[ST] What Remains 2/6
The Other Incident
Learning the truth about McCoy had nearly destroyed him. McCoy was that missing part of him that he had been looking for, but then to learn that the man who made it real also killed everyone. It was too much.
Jim couldn’t believe it. He still didn’t want to believe it.
His memories of McCoy weren’t so much fuzzy as they were milk that had stayed open on the counter just a little bit too long. They weren’t quite sour, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to drink them in.
The guy was like Judas, Hitler, Khan and every other bastard during World War III rolled into one. And he missed him. Of course he missed Bones. For a while that man had been near everything to him, he helped grow the Jim Kirk construct when no one else did.
He loved him. Or at least was programmed to love him. He wasn’t sure. Most days it was easier to just pretend it was something that Chekov threw into his head. Otherwise he loved a man who flipped the switch to kill the world.
Over the barrel of the gun, the two men stared at each other. Neither moving, barely even blinking.
“Kill me! We both know I deserve it.”
Jim closed his eyes and lowered the gun, unable to maintain eye contact. “I was programmed to trust you! Try as I might I can’t overwrite that damn code.” They didn’t have time for this. He wanted to punch something. “I hate you so much.”
Outside the lab, warning claxons blared. Flashing red lights illuminated the hallways signaling the level one breach.
If they still maintained their old protocols, a team of MACOs was no more than fifteen minutes away, and that would have been a slow response. In all reality they had about five minutes to escape.
The laboratory door swung open and Jim turned, aiming the gun at the intruder. McCoy was forgotten, but he didn’t move, still stuck in that same spot hoping someone would show mercy and kill him.
“Spock, what the hell are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer the question. Spock simply pulled out his tricorder and plugged a few things into the machine. A minute later the sirens stopped and the floodlights came on. “I have bought us time, but it is imperative that we leave now.”
Jim nodded and started back through the lab, ransacking the cabinets for supplies. “I take it you also want to grab the data streams too?”
“Whatever we can gather will be beneficial. I will see what I can do to assist.” Spock went over to a monitor and with an unnatural grace he started typing away at the station. He moved like Chekov fiddling with his toys and it made McCoy uneasy.
Perhaps a smarter man would have made a run for it. Funny how running was the last thing on his mind right now. Instead McCoy was gobsmacked watching the two of them. “Unnatural,” McCoy said under his breath, not drawing the obvious attention of either man. Not that they could even be called that.
Jim came back over, a satchel loaded down with what McCoy could only imagine. He glared at McCoy but didn’t linger, instead turning his attention immediately back to Spock. “Alright, I got what I need, let’s go.”
Spock nodded. “Yes, I believe I have everything, we should be going.” After double-checking the upload, he tucked the tricorder away.
Jim started toward the door and stopped when he realized that Spock wasn’t following him. With an annoyed sigh, he glanced back over at McCoy. “If you’re going to kill him, you don’t have to hold off on my account.”
McCoy just stood there, looking at Spock. Where Jim could not, he knew that Spock wouldn’t hesitate. Spock felt no ties to him. He was just another body.
“Doctor, perhaps you do not understand our predicament.” Spock forcefully grabbed McCoy’s arm, tugging him across the lab toward the door. “I have gone through great lengths to get you here, if you delay us any longer my efforts will be futile.”
Jim’s eyes went wide. “What the hell, Spock?” He grabbed for his gun again. “I don’t want him in our mix. He’s the enemy! He’s the one who let the tech loose! I wouldn’t trust him if my life depended on it!”
Spock was visibly unmoved by Jim’s anger. “I believe we have all played our part in that. Even given the…tense feelings between you and the doctor, removing him from this complex will serve to further infuriate The Company, which I believe is one of your goals, perhaps even something you take pleasure in. Once we have utilized Doctor McCoy’s services, then you may do with him as you please.”
“Hey guys, I’m right here.”
Jim glared at McCoy, but ultimately ignored him. “You have a plan then?”
