Something awoke T'Sei prematurely. It was a darker night than she remembered ever seeing, but still the faint moonlight showed a vague horizon, one that was obstructed by something that hadn't been there before.

She thought she had remembered Tarek approaching her sometime in the earlier hours of the night and then leaving, but only really remembered the physical feeling of a near presence, not whose it was. She glanced sideways: he stood as if half-asleep, looking in a different direction. Rhian, beside him, stiffened, seeing what T'Sei had seen come nearer. "Maiek," Rhian whispered nearly soundlessly to the boy who had already seen and looked back wide-eyed. He walked to his mother. Entirely silently, his eyes asked something significant, she shook her head, and he broke away and headed for the house, glancing back once in frustration.

T'Sei raised herself from her sitting position and crouched so she was slightly higher from the ground but unseen in the near-darkness by whoever approached. The form grew larger, the figure more defined—a man—and before sharp features could be distinguished, another shadow neared him and hissed. Rhian, unable to fight but knowing the man's evil; T'Sei knew her voice. T'Sei could barely see, but she heard and recognized the thud that followed, knew what it meant, and guessed that Tarek now rushed to where Rhian lay. Then there was no more hiding, for a moment: sparks flared from the fire she thought dead and showed her, briefly, the man's face she could barely make out. She darted a glance quickly to the side: Tarek had his head bent over Rhian's chest—examining a wound or searching for a heartbeat. She could not see his face.

There was an angry hiss, inorganic in nature. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light flared out, leaving pitch black. T'Sei, heartbeat not fast but level, moved in a silent running crouch towards the unseen assailant. It was not a sense that came naturally to her, but something that exploded behind memory and vision and built up frustration that showed with a strange ease where the man was, how he could not escape this time. A sense beyond sensing. With a far corner of her mind, T'Sei began to wonder at the memories given to her, and why they had not identified this man—

Wind rushed over her back and underneath her as she sprang and then collided with the hard, warm, and living: she knocked him to the ground, which hit her bone-sharp against her back as she rolled with her momentum and searched again without her eyes, trying inwardly to calculate his height, weight, and still wondering who he was. She could now hear the sound of his breathing, which she had not heard before she collided with him. Her cheekbone ached dully where it had knocked against a sharp object at his side.

Slowly she moved her head, barely breathing for the sake of silence. Her arms were braced against the ground; she turned and thought for a moment, then began again to run—

The firelight flared again and caught the man's eyes, closer than she had realized. T'Sei started, saw the calculation in his gaze. Steady now the light came; though red and angry, not spluttering like before. She was stuck with him knowing her position. She would try reacting with speed, not with thought. She circled and he circled warily like a hunter. She could see so little of him but his movement and eyes; smoke obscured his face…T'Sei gripped her knife tighter, did not think about any of her training in Starfleet or on Vulcan. She thought not of eyes, but of weaknesses, but something was breaking through her resolve.

One of them darted towards the other, one struck, one missed. She felt no pain: she had cut him across his forearm, she realized: her eyes were fixed it, for that hand held a long knife that caught her gaze and warned across her mind.

As one of them leapt again, she was surprised into speaking. Her voice was hoarse and as if another's.

"Who are you?"

The question ripped from her throat, but it served as opposite as she had intended. A score across her leg, she saw, but shallow; she analyzed it quickly and dismissed it.

Once again, she could hear his breathing before he controlled it again. How many times had he fought? Enough to be deadly, but she was not experienced either and something about the way he moved was familiar, though seen in only frantic glimpses—

His eyes glittered and gave no answer. They were unrecognizable in the emotion or lack thereof that they held. Her gaze was torn away as something caught and ripped at her hair: the knife tore past, a strand of hair attached and glinting darkly for an impossibly long moment before the moments shortened again and her time was measured by not by heartbeats or seconds but footsteps and attack.

"Why do you fight me?"

