Blind Justice
by
Mylochka
(Author's Note: I have to warn you, I'm putting this fragment here because I believe that it's jinxed -- at least for me. Everytime I try to work on it, I've had terrible luck. Perhaps a less superstitious person will have more sucess with it.)
Chekov's day began, as usual, with a sudden flash of light. It woke him the same way it woke everyone else -- although the other prisoners seemed to find that fact hard to accept.
"Up, up," his neighbor to the right, Number 4753 urged him, as if the ensign weren't able to hear the bellowing of the guards and the noise of scores of men simultaneously getting out of metal frame beds.
Chekov rubbed his eyes as he crawled out from under the thin blanket. Every morning it was like being blinded all over again. He immediately rammed into his left-side neighbor, Number 7786.
"Wrong side, Mouse," 7786 whispered, shoving him towards the bed.
The ensign stifled a curse as he scrambled across the foot of his cot, knowing that he'd wasted 13 of the 15 seconds he had to get into position at its foot. He wished he was further down the long row, but all the cripples were near the door. The guard always reached them first.
As his feet hit the floor, the ensign could hear only the faint rustle of his fellow prisoners and the hard click of boots against the cold tile. "9973."
"Yes, sir," he replied, coming to attention. At least it was Melnick. Melnick didn't hate cripples in general or him in particular.
"Where are your glasses?"
"Glasses?" Chekov's hand involuntarily went to feel the incriminatingly empty space over his nose.
"No, Mouse," Melnick said. "They're not on your face."
"No, sir." Chekov furiously tried to think of where he'd put the damned thing. One of the greatest unexpected difficulties of being blind was the amazing number of incredibly trivial things you had to remember. He tried to orient himself. This was easier during the daylight hours when the sunlight provided more areas of light and shadow. Under the artificial lights, however everything was a bright blur.
"What are you doing? Trying to look for them?" Melnick laughed.
As soon as he heard the click of metal on metal, the ensign remembered that he'd hung the glasses on the foot of his bed where the guard, if not he, had been instantly able to locate them.
"What's the matter with you, Mouse?" Melnick scolded, hooking the contraption behind the ensign's ear and stretching it across his face. "Do you forget that you're blind every morning?"
"Yes, sir," Chekov answered. The glasses he was forced to wear -- instead of fulfilling any practical or therapeutic function the ensign could discern -- blocked off all light, leaving him totally in darkness. "I do."
"You must improve your memory," Melnick replied unsympathetically. "How many days until we execute you?"
The ensign paused a moment to figure. He had to count it out on his fingertips. "Fourteen, sir."
"You don't want to spend those last fourteen days in the disciplinary barracks, do you?"
"No, sir," Chekov replied adamantly. Although he'd only been imprisoned in this work camp for four days, he'd already been on the crew that cleaned D-block twice. You didn't have to be able to see to know the sorts of things that went on there. He'd found a body in one of the beds on his last visit. "No, sir."
"Then I won't catch you without them again, will I?"
"No, sir." The ensign heard the guard step past him.
"Theta-block has drawn line construction again today," Melnick announced continuing down the row. "I trust we will not have a repetition of yesterday's incident."
Chekov hoped so as well. One man had been sent to D-block for pilfering some sort of component. Another three had been beaten for not reporting him.
The uneasy silence seemed to stretch on and on as Melnick's footsteps echoed up and down the long row of men and beds. The ensign knew that every moment the guard held them there was a moment taken away from the miniscule amount of time the others had to eat their morning meal. It didn't matter so much to him, personally. He was with the cripples -- C-crew, as they were called. C-crew ate breakfast late and lunch and dinner early. But, he had quickly learned, what was bad for even one member of Theta-block was bad for everyone.
"Fall out," Melnick released them at last.
Chekov could hear 7786 cursing him as he groped for his shirt. 7786 was not a cripple. He slept in a bed near the door for other reasons. He was completely dressed and gone before Chekov had time to fasten his top button. Not that this was a quick process. The ensign was sure that they always gave him garments with odd numbers of buttons and eyes. It never seemed to come out an even match between the two.
Chekov wondered if the shirt had big stripes on it. That would be consistent with everything else here. He knew his prison number was stenciled somewhere on the front and somewhere on the back. The garment felt like it was made out of sandpaper. He rolled the long cuffs up and reached down for his shoes.
'Tonight, I'll put the glasses in my shoes,' he decided silently. He always knew where his shoes were. They didn't mysteriously change location in the middle of the night.
"Come on, Mousey," 3456 called. His name was Felder, or at least that was what he was called. He was lame. "I can't believe you were a military man. You're just too damned slow."
"One moment," Chekov replied, struggling with the buckles on his shoes. He wondered what had happened to his uniform. He should have known something was wrong when the medics had asked him to surrender it. After all, the injury they were supposed to be treating him for was only to his eyes. If he'd only known then what he was in for, he would have never given that last tie to his civilization up. He'd kill to have that uniform now -- just for the boots alone.
The ensign carefully felt his way down to the foot of his bed. Felder took his outstretched hand and wrapped it around the pushbar of the laundry cart. He and Felder always brought up the rear of C-crew. Felder's legs were damaged in some way that made it difficult for him to walk. Their relationship was therefore a complimentary one. Felder could push the cart by himself just as Chekov could have navigated the corridors on his own. However, together they both did so much more efficiently.
