Part Ten

The Daystrom Cybernetics Annex on Galor IV, some fourteen weeks later…

Lore waited until the cramped, windowless conference room emptied and he was left alone in the dark before activating his holoprojector and pacing furiously around and around and around the table.

They'd taken everything. Those clone-ish, expressionless Starfleet officers with their haircuts and their phasers. Without so much as a 'hello,' those uniformed thugs had swarmed his family's home, clapped his father in magnetic shackles, read off a long list of supposed offenses, and started identifying, stacking, and transporting things away. They grabbed Charlie, Lore's silvery CPU, his father's battered notebooks and records and files… Even poor, unfinished D-6 and Bertie's lifeless shell of a body.

Everything.

And now, Lore was here, alone, with no way to contact his family, no way of knowing what those Starfleet bastards had done to his father, to Charlie…whether they'd captured Juliana at her lab, or if she was still out there, free and frantic to know what had happened…

If he could have, Lore would have kicked at the wheeled chairs, sending them spinning, tilted the heavy conference table on its edge. Frustratingly, though, the image his little box could project was just that: a projected image of light, without substance enough to pick up a data padd, let alone hurl one against the wall. For that, he needed the far more powerful and sophisticated holoemitters Juliana had installed back home. But, he wasn't back home, he was here, a confiscated exhibit stacked atop a pile of notebooks in a corner of a third-rate, Federation-sterile conference room.

It was enough to make a sophisticated computer consciousness scream out loud.

The door slid open just as he was on the verge of putting that thought into practice and Lore swore at his own impulsive stupidity. He should have known better than to activate his image, should have waited, watched, allowed his fumbling human captors to presume he was just what he seemed: a shiny positronic construct, no more living than a game cube…

But, it was too late to vanish now. He had been seen…and by none other than Dr. Ira Graves himself.

"Who the hell are you?" the scientist demanded. "How did you get in here?"

Lore snorted.

"Why don't you tell me, old man," he snarked, and Graves frowned through his trim, gray beard.

"I know that voice…" he murmured, more to himself than to Lore. "Computer, lights!"

Lore raised his chin, fixing the aging scientist with a defiant glare. Graves, for his part, looked staggered.

"Impossible…" he gasped. "You…you can't be…? But, no, Soong is being held in Starfleet custody until the trial – there's no way he could have escaped. That must make you…"

"I am his son," Lore stated, staring the scientist straight in the eye.

"Really?"

Much to Lore's annoyance, Graves's discomfort was rapidly turning to amusement.

"Funny. I never thought Soong the type to procreate. What's your name?"

"What do you care?" Lore retorted.

Graves barked a short laugh and his eyes glinted, as if he'd just stumbled across a connection he'd been missing for months.

"My, my, aren't you a chip off the old block! Tell me, sonny, is your father aware his boy has been hacking my computers these past few years?"

"Of course not," Lore said. "How the hell did you find out?"

Graves snickered smugly, his suspicion confirmed.

"I doubt I ever would have," the older man admitted, "if not for that transport ticket made out in your father's name. I half thought the fool was dead, until I spotted that."

Lore swallowed a surge of horror and closed his eyes, hissing under his breath: "Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…!"

Graves's smug smile grew into a gloating grin.

"Isn't it something how one careless slip-up can derail a lifetime of work," he said, his eyes falling on Lore's box and sparking with recognition. "Or, make it all come together… Let me see that box."

"Get away from that!" Lore shrieked and lunged to cut him off, but Graves's hand passed right through his holographic chest. The man shuddered and gasped.

"What are you?" he exclaimed.

"I'm not a what, I'm a who!" Lore snapped. "You should know, Uncle Ira. After all, you're the one who named me!"

"Uncle…" Graves sputtered. "What do you mean, I named you? I never—"

The scientist cut himself off, his hand flying to his forehead as he stared from the hologram to the silvery box, then back to the hologram, pulling it all together…

"Lore!"

"Right." Lore glared, and crossed his arms.

"How…" the scientist gasped, clearly struggling. "But of course, it must be a hologram. Hell…" Graves shook his head, his eyes wide and livid with envy. "He did it. He said he'd do it, and he did it. That jammy bastard…!"

He looked at Lore.

"Then, the other one, that gold-skinned robot with the jaundice-yellow eyes…"

"Charlie is an android," Lore corrected, "and my kid brother. And you are a kidnapper!" he accused angrily. "My father's innocent of any crime, and you know it! I'm the one who linked up with your computer. I did it on my own, for my own reasons, and as far as I know there is no law against one AI deciding to have a friendly chat with another, no matter how simple and unsophisticated yours might be. Call off this petty witch hunt and get your Starfleet guard dogs to send my family home."

Graves chuckled darkly.

"I'm afraid you are home, my lad," he said. "You may not be aware of it, but your so-called 'father' did steal you from my lab long ago. Now you're finally mine again, that ungrateful reprobate can't touch you. Better get used to it, sonny. You'll never see your 'family' again."

"Why you—!" Lore clenched his fists in fury, but Graves just smirked at Lore's helpless image and snatched up the silvery little box, turning it over in his hands until he found what he was looking for.

"No…" Lore gasped. "No, don't you dare! Uncle Ira-"

Lore's human-looking image sputtered and vanished, his conscious awareness swiftly pinholing to black.

Graves had located his off switch.

To Be Continued...

References include: Brothers; Descent I/II; The Schizoid Man.

More of this story and Skin Deep will be coming soon because it's almost my birthday and I really want to see what happens next before I have to go bury myself in books for the rest of the week...and weekend... :p I have new chapters for Alternative Data (my favorite!) and A Different Kind of Ace in the works too, but I'm afraid they won't be ready for a while... Until next time, thank you very much for reading! Your reviews are very deeply appreciated! :)