Two days earlier
Sarek gently slid the casserole onto the rack and set a timer. He regretted being unable to cook for her the previous night due to lack of time and looked forward to sharing this traditional Vulcan dish with her later that evening. He was eager to make amends and be on friendly terms with Amanda again. He'd miscalculated the depths of her feeling for him, but he chose not to focus on that. All he wanted was to return to the easy familiarity of their early, muted affection.
How foolish he had been to casually let his guard down while melding with her, allowing her to know his innermost thoughts, thoughts he was still processing for himself and hadn't intended to reveal to her. His experimentation with small doses of emotion was clearly out of control and he decided that it would be much safer to retreat back to the comfort of logic while he navigated his next steps in his relationship with Amanda.
Noting that it was 1620 and Amanda would be finishing her class in ten minutes, he collected his PADD and cloak and strode in the direction of the university to greet her. It was a fine afternoon yet the streets and sidewalks were atypically quiet.
His thoughts were turned inward and less focused on his surroundings and so it came as a slight surprise when a vehicle screeched to a halt in the street, less than a meter where he'd intended to cross. He rewound the previous moments in his mind, stunned that he'd failed to see it approaching.
The action was so deliberate it almost seemed as though it had stopped for him, yet he had not ordered any transport. It was a cobalt blue passenger car and free of any markings, setting it apart from one of the many autonomous public vehicles that cruised the city at all hours. The black reflective glass of the left side window gave way, revealing the car had a driver.
Sarek did not know his name but he did recognize him. It was the shorter of the two Vulcan men he'd encountered in the park a week earlier.
"Get in," the man ordered, speaking loudly enough to be heard but not enough to draw the attention of any of the few pedestrians nearby.
Logic and instinct merged as Sarek scanned his surroundings and considered his options: fight, flee, or submit. He preferred the third option the least. Fighting was also an abysmal choice, as he had no weapon and stood exposed on a public sidewalk facing an opponent who could be armed and was speaking to him from the relative safety of a car. That left flight as his only option, but it was a poor one. The closest place of obvious security was his own apartment building and the entrance was twenty meters to his left. He could span that distance in a matter of seconds, but for anyone with even mediocre skill with ranged weapons, five seconds was more than enough time to raise, aim, and fire.
A fraction of a second after the man issued his demand to enter the vehicle, Sarek's body shifted its weight in preparation to sprint back toward his building while his mind formulated the early stages of a plan to traverse the apartment courtyard rather than lead them back to his quarters, exit through the rear of the structure, and jump the fence separating the alley from the adjacent shopping center. Fast twitch muscle fibers in his legs began to spring into action and just as he rocked onto the balls of his feet to take his first strides toward uncertain salvation, the tinting of the car's rear window faded, revealing the figure of person in the backseat, hands bound and head shrouded in a dark hood.
Another Vulcan man whom Sarek had never seen ripped the covering from the captive's head, revealing the tear-streaked face of Mara, who shrieked.
"Please, don't!" she wailed. "I won't say anything, I swear! Just let me—"
Her words were cut short when the man with the phaser buried the fingers of his free hand into the crook of her neck, subduing her hysterics with a nerve pinch.
"Get in," the driver repeated. "Or the human will be missing her head."
Sarek hesitated. He spied a pair of women sitting at a bistro table at a café down the street and a harried woman was walking a child out the door of the learning center, more engrossed in a handheld device than the toddler clutching her other hand. They were all blissfully unaware of what was unfolding right before them. Morever, none of them made ideal witnesses and he preferred to avoid any collateral damage. He glanced at the camera mounted above a nearby traffic light and wondered what algorithms it used to detect danger and how quickly the authorities would respond in the event of an altercation.
Even still, Mara changed the equation. Fighting back for his own sake already had a high probability of failure resulting in injury or death, but defending an unconscious woman from a second attacker and getting her to safety in this scenario would be virtually impossible.
The hum of an energy surge interrupted his thoughts. "In the event that you care nothing for the life of this human woman, you should be aware I have a phaser pointed at your testicles, set to vaporize organic matter. It will easily penetrate the car door and obliterate you below the waist, so I suggest you comply."
