The woman who entered the hall had not attended the meeting, and that caused a stir among the ones who did. Some of them looked at her with distrust or contempt; others slighted her outright by turning their backs. She ignored them all, however, for her focus was on a particular person chatting amiably with a crowd of people on the other side of the room.

Her voice cracked like a whip across the distance: “Augustus.“

A smiling Tappan turned around, his countenance brightening further. It was a signal of sorts to those with him; the group quietly dispersed. It wasn’t until Leta reached Tappan that he spoke.

“My dear, there you are. I had begun to worry that you were angry with me.”

Karen was angry but she knew the futility of expressing that anger. “I needed a moment to myself. What is this I hear about new arrivals?”

Augustus slid an arm across her lower back, anchoring the woman to his side. “Kirk’s crew, of course. They came here to find him.”

The look she gave him was politely curious. “Will they?”

His mouth quirked. “Oh they should, my darling. They absolutely should!”

She swallowed a sigh and leaned into him ever-so-slightly, her emotions at war.

Tappan made the assumption she was silently requesting his support, and his arm tightened about her waist. The look in his eyes turned soft, and that startled Karen. It had been a while since she had seen such softness—and him, the man she had fallen in love with long ago. It wasn’t just nostalgia which struck her in that moment but also pain.

When he leaned in to kiss her, she didn’t resist.

“What’s wrong?” the man asked after he pulled away, finding and brushing away the trail of a tear.

Everything, Karen thought. “I feel afraid,” she told him, which was true.

He looked puzzled.

“Of our future, Augustus. The… possibilities scare me.”

This time he drew her completely against him. “Our future will be glorious, Karen. There is nothing to fear.”

I fear you. Those were words she could never say. “I don’t feel as certain as you do.”

“Then trust in my certainty.”

“Oh, Augustus.”

“Hm?” he murmured against her hair.

Karen gently pushed him back. For a moment, she thought she saw surprise in his eyes but whatever he felt was quickly masked. The man she didn’t want to love had returned.

“You are stressed,” he said in a silky voice. “You should rest. It will help you gain a fresh perspective on things.”

“Perhaps so, but not even sleep will ease my conscience.”

Tappan studied her in silence for too long. “I… see.” He started to say something else but stopped, glancing away. Then he beckoned over one of the men who always seemed to follow him around.

Karen tried not to tense up.

“Longwell, allow me to introduce Ambassador Leta. Karen, this is Marcus Longwell. Mr. Longwell is one of the more recent newcomers to our colony.”

As Longwell stared at her, Karen’s skin crawled. She put her hand on Tappan’s arm. “Augustus…”

Tappan gave her one of his empty smiles. “Mr. Longwell will watch over you, Karen.”

“Don’t be foolish,” she snapped. “I don’t want or have need of a bodyguard!”

“You feel unsafe. Of course you require one.”

Karen took a step back and folded her arms across her chest. “No,” she said firmly.

Tappan chuckled. “So stubborn. I’ve always appreciated that about you.” He said to Longwell, “Be wary of her temper—”

Leta’s face colored with fury.

“—and, please,” Tappan added, tone magnanimous, “try to remain respectful of her privacy.”

“Augustus!”

Tappan smiled once again and left her alone with Longwell.

“You,” she warned the man who eyed her with caution, “will stay away from me.”

“I do as the Governor says, Miss Leta.”

“It’s Ambassador, Mr. Longwell,” Karen corrected coldly, “and Augustus Tappan is not your governor.”

Longwell snorted. “Not yet.”

She suspected Longwell was the kind of man whose opinion and loyalty came with an expensive price tag. Spinning on her heel, she marched away, intent on finding at least one door she could slam to her satisfaction, preferably in Longwell’s face. It only made her more furious that the fool dared to follow her.

A question occurred to her then that gave her pause.

Just how much had Tappan paid for this man’s—and the others’—support?

“Inconclusive.”

Leonard stared at his companion. “Excuse me?”

Spock studied the readings on his tricorder, which had to be the same as Leonard’s, and stated again, “Inconclusive, Dr. McCoy. The evidence suggests Captain Kirk was inside this facility at some point in time, nothing more.”

“The blood is barely dry!”

“The concentration of moisture in the air may have contributed to such a state. Doctor, there is a dearth of information. What we know is simply not enough to support a conclusion concerning the circumstances of this evidence.”

