Something had changed. Malcolm wasn't sure what it was, but something was definitely about to happen. For one thing, there were no visits from Saruman and his protégé. But more ominous than that was that there was no food. Only water. Hoshi had confirmed that they hadn't fed her either. Malcolm hadn't replied after that. He didn't want to scare her.

He had several ideas on why the natives would stop feeding them. None of them were good. They might be trying to see how long their captives could live without food. They might be getting ready to kill and dissect them. They might be preparing to transport them somewhere else. Which on the surface didn't sound as bad as the other two. But what was unknown could be more dangerous than what was known. And then, there was surgery. Except in emergencies, doctors always ordered a fast before surgery.

He was wary then when the door opened the next morning. Saruman and a smaller one entered and checked him over no differently than before. Until Saruman grabbed both of his arms in his large, three-fingered hands. The smaller one quickly stuck a needle into his shoulder and emptied a syringe of something into it.

Instantly, he started to feel heavier. He tried to get out of Saruman's grip. He even tried to kick him, but the smaller one--Grima, his sluggish mind provided--clamped his fingers around both his legs and held them firm. Please, he thought, whatever happens, leave Hoshi out of it. Within seconds, there was no longer any fight in him. He couldn't even hold his head up. He tried to keep his eyes open though and saw the door opened again to allow a table of some sort in. Saruman and Grima lifted him easily onto it and laid him down onto its cold metal surface. Everything went dark at that point.

It had gone easier than Baezhu thought it would. They had both seemed trusting, to a point. The male certainly had seemed more alert when they had entered. And he had tried, weakly, to fight when Dr. Bishtae grabbed him. But really, Baezhu had had worse experience with daka, non-sentient mammals half this size. The female was a little more difficult, as they didn't want to reinjure her ribs, which might still be weakened from her injuries. But in both cases, they were now lying quietly asleep on their respective surgical gurneys.

The large surgical room had been chosen and prepped the day before. Both gurneys were rolled in and set securely in place next to the two large machines, a respirator and a coronary replacement.

Hinath was assigned to Dr. Burha who led the team who would examine the female. Baezhu was assigned to Dr. Bishtae and the team examining the male. As Lesser Wingeds, they were to provide support and minor assistance. Baezhu wasted no time, taking the male's pulse and blood pressure readings as a baseline for the coronary replacement. He took several readings, realizing that it was the most important aspect of life support.

That done, Dr. Enesh began to set up both machines while Dr. Bishtae inserted the tube which would allow the respirator to breathe for the subject. Dr. Kinah began the anesthetic IV drips which would keep both subjects unconscious for the duration.

Hoshi woke up to a sharp pain in her chest. She screamed but heard nothing but alien voices. She couldn't even draw in a breath to scream. In spite of the searing pain running down the length of her sternum, her breaths came in even, almost mechanical regularity. She couldn't change it even to gasp, though the pain was enough to take her breath away. She would have disobeyed Reed's order for silence if she could only move her mouth. She could feel something hard on her tongue.

She tried to move her hands, her feet, anything, but nothing even twitched. She couldn't even open her eyes. It was like she was locked inside a body that wouldn't obey her. Like it was someone else's body. Only she felt and heard everything. She became aware of a loud buzzing sound moving toward her and then pressure in her chest. She had never felt so much pain before. Surely it was enough to kill her, to cause her heart to stop, or to send her into shock.

The buzzing stopped and she felt something reach inside of her. Stop! she sobbed--in her mind. She couldn't make anything else work. Suddenly, it was all worse. The pressure in her chest went the other way, pulling out on her ribs. She heard them crack. She felt a draft underneath her agony and realized they had opened her chest.

God, she prayed, not caring about whether or not there was one to pray to, please let me die.

Don't they even know? Malcolm wondered for the thousandth time in what seemed an eternity. I'm awake! But he could do nothing to make them aware. He couldn't move the slightest voluntary muscle and all the involuntary ones just kept humming along as if his body wasn't a bottomless pit of pain. His chest hurt unimaginably, but his right hand felt as if it had been put through a meat shredder. His whole arm had been sliced up, as had one of his legs. What they did to the rest of him--what he imagined because he could only hear and feel--was enough to make him wretch, but he couldn't even do that. My God, he realized, they're dissecting me but they won't let me die first.

