Disclaimer: Elves and Rivendell belong to Tolkien. Polarans and Vell-os belong to Ambrosia Software and ATMOS.

All characters speak in their respective languages unless specifically stated otherwise. Ie, Elves speak Sindarin, Nil'Tanar speaks Polaran, and Ryllaen speaks Federation Basic.

Sunlight bathed the bed, warm, gentle, golden. Ryllaen stirred, moving a little against the sheets. Momentarily content, he kept his eyes closed, savouring the peace that permeated summer-thick air. He could not remember the last time he had woken thus, or the last time his sleep had been so easy and painless, free of bitter memory and ghosts.

Not since he had first entered into service to the Bureau.

Ryllaen's eyes shot open; he rolled off the bed and onto his feet, ignoring the sheets that now lay in a twisted heap on the floor. The pain in his mind returned full force. He gasped and let out a pained whimper as his mind tore anew. Ryllaen staggered, grabbing the wall for support when his body's injuries protested at the sudden motion.

Capture a Polaran. Bring them immediately to me.

His mission. Ryllaen did not know where he was, did not know how much time had passed or what had happened. What happened? He couldn't remember. The last thing he remembered – the only thing he remembered – was receiving the mission. His head was throbbing; it was hard to think, hard to know how to act. He only knew that he had to complete his mission.

Capture a Polaran.

Grasping for concentration, walling off the pain for the brief moment necessary, Ryllaen tried to form a Dart. The weaves resisted him. Surprised, Ryllaen lost his focus, and reached for it again. The weaves were soft, gentle like summer-warmed air, and yet a solid force. He experimented with a hard thrust against the featureless barrier, ignoring the fresh pain. The barrier pushed back, yielding not at all. Ryllaen's eyes widened; he had found the signature twists of the weaves. The barrier was another telepath, a powerful one, blanketing his mind. He was a prisoner here.

Where?

He didn't know. Reaching for memory, he found only the familiar faces of his ghosts. Accusing, all of them, betrayed. He fled memory. His head hurt. A prisoner.

Resist all capture. Evade and escape.

Standing orders.

The door opened. Someone entered.

Use whatever means.

The scream of absolute fury rolled through the healing rooms. Nil'Tanar jumped up. After the shock had passed, he remembered to relax out of the defensive stance and realised who it was the voice belonged to. He was relieved; after nearly four days of inactivity while Elrond worked on the Vell-os' mind, Ryllaen had at last woken. Then Nil'Tanar felt fear for the person at whom the Vell-os' anger was aimed. Pulling the door open, Nil'Tanar sprinted past the startled Elf that stood guard outside. His cloak flapped around his knees in tatters, shorter than regulation demanded; he had resisted all attempts by the Elves to replace it. Haste led him to Ryllaen's room just behind Elrond.

The Vell-os stood rigidly beside the bed, eyes blazing. Energy crackled around him as a tangible and lethal force barely leashed. Several Elves ranged in front of him, keeping a wary distance and interposing themselves between the danger and their lord. Two were writhing on the ground, their bodies wracked by convulsions. Nil'Tanar was amazed that they still lived; he let it pass as he concentrated on Ryllaen. The Vell-os was irrational and wild. He did not appear to recognise or even truly see any of them, not even the Polaran. Blinded by pain, the Vell-os was responding purely to training.

Gildor approached the Vell-os, speaking calming words as he strove to make eye contact. Nil'Tanar had not seen the Elf appear and cursed himself for inattention when he could least afford it. He raised his voice in warning and reached for Gildor, but he was too late. Feeling the light intrusion into his mind, the Vell-os rejected it forcefully. Gildor was thrown against the far wall. The collision was clearly audible, as was the sound of bone snapping. The Elf was senseless when he hit the floor.

release me

The demand was flung out with raw power. Nil'Tanar winced as it pounded through his head. The Lord of Rivendell spoke. Strength radiated from him, golden and warm like summer's sun over Ar'za Iusia. His words were to no avail; whatever he was saying seemed to have the opposite effect to what Elrond intended. Ryllaen paled with anger and the energy around him condensed as he gathered the weaves. All his concentration focussed on Elrond.

release me now

There was no more time. So thick were the weaves roiling through the room, it almost hurt to breathe. Nil'Tanar glimpsed Glorfindel's arrival, a dark-haired Elf at his side, barely registering that a hard white light shone from Glorfindel. He didn't want to know what would happen when the golden-haired Elf tried to restrain the Vell-os. Either way the clash went, it would be disastrous. As strong as the Elves were – and Nil'Tanar had no doubt now that they were very strong – they were no match for a Vell-os. There was only one thing Nil'Tanar could think of to keep the Vell-os from killing everyone in the room and levelling the city, only one thing the Vell-os might listen to. The idea was utterly ludicrous and unconscionably dangerous, but Nil'Tanar couldn't let himself reconsider.

"Shield me. Bind my fëa," he hissed at Glorfindel. The Sindarin words were clumsy on his tongue and, he was sure, inaccurate. He could only hope that Glorfindel understood, else he would feel those burning weaves cascade through his body.

Nil'Tanar stepped in front of the Elves.

"Vell-os!" he said. He made of his voice a thing of authority, injecting into it all the arrogance and command that he could muster. "You will stand down."

Ryllaen ignored him.

He had only seconds before Ryllaen acted with devastating force. Raising his voice, Nil'Tanar tried again. "You will obey me, Vell-os. I am Bureau. I order you to stand down."

The effect on Ryllaen was astonishing. He jerked his head around and stared at Nil'Tanar; the muscles of his neck corded with tension. His expression twisted into something unreadable as the last trace of colour fled his face. "You are Polaran," he rebuffed. His voice held a trace of doubt.

