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emotion for this man. "Three times a day for two weeks."

He flinched. "Three times a day," he whispered.

"I'm afraid so."

Cree closed his eyes. "Go away."

"I will as soon as Dorrie brings your blanket," Bridget replied, wondering why it was taking the woman so long.

"I don't want a blanket," he said.

"But you said you were cold," she protested.

He turned his eyes to her. "Go...away," he repeated.

Bridget hesitated, thinking she saw a shimmer of tears in the Reaper's eyes, then

decided she could not possibly have since they were not programmed for any emotion

other than anger.

"I'll see you after lunch then." Cree looked away from her. Bridget never saw the tear that formed in his left eye and rolled down his clenched cheek.

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THEY CAME for him at 1300 hours, obviously expecting him to give them trouble.

The six Security guards and the two orderlies had been prepared neither for his docility

nor his cooperation as they unbuckled his restraints. He had surprised them even more

when he swung his legs off the bed and preceded them calmly to the door

"We are sorry about this, Sir," one of the guards apologized.

"Don't be," was all the Reaper said, reinforcing the nickname the Fleet had given him long ago.

"I am told he did not resist," Justice Vuin Barif grumbled as he seated himself in the viewing gallery.

"He would not dare," the only woman in the gallery remarked. "He has too much pride to allow anyone to see how truly afraid he is." She watched Cree enter the treatment room and lie down on the table. "I would venture to say it will take several days of treatment before he begins to balk at being brought here."

Bridget glanced down at him as she came to the table. Dorrie and Tina Portas were

closing the restraints on his upper arms as she took her place at the head of the treatment

table. He barely acknowledged her before fixing his attention on the overhead light.

"Are you ready, Madame Director?" the woman in the gallery inquired.

"Yes."

"You may proceed."

Cree shot a look to the gallery, narrowed his gaze at the shadow of the person

speaking, then allowed the woman behind him to place the hellish rubber wedge between

his teeth.

"You are going to feel a sting, Captain," Dr. Dean said.

Water...Fangs...Fire...Falling ....

The sensations shot over him with blinding speed, alternating with one another for a

root in his terrified mind. He convulsed.

"Where is she?" his mind demanded. He whimpered. "Where IS she?" He screamed.

"WHERE IS SHE?"

His eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out, came to just as quickly
.

"Captain?"

The light was piercing white, filing his head with the worst pain he could ever

remember experiencing.

"Why wasn't she here?"

"Captain?"

He tried to focus. Someone shook him gently, spoke his given name. Fog, thick and

numbing was clouding his vision and he couldn't move, couldn't find his way out of the

mist.

"Why wouldn't she come to him?

"Captain Cree!"

The voice was more insistent, but it was not her voice.

He could smell his own sour sweat. It was distasteful to him and it filled him with

shame. Reapers did not sweat. He had never smelled like this and it offended his sense of

honor.

"Captain Cree!"

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His vision cleared and he found himself looking up into the beautiful green eyes of the

woman for whom he had been searching in his nightmare world. She was leaning over

him, her face concerned, those beautiful green eyes filled with tears. "You are back in

your room, Sir," she told him.

He turned his head away. "What time is it?" he mumbled.

"Fourteen hundred hours," she replied.

An hour? He'd been in that demonic place only an hour? It had seemed like an eternity

that he was lost there. Despite his inability to remember what had happened in the

treatment suite, he instinctively knew it had been much worse this time.

"When?" he forced himself to ask.

Bridget reached out to push a lock of hair from his forehead. "Eighteen hundred," she said gently.

"Every five hours," he whispered.

"I'll stay with you until—"

"Go away." The command was bitter. "You weren't there when I needed you and I don't want you here now!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Go away, woman!"

When the door shushed to behind her, Cree's face crinkled with hopelessness. He had

never once doubted his bravery, his ability to withstand whatever the world, or the

Empire, threw at him, but this? This unspeakable torture was beyond his understanding

and he found himself dreading every ticking minute, every passing nanosecond that

brought him closer to the room at the end of the hall.

Falling...water...fangs...fire.

Helpless...hopeless...defenseless...useless.

"Why had she left him alone?"

"He is experiencing the four most primitive, primal fears there are," the woman in the gallery explained to the others. "From deep within the human part of his subconscious, all those elemental emotions dredged up to frighten and violate a man's mind have survived

civilization, breeding, education, and conditioning. No amount of neuro-manipulation can

either erase or negate them. The drug invading his system is simply magnifying those

emotions Reapers have been conditioned to ignore."

"What exactly are we talking about here?" Barif asked.

"He is experiencing his imminent death in a variety of forms. That is the one thing

every human man fears most, for it is the end of self, the end of existence. To a Reaper,

death is an enemy to be overcome; to a human male, it is something more meaningful. It

is the human part of him the drug is attacking."

CREE'S SILENT scream filled his head. The pain—he thought as his flesh split and

sloughed off, his bones turning black as they charred—the pain was so horrific, so

invasive, so utterly intense, he longed for the surcease of life. But just as soon as the
flames had enveloped him, blistering his flesh, then burning deep through the epidermis,

past the coris, into the muscles and nerve bundles, dissolving capillaries, splitting open
veins and arteries and flashing into the very marrow of his bones; just as the pain

became so terrifying that he had began to beg for death, she was there holding out her

hand to him.