Won't let him die. He would have given up that ghost a million times over by now, if they had given him the opportunity. He was cold. He was burning everywhere they touched, and he was sure he should have bled to death by now. But, of course, they had collected his blood.

Suddenly, his right eye opened and the nightmarish ordeal sank to an even deeper level. He couldn't move his eye to turn it or to let them know he was awake. He couldn't even see clearly. The light above them was so bright it hurt. But he saw a three-fingered hand reaching for him, coming closer and closer. Something cold pushed into his eye socket just above his lower eyelid. If he could have screamed, he would have. The pressure built up so that he couldn't see past the pain anyway until suddenly the pressure was gone. The pain was not.

Just kill me! he screamed to them silently, and he begged for at least the dark peace of unconsciousness. But that was long in coming. He felt them replace his eye, though now he could barely see anything. They closed it for him and he wished they'd close down everything. His heart, his lungs, or whatever machines were keeping him alive.

Finally, the pain ebbed away on a wave of heavy darkness and he hoped it meant he was dead.

By the time Doctors Bishtae and Burha had finished, there was only an hour remaining to Baezhu's shift. Both aliens were now sleeping in a special room set up with life-support and anesthesia not too different from the surgical room. Yet it was meant to be more comfortable for them. Instead of hard tables, they rested on pressure foam mattresses and pillows for their heads and knees. Of course, both were so drugged with pain killers now that they wouldn't even feel the mattresses. Even then, knowing so little about their capacity for narcotics required round-the-clock observation.

Either one might be dead before tomorrow's shift, he realized. But if even one survived, today's examination had given them--and would continue to do so--so much more information on their physiology that Bishtae was confident they could keep the aliens viable through further examinations and experiments. Already, they had learned enough to make anatomical drawings. There were, of course, deeper studies needed to accurately depict the heart and brain, for example. But to continue on immediately would stretch their chances of viability too thin. As it was, there were many variables that would have to be monitored carefully, like infection, clotting, hemorrhaging, or simply shock.

To control the first, the room was kept as near to sterile as they could possibly manage, and antibiotics were administered intravenously. Only foods known to cause no allergic reactions in the male would be used in the feeding tubes to guard that variable as well. For clotting and hemorrhaging, blood pressure was monitored constantly. Any abnormal rise or drop would signal a problem, but also ultrasound technology was used to visually check veins and arteries to ensure blood flowed properly.

Shock was the harder variable to control. It really varied so widely between individuals. Thus the doctors had all agreed that induced comas were the best option at this point.

Kahrae caught him at breakfast the next morning. "They survivied the night?"

"Yes and it's good," Baezhu replied. "Every day we keep them alive teaches us something. Even if they are comatose."

"What did you do in the big exam?" Kahrae asked. "You opened them up, right?"

"Top to bottom," Baezhu concurred. "Of course, we still have to analyze it all, but it was amazing! They're so different in some ways, and so alike in others. I mean, their hearts for example. They're smaller than ours but appear to have four chambers just like ours do."

"Maybe they're more like me," Kahrae said, surprising Baezhu.

"What do you mean?"

"The desert," Kahrae replied as he pushed back his now clean plate. "I've been thinking about it. They crashed one day and were found the next. In the desert. You couldn't survive a night out there."

Baezhu's breath caught in his throat. He hadn't even thought of that before. "But you can. They're warm-blooded."

"Or at least warmer-blooded," Kahrae corrected. "Don't want to jump to any assumptions, do we?"

Baezhu smiled. "Are you sure you're not growing wings back there?" He made a point of trying to see behind Kahrae's back. "You know we still don't know the long-term effects of genetically engineering a new species of Raptor."

"Very funny. My father did warn me about spending too much time with Wingeds and Monitors. Said they'd rub off on me."

"I was wondering when you'd notice," Bishtae said when Baezhu told him about his friend's hypothesis.

"I did notice their core temperatures were generally stable," Baezhu admitted. "But then, we keep the environment stable. My temperature is stable and I'm cold-blooded."

"A good point," Bishtae agreed. "And one that we can test once they are more stable. The male's blood has always tended to be somewhat warmer than the room temperature however, so I think our suspicions will win out."