"Field operant," Nil'Tanar snapped. "Stand down, Vell-os." He heard a quick whisper of Sindarin behind him, and in his peripheral vision saw Glorfindel, his companion, and Elrond come to stand on either side. He braced himself.

Nil'Tanar expected the Vell-os' probe, but he was not prepared for the swift hard stab that was barely turned aside. The three Elf-lords flinched. Then, wills hardened, they strengthened the mindshield and Nil'Tanar felt no more trace of the Vell-os.

Ryllaen's hands bunched into fists at his sides, then slowly unclenched. A mask dropped over his face, rendering the hard angular features expressionless; the eyes that bore into Nil'Tanar's were completely blank. "Rank and authorisation," he demanded. There was no inflection at all in the flat voice. It could well have belonged to a machine.

"More than yours, Vell-os," Nil'Tanar growled. He hoped that the Bureau followed the same ranking system as the Federation Navy. "Captain, second grade." The probe came again, stronger, and the Elves deflected it with difficulty.

"I require credentials," Ryllaen said. Frustration tinged his tone. "Authorisation. Or allow me to read you."

Nil'Tanar kept his eyes fully trained on Ryllaen, aware of the Elves slowly circling around the edges of the room. They had gone unnoticed by the Vell-os, or else he thought them beneath notice. Nil'Tanar strove to keep Ryllaen's attention on himself. He needed the name of the Bureau head, struggled to remember it. A bird, something similar to the name of the great scientist who had first designed the hypergates that made intersystem travel possible … he had it. "My authorisation comes directly from Commander Krane herself. If you do not stand down I will have you permanently discharged from duty. Do I make myself clear?"

Ryllaen did not react for a long moment. Then the fury of energy held in check was pulled into his body and disappeared.

Letting loose some of his tension, Nil'Tanar quietly said, "Very good, Vell-os." He was careful to keep his tone authoritative.

The Vell-os nodded. Without warning he slammed the gathered energy into Nil'Tanar's mind. The three Elves cried out, staggering back under the onslaught. The mindshield shattered. There was nothing gentle about the probe; it was hard and sharp and drilled ruthlessly into the most private parts of the mind. Nil'Tanar's scream of agony as the probe sent waves of fire along his neuronal pathways was nothing compared to the renewed fury that struck through the air as Ryllaen howled roared. The Elves acted before the Vell-os could and struck him from behind, an expert blow behind the ear that sent the Vell-os senseless to the ground.

"Nil'Tanar. That was unwise."

Looking up, the young Nil'kemorya blinked and tried to focus wavering vision on the concerned faces hovering over him. Dimly he wondered when he had returned to Polaris, for the voice spoke perfect Polaran, and when he had fallen. "It worked," he said hoarsely. "The Vell-os–"

"We will heal him."

Nil'Tanar had something very important to tell them, a warning, something he couldn't forget. But his bruised consciousness had already slipped away.

He woke to the uncontrolled shifting of thought and memory, his mind left in more turmoil by the passage of the Vell-os probe than gaining, and subsequently losing, the first link to his Manta had ever caused. His mind was on fire; he pushed aside the pain and concentrated on his first thought. The Vell-os.

What had the Elves done?

Sick with dread, Nil'Tanar left his chamber and made his way to Ryllaen's, ignoring the Elf trailing behind discreetly. He found the inert Vell-os, neck covered in a swath of bandages, Elrond watching over him.

Nil'Tanar froze. His eyes were caught on the thumb-sized sliver of metal lying abandoned upon a nearby table, connecting wires spread out around it, looking like some spider that had waded through a pool of blood. Swallowing hard, Nil'Tanar forced himself to look at Ryllaen. The Vell-os was pale as a corpse. He barely breathed.

"You removed the enslavement device," he said flatly.

"The body cannot live while the fëa is bound."

Nil'Tanar moved, slowly; he sat with exaggerated care in a chair against the wall, never looking away from the Vell-os. He did not speak. There was nothing he could say, now. Any warning he tried to deliver would be heard too late, understood too little. He had tried, and failed.

The enslavement device had been removed.

He knew about them – what Polaran child did not? The legend of the Vell-os was a cause for wonder, the cunning that had gone into the device created in the decades-long war by the Colonial Council and later improved by the Federation's Bureau, a cause for disgusted fascination. It controlled the instinct of a telepath, the automatic responses of the brain. It allowed no leeway; a Vell-os could not disobey. It rendered them incapable of action against their controller. And more.

The Vell-os had left Earth two thousand years before the hypergates had been invented as the first truly feasible technology to reach beyond their own system, thousands of years before Polaris had been born. In the time before the Colonial Council scouts first came into contact with them, the Vell-os had developed an advanced and specific form of nanotechnology. They used nanites for everything: for art, buildings, health. Nanotechnology gave them perfect health and an extended lifespan. Nanites replaced any natural immune system, until the nanites themselves became an inherent part of Vell-os physiology. They grew organs that produced nanites; any child with at least one Vell-os parent would also have them. They were utterly dependent on their nanites.

The enslavement device produced and released two substances into the body. The first was a poison that destroyed nanites, the second a short-lived antidote that kept the poison dormant. Should the enslavement device ever be interfered with, the antidote would no longer be produced, and only the poison would remain. And the Vell-os, bereft of any immune system, with a body no longer functioning, would die.

And there was nothing that Ver'ash or P'aedt, with all their extensive biotechnology, could do to counteract the consequences of the device's removal. It had been attempted. There were branches of both healer and scientist castes that had been working on the problem for centuries, and who would continue to do so. It did not help that the Vell-os were incapable of anything other than opposing their efforts, and that failure meant certain death for the Vell-os freed.

Nil'Tanar sat, unmoving, unheeding of the people around him. There was nothing he could do, except watch the Vell-os slowly die on the bed in front of him.