Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [33]
Nikolas wondered which wish that was, but only for a moment. Then, as the answer dawned on him, he got the feeling that there was someone standing behind him.
No, he thought. It’s not possible…
Whirling, he saw the woman he thought he would never see again. The woman he loved. The woman who had come from another universe and returned to it the same way, taking his every possibility of happiness with her.
Gerda Idun.
Nikolas shook his head. Brakmaktin was powerful, but he couldn’t reach across the barriers separating one dimension from the next. No one could.
Still, it was Gerda Idun standing in front of him, exactly as he remembered her, wearing the same gray leather vest and boots in which she had first transported onto the Stargazer.
But how could it be her? She had gone back where she came from, to a universe where humanity was fighting for its life against an alliance of Klingons and Cardassians.
He knew that with a certainty. And yet, he couldn’t help drinking in the sight of her.
“Andreas,” she said, in a voice that was unmistakably hers. Her brow furrowed. “I’ve missed you…”
Nikolas felt a tingle travel the length of his spine. Despite what he knew, he wanted Gerda Idun to be real—wanted it as he had never wanted anything in his life.
Crossing the bridge, he approached her. And the closer he got, the more obvious it became that she was real—a being made of flesh and blood, just like Nikolas himself.
Not an illusion or a dream. A reality.
Stopping in front of her, he looked into her sea-blue eyes. They were real, too. And he couldn’t deny the spark of intelligence that resided in them.
“Andreas,” she said again, and smiled. Then she brushed his hand with her own.
He reached for her fingers, to intertwine them with his. “It’s me,” he confirmed. “But how—?”
Before he finished getting the words out, he realized that something was wrong. Gerda Idun was fading, becoming unsubstantial. He grabbed at her hand but felt nothing there.
“What’s happening?” she asked, dread and disappointment mingling in her tone.
Nikolas didn’t know. But then, he didn’t know how she had gotten there in the first place.
“No!” he insisted. He turned to Brakmaktin, heat rising in his face. “No, dammit!”
But it didn’t help. When he turned back to Gerda Idun, she was airier and more poorly defined than a hologram.
“Stop!” he shouted, as if he could will her into existence as Brakmaktin had. “Come back!”
She kept fading, though, eluding his attempts to make her whole. And in a heartbeat, she was gone altogether.
Nikolas whimpered like a dog. She had been there. He had felt her. It wasn’t an illusion—it was her.
And now she was gone again, returned to whatever place Brakmaktin had plucked her from—wondering how she had seen Nikolas again when that was impossible, and what it all meant.
He slumped against a bulkhead, feeling desolate, hollowed out. It was even worse than the first time he had lost her. And then it occurred to him—that was exactly what Brakmaktin had intended.
Darting a glance at the alien, he saw that he was right. Brakmaktin was studying his misery with a certain satisfaction—the kind a child might take from crushing an ant.
Destroy me, the alien said in Nikolas’s mind.
He was taking his revenge for what the human had said about Brakmaktin needing him, cruelly reminding Nikolas of who had power over whom.
Like a child, the human thought again. A petty, irrational child.
For a while, it had seemed that Brakmaktin was growing more distant, more aloof. Not anymore. Now he was becoming the kind of being who derived pleasure from the pain of others.
And that made him more dangerous to everyone alive.
Chapter Eight
PICARD STOOD IN THE Iktoj’ni’s main cargo bay and surveyed the corpses laid out before him. Joseph was right, he told himself. They could only have been assembled this way by someone who cared about them.
The away team had discovered fifteen other corpses scattered about the ship, either in their quarters or elsewhere—three in the mess