This question, too, did not distract him, and the next knife nearly did not miss. Her heart lurched as her foot slipped downward in a step. In a flash, he sprang forward and there was now a cut across her arm, short and deep. Her eyes were not fixed on the blood, but on the knife: there, that handle…she had seen it before…

He seemed to falter. She tore her gaze away; this was deadly, this thinking; it had gotten her two wounds and near death in less than the space of a minute.

This time, she did not think about what she was asking, but on her actions, and then nearly stopped thinking about them.

"Why do you kill them?"

Bruise across his rib by the flat of her knife. His balance was altered minutely.

"Do you even know who I am?"

The fire was in back of him and gave him a corona of an outline but no features. She could not see his face…

"Why didn't you kill him?"

There. That faltering—that had been enough: she stepped, ran, and then leapt on top of him, hitting the ground hard and rolling, catching his wrist bone hard to keep him from stabbing at her.

"What?"

She was struggling with his wrist. His hand clawed open and shut, resisting like an epileptic's. His voice was sharp and dry, warm and emotionless, accented strangely differently than that of Evine or the people from Hellguard. A warning chord struck in her. She hoped to distract him and lean her weight hard enough against his wrist to break it so he could not kill her.

"You killed Rhian." She wasn't sure of that, but the sound Rhian had made afterwards… "You must know who she is, who all of them are, to try to kill them. But you did not kill the man, the doctor—he ran to help her—you would have killed—" His body's struggling was hard as turbulence and she was nearly shaking free; her hand was slipping. Resultingly, her sight came in pieces: arm, hand, knife, face—

That single moment of illumination, of the fire's risen light burning his expression of confusion into her eyes, and the shape of his jawbone, no, his forehead, no, his eyes—he was moving fast; the fire blocked his face from view again; direction had reversed completely and he held her arms down sharply, knife in tense hand as he opened his mouth to speak—

"I know who you are" was hurled from her mouth as something flung her away from the ground. She heard a sharp sound and turned as fast as she could though the ground reeled sickeningly and green tinged her darkening vision. She was not seeing, but rushing forward—a familiar man on the ground—blood, too much blood—Ruanek, no, Evine—none of them—She saw a cut across a man's arm, saw it was Tarek who had moved her desperately aside. She scrambled for her knife, ignoring the pain of another cut on her leg, gripped it, turned, then truly saw:

Tarek and the man…neither were moving. Both had eyes locked on each other's faces, the horror on Tarek's igniting T'Sei's memory. As the firelight had before, it showed cruel similarity. The other man had not stopped the ascent of his knife. T'Sei saw it jerk upwards and into Tarek's shoulder, veering away from his chest…he clutched the knife, jerked it out of his flesh. There was a sharp clattering as it fell to the ground.

"He is your father," she told Tarek, though he already knew. But Tarek's face was frozen. He seemed not to hear her. He looked towards Rhian's body prone in the shadows and then back at his father's face. T'Sei had seen that look, before, in a memory not her own…

She did not realize her forward footsteps until she saw the face of the man so unlike Tarek diagonally and much closer than it had been moments before, twisted into something unrecognizable but with the expression falling away…She tried to hold him down and hurl his knife away again, but her hands brushed against his temples and skull and thoughts jerked into her like an electric shock. The hatred was nauseating…

An entire planet, but with less people…adults, faces immobile, emotionless but for pain, and then children, dying, dead…so many…

She looked at Tarek but saw a boy twisted on the desert ground with his leg collapsed beneath him, two cuts on his forehead bleeding above his eyes. She turned back to his father and saw a man with a knife, and a man with a knife many years ago…and death…she couldn't stop herself from shuddering. His thoughts and her memories were too strong.

An inexorable force combined with exhaustion forced her eyelids to begin to shut; in her remaining sight, she moved Tarek's grip, hurled her knife downwards and downwards again into the assassin's body, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hurled them both away…she saw green and horror and peace and then black.

Black and then stars.