Solana was halfway through reviewing the morning inventory when the doors to Sickbay opened and Wade Samstone walked in carrying a small black case in one hand and a padd in the other. She looked up from her work, noticed the case immediately, and gave him the sort of look usually reserved for officers who had finally decided an injury was worth mentioning.

"Please tell me you're not here because you've been ignoring something for three days and finally decided it hurts enough."

"Not this time" Wade said, holding the padd out to her instead. "This is for you. No one else."

That was enough to kill the joke.

Solana took the padd, but the display remained dark until it confirmed her identity and requested a second biometric check. Only then did the document open beneath the seal of the Office of the Chief of Starfleet Medical. **EYES ONLY** appeared across the top, followed by her name and a classification level she didn't normally encounter in Sickbay.

The orders were surprisingly short. She was directed to perform a classified procedure on Commander Samstone using a device he would provide personally. The implant was to be placed at a specific location near the base of his skull, but she was prohibited from examining its internal construction, attempting to access its programming or scanning it beyond what was medically necessary to confirm placement and make certain it wasn't harming him.

The next paragraph explained why the orders had been delivered personally.

Knowledge of the implant was restricted to Wade and Solana. No one else aboard the Rubicon was authorized to know it existed. There would be no ordinary medical entry describing the procedure, no notation of an implant and no copy of the directive left accessible through the ship's systems once she confirmed completion.

Solana read that section twice before looking up. "No one else aboard?"

"No one" Wade said.

She studied him for a moment, then looked at the black case. Whatever questions had brought him here, he clearly wasn't going to answer most of them, and the orders had been written specifically to make certain she couldn't answer them herself.

"Do you know what it does?"

Wade paused before answering. "I know what I'm required to know."

It wasn't much, but it was enough for Solana to understand where the boundary was. She didn't push it and instead nodded toward the case. "Open it."

Wade placed it on the nearest biobed and pressed his hand against a recessed panel on top. The case authenticated him for several seconds before releasing with a quiet click. Inside was a single microdevice seated within a fitted compartment alongside a sealed transfer capsule.

Solana leaned closer without touching it. The device was tiny, dark and almost completely featureless. There was no manufacturer identification, no visible interface and nothing about it that immediately suggested medical technology.

"I'm supposed to put that in your head without knowing what it is" she said.

"That's what the order says."

Solana gave him a brief look before picking up the padd again. The authorization was genuine. The medical authority behind it was genuine. Someone at the highest level of Starfleet Medical had specifically decided that she needed enough information to implant the device safely and absolutely nothing beyond that.

She didn't like it, but disliking an order and having grounds to refuse it were different things.

"All right. Sit down."

Wade moved onto the biobed and removed the outer jacket of his uniform while Solana prepared only the equipment she actually needed. Whatever secrecy surrounded the device, she was still responsible for the procedure itself, and on that point she had no intention of allowing classified instructions to interfere with medical judgment.

"If anything goes wrong, I stop" she told him while checking the placement information again. "If I see a neural reaction, tissue damage or anything else I don't like, this comes back out. Whatever this thing is supposed to do can wait until I'm satisfied it isn't hurting you."

Wade nodded. "Understood."

That was all she needed from him.

The location specified by the order was precise, but the implantation itself was straightforward by Starfleet medical standards. Solana examined the area at the base of his skull, configured the applicator and then transferred the microdevice from the case without attempting to interrogate it. Her equipment recognized that something was present but provided almost nothing useful about the object itself.

She frowned at the display. "I already don't like this thing."

Wade glanced toward her. "You haven't even put it in yet."

"Exactly."

That was as far as the humor went. Solana positioned the medical field and focused on the information she was actually permitted to monitor: placement, surrounding tissue and Wade's neurological response. The procedure lasted only a few minutes, and there was nothing particularly dramatic about it. When she finished, the implant sat exactly where the order required.