Author's Note: This is not a nice chapter. I didn't enjoy writing it but it's necessary to understand some of the things that happen later on. If you want it in a nutshell (*SPOILER ALERT!*) Glinn Vekal has discovered a familiar name on the crew manifest, a name belonging to a man who did some pretty bad things to her when she was a kid. Now she's terribly conflicted over what to do with that information. *END SPOILER.*

Vekal sat on the couch of her quarters, eyes closed, wrestling with her inner self. One of the names she had read on the crew manifest had immediately flagged her attention; the face that was paired with it had made the connection undeniable. She'd seen it decades ago as a young girl.

Her childhood wasn't the sort of thing she liked to remember. It was the sort of thing, in fact, that she preferred to forget about altogether. It had not been pleasant.

There had been the beatings, the hunger, the cold, the brushes with the law inevitable for an orphan on a station where the only authorities were bored, hardened prison guards. She hadn't batted an eyelash at those; that was simply the way of things. As a child without family connections or status, she'd had no place in the world. No, none of those things were the source of her current dilemma.

But there were other experiences, dark images which lurked in the back of her mind and the memories of which haunted her dreams. She'd always had a prodigious memory, but often wished she could forget. She'd been eleven the first time a man had taken interest in her, and her mind had already been developed well enough to store every second of that experience somewhere in its recesses. He was a criminal. Somehow he'd curried enough favour with the guards to arrange for a young girl to be delivered to his cell. Vekal had been well known to the guards; one of the few beggar children who made their permanent home on that cold, desolate station and the only one who preferred to work alone. She wasn't a social animal in the first place, but more importantly she'd never trusted the other children not to steal what little food she could scrounge. She knew that the less assertive, smaller members of the local gangs often starved. She would have been one of them.

So she'd been a loner, and her preference had seen her through most of her childhood relatively unscathed. But that night, it had also made her the perfect choice for the prison guards.

She didn't know and more importantly had never cared to investigate how much time she'd spent in that cell, or how often the criminal had beaten her into unconsciousness. He'd gotten knives from somewhere, too, and sliced her flesh open until her blood covered the entire floor. Those days and nights had felt like an eternity. During that whole stretch of time, she'd never once left the cell. Her meals had consisted of scraps from the criminal's own plate, thrown to her whenever he felt she was growing too weak to be a satisfying punching bag.

Then he'd been transferred somewhere, and she'd been free. She'd stolen aboard a freighter to a nearby Cardassian colony that day, though it had never occurred to her to leave the station before. It was suicide. She knew the station, knew where food and shelter was to be had, knew what competitors she had to contend with. But at the time she hadn't been able to stay in that place for one day longer.

Desperate for activity, she'd stolen into a school and bluffed her way onto the roll call. While still scrounging for food and shelter wherever she could find it, she'd applied her mental gifts to the classroom in full and remembered every piece of information she was exposed to. With her record and abilities, her lack of an identity had been overlooked and she'd secured a position in the military. Never again had she worried about finding sustenance or warmth. Her clothes had been provided for her, an unexpected and welcome luxury, and on the whole she had been able to keep busy enough to push all memories of her experience to the back of her mind. She'd learned the name and identity of the criminal who'd abused her as well as enough information to allow her to entertain realistic ideas of revenge, but she'd also accepted that she was unlikely to get it. That matter, too, had been buried under the more mundane affairs of the years.

Now that was over with the discovery she'd made on the crew manifest. Her tormentor was aboard this ship. And after decades of calm devotion to the State, Vekal's priorities were sorely tested. What she wanted more than anything was vengeance. She felt she deserved it and there was no way anyone could realistically hope to stop her. But the matter was not so simple. In the worst case, she would be arrested and tried as a criminal by the Federation. Cardassia would renounce her but in all probability the Federation would try to hold her people responsible. The peace talks would break down. War might well be around the bend.

And in the best case, even if Cardassia wasn't held responsible, she would be. Which government would get to her first really made little difference. She'd be tried and imprisoned and her life would be over. There was no reason to sacrifice everything she'd built up for a confrontation with one criminal.

Besides, it would be a flagrant defiance of one of Gul Narat's direct orders. True, he was light-years away. True, he had no hold on her from where he was. But disobedience did not come naturally to her, even in a situation like this. And yet the nightmares persisted, would always persist until she put the matter firmly to rest. Vekal imagined herself having a good night's sleep for the first time since her childhood, a night without tossing and turning and dark thoughts assailing her mind at every turn.

In short, she was conflicted. But by the time she was done, she was fairly sure she'd reached a decision. Feeling more confident if not exactly better, Vekal left her quarters to explore the ship.