"Would that be how they survive the cold of space?" Baezhu pondered.

"Perhaps a leap too far, my boy." Bishtae began to step into his clean suit. "We don't have any idea of their technology. Their skin, however, seems hardly thick enough to stand the vacuum. So I guess they had some environmental control of their ship. It could shield them from cold and retain a certain level of pressure, for example."

"But without a ship to study,..." Baezhu began.

"Or their voices to tell us,..." Bishtae added.

"We'll never know for sure."

Bishtae nodded and slipped his helmet on. He waited until Baezhu was sealed as well and stepped into the first airlock. "Well, I know they won't be talking today," he said. He had to speak up to be heard over the cleanser beam.

Baezhu closed his eyes against the brightness and felt the intense heat as the cleanser beam neutralized any microbes he might be carrying on the outside of his suit. The outer edges of his skin tingled and just began to register pain when the beam stopped and the second door opened, allowing the cooler air of the post-surgery room to waft in.

The routine stayed very much the same for a week. He and Dr. Bishtae would check on the subjects' conditions first thing in the morning and midway through the day. Dr. Burha would then do the same in the afternoon and evening, while Dr. Enesh had agreed to stay overnight in order to monitor them until Bishtae returned. Between checks, the doctors pored over notes, photographs, and tissue samples, trying to piece together the puzzle of these two creatures' lives.

Dr. Enesh believed they could see in three dimensions and in color, based on the composition of the eye, the number of rods, and the placement of the cornea. They probably also had a wide visual horizontal field, seeing as they have no biological impediments except to the rear. The vertical field was slightly more limited by the placement of the eyes on the skull. In addition, they had no second skin to protect the eye, leaving them vulnerable to dust, sand, or other intrusions.

Other studies confirmed what was already known, putting reasons to already witnessed attributes. The aliens walked upright. Their spines curved only slightly from neck to coccyx. The legs were longer than the arms, and the neck muscles were placed such that they were strongest when the head was held above the body. Likewise, the musculature of the legs and the structures of the foot showed balance would be carried straight up. They were built to walk upright.

Which left their arms and hands free for other things. Their arms were almost as strong as a Lesser Raptor's arms, comparatively, but not as strong as Winged arms. A Raptor's strength was mainly in his legs and jaws. They were built for running and killing with their teeth. A Winged's strength was in its arms, where the vestiges of flight remained. Unencumbered, Baezhu's people could still fly very short distances, though in the ancient past they had crossed the planet from continent to continent via the skies. Thus, they were the most homogenous sentients in the world.

The aliens had neither the arms for flight nor the claws and teeth of a pure predator. Their five fingers on each hand--and opposable thumbs and large brains--meant that they had a level of dexterity beyond any known species. These were a people that could reach technological heights as yet closed to the Wingeds.

"Dr. Bishtae said that's why we haven't yet put a man on the moon," Baezhu told his friend. "It's not for lack of knowledge. We can dream it. We just can't make it light enough. To be light, the components have to be small. We have to build machines to make things on so small a scale."

Kahrae nodded, clearly thinking it through. "Like computers. The chips and boards get smaller and smaller."

"Yes," Baezhu agreed, "but they're still too big and heavy to get much more than a small satellite up there."

A brightness melted back into the blackness that had surrounded and comforted him. Sounds followed. Beeps and whirrs in an otherwise sea of quiet. Awareness peeled back the layers of sleep and Malcolm Reed woke up.

He blinked in the bright light and absently began to wonder where he was. The ceiling was high and white, and it was all he could see. He tried to lift his head but found he was too weak to do so. And then he realized his sight was funny. Something was missing. And then the memories slammed into him, and the beeping closest to him increased its rhythm.

His eye. They had removed his eye. Instinctively, he reached up to touch it but his arm wouldn't move. The beeping sped up again, but slowed somewhat when he realized he could blink. It wasn't like before. He lifted his left arm and found it obeyed, if awkwardly. He ended up slapping himself in the face, but he accomplished what he had intended. He felt the bandage covering his right eye. It was there. He could feel the pressure of his fingers. He let out a sigh. They had put it back. It was no guarantee that he would ever see out of it again, but it was better than having it ripped from his head. That thought spurred the memory again and increased the beeping, and he knew it for his pulse. He could feel it pounding in his chest.