With a slow hand, Sarek opened the rear door and slid into the seat next to Mara and facing the man with the phaser. The vehicle began to speed away from the curb and the last thing Sarek remembered of the ride was the sting of a hypospray in his neck and the muffled sound of a black bag encircling his head.
He awoke in a dimly lit room to the sensation of hair being ripped from his head. A pinch in the crook of his elbow caused his head to roll down along his shoulder to see a man extracting blood from his arm. A moment later, his head was jerked upward and his right eye wrenched open to scan his iris with what felt like blinding light to his dark-adjusted pupils.
"May I ask what your purpose for detaining me is?" Sarek murmured, his voice slow and quavering from the lingering effects of whatever sedative they'd used to subdue him.
The only reply his captor offered was a solid punch to the mouth that sent a trickle of warm blood cascading from his upper lip to his chin.
In the distance, he heard a muffled voice say, "Vedek's betrayal has altered the timeline. You must go now if you are—" The sentence was cut short by the slamming of a door.
In the ensuing silence, Sarek took a moment to take stock of his situation. He was secured to a chair, his arms looped rigidly behind his back. The muscles in his neck and shoulders protested from the awkward position and his wrists throbbed against the restraints. His head ached and his mouth was dry as sand and as he attempted to blink through the darkness of the room, he sensed his left eye was swollen. He licked the fresh blood from his lower lip and wondered how badly he'd been abused during his period of unconsciousness and whether his injuries were the result of deliberate action or the unintentional consequence of his jailers wrestling the limp body of a 95-kilogram adult Vulcan male from a car and tying him to a chair.
As his mind came into focus, his next thoughts were consumed by Amanda. Where was she? Was she safe? How foolish he'd been to keep her nearby, thinking he could protect her. Clearly, he couldn't even protect himself from a sudden ambush. His frustrations spiraled into fury and despair, but he quickly recognized dark thoughts were a dangerous path.
Amanda was either safe or she was not. Regardless, he was powerless to do anything about it in his current situation. He needed logic now. What was logical?
He needed to analyze his surroundings, secure his freedom from the chair, and assess any avenue for escape. If possible, he should try to locate Mara. The gears began to turn in his head as his aching muscles strained against his restraints, hunting for any weakness he could exploit. The chair was heavy and immovable. The fingernail of the middle finger of his right hand scratched a solid metal frame and when he tried to rock back and forth, he determined the seat was bolted to the floor.
He inhaled a slow breath, willing himself to embrace the serenity of logic. His heart slowed and the pain began to dull as he focused on being as present as possible in this moment. It was pitch black and his eyes were failing to adjust, which told him the room was truly devoid of light. Knowing that his eyes were going to be useless, he trained his other four senses on his surroundings. A musty and slightly chemical odor clung to the moist air. A slow drip of water splashed onto a hard surface in front of him every twelve seconds. Only when he focused all his attention to the sounds of the room did he detect the faint rush of breathing over his shoulder approximately two meters behind him.
He listened to it for several minutes, memorizing the pattern. It was the sort of slow, deep breathing of a person in the midst of sleep. As the minutes wore on, the rhythm grew shallower and gave way to the rustle of clothing and a weak moan.
"Hello?" he dared himself to whisper.
A reply came in the form of a whimper. The pitch strongly suggested a female. Sarek asked, "Mara?"
The room fell silent for a few moments. He repeated the name again, this time saying, "Mara? Is that you?"
"Vedek?" replied a shrill voice in a hushed tone.
"No," he replied. "Sarek."
"Oh stars! Sarek," she muttered, the last syllable of his name falling victim to a sharp sob.
"Please try to remain calm and quiet," he urged.
She stammered and shuffled behind him, quietly choking down tears. He allowed her time to flail around in her emotions and when he detected a lull in the self-pity, he asked, "What can you tell me of our captors?"
She sniffed and muttered, "I don't know. Do you know where Vedek is?"
"I was informed the two of you immigrated to the Kessik IV colony approximately one week ago."
"We were going to," she explained. Her words began to flow so quickly they slurred together "We were on our way to the shuttle and a car showed up. This Vulcan lady told us to get in and Vedek told me to run so I did. But when I turned the corner, the guy that took you grabbed me and threw me in a van."
