“This way,” Janas said and motioned Muninn through the open door. She looked around. The room, gloomy and bare save for a chair-surrounded oval table emblazoned with the Romulan flag, must have once served as an officer’s briefing room. Likely one of many such rooms on the massive multipurpose warship.Around the table, seven lanky Remans watched her, their skin pale in the half-light, their dark eyes glittering. One of them, his face narrower than Janas’, with broader lips and low hung brow, stared at her before transferring an angry gaze to Janas.

“This is what you bring us? She’s a junior lieutenant! A medical doctor by her uniform. That’s not what we agreed upon.”

Janas motioned to an open seat, which Muninn took, silent. He then positioned himself at the nearest narrow end of the oval table, and leaned upon it, staring at his fellows. His gaze lingered especially long on the one who had spoken.

“You all know what is at stake. We agreed to meet for this very purpose, and because we have no other choice. There will be no better time for this than now, aboard this ship, while Hartresk is still far from his supporters on Stalx. If we return, we face another bloody war. More people dead. And if we act now, we might be able to save even Hartresk from himself. Is that not worth a little risk?”

“No, Kavouth is right,” said a slender Reman sitting across from Muninn. Given the softer features, the slight curving of torso and face, Muninn decided to classify her as a ‘she’. “We must be cautious first and brave second. It would be better to wait years than to act rashly, unless we are certain of our facts.” Her eyes flickered to Muninn for just a moment. “What of Hartresk’s claim that this one is an Intelligence officer for the Starfleet?”

Janas quickly shook his head. “I understand, Revasin, that this seems a risk. But, I am convinced Muninn Musgrave is not a spy.” He worked, then, through the proof he had gathered, and Muninn looked covertly around the assembled Remans as he spoke. She saw not one glimmer of trust in their faces, not a flicker of relaxation. 

They’re not buying it. Whatever coup they all agreed needed to take place to dethrone Hartresk, clearly nothing made them more afraid than the thought of once more being under the thumb of a foreign power. How could the Federation be so deeply misunderstood? It occurred to Muninn that, for all she had seen of the galaxy, for all that she had tried to better broaden her understanding of the incredibly diverse peoples in the universe, she still carried preconceptions with her that were as deeply ingrained as the autonomic function of breath itself. She brought herself back to the present moment as the Reman named Kavouth again chimed in.

“That her story is self-consistent does not equal proof!” said another Reman, seated nearby. “You know how these people operate, Janas. We’ve dealt with the likes of the Tal’Shiar too long to be taken in by clever stories and computer fictions.”

“Starfleet is not the same as the Tal’Shiar,” Janas said, the slimmest hint of frustration working its way into his voice.

“I think,” Kavouth continued, speaking over him, “that you are so desperate to supplant Hartresk you would be willing to risk nearly anything. I think this is pride at work, not the good of the revolution at all.”

“Pride!?” Janas slammed his fist onto the table, his face contorted with sudden rage. “Is it pride that you feel, Kavouth, seeing our people turn upon one another for scraps? Is it with pride that you observe Hartresk drag us down this path of never-ending violence?”

“Violence is necessary,” said another Reman seated next to Revasin. “Violence is how we arrived here,” he gestured at the walls of the room. “In command of a Warbird. Free from the shackles of the Governor and his Empire.”

But, next to him, Revasin looked suddenly troubled. “We did not accomplish this through violence alone. Nor, even, simply as a Reman revolution.”Her words were quiet, contemplative, and they drew all eyes toward her better than a shout would have done. She stared at the tabletop, her clawed fingers intertwining in her lap, betraying the inner motion of her mind. Janas nodded slowly, his face lightening, but the Reman next to her raised a curious brow.

“What do you mean?”

“Think!” she said, more hotly. “Ghathan, your parents would have been killed last year if not for whom?” The one named Ghathan stiffened, made a little noise of discomfort. And Revasin offered him a sour smile, which she then turned on the others. “Who among us could have done this without the aid of our Romulan brothers and sisters, those who, like us, were exploited by the Governor?”

