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The captain, who had been drifting off to sleep on one of the encampment’s extra cots, turned at the sound of his name and saw Hanafaejas kneeling beside him. The Kevrata’s facial fur was matted with melted snow, a sign that he had recently come from the city above.

“What is it?” the captain asked, propping himself up on an elbow.

“I have news for you.”

Picard felt his jaw muscles ripple. “Doctor Crusher?”

“Yes,” said Hanafaejas. “She is alive.”

The captain let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He had never heard better news in all his life. “Where is she?”

“At the house of a rebel-one who has chosen to remain aboveground, and serve as our eyes and ears.”

“Will she be safe there?” Picard wondered.

Hanafaejas wrinkled the skin around his nose. “As safe as anywhere on Kevratas. If I were you, I would let her remain there until you leave us.”

Picard considered the option, then nodded. “Thank your associate for his help, and let him know that Doctor Crusher will be his guest a little longer.”

“I will see to it,” said the rebel, and went to make good on his promise.

And Picard got up to tell his team the news. Beverly was alive. Alive. And if she had ever been in the hands of the Romulans, she was there no longer.

He would have preferred to have her join him in the warrens, but he trusted Hanafaejas’s judgment. Besides, it would have been a risk to take her through the streets with Sela’s men on the lookout for her-not only to Beverly, but to the rebels as well.

Better to exercise patience, he thought, as he set out to look for Pug. Now that he knew Beverly was alive, he could endure anything.

Commander Sela squinted against the blast of wind-driven snow, aimed her disruptor at the fist-sized stone sitting on the ancient wall, and squeezed the trigger.

A beam no wider than one of her pupils leaped across the intervening fifty meters and vaporized the stone, leaving nothing but a puff of smoke in its place. Sela admired her work for a moment. Then she took aim at the next stone, a meter to the right of the first one.

Aim. Squeeze. Poof. Like its predecessor, the stone was gone but for a faint twist of gray.

It was a game to which Sela had challenged herself, up there on the roof of her borrowed fortress, every day since her arrival on Kevratas. She had missed her target only once in all that time-just after she learned of Doctor Crusher’s escape.

She had been angry then, frustrated by her underlings’ ineptitude. Little did she know how much more frustrated she would become-when her centurions began showing symptoms of the Kevrata’s disease. Suddenly, it was no longer merely a local problem. It was one that might affect the rest of the Empire as well.

And the praetor would have read Sela’s latest report by then, so she would know about Crusher’s capture. It would only be natural for her to ask why the commander hadn’t extracted the cure from her prisoner before matters got out of hand.

Sela took aim at another stone. A moment later, it was but a wisp of molecular debris.

Strangely, there were no indications that she had contracted the disease herself. Not even a single bump. One of the few benefits of mixed parentage, she supposed.

But other Romulans were not so fortunate. It was of the utmost importance to get her hands on a vaccine, or someone who could produce one. Someone like Doctor Crusher. Or perhaps the other physician, who had come to Kevratas with Captain Picard.

Sela smiled to herself. No doubt the captain believed he was safe from her scrutiny. But he was mistaken. She knew exactly where he was-he and those who had come to this world with him.

They were in the warrens under the old castle, hiding like rodents. The physician among them had set up a laboratory there to provide the Kevrata with a cure.

As a matter of fact, he was making great progress. Before long, his work would be complete.

And how did Sela know all this? How was she able to divine the insurrectionists’ intentions? She knew because she had a spy whose job was to keep