But he didn't feel pain. Now they give me painkillers, he thought. Bastards. He felt ill and still couldn't bring himself to even be happy to be alive. He didn't want to live with the memory of the agony and the imaginary images of what he hadn't seen. He was helpless still under their control. What was there to feed a desire to survive? He was caught in a never-ending nightmare.

The machine beside him was in a frenzy as the tremors began to shake him. And then it clacked, his heart stopped pounding, and a warm liquid entered the side of his neck. The machine commenced again the same rhythm he had woken up to and his thoughts grew fuzzy.

Life-support. They were keeping him alive. The machine, he realized, had taken over for his racing heart. He let his left hand, still touching the bandages on his eye, slide down to the right side of his neck, and he felt a plastic tube there. It pulsated with each beep of the machine.

The idea hit him and he wasted no time contemplating it. He would not have to lie helpless while they cut him open again. He wasn't paralyzed this time. His fingertips pulled on the tube but slipped off, so he turned his head to offer a better grip.

He froze. There was another bed a little more than a yard away. And Hoshi lay sleeping on it. A steady beat emanated from her own machine, and he knew that they had done the same to her. He let his hand fall.

Hoshi had tried telling herself that she was dreaming for hours. She was used to having some cognitive powers over her dreams. Lucid dreaming. She even tried telling her captors that, the bird-like creatures stabbing and slicing her. But she hadn't been able to make them go away or change herself to a different place. Or even to wake up.

Maybe that was because she really didn't want to wake up. The cognitive part of her mind was conflicted. It knew the nightmare for what it was, but it also remembered when it had been real and was disappointed that it could remember anything.

Eventually, in spite of her semiconscious struggle, her senses became aware that her body wasn't feeling what she was experiencing. The sounds of her dreams slipped away to quiet with gentle patterns of beeps and whirrs. The knives wielded by her tormentors ceased to cut or cause pain. She felt nothing except a dull ache over most of her body. The creatures themselves finally faded away and, out of curiosity, she opened her eyes.

And promptly shut them again against the bright light hanging overhead. Then it hit her. She had survived. Her eyes began to water. She hadn't wanted that. Why should she want life when it only set her up for more agony? It wasn't worth what they had done to her. The images of her nightmare returned in vivid clarity to punctuate that point.

She heard more than felt herself let out a choked sob. She tried to lift her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes but only one would move. It was weak and heavy so she turned her head to meet it. And when she opened her eyes again, the nightmare faded. Someone was looking back at her.

Malcolm. His hair was long and he had a scruffy beard, but she still recognized him instantly. One of his eyes was covered by a white, gauzy patch, and the one remaining kept rolling up under his eyelid. But she could tell he was forcing it to stay open. He had tubes in the side of his neck, two of which were dark. They connected to a machine behind his head that was beeping regularly. Then she realized another was beeping a little faster above her head, and she let her fingers brush the left side of her own neck. The tears came again when she found the tubes protruding there.

Malcolm moved, drawing her attention back to him. His left arm, bare and untouched, reached out to her across the space between their beds. She swung her own arm out and met his fingers with her own. He squeezed her hand gently and then closed his eye again.

Hoshi wanted to say something, but it wasn't so much his order that kept her from it. Her mouth was too dry and her throat too constricted as she began to cry in earnest. She found she was glad he was there but felt guilty for it, knowing that he was put through this same hell. She knew now that there was no hope. She thought before that the natives were nice enough, even though they kept her and Malcolm locked up. She was wrong. And she had wondered why Captain Archer hadn't come yet. She knew now he wouldn't be coming. Malcolm wouldn't find some ingenious way to break them free, and they had nowhere to go if he could. This was it. Hell. And the only good she could come up with was tainted with guilt. Malcolm was in hell, too, and she wasn't alone.

Baezhu anxiously followed Dr. Bishtae into the post-surgical room. They were awake. He was glad. While they had gained a lot of data that still needed analysis, it had grown rather dull watching the aliens sleep. Even better than their consciousness, however, was the evidence of interaction between the two. They might just get lucky enough to learn something of the creatures' culture.

