Star Trek Into Darkness Page 0,17

uniform was spotless and naturally sharp. Starfleet uniforms. Harewood selected the one he felt best reflected his mood and the deeds to be done.

In the final throes of her graveyard shift, the greeter at the hospital’s front desk barely acknowledged Harewood’s arrival. Like the rest of the hospital regulars, she now knew both him and his wife by sight. The fact that today he was clad in a Starfleet uniform as opposed to his usual civilian attire hardly registered on the sleepy attendant. She ran his ID without even looking at it, relying on the security processor to do its usual competent job.

Harewood found his wife sleeping in a chair not far from his daughter’s bed. As usual, there was no movement from the bed itself. Careful not to wake his wife, he worked his way through the tangle of conduits that now were all that kept his little girl from expiring.

From a pocket, he removed the vial. Moving to one of the nearby medical instruments, he placed it in an open receptacle and watched as it began to drain. A proximate transparent container filled with liquid holding vital nutrients and salts now began to add medication of a different kind, as blood from the vial began to diffuse into the otherwise clear fluid. From there, it would flow into his daughter’s body. Had a doctor or nurse been witness to the process, they would have been appalled and immediately sounded an alarm. But Harewood was alone in the room with his family, and had been assured the transfusion would work swiftly.

He had been here often enough and had asked the right questions to have a good idea what the numbers and readouts on the instrumentation surrounding the bed indicated. As he stared, they began to change. Indicators that he had not seen since before his daughter had been admitted to the hospital appeared and flashed. On the bed, a slight smile appeared on her face—a sign the pain that quietly racked her tiny body was fading. The stranger had kept his promise, Harewood realized.

His daughter would live.

That was it. Nothing more to be done.

No, that was not quite right. Bending over the girl, he kissed her softly on her smooth forehead. Much as he wanted to, he held back from repeating the gesture with his wife. However feathery, a kiss might wake her. Then there would be questions. Then she would wonder why he was not staying. Why today he could not take her place on watch.

The attendant at the front desk did not bother to sign him out as he hurried from the hospital.

Now, Harewood knew, it was time for him to keep his end of the bargain.

KELVIN MEMORIAL ARCHIVE

The sign above the imposing structure gave no indication of the importance of what was housed within.

Pausing on the rain-slicked sidewalk outside the entrance, something caused Harewood to turn. A flurry of vehicles soared past overhead, carrying early morning commuters to those jobs that required their actual physical presence as opposed to virtual. At that moment, Harewood desperately wished to be on one of them. Nothing would have pleased him more than to be on his way to a dull dead-end job, one wholly pedestrian and entirely without surprises.

Across the street stood the man with whom he had struck the bargain. The man who had somehow, in defiance of everything Harewood and his wife had been told, saved their daughter from a slow, certain death. He was watching. Quietly, calmly, without the slightest sign or suggestion of concern.

Harewood turned and entered the building. The arcade was old, perhaps eighteenth century. He was resigned now. At peace with himself. Renege on the agreement, and the miracle for which he was about to trade everything might evaporate, its promise never to be fulfilled. That was what he had been told, anyway, and he had no choice but to follow through on the last of his instructions. That was the warning Harewood had been given.

Can’t back out now, he thought. It didn’t matter. He had long since resolved to see the matter through to its end. It was not about him, anyway.

Would the frontline guard in the lobby notice anything unusual about his latest visitor? No, the guard was interested only in verifying his visitor’s ID as the light from the scanner traveled up and down Harewood’s face and upper body. When the check was successfully completed, the guard waved him on and returned to monitoring his readouts.

Surely someone will notice something’s