Time to take stock.

Twenty-five dead. The offense on the stasis chambers had been a success. Micar, his disciple Eitan, Kf'iskjyk, and Ny'Jul had been convinced to commit kalifee v'rekor in the same style Vulcans had been forced into on Hellguard.

He took a deep breath. His plan was back on track.

No one could be allowed to forget the nightmares committed against the innocent on the Romulan colony. Not the torments that the disease copied, not the suicides under the sun that some Vulcans chose so they could rob the Romulans of the one thing they still owned for themselves: their deaths. And not the last indignity some had suffered.

He had almost forgotten -- he had forgotten -- the last two horrors, but that had been corrected. Both of them. The sun suicides had happened and the other one was set; it would happen in its own time.

Plus, four of the hybrids that still lived failed more and more each moment. Their time left was marked in days. The Phase III ward became as empty as the small Hall of Ancient Thought at the Hellguard memorial, with Micar's painting serving as the headstone above the empty beds.

The medical team still had no idea what to do and they still looked in the wrong direction for a cure. If they continued this way for another week or two, they would be too late. Not even Arik or Jdehn or the other two not being in Phase III would matter. He had taken care of that too.

Even Jdehn taking off this morning in her ship with Mekhai and a couple others was no trouble. They wouldn't get far.

He had to be patient. When he wasn't, look at the mistakes he made.

The security systems had a glitch where the footage of his shutting down the ten stasis chambers was wiped out. The guard was being questioned now, not that he could tell them anything, but the mistake had been made. Just like the one on Saavik's ship: destroying all the records about his coming onboard had left a trail.

His hands clenched. He knew he couldn't manipulate technology at that level. He thought he had compensated for that, but instead, he had left a track and his pursuers closed in. They had stopped looking in the Romulan Empire and outside of Vulcan. They knew he was here and walking amongst them. They spread a net that expanded further and further, waiting to snare him in his next move. That one, Uhura, sent her watchdog programs into every cranny so if he even monitored someone else's communications, like he had when Saavik contacted her, she'd trap him. Spock's presence waited all over the networks, poised for anyone to access the Hellguard files. And T'Pau, T'Pau, had put an entire contingent of the VSE at Sarek's discretion.

They didn't stop there. They weren't satisfied in waiting for him to venture out. They came after him. They dug and probed and questioned.

Except their security measures had one weak point: they depended on him surfacing. But he had copied all the files he needed long ago, so he didn't have to risk Spock detecting him by trying to get them now, and with all his other plans set, he could sink out of notice. Unless something went terribly wrong again, he didn't need to venture out so they would not discover who he was.

Would it matter? he reminded himself. He never expected to survive this. Obviously not. That was fine. He had done his best to make sure his unknowing accomplice on the medical team would not suffer punishment; he was innocent after all. As for his own destruction, the price had to be paid.

Why didn't anyone else see that? Especially that Kirk and McCoy. After all, debates once again came to a head over sentient creatures being used in ghastly experiments to further some scientific cause. Some argued that even though the results came at a terrible cost, they benefitted other lives. That the products from the experiments weren't bad because of the evil that had created them. Using them would bring some good out of the nightmare.

But the other side had argued just as strongly and in the end won when one doctor insisted:

Some of you accuse me saying I would being arguing differently if I or someone that I cared about would be helped by the products of these experiments. But I would not. I would refuse them as something immoral. No one can benefit by other people's suffering. If we're going to call ourselves a civilized, ethical people, we cannot allow whatever comes out of these experiments to taint the quality of society we have created. If we do anything else, if we don't destroy the creations of these tortures, we make ourselves as guilty and criminal as the people who carried out them out. The crime can never go away when its spoils are allowed to exist!

How he had listened enthralled as the man spoke. The statement had awakened him. The doctor who had made that argument spoke about Hellguard even though he knew nothing of its existence. His words shed a spotlight like a finger of judgment on everyone allowing the colony's evil acts and what they had conceived to exist. It charged for someone to make the hard decision, like that doctor had, to wipe out those creations.

It showed him and so many others the truth, including a name noted in the reports because of its notoriety: Dr. Leonard McCoy. So why did the man suddenly change sides and argue for what he had called immoral and unethical? Why did he try to stop the action he had insisted must be done?

It made no more sense than the Vulcans who had changed their own attitude. They had seen the same truth that he had, but now some drew closer around Hellguard's creations to support them, to mourn them! How could they have forgotten the truth? That he respected Life as much as they did and that's why he did this.

If only he had found a way to bring justice to the Romulans as well, especially now that they discovered one Hellguard scientist still lived. But he couldn't do everything. Someone else would have to shoulder that crusade. He had taken care of what Hellguard cruelly begat at the price of too many lives.

But that didn't matter. He did not need someone else to acknowledge he was on the side of justice. He didn't do this for glory or to be hailed as a hero. He did it because it was the right thing to do.