Previously on Star Trek: Picard...
A group of rogue synthetics dropped the planetary defense shields,
completely destroying the Utopia Planitia shipyard.
Tell us, Admiral. Why did you really quit Starfleet?
Because it was no longer Starfleet!
We're done here.
-What's happening? -Baby, please.
Find Picard. He can help you.
-What do you want here? -I was with my boyfriend.
They murdered him.
No, no, no!
Something inside of me just knew what to do,
how to move, how to fight.
Everything inside of me says that I'm safe with you.
I had a dear friend. Commander Data.
He painted you exactly as you are here and now.
That's impossible.
He named the painting Daughter.
Stay down.
She came here to find safety.
No!
I owe it to her to find out who killed her and why.
The androids that destroyed Mars came from this lab.
No one has ever been able to redevelop the science used to create Data.
Then came Bruce Maddox.
His theory was that Data's entire code, even his memories,
could be reconstituted from a single positronic neuron.
Then Data, or some part of him, would be alive.
There'd be no way of knowing without examining--
Dahj. Data's daughter.
They're created in pairs.
Dr. Asha.
-Narek. -Soji.
-Twins? -Twins.
So there's another one.
Attention, all personnel. Happy First Contact Day.
Celebrations will be held in designated recreational areas
during regularly scheduled alpha and beta shift breaks.
All directors, please submit final duty log prior to shift change.
Sector three maintenance regulators will report
to mandatory security training
at 0800 hours.
Good morning, plastic people.
Good morning, Mr. Pincus.
Let's go to work.
A500 maintenance issues should be reported to synthetic personnel supervisors
prior to initiating manual shutdown procedures.
Every other tri-hy station in the yard gets off First Contact Day.
Not us. What did we do wrong?
To have a skeleton crew, you have to have skeletons.
I bet my kids are having cake on Earth.
Yo, F8.
-You get into any trouble last night? -Hell, yeah.
Oh, yeah? Doing what?
Nothing.
Hell, yeah.
Hey, F8, I got one for you.
What's brown and sticky?
Teratogenic coolant. Isonucleic residue.
Boson-enriched nanopolymer.
A stick.
You get it?
No.
Dude creeps me out.
Hey. He can hear you.
And?
You can't offend them. They're not people.
And they can rip through solid titanium without breaking a sweat.
What are you, his sister?
Who raised you?
I wish they'd go back to using uno amino matrices in the replicators.
No kidding.
Space pineapples again.
I know what's brown and sticky.
This food is brown and sticky.
Hey, that dude is lucky he doesn't have to eat this crap.
Now, here is some brown sticky shit.
Do you replicate flies with that too?
What are you doing?
Security alert.
Multiple synthetic labor units have been compromised.
Get away from there!
Deflector shields down in all sectors of Utopia Planitia.
-Repeat, security alert. -Shit!
Multiple synthetic--
Central, this is tri-hy station A19.
Synth unit F8 has been compromised.
We have a man down.
Repeat, we have a man down.
Stand down!
Grid failure detected.
Move immediately to designated safe zones.
Security grid failure in progress.
Containments have failed. Evacuate immediately.
Orbital defense system compromised.
Emergency evacuation protocol in effect.
Cascade failure in progress.
Surface scans negative.
No matter or trace elements consistent with Dahj Asha are present.
They erased her.
And then they erased themselves.
Well, it's certainly Tal Shiar's operational style, but--
On Earth?
Not even the Tal Shiar would have that audacity.
Then who?
It has to be.
Zhat Vash.
And here we go.
What is "Zhat Vash"?
A Tal Shiar myth.
It's a kind of bogeyman they use to frighten new recruits.
And children.
Please explain.
Here in the Federation,
you refer to the Tal Shiar as the Romulan secret police.
But it's a bit redundant.
You could put the word "secret" in front of almost any aspect of Romulan culture.
I have heard, and I have reason to believe,
that the Tal Shiar is merely a mask worn by another far older cabal,
that before the Tal Shiar, there was the Zhat Vash.
"Zhat Vash" is a term sometimes used to refer to the dead,
the only reliable keepers of secrets.
- Ominous. - No. Fitting.
Because that's the sole purpose of the Zhat Vash...
to keep a secret so profound and terrible,
just learning it can break a person's mind.
Are you sure she said that he was murdered here, in her apartment?
She did.
All apparent evidence to the contrary.
Would it be foolish to ask what is the dread secret
that the Zhat Vash are keeping?
No one outside the Zhat Vash knows for sure.
But I've heard whispers.
Romulan methods of forensic molecular reconstruction
are illegal in the Federation.