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"Come, Kam," she whispered. "Come to me and the pain will stop."

He held out his hand, striving to touch hers, hopeful, ecstatic, then she began to fade

from his sight.

"No!" he cried out, but she was gone, leaving him lost, desperate, so totally without
hope.

"No more today," Bridget told him as he came flying up through the ashes of his own disintegration. "You can rest, Captain."

He found her eyes, those wonderful, pitying eyes and he drew comfort, small as it was,

from those precious, friendly eyes.

"Bridget," he sighed, remembering her name and very proud of his ability to do so.

"Yes, Captain," she agreed, stroking his cheek.

They lifted him onto the gurney and his head lolled. His weary, grainy vision caught

sight of the people in the gallery observing him, pointing at him, wanting him to break.

"Damn you to the Abyss," he thought he told them, but later, he could not remember if he had or not. As he lay in his bed, once more strapped down despite the fact that he

could not seem to get his muscles to maintain any semblance of strength, he decided he

had not said anything at all.

He might have dozed, but he did not think he had for he was bone-tired and unable to

sleep without the triso. He came to himself, feeling her cool fingers on him again. She

was smiling gently at him, sorrowfully it seemed to him, and he had to look away, unable

to bear the sight of her.

"Make a fist for me, Captain," she told him.

He swiveled his head back around and saw the syringe in her hand. His gaze shifted to

hers and held although he didn't say anything.

"Make a fist, please," she repeated.

He slowly clenched his hand. "That isn't my triso."

"No, Sir, it isn't."

"Then what is it?"

She explained it to him and he nearly howled with outrage.

The drug was part of his punishment: an excruciating stimulant that would race to the

somatomotor area of his cerebral cortex; an emotional roller coaster that would cause

intense hyperactivity. Being strapped down as he was, there would be no way for him to

get up to pace his cell to wear the agitation from his body. It was an exquisite torture,

designed to drive him mad.

"I am sorry, Captain," she told him for what must have been the tenth time since he had made her acquaintance. "I truly am sorry; you don't deserve this, Sir."

The drug raced through his veins and he began to itch in a hundred places, his arms

and legs an agony of tingling. With no way to scratch, no way to relieve the maddening

sensations washing over him, he threw back his head and bellowed with rage.

"Damn you!" he shouted, glaring at the camera. "Damn all of you!"

All, he thought with a pang of true regret, except the woman with the beautiful green

eyes.

CREE LAY there calmly enough the next morning as Bridget locked into place the

band across his chest. She smelled of flowers, a scent that was clean and fresh. He

studied her face and for the first time in his life the word sensuous had meaning for him.

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She moved to the table to place the rubber wedge between his teeth. She smiled at him

and he obediently opened his mouth.

When the drug entered his body, he knew something was wrong. The feeling—one of

acute anxiety coupled with emotions he couldn't have explained with words—flooded

through him and in rapid succession, the fire dissolved him, the water invaded his lungs,

the rocks crushed him and the fangs ripped him apart with such swiftness, he barely had

time to register the godsawful pain.

"Kamerone! This way, beloved. Come this way!"

He turned away from the darkness and saw her standing at the top of a small rise. His

hope soared and he started to climb to her, striving to keep her beautiful face before him;
but then the all- encompassing terror of impending death loomed up out of the darkness

and sprung, catching him unaware with a hemp noose that dropped over his head and

jerked him off his feet, away from her.

"Noooooooooooo!"

Bridget saw his eyes snap open wide, watched his face turn red. She looked at the

Director, but Dr. Dean was staring at the floor. The woman never liked watching her

handiwork. "Dr. Dean?" Bridget questioned.

"He's all right," the Director said dully. "Unless he goes into cardiac arrest again, there's no need to be concerned."

The noose pulled him away from her outstretched hand and tightened around his

throat. His legs went out from under him and he was hanging, the hemp gouging into the

flesh of his neck, cutting off his breath. He couldn't even call out to her; couldn't even
beg her to help him. Everything around him was turning red and then became speckled

with stars. He couldn't breathe; he couldn't swallow; he couldn't say her beautiful name.

He was choking to death, the blood filling his head, making it feel as though it would

burst. His windpipe was being crushed and he began to gag, clawing frantically at the

rope to get it from around his throat.

"Dr. Dean?" Bridget called out, watching the man on the table go rigid as stone. His fingers were curled into claws and were digging at the table. His face was turning black

and his throat was working as though he couldn't draw breath.

"Stage Four complete," the computer announced.

"Bring him up, Tina," Dr. Dean told the anesthesiologist and moved out of the way as Tina injected an epinephrine-based drug into Cree's arm.

Bridget had to pry the wedge from his mouth. Once more, he had bitten through the

rubber. A portion of the back end of the appliance was gone: he had swallowed it.

Dr. Dean looked toward the gallery. "I want your permission to discontinue the

neurotransmitter this evening."

"No," Onar denied.

Dean's face hardened. "Is it your intent to kill him?"

"We are attempting to teach him a lesson he has needed to be taught for a long time,

Madame Director," Onar answered in a warning tone. "Do not question us."

The Director turned around, looked straight at Bridget. "Get him back to his room."

She spun on her heel and stormed from the treatment room.

He whimpered as they shifted him onto his bed. His neck was sore, his throat hurt to