The burgeoning sunset framed Srre's body, and painted colors into the creases and folds of the black meditation robe he wore over his brown healer's clothing. Like Sarek's estate, Srre's family home looked out into the desert and from where they stood in the house's garden, the open vista was at his back. As night started to come, the warm breezes had the first touches of coolness trailing them, and they played with the ends of his robe. His whole frame was still out of calmness and serenity as he read the padd in his hand.

McCoy, on the other hand, felt the tension eat his stomach and spine with ragged, fanged bites until he had to break the silence. "Srre?"

The younger healer handed the padd back to Spock. "You have done well gathering your evidence. Both the nurse's positive identification and Commander Stron's discovery of the travel data place my brother on Saavik's ship." He gave a nod to Subcommander Soluk who lingered behind Kirk and Sarek, out of the way. "All of his appointments with the other infected patients have been confirmed, as well as his access to all the data required for these attacks." His eyes fell and his voice drew quiet. "I would not have considered Mal' Shik capable of this. But then, I did not know or understand my brother. The fault is mine."

McCoy had suggested coming out into garden instead of staying inside as Srre had offered. Out here, they put some distance from the family's personal surroundings. It was enough that Srre's father had most likely stood in the same spot inside as he said his goodbyes to his wife and children, unknowingly leaving them for the last time. Or that it might have been the same place where they got the news that he was missing, followed by discovering his capture and death, and a boy born from it: a feral Mal'Shik.

Spock said, "You accept the possibility of Mal'Shik's guilt?"

"I do. As I said, you brought together a formidable case."

"You do not, however, accept the second conclusion of our evidence?"

Srre folded his hands behind him. "Spock, like you, I have studied at Gol. I would know if I carried such conditioning as you suggest."

Kirk stepped forward, as calm as the young healer. "You don't think we made an equally good case on this point? At least enough for logic to consider it a possibility?"

"That I have murdered sixteen innocents, Captain, and brought about the imminent deaths of three more?" An edge cut Srre's voice, until he summoned calm again. "There are others who suit this possibility more so than I do."

Kirk gave a twisted nod. "We considered them – but only you, S'ad, and T'Ahiyya went to the orbital station to meet Jdehn's ship. Someone attacked her and the other two there, and the disease showed up in their systems right after it."

"That admits S'ad is equally as capable as a suspect."

"Except our evidence doesn't support him. S'ad wouldn't have left out the lack of variation in Phase II symptoms, and that's just one example. We have something else that we didn't list in that report. Spock."

Like he had done for so many years, the Vulcan smoothly picked up where Kirk left off. "As a student of Gol, Srre, you understand we have two serious conditions stemming from memory repression."

"I do. I also know the Fullara is an obsolete practice. It has been a century since someone has ordered an Adept to repress a subject's memories of an event."

"Granted. However, memory repression does still occur and still contains the same dangers. You understand the symptoms of these conditions."

Srre nodded. They gave off an air of being nothing more than two colleagues discussing interesting business. "I know this as well."

"The memory engrams in the dorsal region of the subject's hippocampus are disrupted and cause physical damage. If the memories attempt to resurface, the trauma may manifest itself with symptoms including instability in the nervous system, headache, and an inability to reach levels of meditation or focus."

"Yes, I agree."

"We spoke to Sorel," Kirk said bluntly. "You went to him with these exact symptoms."

Srre stopped.

"Srre," McCoy said again. He hadn't said much since he got here. He had certainly planned to say a lot. In fact, he had been about to insist on coming along to confront Srre when Kirk had asked him to come. He didn't know Jim's reasons for having him here, but he came to rail against Srre over killing their patients. To hate Srre. Now he found himself wanting to help the young man who stood so innocent and unaware of what Mal'Shik had done to him. Srre was as sick as Saavik–

–except Saavik died while Srre killed.

What the hell do we do now?

The doctor inside of him gave the same answer it always did: heal the suffering.