“Yes, and I will explain it in detail once we are back at the base. For now, I simply ask that you trust me.”
Both Jim and McCoy chortled at the comment. Trust was no easy concept to come by, even when it could be programmed.
“Fine.” Jim sighed, rolling his shoulders out. “But he does one thing I don’t like and I’m going to blow his brains out.”
All three of them knew that was a lie. Jim had become a composite of all the programming in his head, he didn’t get to overwrite any of it and that included the active-handler protocol.
“That is acceptable, provided that you consult me before you take any action.”
“Whatever.”
Apparently, McCoy had no say in his own fate anymore. Maybe he never did. “We have to get Joanna,” he said once they were out in the hallway.
Jim rolled his eyes. “If the brat has any sense to her, she is already waiting by the van because Spock here doesn’t like to wait around. See, the longer we take here the more likely I am to kill someone who doesn’t have it coming and Spock is big on the morality of it all, but me - well, I don’t really see the point.”
For all the noise they caused breaking into the lab, it was surprisingly easy to get out. That probably had something to do with the number of bodies filling the corridors.
No one was left. Those that mattered had left and the expandable MACOs would be in soon to clean up the rest. This was the world now.
McCoy didn’t feel any relief when they made it back outside. It was just a prison designed in a slightly different way.
At least back in the complex he understood the rules of the game a bit better. Do what they said or the girl dies. Now, it was play by the rules Spock and Jim wouldn’t tell him and hope they take pity on him.
They both left him on edge - Spock more than Jim and for good reason. For as much as McCoy assigned blame to The Company, a good deal of his trouble started with the too calm, half-human who apparently had some great plan involving him.
Jim might have been trouble, but Spock was simply dangerous. But losing his planet might do that to a man.
###
February 2258
Soon the world would know of the Narada Incident and everything would change. The Federation would never be the same again.
History would speak of the atrocities of crazed man named Nero who destroyed one world and came far too close to destroying another. It would document the bravery of the nameless Starfleet officers who did their duty.
And it would forget that in the same instant the world was saved, it was also damned. The real irony was that it had happened before. Only the storm coming now would make the Eugenics’ War and World War III look like child’s play. This would be an extinction event and just maybe the Vulcans were fortunate because it was quick for them.
They were all charting unmarked waters now. There was no longer any familiar ground. And the stakes were higher than they have ever had been before. With all the chaos still unfolding aboard Enterprise, there would be no stand down order coming for the actives. Majority of the ship wasn’t even aware that the two men in charge weren’t actual people.
There was no reason to question it. Even if they were rush jobs, the Jim Kirk and Spock imprints performed beautifully. Earth was saved, and although dead in the water, Enterprise was safe - the Federation stood defended.
And the one person who might have made a fuss about it was a bit preoccupied trying to save their real commanding officer. The Romulans had done quite a number on Christopher Pike, but after twelve hours of surgery and what McCoy knew would be a lengthy recovery, he would walk again.
Now, all McCoy wanted to do was knock back a few fingers of bourbon and grab a few much needed hours of sleep. The only thing standing in his way was the need for him to approve continued assignment for Romeo and India. “Chapel!” He called across the crowded bay - there seemed to be more injuries coming in now. “Do you have the reports I requested?”
“Sir, I have them right now.”
Despite the exhaustion and confusion around them, he couldn’t prevent his expression from softening at the sight of Christine Chapel walking toward him. The woman was brilliant at keeping the bay in order. Even just a few hours working under him, she could anticipate his every move. More importantly she had remained calm and focused through all of the disorder.
Once this was all over, he was going to put in a formal request to have her transferred to special operations. They needed more people like her keeping the actives and the handlers - especially the handlers - in order.
“Mr. Chekov went to great lengths to ensure that I hand this to you personally.”
She handed him a secured PADD, with what McCoy could assume had at least two levels of encryption to dig through before he got to what he needed. The kid was a neurotic and a bit paranoid, but he was also a genius.
