What with the destruction of yet another *Enterprise*, and setting up shop on the *Titan*, Will and Deanna Riker didn't take their honeymoon until almost a year after their wedding.
They decided on a lovely tropical resort in South America, Earth, where the sun shone daily, the beaches were secluded, and the water was crystal clear. When they weren't together – which wasn't often – Deanna slept in the sun on the beach with a book and a chocolate daiquiri and Will played volleyball with the other vacationers. They dined in out of the way restaurants run by accented locals. There was a daytrip to the rainforest to see the lush flora and the singing birds; and a shrieking, giggling encounter with a tiny, frightened gecko in the sitting room. But they spent most of their time in their tiki-décor hotel suite.
Deanna didn't like the room from the start.
"I don't know why," she told Will, "I just get a strange feeling from it."
"Strange how?" Will asked.
The couple in the adjacent room started up again. "I thought you would be able to relax here!" a man's voice howled. A glass shattered against the wall in reply.
"I sense pain," Deanna said.
"I love how caring you are," Will said, pulling her into his arms, "but you can't help everyone."
Deanna cast a concerned glance at the shared bedroom wall where, on the opposite side, unhappiness lurked. She nodded, and they went to bed.
That night, she dreamed she was in their quarters on the *Titan* and people on the deck below were pounding on the ceiling, begging to be let up through the floor. She woke with a gasp. It was still the middle of the night. Will snored beside her like a photon torpedo stuck in the tube. A heaviness weighed upon her mind, like a being in terrible trouble. Deanna tried to parse the strange emotion from the matrix of humanity pulsing through the hotel; the passion, anger, and dreamy confusion was like being lost in a fog. A thread of terror wisped along the bottom . . . but Deanna couldn't get a grasp of it. Then the emotion was gone, smeared into the mist like charcoal on paper.
* * *
They stayed in bed half the day and then went shopping at an open market reputed for its beautiful handicrafts. Will bought his bride an exquisitely woven silver bracelet with heart-shaped beads nestled in the filigree.
Back in their room to change for dinner, Deanna felt odd, as if someone was in the room, watching her. She sensed a presence . . . somewhere. She opened the closet door. Arms encircled her from behind and she yelled.
"Sorry," Will said, and kissed her collarbone. Deanna pulled out of his embrace.
"What's wrong?" Will said.
"I don't know. I keep sensing something really wrong with this room."
"It's probably nothing—"
"Will, it may have been nothing a day ago, or a week. But we've been here ten days and it isn't going away. I'm calling hotel security."
Two security people searched the room with scanners.
"What're we looking for, Ma'am?" one asked Deanna.
"I don't know, exactly. Actually, the feelings I was sensing have gone away. Maybe I was just being paranoid," Deanna said sheepishly.
The other security office's scanner bleeped. "This is weird," she said.
At the foot of the bed, adding to the hotel's "seaport" motif, was a decorative trunk. The security officers opened the trunk to reveal, stuffed inside, a Ferengi. The security officers called the medics who determined that the Ferengi had died less than an hour before.
Two Onarian drug runners were later arrested for the crime; the Ferengi
had apparently run out of time to pay back a debt and was attacked and
left for dead in the trunk. However, the Ferengi hadn't died; his alien
physiology allowed him to hang on for almost two weeks, flittering in and
out of consciousness, unable to call for help.