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"What do you want?" Reed asked guardedly, all his senses tingling on high alert. It had indeed been a while since he'd seen Harris – not since that dark night on the San Francisco street where his former employer had given him information about Terra Prime per Archer's request and wished him luck. Reed felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. He should have known he would see Harris again. The man wasn't one to let a debt go unpaid, and Reed was in his debt.
"You," Harris said bluntly. He also wasn't one to beat around the bush, unless it was to his advantage to do so. "The Section needs you back, Lieutenant."
"No," Reed said. "I left your Section a long time ago. I told you not to come after me."
"Ah, but you came back yourself," Harris said. "You came back because you needed a favour, and I granted you that request. Surely you haven't forgotten what it means to owe a debt to the Section?"
He hadn't forgotten.
"And before that you asked me for something, and I gave it to you," Reed growled.
"Because you owed it to me then. And now we find ourselves in the same position. You are in my debt, and I intend to make good on that. You know what happens if you refuse to pay what you owe to the Section."
He did know. Reed's hands were clammy, and he seethed inwardly with helpless rage.
"What do you want." His voice was flat – a command, not a question. The briefest of smirks crept across Harris's lined face.
"I knew you would come around, Lieutenant. You've always been a sensible man. But you know how this works – you'll find out soon enough what we want." The smug tone dropped out of his voice as he became more business-like. "At approximately 0600 tomorrow morning, your ship's scanners will detect a Minshara-class planet in orbit around a yellow main-sequence star similar to Earth's sun. The planet appears to be uninhabited, though there are traces of unidentifiable minerals on its surface which your Science Officer will believe could be undiscovered elements. Your Captain will authorize an away mission to explore the planet's surface. You will express an interest in this particular away mission. Your shuttle will land at the location of the highest mineral concentrations. You will find a reason to become slightly separated from the group, at which point you will be kidnapped by an apparent indigenous species which your ship's scanners did not detect. That is all you need to know for the moment."
"Captain Archer will come after me."
"Captain Archer will not find you."
"He'll search the whole bloody planet if he must," Reed said with feeling.
"Let him search," Harris said dismissively.
"He won't stop until he finds me."
"He will find you. He will find you dead." Harris looked grimly at him. "You forget, Lieutenant, that we possess your genetic material. Perhaps you have heard of the Lyssarian Desert Larvae?"
Of course he had. It was the juvenile form of a unique creature which remained dormant until exposed to the genetic material of another animal, at which point it developed into a mimetic simbiot – an exact clone of the genetic material it was exposed to. Depending on the complexity of the animal it became, the simbiot had a lifespan of between seven days and two years – for a being as complex as a human, it would live about two weeks. But while it lived, it would be identical to him in every way. It would look like him, think like him, feel like him. And then Harris would kill it, when it was exactly at the stage of physical development that corresponded to Reed's own age. No one was to know the difference.
"Damn you," Reed spat. "That's murder. How dare you –"
"Don't misunderstand me, Lieutenant. The simbiot's body is already in stasis and being transported to the planet as we speak."
Speechless, Reed could only glare at the man staring mildly back at him across light-years of space. "You need not worry," Harris added. "You can return to your ship afterward, if you so desire. We have ways of explaining this to Starfleet, and you can be sure your Captain will not be sorry to have you back."
"Bastard," Reed hissed furiously. Harris raised an ironic eyebrow at him.
"Temper, temper, Lieutenant! You have been gone a while, haven't you." It was a reminder, and a warning. In the Section, emotion was a weakness, and he didn't have room for such a weakness. Especially not now. "If you're concerned about your family's reaction, we have ways to prevent them from finding out about your supposed death. Of course, you might always prefer them to think you met your demise in heroic protection of your crew."
He was being baited. Reed refused to rise to it. "Do what you want. It doesn't seem I have much of a choice in this."
"You don't," Harris said bluntly. He glanced at something Reed couldn't see in the camera's narrow range. "You know what to do. Be sure this communique is completely deleted. Don't leave any chance for it to be reconstructed."
The screen went dark. Automatically, Reed ran through the motions of deleting the communication and all traces that it left. When all records had been wiped, he sat staring at the dark screen for a long time, feeling numb. He'd been so convinced that he was out of the Section for good, with no loyalties left except to Starfleet, the Enterprise, and most of all Captain Archer. Bitter irony welled within him. He should have known better.