"How long ago was this?" Sarek asked.
"Sunday night."
"On Sunday night, you were in your dormitory and said you hadn't seen Vedek since the day before."
"I hadn't. But I went back to his place and he was there. There was this Vulcan guy there with him. They started talking in Vulcan and started fighting and went in a back room and there was a struggle and when they came out, Vedek was covered in green blood. He told me we had to leave right away and I couldn't even go back to my room to pack anything and oh Sarek, I think Vedek killed someone."
"Do you know why he would do this?"
"No," she cried. "He had a lot of Vulcan friends. He was always sending messages on his PADD to different people. I don't know what any of them said because they were in your language, but when I asked about meeting his friends, he told me they weren't really his friends and that they were more like business associates. But he never let me meet any of them and didn't like to talk about it. Do you think Vedek is okay?"
Sarek paused. It was logical to conclude they'd been kidnapped by Ask'era Ozhikersa and based on everything he'd heard since entering captivity, the only plausible deduction was that Vedek was also a logic extremist, or at least, he had been involved with them at some point. But his specious demeanor and close association with Mara ran counter to everything Ask'era Ozhikersa stood for. Whatever Vedek's current loyalties were, there was a distraught human woman wailing his name in a dark room in an undisclosed location.
"Mara, please calm down. Vedek is a clever and resourceful person," Sarek offered, unwilling to say more than that for fear of upsetting her further or being untruthful.
"But why would anyone want to hurt us?"
"I believe we have been abducted by logic extremists and I—"
He stopped and instantly regretted beginning that sentence. Mara howled. He urged her to keep her voice down but the wailing persisted, along with new confessions.
"I'm having a baby," she sputtered. "That's why we were leaving. He said he wanted a fresh start and I—"
"You are pregnant with Vedek's child?" Sarek interrupted.
"I—I d-didn't think it was p-p-possible—"
"If I were you, I would lower my voice and keep that information to yourself," Sarek replied, refusing to allow his thoughts to shift toward the stunning ease with which Mara had managed an interspecies conception in her short acquaintance with Vedek.
"I already told them," she coughed. "When they first put me in here they slapped me when I tried to fight back and I begged them to let me go and it just sort of came out. I think they're actually treating me worse now. What kind of monsters smack around a pregnant woman?"
"The kind who think the child you carry is an abomination," Sarek thought to himself. He struggled to find any words that could be of comfort to her, but he knew so little about her.
Mara evidently found something upsetting in Sarek's silence and began to cry louder. He continued to plead with her to calm herself but it wasn't long before the door flung open. The sudden bright light in his face made him squint and he ducked his head into his shoulder to brace himself to receive a blow.
It never came. The person breezed past him to concentrate attention on Mara instead. There was a hard thump and a scream and despite his best efforts, rage boiled in Sarek again as he listened to what sounded like a brutal beating. "Stop," he insisted, trying to look over his shoulder and struggling against the manacles tying him to the heavy-framed chair. "There is no logic in this savagery!"
By diverting his focus to Mara, Sarek failed to recognize another person had entered the room until a dark cloth was pulled over his head, obscuring his vision. The bag cinched tightly around his neck and knuckles pressed into his windpipe, making it difficult to breathe.
A low voice spoke in his native tongue. "That woman carries a mongrel child in her belly and the only reason she remains alive is because her existence is useful to us. But she is not so useful that her loss would cause us significant harm. The same can be said for you."
The tight draw of the bag around his throat was starving him of oxygen and his senses began to dim. Mara was no longer screaming, but he was unsure whether it was because she'd truly fallen silent or if he was losing consciousness. There was a pinch at his neck and blackness enveloped him.
Present day
"And you're sure you've never seen this vehicle before?" Detective Gold pressed.
He'd asked several times but Amanda wasn't certain she was really listening. She had a lot of questions about Sarek, but so did they and apparently neither party was satisfied with the exchange of information.
"Look closely," the Vulcan investigator insisted.
Amanda sighed in frustration. She hated that sitting in a hospital bed made her feel physically helpless in addition to emotionally distraught. "Sarek didn't do this. He couldn't have."
"Yes, this is the nineteenth time you've expressed that opinion," the Vulcan man said without skipping a beat. "But the vehicle is what we're currently interested in. Do you recognize it?"