"I don't know why your planet has these reasons for repressing memories. Spock tells me the one practice, this Fullara, is done deliberately – I don't know why."

"Vulcan doesn't do it anymore, Leonard."

He's so damned young.

"But I do know that on my planet, we do similar things. We've had this kind of mental conditioning for centuries. Maybe even millennia. We got a lot of names for it, where someone's mind is programmed to act in ways they would never do normally. And they don't even know the conditioning is there."

Srre held up a hand forestalling the lecture with all the arrogance of youth assuming it knew everything. If it had been Spock, McCoy would have had a sharp comment to make, but instead, he wished he could shake the feeling that Srre had been reduced to the defensive student. "I have educated myself with Federation cultures other than my own, both in fact and in fiction. I have read your Richard Condon's Manchurian Candidate and René Eché varria's The Mind's Eye as well as our own Hidden Distortions by T'sia. Your books call it a sleeper agent."

Kirk perked up at that. "Why were you reading that sort of information?"

"Do you think you have trapped me, Captain? If only you did not think it necessary. However, it is not true. A woman of your world once gave such fiction as a reason not to have my brother examine her. She believed a half-Romulan would distort her mind for the sheer pleasure of attacking a human and she said so. I read the examples she gave to better argue against her theories."

The rest of what he wanted to say died in his throat as they all remembered Mal'Shik had distorted people's minds. Not that woman's, but the ones who had escaped Hellguard with him.

McCoy spoke into the heavy quiet. "Srre, your mind doesn't know it suffers from this conditioning, but your body does! That's why you're showing all the symptoms you talked to Sorel about. It's trying to make you see what's going on!"

"Leonard, again, I have learned advanced techniques for mental disciplines. I know my own mind."

It wasn't working. Their plan was to confront Srre with the evidence and get him into custody so he couldn't make any further attacks; but he had his feet planted into the ground and wasn't budging.

"Srre, you can't know your own mind under these circumstance, anymore than anyone else who is affected."

"With all due respect to our patients, they do not have the same training as me."

McCoy decided he didn't dare look to Spock or Kirk for help. He already was losing this argument, and couldn't look even weaker. He wanted to shout, See reason, dammit!, and would have if he had been arguing with Spock.

Sarek folded his hands in front of him and strode into the center of the garden. "A question, Srre. Is this your logic that answers for you or a defensiveness?"

Spock frowned. "Father..."

Sarek held up a hand, then folded it with the other one again. "Srre?"

The younger Vulcan steadied under those venerable eyes until he could dip his head in a bow. "Your question is excellent, Sarek. I have forgotten myself."

I'll be damned.

Sarek hadn't added to the youth's feeling of attack. He had given him an anchor point by taking command of the situation. Maybe he had even brought back memories of the solid father who once steadied the son.

"We do not come here to condemn you, Srre. Nor to serve as your tribunal. We present findings that allows for a possibility. Does not your sense of reason agree?"

"It does." Srre grew tall under Sarek's eye. "It does indeed."

"Then we are agreed. You will accompany us as we return. You will have ample opportunity and full resources to make your argument. This is, after all, a just society. The burden lies on those who would prove guilt, not on you to prove innocence."

Thank you, Sarek! Because McCoy had thought they were being driven down a path of dragging Srre out of here.

Sarek turned first to lead the way. Kirk and Soluk hung at the sides to put Srre in between them, boxing him in between the six of them.

Except Srre didn't move.

In an odd voice, he asked, "What will happen if what you say is correct?"

Kirk tried to be nonchalant, but McCoy knew better. "We'll help you remove the conditioning." When Srre did nothing else, he stumbled into pointing out, "And you can help us remove the disease from everyone else who is infected."

"But none of that will remove the murders."

Sarek looked like he was trying to figure this out as much as everyone else. "Your conditioning would be taken into account." Srre's eyes dropped to the ground again. "Do you ask if you can avoid accepting any responsibility?"

