Asset's myopic cunning makes her suitable for short- or medium-term assignment only

They dragged her into the interrogation room by her elbows, neither man showing concern that her bound feet were scraping over the floor. To be fair to them, Seska's slack expression gave the impression that she also didn't notice the way the layers of her skin rubbed away with the friction.

She did.

Training may have prepared her to be tortured by the Maquis — or the Romulans if she ever made a wrong turn and landed in their territory — but it had especially prepared her for this. A practical how-to in how not to break under the thumb of her own kind.

Her Cardassian guards dropped her on a metal chair in a graceless heap. She remained slouched there, shackled hands in her lap, unresponsive until a voice — low but familiar called out:

"Remove her binds, please."

Across from her, nearly obfuscated by the intense lights shining from behind him, sat Obarit in place of the Gul who had been overseeing her interrogations.

Seska gave no indication to the others that knew who he was.

One of the guards approached and freed her. His movements were efficient, which meant they were brutally unconcerned with the contact sores on her ankles and wrists. She welcomed the pain; it meant she continued to possess all of her limbs.

Many in her place weren't so lucky.

Not that they hadn't tried to take them. Seska could recall, at will, the sounds of her fingers breaking — the grinding and clicking of them knitting back together again —, the high crack of her arms snapping, the deep creak of her femur as they tested its strength.

"Leave us."

When her tormentors were gone, Seska sat straighter. She trusted Obarit implicitly, but she knew speaking now would be foolish. Anyone could be listening.

Anyone could be testing her.

The best thing to do was to do was follow her training.

The lights behind him dimmed at his command, allowing her eyes to adjust until she could see his face. Had she been at a hundred percent, Seska would be been ashamed at how emotional being able to look at him now made her.

Obarit observed her with sympathy and pride. Even though he was a man driven by duty not emotion, he gifted her an apology.

"I wish there had been another way," he confessed, and there was no sign of deceit in his expression or tone.

Seska remained silent.

"I've come to brief you on your assignment,"

Those were the words she needed to hear in order to know she could speak.

"I—" her voice cracked, the result of the overuse of her vocal chords, "I assumed there had been a change of plans."

The plan had been to allow herself to be caught by the Cardassian military, where she'd immediately be transferred into Obsidian Order custody and debriefed. After a time, they would have given her her face and name back and reassigned her to another mission.

Her two weeks of very thorough torture was a clear indication that the parameters had changed.

"Your Maquis comrades have been preparing a rescue mission. I intend to let them succeed."

Unspeakable things had been done to her in this room by her own people. Her only solace during the worst of it had been that they did not know who she was. And because they did not know, Seska understood she couldn't tell them the truth. That she was one of them.

That she was important.

That there must be an explanation for this mistake.

Somehow, it was this that had nearly broken her. Not the pain. Not the degrading treatment.

That she was, truly in the eyes of the state, a Bajoran.

"Have I done something wrong?"

Her role had been to pass on information about the movements of the broader Maquis network, to uncover rogue elements in the Cardassian government that tried to assist them, not to eradicate the crew of the Val Jean. Perhaps the Order had meant her to take that initiative at the end of her mission, to prove that the group had meant nothing to her.

Had all of this been her punishment for failing them?

Obarit knew her better than she knew herself, which meant it was very easy for him to understand why this had been her reaction.

"You have exceeded all of our expectations, Preka," he reassured her

The name didn't suit her when she looked like what she did now — with this face and the bruises that disfigured it —, but Seska let him call her by it anyway.

He could do anything he wanted to her because her life wasn't her own.

"What are my new orders?"

His expression became thoughtful, "Good. It is always best to accept what you cannot change. I will leave this place. When Tarrak and Gopor return, you will stall them by giving them only enough information to make them interested in keeping you alive. You have three days."

She wanted to ask if that would stop the torture, but Seska knew that it wouldn't.

"The Order will make sure the conditions are right for the rescue mission to succeed."

Which meant Tarrak and Gopor would end up on the wrong end of enemy fire. Seska found it a pity that she didn't mind; they'd shown a disgusting interest in Bajoran women.

"When you are back among the Maquis, your orders are to find a way to take over Chakotay's cell. If that is beyond your abilities, then you are to create your own. I would prefer the former, but understand that his crew has demonstrated a loyalty to him that unusual for the organization."

