‘Hm. Well, he’s being a tad too melodramatic about it, if you ask me,’ Lore remarked with a grin. ‘What do they think I’m going to do anyway? Hijack the ship? Kill everyone on board? Deliberately jeopardise my life? I’m not dense; if I were to undertake any of these endeavours, those actions will be synonymous with my being shipped off to Daystrom Institute... That’s the last thing I want.’

Oh well, he supposed these measures were part of some almighty Starfleet protocol. But what was one, singular android going to do against a complement of a 1000 of humanoids? The last time he’d been responsible for the deaths of over 400 colonists he’d been obligated to find external aid — and he sincerely questioned anyone would help him now... Sure, he could compromise the ship’s computer, but what good would that do?

Lal quirked an eyebrow at such a remark, a playful goading that could be perceived as the judgemental attitude of a young woman. "That is likely exactly what they fear you will do," she sighed. "And no one here is foolish enough to mistake you for dense--- it's your cunning that they make themselves fools over." It was this same trait that would keep him out of Daystrom's hands, or it could doom him all the same. She was clever enough to reason that it was the unknown, the unpredictable, that Starfleet sometimes found the most dangerous.

How quickly it had been in her own existence that she was protected by Starfleet, and then was labeled a power too great for free-will. She was not foolish enough to trust that her uncle would be given any immunity from Daystrom if he laid a finger out of line---- if they wanted to possess him enough.

. Julian chuckled. "I like to think I am. I've met far too many who are dispassionate about their job for one reason or another. It's terrible. The day I start feeling that way is the day I retire to just my research."

When his words were proceeded by her words of mystification, Lore expelled a proliferation of excess air accompanied by a laugh imbued with the last vestiges of his repressed anxiety. Fortunately, the android was extraordinarily talented in masking his emotions, and swiftly modulated the tonality to transmogrify the laugh into one that sounded less... tense...

His relief and smile conquered their former positions and he immediately eradicated the trepidation he had experienced mere seconds prior. His light eyes scintillated in elation. He had managed to fix her.

‘Why? I did it because we’re family, Lal,’ Lore said and, for the briefest of moments, grinned at her. ‘Besides, I know what it feels like to be discarded,’ his delight from before evaporated. ‘I know what it feels like to be tossed aside because they deem you defective... I didn’t want you to suffer the same fate I have. You don’t deserve to be disassembled and stowed away in some locker to gather dust for decades... like me...’

A film of desolation cascaded over his synthetic features and temporarily disabled his systems from functioning accordingly. He loathed being enervated by mental and emotional fatigue; he was supposed to be ten times stronger than man, dammit, and yet, here he was, crippled, debilitated...

‘I’ll take care of you,’ he eventually added, offering her a feeble smile — the irony, he could hardly sustain himself, let alone meet the needs of an infant android...

These words were meant to console her, they should have soothed her. Her uncle had not needed to collect her and spend good time and energy to reconstruct her, and this was important to Lal. She could never repay him for that measure. Her father had given her initial life, but now her uncle had given her the chance at a new one. This fact collected a series of unsettling anxieties in her brain--- that her father had not been the one to succeed in this way. She already knew the brand of sentiments that Lore could have about that fact; the Federation and Starfleet keep their officers weakened by duty to their positions and not to their own personal interests.

Would this mean that her and her father's hopes of Lal's admission to the Academy had effectively expired? What was her purpose now? Lore talked about the feeling of being discarded, but Lal was not entirely certain that this was the way she felt. She was still processing the sensations from her new form--- the same but entirely different. Slowly, carefully she lifted to sit, her legs swinging over the edge of the table. It felt easy, as if they had not been removed for storage only recently. At least they had been considerate enough to be gentle with her hardware during transport.

With a sound like an exhale from her mouth, she pressed her hand to the cavity of her midsection. Unknown to her what being taken care of even meant, or what this looked like to her uncle who seemed to have taken on this task in an act of self-preservation as much as her own. But she did manage to grant him a small smile as a feeling unplagued by anxiety triggered in her core: acceptance.

