Before we left, I took another look at Maladek, and a shock of recognition traveled through my body when he returned my look. It was at that moment that I remembered: at Bamarren he was One Ramaklan, the student leader who’d been humiliated in the Competition. His look, however, revealed nothing. We left one by one in the order we had arrived (“Never in a group,” we were warned) and as I made my way to the ladder, Maladek/Ramaklan avoided my last look. Perhaps it was just an uncanny resemblance.

I decided to walk to the Torr Sector, where my new living quarters were located, and requested directions from the comm chip. It was a beautiful night, and the sight of the Taluvian Constellations pulsing their secret messages made me think of the Mekar Wilderness and a simpler time. Perhaps if I could decode the pulses, I thought, I could begin to unravel the mystery that was engulfing my life. I slowed my pace, as I thought about Father and Mother and the path that was leading me to my new home. I felt oddly disconnected, almost as if I were walking next to and observing this person, Elim Garak, who was playing out a fateline that demanded his submission, and over which he had no control.

A group of people pulled me back into myself. How unusual for this time of night, and how clumsily they tried to appear inconspicuous, as if ignoring each other would be interpreted that they were several strangers who happened to be on the street at the same time. I fully appreciated why Limor warned us against such group behavior. And yet, as I studied these people, they expressed no guilt or shame in what they were doing. Indeed, there was a connectedness to them that any amount of pretending couldn’t hide–and which almost made me follow as they entered this one building. Grudgingly, however, I admitted that I had better “submit” to my fate, and I continued in my direction at a quickened pace.

It was a modest dwelling in an old residential area. The comm chip gave me the entrance code and instructed me to a side door that led down to a clean, stark basement. Another basement, but much smaller than home. I wondered if I’d ever live at ground level or higher in the City. The few belongings I owned had been transferred from Tain’s house, and were piled neatly on my pallet. It took me very little time to arrange them and acquaint myself with the room and its few amenities. When there was nothing left to do I decided to go to sleep. But I couldn’t. From upstairs there came the faint sound of someone moving about. It wasn’t Tain. But how could I be sure? He seemed to be everywhere else in my life. I thought of Father and wondered when I’d see him again. Would I ever have the chance to plant Edosian orchids with him again? The question was swallowed by the thick darkness of my new home.

The most horrible images of littered corpses and mass destruction crowded my mind’s eye; my senses filled with the smells . . . the feelings. . . . I knew I couldn’t take much more. Faces of everyone I knew–my parents, the people I cared most about at Bamarren–distorted and frozen in their final agonies, as the sounds of a final cataclysm rose to a shrieking pitch and suffocated all breath and hope.

And then nothing. In every direction. Surrounded by a deadened void; alone. The silence of the end of days. Nothing resounded; everything had been absorbed beyond grief and sorrow. My breathing began to clutch. The void was shrinking; the dense and darkened silence was closing in. I couldn’t swallow. End it. End it now!

“That’s enough,” Limor’s voice said, and simultaneously the room returned. He was intently studying my reaction as I struggled to return my breath to normal.

“You have to raise your threshold.”

“But I didn’t say anything.” I was too defensive, and we both knew it. He was right; my fear made me identify with the images. I couldn’t maintain the distance to remove myself from the pain. He just looked at me, and I knew I was on the verge. How would I ever survive even a moderately challenging interrogation?

“We’ll continue to work on it,” was all he said.

“I’ve . . . never gotten this far before. The third level seems to require certain adjustments. . . .” I knew I had failed–and I didn’t want to let it go.

“There are ways, Elim,” Limor said as he removed the device from the base of my skull. I rubbed the sensitive area in the back of my neck where the filament had been connected.

“That’s enough for today.” Limor took the “enhancer” and left the room. I pondered my failure, the first during my orientation training as a junior probe.

The enhancer is a chip‑size modulator designed to be used for difficult interrogations–a “tool of last resort” Limor called it, which meant that it was used only when standard techniques of sensory destabilization were insufficient. The enhancer is dangerous, because clumsy modulation can unravel a subject to the point of incoherence and insanity, even death. Once attached, it targets the oldest area of the brain, the primal nexus, which contains the master plan of our physical creation and evolution. All recovery from injury or illness depends upon the integrity of this plan. The nexus is also the storehouse for our deepest anxieties regarding death and annihilation. The enhancer attacks the sophisticated nexus defense system with neutrinos that mimic stimuli sent by the new brain requesting information for healing and repair. As the barriers are broken down by the neutrinos, the images of this stored anxiety are released like poison into the new brain and “enhanced” until the whole person is destabilized–or worse. No one knows the fear any one person can live with, and in the hands of a fool or a brute the enhancer is merely a form of torture, rather than a means of intelligence gathering.

Limor had seen my deepest fear surface; I wondered if it would affect my future with the Order. So by the time I had moved through the various methods of interrogation and assassination, assuming identities and learning codes and complicated technological devices, I was eager to take on an assignment and prove myself in the field. It was with a good deal of relief that I received the order to attend my first operations preparatory meeting.

7

Entry:

All I could think about was Tzenketh, and the image of those walls collapsing in all around me. Reading, or sewing, or moving my display clothing (optimistic about the shop someday opening again), I’d feel the walls slowly moving in. I’d look up–and they were perfectly normal. I was relieved that it was time for lunch, so that I could spend some time away from the shop and these codes. Tzenketh was the rendezvous point where–years before–I was supposed to meet my Bajoran contact. It was only after the explosion went off that I realized I had been betrayed. I don’t know how long I was buried alive in the rubble before I was dug out by my support unit. It was several weeks before I could function again. Ever since then, the image of the collapsing walls would flash in my mind’s eye when I was under stress. I cursed these Cardassian military codes. I knew how desperately the Federation needed them decoded, but every time I worked on them the walls began to move in. And they weren’t even that cleverly done! The codes we created at the Order were far more sophisticated.

As I walked along the Promenade to the Infirmary, I let go of Tzenketh and wondered why the Doctor had extended an invitation to lunch. In the past I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but it had been so long since we’d had one of our lunches that I felt somewhat apprehensive. Our relationship had changed irrevocably, and it was foolish to pretend that even a simple lunch would be unaffected.

“Hallo, Garak.” He was waiting at the entrance. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had something prepared for us and thought we could take lunch in my office.”