She ran the permitted scan twice before she was satisfied. Wade's neural activity remained normal, there was no adverse tissue response and nothing suggested the device was interfering with anything around it. The implant itself remained almost completely unreadable, an intentional blank spot inside an otherwise ordinary medical scan.

"You're fine" Solana said. "At least as far as I'm allowed to determine."

Wade instinctively started to reach toward the back of his head, but Solana caught his wrist before he touched the site and pushed his hand back down. "Leave it alone."

He did.

Solana cleared the temporary diagnostic buffers and returned the transfer components to the case while Wade sealed it again. By the time she picked up the padd, a new instruction had appeared at the bottom of the document asking her to confirm completion.

She pressed it.

The system requested her biometric authorization and then Wade's. He supplied his, the screen displayed **PROCEDURE VERIFIED** for several seconds, and then the document disappeared completely. The padd returned to an ordinary Starfleet Medical screen as though nothing unusual had ever been displayed on it.

Solana checked the medical system next. The temporary procedure information was gone there as well. There was no reference to the implant, no description of what she'd done and nothing explaining why Wade had been in Sickbay.

As far as the Rubicon was concerned, the procedure had never happened.

She set the padd down and looked at him. There was already almost no visible evidence at the base of his skull, and within a short time even that would disappear. "I can keep this to myself" Solana said. "But don't mistake that for me being comfortable with it. If there ever comes a point where I need to know what I put in your head, you tell me."

Wade held her gaze for a moment before nodding. "If that point comes, I will."

That was apparently all either of them had left to say about it. Wade secured the black case and headed for the doors while Solana remained beside the biobed, watching him leave with considerably more questions than she'd had when he'd walked in.

There was no order on her padd, no entry in the medical database and no evidence anywhere in Sickbay that the Chief of Starfleet Medical had instructed her to place an unknown device inside her captain's skull.

Whatever purpose it served, the knowledge of its existence now belonged to Wade and Solana alone.