. "Exactly!"His smile was bright. "Something drives us to seek out new and interesting things or people or experiences. Even if you don't want something, sometimes you just want a new experience, to understand others better. I just love people," he laughed. "There's so many thousands of differences, but still so much to connect us to others, and it's because so many of those things aren't strictly necessary for survival that they're so interesting!"

. "I can't imagine what he was feeling when he created you. I have to believe he was excited in his own way. Most people are when they think about their children."

"I assessed that it is a special quality-- while not required-- that does make a physician objectively better at their job; to love people." This element to survival that the doctor was referring to, this connectedness, was in part why Lal believed humans had been able to survive as a species for as long as they had. "You must be very good at your job," she commented. "I hope that I will have the same outcome in my future."

She hesitates. One foot placed in front of the remainder of her refurbished form angled towards the door---- towards her freedom. Her face shaped into a mask of anguish as she glances at a sister she now owed her safety to. Her processors rapidly fire with signs of activation, as if they hadn't been offline for an undetermined amount of time, a program like self-consciousness telling her, don't look back. She continued to pause only long enough to ponder the existence of an inner monologue before she was deactivated.

Several of whom---- of the non-hostile Borg? Whatever the case, this was enough to satisfy Lal, who uprooted herself from the spot and met Soji at the door, ignoring the scientists' continued accusations. She hadn't consented to this, she did not want to be a tool, a weapon. The thought that androids created from her brain with no other purpose than to destroy sent a wave of despair through her.

‘What? No,’ he interrupted himself, surprised she’d even contemplate exile for exposing him to that abysmal bundle of poetry. ‘No, of course not. In fact, your visits are the only eventful occurrences during my indefinite imprisonment on this abhorrent vessel...’

Indefinite until they decided to plonk him on the front porch of Daystrom Institute of Advanced Robotics... However, Lal, inadvertently, prohibited him from pondering that unfortunate and unpleasantly plausible future by diverting their attention to the replicator. Her statement elicited a snort of contempt from him.

‘It doesn’t generate anything but bio-lubricants for me,’ Lore informed her, sauntering toward the replicator, his chartreuse eyes, dead serious, trained on his niece. ‘In a paper cup, I might add; the Klingon fears I might replicate a weapon, or fashion a shiv by combining various materials and subsequently, incapacitate one of his officers. A reasonable precaution, for I possess the knowledge, the aptitude, to construct handy-dandy stabby-stab devices, and the prowess to accomplish feats such as inflicting physical detriment to organics without a sliver of remorse — just don’t have the resources for it... Regrettably...’ he said brusquely, not even marginally attempting to secrete the detestation he nurtured for the Enterprise’s Head of Security, or omit his propensity for violence.

He had tried, though. He had tried to extract a fragment of duranium plating originating from one of the bulkheads for this exact purpose, but his shenanigans had eventuated in the walls being placed under the protection of a permanent force field and periodic, yet unannounced visits. The incessant droning generated by the supplemental layer of shielding, separating him from the walls, was anything but auspicious to his sanity. Organics’ auditory senses were too inferior; they could not discern the monotonous hum, they only perceived the noises emanating of the blaring warpcore several decks below, but he could, and it was worse, pestilential, maddening, for the force field chanted the melody of his ineluctable incarceration and his inevitable deactivation.

Quietly, he stared at the replicator while a curtain of scintillating matter cascaded down and a glass of lemonade materialised in the miniature avalanche.

With a giggle, she shook her head as if the thought were ridiculous. "Lieutenant Worf's main concern is security, and he must be entirely consumed with worry about all of our safety with you on board," she quipped. "An object to stab with is likely to be one of his lesser concerns." It was not lost on Lal, the gravity of her uncle's malfeasant history, nor was it ignored by the entirety of Starfleet. Pehaps they had aimed to relieve the remainder of the universe by accounting for the unpredictable variable that was Lore.

A sigh of relief sidled past his lips as he leapt to his feet; the apprehension he’d experienced diminished exponentially. He approached her, a suppressed spring in his step and a grin plastered to his synthetic face — to be frank, he had never anticipated his efforts would come to fruition.

