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"Do not say his name!"

She tried again to make him understand. "We are in..."

"
I will hear no more!
"he shouted at her, cutting off the one phrase he would be damned if he would let her say.

"
Be very careful how you tread
," Dr. Dean had warned her. "
He is the most dangerous
when he feels threatened
."

Bridget lowered her gaze. Not only because she was angry and did not want to give

away her feelings, but because the fury in the Reaper's face was awful to behold.

"Sit down.

Bridget sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. She waited for him to stop

pacing, not looking at him as he ranged to and fro across the room. When finally he

stopped, she risked a glimpse at him and found him studying her. She tensed, holding his

gaze, refusing to cower before the thunderclouds still sweeping across his face.

"Tell me about yourself."

Bridget let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "I doubt there is anything I can tell you that you haven't already read and memorized from my dossier."

He snorted. "I read only the Retrieval report. All that tells me is from where you were

extracted, when, and who did the Retrieval." He squinted at her. "Captain Kullen, was it not?"

Bridget's jaw clenched. "Yes."

"A son of a bitch," he stated. "Not worth the triso it takes to keep him from

Transitioning."

A cold chill ran down Bridget's spine. He spoke so nonchalantly of something that was

a horror unto itself.

"Go on."

"With what? I don't understand what you want to know."

Cree sighed with irritation. "Who you were. How you were Retrieved. What you felt

about it."

Bridget suspected he knew more than he was letting on that he did, but she had been

instructed to humor him. She was to cater to his every wish.

"I was in college."

"Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa," he supplied. "I believe the year was 1994 or thereabouts."

"Yes." She looked down at her lap. "I had been working in the research lab..."

"Biology."

She nodded. "It was late and I was tired. I was on my way back to the dorm when this

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man I had been seeing was suddenly there beside me. He nearly gave me a heart attack.

He said he'd been waiting for me to walk me to my room. I didn't question him. When he

put his arm around me, I didn't try to stop him. It wasn't until I felt the sting on my

shoulder that I knew something was wrong."

Cree watched her as she sat there, her mouth quivering. He waited for her to speak and

when she did not, he prompted her. "He was a Hunter. You woke on a Rysalian transport."

"Months later," she replied. "The first thing I remember hearing was the seal breaking on the E.S.U." She stared across the room, seeming to see the Extended Sleep Unit sitting there. "I remember watching the lid fold back and this...thing staring down at me."

"The ship's cybot," he said, amused.

Bridget nodded. "I think I screamed, but I'm not sure. Somehow I knew where I was."

She laughed sardonically. "Or rather I knew where I
wasn't!
"

"There was a problem with some of the women taken with you."

"Yes," she answered, recalling that terrible moment. "They didn't believe we were in a spaceship until one of the Keepers opened the shield and we saw nothing but empty

space." She laughed again, this time almost tearfully. "`The Final Frontier.' Margot and Denise had not wanted to boldly go where no ob-gyn students had gone before."

Cree had read the report. He knew two of the nine women extracted with Bridget had

been terminated by Kullen, the Reaper on whose ship Bridget had been taken. He

wondered if Bridget had any idea what had happened to the women. Her next words told

him she did.

"He killed them," she said quietly. She looked up. "The Reaper. He took them away and killed them."

"And he was censured for it."

"Censured for it? With what? A slap on the wrist? How do you Rysalians punish a

Reaper for murder?"

"Reapers are seldom punished for anything we do. We were designed to kill, Bridget.

That is our primary function."

"You kill women, too, do you?" He was stunned by the venom in her voice.

"No," he replied. "I have never taken the life of a woman. I rarely interact with females. There is one on my ship, but I think of her as a member of the crew; nothing

more."

"And the surrogates? Don't you ìnteract' with them?"

Had he not known better, he would have thought her jealous. She was looking at him

with what he thought might well be possessiveness. Women were strange creatures;

contradictions that bewildered the most intelligent of men. Understanding them, knowing

what they meant, was difficult at best.

"Reapers have needs just as other men do," he responded. "Lust is a need that is easily satisfied by the surrogates. You do not need to interact with the plumber who comes to

unclog your drain."

Bridget blushed to the roots of her hair, his words hitting her like slaps in the face. She

could not meet his gaze and knew he was smirking at her, having put her on the defensive

with his lewd comparison.

"You kill," she whispered, trying to blot out the image he had so graphically instilled in her mind.

"Aye," he agreed. "I have admitted as much, but you knew that before you came here."

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She steeled herself to look up at him. "So who do you kill?"

"Whomever the Empire decides must be terminated.

"Enemies of the Empire," she scoffed.

"Aye."

"Women of the Resistance?"

He frowned. "I have told you I do not terminate females."

"Only males."

"Certain males, aye." He held her gaze.

"Such as?"

She was doing something he would never have allowed any other being—male or

female—to do: question him. It was almost as though she was trying to provoke him, to

anger him. She was not openly insulting him, but she might as well have been. Her words

were harsh and were flung at him with a great deal of anger and loathing. She tried to

hide her feelings, but her face was too expressive, her eyes too easy to read. He decided

he liked the mental exercise of sparring with her.

