He sat down on the edge of his bed, breathing deeply and trying to calm his fears. The captain hadn’t specified that the fugitive was human, had she? Starfleet might have any number of reasons for seeking out anyone on board such a big vessel. And at least he hadn’t begun having Tholian flashbacks again, he realized with some satisfaction. There was that much to be grateful for.
But he couldn’t shake the certainty that they had come for him. He was still sitting there, trying not to think about what the Starfleet Security team might have in store for him, when there was a knock at the door to his room. “Come in,” he said, and the door hissed open.
Two uniformed security officers, one an average-sized human female and the other a yellow-skinned being so tall he had to stoop his shoulders to avoid hitting his massive, shaggy head against the passageway’s ceiling, peered at him through the open door but didn’t enter. “Mr. Barrow?” the human woman asked.
“That’s right,” Kyle said.
“Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“That depends,” he answered, plastering a quick grin on his face to defuse the defensiveness of his response. “What about?”
“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.”