Vector stood with Dr. Lokin among the trees, next to the high metal walls of the Project Protean headquarters. The building was much more formidable than Vector had expected it to be, and that gave him a sense of unease. In the faint light of dusk the vines climbing the walls looked like long, gnarled fingers attempting to squeeze the life out of the building. Fitting, Vector thought, that such a terrible place had attracted the parasitic vines to it. Down the hill nearby was the main entrance, but it appeared long unused. The dirt approach was choked with weeds and the enormous door, large enough to drive a small transport ship through, had tufts of grass growing along its edge. The effect was misleading however, for the building was very much in use.

Vector hadn't wanted to leave Liadan's side before they'd barely had the chance to enjoy their victory on Belsavis, but once Dr. Lokin had found the location of Project Protean, he had been eager to make the next move. Liadan had wanted to come, but Dr. Lokin had spent many years as an agent in his own right, and he had too much of a personal stake in this mission. He wanted to lead a small team of two and Liadan had acquiesced.

Vector heard a rustling behind him and turned to see Lokin stripping off his clothes. He handed them to Vector and Vector swung a bag off his shoulder and stuffed them inside. Everyone on the ship knew that Dr. Lokin had infected himself with the rakghoul plague, somehow finding a way to control - and even reverse - the transformation at will. Vector had only seen the man in rakghoul form once, and he knew enough to not want to be nearby when it happened.

"You still want to trot right through the main entrance?" Lokin asked. "Because you can come in my way, you know." Lokin nodded at the ventilation pipe a short ways above their heads.

"We need to at least try it this way," Vector said. "Maybe they will cooperate."

"All right then. I'll be along to join you shortly." Lokin tossed the last of his clothes in the bag at Vector's feet. Then he climbed the side of the wall with the speed and agility of a much younger man. He disappeared over a ledge and then reappeared again, further up the wall. Vector watched him slip into the pipe's dark maw and vanish.

Vector picked his way through the trees down the side of the hill. Around him strange insects hidden among the branches sung in unison. Their song was unfamiliar to him, but if he listened carefully he could almost find meaning in it. He stepped into the clearing in front of the door and stopped. The door ahead dwarfed him. On either side were two huge turrets. Lokin had assured him that they would not fire automatically. Vector hoped that Lokin's research could be trusted.

Vector took a few steps closer. There was a loud mechanical bang as a switch was tripped and two blinding floodlights came on, turning the night to day in an instant. Vector threw an arm over his eyes and stumbled backwards at the sudden brightness, which sliced through his head like a blade. Somewhere, he knew, there would be an alarm sounding.

"Identify yourself," a flat, inflectionless voice said; the voice of a droid.

Vector lowered his arm. "Vector Hyllus," he called out. There was a long silence during which he contemplated the array of spots floating across his vision. The night insects had gone silent.

A grating noise like gears turning came from somewhere ahead and Vector looked up, suddenly fearful that those turrets were being pointed at him, but they were motionless. There was an ear-splitting screech and the enormous door shuddered and slowly began to rise. The entry beyond was dark and filled with even darker shadows. A burst of cool air ruffled his clothes. The place reminded Vector of a cave. Or maybe a tomb.

When the door finally reached its peak, several more rows of lights came on inside in succession, gradually illuminating a long, stark hallway that lead faintly downwards. Vector stepped inside.

There was no one there to greet him, not even the droid, and Vector's footsteps echoed bleakly against the metal walls. He took comfort from the fact that he was not truly alone here and that he had his staff's reassuring weight at his back. They would not find him defenseless if it came to that.

At the end of the hall, when he at last reached it, was another door. This one had a blinking red light over it and a keypad in the wall. As Vector walked closer, the light turned green and the door slid open of its own accord.

A man in a lab coat was there, pulling a keycard out of a slot in the wall. Vector stepped inside and the man backed away slightly, as if eager to keep a certain distance between them.