“Thank you.” At least McCoy was used to his eccentricities by now. After two years working on The Project with Chekov, he hoped that he had figured the kid out. Not that Pavel Chekov was someone McCoy wanted to figure out, but in a lot of ways Chekov was too much like him. Too damn smart and sure that he could do whatever he thought up. It was the reason why they were brought onto The Project. Starfleet needed people whose genius was backed by enough arrogance to actually perform the impossible and tinker with the human mind. The motives for the actions were irrelevant as long as the outcome was what they wanted.
McCoy should have gone into his office and put this last hurdle behind him, but Chapel was still standing there waiting. “Is there anything else?” he asked as he opened the secured files.
“I have also been asked to give you an update of our status.”
McCoy looked up, throwing an eyebrow at her as the nuero output files for Romeo and India loaded on his screen.
“The turbulence we experienced earlier was the warp cores being detonated, leaving the ship propelled by only our impulse engines putting us at least three weeks away from Sol.”
God, this was so much worse than he expected. The actives had neuro outputs well outside of the parameters of their imprints, stress levels through the roof and what he could only assume were a handful of injuries that they were programmed to ignore. And that wasn’t even taking into account that India was a god damn hob goblin and even if Chekov was sure the imprint would block the telepathic ripples of losing a planet, McCoy wasn’t as confident.
Add all that to spending three weeks floating around in this tin can, unequipped for anything to go wrong. Which of course meant that everything would.
“I’m going to need you to go up to the bridge and make sure that Spock and the Captain come down to Sickbay so I can be sure they aren’t going to pass out on us - that’s the last thing we need.”
“Of course, doctor,” she said before turning to leave again. With no one bleeding out in front of him, McCoy went back to his office to pull up the scans on bigger displays so he could really get a sense of what he was dealing with.
Up on the bridge, Jim sat in the captain’s chair doing a great job at pretending that nothing was different. Except something wasn’t just different, but it was wrong.
Jim’s skin felt too small for his body now. There were just so many different voices - people maybe - screaming in his head and he could hear them all. And he wasn’t sure that he actually was Jim Kirk.
Something had happened down on Delta Vega. The man who claimed to be Spock flipped some sort of switch in his head and made him realize that he wasn’t alone - that he wasn’t right.
Luckily there was so much going on that no one had noticed he was different now. He had to be different because he certainly couldn’t be the same. There had been plenty of stuff to worry about. Except that was behind them now. The ship was stable and there was three weeks of open space ahead of them.
Eventually he would seek out Bones and try to figure out what was happening, but he needed more information first.
More importantly, the actual Spock looked about ready to explode. Spock was rigid in the chair. He wasn’t even blinking at the monitor in front of him. The only motion about him was the slow press of dull fingernails into the palms of his hands.
Uhura kept stealing glances toward his station. And at least once Jim could have sworn he saw Sulu look over too. If he didn’t have other things to worry about, he might believe that they were planning something. Instead he was just grateful that it took attention away from him. Now, he just had to sit pretty in the chair and worry about what to do next.
A minute later the doors to the bridge opened to reveal Christine Chapel. And the whole lot of them looked toward her, seemingly out of place among the ragged and tired people on the bridge. Not that she wasn’t just as exhausted, she just wore it better than most.
Nurse Christine Chapel was widely considered a beautiful woman. Her uniform was always clean pressed with her long blonde hair pulled back into one simple braid down her back. She didn’t wear make-up or ever really do anything that would be outright be classified as sexy or seductive, but she was confident and sure of herself. Sometimes competence was a far better trait than sheer animal magnetism.
“Doctor McCoy sent me up here to escort Commander Spock down to medical to be cleared for continued duty.”
And that did nothing to dissipate any of the tension on the bridge. Especially not when Spock remained motionless.
“Spock?” Uhura asked carefully. He gave no indication he had heard her. “You should go see Dr. McCoy for your treatment.”
