FLARN MANAGES

by Luthienn

Author's notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Prologue.

Lt. Matheson's background is completely made up by me. I used the name of the actor who plays him, for the simple reason because I find it pretty (the name… actually, I find the actor pretty, too, but that's another bowl of flarn entirely.)

Kimi is a Japanese endaerment and means "dearest", or so I was told. If it's false, I apologize.

CHAPTER 2: THE END OF THE LINE

PART 4 Babylon 5, on the 22nd April 2271

John Matheson, First Officer of the legendary ship Excalibur, could barely wait to go off-duty and get out of that stupid uniform specifically designed for the crew in the first year of the search for a cure for the Drakh virus. Captain Gideon had been right: the uniform not only made them look like bellboys, it was also extremely uncomfortable. Sometimes John longed for the traditional black uniform worn by the crew of exploratory vessels. It was practical, comfortable and simple – all things he highly valued in life.

Like most telepaths, he was a solitary being and didn't like to stand out of any crowd. On this day, however, he felt the uncommon urge to visit the Zocalo, the trade and entertainment sector of Babylon 5. It was strange, but he could no longer ignore it. It had been on his mind during the long duty shift, unshakably.

Just like the image of a woman playing a silver flute that wouldn't go away. He could clearly hear the music – something classical – in his mind.

He wondered if this was the way some other telepath tried to contact him. After the Telepath War, after the dissembling of the Psi Corps, it was hard to tell who was a teep and who wasn't. If one had strong enough shields, one could ever fool a fellow mind-reader.

John made sure that his shields were firmly set before he left the ship to get to the station. He was wearing civilian clothes off-duty and didn't want to be identified – marked! – for what he was. He hadn't chosen to be born as a telepath, after all. It was his gift or his curse, depending on the beholder's point of view, something he hadn't asked for and couldn't change.

He wasn't sure he'd want to change it, even if he could. On the one hand, his… nature enabled him the experience of hyperspace in a way no mundane could ever hope to experience it. That was a gift he wouldn't give up easily. On the other hand, the very same nature had made him an outsider in human society. He'd never be accepted by the mundanes, no matter what. Even his uniform wore the distinguishing Y mark. Even Captain Gideon, who called himself his friend, gave him that speculative look sometimes. As if secretly asking himself whether the telepathic XO could really be trusted.

John hated this. All he ever wanted was to belong, but he had to realize that despite all those years of faithful duty aboard the Excalibur, he still didn't belong. Not really. Not where the human crew was considered anyway. The only resident alien, Dureena, didn't care, and Galen was an outsider himself – but they weren't the ones John would have liked to consider his people.

Those would be the humans. The mundanes, to be more accurate, as he was barely tolerated among his own kind. The very few who knew about his part in destroying the Psi Corps, acknowledged what he'd done, but they couldn't understand why he hadn't joined "the Case" afterwards. They couldn't understand that he didn't care for "the Case" – for any cases at all. All he ever wanted was to be free – to go to the stars, to explore the unknown depths of the universe.

He got his wish, against all hopes. But it hadn't made him any less lonely. It hadn't ended his painful isolation. In the end, he was still just a teep in his crewmates' eyes. A mind-reader, from whom they wanted to hide their little secrets. And avoiding him was the easiest way to do so.

As the end of humanity – at least on Earth – drew near, John sometimes caught himself weighting his options. He had searched the darkest, most hidden corners of the known universe for the last five years. He'd seen many things, both horrible and awesome ones, and now he felt like changing his life. Would be remaining aboard the Excalibur the right thing to do? What would become of them after Earth had turned into one gigantic cemetery anyway? Where could they find a new home? Would the successor of the EarthForce, whatever it might turn out to be, still tolerate him as the only telepath serving aboard one of their ships?

There were other opportunities. John had been thinking of the Rangers more and more lately. They had telepaths – granted, Minbari telepaths, but still telepaths – among them, people said. And as a trained EarthForce officer, John had a reasonable chance to succeed in the additional Rangel training as well. Could there be a place for him among the Rangers?