Really? I had no idea.
Yeah. They're also unreliable.
And the results are dubious, at best.
Yeah. That's exactly what we wanted you to think.
When I was a new recruit,
-one of my first handlers... -My mother.
-...got drunk on Romulan ale... -My father.
...and let slip that at the heart of the Zhat Vash mission
was a deep unassuageable loathing.
Loathing of whom?
Not whom. What.
-More wine? -Surprise me.
Dahj, your replicator menus are tragic.
It's extraordinary.
It's said they operate without regard for treaty or jurisdiction,
and not just in Romulan worlds,
but in the Klingon empire, the Gorn hegemony,
even the Federation itself,
and that they have kept this secret for thousands upon thousands of years.
Cheeky fuckers.
They've overwritten the particle residuum.
Overwritten it?
Yes, and in a very sophisticated way.
It's barely detectable.
It would read as instrument failure if you didn't know better.
But it's not. It's a flat-out wipe.
Can you recover it?
Have you never noticed the complete absence
of any form of artificial life in Romulan culture?
We don't have androids or AIs. We don't study cybernetics.
Our computers are limited to purely numerical functions.
They must've saturated this place in antileptons.
At no small risk to themselves, by the way.
This place hasn't just been cleaned, Admiral. It's been scrubbed.
Is that to be expected of your Zhat Vash?
They're not my Zhat Vash. And I thought you didn't believe in them.
I may be coming around.
So, then all this is about the Zhat Vash's hatred of androids?
It's not simply hate.
It's hate and fear and pure loathing for any form of synthetic life.
Why?
That I can't tell you. I don't know.
But I am certain that is the silence that seals the mouths of the Zhat Vash
as surely and eternally as death.
The operatives who did this wouldn't have wanted to leave the impression
that the place had been scrubbed.
We may find they've neglected something,
some actual clue that lay tucked inside a false clue, as it were.
Something like this, for example?
There's no record of any incoming or outgoing calls.
The information's there,
but the indexes have been surgically deleted.
There's no way to sort the data.
Essentially, they've sterilized it so that it's qualitatively agnostic.
There's no distinction. Everything looks like everything else.
All we need is a record of any contact that she may have had with her sister.
And no doubt it's in here,
but it will look the same as everything else.
No, it'll look like her.
Like Dahj.
What's her name? Dr. Jurati.
She said that they would be identical twins, right?
-Even closer than twins, perhaps. -Okay.
So what's the first thing you do when you bring a new digital assistant online?
-Introduce myself. -Exactly.
Computers like efficiency.
So what a computer does is build heuristics,
shortcuts to the tasks it performs most often.
You're saying that if they were indistinguishable,
then the machine, at some point, could've mistaken the sister for Dahj.
Exactly.
And if it did, even for a few seconds before it flagged the error,
then the tags might still be in here,
overlooked by even the most diligent of scrubbers.
Got you.
Okay.
These were all outgoing.
These were incoming.
It's her.
Ghosts in the machine.
Can you tell me where she is?
No.
But I can tell you where she isn't.
Nonlocal information packets are routed through subspace relays.
This routing leaves tiny but unmistakable code marks.
Nonlocal?
I am saying this transmission came from off-world.
Are you certain?
Wherever this girl was calling her sister from,
it's nowhere on Earth.
Beautiful?
No one's ever said that before about a Borg cube.
This isn't the Borg cube, Narek. It's the Artifact.
The Borg cube is mighty and omnipotent.
The Artifact is lost...
severed from the Collective...
broken, vulnerable.
You find vulnerability and brokenness beautiful?
Is that strange, to find beauty in imperfection?
Certainly not very Romulan.
But then, there's nothing very Romulan about this place at all.
Apart from the current owners
and the profits you extract from the exploitation of Borg technology.
Are you a subversive, Dr. Asha,
sent by our enemies to foment revolution among the researchers?
Yes, I am.
But it's too late now. You already slept with me.
That makes you an accessory to my plot.
Clearly...
I'll have to silence you.
Try it.
Time for work.
Yeah. Me too.
Oh, you have a job? Thought you were just some Romulan lounge lizard.
Oh, we all have our part to play.
Can I ask you a question?
Sure. Just don't expect an answer.
Are we allowed to be sleeping together, or is that a secret?
Very much the latter.
Is everything Romulans do a secret?
Oh, I'm not at liberty to divulge that.
Is your name actually Narek?
It's one of them.
So, is there anything you can tell me about yourself?
Yes.
I'm a very private person.
So, see you at the checkpoint?