"Vector!" he said cheerfully. He obviously knew of Vector, although Vector knew nothing of him. "This is…well, unexpected! Did you come alone?"

"Yes," Vector said.

The man gestured to Vector's staff. "Is that, ah, is that a weapon there?"

"It is."

"Well, I will have to ask you to give it to me," the man said. He began rapidly tapping the keycard against a fingernail, but then caught himself and stopped.

"No," Vector said. "We will keep it with us, thank you."

The man stared at Vector a moment, seemingly at a loss.

"I see…well, then….I will take you to the director." He turned and Vector followed.

They entered a huge room, filled with computer terminals with a surprising number of people attending them. The electro-magnetic energy in the air was almost paralyzing in its intensity and Vector briefly halted in his tracks. He touched a hand to his temple, feeling dizzy. The feeling passed and he shut out the distraction with some effort. He was aware of a large number of eyes following him as he continued across the room. He doubted many test subjects came here willingly, and especially not by announcing themselves at the front door. The watching scientists were eerily quiet.

At last, he reached the far end of the room. The man led him up a short flight of stairs and stopped in front of a door. He hit an intercom in the wall.

"He's here, Doctor."

There was a click and the door slid open. The man stood aside to let Vector pass. He looked relieved to be rid of him.

Vector walked into the room and the door shut behind him, locking audibly. Vector felt a trickle of fear at the base of his spine, but he quickly suppressed it. He would face whatever was here and would not leave without getting the answers he sought.

A woman was waiting for him. She wore a white lab coat and had long silver hair, which she kept swept back from her head and braided down her back. A kind face, slight build, and cheerful blue eyes made her look wholly unintimidating and harmless. Vector knew better, however. There was a room adjacent to this one, hidden from his sight, where Vector could smell the cloying scent of terror and despair.

"So," the director said and her voice was strangely high and bright, like the voice of a child. "Let's be frank with each other, shall we? You're not here for a social visit." She leaned against the table in front of her and smiled sweetly at him.

"We are here for our file," Vector said.

"Are the Killiks asking for this, or is that request from you, Vector Hyllus?"

"The Killiks did not send us."

"I see," she said. She looked at a holoscreen built into the table in front of her and ran her finger quickly across it, flipping through some files and pausing to examine them intermittently. "We thought you were dead, you know," she said conversationally. "You just disappeared from the Oroboro nest - disappeared, in fact, from Alderaan altogether. How interesting that you seem to have taken up with Dr. Lokin." She looked up and smiled at Vector, and something about that smile chilled him. "Yes, I know you came here with Dr. Lokin." Vector said nothing.

"Did he tell you about his involvement with this project?"

"We know of it," Vector said.

"No, I don't think you do," she replied. Her voice was still cheerful, almost giddy.

"We're not here to discuss Dr. Lokin," Vector said. She would try to introduce doubt and mistrust now, Vector knew. He had the sinking feeling that Dr. Lokin had been right. This was not a person who would ever cooperate with him. "We will take our file now."

The director frowned and studied him thoughtfully.

"What do you expect to gain by coming here? You don't really think you can just walk in, take our records and leave, do you?" There was no malice in her tone now, but the mirth was gone as well. She seemed genuinely puzzled. Vector suspected that the director didn't see him as a person at all, but rather as a study gone awry. Suddenly he felt certain that she would do anything to keep him from leaving this place.

"We are no longer your test subject," Vector said. "We will stop any experiments on Killiks or Joiners as well."

"You were always so naïve, Vector. Your pretty ideals don't belong here. You come here, thinking to, what? Stop the project with just you and your staff? You are a diplomat, not a hero."

"We are not who we once were," Vector said quietly.

"Our work here could save the Empire. Surely you still understand that much. Sometimes a few must be sacrificed to help the many."

"What you've done has gone far beyond allowable sacrifices," Vector said. "This place is a horror. The pain you've inflicted here lingers still and it sickens us."

The director grew quiet. "We could help you, Vector," she said at last. "Work with us, and maybe we could reverse what was done to you."