I really don't think so, Kimi, the mental voice of a woman answered inside his head.

He whirled around in alarm, realizing that his meanderings had brought him to the Japanese stone garden of the station. The one set up by Commander Sinclair in the very first year of Babylon 5. It was still intact, and an excellent place to be along with one's thought. Instinct must have steered his steps right here.

That, or the mental call of the woman who was standing at the far end of the garden, wearing an old-fashioned EarthForce uniform: the kind that had been regular around the time Babylon 5 was built. She was slender and clearly of Asian origins, her long, shining hair swept forth over her left shoulder like a glimmering curtain. On her uniform, she wore the insignia of a lieutenant commander.

John recognized her smooth, ageless face. She was the woman who'd haunted his dreams for months by now. The woman playing the silver flute.

"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you want from me?"

"You don't remember?" she asked. Her voice was soft and high-pitched like that of a child – deceivingly so. Her dark, almond eyes were cold like the hostile depths of space.

John shook his head apologetically. "I don't think so…"

"We've met on Mars," she interrupted. "I visited the base on Syria Planum when you were just a young whelp of the Psi Corps."

He looked at her searchingly but could still not remember. Suddenly, however, something touched a blockade he'd been previously unaware of in his mind, and now he saw her as she had been – as she really – had been back there: in the black uniform and gloves of the Psi Cops that she hadn't worn again since then.

"Agent Takashima," he whispered. She used to have quite the reputation among young Psi Cops. John had never been one of those, but he interned with them… not voluntarily, but at that time, in his naïveté, he'd actually found it an honour to be chosen as a liaison of the actual cops. Takashima had been said to be the best and most ruthless undercover agents masquerading as a mundane.

"Lieutenant Commander Takashima," she corrected. "I hadn't always been what I am now. For a long time, my abilities had been suppressed, without my knowledge, so that I could play the mundane soldier convincingly. I didn't even known I was a telepath until I got reassigned from Babylon 5 to Earth."

Such things hadn't been rare in those years. John had heard about such agents. How the Corps managed to suppress their abilities for years, he didn't even want to guess. Some of them had gone mad, because they were too strong to be suppressed on the duration. Those who'd managed to keep their sanity, somehow, became monsters and got the hardest, most dangerous assignments, because they didn't really care for anyone any longer. Including themselves.

"You'd been sent here to have Commander Sinclair killed!" John realized with horror.

"No," she said. "I was sent here to get the Vorlon killed. Getting rid of Sinclair would have been an additional bonus."

"How could you? He was your friend!" John cried out.

Just as Gideon had been his friend for many years. Even though they questioned each other's motivation sometimes. Even if they kept secrets from each other.

Takashima shook his head, and there was something akin regret on her emotionless face.

"No," she said. "He was Laurel's friend. The Laurel's who worked at Mars Colony Security and refused to let herself get corrupted in order to get a promotion. That Laurel died on Babylon 5. I'm all that's left – and I'm not her. I'll never be again."

"Who… what are you then?" John asked with morbid fascination.

She measured him with those cold eyes of hers. "Do you know what Control is?"

John nodded, shivering. "An implanted alternate personality that can be activated by a telepathically sent password. While dormant, it could act without the host even knowing about its actions."

"In the first year of Babylon 5, I was the one harbouring the Control personality planted on the station," Takashima said. "I was the one who helped the assassin getting aboard. But when the attempt to kill the Vorlon failed, I was reassigned to the Rim."

"Why?" John frowned. "It wasn't your fault."

"That's true," she replied, "but once Control is activated, the original personality is destroyed. Sinclair and Garibaldi would have realized that they weren't dealing with the old Laurel anymore.. Besides, I was needed for the duty on the Rim."

"What duty?" John asked, expecting the worst.