“Exactly!” Janas said, interjecting before anyone else could speak. “The Tal’Shiar could only survive within the fog of fear they created. The Empire thrived on the destruction of class identity. Romulan again Romulan, and Romulan against Reman. We proved that it could be changed, overcome. We proved that the Governor’s control, and that of his agents, was not infallible. And we did it alongside people that Hartresk would happily see starved and murdered simply for the shape of their features and the color of their skin.”

“Now, see here…” Kavouth started, but Janas stopped him with a raised hand.

“I am not saying that Hartresk is at all times wrong. Without his expertise on the field, we would have surely failed in all our goals. But this is more than vengeance, more than open war. We are trying to build a new government to replace the old. We are trying to create an Oumoren that operates by a code of ethical law. A law that we choose.”

A moment of silence followed this, with all present clearly considering his and Revasin’s words. But it was Revasin herself who broke it, a moment later.

“We still need proof,” she said, her eyes on Janas. “There are too many, here on this ship, who follow Hartresk. The Federation may or may not have the same goals that Hartresk believes it does, but until we have proof that their plans for us are not those of yet another colonial force, can we truly expect any to trust them?”

“We also need the Federation’s acknowledgment,” Janas shot back. “Without it, we cannot make ourselves a legitimate entity in this region. We need… allies. Something Hartresk does not understand!”

But Revasin merely shrugged with her hands. Her dark gaze shifted to Muninn. “Starfleet, what proof would you offer our people? Knowing what you know, having heard what you have heard, how would you convince us of your word? Of your government’s intent?”

Muninn breathed in, then out, deliberately pacing herself. On instinct, she stood, hands behind back at parade rest, hoping that she looked more calm and earnest than she felt. The atmosphere in the room flowed with a palpable tension. Fear, anger… so much rode on what she said next, and how she said it as well.“I understand that you mistrust the Federation,” she began slowly, “and from what I know of your situation, were I in your place, I would mistrust us as well. I would mistrust any outsider that came with an open hand because I’d be used to the other hand holding a knife. I’ve explained to Janas that I am not a political officer… I can’t speak for the Federation when it comes to diplomatic policy. But I am a Starfleet officer, and that means I am bound by certain oaths. Of those, one of the most important is the oath of non-interference. Hartresk believes that I am some sort of agent for Starfleet Intelligence, and maybe some of you do as well. But even if I were, it would be against every principle of the Federation to act against your people in any way, unless you were considering acts of violence against the Federation itself. Our respect for other cultures is paramount, and our desire to help regions stabilize themselves, through their own self-governance, is likewise fundamental to everything we believe. If you bring Commander Allan in, he’ll tell you the same thing. And he has the rank and privilege to deal with you as an official member of Starfleet. To give you at least some of the assurances you seek.”

She opened and closed her sweaty palms at her sides, as if to massage the tension out of the air. Around the table, half-a-dozen pairs of Reman eyes glittered.Then, Janas spoke. “Proof. There is a type of proof that would be undeniable.” When he said this, he looked directly at Revasin. Her eyes widened in apparent understanding.

Muninn looked back and forth between them. “What is it? What can I do?”

Revasin sighed, then slowly stood. The Reman woman was just as tall as her male counterparts, with the same powerful, lanky build. She stalked around the table, coming to stand next to Muninn.

“There are some within my people who retain the Vulcan genes required for telepathic communication,” she said, her voice low. “I am… one such individual. What Janas speaks of is a bonding, a link between myself and you, in which I would conjure your memories and live them alongside you. I would be able to walk with you and seek the subterfuge my comrades,” she shot a glance at Kavouth, “still so greatly fear.”

“Why didn’t you do this when you first took us?”

“Because such a link is extremely dangerous, especially for you. And because to walk in another’s memories without agreement is both extremely difficult and… profane. It requires your acceptance. I would need to be allowed in to the most private and intimate corners of your mind.”