She was getting desperate now, Vector thought, and her switch in tactics was misguided. She didn't understand what she'd done to him at all, did she?

"That is not what we want," he said. He decided to attempt one last plea for logic, even though he knew it would be futile. "Your study is no secret to us anymore and cannot now proceed as planned. Knowledge of what you have done is already known to the Hive. Talks for a Killik-Empire alliance are underway. Do you wish to jeopardize that? Make an enemy of the Killiks and you have done anything but help the Empire."

The director's face had become a mask and she no longer appeared to be listening. She took a step back from the table and as she did so, Vector saw her fingers linger for a moment beneath it. Immediately, Vector felt a prickle against his consciousness and then in a flash of recognition he knew there was an aura of another being nearby.

Vector drew his staff and spun around just in time. A figure materialized before his eyes as the cloaking screen dropped, and Vector blocked a blade that was already en route towards his vital organs, knocking it out of the would-be assassin's hand. It slid across the floor and hit a nearby wall. The man quickly swapped in an off-hand blade and made a stab for him again. Vector swiveled out of reach and brought his staff around in a sweeping arc, hitting the man squarely on the temple. The man crumpled to the ground and did not move again.

Vector looked up and saw that the director now had a gun pointed at him. She looked startled and afraid, and the gun shook noticeably in her hands. Before Vector had time to react, the barrel lit up in a brilliant flash. There was a hiss as a small hole opened up in the wall behind him and began to smoke. Vector leapt onto the table and lunged for her, just as she raised the gun to fire again.

Suddenly, a grid panel flew off from the ceiling and crashed to the floor, followed by a white blur dropping onto the director's head. She was flattened to the ground in an instant. Something wet splattered across Vector's face and when he went to wipe it away his hand came away red. Vector blinked away the blood and saw a large rakghoul hunched over the director, snarling and digging at her with its claws. It made hideous slurping sounds in between growls.

He tried not to look at the rakghoul – he couldn't think of it as Dr. Lokin just now – which was quickly turning the woman into something gruesome and unrecognizable. The scent of gore was impossible to avoid however. It triggered some primal survival instinct in him - whether human or Killik he didn't know – making his muscles taught and his senses keen. The room took on a surreal quality; the lights unnaturally bright, the sounds uncomfortably loud in his ears. He felt vaguely dizzy. Distantly, he was aware of shouting beyond the locked door. He knew instinctively that he would fight to the death anything that came through that door.

With deliberate care, he swung his staff onto his back and turned away. He took his steps carefully, so as to not to slip on the wet floor. A short ways away, he spotted the director's lanyard with a key card hanging from it. Vector retrieved it, wiped it quickly on his coat, and then went to the nearest data terminal and slipped it in the slot.

The screen informed him that he was about to access confidential files and asked him if he wanted to encrypt this session. He told it "yes" and proceeded to run a search on his name, along with the words "Joiner" and "Killik." A mere second went by and the machine displayed a number of records. There were more than he was expecting and he stared at the list for a moment. He selected a file named "Subject: Vector Hyllus" and opened it.

His picture came up – he recognized it as his Diplomatic Service photo ID shot – along with a bio that included his medical and educational history, his professional connections and accomplishments, and most interesting of all, a psychological assessment. Apparently, he was "ideally suited" as a test subject for their Joiner experiment. His file was linked to a number of other records, such as one on Killik history, Killik physiology, a study on mind-control (he was no longer surprised to see this), and some kind of lab report on pheromones. At the bottom was some correspondence between the Science Bureau and various other government departments. Many were holorecordings which he didn't have time to watch now, but they came with written abstracts. One was from the Director of the Diplomatic Service authorizing Vector's assignment transfer to the Oroboro nest. Also there was a request for records from the Science Bureau to the Intelligence Department. Interestingly, the Minister of Intelligence had denied the request, responding that they had no records to send. It seemed he had indeed truly disappeared when he had joined Cipher Nine.

