Cynfor smiled broadly as he walked into Moonho Han’s hospital room. He was just glad to see that Moonho was awake and coming back to his old self. Rees was sure that Commander Han would be overjoyed to hear that. “Mr Han a pleasure to meet you now that you are yourself. I am Cynfor Rees. It is great to see that you are on the mend.”

”Thank you.” Very slowly, Moonho planted his hands on the biobed and shifted to sit up straighter. His face turned grey, but he centered his head on his pillow and relaxed again. He swallowed the rising taste of metal back down his throat. “Sorry, I’m…not sure how long…” Steady sentences flitted in and out of his mind like nervous birds. “The nurse said…you have questions?”

”It has been about a day and half. I am here to ask a few questions about the person who did this to you. We are attempting to track them down. What can you tell me about the night you were attacked?” Cyn spoke softly but to the point.

Moonho looked at the ceiling, his eyes growing distant. A faint wince stretched tightly across his face. He grasped at his tumbling, disordered memories like dandelion tufts dancing on the breeze. “We were….shooting late. There’s a cafe we go to on nights, and a waitress, this girl…” He smiled for a second. “…she hasn’t worked that shift for a couple weeks. This alien took it, and I didn’t… There’s better food.”

”Hmmmm, Mr Han you seem to be loosing your train of thought. Why don’t you concentrate on the girl who hasn’t worked that shift for a couple of weeks. Tell me about her, what she looked like etc.” Cyn asked in an attempt to get everything that he could from Han.

On the ice skating rink of his mind, Moonho held tight to the ledge the lieutenant offered him. If he couldn’t focus on a beautiful woman, he couldnt’ focus on anything. Usually, he was the one asking the questions, waiting for Greg to nitpick his expression and call for another take. Usually, it was just a scene. “She was blond. Early twenties. Named Carla.” He stroked a finger across his left chest to underline an invisible nametag. “She goes to the college. Loves history.” Moonho grinned. “She pretends to know our show, but we all know she hasn’t seen it.”

Cyn nodded and began to take notes on a PADD/ He was no security officer, however, he would try to find out who was ultimately behind this attack. He had to, Moonho was family whether he knew it or not. By now Rees had put that much together. This was Yumi’s son.

As the interview went on, Moonho’s body slid from nausea into exhaustion, but he answered with dawning clarity. The kidnapper had worked Carla’s night shift for two weeks before getting Moonho alone. His friends on the crew went back to set while he finished a slice of pie, and when he left a few minutes later, the alien—Yagaba—offered him a coffee refill to go. He didn’t get far before the mickey kicked in, and the next thing he remembered was the nurse who ushered Cynfor into his hospital room.

Cold beads of sweat gathered on Moonho’s forehead, but he pressed to get one last detail through before it slipped away like an unhooked fish jumping back into the lake before he got it into his catch bucket. “Yagaba was at an autograph signing months ago. First in line after camping out for who knows how long. I…” He scowled at his knees under the hospital blanket. “I laughed at something she said. Not a nice laugh. I was laughing at her, but she seems off in the head.” Moonho tapped a finger on his temple. “What makes sense in her galaxy doesn’t make sense in everyone else’s galaxy. The clip went viral, and people were pretty mean. To her.” He sighed, and his scowl turned bitter. Crime statistics were other people. People he felt sorry for for a few minutes before changing the channel. Why was it his luck to have to have a fan so crazy? “I think… I don’t think she came for revenge. I think, she wanted to…prove them all wrong? Prove her galaxy is the real one. And live in that galaxy where I’m her man for some reason.”

”There are times when people forget what is real, and what is made up. It can me akin to the folks who think what happens on a holodeck is real etc… Think nothing more my boy she is in custody and will get the help that she needs. I am just glad that the taxi driver stopped me when they did, this way nothing further happened to you.” Cyfor smiled as he stood and tucked the PADD under his arm. “Mr Han I am going to let you rest, but I will stop in and check on you when I can.”

Cyn turned and left the room happy, that he could help an extended relative. He took a mental note to contact Yumi and let her know about her son. As he was leaving the building to men in Security gold approached him.

”Are you Lieutenant Cynfor Rees?” the male guard asked.

”I am indeed. What can I do for you?” Cyn replied.

The two guards stepped forward with one hand on their holstered phasers. “I am sorry sir but we have orders to place you under arrest and take you into custody.” The guard continued.

Cyn put up his arms to show that he would not put up a fight. “On what charge? Under who’s authority?”

”All of that will be explained to you upon your arrival at the Brig. If you would come with us please.” The male guard took the PADD from Cyn and the trio walked away toward the Brig. 

Empok Nor – Brig – Booking

Cynfor Rees sat next to the officer’s console as one guard covered him with a phaser, and the other placed his information into the system. “I believe I have a right to know why you have placed my under arrest.” He made sure to not get physical or show any signs of fight. However, his voice had gotten a little agitated. He found it to be quite odd that a Federation citizen and Starfleet Officer would be arrested and not told why immediately.

“Take him to Interrogation Room 1,” a voice like ice chips said behind him.