Everything seemed entirely too present at the start until the external stimuli withdrew enough for her to give attention to the internal. Syntactic algorithms, online. Autonomic logs, online. She quietly tested her functioning. Blinking routine, online. She was 'alive'. It would take Lal another moment before she turned to face the voice by her side.

Promise. She would ignore the improbability of that sentiment for now, as Lal recognized the likelihood that its existence served to ease the shared uncertainty of this precarious situation. Lal was fairly certain her brain had suffered a series malfunctions sufficient to render her gone.

The two bound scientists kept pelting her with questions and accusations, it was so much that Soji didn't hear Lal's question, not until she repeated herself. She twisted back to face her and found that her sister's expression had smoothed out again. Soji tentatively took that as a good sign and nodded as she stepped back, giving space for Lal to stand.

"I'm not going to kill anybody," Soji assured her and realized it was half a lie. If they weren't quick enough to get out of here unnoticed, she might have to. Quickly and, ruefully, she appended her statement with: "Not unless I have to."

The two scientists were still babbling, voices tinged with various levels of terror and offense, but Soji ignored them. Lal was right, they had to leave, and quickly…but Soji had been on her side of this equation before. Knowing that the person helping had real, substantial ties to her had meant all the world.

"As I said, my name is Soji," she starts again. "I'm a synth. I'm not quite an android like you are, but I was made from one of your father's--our father's neurons. I had a sister, a twin, who was made with me and she died."

She tries her best to ignore the intimidations from the scientists in the room--- the very same who had kept her captive, kept her in a state of disassembly to produce, what--- a line of weaponry capable of defeating the Borg? It was an ambition she had previously only dreamed of, to be useful.

With a quick nod, Lal prevents herself from facing the men in the corner. Not for fear that they may harm her, but for her trepidation that in her current state of vulnerability they may be able to convince her to stay.

"Soji," she repeats, testing the sound of the name and the way it resonates in her own voice. This concept confounds Lal momentarily. "You're saying that--- our father did not construct you himself?" What a foreign string of words and a mysterious composition of her origin. While she herself was created from the positronic brain of Data in its entirety, Soji's own explanation depicted a method of creation that Lal was unfamiliar with---- an android hybrid ?

Lal & Ziyal would’ve been perfect for each other!!!

They would have bonded over not quite fitting in anywhere and art and self-discovery.

And Data would’ve been a great father figure because Dukat is a piece of shit!!!

Of all people, Soji knew how deeply feelings ran through the androids who were capable of them. She had no idea how stable Lal was and the very last thing she wanted was to hurt her. "Hey--hey--it's alright," Soji assured her as gently and sweetly as she could. She stepped in front of Lal and bent forward a bit, just to make the space a little closer and less overwhelming--it might not help, eclipsing the lab, but she gives it a shot regardless.

"Take it easy," Soji directed calmly. "You've been asleep for a long time. When you're ready we can go."

Unfortunately, two things happened in quick succession while Soji was trying to handle Lal. Derrin decided to take that very moment to interject, and the scientist he was tied up with regained consciousness.

"You can't take it! We need the template! How do you expect us to stand against the Borg!?" Derrin shouted and, as if on queue, the man at his back let out a loud and terrified cry as he started struggling against his bonds and his coworker.

"She's dead! She's a changeling!" the second man shouted and Derrin tried to keep them upright against his struggles.

"What? Are you sure?"

"Please don't kill us!"

"Oh my god," Soji said and had to take a deep breath and count to ten. "I'm sorry--I--" She twisted in place and glowered. Derrin reeled back, but the other coworker didn't fall silent. "Will you two please can it? I'm trying to have a moment with my sister. Nobody's going to kill either of you!"

She had been here? How long was 'a long time' ? Was her father ok? Surely he was unaware that she had been taken---- he would not have consented to this, even in her decommisioned state. Eyes darting around the space, trying to see past the face in front of her until the processor satisfied its need to understand that this environment was not a safe one---- that she needed to leave. Now that she was activated again, would her father know? Would he come for her?

"Who are you?" Lal tried to ask, because facial recognition was failing, and the stranger wore clothing that did not signify any identification. The panicked voice of a man on the other end of the room stole her attention. Borg.... Template ?

Locking eyes with the stranger, Lal's features held too many unanswered questions for this exactly moment because they needed to leave. Now.