She shrugged. "It's a…blue car. I've probably seen dozens like it before. Couldn't say whether I've ever seen this exact one."
She studied the still image on the PADD and fought back tears. According to Gold, this was the last known sighting of Sarek. The timestamp was 1622 hours on Friday afternoon. He had probably been on his way to pick her up from class. She replayed the video several times. It was only eleven seconds long and featured Sarek walking along the sidewalk, preparing to cross the street, and nearly being hit by the blue car. The car stopped and the window rolled down, though the angle concealed the driver. Sarek began to turn but the rear window rolled down. Whoever was inside must have communicated something to Sarek that made him reconsider. He looked around, stole a glance directly into the camera, then got in the car. A second later, it sped away.
"So you have no idea who may be driving that vehicle?"
"No. But he looks distressed. It doesn't seem like he wants to get in."
"Does he look distressed?" Gold commented. "Seems pretty calm to me."
"He's Vulcan. He's not exactly the type to throw a fit in the middle of the street."
"So your interpretation of the events in this video is that he's entering the vehicle under duress?" the Vulcan inquired.
"Something just isn't right. He seems...anxious."
"No one appears to be threatening him," Gold pointed out. "I don't see any weapons or—"
"Look," she sighed, frantically scrolling back to the millisecond when Sarek appeared to turn back toward his apartment. "He looks like he's getting ready to run away. But the window in the back rolls down and it seems like he changes his mind."
The two men watched the eleven second clip again in full and exchanged glances. "That's a pretty imaginative way to interpret a barely perceptible motion," Gold countered.
"You don't know him like I do," she argued. "He looks apprehensive, he—"
"What do you know about Nesh'kur Vedek?" the Vulcan asked, clearly resolving to agree to disagree about what might be transpiring in the video.
"Wait? What? What's that?"
"Not what, who. Nesh'kur Vedek is a person."
"You mean Vedek? Mara's boyfriend?"
"Yes, I believe he was involved in a relationship with your roommate, Mara deCorvey," the Vulcan prompted.
"Vedek is…Vedek. I don't know. He works with Sarek. I met him about a month ago at a bar at the same time I met Sarek. He uh, he stays over at my dorm room a lot but he also has his own place. I've never been there. He and Mara have a lot of sex. They—"
The memory of sitting in her bathroom and clutching Mara's positive pregnancy test emerged, yet she stopped short of conveying this information to the detectives. Maybe it was relevant, maybe it wasn't, but it seemed like a secret and one that wasn't hers to tell.
"They…what?" Detective Gold asked.
"They're smitten with each other. The last I heard, they were moving to Kessik IV, I think it was? Um, I know Mara dropped her classes and left sometime on Monday. She sent me a message but I only got it a few days ago."
Gold's brow furrowed and be began scribbling notes on his PADD. "And Vedek went with her?"
"That's what the message seemed to indicate."
"That didn't strike you as peculiar?" the Vulcan asked. "That your friend would just leave on a whim with a man she'd only known for a month?"
"Mara is a really impulsive person."
The Vulcan man's eyebrows rose a few millimeters, giving the impression that he had some very strong opinions about human impulsivity but knew better than to express them aloud, at least in the company of humans.
"Why are you asking about Vedek and Mara?" Amanda asked. "Are they somehow involved in this?"
"That's not something we can really discuss," the Vulcan said, extracting a PADD from his pocket. His fingers slid around on the screen and then he presented the device to Amanda. "Do you recognize any of these individuals?"
The pictures of eleven Vulcan men and one Vulcan woman occupied the screen. She looked hard at each of the faces. One man looked vaguely familiar, but she didn't really know any Vulcans besides Sarek and Vedek and aside from her trip to Vulcan Village with Sarek that one time, she rarely even encountered any. She had never been very good with faces and she was also afraid to admit aloud that a lot of Vulcans looked very similar to her.
Like humans, some had dark skin and some had lighter complexions, some had black hair while others had very dark brown hair, but for the most part, Vulcans were tall, thin, olive-skinned people with the same severe shiny hairstyle. All of the people in the array of photographs in Amanda's hands fit that description and with the exception of the woman, they all could have been close to interchangeable with one another as far as Amanda was concerned.
