Night had fallen over Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. Besides the chirp of crickets and the crash of water, only silence greeted the admiral and the psychologist as they walked the cobblestone roads of the antiquated village cut into the limestone cliffs of Provence. A pair of faint silhouettes backlit by dim street lamps stood directly ahead on the arch bridge that ran over Ravin de Notre-Dam.

“You know what time it is, don’t you Jake?” asked the Admiral Reyes as she and Dr. Hall approached Commander Lewis and Ensign Rel. “Your message was very cryptic. Why’d you drag me and Lisa out of bed? Do we need to pay another visit to Mark?”

“He’s gone,” the commander replied flatly.

“Wait, what?”

“And it’s worse than that. They knew we were coming.”

“Who knew you were coming?” Admiral Reyes did not understand what Commander Lewis was talking about, but she could tell something was wrong. He looked spooked, and that wasn’t normal for the seasoned spook. “What is going on?”

“Honestly, no fucking idea.” Commander Lewis was a mixture of frustrated and pissed. “We got ambushed while we were breaking into the FNN. Didn’t trip any alarms, but they knew we were coming, and they came in weapons hot.”

“Wait, hold on…” The admiral raised her hand to slow him down. It was a lot to take in, and it did not align with her understanding of the op. “When we spoke earlier, you said you were going to stop by the broadcast center to talk to the news director. You didn’t say anything about breaking in. That’s waaay off the reservation Jake. Do you know how…”

“Let’s talk about that bit later,” Lewis tried to cut her off.

“No Jake, let’s talk about it now!” Reyes snapped as her eyes narrowed on her old friend. How did he not get it? On Nasera, it was ok to cross some lines against the Dominion to save thousands of Starfleet and Federation lives.But this was completely different. They were on Earth for crying out loud, and a Starfleet officer could not just go breaking into a civilian news agency. “We cannot be doing shit like that…”

“Spare me, Allison,” Lewis interrupted again. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

“We… we what?” Reyes scoffed. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Had Commander Lewis gone completely mad?

The Commander extended his hand, opening his palm to reveal a button, a filament from a light, and a battery from a nightstand. “Recognize these?” 

Reyes shrugged. She knew what they looked like, but she figured that wasn’t the point.

“These are household items from Mark and Aria’s home,” Commander Lewis explained. “But each of them has an embedded nano-recorder. After we realized we’d been compromised in Milan, Elyssia and I came back here to look for answers. Mark was gone, so we tossed the house and these turned up.”

“Someone bugged their house?”

“Yes, and I’d hazard a guess that if we went back to the safehouse in Milan, we’d probably find that it was bugged too… not that we can do that with those shooters crawling around looking for us.” Focused on the escape that he and Ensign Rel had managed out the service exits of Teatro alla Scala, he was not aware that the tactical unit had departed Milan directly after the scene in the plaza.

“Shooters?” asked Admiral Reyes.

“The tactical unit that ambushed us. They weren’t mall cops from the Galleria nor run-of-the-mill corporate security the FNN would have hired,” Lewis explained. “These guys were paramilitary operators, well trained and well prepared. They dropped jammers over the downtown to block our transporters and comms. They engaged us in a gunfight without hesitation. And they even flew reinforcements via shuttle straight into the downtown area completely unobstructed.”

Those were concerning details, thought Admiral Reyes to herself. The technical sophistication necessary to jam Starfleet-grade transporters was not insignificant, and the actions they’d taken were incredibly bold. Who was their enemy? And why were they going to so much trouble to stop her and her team? Her conversation with Ambassador Drake had suggested something nefarious was afoot, but what Commander Lewis and his team had encountered in Milan all but confirmed it.

“And they were good enough to apprehend Shafir and Morgan,” Commander Lewis added.

Admiral Reyes sighed. Not only did they have the problem of getting caught breaking into a civilian media company, and the problem of a public firefight, and the problem of a capable and confident, yet still unknown, enemy, but now they also had the problem that two of their own had been captured by that enemy. It was a lot of problems all at once. “What’re you thinking Jake?”

“These devices,” Commander Lewis replied, his focus returning to the surveillance devices that he and Ensign Rel had found. “They work by collecting for some period of time and then waking up to call home. Elyssia and I neutered their ability to call home, but that’s as much as we could do. They’re very sophisticated tech.” In fact, he thought to himself, he was pretty sure they were of Starfleet origin. “Someone like Shafir though could probably reverse them and find out where home is.” The problem, of course, is that Shafir was one of the ones who’d been captured.

“Anyone up on the Serenity who could help?” asked Dr. Hall.

“Doubtful.” You needed someone who specialized in breaking into things, not someone who simply maintained them. “And besides, as the Admiral has kindly pointed out,” Commander Lewis added as he glanced over at Reyes frustratedly. “We’re pretty far off the reservation here. One of those kids might blabber if we brought them into this.” He’d already been taken for a fool once today, and he did not plan on putting his faith in those children they’d adopted when they commandeered the Serenity. They needed someone they could trust. And then it dawned on him. “Dr. Brooks!”

“Who?”

“Tom Brooks, my former head of exotic sciences on the Enigma,” Commander Lewis explained. “He’s got at least another year here on Earth. He’d be more than capable of cracking these, and he definitely knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“Where can we find him?”

“Well, that’s the interesting part,” laughed Commander Lewis as he looked down at his watch as he calculated the time difference. “If we hurry, we can probably make it in time for brunch. I hear the penal colony makes a mean oatmeal.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Admiral Reyes scoffed. First, Lewis went and broke into a media agency, and now he was suggested picking his old friend up from prison. The commander was certainly doing his best to look completely unhinged.

“Got any better ideas Allison?”

The admiral shrugged. The reality was she had nothing better. Starfleet Command had been a bust. The investigation in Milan had turned up nothing. And now, in addition to Rear Admiral Edir, they’d now lost two of their own people. Along the way, they’d also discovered they were under observation this whole time, but they had absolutely no idea by whom. They needed a wizard to help run this clue down, and they were very short on people they could trust. Maybe out of the box was exactly what they needed.

“Alright, then Tom it is,” Commander Lewis concluded. “I’m just going to need you to ink an excuse so we can go pick him up.”

“On what grounds?” Admiral Reyes asked pragmatically. While her pips could open a lot of doors, they did not give her carte blanche with the penal system.

“Tell me Commander,” Dr. Hall asked. “What’s Dr. Brooks in for?” 

“Multiple violations of the temporal prime directive,” Commander Lewis explained. “All the way back to his time with me, he was fixated on the Temporal Cold War, but after the Enigma got shut down, Tom just went further and further off the deep end. Eventually, after a few too many timeline displacements, uptime agents had to intervene.”

“Well then, the cover story almost writes itself,” Dr. Hall smiled.