WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS EXTENDED SCENES OF EXTREME VIOLENCE AND BRIEF BUT GRAPHIC SEXUALITY

This chapter builds upon events in chapter 7 of season one. Readers who have not yet read this chapter are invited to do so before undertaking chapters 13-14 of season two.

CHAPTER 13

THE LONG WAR: HOMECOMING

PART I

"Kara, we've jumped to Kobol. It's time for you to go."

"No, John, I'm not going anywhere. Not until we've finished. Once I enter the tomb, there's no turning back … and I'm no longer sure that the Thirteenth Tribe deserves to have us come knocking on their door. Maybe Cylons and humans should have to prove that they can live together first. Maybe we should be looking for a cozy little planet to call our very own."

John Bierns was hard pressed to disagree. He had seen the best and the worst of both species, and his own career was hardly a testament to virtue. We're all deeply flawed, he thought, and Kara's seen to the heart of it. We still don't know whether we can overcome our differences, and at the end of the day that's the only question that matters. Live together or perish separately: sometimes I get so caught up in the details that I forget that we're fighting not just to survive but to have a chance to prove that we're worthy of survival. Cottle would probably chalk it up to combat fatigue … and maybe rightly so. I've been playing cat and mouse for a long time, and for sure I've taken my lumps. But Cavil never takes a day off, so neither can I. Shelly, Lydia, Sibyl, the centurions … there are so many in this fleet who deserve something better than a life spent wandering through the emptiness of space. Harlan was right … you can talk all you want about principles and ideals, but war is ultimately about people. You can't survive without accumulating debts, and no one gets to default. I owe you, General … you and Richard both … and I'll pay the debt. But war is also about payback, and John Cavil and I have a huge score to settle. Yeah, One, the day's coming when I'll be able to attend to you personally—and the frakkin' sooner the better! When it came to the hatred in his own heart, John Bierns had no illusions whatsoever.

"Kara, what can I tell you? Harlan's plan was amazingly simple, but that's why it was so brilliant. We couldn't risk snatching one of the Cavils—and they were the only worthwhile targets. The others were unlikely to tell us anything that we didn't already know. So, we had to reverse the field. Harlan ran a variation on what agents call a honey trap. The idea was to set me out as bait, and get one of the Cylon women to reel me in. The objective was to get me onto a baseship and jumpstart a dialog. Richard even empowered me to represent him … to serve as his personal envoy. We figured that, while the Cylons might go on boycotting the scheduled talks at the Armistice Station, once we openly confronted them on their own turf they would have no choice but to open backdoor negotiations. It took a long time to bait the trap, but in the end it worked fine. The problem was that we had started from a certain set of assumptions, and the most crucial one turned out to be wrong. The Cylons weren't interested in talking. The clock was already ticking down, and it was far too late to stop it."

"Backdoors, honey traps … John, I keep thinking that this was all just a game to you and your buddies. Our side moves a piece onto this square, and their side moves to block. So you move another piece … seriously … was any of it ever real to you? Did you ever actually stop to think that fifty billion people might die if you got this wrong?"

"It was never a game for Harlan, Kara, anymore than it was for General Pinkert. There's a wall in the atrium of our headquarters that's covered with plaques. They're very simple: a name, and the number of years, months and days of service of every CSS agent who has died on active duty. Every single one of us took the oath in front of that wall. Pinkert and Berriman recruited most of us personally, and every time they sent us out the door they knew that we might not make it back alive. Believe me … they understood the connection between action and consequences. But if you're asking about me personally, I honestly don't know what to say. Maybe it was all a game … until Mara died. The people I killed? It never touched me. You're right, Kara, they were just pieces on the board, and they had to be sacrificed to give us a chance to survive. Even Mara's death … I had the report on my desk two hours after the fact. I read it, and it didn't touch me. It wasn't real. It wasn't until I got home … it wasn't until I walked into the bathroom and picked up her hairbrush. I saw a few strands of her hair and that's when it hit me—that she was gone, and she wasn't coming back."

John's voice broke. "I killed her, Kara … not Cavil … me. If it was a game, then it was a very deadly game and I broke the rules, only I broke the wrong rules. I loved her and I wanted to tell her but I couldn't because then it wouldn't have been a game anymore and I was so afraid. I was selfish and afraid, and I killed her!"

"Stop it," Kara screamed. "Stop it!"

Starbuck turned away, and stumbled along the edge of the pond. She brought her hands up to cover her ears, though she couldn't tell whether she was trying to shut out the sound of John's voice or keep all the pain and guilt from seeping out of her. She sensed Reun come up behind her, and fell into her arms. Kara wanted to be held, wanted someone to make it all go away.

"I killed Zak," she whispered, the horror of it still fresh in her mind. "I loved him and I destroyed him. I love Lee, but I can't love him because I'll destroy him too. I'm the angel of death, Reun, and I'll destroy anyone who comes close."

"Yes, Kara, you're right," Reun softly answered. "Your love can destroy Lee … but only because he wants it too. He's pursued by demons of his own … even you can see that … and he wants you to punish him. It's not death that he seeks so much as it is oblivion."

"Creusa?"

"She can save him. She does not yet possess the patience or the wisdom to do so, but her faith in Lee will never waver. It may be enough."

"Then I have to stay away."

"If you truly love him … yes, you have to stay away."

"Reun? I love you. Does this mean that I … that I …"

"I don't know, Kara. You are the harbinger of death, but it is also your destiny to guide all to their appointed end. This would make sense if death was the end of all things, but it isn't. I cannot reconcile the things that I know to be true. There's too much confusion here."

. . .

Larissa Karanis studied Kara Thrace. Starbuck's face had gone slack, and her eyes were vacant. What, she wondered, would an EEG show? Would it flat line? Is Kara Thrace still in there, or has she gone somewhere else?

Larissa thought about the incredible patterns that had lit up the monitor above John's head. Doctor Gerard had been unable to decipher the screen, but the brain surgeon hadn't talked with Natalie and Leoben. He didn't know what he was dealing with. John, there's another mind at work inside your head, isn't there? You and Reun really have merged, haven't you?

. . .

John pulled Starbuck close, and leaned down to whisper in her ear. "I'm sorry, Kara; I'm not usually this insensitive, but I have been known to go through some really bad days. Maybe this is one of them."

She patted his back, which was as close to an apology of her own as she could get. "Does this mean that super secret agents occasionally break out into a sweat when they're killing the bad guys and saving the planet?"

"Sorry, but I can't help you, Starbuck." John smiled. "The spooks who specialized in saving the planet worked in another department."