Spock looked at her a moment, as if he was considering the word. Caught up in watching Spock, Jim almost didn’t realize that the word had triggered something in him. “Yeah, Spock, get cleared and come back to the bridge and I’ll even willingly visit the good Doc after.”
“That is an agreeable offer.” He rose from his station, still moving too stiffly. “Nurse Chapel if you will.”
It should have been a comfort, but no one felt relieved.
Medical was still overcrowded with patients - the crew, survivors from Vulcan and even a few from the other ships. They were all actuals. While McCoy would have liked to examine India and Romeo in the fully secure private bay, he would just have to make sure of the private rooms in this bay.
To make matters worse, Chekov had recently arrived and taken over his office. With nowhere to hide out and wait, McCoy made rounds checking on patients, but really just going through the motions. India should have been down here hours ago. Chekov should have insisted. Instead McCoy had to pull rank.
“Chapel,” he said as she walked in with Spock, “Take him to private bay one, it’s all I have open. I’ll be just a moment.”
“Just this way, Commander,” she said.
Except Spock didn’t move. His gaze was fixed on a small group of Elders hovered together over a bed.
“Commander?”
“My apologies.”
The pair moved slowly through the medical bay, earning few glances from the conscious patients, but there were no other delays. Chapel keyed open the door and Spock entered the room. He sat right on the edge of the bed, settling just a little.
Chapel had never been in this room. It was a bit bigger than the other private rooms and attached to a small laboratory with some equipment she didn’t recognize. This room was McCoy’s dedicated space and really the only other person she had seen in here earlier was Pavel Chekov, but he seemed to go wherever he wanted. Deciding not to worry about it, she connected Spock to the leads to establish a baseline reading.
What was worrying was the way Spock was tracking her every movement. He seemed to be taking in every nuance. It made her feel like some sort of animal, like she was being hunted. Only that was ridiculous. It had to be the exhaustion finally coming through. “Vitals look good. You don’t appear to have any serious injuries, but Dr. McCoy will still have to clear you.”
On any other day she might have tried to make small talk until McCoy finally showed up, but what was there to say? She didn’t know him and even if she did, Christine still had no idea how to speak with any of the Vulcans after what happened.
Today the rules had changed. And they were going to change just a little bit more before the day was through. In the span of two minutes, twenty-three seconds things shouldn’t have been able to go to hell.
So, McCoy wasn’t expecting to find anything out of the ordinary when he finally made it in to see Spock. Upon opening the door he heard a strangled gasp followed by a thud. McCoy squinted as bright light from the exam table swallowed the room. The outlines of the people in there turned into little specks of blues and grays. His arm rose defensively as he stumbled back, trying to get his bearings.
Blinded, he could only hear the swish of the door behind him and scurry of feet and instruments on the table. The problem was he only heard one person moving around and the footsteps were too heavy to be Chapel. Worse, there was something wet on the floor.
“Dr. McCoy, what a pleasure it is to see you.”
Before he could even fully make sense of what was happening, India had him pinned against the door. “India!” he shouted, “It is time for your treatment, don’t you want that? You like your treatments!”
“There is that name again. India - it is one of many I have, did you know that? Well, of course you did.”
He took McCoy by the collar and threw him toward the desk in the front room. That was when he realized the sticky substance on the floor was blood - vibrant, red human blood. Christine. Panic set in then.
“What did you do to her?” He asked, trying to find his balance.
Across the room, India laughed. “Nothing she did not deserve - thinking that with one smile she can disarm any man. Too bad I am no man. No, I am far greater than man or even Vulcan and you are going to help me be even better.”
“Like hell I will!”
“That is not the appropriate response, Dr. McCoy.”
In one step, India crossed the room and picked up McCoy. Even if he did pass his hand to hand combat classes with top marks, there was no way that McCoy was going to beat a Vulcan.
As India manhandled him into the attached laboratory where the imprint chair was, he finally saw Chapel. She was propped up in the corner with deep lacerations across her face, distorting her features. Her chest was rising and falling unevenly, but it was moving. She wasn’t dead.
