport something else with her when he came to…it looked like a bio container." Faster than any of them thought possible, they all leapt to their feet and ran as the Captain shouted orders to different parts of the ship. "Any decks showing any signs of the virus evacuate immediately and beam over to the station! Quarantine any infected decks with force fields! Mr. Worf grab your security team and search the northern part of the station. Data, Deanna, Will, you're with me. Beverly tend to any crew members who have been infected and get a medical team to anyone unaccounted for! MOVE!" With that, he along with Data, Deanna, and Will, disappeared off of the transporter pads and appeared in a corridor of Star Fleet headquarters. All was quiet as they drew their phasers and rushed forward.