-Oh, really? -I need to see how it works.
In your new capacity as?
Can you keep a secret?
Yes.
Good.
So can I.
He said I'd find you out here.
-Moritz. -Hello, Jean-Luc.
It's been a very long time.
Too long.
I know there was a bit of trouble with the remote med-scan,
but I hardly expected a house call.
Let me just...
Your office told me
they would be forwarding the certificate for interstellar service
as soon as you had seen the results.
Oh, I see.
You might want something stronger.
Your med-scan came in
at or above Starfleet minimums in every category.
Cardiovascular. Metabolic. Cognitive.
For a relic, you're in excellent shape.
Just that little abnormality in the parietal lobe.
I was told a long time ago that it might cause a problem eventually.
Loss of appetite, mood swings, unsettling dreams?
Inappropriate displays of anger on interplanetary news holos.
What do you think it is?
I'd need to run more tests.
It could be one of a number of related syndromes.
Prognosis?
Come on. Let's have it, Dr. Benayoun.
A few are treatable, but they all end the same way...
some sooner than others.
I see.
I need you to certify me to Starfleet
as fit for interstellar service.
Now, will you do it?
I don't suppose you'd condescend to tell me why?
Secret mission?
We certainly had our share of those on the Stargazer, didn't we?
Remember that time in the fire forest on Calyx--
Dr. Benayoun.
Forgive me.
You really want to go back out into the cold, knowing?
More than ever, knowing.
I don't know what kind of trouble you're planning to get into.
Maybe if you're lucky,
it will kill you first.
All visitors must report to main security desk.
Admiral Kurti, please report to conference room B.
Hello.
I have a meeting with the CNC. I have an appointment.
Of course, sir.
May I have your name, please, sir?
Oh, um... Picard.
P-I-C-A-R-D.
Jean-Luc.
Ah.
It's nice to see you up and around, Admiral.
Welcome back.
Come.
Jean-Luc.
Kirsten.
Hello.
May I?
Apparently you have urgent Federation business.
I understood you to have left affairs of state behind.
I am staying as far from it all as I can.
-So, then what can I do for you? -Bruce Maddox.
What about him?
I believe that he is using neurons from the late Commander Data
to create a new organic synthetic.
Well, that's not far from all of it. It is all of it.
The Romulans are involved.
This gets better and better.
Commander Data was not only my colleague, he was my dear friend.
And he gave his life, body and soul to the Federation.
And if there is a chance that some part of him still exists,
then I think we have an obligation to investigate--
There is no "we," Jean-Luc.
Kirsten.
I know we have not always seen eye-to-eye.
Nevertheless, I have a request to make.
Based on my years of service, I want you to reinstate me,
temporarily, for one mission.
I will need a small warp-capable reconnaissance ship with a minimal crew.
And if you feel that my rank makes me too conspicuous,
well, then, I am content to be demoted to captain.
The sheer fucking hubris.
You think you could waltz back in here
and be entrusted with taking men and women into space?
Don't you think I was watching the holo the other day,
along with everyone else in the galaxy?
I should not have spoken in public.
The Romulans were our enemies.
And we tried to help them for as long as we could.
But even before the synthetics attacked Mars,
14 species within the Federation said
"Cut the Romulans loose or we'll pull out."
It was a choice between allowing the Federation to implode
or letting the Romulans go.
The Federation does not get to decide if a species lives or dies.
Yes, we do. We absolutely do.
Thousands of other species depend upon us for unity, for cohesion.
We didn't have enough ships left.
We had to make choices.
But the great Captain Picard didn't like his orders.
I was standing up for the Federation, for what it represents,
for what it should still represent!
How dare you lecture me?
Ignore me again at your cost.
-My cost? -You are in peril, Admiral.
There's no peril here.
Only the pitiable delusions of a once-great man desperate to matter.
This is no longer your house, Jean-Luc.
So do what you're good at. Go home.
Request denied.
All those entering the Gray Zone
are required to wear protective gear.
Security badges must be visible at all times.
Here, let me help you with that.
So embarrassing.
Are you new here? Haven't seen you around.
Yesterday.
My residency was supposed to start six months ago,
but the Romulan Free State revoked it when I was halfway here.
I have no idea why or why they finally reinstated it.
Well, that sounds about right.
They still don't have a clear idea of how much damage this Cube sustained.
Or maybe they do, and they just aren't telling.
Anyway, you don't want to cross over into the Gray Zone without this turned on.
Don't worry. You're gonna be fine.
Morning, and welcome to Ops Cycle 9834.
Here we go.
As guests of the Borg Artifact Research Institute,
your safety is important to us.