Kara took a deep breath, and looked up into his eyes. "So how does a honey trap work?"

"Slowly. You can't rush these things … it's hard enough even to control them. This one took over a year to execute."

"A year? And you spent two years training for it? Gods, John … three years for a single mission?"

"Yeah, and at that it was a rush job. First, we had to plant rumors … lots and lots of rumors. The President's office was leaking like a sieve anyway, so we started there. Harlan went over personally to brief Adar, his senior advisers, and several cabinet members. He told them that, as unlikely as it might seem, there was a strong possibility that the Cylons had breached the security of one of the intelligence services. Oh, there was a lot of verbiage, but that's all he really said. He wanted to work on their imaginations."

"On cue, the President instructed him to brief the other security chiefs, but Richard improvised and threw in an inspired suggestion of his own. He ordered Harlan personally to make the rounds of the key defense contractors, and bring their heads of security up to speed as well. Fast forward a month, and Picon fleet headquarters was awash in rumors. Their MI guys didn't like us very much … indeed it's fair to say that they didn't like us at all, so when the rumors bounced back to us they had acquired a synergy all their very own. They were no longer vague; it was the Colonial Secret Service that had been penetrated." John's voice swelled with admiration. "Kara, when it came to reading bureaucratic tea leaves, Harlan was a genius. He had not only anticipated this … he was counting on it!"

Bierns guided Starbuck back to the boulder; he sat down, and patted the rock beside him. "We let the rumors percolate for a while, and then the President summoned Harlan to a carefully scripted and very heavily attended meeting. They both played the audience beautifully. Richard 'demanded' to know what the hell was going on. Naturally, Harlan denied everything, but by this point we had spread a few rumors of our own—all to the effect that Harlan was turning the Service upside down trying to find a Cylon agent. The idea was to suggest that somebody on the payroll was selling secrets on the side; the last thing on Caprica that we wanted was for someone to jump the gun and start imagining humanoid Cylons in our midst!"

Kara stared at John with a kind of dread fascination. This was not the sort of thing that cadets were taught at the Academy. The bureaucratic in-fighting was understandable, but what John was describing amounted to wholesale manipulation of the entire government. Gods! Was anything that appeared in the press real, or was it all manufactured by people like Harlan Berriman?

"John, there's one thing that I don't understand. You wanted these rumors to reach the Cylons, right? But the One who killed Mara knew the truth … he knew exactly who you were. Why would you expect the Cylons to take the bait?"

"Mara's murder told us that the Ones still had secrets to protect. Our analysts concluded that they would have to jump all over these rumors to distract the other models … keep them far away from the truth. We were trying to force the Cavils to react in a very specific way at a time and place of our choosing."

Kara could only shake her head in wonder. She was finally beginning to accept that she had come very late to a war that had been going on for many years. The real war had been fought in the shadows, the first salvos fired not on the battlefield but by a handful of men and women who had conceived and executed a desperate plan to crack the enemy from within. Fifty billion people were dead … an entire civilization had been obliterated, but Deirdre was right—not only was the war still ongoing but the outcome was truly in doubt. I may be crazy, Kara thought, but we may actually be winning! Roslin … the Old Man … compared with these guys, they're babes in the woods!

"John, remind me to give you a cloak and dagger for your next birthday. This is amazing stuff. It puts all of those Rex Caesar spy flicks to shame."

"I've never seen a video," Deirdre sighed.

"I'd like to try reading a book," Reun cut in; "poetry would be nice … maybe something by Kataris?"

"What?" Starbuck was aghast. "Are you telling me that you can't read? That's hard to believe!"

"Why?" Reun was baffled. "We keep one eye on gauges, and with the other we gaze upon infinity. We're supposed to be machines. Tell me … was your oven literate?"

"Uh … well … no."

"There you are, then."

John cleared his throat. "Are we done here?"

Kara laughed, and punched him playfully on the arm. "Nice try, superspy, but no … we're not done. Keep going."

"So, you're okay?"

"I have my ups and downs, but booze and meaningless sex do take the edge off. I get by."

"That's not what I meant!" John looked at her more closely, and let out a long sigh. "Right … never mind. Okay, we're fourteen … maybe fifteen months out, and the rumors had firmed up nicely. It was time to give them a face. Harlan was on the A list, and he was drowning in invitations. Although he never attended events, all the serious players nevertheless invited him to their parties. Can you imagine what a coup it would be if someone actually persuaded him to come? Just envision a gaggle of bored trophy wives gathered round, exchanging cocktail conversation with the chief spy … the head of the most secretive department in the whole government. It doesn't get any more romantic than that."

John laughed at the absurdity of it all. "So, Harlan began to accept the invitations, only he dispatched me in his place. Major Bierns joined the canapé circuit. Almost overnight, I became the celebrity spy, and in no time at all I was receiving invites in my own name. Once Harlan had leaked my nickname, the formal invitations increased fivefold. No one knew what it meant, but 'Lord High Executioner' sounded so delightfully sinister. I brought an air of mystery and danger to parties that otherwise tended to be quite tedious. I even started carrying a gun in a shoulder holster; it bulged nicely under my jacket."

Kara clapped her hands in droll approval. "Your sex life must have gone off the charts!"

John grinned. "My proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. But this was no game, Kara. We were trying to construct a public persona—the deadly, unscrupulous, and possibly corrupt intelligence operative who went to parties in search of beautiful women that he could drag back to his bed. It was all for the benefit of the Cylons, who also showed up at these affairs with some regularity. I ran into one of the Cavils at a ministerial gathering, and a Five was now working public relations out of the President's office—probably the one that you left at Ragnar. I saw a lot of D'Anna Biers, especially in Caprica City; she was also on the A list, and she was tuned in to all the latest gossip. In essence we wanted the Cylons to get a good look at me, and to feel confident that there was a way they could grab me without putting any of their own agents at risk."

"So down at street level the Cylons were hearing rumors that they had penetrated the CSS. It must have confused them no end—everybody except the Cavils, who knew it was all nonsense but couldn't tell the others why. You were boxing them in."

"You're quick, Kara … in fact, you're almost there. But you have to remember that Mara told Cavil about me … that's why she died. The Ones had known for several years that D'Anna's child had grown up to become a CSS agent, so they could see how the rumors might have a basis in fact. Fending off queries from their own agents must have become increasingly awkward—and we wanted to make it impossible. So, we ratcheted up the pressure. Shortly after the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Cimtar Accords, Harlan began to tie it all together. He used Adar's office to leak bits and pieces of my medical file into the public domain. No one who got a look at this material would ever conclude that I was human … not if they knew a damn thing about science. Hence by process of elimination I would have to be a Cylon … a humanoid Cylon. That's the way Harlan's mind worked, Kara. I swear, his brain was more labyrinthine than a Tauranian puzzle box."