Funny how he found relief in that, even as India strapped him down to the chair.
“You mess with our minds, doctor, and now you refuse to give me what I ask for. Isn’t this what you are meant to do? Fulfill the wishes of others and make sure we are all our best?” He began attaching the leads to McCoy’s head, attaching him to the imprint device. “While I would prefer to kill you, your brain is too valuable to simply lose. The only logical conclusion, then, is for me to take it from you as you are certainly not using it to its full extent.”
India went over to the monitor and started to fire up the system.
“You can’t imprint someone without active architecture, it will kill them!”
“If you do not struggle, this will be over quickly.” He slid a data wedge into the back of the chair and then returned to the module to input a few more commands. India looked at McCoy, hesitating just a second, before he hit the execute button.
McCoy let a primal scream loose, his body seizing for a few seconds before he fell limp back against the bio-bed.
The monitor, which had been beeping all over the place before, silenced.
”Fascinating.”
###
Chekov was just finishing up in McCoy’s office when the progress was interrupted.
“What? What is happening?” He tapped away at the keyboard. “The doctor and technology is dangerous, always breaking things...”
Then the system froze. That only happened when -
“But I did not authorize an imprint and McCoy would not do it without me.” He toggled the security cameras to pull up the feed from the lab.
Nothing could have prepared him for what saw.
“No,” he said, “No, no, no, no, no.”
Chekov’s heart started to race. There was protocol for this. Things he needed to do. Except he could not remember any of it.
Oh god, oh god, they were all going to die.
Finally, he remembered to activate the Code Orange and opened a public channel to the bridge. It didn’t matter who would hear. “Shut it down! You must shut them all down now!”
A single high pitch note ran through the ship’s intercom and up on the bridge Acting Captain Jim Kirk went limp in his chair.
"I need a team down here now!”
But it was already too late.
The team arrived no more than ninety seconds later. The MACOs, lead by Sulu, were all calm and focused as they secured the area. Chekov was just trying to figure out how to breathe again.
Chekov had never seen so much blood before in his life. He was a doctor, but he was not that kind of doctor. And there was blood everywhere. All over the equipment, smeared on the monitors and no one else seemed to care. It could have been him!
No, no, no, it probably should have been him.
Chapel was limp against the far wall, blood running down her face staining her perfect blue uniform. It felt wrong. She was always so clean cut - so nice. She was a good nurse. A good person. Certainly, far better than he was, better than any of the people in the room right now.
And Doctor McCoy - Chekov couldn’t see him because he refused to step any further into the room. But he could not be heard and if McCoy could not be heard that probably meant he was unable to speak.
And it was just too quiet.
The men in the room were like stones. Their guns were fixed at the unconscious and bound India in the corner. It brought him no comfort. Even without knowing the full details of what happened, he could make a very good guess. This was bad. Very, very, bad.
“Chekov?” His scrubbed his face, trying to focus on the man saying his name. All he saw was that Sulu had blood on him too.
“What do we do with them?”
Only Chekov wasn’t listening. He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his blood, his pulse drumming in his head. At least all of his blood was in him.
And God, this was his fault. He was the one who made the imprints. He assured everyone many times that it would be fine and nothing could go wrong. He had called McCoy foolish. There had even been joking about dampening the Vulcan biometrics because surely nothing would go wrong. It was arrogance - plain and simple.
“Chekov!” It was the hands on him rather than the sound that snapped him out of it.
“I don’t know!” He shouted, unable to control the volume of his voice.
The room was too small. This ship was too small. He needed to get out, get away, to put space, lots and lots of space between him and the blood. Except with Chapel and McCoy dead he was the only one who could fix it - if it could be fixed at all.
God. They were dead. Dead.
Never coming back because they only backed up the actives. It had never even been a thought, even if the staff was just as valuable if not more so.
“This is way outside of my comfort level or even my security clearance.” He was babbling now, but at least it was still in English. “I do not make these decisions, I just do what they ask of me, yes, to my own specifications, but I follow orders! And now they are dead...”