"I'd like to accompany the away team, Captain," Reed offered, keeping his face carefully bland and his voice mildly interested. It was alarmingly easy to slip into a façade of innocent normality. Just how close did other aspects of his Section training linger under the surface? The thought was disturbing.
"Aren't you on partial duties?" Archer asked. Reed stiffened at the reminder of his embarrassing mishap with the hypospanner.
"I cut my hand, Captain, it's hardly a debilitating injury."
"I doubt we'll need much security at any rate," Archer said. "This planet is uninhabited, as far as we can tell."
"Better safe than sorry," Reed pointed out reasonably. "Besides, if Sub-Commander T'Pol has detected new elements, they may have security applications. I'd like to go, Captain."
Archer smiled indulgently. "Very well. You, Trip, T'Pol, Crewman Alex, and Crewman Novakovich. Is that a team you can work with, T'Pol?" he asked, turning to the Science Officer. T'Pol raised an eyebrow slightly, as if to suggest that any team was one she could work with.
"Indeed. Captain, I suggest we begin this mission sooner rather than later. My scans of the region indicate a likelihood of inclement weather during the afternoons."
"Very well," Archer nodded his agreement. "Permission granted, Sub-Commander."
Reed followed T'Pol off the bridge with an icy feeling of dread in his stomach. He wondered when he would see the bridge again – see the Captain again. He felt like a deserter. Knowing the Section, and Harris, as he did, Reed was fully aware that the chances were not terribly high that he would ever see the inside of this ship again.
"Coming for a walk planetside?" Tucker greeted him cheerfully as the five-member away team entered the shuttlebay.
"Something like that," Reed said. "I'm interested in these minerals T'Pol picked up. You say they may be unknown elements, Sub-Commander? Were you able to determine anything about their properties?"
"They appear to share characteristics of both alkali and transition metals," T'Pol began, "though their density is unexpectedly low. It is possible that these could be compounds of known metals that have not been discovered in nature yet, but due to the resonance scan I performed, it is more likely that…"
The attention safely distracted from himself, Reed settled back in his seat in the shuttlepod and listened to the scientific conversation between Tucker and T'Pol as it ranged from the specific properties these elements displayed, to methods of extracting the elements from the planet's crust without causing destabilization, to Tucker's speculations on possible uses for the substances. For his part, Reed feigned interest. Under ordinary circumstances he would, in fact, have found this discovery quite interesting. However, there was little chance he would get to examine or appreciate the minerals.
He felt like a condemned prisoner walking to his execution. He wanted to appeal to the Captain, to T'Pol, to Tucker, to warn them about what was about to happen, to plead with them to help him. I don't want to go. But he had no choice. He was in Harris's debt, even if he had asked the man for a favour on Archer's orders. Did you know what you were doing, Captain? Did you know they would come back for me?
"You alright, Malcolm?" Tucker asked. Reed realised that he had been staring straight ahead without speaking for some time now, lost in thought. He nodded, and offered a smile that felt tight, though Tucker's answering grin was proof enough that it looked genuine.
"Fine."
It didn't matter, though, what he wanted. There was no way out of this, not this time. Harris and the Section had a hold on him, had it and would always have it, an undeniable hold that he could not escape or run from. He'd known that since he first began work for the Section all those years ago. There was an unspoken code in the Section, and that was as much a part of him as his own bloodline. He could deny it for a time, or ignore it, or fight it, but in the end he could not be rid of it. Not now, and not ever.
They had come back for him, and he accepted that fact. He didn't have to like it. He just had to survive it, if he ever wanted to see his ship, his crew, again.
He felt himself sliding back into the mind-set he'd developed during his time under Harris: one of heightened awareness, allowing his senses to feed directly to instinct; one of hardened indifference, a shell of protection from the unwanted thoughts, desires, and emotions that could distract an agent just long enough to prove fatal. He had a feeling that if he wanted to survive whatever Harris was about to throw at him – or throw him at – he'd need all the training he'd ever gone through.
Shuttlepod Two landed softly in a small expanse of long yellow-green grass encircled by wide-leaved greed trees on three sides, and a shallowly sloping outcrop of rock on the fourth. The air smelled sweetly pungent with the scent of alien vegetation and rot as the away team disembarked. Tucker breathed in the moist but not oppressive air as if he'd never experienced anything quite so pleasant. He shuffled his feet through the long, smooth grass.
"Feels good to be on solid ground again."