His file ended abruptly. The last entry was a calendar detailing various milestones in his history as a test subject. It ended with the chilling note, "Commencement of in-house testing." The date listed for this was only days after he had left Alderaan with Liadan. If he had not been transferred to Intelligence, he would have come here instead – and probably would have never come out again.

He had no desire to read any more. He copied the files and saved them, however. At some point he would sit down and examine them more thoroughly. When the copy was complete, he deleted everything. He watched the file names flash across the screen as they were deleted, and only closed out the session when he was sure he had eliminated them all.

There was a noticeable silence behind him and Vector turned to see the rakghoul staring at him with its yellow eyes. Nothing human looked back at him from that gaze. If the Dr. Lokin he knew was in there, there was no sign of him now.

Without warning, the creature hunched over and made a strange yowling noise. The edges of its form grew blurry, as if Vector was seeing the rakghoul under a pool of water. A faint glow surrounded it, gradually becoming brighter as the creature's shape grew more indistinct. At last, the shape of a man appeared. It coalesced before Vector's eyes, finally solidifying into a naked Dr. Lokin.

Dr. Lokin stood up and stretched. "Ah, give me a moment," he said. He smiled disarmingly at Vector. Then he looked around as if seeing the room for the first time.

"Well!" he said jovially, "seems things got a bit messy." He padded lightly over to the pack containing his clothes and began to pull things out.

"We are going to look around further," Vector said. He had finally noticed the open door leading to the room he had sensed earlier. He felt drawn to investigate, even though he suspected he would find nothing pleasant there.

The doorway led to a hall with smooth, curving walls. It turned abruptly, and then headed downward. Vector followed it. It emptied out into a room filled with cells. Most of them were empty, but a few were not. Vector sensed no life here.

He walked slowly down the row of cells. The subjects here were predominantly the least-humanoid types of aliens. None of them looked like they'd been dead for long. Vector stopped abruptly. One of the cells held a Killik.

He found the wall panel and hit the switch to turn off the energy field around the cell. The walls flickered and then disappeared. Vector hesitated but then forced himself to step inside. Something felt terribly wrong here and he was filled with unease. Gingerly, he turned the Killik - a female - on her side. She was dead, but he could find no sign of injury on her. He stood up and surveyed the cell carefully. He sensed nothing.

For a moment he was baffled, but then he realized that the "nothing" he sensed was in itself the problem. There was no scent here at all. It was like she had been stripped of all pheromones, even the ones that should have been present in death. Suddenly he was more afraid than he had ever been since coming to this place. In essence her very identity had been taken from her. The horror he felt was akin to finding a person whose face had been replaced with blank nothingness. He backed away quickly.

There was no need to take the body and return her to one of the nests. The Killiks would not even recognize her as one of their own now. She was a non-entity.

He left the cell block and returned to the director's office. The sight of the director's mutilated body sickened him. Dr. Lokin was poking about at the various terminals. Vector noticed that he'd acquired the director's gun.

"All the test subjects are dead aren't they?" Lokin asked. "I can see the order here. The director had them killed as soon as she sighted us coming."

"We want to leave this place now," Vector said.

"Very well, my friend," Lokin replied. "Time to take care of loose ends."

Lokin went to the director's desk and ran his hand underneath it. He tapped a button he found there and the door unlocked and slid open. What noise there had been in the room outside suddenly hushed. Vector followed Dr. Lokin out and onto the landing. The scientists were now gathered in a huddle on the far side of the room. The one who had escorted Vector inside rushed forward and ran past them into the room behind.

He was silent a moment and then Vector heard retching sounds. The man stumbled out of the room, still gagging and wiping his chin. He looked at Vector and Lokin and then skittered down the steps away from them, wobbling like a drunken man. He ran back to the group of scientists. They began muttering and exclaiming loudly.

"Listen up!" Dr. Lokin called out. They quieted. "Come closer…that's it…come on now….there." Once the scientists were all gathered around, Lokin smiled as a father might to his children.