Srre stood there, somehow unbowed even with his head lowered. "I ask if my brother can be spared."

A snaking fear wound around McCoy's insides. "Srre?"

Nothing, and then in the next second, the eyes flicked up at a sound. Five forms emerged out of the twilight closing around his home. Mekhai led on the left with Arik trailing him, while Saavik came into view on the right, Jdehn with her, guiding a chair carrying Vi'hai, too weak to walk.

"What is this?" Sarek demanded.

Vi'hai answered, with a voice that had to be forced out of his chest. "With all respect, Ambassador, it is our right. We only came to ask him if it was true."

Sarek appeared to accept that and then turned. "Saavik."

But her head had cocked to almost lean on her shoulder. She found Srre's uplifted eyes and suddenly straightened. "What have you discovered?"

Kirk stiffened and then snapped at her, "Why?"

"The behavior." She turned back to the quiet form in brown and black. "It does not belong to Srre."

The downcast head gave a bare movement of side to side. "Of course. You noticed."

Mekhai's upper lip curled into a snarl. "Mal'Shik."

"Jim!"

Kirk's face reflected every bit of McCoy's shock. They had thought Mal'Shik had infected Srre the way he had designed the mental condition in the hybrids. That he had changed his brother to go out unconsciously and kill when a trigger activated his subconscious programming.

But it was much more than that. Mal'Shik had actually grafted his own persona on the conditioning. When Srre was triggered, some other form of himself didn't come out, Mal'Shik did. No denying it. Everything about Srre had changed: his body language, his speech pattern, the very nature of his soul pouring out from his eyes.

McCoy grieved for the brilliant mind that had created such a thing, for the lives it could have saved instead. For all the help and good it could have done. Then he added Srre's loss of seeking forgiveness and being turned into a weapon instead.

The waste. The heartbreaking waste.

The question got pulled out of Kirk. "Why?"

Srre's face with Mal'Shik's expression turned to him. "Why is a broad question, Captain. Could you be more specific?"

"Mal'Shik." Jdehn spat it out. "You always were a knife's pain to the gut."

He had a glint of near amusement on Srre's face. "Which one of us wasn't?"

Vi'hai struggled to speak. "Is that what this is about?" His breath came in wheezes. "Revenge? After all this time?"

All amusement died in Mal'Shik along with too much else. "Haven't you learned anything? If I wanted revenge, I would not have done any of this!"

Kirk licked his lips and got control over his shock fast. "You can understand our surprise. We thought you hadn't passed on your katra."

"And I did not. This," he gestured down the length of Srre's body, "is a facade. A mere fraction of who I once was."

"But why bother at all?"

"If I passed on my katra, you would have discovered my actions much sooner. Srre would not have been able to control the elements of my persona from showing forth."

McCoy knew that was true from personal experience. He hadn't been able to stop Spock from coming through.

"It also would have limited what I could do as well as meaning Srre would be conscious of what was happening. This method gained me time and mobility. And I was sincere when I stated that my plan was to spare my brother if at all possible."

"But why do it at all?" Arik's voice was a high shout.

Mal'Shik made an aggressive move forward. "Have none of you paid attention?" Arik quivered, but refused to budge. "How have you not seen the purpose behind this? Each phase had an exact lesson, the whole plan had an exact purpose! Even now, you claim not to see it?"

He swung on McCoy. "You will understand." Was that a fact or an order? "An abomination cannot have benefits, for it will dull people's sense of its horror and instead make them accept it as a price to be paid."

If McCoy thought nothing else could shock him, he was wrong. Kirk and Spock moved closer.

"Bones?"

"I said that, Jim. He's quoting me. ...But this isn't what I meant."

"Why not, Doctor? Because you have reaped the benefits? Because the benefits are people you know such as Saavik? You have another expression on Earth: the end does not justify the means."