"I think I see where this is going," Starbuck interjected. "Left to their own devices, the Ones would never have taken the bait, so you had to tie their hands. You baited the hook for someone else … someone like D'Anna Biers … and you made it so easy to reel you in that her controller couldn't refuse without arousing suspicion in the ranks."

"Starbuck, go to the head of the class! We had D'Anna squarely in our sights. About six weeks later, I ran into her at one of those fancy garden parties … you know the type … catered, with a rental orchestra on somebody's back lawn."

"Sure," Starbuck sprightly replied, "I used to attend parties like that all the time."

"Touché," John laughed. "Anyway, we were on a first name basis, and she wasn't shy. She walked right up to me, two glasses of champagne in hand, and asked if her favorite Cylon needed a drink. Kara, you'd have been proud of me. I never missed a beat. I told her that the bubbles played hell with my circuits, and come the morning I'd probably have to reboot, but it was a small price to pay for an evening of her company. I was supposed to seduce her, or let her seduce me, but I freaked out. D'Anna didn't look much like my mother, but still … "

"Incest is a very strong taboo?"

John nodded vigorously. "I just couldn't do it, which meant that we were back to square one. It took several months to line up another well placed target, but this time we struck tylium. Gaius Baltar started showing up at these affairs with a gorgeous, platinum haired Six on his arm. She had her hooks in deep, which intrigued us because Baltar was so well connected at Defense. We knew he had a contract to network the fleet's computers, and he was collaborating with a number of people in the weapons development program. Doctor Amarak's boys and girls were way out on the cutting edge, so Natasi potentially had access to some pretty scary stuff, even if it had yet to make its way off the drawing board."

"Amarak … Amarak." Starbuck snapped her fingers. "Wasn't he Shelly Godfrey's boss?"

"Yeah. I didn't know any of the details at the time; Amarak's operation was extremely sensitive, and it wasn't part of my brief. All Harlan ever told me was that there was a Six in Amarak's office, and that the two of them were romantically involved. I remember suggesting that we ought to have someone host an intimate little dinner party and invite Amarak, Baltar, and their significant others. It would have been fun to see what happened when two Sixes sat down opposite one another."

"You mean fun as in watching them break the necks of everybody in the room in order to protect their identities?"

"Starbuck, you really should have been working for us. That was pretty much the General's reaction."

"I'll bet. What'd he actually say?"

"Um … that he was starting to worry about me? I was just kidding around, but he probably wondered whether I was on the verge of burning out. The CSS wasn't the most stable collection of personalities in the Colonies. The divorce rate was appallingly high, there were suicides, and alcoholism was a serious problem. A lot of our retirees gravitated to seaside villages on Aquaria and Picon where the authorities turned a blind eye to prostitution and illegal narcotics. They drank up their pensions in back street bars—believe me, the money goes fast when you've got a pretty, young bar girl hanging on each arm."

"John, you're preaching to the choir. Your guys sound just like your average Viper jock—we were perpetually broke, and pretty much for the same reason. Still, it's good to hear that you got out once in a while and dipped your toe in the real world!"

"Oh, I was the poster child for emotional stability, Starbuck … the stone cold, part-time assassin who fell in love with a known Cylon agent and wept like a baby when she died. Don't you find that a little … odd?"

"Not in the slightest. Well, maybe weeping instead of getting drunk and heaving your guts out … maybe that was a little strange. Every time we lose a pilot I drink myself under the table."

"I've noticed … any chance of reforming your public image?"

"Zero chance. Finding out that I'm half Cylon doesn't mean that I'm going to turn over a new leaf. Kara Thrace is and always will be the meanest mother frakker ever to have climbed into a cockpit! No one's going to take that away from me! So, tell me about Natasi."

"She was part of the third wave, so she'd already been under cover for more than a year when she was first brought to my attention. Kara, she's incredible. No one, and I do mean no one, would ever pick up on the fact that she's a Cylon. She strikes me as a bit too rehearsed, but her mimicry of human behavior is otherwise flawless, right down to the smallest details. Her learning program must be incredibly sophisticated."

"That's pretty cold. Maybe she evolved. Maybe Baltar, the gods bless his selfish little heart, inspired her to reach beyond the limits of her programming. Maybe she's more like us now."

John shrugged his shoulders, conceding the point. "I've always thought in terms of adaptation rather than evolution, especially with regard to the Sixes, but Natasi would agree with you. She insists that a capacity for love is not built into her programming, but she also insists that she loves Gaius. If you think you're in love, then I guess you are. But in any event we may be talking apples and oranges here. Granted, she's a machine … but so are human beings. The human learning program is certainly no less sophisticated than the cylon, and it may well be far more so. In my mind the 64,000 cubit question has always been whether human beings have a monopoly on humanity. Is compassion instinctive, or is it learned? If we learn how to be good people, why can't the Cylons learn the same lessons?"

He shrugged again. "They've obviously mastered the worst human traits with ease, but I once trusted the Six with no name with my life, and my faith in Shelly Godfrey is absolute. I do not mean to suggest that either one of them walks on water, but I believe that they are both humane in the truest sense of the word. Whether we can generalize from a few copies to the entire model is not a question I feel qualified to answer. All I can do is tell you what took place on the baseship, and leave you to draw your own conclusions. It's a complicated story, and my feelings about what happened are … ambivalent."

Kara remained silent. There just didn't seem to be anything for her to say.

"Oddly enough, we did use a dinner party to make the approach. Gaius Baltar may be witty and charming, but back on Caprica he maintained a flamboyant life style that was well beyond his means. This condemned him to scrounge for consultancy fees, research grants, and everybody's personal favorite—the government contract that didn't draw too fine a distinction between personal and research expenses. Harlan arranged for a friend on the Defense Appropriations Committee to host an intimate little gathering. There was no way that Baltar was going to turn down an invitation from Mitchell Mackay, and the good doctor wasn't the kind of man to pass on an opportunity to flaunt his new girlfriend. Mitch was in the loop, and he was more than willing to ask certain leading questions, but in the event Baltar beat us to it. He loved to dominate the conversation, and he liked to show off … to demonstrate that he knew things that only someone well connected politically could possibly know. Kara, imagine the scene … Baltar and Natasi are seated directly opposite one another, and I'm seated to Natasi's immediate left. The main course and dessert are behind us, and coffee and ambrosia are being served. Gaius has just lit up a cheroot, and he's leaning back in his chair, appraising me. . . ."