"I don't think so?" she finally confessed. "I don't know very many Vulcans."
The Vulcan detective swiped his finger left along the top of the PADD, revealing twelve more images. "What about any of these people?"
Her eyes drifted from face to face, pausing briefly on a man in the third row. There was a familiar coldness to his eyes. She could almost hear him saying, "Don't be rude, Sarek. Amanda was just introducing herself."
"This one," she said, tapping his picture. "I think I saw this one in the park about a week ago."
"Going to a park isn't a crime," Detective Gold mused.
"No, but he was talking to Sarek. There was another guy with him. Also Vulcan. He was a bit taller I think. They were talking in Vulcan when I got there and Sarek seemed really on edge."
"So he knew them?" the Vulcan man asked. The corners of his mouth tightened and his eyes seemed to be burning holes right through her.
"No, I don't think so. In fact, he said he didn't. It was really weird. Things seemed tense between the three of them when I showed up and Sarek practically dragged me away and seemed paranoid the rest of the day. I had introduced myself because I thought they were his friends, but he explained he'd just randomly walked into them and seemed mad that I'd told them our names."
"What makes you think it was a random encounter?" Gold asked.
"Because I'd messaged Sarek out of the blue and asked him to meet me at the park. We'd briefly talked about meeting at a coffee shop, but decided on the park instead because the weather was so nice. So as far as I know, Sarek hadn't planned to be at the park until twenty minutes before he got there. Also, the spot in the park where I met him—a week before that, there had been this weird graffiti on the community message board written in Vulcan. I asked Sarek about it and he said it had something to do with logic extremists."
She looked from one man to the other, waiting for them to acknowledge this new information. Instead, they remained silent and continued to gaze at her expectantly.
"So there's that," she added.
"Anything else?" the Vulcan urged.
"I don't know. I don't think Sarek is a logic extremist, if that's what you're waiting for me to say."
"No one is anything until they are," the Vulcan retorted.
"Sarek didn't do this!" she raged.
"Okay," Gold said, waving his hands to calm the situation. "What happened after the incident in the park? You said Sarek seemed paranoid. Did they follow you?"
The questions continued for nearly an hour as Amanda recounted every minute of her life from the previous week, from their excursion to Vulcan Village to their trip to Io Station and her recently moving in with Sarek. She left out many of the more salacious details regarding their sex life because it was absolutely none of their business. When she was done, they repeated the exercise two more times, clearly in an effort to either get Amanda to remember something else or perhaps trip in a lie. All it did was frustrate and anger her.
When the nurse knocked on the door with Amanda's discharge orders, she flung the blanket from her lap and stood to get dressed. Both men turned their backs and Amanda invited them to leave.
"We have more questions we'd like to ask you," Gold explained.
"You've asked the same questions about ten times now. Unless you have any new ones, I don't see the point."
"Still, we have—"
"Am I under arrest?" Amanda interrupted, buttoning her jeans and stooping to pick up her shoes. She felt nauseated and dizzy and couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten.
"No, but—"
"Well, then, I don't have anything to say to you unless it involves helping you find my boyfriend, who didn't kill his father and brother, by the way."
"Be that as it may," the Vulcan interjected, "we urge you not to leave the area. As I'm sure you're aware, terrorism and murder are very serious matters. It's very likely we'll have more questions for you in the coming days."
"He's not a terrorist." She turned to leave.
"You have our contact information," Gold called after her. "If you think of anything…"
Amanda stopped listening. She quickened her pace and wiped the beginnings of tears from her eyes. None of this made any sense. A month ago, she was just an overworked, overstressed college student. Now she was the girlfriend of a suspected terrorist. She left the hospital without any clear idea of where she should go.
Part of her wanted to go back to Sarek's apartment and search for any clues as to what might have happened to him or where he might have gone. She didn't care how much the two detectives dismissed her. Sarek hadn't gotten in that car willingly. She knew he wasn't on the best of terms with his brother, but who in their right mind would set a casserole to bake and then decide that was a perfect time to go murder their family? She gritted her teeth, thinking she should have said that to the detectives. Why did so many good comebacks always come to mind after the fact?
