The Lost

Deceit

It was cold on the metal slab that was the examination table. Her clothes did little to prevent the cold from touching her skin. But honestly, she didn't mind it one bit. She sat and smiled up at the ceiling as The Curator began to prep things for the procedure.

:"Alright now, Annabeth. I will be giving you a small muscle relaxer to keep you calm as you lay there. I know not how long this will take me. It all depends on the amount of Data i have to sift through. But i promise, we can go to the Holo-Deck once we are through and I will show you one of this facilities magnificent gardens that we have here." He smiled calmly at her, and walked to her with the syringe in hand.

He could see that she was calm. Calmer than she had been previously since she first came to them after the fall of the Labyrinth's. "Will it hurt, Curator?" She asked like a little kid.

"Not at all, dear. the muscle relaxer is to just keep you calm while I run through the data. Some areas of data could perhaps cause your limbs to convulse, and I just want to make sure that there will be no further harm to you than there already has been."

She nodded in understanding. "I understand, Curator. When you are ready." She closed her eyes as The Curator checked for the vein he needed, and inserted the needle, As the fluid was injected into her vein, she felt a sense of panic, and then relaxation as a familiar icy burn spread throughout her body and then calmed to a slight chill to match the exam table. She blinked a few times, and moved her head as The Curator moved, watching him.

"Now now, lie still, Anna. I need to access the port for your brain." He was holding two connector cables in his hand, and she recognized them as Data Cables, One way data cables. She could trust The Curator to keep his word. She turned her head again and continued looking up at the ceiling, her hand coming up to move her hair to expose the data ports behind her ear.

The Curator nodded his approval of these actions, as it meant she was willing to cooperate more and more, and he quickly connected the two cables. The second one sent a small jolt through her system as it also supplied a bit of power for the process, and then he connected the last cable to the terminal he was working with and ran the diagnostic program.

Data began to scroll across The Curator's screen, and he nodded, looking for anomalies, He was quiet for some time. "Ah! There it is..." She could hear his fingers as they glided over the keyboard and began recording his findings that he would later feed into another program to analyze, and come up with a solution.

"What did you find, Curator?" She asked as she continued to watch the ceiling, her hands now overlapped on her stomach. She was beginning to feel a bit hungry, but these tests needed to come first.

"Not much my dear. A spike in adrenaline as the memory breeched the surface, and broke through to the forefront of your mind. The pain was caused by an overload in your Synapses, caused by a temporary swelling in your frontal cortex, which was due to an increase in pressure as your subconscious tried to make your conscious mind remember what you had been through."

She frowned, and furrowed her eyebrows, trying to figure out what this meant for her in regards to her health and mental well-being. "Is this going to be a problem, Curator?"

She could hear him stop typing and turn his chair to look at her. "To be honest, Annabeth, I don't know. It's not something we have looked closely into. And I fought to leave your memories intact but buried, so this issue may resurface again. I don't know what could happen. But this is why it would be imperative for you to have a team on your next mission. One, to make sure if this did happen that they could muffle the sounds. Two, to make sure you don't get injured in the process of another incident."

She closed her eyes in thought and just lay there, contemplating everything she had just heard, and what it could mean. Would it be the same pain? Less? Would she ever get used to it? "Curator?"

"Yes, Annabeth?" He said as he approached her on the table again.

She looked up at him. "What keeps you here? I mean. Why do you serve the elders?"

The Curator froze. He had never been asked this question by one of his subjects before, and it caught him off guard. "W-well, there are many reasons why one would work for the elders. This place is a place for the progression of technology and humanitarian needs." He began to speak of the reasons the facility existed, and not directly answering the question. "Some seek refuge and solace in the work that we do here. Without having to think overly much for themselves, we can be given a list of tasks, and we are content."

She nodded, and filed the information away. Her computer components that would have detected his vitals and what not were turned off while at he facility, otherwise, she might have been able to tell he had been lying. But as she could not, she couldn't tell that he was lying, but how in the world would he have ever been able to tell her that his family had been wiped out by the same people who he was working for now, and he had nothing else to do with his life? What would that achieve?

He went back to his computer and continued to analyze the data, highlighting the important data streams for further inspection later. About an hour later, he came back to the table and disconnected Annabeth from the machine. "We are all done, Annabeth. You can get up and stretch your limbs now." He looked at the time. "Oh my, you must be hungry, dear. It is past the time you normally eat your lunch. Come, come, We will go somewhere special to eat."