Jim blinked in surprise.

'What?' he asked.

If anything, Tyker's smile widened.

'Good o'l dynamite, my friend,' he chortled and made a move to playfully punch Jim.

Instinctively, Jim blocked the punch and harshly knocked Tyker's hand away.

'I'm not your friend,' he growled.

It did little to faze Tyker's manic mood.

'I'm surprised, J.T,' Tyker said, 'after all; an enemy of your enemy of is your friend.'

Jim continued to glare at the teenager. Tyker scoffed at Jim's uncompliance.

'You'll see,' he promised, 'and you'll regret it when you see your greatest enemy finally fall and know that you missed the opportunity to be part of it.'

'You won't be able to blow up Starfleet even if you had all the gear for it,' Jim said flatly.

Tyker tutted and waggled his finger in front of Jim's face. His grin was infuriating and his finger even more so. Tyker was treating him like a misbehaving child and Jim had lost that side of him on Tarsus IV; he was older than an adult now, with all that he had seen on that forsaken planet. Annoyed he squatted Tyker's hand from the air.

'Get your finger out of my face,' he snarled.

'Oh, but you be judging haaard Jim,' Tyker leered, ignoring the insulting comment Jim had thrown at him, 'unlike you – I can make friends, and one of the boys in the ward is as smart as you. He can make bombs – give 'im some dynamite and he can make anything you ask.'

Jim rolled his eyes.

'Congrats Tyker, you found a puppy dog to make you firecrackers,' he drawled, unimpressed.

'Na, na, na,' Tyker contradicted, 'this one's the real deal – that's how he survived on Tarsus. Blew up the soldiers with a couple 'o land mines and a grenade or two and then stole their food. Kodos took all the guns, yeah? Even the colony's Stone Age rifles that we used to live 'old fashioned' just so that we'd be left with nothing, but he never used the crummy things. All his kids had laser rifles cause they didn't need no bullets so he didn't bother taking the gunpowder. My boy took the stuff and made all the explosives with whatever he scrounged up. He ain't no fighter like you – heck, he'd piss himself in his first fight – but he don't need that stuff to survive.'

'He tell you this, did he?' Jim asked.

Tyker nodded and Jim scoffed.

'You dumb-ass, he fed you his crap and you ate it,' Jim said.

Tyker spat to the side, his spittle splattering against the pristine concrete.

'He's the real deal!' he insisted, 'already made me a haul of blasters – all I gotta do now is pinch a plebe uniform and plant them!'

That stopped Jim in his tracks. He froze, as he comprehended what Tyker had just told him.

'He's… already made you the bombs?' Jim asked very slowly.

The corner of Tyker's mouth tugged upwards, although the smile was a sinister one. He seemed pleased with himself that he had managed to get Jim to take him seriously and quickly grasped the opportunity before it slipped away.

'Yeah man, it's like I said,' he said, 'but he's dead yellow so he pissed off after he gave me the bombs. C'mon J.T, you hate Starfleet as bad as I do. With your brains and my bombs we can plant them and set the whole place on fire!'

'The academy?' J.T asked, confused.

'Yes!' Tyker replied as if it were obvious, 'you can't kill a weed unless you pull it out by it's roots – the academy is Starfleet's roots! Without all the fresh meat to train, Starfleet will run out of officers to replace their old ones!'

Jim frowned.

'It's Starfleet's fault that Kodos killed all those people, but their cadets didn't have anything to do with it – it's not even their job.'

'But it will be,' Tyker argued, 'Come on, Jim! This is the chance of a lifetime!'

Jim scowled.

'Don't call me that,' he snapped, 'you aren't my friend. I don't trust you, I'll never trust you.'

'You can say that all you like but we're partners now,' Tyker told him.

'Says who?'

'Says me! We're blowing up this place together aren't we?'

'No we're not, I never said I would.'

'But you will.'

Jim shook his head.

'No, I'm not. It's not moral – you can't just kill innocent people'.

'Moral? Innocent?' Tyker asked, taken aback, 'was it moral for Starfleet to leave thousands of people on Tarsus IV to starve? Will those fancy cadets still be innocent once they're officers?'

'Who are you to judge what is moral and what is not? Were we not innocent when we were starving and Starfleet killed us by abandoning us? It's not retribution if you want to cause the same suffering to their cadets. It's revenge.'

'How is it any different from retribution?'

'Because retribution is punishment and the people at this academy have done nothing wrong to deserve your anger.'

'What's the matter, Jimmy? Lost your bottle? Can't kill anymore? I know you've done it – we've all done it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be alive; Kodos 'soldiers would've shot us long ago.'

Jim jerked his foot upwards and his boot knife was propelled into his hand. Before Tyker could make sense of his sharp movement, Jim had covered the distance between himself and the teenager. He shoved his forearm against Tykers's throat and pushed him up against the wall. In seconds, Jim had the teenager trapped against the far wall with his knife pressing against the delicate skin under Tyker's chin.