Cynfor’s eyes widened when he heard the voice that came from behind him. It was the last person that he would have expected, Lieutenant Commander Yumi Han the Firebird’s XO and Chief Intelligence Officer. All at once it dawned on him and he knew why he was there and that his life was about to become unraveled.

Yumi Han, the Firebird’s Chief of Intelligence, stared balefully at Rees. Rumors of her demise on Planet ZP0442 were greatly exaggerated. Though, the ordeal had changed her in ways even she was not aware of yet. Most of them for the worse. She stared at Cynfor callously and addressed him without rank. “Nothing is secret forever, Mr. Rees. I believe you know exactly why you are under arrest.”

His shoulders slumped slightly, and his demeanor changed visibly, he sighed deeply. In this moment Cynfor Rees felt like he had been stabbed in the belly. Not because he had finally been caught, but because it was someone from the Firebird doing the catching. After all they had been through, and especially Yumi, he just saved her son’s life. Without turning around he spoke. “All I have to say is I request JAG representation.” 

Empok Nor – Brig – Interrogation Room 1

He was taken to the Interrogation Room as Yumi had ordered and there he sat for about an hour as he awaited someone, anyone to come in and begin the questioning. The room was dim and painted gray. There was a table with two chairs, one on either side in the middle of the room. The temperature in the room seemed to be deliberately lower than everywhere else. In fact if it weren’t for the coffee that one of the guards had given him Cyn would be freezing. He sighed deeply as he thought all of this was pointless. He would answer no questions until his daughter got there.

Yumi sat on a bench outside the interrogation room. She stared unfocused at ambiguous shapes in the floor tiles and held a cold cup of coffee. Like a prize fighter, she tried to work herself up. Between Jackson, Stephens, and HALP, they had him dead to rights. A traitor. Coughing up Federation weapons to a rogue militia at the first deadly storm his family sailed into. It had worked. But the sea is always angry. Once you sell your soul to Poseidon to get through a storm, what’s left to sacrifice to get through the next one? And the next? Perhaps Cynfor Rees was charmed. He’d saved his son at untold cost to others. He’d saved her son…

Her brow fell like a gavel. She didn’t hate him. She wanted to hate him on principle. For breaking his Starfleet oath. For passing the buck of misfortune to someone else. Maybe a lot of someone else’s…maybe none. He’d stolen weapon designs, not actual weapons. Where had that buck stopped? They didn’t know. The weave of lies and cover ups was so old, it only unraveled so far before fraying apart into nothing.

The PADD mapping each and every thread Starfleet Intelligence had uncovered was a cold slate of lead in her lap. A drink tray for the habitual coffee her stomach was too knotted up to want. She ran over the details on the PADD to prepare, but her mind tripped and rolled into a field of questions about Moonho instead. She had slipped out to the medical center while the higher-ups contacted JAG with Rees’ request for an attorney.

He’d looked so like his father. Asleep with matted black hair and a slack jaw. She blinked quickly to hold in unwelcome tears.

”Commander?”

With a sharp inhale, Yumi sat up straight and looked at the young officer standing beside her. When had he walked up?

”Commander, an inter-sector holographic link to Ensign Maia Rees is third in the waiting queue.” He handed Yumi a mobile hologram emitter. She looked dumbly at it sitting in her palm, and after an awkward few seconds, he frowned at her slow response. “It’s a secure, low-latency comm link that is transmitted through warp space. Your wait time for a channel should be about 10 minutes.”

”Thank you.” With a sigh, Yumi dropped her still full coffee into the reclaimer bin at the end of the bench and stood up. The young man looked at her with uncertainty, and she stiffened her gaze. “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

He nodded and turned smartly to leave. The door to Rees interrogation room slid open as he passed, and Yumi entered with intentional formality.

The brisk chill of the room was as refreshing as her coffee should have been. Without making eye contact, Yumi set mobile holo-emitter on the edge of the table and sat across from Cynfor Rees. She laid her PADD down and rotated it to sit perfectly aligned with the side of the table. She tapped it awake and pretended to check something on it before finally looking up at her crewmate.

”Your daughter will join us very soon. Is there anything you’d can tell me before that…about what happened with Moonho yesterday?” Her impassive mask cracked as she spoke her son’s name, and a look of motherly worry bled into her expression.

Cyn was taken off guard at first by Yumi’s question. He has expected her to come in guns blazing as it were, ready to take down the traitor. Yet here sat a woman who appeared to be more the worried mother and less the staunch investigator. He glanced at the holo-emitter and it all clicked. Yumi was stalling for time until Maia could come on the line. Rees sighed deeply and a sheepish grin crawled across his face. “It seems that your son has an over zealous fan. A young lady drugged him and kidnapped him. If it wasn’t for a quick thinking transport driver who flagged me down she would have gotten away with it. The culprit is in custody and station security is handling the matter. I am glad that I was there and able to help. It seems that he will make a full recovery. I told the officers to contact you and it seemed that you were incommunicado and on a mission.” The smile left his face as he realized exactly what mission she was on.