"So, Major, what am I to make of the rumors that I keep hearing? You know, the allegation that the Cylons have got someone inside the Colonial Secret Service? That's bizarre enough, but everywhere I turn these days, there are people whispering that you are a Cylon."

Lacy Mackay choked on her coffee, and openly glared at Baltar. Her husband put his own cup down, and stiffly addressed the self-proclaimed genius.

"Really, Doctor, aren't you being a little … indiscreet?"

"Oh, I don't think so," Baltar coolly countered. "I mean, the rumors are out in the public domain. I've not just come across them in the halls of the Admiralty and Defense … they've also been a very hot topic of conversation at certain parties I've attended of late."

"Mitch, it's okay. I've been getting strange looks for months, and that investigative journalist, D'Anna Biers? She teases me constantly, calls me her favorite Cylon. Doctor, it all stems from certain … oddities in my medical history. My blood doesn't type, and my DNA is so far outside human norms that it calls the whole theory of evolution into question. But here's the one that you'll really appreciate: my blood contains no antigens."

Baltar's jaw dropped, and his eyes almost jumped out of his head. "You can't be serious," he lamely replied. "That's simply not possible."

"Oh, I'm quite serious. I do have an immune system, but you would be hard pressed to call it human. In fact, to date no one has been able to figure out quite how it works. You know how rumors get started, Doctor. I'm an orphan, so my parentage has always been a mystery, and there's more than enough here to make it altogether suspect. Since the only other species out there to our knowledge is the Cylons, if I'm not human then I must be a machine … a new and improved kind of toaster!"

"Natasi handled all of this beautifully. We made small talk during dinner, and when Baltar dropped his bombshell she displayed interest, but it was polite … she didn't do or say anything that would trigger an alarm. When the evening was over, I had a few minutes with her alone while Gaius went off in search of his limousine driver. . . ."

"Natasi, I apologize for being so inattentive during dinner. It bordered on rudeness. It's just that conversations can get a bit awkward when people find out that I'm …"

"The Lord High Executioner? I attend the same parties, Major, and you can take it for granted that I've heard the same rumors."

"So, aren't you afraid to be standing out here alone with the big, bad Cylon?"

She smiled, and her eyes lit up with merriment. "Shall I scream for help?"

"Why do I get the feeling that I'm the one who needs rescuing?"

"Perhaps you're overmatched."

"Indeed. Please give me a chance to make a better impression … lunch or dinner tomorrow?"

"I'm sorry, but Gaius and I have already made plans."

"They're about to change. Doctor Baltar doesn't know it yet, but he's leaving for Picon in the morning. He's going to be tied up in meetings for the next several days at fleet headquarters."

"Now I am impressed. You can make Gaius jump through hoops by simply snapping your fingers?"

"Let's just say that this dinner had an ulterior purpose."

"Lunch or dinner," she murmured. "Why don't you give me your number, and I'll call you."

"Yes, that would probably be for the best. Here's my card. You can reach me at any time, day … or night."

"Two days later, it turned out to be both lunch and dinner, and then back to her place … for the night. We were both so heavily engaged in seduction that we would have needed a scorekeeper to figure out who was ahead on points. I was confident that she had set a honey trap of her own, so I was just waiting for the lid to slam shut. It happened the following night. I went straight to her apartment from a meeting in the President's office. We were supposed to go out to dinner, but she wanted to have a drink first. My whiskey and soda had one hell of a kick. When I woke up, I was on a Cylon baseship … naked and chained. I know that sounds like cheap porn, but it's the truth!"

"Ouch! This sure doesn't feel like the homecoming that you were counting on. What in the name of the gods went wrong?"

"As strange as it might seem, nothing had gone wrong. Oh, Cavil had me at his mercy, but we discounted the possibility that he would kill me outright—there was just too much useful information floating around inside my brain. That call was spot on. We reasoned that a prolonged interrogation on colonial soil was impractical for all sorts of reasons, not the least of them being that Cavil would have to rely on the very agents that he was trying to keep in the dark. No, we expected him to bundle me up and smuggle me out of the Colonies to the nearest baseship, so everything went just the way we had planned. The accompanying instructions undoubtedly read something along the lines of 'senior CSS officer—bleed dry', but Cavil would have sat on all of the rumors that were swirling around me. We were counting on that—having me stake a claim to my Cylon birthright was our fallback position, and it certainly sat atop my personal agenda, but the real intent of the operation was to confront the Cylons with a presidential envoy. It was all misdirection, Kara. Harlan wanted Cavil to look off to the side while he slipped a ringer in under his nose. We expected the Cylons to be impressed: they weren't."

. . .

"When I was coming around, it felt like I was a hundred feet under water. Not drowning, exactly, but unable to find my way to the surface. The sun was up … down … I vividly remember asking myself how it could be in two different places at once. Eventually I clawed my way into the light … one small pool of brightness in a sea of otherwise uniform darkness. Kara, I tried to find the source, but every time I looked up, I saw two suns. Groggy and disoriented doesn't even begin to describe it. It literally felt like I was trying to swim through mud. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be nothing more exotic than pherylbenzylene. As date-rape drugs go, it was a good choice. It's tasteless and fast, but Natasi must have slipped me a dose sufficient to sedate a horse!"

"I couldn't focus on a damn thing, but we're trained to use all of our senses to interpret our surroundings. The first thing I tried to do was feel my beard. That's when I discovered that I was in irons … manacles fastened to a waist chain, with very little play. If I couldn't see anything, I could still feel the cold steel on my wrists and around my waist. My ankles were shackled as well, with a lead attached to a grommet that was anchored to the floor. I wasn't going anywhere."

"There's a series of checks that we're supposed to run in these situations. The stubble on my cheeks told me that I'd been out for about sixty hours, which was more than enough time for the Cylons to have given me an exhaustive physical. But I couldn't find any puncture marks … not on the neck, not on the arms … I drew a blank. Not unexpected, perhaps, but bad news nevertheless: if they hadn't taken a blood sample, then they wouldn't have bothered with saliva or tissue—so, no DNA analysis. My hosts would presume that I was just another human, and setting the record straight wasn't the straightforward proposition that you might think."