As Revasin spoke, Muninn’s breath quickened as she took in the meaning of the words. Her mind flashed to a dozen petty secrets, personal matters, private yearnings, that she would rather keep secret. And then to the bigger ones, the truth of who she was, a truth that could see her life in Starfleet ruined—and the lives of her parents as well. The secret of a Romulan teenager, hiding in the Mogrus with orders foolishly given to try and signal for aid.

The decision ahead of her so completely overwhelmed her that, for a long moment, Muninn could do absolutely nothing but sit and look up into Revasin’s hard, if not unsympathetic eyes. Muninn’s own gaze swelled with tears, driven up from some deep place, a primordial fear, perhaps, of having her myriad darknesses and failures publicly exposed.

But, for all that, what choice was there? None, she answered herself. No choice at all. And so, she nodded, blinked back the water in her eyes, and swallowed the lump that formed in her throat. “Okay.”

“You accept this?” Revasin said, and something of a surprised tone entered her voice.

Muninn gazed up at her and nodded again, more certainly this time. “I do. If this is the proof you need, this is the proof I’ll give. All I ask is that you look deeply, and see everything as I have seen it.”

Revasin gave a little nod of acknowledgment, then looked at her fellows around the table. “Is this acceptable?”

Not all of them looked completely swayed, and Kavouth’s mouth was a hard line beneath stormy eyes, but no objections were sounded. Janas, though, did not look relieved. He stared across the table at Muninn, clearly troubled, and she found herself wondering what, exactly, it was that she had signed herself up for.

“What do I need to do?” she asked, looking up at Revasin.

“Open your mind to me. Hold nothing back. And remember to breathe.” Without further preamble, Revasin reached out and gripped the sides of Muninn’s head in her long fingers. Her skin was warm, belying the clammy look of her off-white skin, but her long nails pricked Muninn’s skin like razors where they touched.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and Muninn merely looked up into the Reman woman’s impassive face, waiting. The first sign that something was happening came as a background sensation, like an ant walking across the bare skin of her shoulder blades. The vague sense that something was wrong.

In the part of Muninn’s mind that held her medical training, the facts of the experience played out like a textbook’s passage on telepathy. She knew that the electrical signals of her brain were being both received and communicated through an incredibly complex set of electrical nerve points throughout the Reman’s skin. Within Revasin’s brain, the specially-adapted sensory organ responsible for controlling the bridged patterns of their two independent brains was swelling with blood and chemicals as it flared to life, acting almost as the bridge between a human brain’s two hemispheres.

She knew all of this, and knew that she knew it. But, surrounding that textbook knowledge, undermining it, was an overwhelming sense of the alien. It was as if she were standing, naked and alone, in a vast dark cave, and something in the blackness was moving closer to her frozen form, closer and closer, pressing itself against her and invading through her very pores.

“Breathe,” Revasin commanded.

Muninn took a breath. The room disappeared.

***

Muninn stood next to a hospital bed that she recognized, dimly. A sense of disassociation flowed through her, of déjà vu, but somehow keener. She should be in the bed, that much she knew. But someone already lay there, sleeping. A young girl with bright red hair.

“This was your third year of life?”

Muninn started. Revasin stood beside her, calm, looking down at the girl in the bed. She looked up into the Reman’s eyes and nodded. “Yes. An Illyrian colony outside Federation control.”

“Illyrians practice genetic augmentation, do they not?”

Muninn felt her stomach twist. It was as if she were falling, only her feet were planted on the ground. Revasin reached out and touched her arm, and the connection seemed to restore her sense of balance.

“Your mind is rejecting the connection.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You’ve been hiding this for a long time,” Revasin said, her voice calm. “It is reflexive for you that this should be a secret. You have become used to living with a lie.”

Muninn stared at the girl in the bed. Me. She remembered the horrible pain that cut like heated knives through the fibers of her nerves. An arthritic ache beneath that searing fire. The knowledge that, even with the best treatments available, her limbs would slowly twist and deform as her body contorted in upon itself, her immune system destroying its own body in a violent attempt to survive.