Angry, Leonard moved into Spock’s personal space. “God forbid you should come upon the scene of a murder, Mr. Spock. You’d look at the smears of blood on the walls and say it might have been done as a work of art!”

Bones, he heard the Jim-like admonishment in his head but ignored it. “If you want facts, I’ll give them to you: Jim is hurt and we can’t find him! If these colonists cared one iota about helping us, they would have joined our search, to prove their innocence if nothing else! So what we can conclude is that they have an ulterior motive, and I’d bet you every last credit of my salary and savings that includes keeping us from our missing crew!”

Spock’s eyes had darkened at the start of the doctor’s rant; now they glittered like chips of black ice. But he said nothing to Leonard, nothing at all for a full minute, which had Leonard cautiously drawing back. The officers of both their teams had made themselves scarce sometime during the interim, he realized then.

“I regret my decision,” the Vulcan commander said at last.

Leonard slowly drew in a breath, released it, and asked, “What’s that mean?”

“You should not be here.”

Leonard almost flinched. “For being so staunchly against violence, you sure know where to twist the knife, don’t you, Spock?”

“As do you, Leonard.”

The doctor resisted the urge to take another step back. Spock never used his first name. Hearing how he said it now made Leonard kind of sick to his stomach.

But he knew when to stand his ground. “I’ll be plain, Commander. I don’t care if you think I’m emotionally compromised. I don’t care if you hate me right now. That part that’s human in you knows I’m right. Our Captain is in danger. So do whatever you think you need to concerning me—hell, lock me in a room somewhere and have one of Giotto’s men keep watch—I won’t protest. Not as long as you do your damnedest to find Jim. That means letting no one fool you. Don’t dismiss the smallest clue, even if it’s a drop of blood on a dirty floor, and look everywhere, whether or not it makes any sense. That’s all I ask.”

Spock stared at him without reacting.

Leonard sighed through his nose and walked out of the room. He was aware of the Vulcan following him at a much slower pace.

“Mr. Spock,” called one of the security officers, “take a look at this.”

Spock veered away. The lieutenant handed a strip of plastic to the Vulcan and pointed at the lower half of one of the beams that supported the roof. Leonard listened to them discuss the scratches and, after a minute, swallowed and turned away. He couldn’t bear to hear what Spock might say. He left the barn.

What if Spock really did lock him up somewhere? Damn it, he shouldn’t have lost his temper. Under other circumstances he might have reined himself in, or Jim might have dropped a calming hand to his shoulder.

Only, Jim was the very reason for his lack of self-control. Just how could Spock remain so calm, knowing that someone had deliberately shed Jim’s blood in that room?

And it was deliberate, of that Leonard was certain. It seemed as though everything which had occurred on this planet so far was borne of a deliberate act. Someone had cut the communication with the Enterprise; someone had blocked their ship’s scans; someone had reduced an entire space shuttle to free-floating particles.

It had to be Tappan. It was Tappan. Leonard simply needed to locate him and make him talk. Somehow.

Too focused on his flyaway thoughts, Leonard nearly ran into the person he had failed to recognize was blocking his path.

The farmer fixed a narrow-eyed gaze on the doctor. His drawl was much thicker than Leonard’s and far less honeyed. “You’re a doctor.”

Leonard didn’t like the way the man was looking at him, but he didn’t see a point in lying. “Yes, I am a doctor.”

“…Suppose I could use your services.”

Perusing the man from head to toe, Leonard remarked, “You look healthy to me.”

The man bared his teeth in a parody of a grin. “It’s one of my… good friends who needs your help.”

Is this a trap? wondered Leonard. He glanced back at the closed doors of the barn.

The man took a hold of Leonard’s right shoulder, his grip just shy of bruising.

Leonard reached for his communicator on instinct.

“Don’t,” he was warned.

The man then jerked the doctor close and jabbed something just beneath his rib cage. Leonard dropped his gaze and, for several seconds, stared blankly at the business end of one of their Starfleet-issued phasers.

“I can guess where you got that,” he said. “What did you do to Captain Kirk?”

“Forget Kirk. You’re coming with me.” The man detached Leonard’s communicator and tossed it aside.

Leonard relaxed. A smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. “I guess I am.”