"All right then!" he said. "I am Dr. Lokin. Some of you may already know me." He held out his hands and smiled. "I will be your new director. All current projects are to cease immediately until further notice and you will all be receiving new assignments. In the meantime, you may each write up a report of what you were working on and its current status. Any questions?"

The murmuring had stopped and now there was silence. A woman stepped out of the crowd and cried, "What have you done with the director?"

"The director and I could not come to an agreement. She is no longer with us."

"You…you killed her! You can't do that!" the woman said.

"I can and I did. If you are not going to work with me then you are part of the problem." Dr. Lokin pulled out the gun he'd stashed in his pocket and pointed it at the woman. There was a frightened murmur from the gathered scientists.

Vector held a hand out to Lokin and stepped forward. "The experiments your director was conducting were unethical," he said to the gathered scientists. "She is dead because she tried to kill us – both of us. You can redeem yourselves now by working with Dr. Lokin instead. You will be treated fairly and there will be no more violence."

The woman held up her hands and backed away into the crowd again.

"Much better," Lokin said. "You've all had enough excitement for one day, so I'll be going now. I will be in touch." He nodded to Vector and walked down the stairs. Vector followed while the gathered crowd watched them walk from one end of the room to the other. Before reaching the door, Lokin turned and faced the group of scientists.

"One more thing," he added. "Please have that office cleaned up before I return."

oo0oo

Ensign Temple had the ship waiting in orbit and was ready to pick them up as soon as she received their holocall. Even still, by the time they returned, it was very late. Vector showered and put on comfortable lounging clothes, but even though he was tired, he could not sleep. He let his mind float through the endless ebbs and flows of the Hive, but instead of calming him, it seemed just a cacophony of meaningless sound. He was restless.

After some while, he rose and wandered to the bridge of the ship. He gazed out at the blackness of space, punctuated with so many distant suns. Slowly, he became aware of the soft touch of Liadan's aura nearby. Her bedroom was close to the bridge, and he had passed it to come here. The feel of its energy was docile and quiet; its song a gentle hum. It prickled against his skin, light as a feather, lapping at the edges of his consciousness like a calm sea. Yes, he thought, this is what he sought.

He stood outside Liadan's door and paused. She had given him the passcode to her room some time ago, and he had committed it to memory. But he had never used it. It was late and the feel of her aura told him she was asleep. He contemplated whether or not he should wake her. The sweet lure of her aura decided him. He punched in the passcode and her door slid open with a whisper. He stepped inside and it closed behind him.

He was enveloped in blackness. He welcomed that bit of sensory deprivation however. Without visual distractions he was able to fully immerse himself in the swirl of energy around him and drink it in to its fullest. He stepped forward cautiously. Liadan's aura glowed like a gentle beacon, showing him where to go.

There was a rustle from the bed. "Vector? Is that you?" Liadan's voice was groggy and rough.

"Yes," he said. He came and sat at edge of the bed next to her.

"I'm glad you're back," she said. She sat up and reached for him, her hand finding his shoulder in the dark. From there, she drew her hand through his hair and he felt a shiver ripple through him. "Did everything go all right?"

"It is taken care of now," Vector told her. "But we shall let Dr. Lokin tell you about it tomorrow."

She was quiet a moment. "How about you? Are you ok?"

He started to answer her but then stopped. No, he wasn't ok, he thought, but he would be in time. Right now he wanted to leave his thoughts behind to be sorted through later. Liadan's aura called to him, and he wanted to answer that call. Now that she was awake, the energy around her was awakening too. It danced about her, and where her aura overlapped with his the energy mingled in fascinating, unpredictable ways. He felt it like a caress against his skin, and he could almost hear it too, like two melodies playing against each other, not quite clashing, but not achieving unison either. A little closer perhaps and they would meld together in harmony. He cupped her cheek in the dark, then found her lips and kissed her.

"We…" he paused, "we need…this." He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to kiss her again. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I understand," she said against his ear.