Though he hadn’t yet heard an alarm, he knew he couldn’t afford to take the time to figure out the layout of the prison, and probably lacked the time even to map out his most efficient escape route. The guards’ disruptor rifle blasts had undoubtedly been detected by other Romulan troops, so it was likely that he had only minutes of freedom left, if that. But he knew of someone who almost certainly didknow the best way out, though accessing that information would be almost as dangerous as facing the rest of the prison’s armed personnel.

Tuvok approached the bleeding guard and pulled his crumpled form into a sitting position. The man’s dark eyes were open but unfocused, and his body still twitched. He was dying, but not yet dead. At least not completely. Tuvok forced aside another wave of self-loathing as he contemplated what he was about to do. What Ihave to do.

Placing his left index finger beside the dying man’s nose, his thumb under his chin, and splaying his other fingers against his bloodied cheek, Tuvok stared deeply into his erstwhile captor’s rapidly glazing eyes.

My mind to your mind,he thought, placing every iota of his will into the mind-meld. If he could extract the information he needed before the final dissolution of the guard’s mind, then everyone confined in this horrific labyrinth might stand a fighting chance of escaping.

Mekrikuk felt the gentle touch of Tuvok’s mind before he even heard the Vulcan’s thoughts. The brief contact allowed him time to warn Tesruk and Kachrek and several other Reman prisoners—though they were not exactly friends, Mekrikuk regarded them almost as equals—of what was about to transpire.

Then the cell doors opened, and Mekrikuk knew that the Trayatik dice had finally been cast.

At first, no one seemed to react. But within seconds, the Reman prisoners began a mad en masse rush to the corridors. Finding themselves suddenly outside the cellmaze doors for the first time since their arrival at Vikr’l, many of the Remans pushed forward toward the prison’s outer perimeter, which some of them had not even seen in years. Some stayed behind, scrapping and brawling with prisoners from other tiers, their anger over real or perceived slights now exploding with furious intensity.

Mekrikuk and a handful of Reman prisoners from his immediate circle of intimates stayed back in the cell, biding their time as the noise of the rapidly escalating riot grew almost deafening. The shouts and screams reached an earsplitting volume as the doors to the chambers beyond their tier also opened. Approaching the duranium bars, Mekrikuk squinted, watching as hordes of Remans surged forward into the well-lit areas that lay beyond the outer doors.

He grinned in satisfaction, imagining that this scene was being repeated in every confinement wing in Vikr’l Prison, thanks to the machinations of Tuvok. Until the Vulcan’s newly scrambled security codes could be deciphered, this entire maximum security facility had been effectively turned into an open courtyard. Mekrikuk had no pity for the guards he was certain were now attempting to flee the prison as the angry masses surged toward them, their minds brimming over with thoughts of revenge.

And of freedom, which was Mekrikuk’s foremost desire. Assuming he survived the events of this day, there would be time and opportunity later to exact vengeance against his captors. For now, he knew he would have his hands full just keeping himself alive and in one piece.

Mekrikuk noted that the outer corridors were mostly empty now that the rioting crowd had moved toward the prison’s periphery. The storm is always calmest in its center,Mekrikuk thought, echoing the sentiment that Tuvok had instilled in him during their brief psionic contact. All that remained in the cell block’s deeper recesses were the broken bodies of the dead and those too badly injured to take advantage of the opportunity to escape.

“Denae!”Mekrikuk said, and his small retinue of Reman compatriots followed him cautiously out into the corridor. The rough stone floor was slick with emerald blood as they exited the cellmaze.

“Bont na batlem saith,”he commanded, and the group moved among the wounded. As he had instructed, they quickly and cleanly killed any who would otherwise have died a lingering, agonizing death from their injuries. Mekrikuk had learned to practice this judicious compassion during the Dominion War, on Goloroth and other battlefields. He knew well that wars were anything but noble enterprises, and that their corpse-strewn killing fields were among the least glorious places to die. Having looked into perhaps hundreds of haunted, pain-racked eyes, he understood the grateful release of those whose journeys to the next world he had mercifully expedited.

His grim task complete, Mekrikuk led the group down the corridor. They blinked and squinted as they entered the more brightly-illuminated rooms and corridors that lay beyond. “Keisa,”Mekrikuk said, instructing his people to enter the small chamber on the right.

They entered, and Mekrikuk saw five Romulan guards lying dead on the floor. They were the same guards who had taken Tuvok away. He saw that they had been savaged after death by the prisoners who had moved through this room. Stupidly, the rioters had also smashed most of the monitors and computer equipment in the room before they had moved on.

“Tuvok?” he called out. There was no sign of the Vulcan, but his mind told him that his ally was somewhere in the room.

He heard a sound above and behind his group. He whirled to look, as did the others, each of whom possessed hearing no less acute than Mekrikuk’s.

Mekrikuk looked upward. From behind the dark latticework of pipes that ran across the ceiling, Tuvok emerged. The rags he wore were encrusted with dirt and blood. He held several disruptor rifles, tied together with a length of cord.

Tuvok jumped down, his legs coiling beneath him as he landed, like those of a particularly agile arark.

“You are unharmed?” Mekrikuk asked.

“Essentially,” the Vulcan said. “I have not been injured beyond repair. Thank you.” He turned to face the others and began distributing the captured Romulan energy weapons, handing one to Mekrikuk and another to Tesruk.

Despite Tuvok’s assurances, the Vulcan’s dark, sunken eyes were twin pools of pain. Mekrikuk supposed he was unaccustomed to such violence as he had seen today.

“The Romulans will already have locked down Vikr’l’s outer perimeter,” Tuvok continued, speaking in the Romulan common tongue. “We will have to overcome that problem once we reach it. There are other entrances and exits, if we can find them. But our way will be blocked there as well, by other prisoners, by guards, and by whatever security measures they will soon take to quell this riot. It’s likely that they will take lethal measures, and perhaps even try to eliminate the entire population of the prison. We will have to make our escape before that happens.”

“Voi mnaeri mnean ihra corr Rihanha?”asked Fapruk, a portly older Reman male. Mekrikuk had always regarded Fapruk’s so-called revolutionary crimes—the nominal reason for his incarceration at Vikr’l—as the consequence of spontaneous vandalism rather than the result of any coherent plan.

“We should trust him, Fapruk, because he got us this far,” Mekrikuk answered. “And because I said so,” he added in a more menacing tone.

His expression determined, Tuvok motioned toward a side doorway.

“Let’s get out of here.”