"I was about to say," Starbuck objected, "that you could have brought them up to speed anytime you wanted. Why didn't you just scream bloody murder and ask what the frak they were doing to a fellow Cylon?"

"And if the blood test came back with the wrong results, what then? I'll tell you what … I would have been fish food!"

"Frak that! Then you tell them that you're a hybrid!"

"And we go about proving that … how? No, my best chance of getting off that ship alive was the diplomatic initiative, but if I had to fall back on my cylon heritage it was absolutely critical that they discover it for themselves. If I had forced the issue, they would have simply seen it as a measure of my desperation. Kara, believe me, you don't ever want your captor to sense that you're that close to the edge."

"Yeah, yeah … name, rank, serial number. I know the drill. Don't give the bastards anything that they can use to gain a foothold."

"If you're trying to protect time-sensitive intelligence, sure, that's the way to go. But I wanted to strike up a conversation. We reckoned that the Cylons weren't seasoned enough to realize that an interrogation is a two-way street, with information flowing both ways. Would they hide the one question that was important to them inside twenty that were irrelevant? We didn't think they were that good. We expected their questions to take us to the heart of their vulnerabilities. So, if the diplomatic gambit failed, my job was to get them talking, and commit every question they asked to memory. If I could get out of there alive, the analysts would sort it all out after the debriefing."

Starbuck shook her head in disgust. "John, I've placed plenty of bets against long odds, but this is ridiculous. What are the chances of escaping a Cylon baseship?"

"Escape was never part of the equation, Kara. It never even came up for discussion."

Everywhere he looked, he saw nothing but fog. But there was a noise in the mist, and as is always the case, the sound was magnified by the pervasive silence that otherwise prevailed. It was rhythmic, a steady click-click that was drawing closer and closer. It came to him all of a sudden: stiletto heels, a woman walking down a long corridor. And the Threes and the Eights had not been drawn to this particular human affectation. . . .

"Hello, Six, how are you today?"

Bierns noted with satisfaction that the Cylon's steps had faltered momentarily. He wanted to keep her off balance.

"I'm fine, Major, um … thank you for asking. And how are you feeling?"

"Do you want the truth, or polite fiction?"

"The truth, Major." Bierns could not see the Six's lips curl into a hard smile. "I don't want you to get into the habit of lying to me."

"Fair enough. Well, let's see. I'm thirsty, quite possibly dehydrated, and my vision has been severely impaired. You're nothing at this point but a vague blur. Whatever Natasi put in my drink, she badly miscalculated the dose!"

"I'm sure that your vision will return, Major. But let me get you a glass of water."

The Six went to a table somewhere in the darkness. She returned moments later, glass in hand. She bent over, and held it to his lips.

"Slowly, Major, slow … ly. I'm not going to yank it away from you at the last minute. Slow … ly."

To John Bierns, the water tasted like the finest ambrosia. "Thank you," he breathed. He was genuinely grateful. "But naked and chained? Come on, Six. Isn't this a bit melodramatic?"

"On the contrary, Major, think of your current state as a testament to your reputation. No one on this ship has any desire to become the Lord High Executioner's next victim."

Bierns couldn't help but grin. "Nicely played, Six … very nicely timed. Seriously, though, a lot of time and effort went into getting me here. I'm here to talk, not to pick a fight."

Six frowned. "You make it sound as if you are here by design."

"Precisely. Six, everything I told Natasi was true. I did go to her apartment directly from President Adar's office. I'm here on the President's behalf. Please consider this an effort at quiet diplomacy. The President wants peace. He wants to scrap the current armistice and replace it with a formal treaty. It's time for both sides to let go of the past and move on. Each of us has a lot to offer the other."

"President Adar? Would this be the same President Adar who sent his battlestars repeatedly across the Armistice Line?" Without warning, Six kicked Bierns viciously in the ribs, causing him to gasp in pain. She knelt down, grasped his head by the hair, and turned it so that she could look directly into his eyes. "Major, I don't know what game you're playing, but it's not going to work. We're not fools, and we don't appreciate being treated as such. Yes, you're going to talk, because I have lots of questions and I won't settle for anything less than full and truthful answers. Understand your situation, Major. You are on a baseship deep in cylon space. No one's coming to rescue you. Your life belongs to me, but what I do with it is strictly up to you. I'm not cruel, Major, and I don't wish to harm you. But if you refuse to cooperate, then you will leave me no choice. I will cause you more pain than you can possibly imagine, or possibly endure."

The Six relaxed her grip, only to take John's cheeks gently in both hands. "But I don't want to. I really don't. Talk to me, John, and I will show you the meaning of pleasure. I will become your woman, and bring your every fantasy to life." She kissed him, first gently and then with greater insistence. "I have no inhibitions, and I'm eager to try everything. I've never slept with a man before … never made love. I want you to become my lover."

She kissed him again, and Bierns couldn't help but respond. He leaned into the kiss that she offered, but the manacles on his wrists belied the promise in her eyes. He suddenly jerked his head away. "Sorry, Six, you're very good at this, but the only fantasy I'm entertaining at the moment is an enduring peace. There'll be time enough for us to play once we've established a framework for negotiations."

"I'm sorry, too, John, because if there was ever a time for negotiations, it has long since passed. Humanity's children are coming home, John, and very soon. Now tell me … how did you learn my model number?"

"Visions, Six … visions. You've been living in my mind for as long as I can remember."

The Six scowled. "Are you trying to be funny? You should know, Major, that none of us appreciate the human sense of humor." She reached down and pushed the palm of his right hand firmly against the floor with one hand while gripping the small finger with the other. Her intent was clear. "I'll ask you one more time. How did you learn my model number?"

"Six," he sighed, "I did not come here to lie to you. If you ask me a question that cuts too close to the mark, I'll keep silent. Right now, I'm telling you the truth. You, the Ones, the Threes, the Eights … you've haunted me for decades. You can ask me this question a thousand times, and you'll get the same response every single time."

John closed his eyes and tried to relax, but the Six was patient. She waited until he had opened his eyes, and then she broke his finger as easily as she might have snapped a piece of dried kindling. He rushed to embrace the pain, diluting it as he had been taught by instructors who had stressed that what could not be avoided could be managed. The trick was to channel the pain through the entire nervous system rather than allow it to overload the receptors in the brain. Still, a low moan escaped his lips, and a few beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. His finger was now standing straight up, but the shock to the nervous system had already passed.

