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“Wow,” she heard him whisper as he struggled to catch his breath. “Now I know what a supernova feels like up close and personal.”

Trip’s offhand remark made T’Pol wonder what sort of future might lie ahead for them as a couple. Indeed, a supernova might indeed be an apt analogy for their unlikely relationship: preternaturally bright and hot, yet ultimately destructive and short-lived.

Where could they go from here? And how long could they stay there?

She decided it didn’t matter. We’ve crossed the Rubicon, let the bridge be burned behind me, come what may, she thought, borrowing the half-remembered phrase from a long-dead leader of an extinct empire from Trip’s homeworld. Or perhaps she had mentally “overheard” Trip thinking the very same thing during the meld.

Setting aside her personal concerns, T’Pol decided to tend to an even more urgent issue to which the mind-meld had alerted her. Raising herself up onto one elbow, she looked him straight in the eye.

“Trip, why didn’t you say anything earlier about your encounter with Sopek at Achernar?”

He turned and looked at her strangely. Then a look of discomfited realization crossed his face. “I don’t know. I guess it must have slipped my mind somehow. Funny.”

T’Pol knew from their meld what he meant, but she also knew that he knew something wasn’t right.

“You thought only of us.” she said. “But you do remember your encounter with Sopek now?”

“Sure. I’ve been at the business end of that guy’s disruptor too many times to forget about him for very long. This time he took all three of us prisoner, me, Ych’a, and Terix.”

As before, she sensed no willful evasion on Trip’s part. “And do you recall precisely how you freed yourselves, and reached Achernar II afterward?”

He appeared to consider her question for a moment. Then his eyes grew large with evident alarm, ratcheting up her suspicion to a nearly palpable certainty.

Something was indeed very, very wrong.

Once again, Tevik closed his eyes. Long, delicate fingers touched his face, probed his temples. And moments thereafter he floated in a cool, dark void, a familiar place that both comforted and smothered him. He tried to relax, as Ych’a advised. Tevik sought peace.

No. Not Tevik. Not the spy. The soldier.

I am Terix. Centurion of Admiral Valdore’s Fifth Legion, in the service of our glorious Praetor D’deridex. Centurion Terix!

Then he began remembering things. Or rather, things were being forced into his memory. Tevik’s first bowl of plomeek soup, and his pet sehlat. Tevik’s kahs-wan ordeal. His abortive first term at the Vulcan Science Academy. Tevik’s perilous ascent of the L-langon Mountains during his Vulcan basic military training—

—and as he neared the summit, a gleaming dathe’anofv-sen, a traditional Romulan Honor Blade, appeared in his hand. He thrust it into the mountainside, to no effect. He clung to the blade, even after he lost his footing and fell off the slope. He tumbled back into the embrace of the void, at which he slashed ineffectually with his blade.

Perhaps he could not slay the corrupting influence of the void with a sword. But he could shout his name into it.

I am Centurion Terix!

The sound of a brief, pained shout instantly snapped Trip out of the afterglow and into a state of total alertness.

“Did you hear that, or did I dream it?” he said as he rolled out of bed and began searching the floor for his hastily discarded trousers and traveling robe.

“I heard it as well,” T’Pol said. She rose from the tangle of bedsheets and quickly recovered her own clothing.

Moments later, Trip stood disheveled but decent beside a much tidier-looking T’Pol in the house’s broad central living area. Terix— Trip still had trouble thinking of him as Tevik of Vulcan—sat on the low sofa, flanked by Ych’a and Denak, each of whom had applied both hands to one of Terix’s temples, their digits splayed like crab legs on either side of the centurion’s head.