He might have sent actives on kill missions, but he had never seen a body before. Chekov was allowed to stay up in his tower, safe from the reality of what kind of men they really were, but not anymore.
“No one is dead,” said Sulu, “They all have vitals - weak as they are. However, there isn’t protocol for any of this, and right now you’re the most qualified person in this room, maybe on this ship right now, so you’re going to have make some decisions.”
“That is not helping any!” Chekov pushed Sulu out of the way, swearing up a storm as he keyed the pad for the door. He needed to get out of this room. Maybe if he didn’t have to see or smell any of it, some sort of solution would be found.
Unsure of where else to go he went back into Doctor McCoy’s office. It was probably the only place he was allowed to go at this point. And at least like a proper Southern gentleman, McCoy kept liquor in his office - even if it was whiskey. Not that he would drink it - he wasn’t that desperate. Yet.
He pressed his hands into face. Chekov had no clue where to start. He was in so far over his head. And Sulu was already following after him, seeking answers. At least the man had the sense to wait until Chekov was ready to speak again.
Running his hand through his hair, he let out a long breath. “Alright, we’ll have to scrub India, clean him until there is nothing left and then just keep him sedated until we reach Earth. He must have had some sort of composite event, all the psychic stress made him snap...” Chekov shook his head. How did he not see it coming? Uhura was going to kill him.
“We can transfer him to another secure bay in the meantime, “ said Sulu. His tone was calm, empty but in a strangely comforting way. It was just facts and Chekov could deal with facts right now and nothing more. “A cover won’t be hard to come by - the other Vulcans on board aren’t handling the situation well.”
It wasn’t a long-term solution. But he was just looking to triage the situation. Sulu pulled out his communicator and belayed the orders to his team.
Chekov leaned back in the chair, relieved that he was not being asked to scrub India immediately. He was in no state to deal with such a sensitive case.
“And the others?” On Sulu’s face was almost a look of regret.
“I am going to have to go back in there, yeah?”
Sulu nodded, ushering the man onto his feet and back toward private bay number one.
“I better be getting lots of inappropriate starches for this,” he said trying to put some humor into the situation, as if they would make it better. (Nothing was going to make it better.) Chekov keyed open the door and walked in. Under his breath he kept repeating one simple mantra - they are not dead. It would be too much if they were dead.
By now much of the blood was clean up. Chapel had been moved and was receiving basic medical attention. It was a good start and far better than he could have managed.
Unfortunately, that just left McCoy. Taking a deep breath in, he entered the imprint room. For the first time in his career, he did not want to be here, but there was no other choice. McCoy was thrown in the corner, limp like a rag doll.
“You must help me move him.” Chekov did not want to touch the body, but he needed to get accurate readings. Sulu didn’t ask, didn’t question. He just moved to help Chekov transfer McCoy back onto the bio-bed.
“And set up the leads.” The two men set to work. Chekov powered up the module, trying to figure out what India had done.
After a minute, they had a read out of McCoy’s basic life functions. That steady sound of the vitals became Chekov’s new mantra to get him through what came next.
The vitals were only half of the picture. Toggling a few buttons, he pulled up McCoy’s brain activity.
“No, that cannot be right.” Chekov plugged in a few more commands, calling up a different live brain map. “I mean that’s impossible, to cause so much damage...”
“What do we have?”
He looked up. “His cerebrum is completely fried, there is just nothing left. It was like he was just ripped out of his brain. See all this?” He motioned to the holographic model between them, which lacked the standard vibrant colors. “This is all scar tissue.”
“But he’s not dead.” Sulu crossed the room, coming closer to the supine man on the table. “Can you bring him back?”
“Back! Back to what? There is nothing left. There is no back up!”
“You said it was like he was ripped out of his brain, well, where did he go?”