"The deck of the Enterprise is made of duranium alloy, Commander," T'Pol pointed out. "I assure you, it is quite solid." Reed thought he detected a note of wry amusement in her voice. Perhaps she too felt relaxed by the warm, balmy atmosphere. Then again, perhaps not.
"Scans indicate the highest concentration of mineral deposits in that direction," Crewman Novakovich reported, indicating the rocky outcropping. T'Pol nodded confirmation as she examined her own hand scanner.
"Lead the way, Crewman," Tucker said buoyantly.
Reed trailed slightly behind as they walked toward the rocks, but Crewman Alex trudged along beside him. Reed noticed that the Crewman kept his hand near the phase pistol at his belt.
"Something wrong, Crewman?"
"Ah – no sir." Alex glanced to see that the other three were not close enough to hear before lowering his voice. "Sir, this planet is uninhabited, isn't it?"
"That's what the scans showed," Reed answered calmly. "Why?"
"No reason, sir, really. It's just – it's probably nothing."
"What's probably nothing?"
Alex fidgeted awkwardly. "Just a feeling, sir. Since we landed…I've just had a feeling that there's something not quite right here."
Reed increased his pace slightly, gradually closing the gap between the two groups. "Want to explain that, Crewman?"
"I don't know that I can, sir," Alex said unhappily. "Like I said, sir, it's probably nothing."
"Hm." Ordinarily, Reed encouraged his men to pay attention to their instincts but not to act on them without proof. In this case, however, he knew Alex was exactly right, though there was no danger to the other members of the party. There should be no danger to them. He was impressed by Alex's intuition. He felt it too, though he'd assumed that was due to the fact that he already knew what was amiss. Their surroundings were eerily silent. Scans had showed that the planet was heavily populated with small life forms similar to Earth birds and insects, but there was no sound of these. Apart from the light breeze that ruffled Reed's hair, the planet seemed to be holding its breath. Reed glanced up at the sky, blue above them but heavy with far-off clouds near the horizon. "Perhaps it's the weather," he remarked. "Sub-Commander T'Pol did say there would be heavy storms in the afternoon."
"Perhaps that's it, sir," Alex agreed. He didn't sound convinced.
"At any rate, we might as well be careful," Reed said, seeing his opportunity. "Stay near the others, but not too close. Take the left side, I'll go right. I wouldn't worry too much, though," he added. "Sub-Commander T'Pol scanned the planet carefully."
Alex nodded, reassured, and the two separated, speeding up to catch up with the others. Reed kept a distance of about ten metres between himself and the group as they neared the rocks. The Section wouldn't need much chance, he knew, but he did need to give them that chance.
As Tucker, T'Pol, and Novakovich reached the rocks, Reed skirted to the side along the base of the outcropping, following it some distance to the side before starting up it. He allowed his proximity to the group to widen to some thirty metres. They would be close, he knew, though he couldn't see or hear them. He was impressed – but maybe it was only that his senses had dulled in his time away from the Section.
Reed felt a sharp, sudden prick in the back of his neck like an insect's sting. He clapped his hand to the spot and pulled it away with a spot of blood and a short, sharp splinter of wood in his palm. He dropped the splinter to the ground, shaking his head. Tranquilizing him? Really? Surely they knew he would cooperate. Then again, perhaps the splinter carried no chemical substances and was simply a way of getting his attention, warning him to be on the alert. Reed rubbed his neck again and started up the rocks at a slower pace, careful to avoid steep or slippery areas, in case he had been sedated.
"Come on, Malcolm," Tucker called from near the top of the rocks. When had he gotten so far ahead? Reed didn't realise he'd been moving so slowly. He smiled softly. Now that it had begun, his anxiety had gone. He had been tranquilized, he knew. He could feel it now: the spreading tingle on the back of his neck, the heaviness on his limbs, the numbness in his fingers and face. He started forward again, but his movements were sluggish and wobbly.
"Malcolm? What's wrong?" Tucker's voice sounded a long way off. With effort, Reed raised his head to look up at him. It would probably be the last he saw of his friend for a long time. Concerned, Tucker started toward him.
Through his fading senses, Reed heard a sudden commotion behind him and turned to see four or five humanoid figures surging towards him. They were coming for him. But what strange agents, or how good their disguises! Long-haired, dirty and ragged, ridged faces blank and devoid of full intelligence – so this was the "indigenous race" Harris had spoken of. Reed had to admit it was convincing.
His legs gave out and Reed crumpled to the ground, his eyes sliding closed against his will. The last thing he heard was Tucker screaming "Malcolm!"