Huddled together under the bright lights of the surgical alcove, Yuulik reached out.  She clasped Pagaloa’s forearm and rubbed a thumb on his wrist.  She understood the science within cybernetic implants well enough to trust the pressure from her hand would transmit bio-electric impulses through Pagaloa’s biosynthetic limb.  

However, she had to leave it to trust that her touch would communicate emotional support.  

She knew a hundred different words to challenge, to compete, to incite.  But on this night, she didn’t know what to say.

The Emergency Medical Hologram trained a tricorder over the corpse.  Laid on the biobed was the body of a young Tellarite, his eyes closed.  As a maintenance officer, he had been a charge of Chief Engineer Pagaloa’s department.  The trauma that had killed the young Tellarite was hardly visible to the natural eye.  His mustard-shouldered uniform wasn’t even scuffed or torn.  The inescapable fact of his death seemed impossible.

“–further scans have confirmed my initial pronouncement,” the EMH was saying by the time Yuulik started listening intently again.  The EMH had been droning incessantly about unproductive details for several minutes.  What they said next was the only thing that mattered:

“Ensign Trogrik Claarc’s cause of death was irreversible brain injury from a fall at heights.”

Yuulik squeezed Pagaloa’s forearm, trusting once again.

There was a clattering from across the med bay, signaling Flavia’s entrance from the corridor.  Despite the fine-quilting of the Romulan textile she was wearing, the bright orange of Flavia’s jumpsuit proved an eyesore.  Flavia proved herself an earsore, too, when a nurse attempted to check her in. Flavia pushed past Nurse Rals, shrieking that she has “diplomatic immunity” as the mission commander of the Romulan scientists on board.

Shaking her head, Yuulik rounded the foot of the biobed and planted herself as a wall between Flavia and Claarc’s body.  Yuulik breathed in a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest.

“No, ma’am,” Yuulik said as disrespectfully as she could manage.  “You have no business being here.”

“I am responsible for the safety of the scientists I brought aboard Constellation,” Flavia insisted, while treading right for Yuulik.  “I will go wherever is necessary to assess the risk to my people when Starfleet officers start dying.  This is where I find the two of you, so this is where I stay.”

Yuulik jutted out her chin, and she pursed her lips, offering nothing.

From behind Yuulik, Pagaloa peaceably said, “Your scientists are safe, Flavia.  Ensign Claarc slipped from the warp core’s upper catwalk.”

“Are you lying to me?” Flavia asked.  She bobbed her head to the side, narrowing her eyes at Pagaloa.  

Muttering, Pagaloa offered a brief expression of confusion to Flavia, and she snatched the medical tricorder out of the EMH’s hands.  As Flavia jutted the scanning device at Claarc’s body, Yuulik swiped a backhand at it.  Flavia smoothly evaded Yuulik’s attempt to slap the tricorder out of her grasp.

Otherwise, Flavia offered no reaction to Yuulik.  Looking at Pagaloa directly, Flavia asked, “Did he fall up and over the guard railing, lieutenant?”

Pagaloa’s face crumbled into a hurt expression.  “Are you calling him clumsy?”

Sighing, Flavia softened her tone to say, “I’m not denigrating your fallen officer.  Just look at him.  Look at how short he is.  He would have needed an anti-grav to get himself over the guardrail.”

Unsettled by what Flavia suggested, Yuulik asked the EMH, “Doctor, are you sure we shouldn’t summon Doctor Nelli to offer a second opinion on the cause of death?”

The EMH crisply replied, “My programming will not permit me to distract Doctor Nelli from her surgery for a patient who is, I’m afraid, already dead.”

Flavia laid the tricorder on the biobed, and when she looked up, something was harder behind her dark irises.  The sharp blades of her eyeliner took on a menacing edge with that look in her eyes.  Her attention fully shifted to the EMH.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to betray your programming, doctor?” Flavia asked.  There was a double-edged temptation to her question.  Smiling emptily, Flavia’ portrayed all the affability and artifice of a bartender asking if you want another drink and yet dreading the answer at the same time.

A voice of a much higher pitch interjected: “Doctor, be brave!  Answer her question.”

That was a voice Yuulik recognised.  Coming in from a side passageway, what looked like a ten- or eleven-year-old human child asked the EMH, “Don’t you dream of being something more?”

The child wore her blonde hair in a high ponytail and was dressed in the patterned overalls that were fashionable among Starfleet brats twenty years earlier.  The only immediate tell that she wasn’t human was the pale pearlescent skin tone and yellow eyes of an A500 synthetic android.

Gaping at her, Pagaloa asked, “Addie, if you’re here, who’s watching Misriam?”

“Misriam is sleeping; she’s fine,” Addie said, then flung herself on the floor with the mewl of a tantrum.  Crawling across the deck, Addie snatched a little hand at Yuulik’s ankles.  

Addie whimpered, “I need my best friend Yuulik because my stomach hurts.”

The EMH moved in Addie’s direction and said, “I can attend you.”

“No, no, no, not the hologram!” Addie screamed.  Flailing defensively, she raised her arms over her face.

When the EMH halted, Nurse Rals stepped in.  He left behind another patient, clearly trained to respond to the greatest suffering.  The tall Bajoran crouched to the deck, approaching Addie slowly.  Between Rals, Yuulik, Flavia and the EMH, Addie was surrounded.  Rals reached a hand out to her.

Addie wailed again, but this time, it was to say, “I feel inflamed.“

“What are you doing, Addie?” Pagaloa asked.  He spoke softly, but there was a demand in his tone.  “You don’t have a digestive system.  You have sarium krellide cells.”

Rals calmly pointed out, “Maybe so, but look?  Her stomach is distended.”

Addie scrambled into Rals’s arms, burying her face in his shoulder.  She balled her fists and clutched the front of his uniform jacket.  None of this changed her demeanour.  Addie continued to groan in distress.

“Listen to him!” she cried out.  “I’m inflamed.  It’s real!  I have inflammation.  Existential inflammation!”

While visually examining Addie’s facial expressions and body language, Yuulik instructed, “Addie, I need you to slow down and run a self-diagnostic.”

Flavia sneered at Yuulik, her lips curled up in disgust.  “Why are you behaving so familiar with the little robot monster?”

“Because Yuulik and I built–” Pagaloa responded.

Pagaloa had started to say, “her,” but a sickening snapping sound drown out his voice. Pain-filled screams from Nurse Rals came next.

“Assimilate this,” Addie spat at Rals when she broke his arm.

Yuulik didn’t even see Flavia move.  Yuulik assumed she blinked and then Flavia’s boot had connected with Addie’s skull.  Flavia’s kick launched Addie out of Rals’s arms, and Addie smashed into a bulkhead. 

Shouting for her to stop, Pagaloa reached for Flavia, reached over Claarc’s dead body to grab Flavia by the shoulders.  He was still attempting to restrain her when Addie punched the bulkhead twice.  Her tiny fists crumpled in the hatch to a Jeffries tube in just two punches.  Moving with a preternatural swiftness, Addie disappeared into the Jeffries tube.  

Yuulik immediately gave chase while Flavia called out from behind her, “Give me a phaser!”