As the colonist forced the doctor to move in front of him and walk away from the barn, he couldn’t have seen the strange look in Leonard’s eyes. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have surmised the train of thought behind it, for no one in their right mind would consider it their good fortune to land in the hands of an enemy.

No one, that was, except Leonard Horatio McCoy on the hunt for James T. Kirk.

Lakshminarayanan Sandeep Balasubramaniam (otherwise simply known as Sandeep since everyone was too intimidated by the length of his full name to say it, except for family and a certain Vulcan First Officer) had been part of the flagship crew long enough to identify the Powers That Be. Luckily, the Powers That Be were the kind of people who cared about the welfare of their subordinates and maintained a code of honor that in turn allowed others to feel honorable about serving them. On the downside, though, when the Powers That Be weren’t happy with each other, the impact rocked the whole ship.

Recently there had been a taste of that, which was why Sandeep and his fellow security officers scattered the moment Dr. McCoy looked like he was preparing for target practice with Mr. Spock as his bull’s-eye. Tensions had been high in general since they left the ship, but for those two the tension had grown more volatile. It wouldn’t be fair to say Captain Kirk was at fault—except, to Sandeep’s way of thinking, he was partly responsible since he had left Spock and McCoy alone during a time when their relationship was already notably strained.

Now Sandeep wondered if that relationship had reached a breaking point. They weren’t working together in any kind of coordinated fashion, not as they had in times past when Kirk encountered trouble. It was awful to watch, actually, because he had been around during the formative years of their friendship and what he saw right now was all of that progress coming undone. The catalyst, ironically, was Kirk. It seemed almost counterintuitive, for Kirk brought their two clashing personalities together in a harmonious way, proving that Spock and McCoy actually complemented each other when in tandem. But without him, they were grating, discordant—and spiraling fast into chaos.

Not that Sandeep would ever tell anyone he had contemplated this matter so deeply. It was a fact that most of the ship found the three COs fascinating. A third of those turned them into interesting gossip. A third of that third actively tried to perform scientific studies on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Sandeep, on the other hand, was willing to allow them their privacy as long as they didn’t turn into a force of evil or, worse yet, simply fall apart.

Unfortunately the balance between the Powers That Be had shifted dramatically in the last week alone, and the metaphorical sky was falling. No one had dared to ask why. Some speculated that it had always been imminent. How could a triumvirate with that much dynamic, that much pull on the universe, exist without going supernova or collapsing in on itself?

Sandeep did not adhere to that theory, of course. He thought that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were more than capable of co-existing. They had proved many times over that as a team they could beat the odds. This time was different because the conflict was internal. They were going up against themselves. Anybody, he thought, would struggle with that. With time and patience he hoped they would overcome the issue—given that, he mused grimly, one of them (namely Jim Kirk) didn’t die before the riff could be mended.

Sandeep sighed long and low, pulling out of his thoughts, and placed a quick call to Giotto. He updated his superior that the two teams’ whereabouts remained unchanged. It was only when he closed his communicator that he realized he had no actual visual on Dr. McCoy, thus making his report partially a lie since Giotto had been specific in the Security briefing that looking out for each other was as equally important as searching for those who went missing.

He recalled that McCoy had left the barn. No one had followed the doctor because everyone’s attention had been diverted by Lt. Danson finding evidence which suggested Kirk and the others being held as hostages was more than just supposition.

Thinking he would retrieve Dr. McCoy before something bad happened, he went outside. To his horror, all he found was a communicator lying abandoned on the ground.

Sandeep had never been skilled at cursing but in that moment he made up some impressive phrases which would have shocked everyone in his home village. Racing around the sides of the barn, he alternated between praying and using these curse words. When a visual sweep of the area proved fruitless, he ran back into the barn.

Panic must have been written all over his face. The other security officers whipped out phasers. Commander Spock, by contrast, literally dropped what he was doing and snapped upright.

“Report, Lieutenant,” the Vulcan ordered.

Sandeep told them McCoy was gone. He also told them he hadn’t found signs of struggle but had recovered the doctor’s communicator.

Mr. Spock took the communicator from him slowly, almost like it was too terrible to touch, then stared at it for the longest time.

The tension in the barn became palatable as the subordinates awaited orders. Yet Mr. Spock, who was always the voice of reason in an upsetting situation, had no words for them, not even a reprimand for letting McCoy walk out alone. Kirk would have barked, “Fan out and find him!” relying on the hope there was time yet to catch whoever had taken McCoy.