She started in the direction of Sarek's building but quickly stopped. The authorities thought Sarek had just killed his father, brother, and more than a dozen innocent bystanders in a terrorist plot. No doubt they'd have his entire block cordoned off and were scanning every molecule for evidence.
Her chest tightened and tears welled in her eyes again. Her feet drifted along on autopilot until she discovered she was trudging up the stairs of her dormitory. She knew she needed to eat but she suddenly wasn't hungry. She opened the door to her room and cringed at the familiar stale smell of Mara's abysmal housekeeping habits. She shuffled into the room, expecting the light to come on automatically, but it remained dark.
She couldn't remember turning the automatic setting off but she hadn't really been in a good mental place yesterday and supposed maybe she'd done it without really thinking about it. She felt along the wall for the switch and a moment later, Mara's messy glory came into full view. She groaned and closed the door, but just as she started to turn in the direction of the kitchen, a dark figure emerged in her peripheral vision.
She yelped in surprise to find Petra, the woman from Sarek's office, clad in all black and brandishing a hand phaser.
"I know you're probably tempted to scream," Petra said in a low voice. "Please don't. I'm here to help you."
"Then why do you have a phaser?" Amanda blurted, gesticulating wildly at the weapon. "Why are you in my room? How did you even get in here?"
"Please lower your voice."
Of all the inappropriate things to do at that moment, Amanda chose to laugh. This was ludicrous. This had to be a joke. A cruel, elaborate joke.
Petra peeked through the curtains and in a cold and dismissive tone declared, "We need to leave now."
"I'm not going anywhere with you." Amanda had no idea where the sudden burst of audacity came from, to stand up to an armed intruder like that, but it had been a very weird past few days and she was tired of feeling powerless to control the events around her.
"We need to leave now. Trust me," Petra insisted, marching toward the door.
"Why should I trust a strange woman in my room holding a phaser?"
Petra uttered an exasperated sigh and raised the weapon to Amanda's center mass. Amanda's ears filled with the gentle hum of energy as the weapon charged. "I'm willing to try and earn your trust later for the price of threatening your life now," Petra said. "There are people entering this building to get you as we speak and I can promise, they won't be as kind and patient as I am."
Amanda's courage failed her then. She stumbled backwards toward the door in shock, tripping over a pile of Mara's laundry. The two women exited the room without closing the door, setting off down the hallway at a brisk walk that transformed into a shuffling jog and ended with a sprint out the emergency exit of the west entrance.
A black vehicle idled at the curb. All Amanda could think of was that this was exactly how Sarek had disappeared, ushered into a random car, only to be accused of murder two days later. This was insane. One of the earliest lessons in life had been to avoid going anywhere with strangers. And yet, Petra had a phaser.
When they were a meter from the vehicle, the rear door flung open to reveal a middle-aged Vulcan woman sitting across from none other than Vedek. Despite her misgivings, Amanda leapt into the backseat and Petra followed. A moment later, they were racing down the street. Petra looked over her shoulder and said, "I don't know if they saw us."
The Vulcan woman gave Amanda a strange look, leaned forward slightly, and sniffed her. "Fascinating."
"Huh?" was all Amanda could think to say. It had been a few days since she'd showered, sure, but she was too frightened and bewildered to be very embarrassed. "Who are you?"
"My name is T'Pol. I believe you already know Vedek." She gestured to Vedek, who was sitting in the rear-facing seat opposite them. Only then did Amanda notice his hands and feet were bound. He refused to look her in the eye and something about his mournful expression made Amanda question how much of an ally he was going to be in this situation.
"Can someone please tell me what's going on?" she said, forcing herself to sound as assertive as possible, though she was certain she failed miserably.
Petra ripped the bag off Amanda's shoulder. Amanda started to protest, but the dark-haired woman deftly extracted the PADD from her bag and hurled it out the window.
"Hey!" Amanda shouted at the abrupt injustice.
"It was necessary," said T'Pol.
In any other situation, the Vulcan woman's stoic manner might have calmed Amanda, but now it only served to rattle her that much more. Her mind began replaying the eleven second video of Sarek getting into a strange car and she couldn't help but wonder if what had happened to Sarek was now waiting in store for her.