"I'm concerned about the secretions from the female's eyes," Dr. Bishtae said. "Did Dr. Enesh mention anything in his ocular analysis?"

The male was sleeping soundly again to Baezhu's chagrin. The female, however, watched them with wide eyes oozing a clear liquid onto her cheeks. Her coronary replacement device clicked on and calmed her pulse which had begun to race. "He did see ducts near the eye which he presumed kept the surface of the eye moist. He noted it dried outside the ocular pit."

Dr. Bishtae reached toward the female's face with a swab to take a sample. "I wonder, then, why she is overproducing it." The female released the male's hand to try and swipe Dr. Bishtae away, but the doctor merely held her arm back as he took the sample. When he released her, she hastily wiped at her eyes with her fingers. Her hand was shaking.

"She seemed frightened," Baezhu suggested. "I know that may be reading my culture into her expressions, but it also seems appropriate to the situation. She probably doesn't understand what's going on."

"True enough," Dr. Bishtae agreed. "The hand-holding could be a source of comfort. Perhaps we should move their beds a bit closer. As they heal, they may interact more. They might even communicate with each other."

That decided, the beds were moved until there was barely a foot and a half between them. Dr. Bishtae had reasoned that the affected limbs were on the outside, so it didn't really matter if he or Baezhu could fit between the beds anymore. "Let's get them rolled over, Baezhu," he said finally, satisfied with the aliens' conditions. "We don't want them getting pressure sores."

The female was sedated again by the time Baezhu turned her onto her right side, bending her right leg slightly and placing a pillow between her knees. He stepped back to check the alignment of her spine and then adjusted the board her left arm was strapped to so that it rested in front of her on her knee. Dr. Bishtae had turned the male as well, so when they awoke they would see each other easily.

Dr. Burha would be by later to change their bandages, so Dr. Bishtae signed off on their charts and collected his sample. Baezhu followed him out gladly. It was late and he hated the suits they had to wear. Still, he was happy overall. A new stage had dawned, and they were finally getting some answers.

Kahrae watched the stars as he watched the front gate with Nishet. "You think there'll be another one?" Nishet suddenly asked, kicking at the sand at his feet.

"Another what?" Kahrae asked, though he thought he knew the answer. He just wasn't sure how much Nishet knew.

"Meteorite," Nishet replied. "I hear it's got the Wingeds all in an uproar. What'd they do, find some new kind of metal?"

"Not sure," Kahrae lied. "I haven't been watching the news much lately."

Nishet gave him a knowing look. "Too busy thinking about breeding season?"

Kahrae chuckled. He'd be lying again to say he never gave that any thought. "Any rumors on the quotas this Turn?"

"Nothing definite," Nishet replied, still keeping his eyes on the horizon. "But with our problems with Buftanis, I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted more Raptors."

"Ah, but what about Cold Raptors?"

Nishet smiled and looked over at him. "We, my friend, are a revolution, a step forward in evolution. There has been an increase every breeding season for the last six Turns. We can no longer expect our world to turn only in the daylight. Heck, I think they might start making Cold Wingeds next."

"We've got a shot then," Kahrae concluded. "I had no marks this Turn. I don't want to miss out again."

"I've been written up twice, but I still think I've got a chance," Nishet admitted. "They need more Cold Raptor DNA in the pool so they won't have to keep tinkering with the eggs."

"My friend, Baezhu, thinks Colds could be birthed naturally within four Turns."

"That's right," Nishet said. "You've got a Winged friend. I hear Dr. Bishtae is really taking him under. And with the doctor's prestige going up since that meteorite, your friend's almost guaranteed a spot. Hey, maybe he can find out the quotas."

Kahrae started to say that he'd ask when something caught his eye. "What's that?" he asked, inclining his nose toward the light moving across the stars in the west.

"I don't know," Nishet replied, looking himself, "but it's no meteorite."

"Yeah," Kahrae agreed, "it just sped up. I'm calling it in." He activated his radio. "Cold Command, this is Kennisatae Research Silo. Unidentified flying object crossing from west to east toward meteorite crash site."