If Mr. Spock was thinking of such a scenario, he gave no indication. He certainly didn’t act on it. In fact, his expression remained so disturbingly blank, Sandeep had a suspicion the Vulcan might have ceased to think at all.

Spock eventually stirred, closed his hand around the communicator. Sounding much too calm and collected, he said, “The search is over.”

The officer standing at Mr. Spock’s elbow looked shocked. Sandeep fought to keep his own jaw from dropping. Call off the search? No one had been expecting to hear that.

Mr. Spock flipped open his own communicator. “Spock to Giotto.”

“Giotto here.”

“Abort search and report to me at the central dome.”

The silence from the other end of the line only lasted for a second. “Understood, Commander. Giotto out.“

As the Vulcan moved with purpose for the barn’s exit, Sandeep couldn’t help but voice his concern, a concern he was certain the others shared. “Why are we quitting the search, sir?”

“We are not quitting, Lt. Balasubramaniam.” Mr. Spock spared a glance over his shoulder for Sandeep, and Sandeep saw at last that Mr. Spock was far from unaffected by McCoy’s disappearance. “We are changing our strategy.”

Somebody, the lieutenant realized, had just pushed his normally placid commanding officer into a deep rage.

Suddenly Sandeep was no longer concerned about the survival of the Powers That Be. No, the ones to feel concern for, or rather pity, were the idiots who had taken Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy away from Mr. Spock.

As everyone hurried out of the barn, Danson caught up to Sandeep and whispered to him, “Should we say anything about Mr. Spock? He looks…”

Murderous? Sandeep filled in silently. Terrifying? Like that popular picture in the history books of a pre-Reform Vulcan wearing a necklace made of the teeth from his most recent victims?

“Not on your life,” he whispered back.

Danson fiercely nodded his agreement.

Tassos III had a decent-sized medical facility, Leonard noted, but no staff. Did no one remain in the building on the off chance that an emergency case was rushed in? Leonard couldn’t fathom why the medical protocols would be any different on this colony than any other or than that of a starship or a primary planet also in the Federation.

“That way,” the man behind McCoy said, prodding him to take a right from the outer ward.

The corridor ended at a double set of doors of an OR. Inside, a man was lying unconscious on a gurney in the far corner under a blanket. His face was covered in sweat; his lips were bloodless.

“What happened?” Leonard questioned as he hurried over to the patient. He switched the settings on his tricorder to a general scan and waved the device around the man’s head, then down his neck and across his chest. “Tell me what happened,” he repeated more firmly, “or I might treat him improperly.”

Leonard’s kidnapper took a wide-legged stance at one end of the gurney and said, sparser than ever with details, “There was a fight.”

The tricorder shrieked over the lower abdomen. Leonard peeled back the edge of a blanket and sucked in a breath. The tricorder had recorded stats that he recognized all too well. “You should have started by mentioning the knife wound. How long has he been like this?” The blood flow wasn’t heavy, nor was it congealed.

“You’re the doctor. You figure it out.”

“Thank you, Mr. Helpful. Now quit hoverin’. Move this gurney under that middle light.” Leonard stripped the blanket off his patient after he had been relocated. “Remove his boots but be careful not to jar him.”

“He’s not gonna wake up.”

“I’m more concerned about his internal damage, not his state of consciousness.” Leonard grumbled to himself, “We need to get rid of this damn jumpsuit.”

His kidnapper turned out to be quite the efficient helper in a sick room.

Once removed, Leonard bunched up the jumpsuit and shoved into the man’s hands. “Dispose of that.”

The man didn’t move, just watched Leonard cross to the other side of the room. He said in warning, “Don’t bother trying to run away. I’ll catch you.”

Leonard snorted and inspected the various cabinets, gathering the supplies he needed, including a few old-fashioned tools. “You brought me here to help this man, and I fully intend to. If you want him to live, which I would say so, then stow your aggression and allow me to do my work. We can discuss the terms of my captivity later.” And I’ll worry about my own plans then too.

The facility wasn’t under-stocked but it did not have everything Leonard would have liked it to. He had saved lives with less, however, and so he felt fairly confident that performing surgery here wasn’t going to put the injured man at further risk.

