Under the relative cover of nightfall, Sayden finished his preparations for tonight's run.
His backpack was quite a bit lighter, of course, but that was only part of the plan. The other part was the document he had spent the afternoon carefully composing, over more cups of heinous brackish tea.
The trick would be getting the timing right...
A glance at his chronometer told him it was time for another shot. Continuing to feign bored attention in his news-sheet, for the benefit of his wall-eyed server, Sayden reached one hand beneath the table and jabbed himself sharply in the thigh with a hypodermic.
After a few seconds, the predictable sensation kicked in, his heart seizing up for a few agonising seconds and then beginning to pound strongly and quickly.
How Sayden hated it.
But if these Denobulan Devils didn't sleep, then neither would he.
Not quite half way to Engineering, Trip's occasionally explosive, but never long-lived temper receded, and in its place slowly bloomed a creeping sense of guilt about his behaviour on the bridge.
This day just won't quit, will it? he muttered to himself at the realisation he probably owed Alice an apology. Still, there was no point letting things fester. With a long sigh, he changed direction, pausing only the curse the existence of terrorists and the ill-fated timing of whatever deity determined Vulcan fertility.
A few minutes later, he happened upon Hoshi, standing in the middle of a corridor, staring into the middle distance.
"Hey, Hosh," Trip called, looking around for her 'prisoner'. "Where's Alice? She talk you onto letting her get one last cup of coffee before you threw her in the hole?"
Hoshi blinked at him, then cleared her throat.
A quick self-inventory suggested to Alice that the transporter had indeed reassembled her adequately. The street she had arrived in was reasonably quiet. Yet her arrival had been noticed, and the looks she was getting from the Denobulans in the street - overwhelmingly male Denobulans- was decidedly unfriendly.
"Hello," she said stupidly, to nobody in particular, before quickly retrieving a map and universal translator from her case. To her relief, Hoshi had input transporter coordinates quite close to her destination. Alice plotted her route quickly.
Don't think. Just keep moving, she told herself firmly.
She started to walk purposefully, as if she had every right to be there, and after a few steps most of the watching Denobulans lost interest. However, as she passed one of them, the man sneered and shouted a word in Denobulan. Alice smiled uncertainly and glanced at the translator screen:
/*\\
Language: Denobulan Dialect: 127-alpha Definition: invective or disparagement; typically levelled at members of minority ethnic groups, or aliens; especially women. Click for further etymological information.
/*\\
Alice quickened her pace, but she was not followed.
Once she arrived at the hospital, Alice found it surprisingly easy to talk her way past the triage nurse and hospital security. Since the emergency had started there had been a steady stream of strange doctors arriving and leaving for casual shifts. Consequently, apart from a few minutes lost to bureaucracy while her IME number was checked, Alice's presence raised unexpectedly few eyebrows.
After locating and translating a floor plan of the hospital mounted to a wall, Alice fought an urge to go straight to the ICU and instead tracked down the hospital's Head of Surgery, a small, harried Denobulan man with a kind face, currently scrubbing between two emergency births.
"Well, I'm glad you are here," the man said, while decontaminating his finger nails. "We can't get enough surgeons. But I'm still not sure how we can help your friend. The theatres, the nurses, everything is overwhelmed."
"I brought my own drugs and instruments," Alice replied calmly. "All I need is a scrub nurse, an anesthetist, and any relatively clean room. A procedure room? The morgue? A large stairwell landing, even...?"
"And afterwards, you'll he available to help?"
Alice nodded fervently. "Afterwards, I'm all yours."
The man paused, then nodded agreement. "I can give you two med students and a skills lab."
"I'll take it."
Palayjah's rooms were filling up with people arriving to see Phlox, including, most uncomfortably for Liz, two of Phlox's wives, Resba and Chenteel. At the sight of them, Liz stowed her universal translator, ostensibly to practice her conversational Denobulan, but actually to give her a plausible reason to appear as standoffish and awkward as she truly felt.
To Liz's tremendous relief however, the two women were lovely, greeting her as if she was an old friend and inquiring after the health of relatives Liz had half-forgotten she even had. After a little bit of time Palayjah joined them, with the air of one rescuing Liz from an interrogation, and the conversation turned to domestic worries. Liz followed along as best she could, and all three women took pains to include her, but it was not long until her attention began to falter.