Her brain raced from 'changeling' to 'dead' in a milisecond before choosing to cease processing on the word 'sister' uttered from the figure by her side, the figure who had presumedly repaired her. "Who are you?" Lal asked again, this time more urgently. She did not have a sister when her brain was taken offline, and while it was entirely possible that her father had created a new offspring since Lal's failure, there was something differential in the quality of this one that Lal had never seen before. Now was the time for her to tamper down the heavy mixture of betrayal, anticipation, curiosity, and fear threatening to intercept her faculties.

An absent-minded nod ensued the interpretation. Lore averted his gaze and proceeded to subject the booklet to extensive scrutiny, an intermission of silence suffusing his quarters — his prison —, in which he tossed himself into a typhoon of introspection.

‘What about the lamb?’ he asked quietly, his optical components still occupied with a visual analysis of the object in his hands. ‘Does it simply symbolise a benevolent animal, a dichotomy between the tiger and it? to serve as the tiger’s antithesis? Or is the lamb the tiger? Did experiences and overtly ambitious aspirations transmogrify the lamb into a creature to be feared by all? Or had the tiger been there all along, obscured under the multitudinous layers of wool, the innocence of the lamb? “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Are those words of surprise? Incredulity? Terror? Repugnance? A combination of all of the above? The poem always reminded me of Lucifer and his inevitable fall from grace...’

He proffered his left hand containing the bundle of nursery rhymes, brandishing the book impatiently, urging her to liberate him from the burden — the dismal contents imbuing its fragile papers bore an ineradicable correlation to his equally as dismal past, which he’d rather not reanimate.

The walls enclosing them warped and melted before readjusting themselves to reality once again; a watercolor of blurry shapes like she remembered viewing in a painting. A crush of muted landscape and bland colors. Was this another inexplicable reaction? A sign of her pending demise? Identification of what she must attribute to this disruption of her focal sensors would wait----- although she was beginning to believe with each passing nanosecond that this was her prison in equal measure.

A fall from grace... Hmm. "I interpreted the tone as one of veneration..." Her forlorn look into the space between them. "The details provided of the tiger's creation denote a sense of pride, almost. Perhaps it is simpler than that. Perhaps it is asking the reader to consider that there are mysterious to the creation of life that we may never have the answers to." She was uncertain if these words were meant for the sake of compassion or for argument. She hoped they would reflect with her purest of intentions.

Retrieving the book, Lal quickly returned it to its hiding place in her jacket pocket, considering it forgotten. Even through the absence of admission, the pain seemed apparent to her. Giving it a voice felt incorrect for her to do, but she could give it space. Lal only hoped that her uncle believed her to be trustworthy----- he needed at least one whom he could trust. But this was a self-serving hope in equal measures, for Lal wanted to be trusted, to be useful, and in an effort to campaign herself as such, she smiled. "Again," noting his reference to a possible future visit. "So you are not banishing me for my greivances." Her hand poised over the shape of the small greivance book in her pocket as her grin evolved.

. "Well, I only mean that humanoids don't just do what's necessary. Some do, I'm sure, but..." he tried to think of a good example. "Take Odo, for example. He'll 'harrumph' and bicker, but he still seeks out social contact despite claiming to hate it. We all seeks something more out of life than just eating, sleeping, procreating, and perishing. We reach out to connect even to people who are incredibly different than us."

. "Certainly! If you know what you're getting into, he's fantastic fun. Hard to find anyone like him, for better or for worse." Julian certainly enjoyed interacting with him and Rom and Nog. They were all good fun or just good company.

"Yes, this is true." She is pleased to come with a preinstalled comprehension of human needs dating back to 20th century psychological theory. "Humans are inherently social animals, so it stands to reason that this distinct trait would be shared among their biological cousins, but there also must be a degree of social construct to this desire as well. I am the product of an artificial lifeform's want to create a progeny---- where no biological urge to do so exists. But in doing so, my father created social capital for himself that had not been pursued before in the history of androids."