You are standing inside one of the most destructive weapons ever known.
And though no longer active, it remains potentially dangerous.
Please don't venture outside of your designated research area.
Assume that any fixture or instrument not personally known to be benign
is malignant.
Romulans are into drama.
You may not remove any object.
Who is that?
That's Narek. He's new here too.
I didn't know Romulans could be so hot.
Me either.
While in the Gray Zone,
you are likely to encounter former members of the Borg Collective.
Are you researching the xBs?
It's a little more hands-on.
And if your gradient badge starts to blink green, run.
Don't worry about it.
Narek, this is--
Dr. Naàshala Kunamadèstifee of Trill Polytech.
The Institute is eager to see your work bear fruit, Doctor.
How likely is the Collective to re-establish a link to your Borg?
Is it really wise to release them?
Well, they're former Borg. And we're not releasing them.
-We're reclaiming them. -There's really no danger.
When a Cube undergoes submatrix collapse,
the Collective immediately severs its link to the afflicted population.
As far as the Collective are concerned, this is just a graveyard.
And what does that make us?
The same as you find in any graveyard.
Some have come to feed on the dead. Some are ghosts.
And a few, like you, Dr. Asha, pin their hopes on resurrection.
May I join you for the procedure?
I'd like to see you work.
That's not up to me.
You need approval from the Director of the Borg Reclamation Project.
Hmm. Actually, I don't.
Ah, you have a taste for the classics, I see.
I never really cared for science fiction.
I guess I just didn't get it.
-Well, thank you for coming over. -Yeah.
It was hard to tear myself away from the action at my lab, but...
Um, your preference? We have a selection.
Earl Grey?
I knew there was something about you.
I've gathered up everything I could find from Maddox's tenure at the Institute.
Most of what was there got black-boxed after he disappeared,
but they left some of the ancillary stuff untouched.
I was thinking about the painting.
Bruce and Data were friends, after a fashion.
If Bruce is using Data's neurons to make more synths,
it would make sense to model them after the painting Data made.
Indeed.
I also did a little digging into Dahj Asha.
You were right. She was accepted at Daystrom.
In fact, she was the perfect candidate.
In hindsight, a little too perfect.
Her credentials were bogus.
It's more insidious than that.
I checked with Regulus.
Their records show she was enrolled there, and her grade transcripts are on file.
So, she was what she claimed to be?
She was a complete work of fiction.
There's no record of her having actually attended R3SA.
I'm no forensics maven,
but my sense is that her entire identity was built all at once
about three years ago.
By whom? Bruce Maddox?
He certainly had the ability.
-Motive? -I don't know.
People in the synthetic humanoid field tend to get a little secret-planny.
-Milk? -Yes, please. Thank you.
There you go.
Oh, thank you.
It breaks my heart that I never got a chance to meet her.
Such a wondrous thing.
And the damn Romulans just wiped her away.
You asked me what the plan was, what she was after at Daystrom.
I don't think that's the most relevant question right now.
I think the question you should be trying to answer is--
"What about the other one?"
If she is really out there,
and if the Romulans haven't gotten to her too...
then where is she?
And what is she after?
Continuing procedure on patient 8923 stroke three.
One of the Nameless.
Time in regenestasis, 14 years.
Arm implant was successfully removed.
Initiating ocular harvest procedure on Nameless.
You know I hate it when you use that term.
You may have mentioned that once.
Why do you call them the Nameless?
Their species had a name. We just don't know what it was.
Nameless is a name.
Removing ocular processing core.
Tertiary mandible implant. Containment complete.
Tagged for level ten storage.
Tagged for level one disposal.
You are free now, my friend.
Raffi, it's Jean-Luc.
Please don't hang up. I need your help.
I need a ship.
Picard again?
And we all thought that he was safely mothballed on that vineyard of his.
All these years, the hermit of La Barre.
Now suddenly he is inescapable.
That's one word for what he is.
Going on and on about advanced synthetics, Bruce Maddox and--
Bruce Maddox?
-Is he still alive? -Does it even matter?
And then there was this wild talk
about clandestine Romulan anti-synth ops here on Earth.
It was just...
It was just sad.
One might be even inclined to say tragic.
Admiral Clancy, I know I need hardly remind you,
if the Romulans were running clandestine operations on Earth,
I would know.
And then you would know.
And then all of Starfleet would know,
because clearly that would be an overt and intolerable act of war.
Of course.
Look, Commodore, obviously there's nothing to it,
but I thought I'd better check, out of an excess of caution, as they say.
-Just look into it. -Of course.