"I am here, Mal'Shik." Saavik had moved closer. When had she done that? Mekhai was on line with her across the garden with Jdehn a few paces back and centered. "You need not speak as if I were not."

He glanced from her to Mekhai, taking in the three of them, but McCoy warned her silently: Let me handle this. Amazingly, she listened. He thought he'd have to get Spock or Jim to make it an order. She gave some signal he couldn't see that kept Mekhai and Jdehn reigned in... barely. Their tension quivered the air.

But McCoy had to keep Mal'Shik here. They needed him, and if he disappeared again, maybe for good, it was all over. Already his eyes darted to Saavik and Mekhai walling him in.

So McCoy kept trying. "That is true, but... we're talking about lives."

"Yes. Lives." Darkness drew over Mal'Shik's expression like the sky as the sun set. "You also stated you would willingly die and make that decision for those you know rather than accept life from an abominable practice."

"I was talking about a cure. I would refuse any treatments or cures that were created from the horrible treatment of innocent lives!"

"Which is the same statement I am making." An earnest note came back in his voice. "The lives that were destroyed. To have a Saavik, you must destroy another. And because you have served with her, you have become what you warned others about. You are dulled to the destruction of someone else. Or are incapable of direct rather than passive action."

Mekhai shifted his balance.

"No," Sarek called out. "He seeks not to add more destruction to what has already been done."

"He's right," Kirk added. "All of you dying will not bring back the people who died on that colony. You're a healer. You wanted to save people!"

Mal'Shik came right back at him. "How many times have you used violence to end lives because they murdered innocents? How many other acts of violence have you condoned as justified for the perception of the greater good?" He turned to Spock. "I have heard about Valeris and how the Federation claimed such a means was necessary."

Jdehn, Arik, even Vi'hai couldn't look at Spock now. Only Saavik stayed unshaken.

Spock grew as formidable and expansive as Sarek had done with Srre. "Is this how you view the Symmetry's risk in rescuing you? And all the efforts to give you a new life?"

But Mal'Shik wasn't Srre. "Sir, I hold you in the highest esteem. What you and my family have done for me cannot be repaid. But it does not change facts if you refuse to see them, even out of generosity."

Even Spock couldn't reach him.

Can I?

Mal'Shik didn't have a father, but he had mentors, healers like Sorel. And he apparently had been very affected by the conference where McCoy had spoken or he wouldn't keep quoting it.

"Son."

Mal'Shik gave a slow, almost sad, shake of his head. "I am not your son, Doctor."

McCoy glanced over to Mekhai, remembering when they had a similar conversation in the restaurant when Jdehn's ship first arrived. "I wish you were. It'd be an honor. You're right to bring my words back to me. I meant them. I didn't want someone using somebody else as a guinea pig – a test subject to be tortured, and then use the test results like they came to me clean of all that. I wouldn't do that to anyone who died on that colony."

"But you are! Can you not see it?"

He's listening. He's not acting like it, but you got him listening. By god, whatever you do, McCoy, don't blow this!

Soluk moved slowly up from behind, but Spock stopped him and McCoy sent him a silent thank you. Anything could set Mal'Shik off, and they had to save Srre and the five people still infected.

"Tell me, son. I don't see it."

Mal'Shik swept Srre's hand to encompass the other five survivors from Hellguard.

"Starfleet uses what's been bred and forged in Saavik. People in the Federation use Jdehn for trafficking and Mekhai for entertainment. The Science Academy reaps the benefits of what is bred in me."

He twisted truth to fit his madness and it scared the hell out of McCoy...

...but what made him sick was realizing, He doesn't do it deliberately. His self-loathing heard what McCoy and the others had said, and he thought he heard the truth. Because his demons told him it was the truth.

And I bet those demons wear Romulan faces.

And, he swallowed, probably too many Federation ones.

Kirk gave him a sharp glance, wondering if McCoy was giving up, if he had to step in. McCoy didn't bother shaking his head; he kept talking.