Chekov paused, taking a moment to finally look around the room. He was missing something, because there were too many things he did not want to see. “Right! There was an unauthorized imprint, or rather what I thought was an imprint - perhaps it was more of a wipe.” He turned around and started typing away at the other monitor. Code was flying in front of him, giving his frantic brain something familiar to focus on. “Yes! There is it!” Chekov jumped adrenaline leading to a bit of misplaced excitement. “It is rather crude and maybe a little barbaric...”
He lost himself to the computer for a moment.
“So what?”
“Doctor McCoy was saved. To a wedge.”
Sulu glanced over at the wedge in the input module. Even in a world of transporter technology and warp drives, some things were still kept in hard copies.
“So put him back.”
Chekov wanted to snap, wanted to scream that he was not a god. Because right now he felt infinitely mortal. But he did not.
“I cannot do that. I mean, the best I can do is install active architecture and imprint him with himself, but there are not enough viable nerve endings to do anything. Remember the scar tissue?” He motioned back to the map. The brain might as well be dead.
“You also said he was not dead, which means at least his brain stem is still viable.” Sulu looked over at the brain map still floating in the air. “And that part, there, in the back, there’s still activity there.”
“Of course, there is activity there! That is the cerebellum! There are more nerve cells there than both hemispheres combined, but that’s all muscle, fine motor skills, equilibrium. We may alter that part of the brain, but we cannot put any sort of active architecture there.”
“Can’t or haven’t?”
Of course he could do it. Or rather knew how to do it. That wasn’t even a question. He just wouldn’t know what the risks would be and to dump all the speech, motor development, personality, memory, language, sensation and everything really it wouldn’t be perfect. Not on the first try. And he did not think there would be any volunteers. Still, this was not standard. Many of the staff was lost to the cause. Never before had such a fuss been made about saving them.
“Man-friend, you are keeping secrets from me again, what makes Doctor McCoy so special?”
“Now, is not the time for questions, we just need him back online, is that clear?”
Chekov did not like it, but he knew what happened to people who did not comply. “He will not be happy.”
“Yeah, well, at least he’ll get the chance to bitch about it.”
Chekov didn’t believe that McCoy would quite see it that way. However, they could cross that bridge when they got there. But when he reinstalled McCoy he would make sure there were armed guards just in case.
“I will need time, although really Doctor McCoy would be the best qualified to do this sort of thing. He did develop that grafting technique using this part of the brain.”
Sulu nodded. “So, we have need of a doctor then.” This conversation was already going ways that he did not like and now it was about to take a step further. “What about Chapel? Could you make her the doctor we need?”
“You are not authorized to make those sorts of decisions! She is not a volunteer and her injuries are just superficial. She will recover!” His brush with mortality apparently came with the pesky surfacing of a conscience. With morals. And a conscience had no place in the work they did.
“She’s an officer, same as anyone else, and she was being primed to join us anyway. The actives might have terminal contracts, but we’re all lifers. And like you said, McCoy was the best qualified candidate and he’s in no shape to do it to himself.”
Chekov’s hands began shaking now as the adrenaline burnt off. “What you are asking for - that is a permanent imprint, a full human upgrade. That is impossible.” It was also illegal, but that seemed like the less valid point here.
“Make the impossible happen.”
It was disturbing how easy that order was to be made and how easy it was for him to follow. Well, easy in terms of the science; emotionally, he did not like it at all. He hated himself for it.
Chapel was a good person, and yes, she would continue to be a good person, but she would never be the same - she would be different. She would be one part Christine Chapel and one part Doctor Leonard McCoy.
Blending the medical knowledge and skill with her personality wasn’t much of a challenge. All he had to do was construct a few other memories - explanations for the scars on her face, maybe an irrational fear of open spaces so she would never want to leave, so no one who knew Christine Chapel before would meet this new version and start figuring out what changed. He would have to temper some of McCoy’s moral clarity, to alter those lines just enough so she could be better.
Pavel Chekov created people before, but never like this. All of those were temporary. This would be the first time he created something permanent. And it would not be the last.
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