"I go after rogue Retrieval Unit personnel," he explained. "Those who have decided they prefer living on Terra and mating with Terran females there rather than doing the job

they were sent to do. We must terminate them because they hold secrets your Terran

military should never learn. The most moronic of our Hunters and Gatherers are hundreds

of years ahead of your most gifted scientists when it comes to the rudiments of space

travel. A slip of the tongue to the wrong scientist could be disastrous. Likewise, they

provide counterfeit documents and identities for Hunters and Gatherers stationed on

Terra. Knowledge of how they do this, and the ease with which they manufacture Terran

monies would cause planet-wide panic." He shook his head. "Not good to allow that to happen."

Bridget thought of the brilliant man who had cultivated her friendship; the man she had

dated for several weeks, thinking she knew him, only to find out he wasn't even of her

world. Lin, wasn't it? Lin Charles? She couldn't remember. How many more like him

were there on earth? He had seemed to fit right in and often spoke of how much he liked

to visit Florida, told her of his hometown in Indiana. She wondered if he might one day

gò`rogue' and have a Reaper come for him.

"You didn't take into consideration that they might like Earth when you sent them

there? Might fall in love with the women they were sent to abduct? Or prefer Earth's

freedoms to the restrictions most Rysalians suffer?"

He began to pace once more. He kept glancing at her room's Vid-Com and Bridget

wondered if he was being probed again or if the conversation was starting to bore him.

"When you are sent to perform a mission, you perform it to the best of your ability.

Personal feelings are not to get in the way."

"Do Reapers have feelings?"

He stopped, turned and glared at her. "We are programmed for certain kinds of

emotions. Love is not one of them."

"Anger? Hatred? Violent emotions?"

"Aye," he replied, uneasy with the turn the conversation had taken. She saw him

staring at the Vid-com.

"What of envy? Jealousy? Possessiveness?"

Cree snorted. "Those are not violent emotions."

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"They can be," she reminded him.

"Only with Terrans." She sighed. The genetically engineered warrior standing before her would be a harder nut to crack than the Resistance thought. Obviously the subliminals

had not been as effective as they were designed to be.

"I need to rest. You may retire whenever you wish. I will most likely have left before

you rise in the morning."

Bridget stood up. "Will you require a meal before—"

"No," he cut her off.

"Captain Cree?" the Vid-Com chimed.

"Aye?" he said, obviously relieved.

"Your med is here, Sir."

"Enter!" he ordered, striding briskly from Bridget's room.

Bridget followed and shuddered as the cybot entered the Captain's quarters. It was one

of the same faceless, sexless entities she had awakened to see hovering over her on

Captain Kullen's starship. She found the thing hideous and unnerving to look at.

"You are three cycles away from Transition," the cybot pronounced.

"I know how close I am!" Cree snapped. He stood still as the cybot injected the triso into his jugular.

Bridget saw the Reaper wince and knew the neuroleptic drug was thick and had a

terrible sting to it. If it made a warrior bred to withstand vast amounts of pain flinch, what must it do to a normal being?

The cybot left as quickly as it had come. Cree stood were he was, rubbing at the place

on his neck where the drug had been injected.

"It must be very painful."

"You get used to it." He drew in a long breath. "I bid you a good night, Bridget."

Bridget noticed his last words were slurred and knew that was due to the drug's

interaction with his genetically -altered DNA. She watched him stumble as he went to his

door and the last she saw of him, he was falling across his bed.

"
They sleep very little
," Dr. Dean had told her. "
When they do, it is a sleep like that of
the dead. I think part of their legend has to do with that deep sleep.
"

Long into the night, Bridget sat in the living area of the Captain's quarters and stared

fearfully at his door. Now and again, she could hear him moaning then listened as he

paced about the room like a caged animal. For a half hour or so, all sound would cease

then the moaning would start again, then the pacing. She fell asleep curled up in a chair,

her hands tucked beneath her cheek. She never felt him cover her with a blanket nor did

she feel the gentle touch on her hair before he left.

CREE ROLLED up his the sleeve of his jumpsuit and allowed the Ministry of

Medicine physician to inject the hypersleep drug into his vein. The drug was thick and it

stung as it traveled up his arm.

"That burned worse that usual," he complained as he reached over to massage his arm.

"You need to be out at least twenty minutes for the programming to be downloaded,

Captain," the medical officer reminded him.

Cree's lips tightened. He was still smarting over the extra assignment he had been

given earlier that morning when he had reported to Operations.

"I am not a gods-be-damned Shepherd!" he had snarled as he was being briefed.

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officer had explained nervously. It didn't do to have a Reaper glaring at you as Captain

Cree was glaring at him. "The female is to be treated with the utmost respect."

"Female!" Cree had grunted. "I don't need another gods-be-damned female on board my ship, either! One is enough with that prissy-assed Med Off you foisted on me!"

The briefing officer had backed away. "Well, Sir, there will be more than just the one

female you will have to r-retrieve."

"
What?
" Cree had thundered. He'd grabbed the poor man by the lapels of his uniform.

"
How many more?
"

"F-five."

"Gods-be-damned Kahn and his sniveling female targets," Cree mumbled under his

breath as he settled himself more comfortably in his E.S.U.

The Medical Officer knew Cree was already feeling the effects of the sleeping drug

careening through his system. Within a matter of moments, the Reaper would be fast

asleep, the information needed for him to perform his mission beginning to be

downloaded to the terminals implanted in his brain. "How close to Transition are you,

Sir?"

"Not close enough for you to have to concern yourself about it," he responded. Already his eyes were closing and a soft black mist was shutting down his world. He forced his