“Did you know the man who called himself John Abbott?”

Kyle picked up on the past tense reference right away. “What do you mean, ‘did’ I? Of course I know him.”

“How well?”

“Has something happened to him?” Kyle demanded.

The shaggy yellow creature spoke for the first time, his voice deep and rumbling with menace. “Please just answer our questions, Mr. Barrow. It’ll be easier on everyone.”

The woman flicked her eyes toward her partner, and Kyle got the impression that their working styles were not always in smooth confluence. “I’m afraid that Mr. Abbott took his own life,” she explained, sounding sympathetic. “When he heard we had come for him.”

“Took his own life? Why?” Kyle asked, already forgetting the tall one’s warning.

The woman blew out a sigh. “How well did you know him?” she asked again.

“Just casually,” Kyle replied. “We were the only humans on the ship. We had a few drinks together, had a chat from time to time. I didn’t know him before we met during the trip, and wouldn’t consider him a friend. But I’m sorry to hear that he’s dead. Was he in some kind of trouble?”

“You could say that,” the tall yellow officer said. “Abbott was a killer. In his cargo, we’ve found parts belonging to at least a dozen different bodies. But the captain of this ship says that a couple of her crew members have gone missing in recent weeks, and now she’s worried that he might have been continuing his spree on board.”

“You don’t mind if we have a look around in here?” the woman asked. Her tricorder had already appeared in her hand.

Kyle stepped away from the door to let them in. The yellow alien had to bend over uncomfortably far to fit beneath the low jamb, ducking like a palm tree in a hurricane, or a snow-laden fir. “Not at all,” he said, his mind racing to determine if there were anything in the room that might point to his real identity. As long as they didn’t try to access his padd, he thought he’d be okay.

Both officers ran their tricorders across the room—scanning for body parts, Kyle guessed, though he couldn’t be sure if any of their outlandish story had even been true. When they were finished they locked eyes and shared a shrug.

“You’re not making this up?” Kyle asked. “About Abbott and the bodies?”

“It’s not our job to tell spooky stories,” the yellow one said. “Abbott wouldn’t have told you any, would he? Maybe let on where he stashed his newest victims?”

Kyle shook his head grimly. “This is the first I’ve heard of anything like that,” he said. “He seemed like a nice enough fellow to me.”

“That’s what they always say about the worst ones,” the woman told her companion. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Barrow. Sorry to disturb you. Enjoy the rest of your trip.”

They both stepped from the room, the tall one scrunching himself down again to get out, and the door closed behind them. In the wake of their visit, Kyle found himself at once astonished and terrified. He had known that Abbott was a phony name, of course, but had thought maybe the man was a smuggler or something. Certainly nothing as sinister as a killer.

As he sat back down on the bed, he realized that the other thing Abbott had been was the only other human being he had spoken with on the Morning Star.Now there was no one on the ship but the crew, mostly Kreel’n, who had shown no indication of wanting to interact with him at all.

You wanted to be left alone,he told himself. Congratulations. It doesn’t get much more alone than this.

Where is he?

He’s everywhere. He’s nowhere.

What does that mean?

No one has seen him. There have been no records of his showing up anyplace—he hasn’t been home, he hasn’t been to his office, he hasn’t been near Headquarters. But his padd’s GPS shows that he’s everyplace from Venus to Taipei to Taurus II. Every reading comes from someplace different. It’s as if he’s completely vanished.

That’s impossible!

Exactly my point. We’ve lost him, or he’s lost himself. Either way...

But... but I want him! I want to see him squirm, see him suffer. I want him crushed! There’s a high price that needs to be paid, and Kyle Riker is the one to pay it!

I’m not resting... I won’t rest, until he’s found. And punished.

Yes, punished...

PART TWO

FEBRUARY-MAY 2356

Chapter 15

The sun set late on Hazimot, which was one of many reasons why Kyle liked it there. Eighteen hours of sunlight in a row reminded him of the Alaskan summer, that golden time of year when you remembered why you put up with Alaskan winters. Of course, Hazimot was hotter than Alaska, even Valdez in midsummer. It had its sun, technically a star known as Iamme IV, and then it had a secondary sun, Myetra, much farther away but still near enough to cast light and some warmth down on Hazimot’s arid surface. The conflicting gravitational fields gave all the system’s planets skewed orbits, and there were long winters on Hazimot that were much colder than Alaska’s. But the next one wouldn’t come around for about twelve earth years, and Kyle didn’t plan to stay that long.

Kyle was walking home from work through the twilight streets of Cozzen, one of the largest cities in the nation of Cyre, with Clantis, a Cyrian coworker. The day had been long and wearying and as Kyle walked he felt a heaviness of limbs and a weariness of muscle that left him at once tired, sore, and satisfied. Clantis, taller than him and broad, with a deep chest and massive shoulders that made him well suited to hard physical labor, had skin the color and texture of hammered copper. The months on Hazimot had bronzed Kyle’s as well, but he figured he’d never achieve the look that Clantis had.

When they reached the intersection where Kyle went one way and Clantis another, the Cyrian regarded Kyle with a bemused expression and shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe you still live in that hole,” he said. “You make enough, don’t you, to get a real place? In a neighborhood where you don’t have to fear for your life every day?”

Kyle shrugged. He had always had a facility for languages, and Cyrian had been easy for him to learn. “I guess it just suits me.”

“Suits the vermin who get into your food and bedding,” Clantis argued. “Not you. You’re a smart guy, a hard worker. You could do better, easy.”

Clantis’s own home was a low, domed house in a neighborhood of similar structures, all built in the shadow of one of the great walls that surrounded Cozzen. It had seven rooms and was technologically current. Kyle, on the other hand, still lived in the place he’d found upon first arriving in Cozzen, so many months before. His building was half a dozen stories tall, one of many in its cramped district, a warren of narrow streets and abandoned buildings turned squatters’ hovels. Kyle shared his building with a changing cast of characters, twenty or so at any given time. But rent was free and, more important, no one asked difficult questions there or pried into one another’s private affairs. Hazimot had a fairly substantial human population, and the natives were humanoid enough that blending in was easy.

“I suppose,” Kyle said, noncommittal. “But I’m happy, so why worry about it?”

“Happy?” Clantis echoed. The two had grown fairly close, working side by side on the interminable public redevelopment projects that were so common in the city, and walking home together most days. Close enough,Kyle thought, that he seems to be taking my life choices personally now.

That’s not good. Next thing, he might start wondering about my past.

“I don’t see how you can claim to be happy,” Clantis continued. “Living down there with the dregs, the losers and maggots that feed on society’s droppings.”