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Indeed, he did know. In the center of the room lay a large, colorful throw rug. David grabbed the edge and threw it aside, revealing the floor’s wooden slats beneath. Saavik kneeled, setting her palms upon the floor, and found a hidden latch. She turned it, and a hidden trap door was revealed. The aperture swung open with a creak, exposing a dark shaft that fell away into nothingness.

Together they approached the long shelves and began to selectively remove volumes from the stacks. David held a book in each hand: Biochemical Modification of Ecological Systems, and Principles of the Meta-Genome. He tossed both into the hole in the floor. Saavik removed Molecular Waveform Reorganization and Propagated Metastasis from the shelf, and they followed the others into the darkness beneath their feet. As a well-coordinated team, they pored over the contents of the library and, one by one, removed anything that might reveal David’s intimate knowledge of the secret Genesis technology, and concealed it within the hidden vault.

Once they were satisfied, they closed and sealed the trap door, the seams around the opening disappearing into the gaps between the floorboards, and Saavik pulled the rug back into place.

As they stood in the center of the room, David looked around, assessing what they had accomplished. The shelves about him were by no means bare-in fact, they’d worked to eliminate any large gaps that might arouse suspicion. But now for the first time, David became aware that something significant had been changed within his memory. The science, his research, the myriad experiments that made up the Genesis Project…all that knowledge was gone from his mind. He could hardly remember what the project even entailed, except for what he had discovered during their recent investigation of the Genesis Planet.

Saavik, he said, though at some level he realized that he wasn’t actually speaking the words. It’s all gone! It’s…it’s my whole life’s work, and I can’t remember any of it!

Relax, Saavik assured him. The knowledge is still buried deep within your subconscious. It can be retrieved. But now it is important that you assume the role…

“Hey! None of that in the brig! Keep your hands to yourselves!”

David spun around to see Torg standing at the entrance to the library with two guards close behind him. As the Klingons approached, the tranquil image of the room around him began to shift, losing focus and cohesion, until the illusion completely faded away. David was still seated in their cell aboard the Katai, and Saavik was still gently holding his head between her fingertips. Torg forcefully placed his arm between them and shoved Saavik aside, and she fell backward onto the hard surface of the metal bench. Infuriated, David lunged at Torg, but the other two guards each grabbed an arm and easily restrained him.

“Don’t try to be a hero, human,” Torg admonished him. “If you cooperate, there’s a slim chance that you may get out of here alive.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I have trouble believing you,” David shot back.

“David!” Saavik said, having pulled herself back up to a sitting position. “You need to cooperate. Just do what they ask. After all, we have nothing to hide.”

He stared at her, and realized that she was right. His mind felt as barren as an empty house, once lived in as a home, but now bereft of all furnishings except for bare hooks on the walls and stained carpets on the floor. There was nothing left to be hidden.

David Marcus made no effort to resist as Torg strapped restraints onto his arms and legs as he lay face-up on the cold steel table in the Katai sickbay. He felt mildly nauseous as the odor of charred flesh and ozone still hung in the air from the earlier “treatment” of his amputated limb, and the pain still left him in a terribly weakened state. But even if he still had the strength left to fight, this was the fate to which he had resigned himself. This was the risk that Saavik had asked him to take, and he was willing to gamble his safety for her, not to mention