He sterilized his hands, then the necessary equipment. “Does he have a name?”

“What’s it matter?”

“I think it’s polite to introduce myself before I cut a man open.”

Silence. Then, “Greene.”

Leonard rolled a small table to the side of the gurney. “Hello there, Mr. Greene. I’m Dr. McCoy. I’ll be the physician performing your surgery.” Leonard shot a look at the man who was fully conscious. “Have you had any field training in trauma care?”

“No,” was the gruff response.

“You’re able to. Go wash your hands. And if you don’t have a strong stomach, you have about three minutes to acquire one.”

From then on, Leonard gave most of his attention to the patient, though he made certain his helper didn’t stay idle. Half of an hour passed before Leonard had regenerated what he could and stitched up the rest. He was taping a square of gauze over the patient’s sutured wound when he was asked tersely, “What next?”

Leonard lifted an eyebrow. “Your friend needs a blood transfusion.”

For the first time, his kidnapper looked unsettled, not-so-subtly hiding the crook of his arm.

Leonard commented dryly, “Not your blood. There are packs in the frig. When was the last time y’all had a supply run?”

“How should I know that?”

“In a community this size, you should. Unless you’ve been living under a rock.”

The man growled at him.

Leonard didn’t flinch. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Have you been living under a rock?”

“No.” The man looked away, seemed to come to some decision before his gaze returned to Leonard. “There have been no supply runs for seven weeks.”

Leonard interpreted that statement as “In other words, you’ve only been on Tassos III for roughly two months.”

The man stared at him without answering.

Leonard wondered why that bit of information had to be so closely guarded but decided not to question the matter further. Instead he said, “Bring two bags of Type O,” and turned back to his patient.

After a short pause, the fellow went to the one of the glass-front refrigerators and peered into it with a pensive expression.

Leonard straightened out the unconscious man’s left arm and had moved onto the right arm when he caught a glimpse of something that made him lift the man’s arm higher. Picking up his tricorder with his free hand, he scanned the underside. The reading wasn’t out of the ordinary, and that surprised Leonard.

The skin rash started at the armpit, ran to the elbow and, strangely, had the discoloration of a day-old bruise.

Leonard lowered the man’s arm and started again from the crown of the head with his tricorder. A full sweep yielded nothing insightful; the results were consistent with what he expected.

He switched the tricorder off, set it in his lap, and rubbed his knuckles against his mouth in thought. He was startled when two packets of blood were shoved under his nose.

“What next?” the man beside him asked again.

Leonard replied, “I guess I teach you how to find a vein.”

Karen slowly fanned herself and contemplated her options while staring at the closed door to her personal room. Augustus’s watchdog was just outside, no doubt thinking her temper had exhausted itself and she fell asleep. Little did he know she preferred to brood for long periods of time and, if possible, to plot a coup.

Her eyes narrowed.

Augustus was an idiot if he thought she would stay put. He had to knew her better than that, which meant he must have given Longwell orders to make certain she stayed imprisoned. And that, she decided, would not be tolerated.

With a wicked smile, she strode to a curio-table, picked up a vase of wildflowers there, and threw it straight at the wall. It shattered into pieces across the floor. Then, gracefully, she collapsed into a heap.

Longwell rushed into the room.

Karen’s hand flew out. “Stop, watch out!” she cried. Then she gave him a pitiful look. “I only wanted to refill the vase. I tripped and dropped it.”

The man stood motionless, blinking stupidly at the mess of water, glass, and flowers as if of all the situations he was prepared to deal with, a clumsy woman wasn’t included in any of them.

Karen made a point of sniffling as she touched a bare foot. “Oh no, I think there’s glass in my foot.” With weak effort, she tried to stand up.

Longwell skirted the table and came over to help her.

“The bathroom, please,” she said, clinging to him.

He escorted the limping woman to the other side of the room. Just as he started to usher her inside the bathroom, she halted him and gripped the doorjamb, wiping at the non-existent tears in her eyes.

“You’re too kind, sir,” she thanked him with a tiny smile.

“Uh,” began Longwell, coloring rising in his face, “you’re… welcome?”

Karen’s eyes hardened. “Fool,” she said, and punched him straight in the nose.

The man wheeled backwards, and she gave him an extra shove via a foot to his groin to tip him the rest of the way over. Then she slammed her palm against the door sensor and the bathroom door slid shut.

