@bystcrdust​ has broken the mirror !
He’s never gotten this far before. Lore has attempted escape in the past, of course (and he still feels a sense of pride when he thinks of how many of Soong’s people he had managed to kill before they deactivated him the last time), but he’s never before been able to make it off that hellish rock. He has his dear brother Data to thank for the opportunity. He wishes there were time to mourn the other android, but it took a Soong-type dying to get Lore out-- he won’t have another opportunity like this again.
He can’t afford to fuck things up now.
So he works methodically as he liberates a little vessel from its Pakled owners, refraining from celebration until he’s kicked their corpses aside and has set the autopilot on a direct route for an unassuming little M-class far, far away. Only once the ship has entered open space and left the small trade hub a receding speck in the distance does he dare relax. He’s done it. The only thing that could stop him now would be his homing beacon, but neither he nor Doctor Soong know the exact range of the recall subroutine-- Lore’s only option is to put as much distance between him and his father as he can and hope that it’s enough.
For now, though... he’s free.
He laughs to himself, almost unable to believe his success, and hums a jaunty little tune from a planet he’s never been to. The song carries through the empty halls of the ship as he kicks back from pilot’s seat a few minutes later and goes to explore the rest of his prize. He has time to do so, now-- there’s nothing much else to do while the ship is on-route-- and while he doesn’t expect there to be anything of great interest to be found on such a small vessel, it’s still worth taking a look. ...if nothing else, he hopes, he’ll find a suitable storage room to move the bodies too. He doesn’t want them near him when they start to rot.
“What--?”
His good mood is immediately snuffed out by a cold wash of terror when he sees someone in one of the ship’s few back rooms. How could he have been so stupid? How had he not noticed that the Pakled crew were not the only lifeforms aboard? He could be deactivated or torn apart right now because of his own foolish, unwarranted overconfidence! He won’t make that same mistake again.
...luckily for Lore, though, the stranger doesn’t seem like much of a threat. She looks young by human standards, but isn’t human herself. That’s reassuring. All organics are capable of the same levels of cruelty, each one clawing and scraping to get ahead of the rest before their inefficient systems give out, but humans are the worst of all. Whoever this stowaway is, at least she’s not one of them.
Still shaken, but no longer terrified, Lore tips his chin up and sneers at the girl in a show of confidence and contempt that slowly becomes more and more genuine as the last of his fear fades away.
“Well, well, well,” he says, smiling unkindly. “I’ll admit, you’re an unexpected surprise. Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll give you one minute to tell me why I shouldn’t remove you from my ship right now.”
