Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek: The Next Generation. Please don't sue me or steal my story. Thanks! :)

NOTE: This story takes place shortly after the movie First Contact.

Skin Deep

by Rowena Zahnrei

Lt. Commander Data strode into Deanna Troi's office and slapped a padd down on her desk.

"Good morning, Data," the counselor said, looking up from her computer terminal. "We're not scheduled to meet today, but if you—"

"Are you aware that I am a threat to the Federation?" Data said, pushing the padd toward her. "Perhaps a greater threat even than the Borg? It says so, right here, in this opinion piece, published today in the Federation Standard Times. That, and a great deal more."

Troi's pleasant expression fell into a confused frown.

"Data…I'm afraid I don't understand…?"

Data snatched the padd back in frustration and pulled up a chair.

"This man, this Jake Sisko, blames me – me personally – both for the destruction of the Enterprise-D and, more recently, for allowing the Borg Queen to tamper with the timeline."

"Data, you know that's ridiculous," Deanna said. "No one person could possibly-"

"That is not what Sisko says!" Data interrupted, gesturing to the padd as if it were the offender in person. "According to him, my decision to install the emotion chip my father created for me makes me culpable for all the destruction that followed. He argues that installing that chip was the equivalent installing a fatal virus, a flaw or weakness that has since made me a dangerous and unstable element, and that the Federation would have been safer and better off if I had just stayed as I was: a machine that intellectualized its experiences instead of feeling them!"

Deanna winced.

"Data," she tried, "you had every right to—"

"No, you are wrong, Counselor," Data said. "For, according to Sisko – who casts himself as an unerring authority because, as a child, he lost his mother in a Borg attack – as a Starfleet Officer, it is my responsibility to put the good of the Federation's citizens before my own selfish desires. I, therefore, had no right to expect time to adapt to the chip's emotional input, to come to grips with my new emotions, or to heal, emotionally, following my experience with the Borg Queen. If I wished to conduct cybernetic experiments on my positronic brain, I should first have resigned my commission."

"That is hardly a fair conclusion, Data," Deanna said.

"Is it not?" Data said. "It was my choice to install the chip – I did not have to do that. And, you must acknowledge, my situation has altered since. I have become as Sisko says: volatile. Unpredictable. Perhaps even dangerous. And the more integrated these emotions become, the more my programming adapts to handle all this complex, contradictory emotional input, the more I…"

"Yes?" Deanna leaned forward, her brow furrowed with concern. "Don't stop there, Data. What's really worrying you?"

"Never mind," Data said, and she actually felt him deactivate his emotion chip. His expression smoothed out and his posture straightened as he rose to his feet. "I apologize for barging into your office, Counselor. If you will excuse me—"

"Oh no, you're not getting out of here so easily," Deanna said, pushing away from her desk and striding over to cut him off before he made it to the door. "I've felt this before in you…this terror you fight to hide away from me, from your friends, even from yourself. Now, this article has brought it to the surface. You know you can talk to me, Data. Tell me: what are you so afraid of?"

Data's calm golden eyes seemed offputtingly cold.

"If you do not move out of my way, I can move you."

Deanna felt a peculiar chill, but swallowed it back.

"But you won't," she said.

"What makes you so sure?" Data retorted. "I am stronger than you. Faster. You cannot stop me if I do not want to be stopped."

Deanna straightened.

"All right, do it," she said. "Make me get out of your way."

Data's eyes widened for a moment - just a moment - then he smoothly dodged around her and through the sliding doors.

"Data!" the counselor called after him as he marched down the corridor, noting the tension in his shoulders even though he had not switched his emotion chip back on. "You're not like him, Data. You never will be."

Data turned to face her as he entered the turbolift.

"I wish I could be as confident as you, Counselor," he said, and was gone.

Deanna returned to her desk and rubbed her arms, as if cold. She started to go back to her work, then sat back and tapped her communicator.

"Troi to Captain Picard," she said.

"Picard here," the captain answered.

"Captain, it's Data," she said, and sighed. "I think we have a problem."

To Be Continued…

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