"Major, did you know that there are over two hundred bones in the human skeleton, and that most of them can be fractured without putting a person's life at risk? We have lots of time, you and I, and I can and will keep doing this over and over and over again. You know that you'll break … in the end, everybody does. So why don't you save yourself a lot of pain and tell me what I want to know. It's an innocent enough question … really … it's just to satisfy my own curiosity."

"Well, I doubt if your friends will be pleased if you break every bone in my body over something so trivial. Why," he asked through gritted teeth, "don't you ask me something that's actually worth a broken finger or two?"

"All right, Major. Are there any Cylons in the President's office?"

"No … at least, not at the present." And that's the literal truth, John thought—Leoben is not actually "in" the President's office. His teachers had emphasized that the way to beat a truth serum … to beat any interrogation, really … was to seize upon the tiny nugget of fact that was buried inside the lie. Almost every question offered an out; it was his responsibility to find it.

"But Mara was there five years ago … one of your sisters, Six. Mara was a presidential secretary. We were together for almost eight months, and I loved her. I knew what she was, and it didn't make any difference … I still loved her. I went on loving her even after Cavil murdered her. She was the first, but hardly the last. You'd be amazed at how many of your sisters have been killed by their handlers over the years."

The Six stared wordlessly at John Bierns for several moments. Then she shook her head; a human would have said that she was trying to shrug off her confusion.

"How did you know, John? How did you know that she was a Cylon?" The Six reached out to grasp the little finger on his left hand.

John Bierns gazed at the Six with a look that combined pity and resignation. She was close enough now that he could make out her features—or perhaps it was the case that the fog inside his brain was beginning to life. He gently covered her hand with his own.

"Six, I'm truly sorry that you cannot accept the truth when it is offered to you. You know the answer: it will never change. And I forgive you, Six. No matter how badly this ends, I want you to know that I … forgive you."

A harsh, choking sound welled up from her throat, but the Six hesitated only for a fraction of a second. She broke another finger, but this time she turned away. She heard his stifled cry, but it brought her no satisfaction, no sense of triumph.

"Well," he finally gasped, "at least now I have a matched pair."

"This is getting us nowhere," the Six concluded. She got to her feet and walked off into the darkness. She returned with a syringe, which she promptly plunged into Bierns' neck. "Perhaps this will loosen your tongue."

John Bierns felt his mind cut loose, like a sloop that had slipped its mooring. 'Hallucinogenic,' he thought as he readied his defenses. He struggled to control his breathing, and to slow his pulse and heart rate. Drugs that induced anxiety or made the mind susceptible to suggestion relied on speed; they overwhelmed the mind like a tsunami crashing onto the shore. They were easily beaten, but it took discipline and training. John had both in abundance. He crouched in the bushes, waiting to pounce upon the questions that the unwary Six would pose.

"Are there any Cylons engaged in the Defense Ministry's advanced weapons research program?"

"No," he grudgingly admitted. And that was the truth: Doctor Amarak's operation was not actually located in the Defense Ministry … it wasn't even on the same planet. The Doctor's main research facility was housed in a small and unpretentious building on the surface of Canceron, with the weapons research labs themselves buried deep underground. John doubted whether Shelly Godfrey had ever set foot inside the sprawling Defense complex.

The questions came thick and fast, although the Six paused occasionally to add new chemicals to the heady stew that was already boiling inside John's brain. But the spook was in his element now; two years of training had fortified him against every drug in the Cylon arsenal. And like the Cylons themselves, John had an eidetic memory: he filed the questions away, although it became quickly apparent that the Cylons had one overarching fear. How much of their operation had been exposed? How many of their agents had been compromised? Was their plan of attack still viable? Every question was a variation on one underlying theme, and John did his best to ease the Six's fears. Constantly on the alert for the test questions that might trip him up, John Bierns wove a pattern of elaborate lies out of the raw material of tiny truths. When the sedative finally began to flow through his veins, and sleep was at last on the verge of overcoming him, the CSS agent decided that he had won the first round. He had planted the seeds of doubt in the Six's mind, he had offered her a complicated mix of truths, half-truths and outright lies, and he had pulled it all off without ever lying to her outright. But the First Born did not congratulate himself. One round did not a fight make. The Six was right: time was on her side, and the Cylons would keep coming at him, keep trying to trap him in inconsistencies and contradictions. This bout would be scored in the final rounds, not the first.

. . .

When John Bierns awoke, he had no idea how much time had passed. He was thirsty, he was hungry—and he was clean-shaven. Someone, he wryly noted, has caught on to that little trick. But the act itself was informative: why bother unless they're planning to put me on an accelerated sleep-wake cycle in order to disorient and confuse? This was the one ploy that the spook actually feared. While it might appear benign to the uninitiated outsider, the technique was effective and deadly. The questions would never stop coming—the same questions, asked over and over again. The sleep-deprived mind could lose track of the answers tendered yesterday and the day before. The real interrogation would only begin when the contradictions began to surface.

But in the second round, the Cylons made a mistake. The Six returned to the hallucinogens, and that allowed John to feign a loss of concentration. His answers came slowly and with hesitation, in a speech that was progressively more and more slurred. He was surprised to see that his broken fingers had been set while he was out, and he wondered whether the Six was reluctant to go on torturing him physically. No matter … if she faltered, someone else would come along to take her place.

Time crawled by, and the Six became restive. The spook sensed that he had made a mistake, but he couldn't pinpoint it. Perhaps, he thought, my responses have been too consistent. Maybe I haven't shown enough loss of control, enough weakness. Maybe I haven't created openings that it's worth their while to explore. John knew that he was in trouble when the Six gave him a long, despairing look, and two centurions suddenly loomed out of the darkness, their red eyes focused malevolently upon him. The machines picked him up and dropped him on his knees; one of them pushed his cheek hard into the floor. John felt the waist chain fall away, and then his wrists were pulled between his legs and the cuffs unlocked. The freedom was, however, illusory: a second set of cuffs appeared, and his wrists were quickly shackled to his ankles. John Bierns' ass was dangling in the wind.

"I'm sorry that you wouldn't listen to me," he heard the Six say. "I didn't want this." She injected him again- an agent to trigger anxiety- and then she disappeared into the darkness. He heard the sound of her heels recede into the distance, and he grew very afraid.

The pain, when it came, was searing. One of the males came out of nowhere to spear him from behind. Two years of brutal training had not included serial rape, and he screamed at the repeated invasion. They came for him, one after another, no respite between the blows, until he lost count of the number of his assailants. It seemed to go on forever, but at some point the pain dulled, and finally faded away. He felt nothing. It's the blood, his dazed mind concluded; I'm hemorrhaging, and the blood is acting as a lubricant. With his head still locked in the centurion's vise-like grip, he couldn't see the pool of blood that was in fact gradually spilling onto the floor between his legs.