The reply came back quickly. "Confirmed, Kennisatae. We have identified it. Buftanisian spy probe. We'll take care of it. Out."

"What do they care about a meteorite?" Nishet asked at the other side of the gate. "Do they have to have every little thing we do?"

Kahrae snapped his head around. "You think they want to spy on the meteorite?"

"Sure," Nishet said. "We are at the edge of the most barren desert on the planet. What else could Buftanis possibly be interested in out here? They probably picked up the seismic hit, too."

Several white tracer bolts lit up from the desert ground defenses. They were anticipating the object, passing just in front of it until finally it ran into the third bolt and blinked out of existence in a brilliant flash.

"Sometimes I wish we'd just get it over with," Nishet said, after it was gone.

"What?" Kahrae asked, though he was only half listening. He was instead thinking about Buftanis and what they knew about the aliens and their crashed ship.

"War."

Colonel Gaezhur woke up to the sound of his radio buzzing. The heat lamp above him glowed warmly but he still felt slightly chilled. His kind were not supposed to be awake at night. That's why the Council had decreed the Cold Raptor experiment six Turns ago. It had gotten off to a rocky start, but the last three generations had proven solid and stable warm-blooded Raptors. Gaezhur picked up his radio, knowing that he wouldn't be called for just anything.

"Colonel," Major Zhenah's voice replied to his acknowledgment. "Sorry to wake you, sir, but you did say to notify you. Sir, we've just shot down an unmanned Buftanisian spy craft near Kennisatae Research Silo."

"How close to the crash site?" Gaezhur asked, instantly alert. He had left standing orders to notify him of any Buftanisian action in his territory of command.

"Thirty kilometers," Zhenah replied. "We should assume they got a glimpse."

Gaezhur nodded, knowing the major couldn't actually see him. "Agreed. While it doesn't reveal much even to us--and we've been over every inch of it--it will likely make them far more curious. I'll inform the Council in the morning."

One word reached him through the nightmarish sounds and sensations that had brought him out of the black silence of unconsciousness. One thought. One name.

Hoshi.

Hoshi, over and over, until it drowned out the other sounds, sounds of cutting and of alien speech. He hung on to the name, letting it pull him from the pain of instruments and three-fingered hands moving inside him. Sight returned to him and he saw Saruman and Grima cutting Hoshi again as she lay still, yet breathing, on an operating table. He wanted to scream at them to stop but his mouth wouldn't open. He wanted to jump up and fight them off but he couldn't move. He couldn't even blink.

He could only watch, helpless, as they peeled back the skin on her face, revealing a bloody mass of crisscrossing muscle and one large, round, brown eye.

Hoshi.

And then it was gone. The sounds, the pain, the vision of a grossly disfigured Hoshi. In their place were the soft beeps and whirrs of the machines and a white lump before his good eye. There was something beyond that white lump--a pillow, he realized--just past his unbandaged hand that lay dangling into the open space at the side of his bed.

Hoshi.

He had to push down the pillow to see her, but he could then see her face, whole and uncut, beautiful still in seeming peaceful rest with her hair down around her shoulder and spilling over her neck.

But there were red lines on her cheek. She'd been crying. He hoped it was for what they had done to him--that they hadn't done the same to her. But he could see the bandages on her immobilized left arm which rested on her knee, just as his right arm did. Now he could see the tubes as they pushed up past her brown hair. Then he hoped her tears had been for the realization of what had been done to them both, that she had been spared the full horror of consciously experiencing it. He was at least a little relieved to see no patch on either of her eyes.

Selfish, he chided. He'd been selfish, wishing for death when Hoshi trusted him. A superior officer does not abandon his crew. Not a good one. And he always strove to be a good one.

He'd have to be strong now, for Hoshi. They could hang on until Captain Archer and Enterprise came for them. He didn't want to think what else Saruman might do before that time. He just couldn't go down that road and stay strong. It was obvious the natives wanted them alive, so they'd have to back off now, for at least long enough for them to heal physically as they must have done for the time after the crash.

It was forty days from the crash before they had come to take him for.... Forty days. Maybe they'd give them that long again. Or longer, since the wounds they'd inflicted were far more severe than what the shuttle had dished out. To them, anyway. Surely Enterprise could find them in eighty days.