Palayjah's rooms had no beds, as there were seldom more than a few people in any one building hibernating at any one time.
Where am I going to sleep? Liz wondered.
She was on the point of asking when she became suddenly aware that someone was standing behind her. Whipping around, she saw Mettus, peering down his nose at her.
"You have a message," he announced. "From something called a 'Hoshi Sato'"
"Hoshi is my friend," Liz replied a little coldly. "What does it say?"
Mettus shrugged. "I can't read your eeshdenda script."
Palayjah hissed quietly through her teeth and Chenteel cleared her throat reprovingly, but Mettus merely tossed a data display into Liz's lap.
/*\\
From: Sato, H. To: Phlox; Cutler, E.
Morello, H. - deceased, KIA Boschmann, F. - deceased, KIA Cole, A. - deceased, KIA
Reed, M. - Injured, critical - Denobula Harper, A - AWOL- Denobula
Denobula under quarantine from all Coalition worlds.
END.
/*\\
Liz rose to her feet and shouted for Phlox.
"Just gave you the slip, did she?" Travis asked sharply, the moment Hoshi stepped into his room.
"Travis, could you just...not?" Hoshi replied, sinking onto the bed. It wasn't so much that the captain's questioning had been grueling, it had been almost startlingly perfunctory. But, it had been a long and bitter day.
In the end, there had been no laser scalpels in the story Hoshi had told, no generated injuries on her body. Although she appreciated that there was no point throwing two careers away instead of one, she had simply not found herself willing to Alice Harper as a dangerous criminal.
So she'd simply said that Alice had given her the slip and had managed to transport down before Hoshi could raise the alarm. The only problem was that this story would not survive a casual inspection of the transporter logs, which would clearly show Hoshi operating the transporter.
It was a mess, definitely. But regretting her actions? That was a non-starter.
"These are my quarters, and I'll say what I like in them, " Travis replied, or rather, seethed.
Slowly, Hoshi pulled herself back to a sitting position. "I can leave if you like, Travis."
Travis smiled coldly. "Are you sure? You don't have quite so many options about where to go now, do you?"
"Stop it, Travis," Hoshi growled.
"I won't. You risked your career, and therefore, OUR LIVES TOGETHER. WIthout even talking to me first. For HIM."
Hoshi narrowed her eyes. "That's enough."
"More than enough, I'd say," Travis answered, before standing up, and walking out the door.
At twenty minutes to midnight, Sayden sent his carefully crafted document to every major news-wave service in the Denobulan Capital.
He'd manufactured the evidence within it, but it also happened to be perfectly true: That the contagion that was killing mothers and late-term foetuses also caused widespread infertility. And that the Denobulan government was suppressing this information from the Denobulan public.
Twenty minutes felt like long enough to make the broadcasts, but not long enough for any widespread government intervention.
Then he waited.
"Do you mind?" the server asked, just before midnight, while indicating the news-wave receiver.
"Not at all," Sayden replied with a broad smile. "In fact, I'd quite like to watch."
And sure enough, there it was. Top story.
The first would-be refugees arrived at the border about thirty minutes later. Over the next hour or so, a crowd began to accumulate. Denied exit, many of the children were escorted back home, but the adults remained, forming an impromptu protest demonstration.
By now the border guards would be calling for reinforcements, Sayden thought. But all the official services were overtaxed by the health emergency and those reinforcements would not be here quickly.
Just before two hours past midnight, Sayden got up from his table and strolled behind the counter where the server was watching a televised account of the protest happening right outside his door.
"Can't come back here, friend," the server replied absently.
"Duck," Sayden replied, still smiling, and bent down behind the counter.
A second later the street full of protesters were engulfed in fire, and a large shard of glass was embedded in the server's throat.
As the man gaped his final breaths, he stared at Sayden with horror.
"Well, I did tell you to duck," Sayden reproached. "Although I suppose I said it in Valakian didn't I?"
With that, Sayden stepped out into the carnage, and disappeared over the border, and into the night.