He sensed a new presence in the chamber, felt the sting of another injection. "Such a pretty ass," a female voice maliciously observed, "but it won't stay that way for long!"

John's mind recoiled with horror. "Mother," he cried, "no! Don't do this! Leave now! Leave!" But perhaps his cries of despair were only in his mind because the cane swooped down out of the air like some avenging Harpy, and one stroke became ten and then fifty and then a hundred. He could see the bloody welts in his imagination, coursing up and down his back and his buttocks, mutilating the flesh, transforming it into a kind of macabre battlefield. And his mother's voice beat down upon him without cease, the one question repeated ad nauseam: "how did you know, Major? How did you know that D'Anna Biers was a Cylon?"

He gave up answering, for the answering brought him no respite from the blows that rained down upon him, and he could no longer afford the luxury of divided concentration. John Bierns was at war with his own nervous system, and he had to bear down. The pain feels so good, he repeatedly told himself, so cleansing. This is my penance for what I did to Mara … my penance … my penance … my penance. But the drugs continued their assault on his mind without interruption, and as the hours passed he began to glimpse holes in the armor with which he had girded himself.

He slept again, and he could no longer tell whether it was exhaustion or a sedative that had rendered him unconscious. He had no sense of time passing, but when he awoke he was on his feet, his arms stretched painfully above his head, his wrists chained to a bar that forced him to stand on the tips of his toes.

The Six was waiting for him, caressing his cheek. "John, why are you doing this? Why won't you stop? All I want to know is how you learned my model number. Really, John, it's such a small thing … so meaningless. Tell me, and I'll make the pain go away. Tell me, and I'll protect you … take care of you. You'd like that, wouldn't you John? You loved my sister … perhaps you are also meant to love me. My model number, John … how did you learn my model number?"

"Six," he creaked through parched lips, "would you do me a favor? My back itches. Would you scratch it for me? Scratch it hard!"

"Oh, John," the Six said with regret as she pulled a syringe out of her pocket, "why are you doing this to me? How can you hate me so much?" She paused with the tip of the needle grazing his neck. "I don't want to hurt you, but you keep pushing me down this path. Why won't you let me love you?" She rammed the needle home and depressed the plunger. "I want to hold you in my arms, feel your arms around me, pulling me close. My bed chamber is nearby, John. Wouldn't you like to go to sleep in a real bed, and wake in my arms?"

The Six leaned forward and kissed him softly … ever so softly. She kissed his neck, licked the bruises that surrounded the puncture marks. Her fingers slowly wandered across his chest and stomach, finally coming to rest on his manhood. "I want you, John," she breathed; "I want you so badly." She began to stroke him, patiently coaxing him erect. She got down on her knees and took him in her mouth. His body stiffened under her soft but knowing touch, and he began to moan, feeling the hard edge of pleasure through the wall of pain that had become his constant companion. He willed his body to stop, but it refused to obey; his body wanted her to keep going … gods, but he would sell his soul for the relief that beckoned just over the horizon.

The Six took him close to the edge, and then she paused. She got up and walked out of his line of sight, and when she returned she was holding a leather whip, the ends of its many strands knotted into tight balls. She held the whip up to his eyes, and then she threw it over his shoulder and allowed it to settle on his back while she resumed stroking his penis. "Pain or pleasure, John … I'll give you whatever you want. You can have me right now, on this floor, or you can have the whip. It's your choice."

John chuckled … a dry, rasping sound. He raised his head to stare defiantly into her eyes. "Six, you still haven't scratched my back, and the itch is getting worse and worse."

They resumed. He could hear the whip whistling in the air in that last fraction of a second before the blow landed on his back, on his buttocks, and the pain exploded anew in his mind. At some point the Three returned, to stand in front of him and watch through narrowed eyes. The questions started anew.

"How did you know, Major? How did you know that D'Anna Biers was a Cylon?"

The Three began attaching electrodes to his body. The machine had come out of nowhere … or perhaps it had been there all along and he just hadn't seen it. His fingers, his testicles, the yawning wounds on his back … and when she flicked the switch and twisted the rheostat, he fled. His body remained on board the Cylon baseship, but his mind took flight to Galatea Bay. He was not even aware of the damage that a simple cigarette lighter began to inflict on his back.

. . .

It was the penultimate line of his defenses, and he had no explanation to offer himself or others. It wasn't daydreaming, it wasn't a too vivid imagination, and it wasn't hallucination. It was something else altogether, this strange ability to project his mind into another place that was so real that he felt like he was jumping dimensions. He was lying in the sand, lying on his stomach, looking out to sea. The warm sand relaxed him, and the gentle breeze tickled his spine. He wanted to scratch, but one of the unalterable rules of the universe dictated that you could never quite reach the place that itched. He relaxed, and let it go. In the far distance he could hear a whistling sound, and the scent of grilled meat reached him from close by. But he wasn't hungry. He just wanted to lie in the warm sand, feel the breeze on his back, and drift off to sleep.

The Three was infuriated. She had overdone it, and the subject had passed out. They would let him rest, let the pain recede … and then they would start again.

. . .

The Cylons were relentless. On the third day, the centurions wrapped his torso in barbed wire and took him down from the rack. Two of them hoisted his body into the air, and then they dropped him onto the floor. He landed hard on his back, and a fresh wave of pain washed over him as the barbs bit home. Chained once more to the bar, he was distracted by the pain when the Six began injecting still more drugs into his system. They came much more rapidly now, came one after another as the Cylons tried to find a combination that would break the subject down. He had answered many of their queries, but they had no confidence in what they had learned because he was still evading the control question. They had not yet broken his resistance, and a man who was capable of resisting was also a man who was capable of lying. They had no choice but to press ahead, although Simon kept reminding them that the drugs were sufficiently toxic to do physical damage to the brain. The subject might lapse into a coma at any time, he warned, and then this golden opportunity would be misspent once and for all. But the subject had to be broken, the others replied, or the entire exercise would come to nothing.

John Bierns fought the drugs … he fought them hard. But the combinations increasingly bedeviled him, and pain in tandem with the fever that he was now running sapped his concentration. Many of the lesions on his back had degenerated into open sores, and left untreated, they had become a haven for infection. Perhaps it was all in his head, but John swore that he could smell the stink of rotting flesh. When, therefore, the Three held the open cigarette lighter under his nose, he didn't know whether to be grateful or afraid: the flame that scorched flesh and triggered pain would also cauterize infected wounds.

