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Killed him?

Tears welled in her eyes at the thought and spilled down her cheeks. At once Moset dabbed at them with a soft cloth, looking unduly distressed.

“There, there, dear, please don’t cry, I don’t mean to frighten you. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you keep breathing and that your heart continues to beat. Poor child. I’d sedate you if I could, but we really must be able to monitor your brainwaves while you’re conscious or else we will have gone to all this trouble for nothing.”

She watched him, her eyes fixed and staring, as he moved in and out of her range of vision. Humming something. She heard the snip of scissors or shears, she couldn’t tell which, and then the buzz of a razor.

“I like the older tools,” Moset was saying, as if she cared, as if she wasn’t terrified and helpless and being violated. “I like the contact. I think modern medicine and research has wandered too far away from that sort of intimacy between doctor and patient.”

In and out of her field of vision he drifted, reaching in to touch her skull, his fingers coming away red, humming, humming the song about the frightened maiden, and then came the descent of agony, not blocked by the paralysis—

Sekaya gasped and tried to bolt upright, slamming painfully against the restraints.

“Sekaya!”

Chakotay—

It took a few seconds for her to remember. She was not aboard Moset’s ship in orbit about Dorvan V. She was with Chakotay, her brother, deep underground on a distant world. Sekaya lay back, trying to gather her thoughts and not let the primal terror overwhelm her. Moset was not a fool. She’d need all her wits about her if she and her brother were to get out of this alive. Even as she had the thought, another came hard on its heels: But you’re not going to get out of this alive.

She looked around. They were alone, for the moment. “Where is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Chakotay, keeping his voice soft. “He left just a few moments ago.”

She turned to look at him. Part of his head was shaved and there were glowing inserts implanted in his skull. Sekaya couldn’t feel hers, but she was willing to bet she had them, too. She suppressed a shudder.

“Sekaya, was this what he did to you on Dorvan V?” Chakotay asked.

“Among other things.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Have you learned anything?”

“Not much,” her brother replied. “Sekky, this is important. Did he perform an analysis on everyone on our world?”

She nodded. “Everyone. He seemed most interested in those from our tribe, though. But even new mothers were required to bring in their infants. The only person he didn’t get was you, because you weren’t there.”

“He knows about the Sky Spirits,” said Chakotay. “Both of them do. Ellis—Katal—the Changeling used the chamozi as bait to get me down here.” He laid his head back down on the bed.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the blinking green and blue lights in his skull.

“So much makes sense now. Ellis seemed a bit upset when I ordered him to lead the away team, which puzzled me at the time. That decision was by-the-book regulations. He ought to have been delighted. When I made it clear that I wasn’t planning to visit the surface, he had to think of another way to get me here.”

He turned to look at her again. “Sekaya, I’m so sorry I dragged you along. You shouldn’t be part of this.”

“It’s all right,” she said, and meant the words despite her terror. “I can help.”

Chakotay sighed. “I’m not sure anyone can.” He paused, his face thoughtful. “Our doctor created a holographic simulation of Moset.”

“Yes, I remember you said that.”

“It was based only on the information we had at the time. There was a lot about Moset we didn’t know, that we found out later.”

“How close a version was it, do you think?”

“Very close indeed. The simulation had an ego. He liked to think of what he did as heroic, as advancing the sciences and helping people. He was a classic example of ‘the end justifies the means’ thinking.”

Sekaya recalled Moset’s face hovering over hers, concerned