Lieutenant Rizzo to me, please.
What?
Have you gone mad?
-Is it dementia? -I beg your pardon?
Sorry, but you're not a stupid man,
so when I hear you say such a stupid idea, I have to ask for other explanations.
Well, how about this?
The daughter of the man whose death I have been mourning for two decades
comes to me for help and assistance.
And then she is assassinated in front of my eyes by a Romulan death squad
who will then go and try and find and destroy her twin sister.
And you want me to sit here worrying what to do about the spittlebugs on the pinots?
I want you not to die.
No one but the Tal Shiar could ever protect you against the Tal Shiar.
She's not wrong. You can't go without us.
Idiot! He cannot go at all. He's only safe here.
He knows about them. They have to eliminate him.
Nevertheless, I have to go.
Go where? Go how?
Well, I will get a ship, and I will find Bruce Maddox,
wherever he is.
Laris, I have to do this.
I don't yet fully understand all of it,
but I know that it's important,
and not only to me.
No, of course, if it's important to Jean-Luc Picard,
it must be important to the whole galaxy.
Go.
And take that one with you!
You can die together.
Laris understands. She's afraid for you. That's all.
I know that.
But you have to stay here with her.
The grapes are far more in need of protection than I am.
And it's less than a month to the harvest.
But you can't do it alone.
-You need help. You need protection. -Yeah.
You need a crew. Riker. Worf. La Forge. Hmm?
No.
I thought about it.
And they would do it in a heartbeat,
and that's precisely why I cannot ask them.
They would put themselves at risk out of loyalty to me,
and I do not want to have to go through that again.
Okay.
You need someone who hates you and has nothing to lose.
I've already made the call.
Come.
You wanted to see me, Commodore?
Take a look at this.
Does that look like disrupter fire?
There.
Reflected in the handrail.
Not to me, no.
Admiral Clancy just called.
Jean-Luc Picard came to see her.
He has information about clandestine Romulan ops here on Earth.
He referred to Zhat Vash by name.
He was trying to persuade her to give him a ship
and let him go after Dr. Bruce Maddox.
Although she did not mention that last part
nor the talk about Zhat Vash.
-Then how do you know? -Do not insult me, Lieutenant.
It would not be advantageous for your career.
Apologies, Commodore.
This is unexpected.
A dirty word in our line of work.
Perhaps the worst word of all.
So, you need me to take care of Picard?
Your zeal and passion are commendable,
but they are very nearly overbalanced by your impatience.
There is a fundamental aptness in the word "undercover"
which you have yet to fully absorb.
So I won't take care of him impatiently.
I'll make it last as long as you like.
Clancy has discouraged him adequately, I believe.
And if the need arises,
I will take care of Picard.
I want you to stay on mission.
You made a shambles of the operation here.
Your team destroyed the thing before it could be interrogated
and nearly blew our cover.
We have one more opportunity.
Do not squander it.
Of course.
-I've put my best man on it. -Have you? I worry about that one.
He too has a troubling penchant for the unexpected.
And I have had just about my fill of surprises, Lieutenant.
Do I make myself clear?
I will vouch for him with my life.
Indeed. You will.
Which is why I strongly recommend that you manage this case in person.
Of course.
Everything is at stake.
See that he does not fail.
See that neither of you does.
You can turn around and call that cab
to take you right back where you came from.
I just want to talk.
There isn't anything you could say that I wanna hear.
Secret Romulan assassins are operating on Earth.
Is that the '86?
Goddamn it.
-Nice of you to knock. -Why start now?
How's life in Starfleet, Lieutenant Rizzo?
That ridiculous disguise and round ears.
-You look like a plucked wakak. -Shut up.
-Any progress? -Yes.
Slow, but I'm still confident
that my approach, which you approved, is the only sound approach.
I hope that confidence is not misguided.
If your approach doesn't start paying off very soon,
I'll be obliged to un-approve it, for both our sakes.
Commodore Oh is quite distressed.
She has been a useful ally for a long time.
I can't have her turning on us.
-When I arrive-- -When you arrive?
I'm on top of it.
So it would seem.
Have you found the nest?
Has the machine given up the location of its fellow abominations?
Really, has it told you anything at all?
Grave reservations have been expressed about your approach, baby brother.
I don't have to tell you the stakes couldn't be higher.
Oh has reservations...
profound reservations.
There is no one whose survival matters more to me than yours.
Except my own.
If you've made no progress by the time I get there,
I will have no choice but to try my approach,
unfortunate as it may have been.
If there is another such disaster...
it will undoubtedly consume you and me too.