Control, a Star Trek: Picard + Star Trek: Discovery Crossover fanfic

Control

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Star Trek: Picard/Star Trek: Discovery

Bruce Maddox is dying, and it's Agnes Jurati's hand shutting down life support.

He's gasping for breath, veins bursting in his face. It's grotesque. It doesn't seem real. She knows exactly what she should do to stop this from happening. She doesn't.

"I'm sorry," she says, feeling the hot tears streaming down her face as if they belonged to someone far away. "I'm so sorry. If you only knew what I know … "

When Commodore Oh found her in the park by the river, Agnes was about to walk away. She wanted no part of anything the Director of Starfleet Security was involved with; the woman terrified her. (The irony of this is not lost on her later. It is not Commodore Oh who pressed that button.)

The Vulcan called Agnes back with a single sentence: "Before you go, there's something you should see."

Agnes is a scientist. Excessive curiosity has always been the flaw she's most proud of.

Oh handed her a padd and stood in front of her as she read. The files on that padd were so classified that Oh was possibly the only person who could access them, and so highly technical that even on the remote chance someone else found them, they were unlikely to understand. To Agnes, however, they read like a horror story … worse than that, because it made so much sense.

Starfleet's technological advancement had taken several steps back around the early 2200's, a fact that still puzzled historians to this day. Holography, robotics, AI, all that research had been abruptly curtailed and taken centuries to catch up again. This was the missing piece of the puzzle. This was the reason why.

"The AI known as CONTROL was designed with the noblest of intentions," said the Commodore, her face as impassive as ever. "To help Starfleet Intelligence keep the peace. Instead it consumed its creators, one by one. If not for the sacrifices made by the Discovery crew, it would have gone on to consume the galaxy as a whole."

It was the autopsy file for one of the Discovery's officers, Commander Airiam, that really threw Agnes off balance.

She knew about Airiam. The cybernetic enhancements that had saved the young officer's life had been a pioneering achievement at the time. Agnes had studied them in university. She had read everything she could about the life of this extraordinary woman, who had lost so much – the man she loved, the body she was born with, even her memories – and still gone on to serve with distinction in the Klingon War. Official records listed her as missing in action, presumed dead, along with the rest of the Discovery crew. They never mentioned how exactly Airiam had died, however, and as she read the autopsy, Agnes realized why.

"Her programming was hacked … ?"

"By CONTROL," the Commodore confirmed. "It forced her to attack her own shipmates, until the security chief, Commander Nhan, stopped her by ejecting her out the airlock. Commander Airiam's memory files show that she was fully conscious at the time."

Agnes put her hand over her mouth and swallowed hard.

"You mean she knew what was happening and couldn't stop it?"

"Yes," said Commodore Oh. "But because of one brave officer, the rest of the crew survived to complete their mission and destroy CONTROL for good."

One brave officer, meaning Commander Nhan. Agnes couldn't imagine how Discovery's security chief lived with herself afterward, but at the same time, what else could she do?

"The truth about CONTROL was hidden at the time," the Commodore continued. "It seemed the logical thing to do, since nearly everyone who had encountered it was either dead or stranded in the far future. My predecessors decided that to reveal the story would only cause panic. If they had, however, people such as Drs. Soong, Zimmerman and Maddox might have been prevented from following down the same dangerous path. Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it."

Hearing Bruce's name spoken so dismissively stung Agnes into arguing back for the first time.

"Dr. Maddox's work is nothing like CONTROL," she shot back, almost shoving the padd back into Oh's hands. "There's a word of difference between a positronic brain contained in a single body and an AI system that infects anything it touches. If you've ever read his research, you should know - "

"Am I to understand," the Vulcan interrupted, raising one perfectly sculpted eyebrow and allowing, for the first time, a touch of asperity into her voice, "That your mentor's research has no destructive potential whatsoever?"
That was a rhetorical question. Agnes could tell that Oh already knew the answer as well as she did.

Bruce's most cherished ambition had been to surpass Noonien Soong. He had dreamed of a life form more powerful than Data, more intelligent, more emotionally complex, and better able to defend itself. Whatever defense mechanisms Bruce had designed, though, must not have been enough for the F8 androids on Utopia Planitia, because it hadn't prevented them from destroying the place.

Bruce was like a force of nature sometimes; he let nothing stand in his way. It was one of the things Agnes loved about him, but it could also make him ruthless. He would have dissected Data once if Picard had let him. If he wanted to make Data's daughters stronger than their father, there was no knowing with what dangerous powers he could have equipped them.

So, yes, Bruce's work did have destructive potential. Agnes couldn't deny it.

"But why are you telling me all this, Commodore?" she faltered. "Why … why couldn't you just, I don't know, keep it in whatever secret archive it belongs?"

"Because you need to know how much is at stake. You need to know why Dr. Maddox must be prevented from completing his project … by any means necessary."

Agnes could think of only one way to stop Bruce from building the next Datas. "You mean … ?"

"The same way Nhan stopped CONTROL," said the Commodore. "Yes."

"No." Agnes stumbled back until she bumped into the tree she had been sitting under. "No. I can't, I won't, I … you have no right to … "

She turned her back on Oh and started walking, then running, hardly seeing the green riverbank or the blue sky in front of her, everything blotted out by the horrible implication behind the Vulcan's detachment.

Commdore Oh kept pace with her easily, following her along the riverbank without even breaking a sweat.

"What will you choose, Dr. Jurati? The lives of the many … or the one?"

The life of the one ends in La Sirena's Sickbay at 18:34 hours.

Agnes knows this because the EMH activates to tell her so.

"Cause of death … " The hologram with the face of Captain Rios looks down at the readings on the monitor, then over to the body on the biobed, then up at Agnes, with dawning comprehension in his eyes. "But his vital signs were stable. This shouldn't happen unless - "

"Deactivate EMH," Agnes snaps, in a cold sharp voice that does not belong to her. "Give me access to his program."

"Access denied," says the computer.

But she's not the Federation's leading expert on synthetic life for nothing. It takes only seconds for her to hack into La Sirena's systems and cover her tracks. When she's done, it looks like no one touched Bruce Maddox's life support except the EMH himself.

What no one tells you about committing a murder is that death is only the beginning.

She has to tell the others. She has to get out there and act like a woman in mourning – which, to compound the irony, she is. She has to stay on board until they find Soji Asha; Bruce's death will mean nothing if she can't prevent the danger he unleashed.

She has to make sure the crew still trusts her. If Picard found out, he would grieve and blame himself. Rios would say he knew all along that bringing Agnes was a terrible idea. Raffi would be furious for Picard's sake, and Elnor … oh God, there's a Romulan sword master on board who believes in absolute candor. What will he do if he finds out that she betrayed them? What will she say to him if he asks her why?

What, in God's name, has she done?

That wasn't CONTROL on the biobed in front of her. That was Bruce, who used to bake cookies from scratch for her and call her his muse, who broke her heart when he left, but inspired her mind like no one else.

Agnes is not Nhan. She's not a soldier doing her duty against a world-ending threat. She's not even Airiam, who had no choice in what her hands were forced to do.

She's a woman who just killed the man she loves, and nothing will ever be the same again.