Then, suddenly, the room dissolved as if made of smoke, then flickered back again in a series of images like a manic holodeck program flicked off and on around them. Only Revasin’s hand on her arm remained true and solid as the world changed.

The young girl, screaming for her mother.

Body encased in restraints, needles plunging deep into every vein. The horrible, impossible pain.

The tank that she had floated in. She saw it from the outside now. A chrome coffin filled with liquid, the little red-haired girl inside floating as beams of radiation were fired into her skin and bones. 

Injections, treatments, hyposprays: row after row of faceless doctors visiting, nurses speaking sentences that were merely disorganized strings of sound.And then the images stopped, and they were standing somewhere else. Not the bright, sterile landscape of the hospital at all, but someplace altogether different. Not yet familiar, but surrounded by the touches of her own hands.

Revasin and Muninn looked across to the middle of the room, to the teenage girl perched on the chair, and the red-headed woman sitting on the couch across from her. My office, Muninn realized, looking around at her new professional space on Starbase Bravo, so different from the small offices she’d inhabited on her previous posting.

“They died,” the Asenth said. “The Remans killed them all.”

At this, Revasin’s grip did tighten, and Muninn felt dizzy once again, unmoored.

“What is this?” asked the Reman telepath, glaring at Muninn with lidded eyes.

“The case that brought me here. Her name is…”

“Asenth,” Revasin said, eyes widening.

Before them, the scene seemed to skip forward in time, but Muninn’s mind made sense of it: she knew the conversation, remembered her words of consolation even as she remembered her own sudden fire to do something, anything, to help Asenth survive.

And then Revasin was pulling her around, face-to-face, her eyes grave. “She’s on your ship!”

“She would have been killed.”

The Reman stared at her in horror as everything Muninn remembered from the battle crossed the link between them, becoming shared memories for both.

“You asked a child to do that?”

“I thought there wasn’t any other choice.”

“You thought that we were monsters.”

“I didn’t know.”

Through their connection, Muninn felt a sudden backwash of emotion, a great tide of misery that the Reman could not contain. Hatred, yes. But also pity, and grief, and love, and joy. Here was a sentient being like any other, possessed of feelings, needs, hopes, and cares. For just a moment, Muninn saw Revasin as she saw herself: an isolated, lonely figure, taunted and brutalized by everyone around her. Not just Romulans, but her own kind as well.

Then the connection stabilized as Revasin gasped and forced the flood of memories closed.

“Why?” Muninn asked, as the landscape around them once more floated into a hazy, white fog.

“Because those in pain will always seek to turn that pain around, to cause others the pain and shame that they themselves have been subjected to.” The Reman’s words were strange, halting, ephemeral. For a moment, Muninn was uncertain if she were looking at Revasin’s face or Adeyemi’s. She could so easily picture the dark crow’s feet at the edges of her mentor’s eyes, the sad smile.

Then, all at once, Revasin’s voice seemed to flutter all around her like a million butterfly wings, a soft thunder that shook the air. “Something is wrong!” 

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. 

The word echoed like the strike of some colossal gong.

And Muninn cried out as the connection between the broke. 

A pain, just behind her eyes, momentarily blinded her, and a horrible sense of isolation flowed into her, as air fills a sudden vacuum, rushing in. She doubled over, her nose bleeding, her heart wrenched with a loneliness she could not describe.

The sound of an alarm screeched through the air, shattering the calm of the room. The Remans were all on their feet, and Janas was at the open door, speaking with another Reman in the hallway beyond.

Revasin still held Muninn’s arm. However, though her grip was firm, it was not harsh.

“What… what’s happened?” Munin managed to ask.

It was Janas who answered, rounding on her. “Your ship,” he said with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Your ship appears to have launched a distress beacon, despite there being not a single member of your crew left on board.”