John longed to return to Galatea Bay, but the increasingly frustrated Three refused to let him go. She repeatedly slapped him, and the force of the blows whipped his head from one side to the other. Finally, she held up a pair of pliers.

"Behold, Major, an ordinary pair of pliers. They don't look like much, I grant you, but they will cause you an unbelievable amount of pain. I am going to get a grip on an exposed piece of your flesh and rip it off your body. Then I'm going to feed it to you; you haven't eaten in several days, and you must be hungry! When you've finished with your first morsel, I'll feed you a second … and then a third. Tell me what I want to know, Major, or I am going to skin you alive. For the last time, how did you know that D'Anna Biers was a Cylon?"

The spook shook his head. "Just so that you know, Three … I like my steaks medium rare!"

The Three looked at John Bierns with undisguised hatred, and then she slapped him again, much harder than before. When she walked out of his line of sight, John retreated to Galatea Bay, but the incredible pain that ensued a couple of seconds later pulled him back to the baseship. He heard a blood-curdling scream that froze the blood in his veins, and then he belatedly realized that it was emanating from his own mouth. No amount of training had prepared him for this: the pain consumed him.

"Six, pinch his nose."

The Three waited until the subject opened his mouth to breathe, and then she shoved the mangled flesh deep into his throat and clamped his jaws shut.

John gagged, and his entire body bucked violently.

"Chew it quickly," the Six urged, "and never mind the taste. Just get it down and you'll be okay."

The spook complied, but the moment the Three relaxed her grip his stomach revolted, and he vomited all over her. His bowels loosened and his bladder emptied involuntarily: he looked in surprise at the mix of urine and blood that was running down his leg to puddle on the floor. The flogging had badly bruised his kidneys, but he knew that it was just a matter of time before he suffered far worse damage.

"Sorry, Three," he gasped in great, heaving breaths, the sweat pouring off his forehead and stinging his eyes, "but I told you … I like my meat medium rare. That was badly undercooked."

"John, stop it," the Six screamed, "just stop it! "This has gone on long enough. You have nothing left to prove. Why are you so stubborn? Is it a question of pride? Is it pride that keeps you from answering a stupid, meaningless question?"

"Gods damn it, Six, I've told you the truth! I haven't lied to you once." Although the major's breathing was terribly labored, the pain was so intense that it had driven the drugs from his system and brought him welcome clarity of mind. The exasperation in his voice was evident. "Do you want me to make something up? Will that make you happy? Okay, try this one on for size. Once …"

His body shook, and his stomach heaved. He tried to vomit, but nothing came out. "Once, when we were making love, I looked in the mirror and saw that Mara's spine was glowing. It was a spectacular shade of red, like embers in a glowing fire." He shivered and groaned as another wave of pain swept through him. "That happens to be true, but it is not how I knew that Mara was cylon. How many times do I have to tell you? I've known about you for decades."

"Right," the Three sneered, "you've seen us in your dreams. And how many times do we have to tell you that that's not good enough?"

"Not in my dreams," John corrected. "Oh, I had plenty of nightmares when I was a child, but the visions came to me during the day. I didn't want them, Three … I tried to run away. But how do you run away from something that's in your head?"

"I am so sick of your lies," the Three countered, "and that's all you've given us … one lie after another. Fine. We'll begin again, only this time we won't be so considerate. You can't see what's behind you, Major, but the next time the whip lashes you … why, you'll have a bird's-eye view. Everybody talks, Major, everybody breaks. It's just a matter of time … and we have all the time in the world. We also have some interesting toys … things that you have probably never seen before. I think that I'll introduce you to one of them right now! Centurion, bring him down."

The one-eyed machine cranked a winch, and the bar abruptly dropped. John's feet landed squarely on the floor, but his overtaxed muscles were incapable of supporting him. He would have collapsed, but the Six caught him. She took his weight, and he cradled his head against her chest. Muscle spasms wracked his calves, but he barely noticed pain that in ordinary circumstances would have dropped him to the floor.

"I've got you," she soothed. "Don't be afraid … I've got you."

Two centurions loomed above his head; when the Three freed him from the bar, each grabbed an arm, and they frog marched him across the room, his legs dragging uselessly beneath him. He winced as the entire room was suddenly bathed in intense, unnaturally white light. He saw that the machines were draping him across a long, open-topped pedestal. What appeared to be blood was coursing through the trough beneath him, but the viscous liquid glittered with light. He panicked; he was certain that the machines were going to offer him up as a living sacrifice to some obscene divinity of their own creation. And then he remembered the report that he had read so long ago, about Cylon experiments on living flesh, and his panic increased tenfold. He struggled, tried to break free, but steel claws held him firmly in their grip. His head dangled on one side of the pedestal, his shackled feet on the other.

"John, don't struggle. You'll only make it worse." The Six was speaking to him in a soft, calming voice, but memories long suppressed were now pouring into his conscious mind. He saw aunt Three being sliced open … aunt Sharon … their babies being dissected; he felt the needle punch through his hand, saw it plunge into his mother's chest, rising and falling in an endless procession, the two of them screaming with pain and fear and the despair that only comes with utter helplessness.

"No," he raged, drowning in the memories, suffocating in the panic. "No! Please! No! Don't do this!"

The Three was holding a metal snake; it went on forever, and it was writhing in her hands. "You may have wondered why we were so intent on stretching you out."

He heard her voice, but it confused him. His mother was lying on a table, spewing curses at the One, yet she was also standing just inches away, saying something else. But the monster had bragged that he was going to put her in a box … how had she escaped?

"This is a very specialized tool … a variation on the one human doctors use to perform a colonoscopy. There's one hundred feet of it, and we're going to use this to clean out your insides. I hope you like organ meat, Major, because I'm going to feed you your own intestines."

Two more centurions came up behind him, to pin his legs. The Three began feeding the tube into his colon, snaking it higher and higher into his intestinal tract. He did not even feel the electrodes that the Six was simultaneously pushing deep into the lesions on his mutilated back.

When the Three was finished, she closed a switch, and the snake began to inflate … it did not stop until it rested securely against the wall of his intestines. She pushed a button, and a million tiny needles punched into the wall. He screamed in raw agony.

"Medium rare? Is that what you said, Major? Very well. We'll give it eight minutes; that should cook you to your satisfaction." The Three twisted a pair of rheostats, and current began to flow through his body.

John Bierns' mind shattered.

TO BE CONTINUED