Two years she'd already spent aboard the Val Jean. Two years saying 'yes sir'. Two years laying on her back and thinking of the Empire. That was supposed to be the end of it; hers was never supposed to be a long-term mission.

"Understood," Seska said, even though she knew that she was incapable of leading anyone, even though she knew that Obarit knew she couldn't possibly succeed.

The Order had handed down this final test, fully aware that she would fail it.

…

Few aboard this ship commanded Seska's respect as easily as Tuvok did. Part of this was a professional courtesy. He had managed to convince the Maquis — and in turn her — that he was truly one of them, a rare Vulcan capable of unsanctioned violence.

Even though his constant distrust of her now was an annoyance, Seska also saw it as a compliment. A professional courtesy of his own.

He hadn't suspected she was a spy, either.

It was only fair, then, that they suffered the consequences of his well-earned paranoia together.

"Did you really think the Maquis crew would follow me in a mutiny? After what I did to them? Surely, even you can't find them that simple-minded."

They were hiding in a jefferies tube, one that gave access to Transporter Room One through a small ancillary grate, as he monitored the readings from his tricorder, and she checked and rechecked the settings on her phaser. It was holographic, but Jonas' alterations to Tuvok's holoprogram made it as dangerous as the real thing.

To set to vaporize or not to set to vaporize? Was it excessive if her targets weren't even real?

"This is one of several scenarios I created to explore the risk you posed to this crew. It was abandoned in favor of the one which you attempted to take Voyager with Kazon force."

She supposed she should be thankful he was using past tense, "Well, while I'm glad you think I'd be a competent leader, I'd have never been able to keep this ship once taking it. There was little point in trying."

"I concur."

Seska pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him. It was one thing to recognize her own shortcomings out loud, it was another for him to do so as well, "Don't try to distract me from the fact that you expected more trouble from the Maquis. This program is as much about them as it is about me."

Tuvok conceded the point with the tiniest tilt of his head he could manage and then said, "You are correct."

"What I don't understand is why you didn't delete it. What if someone else found it," someone else had found it, but that wasn't the point she was trying to make here, "someone like Paris. He sticks his nose where it doesn't belong all the time."

"Need I remind you, that you were not meant to access this program either?"

Seska smirked, but before she could respond, the doors to the transporter room opened. The Captain — or rather, her holographic facsimile — strode in while giving orders to a replica of Tuvok.

"Should we ask for their assistance?" she whispered, trusting his decades of knowledge on Kathryn Janeway and his centuries of knowledge on himself.

"It would be wise to make allies."

But the words had barely left his mouth before a version of Seska, one who still looked half Bajoran, rushed in with a small group of Maquis and vaporized the pair on sight.

How absolutely unrealistic. She knew better than to summarily execute a commanding officer of a ship without first securing their command codes. Also — she was able to admit this now — Janeway and Tuvok would never freely roam around a besieged vessel without securing the area around them first. Also also, there was no universe where Seska would be able to outsmart them if they were able to freely work together.

Jonas' manipulations must have made everyone dumber. That was the only explanation. There was no way Tuvok would willingly make himself look like a fool.

"Never mind," she whispered.

Not for the first time, Seska wished she'd taunted Tuvok by opening the Kazon scenario instead. It might have been therapeutic, vaporizing a hologram of Culluh.

"Indeed."

As the scene continued to play out on the other side of the grating, Seska scoffed, "Do you still think that I was the one who reprogrammed this?"

Tuvok adjusted his position carefully, so he could look out into the transporter room without giving away their position. He didn't frown at the sight of a holographic Michael Jonas passionately kissing the holographic version of her, but it was a very near thing.

"I do not," he conceded.

"What a little creep," she seethed, "I'll let you kill the other me, if you let me take out Jonas."

Tuvok's frown fully materialized.

"Don't lecture me," she grossed, before he could start, "They're holograms, and we both obviously have a few things need to get out of our system."

He neither confirmed nor denied that, "They have left. We should relocate to engineering."

Spoilsport.

Author's Note. Voyager Week, Day 6 Prompt: Favorite Holodeck Program [3x25 Worst Case Scenario]

Spy BroTP?