“Sounds like fun,” Plure growled, his voice every bit as unpleasant as the rest of him. “Maybe you’ll introduce me to your family. The meals they serve here stink, and you look like some good eating.”

Aronson ignored the taunt and touched his combadge. “Pegasus,”he said, “five to beam aboard.”

As Will dematerialized, to arrive a moment later in the transporter room of the Pegasus,he thought he heard the terrible mob break through the prison walls. He hoped Luwadis could calm the mob before he and his guards had all been killed.

Chapter 33

There was little security in the psychiatric facility. Carson Cook wasn’t considered a danger to himself or anyone else. One had to have some kind of mental process to be dangerous. Carson was just a blank slate, and no one had written menace onto it. And psychiatric science was such that very few people needed to be confined. So Tanguy Messina was alone in the building with Carson Cook, and once Tanguy was dead, there was no one standing in his way.

Carson walked away from the building rapidly, partly in order to put distance between himself and Messina’s body, but mainly to find and kill his next victim. There was menace in him now, certainly. He personified danger. He didn’t have a conscience—had he been asked, he wouldn’t have been able to define the word. He didn’t have a moral code or a set of ethical standards. All those things had been left behind in the man he had once been, but was no longer.

Now, he was a targeted missile.

At uneven intervals he received new information, helping him lock onto his target. As he walked, some people stared at him, he noticed. Eventually he figured out that it was his robe. He was naked underneath, and it wasn’t what they were wearing. When he came to that conclusion, his mind told him that he should do something about it. He needed to blend in if he was to reach his goal. He watched a man about his size enter a house, and as the man was just passing through the doorway, Carson rushed up the walk and hurled himself at the man. His momentum carried them both inside. The man cried out but Carson slammed a fist into the man’s throat, effectively silencing him. The man flailed at him. He was no soldier, though; he was weak, and soft. Carson smashed his head against the wall a few times, and it left a thick red smear when the man sank to the floor.

The man’s clothes were torn and bloody now, but Carson understood that he was inside the man’s home. He went upstairs, found a closet full of similar suits, and put one on. With a tunic and pants of the same color, a pleasant royal blue, and a pair of actual boots, Carson figured he would look enough like anyone else on the street to withstand casual scrutiny. He looked around for a few more minutes, to see if there was anything else here that might be useful to him. He didn’t find anything, but so attired, he went back out into the city and waited for more instructions.

A night passed, and a day, and then, as if he had always known it, he knew the location of his target. He knew what his target looked like, how he might be dressed, what the sound of his voice was. He went to his target’s approximate location, and he waited.

And finally, his target showed.

As promised, Kyle reported his new address to Owen Paris as soon as he’d secured an apartment. And as Owen had promised, he relayed the information to Starfleet Security, to personnel, to records—to virtually every department he could think of, short of writing it on the walls of Starfleet Headquarters in giant red letters. If there were going to be more attacks against Kyle, they would happen soon.

They’d have to. Kyle had been feeling low-grade anxiety ever since he’d entered Earth’s orbit. He wanted to get this over with, once and for all, so he could go back to living his life.

He spent the next day trying as best he could to put his affairs back into some kind of order. He retrieved his abandoned belongings from storage—his books, his maps, his clothing, some artwork, some sentimental items that reminded him of Annie, or Kate. To these, in his new home, he added the holoimage of Michelle. The three women he hadn’t proved worthy of. But maybe it wasn’t too late to try.

His new apartment had a food replicator, but he was back in San Francisco, which was still one of the best places in the galaxy to get a fine meal. So that evening, instead of eating by himself in his apartment, he went out. He had his heart set on Italian—some capellini pomodoro, maybe, with a nice bottle of Saint Emilion, a favorite wine he’d introduced Owen Paris to over dinner a few years earlier.

Notwithstanding his generalized anxiety and the grief that still clawed at his heart, Kyle felt better overall than he had since before the attack on Starbase 311. Even with all the horror he experienced there, the time on Hazimot had been healing and restful. He felt sharp, alert, and clearheaded. The hard manual labor he had done there had left him strong, with stamina he hadn’t enjoyed since he was much younger. And being back in San Francisco helped, too. He loved the city; always had. Its cool breezes, crazily diverse architecture, and almost uniquely polyglot population sang to him. As he walked down the street, confident that whatever Italian restaurant he came to first could provide an excellent meal, he felt almost happy again. He felt, at least, the possibility of happiness; no, the inevitability of it.

Inevitability. He liked the sound of that. He even tried saying it out loud. He repeated it, almost like a mantra, inside his head as he approached a small storefront restaurant called Paolo’s, its sign glowing golden and inviting in the twilight.

But before he reached Paolo’s, he saw a man coming toward him in an ill-fitting blue suit, a glazed expression on his face. This, he was pretty sure, was it. Maybe the first of many, but definitely an attack. You should have armed yourself,he thought bitterly. A phaser would make short work of this guy.He hadn’t wanted to be overly impulsive, though. Maybe the man was just lost, a stranger in town, confused and looking for a hand. The way Kyle had been feeling lately, he might have fired first, leaving San Francisco with one less tourist and himself with an even bigger problem.

His muscles tensed, his heartbeat and respiration quickened. Still the man came toward him, not deviating from his path. His hands were clenching and releasing, and Kyle knew then that he was not wrong. He glanced around himself, rapidly, trying to determine whether or not this person was alone. It appeared that he was, so Kyle froze in position and let the man come to him.

As he neared, steel flashed in his hands. The man carried a Ligonian knife, its blade wickedly curved, in his right hand. Kyle barely had time to register that when the man in blue sprang at him.

Kyle dropped to a partial crouch, minimizing his target area and bringing his arms in front of himself for defense. Now Kyle recognized him: Carson Cook, the supposedly comatose security officer; Owen had sent over an image of him last night. Cook moved in fast, blade slashing wildly toward him. Kyle blocked the first attack with a blow to Cook’s forearm. Cook almost dropped the knife, but he recovered it and brought it down below Kyle’s waist level, then stabbed up, aiming for the ribs. Kyle caught Cook’s wrist, the knife’s point just nicking his own forearm as he did. With his other hand he reached for Cook’s throat. Cook dodged the arm, so Kyle, still gripping the wrist, kicked at Cook’s knee instead. The kick connected, hard, and Cook lost his footing. He fell to one knee and Kyle jerked his arm skyward, twisting as he did. Cook’s hand spasmed and the Ligonian knife went flying, landing on the street with a clatter.

As soon as Kyle released his wrist, Cook lunged forward again, this time from his kneeling position. His mouth opened and he snapped at Kyle’s stomach. Kyle brought a knee up, smashing it into Cook’s jaw. Cook’s teeth crunched sickeningly and he swayed backward. Blood appeared at the corners of his mouth and he spat bits of tooth into the street, but he didn’t go down.