"Looking out for the Shadows," seeing John's shocked face, she nodded grimly. "Yes, the brass of the Corps had known about the Shadows, long before the Minbari War. But we hoped to figure out how to control their technology before they actually made their move. The only way to spot them is telepathy, as you know."

"Yes, but why did the Corps want to kill the Vorlon?" John still wasn't getting it. "Weren't the Vorlons the enemies of the Shadows?"

"They were," she answered. "And they've created us to be their cannon fodder. To fight their war for them – for both sides. Lyta Alexander wasn't the first one to figure them out. Some of us – the likes of Jason Ironheart, who'd grown beyond their original destiny – were able to tap into our collective memory. We've learned long ago that we could be vital for the functioning of Shadow technology… or the destruction of it. Plans how to bend it to our will had been made. We'd have been able to infiltrate their ships and to destroy them from the inside… eventually. We've already made considerable progress. Had Sinclair, Sheridan and the other do- gooders not interfered. Or that old sadist Edgars. But we've dealt with Edgards, and given enough time, we'd eventually have dealt with the Shadows, too."

"We?" John repeated suspiciously. She nodded.

"When the blockade has been lifted, my true abilities resurfaced," she said. "I'm a P12. Dealing with the awakened senses was brutal, and the Control personality took some damage. A lot of damage, actually. My mental distress reached the one who'd once been Jason Ironheart. He came to my aid and removed the rest of the Control personality. For a while, my mind was completely blank. I was taken to Minbar, to the Temple of Valeria, where their mind-healers have artificially rebuilt me, as well as it was possible, based on the detailed psych file of the Corps. But great parts of me are still empty… lost. The memories are still there, but I'm completely detached from them. It will take years to become a hale person again… if ever."

"I'm sorry to hear that," John said with a shrug, because that must have been terrible, but he couldn't really feel for her, knowing what he knew about her. "But why are you tell me all this?"

She looked at him with the same, detached pity. "Because you're a sleeper, too," she said simply. "You've been implanted shortly after the rebels destroyed the secret base… due to your compassion. You've been very fortunate that you haven't had a password accident yet. But you could run into someone who knows it, and the person you are now could be gone, forever."

John was petrified with shock. He was a mere P5, nothing special, taken from his mundane parents at the age of four. He didn't even remember them anymore. He had been one of the many raised by the Corps. His abilities were by no means outstanding. Why would the Corps – or whoever had been in charge after the destruction of the Corps – want to make him a sleeper?

"It was the ultimate punishment," Takashima said, reading his unshielded thoughts easily. "Or do you really think the brass hadn't find out what you'd done?"

That, and probably the fact that he'd been the first – and to date still the only – telepath serving on an EarthForce ship. Of course they would want the chance to turn him into a mindless puppet who'd turn against Captain Gideon whenever ordered. And who'd obediently send reports about his Captain's activities, without even knowing it.

His entire world had just been turned upside down and inside out.

"Next you'll tell me that not even my name is my own," he said with a mirthless grin. He meant it as a lame joke, but Takashima was not laughing.

"Actually," she said with a touch of cold pity in her voice, "it's not. I've seen your file – your real file – on Mars. Your true name is Daniel Dae Kim. You're the son of Korean-American parents, and you've got at least one sister that we know of. I'm sorry to tell you that they all live on Earth."

Once again, John was frozen with shock. He hadn't thought of his family for a very long time. He'd ceased to ask himself whether they were still alive and what they might look like in the second year in the Corps. Such thoughts had been trained out of one at a very tender age. He'd grown used not to think forbidden thoughts. The only longing the Corps hadn't been able to erase from his mind was that for deeps space.

He wished he hadn't learned about his family now, that there was absolutely no chance to be reunited with them. Ever.

Unless…

"You seem to have great influence," he said to Takashima. "I'm not asking whom you are interned with; I don't really care."

"What are you asking, then?" she riposted.

"For a way to get to Earth," he answered.

TBC