“Engage lock,” she ordered. “Override only by voice command of Karen Leta.”

“Engaged,” the panel beeped.

In the aftermath, she brushed off the sleeves of her blouse and went to pick up her discarded boots. There was much to be done, foremost of which would be to find out where Kirk had been taken.

Pausing as she rolled a sock over one of her feet, she changed her mind.

She would find her son first and make certain he had somewhere safe to hide. It was possible Augustus would try to use Ram to keep her in line, especially if he had already guessed that she wanted to thwart him.

Yes, Ramses must come before anyone. It was the least that she could do as his mother.

“Captain? Captain Kirk?”

Jim came awake with a start and felt disoriented. Had he fallen asleep? Rubbing at his tired eyes, he asked Ram, “How long was I out?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”

Jim checked the streaks of sunlight on the silo wall, saw that they had moved position. He estimated that he had been out for over an hour. At least, he thought humorlessly, the foul odor had improved. That, or his sense of smell had finally stopped working.

As he shifted against the wall, he felt pain and cursed, forgetting momentarily about the impressionable young man next to him. The only good that had come from sleeping (or passing out, whichever it had really been) was that he wasn’t bothered by the persistent itching which had been driving him crazy. At first he figured he had gotten some of the loose grain down his tunic but shaking out the material hadn’t provided any relief. Now, with his nerves waking up, his arms had gone from itchy to burning.

He pulled up a sleeve to reveal the discolored skin of his forearm. He touched part of it and bit back another curse as the fiery burn spread up his arm.

“Captain? What’s wrong?” An anxious Ram scooted closer as Jim continued to inspect his arm. “What caused that?” the young man wanted to know, going from anxious to alarmed.

“I wish I knew,” Jim replied. “It hurts like hel…” He coughed, amended, “Like heck,” and tugged his sleeve back into place. “I must be allergic to something in here.” Which, considering his list of odd allergies, was entirely possible.

Ram grew silent.

When the young man began to stare at Jim in a grim way, Jim said, “Ramses?”

“Does it itch?”

“What?”

Ram looked grimmer. “Does it itch—the rash? Are you hot? Does anything else hurt?”

Jim had a sinking feeling that Ram wasn’t just questioning him out of morbid curiosity. “Yes, yes, and no.”

Ram closed his eyes. Jim reached out to grab him but stopped himself before he made contact.

“I think you’re going to need that doctor you were talking about in your sleep,” said Ram in a near-whisper. “You’re sick, Mr. Kirk.”

Jim retracted his arm and balled his hands into fists in his lap. “I don’t follow you.”

“I didn’t figure it out until just now. I’m sorry.” He sounded upset. “Since it was just them, we thought they had picked up something off-planet.”

“Who?” Jim demanded. “Picked up what?”

“The new guys—Walken and his friends. My dad commissioned their services a couple of months ago. Some of them have fallen ill recently. They developed that rash first,” Ram said, pointing at Jim’s arm.

Jim leaned back against the wall and tried to quell his rising panic. He had a good idea of where Ram’s explanation was headed. “You thought the cause of their illness wasn’t related to the colony, but I have the same symptoms. Basically, the cause exists here.” He meant that literally. “The infected grain. Have I guessed right?”

“I’m sorry, Captain, I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”

When Ram reached for him, Jim warned him, “Don’t.”

Ram insisted, “It’s okay, I think I’m immune. No one—I mean, none of the settlers have gotten sick.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll take no chances.” He softened his tone. “This next question is important, Ram. I need to know. Has anyone died?”

The answer was silence.

Jim closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Bones… Bones, if you were here. No. No, you idiot, don’t wish anything like this on Bones!

Oh god, what about Andrew, Blanca, and Joran? They would be no more immune than he was.

Jim placed a hand to his face, feeling too hot and stifled all of a sudden.

“Captain? Captain!”

Jim’s eyes jerked open. “Did I pass out again?”

“No, Captain, look!”

He did and saw what Ram was pointing at. The hatch wheel was turning. Somebody was coming for them… or coming to get them.

Pushing aside everything—the pain, the fever, and terrible, too-familiar memories—Jim jumped to his feet and locked his jaw. No matter who was on the other side of that door, he and Ram were getting out of this silo for good!