Chapter VI: Improvisations
K'vot watched through the one-way glass intently, his elbow tucked in as he stroked his beard absent-mindedly. Asiliaa was much more concerned with the neuroprogramming monitors before her, watching the progress of each code fragment as they uploaded. Only occasionally would she glance up at the subject in the next room. Semil was strapped to a table, fidgeting and straining against the restraints, his head encumbered by a large probe device.
"The inputs are registering nominally," the Orion doctor reported. "It should only be a minute more."
K'vot didn't bother nodding. Without Asiliaa noting, his free hand slipped into a utility pouch, producing an isolinear memory crystal, which he held out for the doctor, turning to her.
She eyed him with suspicion. "What's this?"
"The General has felt some... creativity is perhaps in order." K'vot almost smirked. It had been little secret that he relished these opportunities to assert his dominance, despite Asiliaa's protests. It was hardly the first time he had invoked the General to countermand her work. But this was most certainly a new manifestation of their typical Klingon bullying.
She took the crystal in hand from K'vot without breaking eye contact. "I hope you know the risk you're taking." She knew this would be an unwinnable argument, as so many others had been. "This engrammatic programming hardware is cobbled together from what your brutes could pilfer during the Dominion Wars and from the chaos of the Romulan schism; it's hardly ideal for your... 'improvisations'."
"Doctor, humor me." K'vot smiled to himself with fond memories of those times. Desparate battles against the Jem'Hadar and assault raids on underdefended Tal'Shiar labs were certainly preferable to these nursemaid duties.
Asiliaa begrudingly inserted the crystal into a port. "I'm at least going to inspect your handiwork before I do anything that will irreparably fuse his synapses." Her fingers tabbed at controls busily. Her eyes rolled as she leafed through the program contents, her eyes slowly widening. She stopped herself before protesting any louder. "So are you ordering me to upload this... this -- barbarism?"
"Let us consider it a strong recommendation."
Of all the Klingon traits she found unappealing, their capacity for patronization was the most galling. Asiliaa gritted her teeth as she keyed in the compile and upload commands. "I hope you know what you're doing."
With a final keystroke, the program uploaded. They both turned their heads to watch.
In the next room, Semil tensed violently, screaming out. He thrashed against the restraints, as multitudious images of violence and depravity flooded his cerebral cortex through the neuroprobes.
Asiliaa turned her eyes back to the monitors. "Adrenergic signals are spiking. Dopamine, cholinergics -- all rising."
Through the audio pickups in the otherwise soundproofed room, over the screams and cries, Asiliaa could hear the crack of Semil dislocating his own shoulder as he writhed and bucked, still screaming. "I'm putting a stop to this. Now." No sooner than she began to key the shutdown sequence that she could hear more sounds of breaking and shattering in the room.
She shook her head as she completed the shutdown. Again, the Colonel would be ruining her work with his presumptiousness and impatience.
With the shutdown commands complete, she turned again to peer into the room, fearing the worst. What she saw gave her pause - Semil had broken free of his restraints, in spite of (or was it the reason for?) his dislocated shoulder. The neuroprobe helmet had been mostly pulled from his head, as he lay at the foot of the examination chair curled as a fetus, trembling and rocking in place.
The shoulder would be easy enough to fix, but how to assess what other damage K'vot had done? Asiliaa reached for a medkit.
Having stepped back well outside the Doctor's sight, K'vot quietly smiled to himself.