'Don't, be so quick to underestimate me,' Jim breathed dangerously, his eyes locked on Tyker's.

Tyker choked out a short bark of laughter, Jim's knife pressing into his neck every time he drew a breath. In this position, it was difficult to talk and Tyker had to choose his words carefully, leaving no room for foolish banter. It was exactly what Jim wanted.

'You… won't kill… me,' he gasped out.

'Why not?' Jim snarled.

'Because… I'll blow you up first,' Tyker threatened.

Reaching up, he unzipped his jacket to reveal a crude – but effective – bomb vest. It was obvious that Tyker had been telling the truth about his friend, as the bomb vest wasn't as neat as a store bought – or black market bought – bomb vest. In contrast, it was disheveled and a mess of wires but otherwise, looked as if it could definitely blow him up if Tyker activated it's switch… Switch… Jim glanced further downwards and his heart sunk as he spotted Tyker's hand engulfed in a pocket that likely contained the detonator.

Jim had no choice but to do what Tyker wanted; even if the teenager was bluffing, it was too dangerous to try for a compromise. Slowly, he relinquished his knife and arm from Tyker's neck and stepped back.

Tyker cackled in glee. It was a crazed laugh and rightly so. After all, what sane person would want to blow themselves up?

'That's right, J.T,' he leered, 'run away, cause you got no friends and you lost the one chance you had at getting revenge on Starfleet.'

Jim stayed silent but projected as much malice as he could in his eyes towards Tyker.

'I guess I'll have to move onto plan B if you're not helping me. Besides, I'd rather die than get caught trying to plant bombs and spend the rest of my life in another prison – Tarsus IV was enough captivity for a lifetime,' he regarded Jim's lethal expression with carelessness, 'Geez, lighten up Jimmy – you should be happy. You've won the argument and now I'm going to blow up the real people who are responsible – not those slimy cadets you love so much.'

Jim frowned slightly as he tried to make sense of Tyker's statement. There weren't any Starfleet officers for… dammit… for about 10 metres. He had forgotten about the officers at the memorial… and Pike.

Jim looked up, abandoning all sense of rational thinking and prepared to negotiate with Tyker but the teenager had begun to walk towards the end of the concrete corridor.

Carol's eyes widened as she reached the same conclusion as Jim. Seeing Tyker walking towards her hiding spot, she quickly turned and ran to other opening of the tunnel.

Jim started after the retreating teenager.

'Tyker!' he called, 'wait!'

'Too late,' the boy said nonchalantly as he stepped out into the sunlight.

'Wait!' Jim hissed and broke into a jog.

He stopped short of the corridor entrance and watched as Tyker walked towards the back of the unsuspecting crowd. He was helpless – he couldn't run out and expose himself for fear that Starfleet might accuse him of being an accomplice or incase Tyker blew himself up earlier out of panic, but he couldn't just stand here doing nothing either. Chris was in that crowd and Jim would never forgive himself if he let his father's best friend die – he owed his dad that much.

The speaker on the stage let his gaze wander as he slogged through the same speech he'd recited the previous year and noticed a disheveled looking teenager approaching the service. Even as his mouth and vocal chords moved mechanically to perform his well-rehearsed speech, he squinted to determine the bizarre looking contraption on the individual's chest. It wasn't so much for the fact that he was shortsighted – everyone in this century had perfect eyesight thanks to modern medicine – but the distance between the stage and the approaching boy. Only when the boy had covered a few more precious metres did the speaker realize what was strapped to the teenager's chest. He hastily turned to where the few security personnel were standing in a precise line perpendicular to the stage.

'Um… er,' he stammered, 'we seem to have a breech.'

Thankfully, the officers understood his directed statement and instantly turned the attention to him. The speaker subtly inclined his head towards the teenager and they switched their gaze until they noticed the solitary individual. Because of the bomb's unusual appearance, the officers stood confused for a few seconds until they realized what was strapped to the teenager's torso.

Jim swore under his breath. Tyker had almost reached the back row of seats and he was still stuck behind this blasted wall. So he did what he did best – he improvised.

Seasoned after countless life or death situations, his brain immediately addressed the problem at hand and determined the most effective solution – regardless whether it was ethical or not. On Tarsus, there was little room for moral and ethical thinking when it came to survival… or the survival of the people he cared for – in this case, Chris.

He adjusted the position of his knife in his palm and held it by his side. Jim had thrown knives over different distances and of ranging weight countless times before. He trusted his instincts to overcome him as it always did and allow the blade to hit its mark.

Virtually no wind, medium sized target, about twenty metres northwest.

He closed his eyes, imagining the path of his knife as he released it and exhaled before opening them again.

In one fluid motion, he brought his hand up and over his head.