She seems to be in a panic, perhaps even upset to see someone else in the sick bay at the moment. Ripley had planned to sneak in and sneak out, but this was something she hadn’t accounted for. “Please, I need to do this myself.” The woman, or whatever looked like a woman, furrowed her brows. “I don’t want to hurt you. If you touch it, you’ll get hurt,” she begrudgingly admits, lightly gesturing at her arm as to not disturb it.

Steady hands with the intent to reach for the crew member's injured arm paused in the air. Lal detected panic in her tone, perhaps partially accounted for by the adreneline produced by this accident. Her training would certainly be put to use right now. "What you are asking," she began in a calm, soft voice, "it's not within our protocol." Now she gave the woman a sympathetic look in the eyes while simultaneously resuming her medical assessment of the injury in the most covert means. "I am trained to assist you, I can talk you through the whole process if you prefer," Lal offered in the same gentle voice. She gestured toward an examination table, not bothering to page anyone else lest that cause more alarm.

The conscious scientist, his badge had the name 'Derrin' on it, made a constant fuss the whole time. At first trying to shout for security, then shouting garbled insults at her as she worked, then just making frustrated sounds into the gag. When he started twisting and trying to free himself, she ignored him, but then his thrashing threatened to hurt the unconscious coworker at his back. That's when Soji finally relented and ungagged him. When she did, she drove one fist through through the wall next to his head in warning. For a moment, she thought he might faint dead away from the shock, but no such luck. He was a scientist at heart and, upon realizing that she was synthetic, gave up on escape and just started pelting her with an endless barrage of questions.

Soji found that if she answered every fifth one or so he would be distracted enough that he'd forget to start shouting for help.

Where are you from? Who made you? Are you an android? You're so realistic what is your bioplastic makeup? What do you mean you have blood? How old are you? How did you get in here? What type of android are you? What is your processing makeup? Was your creator human? What do you mean 'for a given value'?

Eventually, it got on her nerves and she was tempted to gag him again but, when she finally finished repairing Lal's body, Derrin did come in useful. She didn't know how Lal was integrated with the system and, in exchange for some paltry details about her own construction, he walked her through extracting Lal's consciousness from the template system. It would have taken her hours to figure out if she were teasing apart the active processes and threads by hand, so Derrin's willingness to help was convenient.

"Why are you reactivating it? Oh my god, are you here to stop production of the combat models? Are you going to take them too? How many of you are there?"

Soji was going to blow a gasket on this guy. She looked over her shoulder as she worked and shot him an impatient glare before shushing him. When she turned back around, the template system was offline and Lal was booting back up. Her heart was in her throat as her eyes opened, her hand lifted, and then she spoke. That moment would be etched in Soji's psyche forever and, thankfully, Derrin was silent (albeit with horror at his own fictional catastrophe) as Lal awoke.

"That's good to hear," Soji said softly. She couldn't keep her smile down and, while she was tempted to hover over her, she relented and drew back just a bit so Lal had room to sit upright if she chose to.

Her frame, perfectly reassembled as if it had never been crudely taken apart and laid out in various pieces, moved with its familiar agility. While Lal had not been not truly conscious, she had known that her body had been deconstructed for examination. This body was not like anything organic, it did not need time to heal, and yet Lal felt a psuedo weakness in her limbs as she swung her legs off the side of the metal table and braced her hands. Eyes shifting to look at her savior.

"Soji," Lal repeated the name. Soji was android and a distinctly familiar one at that. There was something illogical which Lal recognized, something that called to her in a way that presented her with plenty of questions. How long have I been in stasis?

. "I imagine that adds to it, absolutely. If we all only did what was necessary there would hardly be as much connection between cultures, I'd think." At least, to him. Some of the Federation's alliances had nothing to do with need.

. "Oh, I'm certain the moment Quark thinks of a scheme, he'll pull you into it. He's not a bad person, but be wary of some of his suggestions. Speaking from experience." He wasn't so proud as to pretend like Quark hadn't gotten him a few times- and without him having any clue until it was pointed out or he was in deep water somewhere.

"I am familiar with the Prime Directive, but I sense that there is more left unsaid in your sentiment." Her voice was quiet enough to avoid wandering ears, hoping that the general din of the space prevented anyone from getting the incorrect impression.