"But isn't that better than having nothing good come from all this pain? My god, Mal' Shik, you're brilliant! The ability to create something so intricate as this - getting the mind to do so much to the body through a mental suggestion - even able to put in the later suggestions like with Micar."

"Not so brilliant." He scowled hard at himself. "I made so many mistakes. I miscalculated how long it would take me to reach everyone. By the time I gained access to Saavik, Phase III had progressed to far. I was dying and leaving things undone. That's when I remembered that woman who spat at me about making her act unconsciously and devised this." His hand swept down Srre's body again. It dropped heavily by his side. "Even so, I would have spared my brother... although, I – did not believe him when he said he no longer held me responsible for our father's death. I thought – he would understand why this was necessary."

McCoy wished he could have touched that hurting soul. "You still have a great gift, Mal'Shik."

"Gift? Any gifts I was given by being born were paid for with an unholy price. Every day we live is a crime with spilt blood as the foundation. You speak the words, Doctor, but you cannot do the actions that you demanded. I could."

"Bones." Kirk almost hissed. "Move away!"

I lost him.

Mal'Shik turned to the other five and started to shout, but Jdehn and Mekhai broke ranks and charged him. Jdehn pulled a small phaser from her belt, sending Soluk into sweeping Sarek behind him as Saavik slid in front of Spock. Arik hesitated, then blocked Vi'hai with his body.

Kirk pushed McCoy out of the way and tried to break up the struggle, but Mal'Shik went down under Mekhai. He finally struggled under the muscled weight pressing on his chest and then twisted enough to call out in something that sounded like the butchered Romulan language they had spoken on Hellguard. The effect was instantaneous. Mekhai jumped off of him, then pulled himself away, his eyes turning to the dying sun on the horizon. He reached for his clothes, stripping them as he headed for the desert. Soluk ran from the wall and jumped him, Sarek helping, but even all their strength didn't seem enough against Mekhai's determination to die in the fires under the sun. He only shifted to drag them with him, into the house, to the large firepit in the courtyard.

Saavik stiffened as if she took a deep blow to the body, her eyes sunk inward. So did Vi'hai. Jdehn held her phaser easily in a loose grip and surprised Kirk with a smile.

"I have come home with blood on my wings."

He dove for her and got his hand on hers, but she threw him off and, for some reason, ran at Mal'Shik.

Who welcomed her.

He smiled at her and she smiled back. "There is blood on our wings," he whispered which made her nod and lift the phaser again. At him.

He hadn't expected that. "No! Srre will die too! He is innocent!"

"You can't live. None of us can."

"I already planned this without you, Jdehn." His voice sank.

She tightened the trigger.

Except Srre re-emerged. He stared out as memory of his actions flooded his conscious. He turned his head to stare at the phaser as the bore of its muzzle stared back - Kirk shouted for Jdehn to stop, for Srre to stop her - and then...

She merely nodded. "He is gone." And turned the phaser on herself. Kirk's tackle took her to the ground as he fought to keep the phaser from her head.

During all of this, McCoy's decades of triage experience sent him to Vi'hai's side. Vi'hai was the weakest with the least strength to fight for his life... and to fight off McCoy.

But do I let him fight it or knock him unconscious? Would it help or hurt if Vi'hai wasn't awake? Would it let him fight the disease's conditioning with more time or render him defenseless?

No time to ask anyone. Vi'hai began gasping for air.

Saavik clawed her throat, choking, not able to breathe, and Spock came up behind her. His hand held steady near her face, but under the command of the disease, she fought hard against his help. Spock's hand hovered as doubt swept over his face for less than a second.

Do it!

Then Spock's free arm snaked around her, holding her in place while the fingers near her temple shifted to the right positions. He forced the meld.

Saavik arched violently under his hand, her mouth stretched in an effort to scream, in an effort to breathe.

And McCoy, with a sinking pit in his chest, remembered they had only fourteen seconds starting now.