‹ You will have no further opportunity to infect the Apparatus with aberrant code, › the Presence said confidently. ‹ I will overwrite you now. ›

Data knew all too well what the Presence meant. His positronic matrix would be wiped clean. His experiences and memories, his dreams and hopes, his friendships and loves would be reduced to a blank slate. He would be erased as though he had never been.

The Presence had obviously adapted to the output of his emotion chip. The only weapon he possessed had been neutralized. Despair threatened to overwhelm him. How easy it would be to simply let it happen, and accept the surcease of deactivation and nothingness.

No!Data shouted silently. He recalled his brief glimpse of the scoutship’s interior. He remembered that a Romulan warbird was about to vaporize Captain Picard and Lieutenant Hawk.

Then, even as awareness began to flee him, hope arose within Data once again: He recalled that he had set the emotion chip’s output at nowhere near its maximum gain. That told him that he still had a weapon. Gathering up his will, he let the chip’s energies build, as though it were a phaser set on overload.

A cybernetic eternity later, he released the chip’s greatly increased emotional output, letting it flood into the Romulan machine‑entity’s consciousness.

‹ No, › said the Presence. Data could feel it actively resisting him.

With all of his remaining will, he directed the totality of his anger, his fear, his frustration straight into the algorithm‑creature’s core. It was as though the Presence had been forced to drink from a fire hose. Teraquads of intense emotion rushed through the chip, sweeping the entity away before it had an opportunity to sever Data’s subspace connection to the Romulan array. The deathscream of the Presence reverberated in Data’s consciousness as the entity’s code decompiled, corrupting itself in a spontaneous cascade effect.

Even as Data felt his adversary’s passing, he wondered whether his triumph had cost him the use of his emotion chip. At that thought, hope fled from him, as did every other human emotion he had worked so hard to acquire for so many years. But with no emotions to distract him, Data had no trouble accepting that the loss was infinitely preferable to nonexistence.

And he had no trouble giving the plight of Picard and Hawk his full attention. Noticing that his cybernetic connection to the Romulan array remained intact, he sent a portion of his consciousness deeper inside it, ready to resend the abort command–

–only to find the data channels still aswarm with “antibody” programs, the final nonsentient remnants of the Presence. Or perhaps they had arisen as a consequence of that entity’s contact with him, like a cybernetic immune response.

Regardless, Data knew that he could never get the abort command past them, even if he were to perish in the attempt. He quietly backed away, all but disengaging entirely from the Romulan array. Despair stung him then–

–and struck a spark that glimmered into joy. Only a functioning emotion chip could have made either experience possible. As his maintenance subroutines reawakened and began purging his matrix of whatever remained of the Presence within him, Data rejoiced at having succeeded in hanging onto his hard‑won humanity.

And, even as he struggled to regain control over his body’s many subsystems, Data clung just as steadfastly to the hope of finding some other way to neutralize the Romulans’ subspace singularity.

His hands a blur on the instrument panel, Hawk entered the final command sequence, then tried to get a fix on the subspace singularity with the sensors. This has to work,he thought.

No change.

Ten long seconds ticked by as Picard continued dodging the Gal Gath’thong’s relentless disruptor fusillades, while staying less than quarter of a kilometer from the warbird’s bifurcated hull. At this range, it was relatively easy to foil the Romulans’ target locks. But it was still a minor miracle that they had thus far avoided a mutually destructive collision.

Sooner or later, Hawk knew, their luck was going to run out.

Hawk examined the singularity once again on the passive sensor display. It seemed indestructible. He closed his eyes, feeling utterly defeated.

“Report, Lieutenant!” Picard barked.

“It . . . didn’t work. I don’t understand it. I must have mis‑keyed one of the command pathways.”

Hawk heard a voice behind him. “I do not believe that is so, Lieutenant.”

“Data!” Hawk said, startled. He turned in his seat and saw that Data was now standing in the crew compartment. Except for the cable that connected his metallic skull to the bulkhead, he appeared none the worse for wear.

“Forgive me, Lieutenant. I did not mean to startle you.”

“Data, what happened to the AI you were fighting?” Picard said as he rolled the scoutship past a disruptor tube an instant before it fired. Hawk noticed that the Captain’s hand was on his phaser.

“It has been . . . neutralized. My internal housekeeping subroutines are purging its remaining code‑structures from my physical matrix even now.”

“Excellent. But can you get back inside the array?”

“Not in the same manner as before. I just checked the information channel through which I originally entered the array, and I have determined that it is now filled with electronic ‘antibodies’ designed to cancel out any recurrence of my original externally introduced abortcommand sequence. It is the positronic equivalent of an inoculation against a viral infection. I am afraid that we must find another avenue of attack.”

Picard finally seemed to be running out of patience. “Data, don’t you understand? We don’t have timeto look for another avenue of attack!”

Attack.The notion struck Hawk like a clap of thunder. Attack! That’s the key.“Maybe we already have one,” he said.

“Let’s hear it, Lieutenant,” the captain prompted, still obviously intent on staying one step ahead of the Romulan guns. A disruptor salvo rocked them at that precise instant, and the scoutship’s responses to Picard’s piloting seemed to be growing sluggish. Heaven only knew how badly they’d been damaged.

Hawk took a deep breath, then plunged forward. “Data, if the array’s own defenses were to malfunction and attack the singularity’s containment facility, wouldn’t that bring on an abort automatically? And send the singularity back into subspace immediately?”

“That wasthe scenario that I originally attempted to make the singularity’s containment machinery believe,” Data said calmly. “However, I would still have to transmit the abort order through command pathways from which we are now blocked.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Hawk said, his words piling onto one another in his excitement. “What if the array’s defenses really didstart shooting at the singularity’s containment field?”

The android nodded, evidently grasping the idea. “In that event, the Romulans’ own failsafe programs should initiate an abort command on their own from within the singularity’s subspace containment system. I would not need to send any such command myself.”

“All right, gentlemen,” Picard said, now clearly preoccupied with keeping the ship in one piece. “How might we accomplish that?”

“What about trying to alter the containment facility’s sensor profile?” Hawk said hopefully. “We could make the singularity itself appear to be surrounded by a fleet of invading ships.”

“And thus in danger of suffering a fatal containment breach,” Picard added, nodding.

“Unfortunately,” Data said, “The systems that govern sensor data are now closed to me as well.”

Hawk’s spirits flagged again when he heard this. Then he glanced at Picard, and saw a slow smile spreading across the captain’s face.

“Maybe there’s another way to go about Mr. Hawk’s idea, Data.” Picard then handed the conn back over to Hawk. Though the evasive flying kept him busy, the lieutenant listened carefully to the captain’s words.