"Felder," Chekov asked, pushing the dark glasses down his nose to maximize his remaining sense of sight. "Would he really do that to me?"
"Do what?" Felder always seemed to have his mind on something else. He had been a leader of the Resistance Movement. Whatever had happened to his legs had happened during an interrogation session.
The ensign could tell they were passing out of their wardroom by the change of light. He lowered his voice cautiously. "Would Melnick actually send me to disciplinary barracks for losing these glasses?"
"Melnick could send you to D-block for sneezing," Felder replied at a volume that told him they weren't near any guards.
"That doesn't seem fair."
"You might have figured this out for yourself sometime before your execution, Mouse," Felder said, as they passed into another wardroom. "But I think I'll go ahead and break it to you. Life isn't fair."
"Where have the two of you been?" 4753, Chekov's right-side neighbor, demanded. The others called him Palmer. Chekov had resolved to stop doing so as soon as he figured out that this was not 4753's name but an obscene -- if well-earned -- nickname.
"On a cruise," Felder replied, tapping the ensign's hand. They always tapped his hand or his back as a signal for the ensign to stop -- stop talking, stop eating, stop moving -- whatever the situation called for.
4753 pulled Chekov away from the cart and began to stack clean sheets in the ensign's arms. 4753 was a young man -- a good deal younger than the others in C-crew. He didn't get a lot of chances to order anyone else around. Chekov believed that was why Palmer savored any opportunity to exercize authority over him. Palmer may have had only had one arm and one eye, but that and his experience put him ahead of the ensign.
Chekov was in the midst of reminding himself that he was no longer calling 4753 Palmer when everything went dark again.
"Watch it, Mousey," 4753 -- who had apparently pushed the dark glasses up into place -- warned. "You'll be spending the night in D-block tonight if Melnick finds those glasses hanging off the end of your nose."
"Surely not," Chekov replied sourly, balancing the sheets on one arm, while he felt for the mattress beside him.
"I thought you were afraid of D-block." From the sound, 4753 had joined Deafman in stripping sheets down the right side of the wardroom. Felder, Fid, and Chronin worked on the left side. Originally the procedure was for everyone to strip sheets first, then flip the mattresses and put on the clean sheets. However Chekov had had a number of bad experiences pulling sheets, culminating with finding the corpse. "Scared you'll run into another body?"
"I'm afraid of going to D-block and becoming a dead body," Chekov replied, putting the stack of sheets on the second mattress down the line and pushing the dark glasses down his nose again.
"That'll happen soon enough," Palmer reminded him unnessarily.
"Melnick was just trying to make a point," Fid said, dumping an armload of dirty sheets into the cart. Fid -- Number 6542 -- had been a teacher before his arrest. Like Felder's feet, Fid's hands had been mangled in an interrogation session.
"No breakfast," Chronin said, making his way to the cart. "That was his point."
Chronin was an old man. Chekov was unsure of exactly what his disability was beyond that.
"That was part of it," Fid agreed, moving away again.
Chekov carefully centered himself against the foot of the first bed before unfurling the clean sheet over it. "I did not think that the potential loss of my glasses was sufficient cause to warrant such an extreme punishment."
"Loss is the same as theft in their eyes," Chronin pronounced. "You saw what they do to theives."
"Mouse doesn't see anything," Palmer put in. "Worse yet, Mouse doesn't notice things. Like the fact that this is the third day in a row Melnick has found a reason to touch him."
Chekov found he was fast on the way to hating Palmer.
"It's not Melnick that's after him," Chronin said. "It's Spaeder."
"Who's Spaeder?"
"Night guard," Chronin answered. "Third shift."
In addition to being an old man, Chronin was an old timer. He'd been in the work camp for many years and was a wellspring of information about the guards.
"How the hell do you know that, old man?" Palmer asked. "Do you stay up all night?"
"No, I don't have your strength, Palmer," he replied, meaning it in two sences.
If Palmer had a responce -- and he usually did -- he didn't get a chance to deliver it. They all fell silent at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was easy to distinguish the hard soled boots of a guard from the more indistinct shuffling of a prisoner -- not that a prisoner would have much reason to walk anywhere by himself.
Chekov cautiously slipped the dark glasses back up to their proper place and hoped Palmer didn't see him do so. He also hoped that this guard wouldn't object to the fact that he wasn't pulling sheets. Melnick had given them permission to alter the established procedure, but that wouldn't mean anything if this guard took exception. One never corrected a guard -- even to the extent of informing him of what another guard had said. A guard's word was law, no matter how incorrect or capriciously cruel.
Chekov smoothed the sheet beneath his hands. The metal bedframes creaked and groaned in counter rhythm to the thud of the matteresses being flipped and the sharp click of the unknown guard's boots as he slowly passed down the line.
At the moment when the ensign decided the guard was going to pass through without incident, the call came, "Attention!"
The ensign instantly abandoned his task and quickly groped his way to the foot of the bed. Moving as fast as he could, he knew he'd still be the last one to come into place. Even the Deafman was faster than he was. The other prisoners said that Deafman never missed a command to fall in. They said he was able to feel the vibration of the others' feet on the floorboards. Chekov wished he could figure out a similar system to diminish his disability. Even being a few seconds behind everyone else made one conspicuous. The last thing one wanted to be in the work camp was conspicuous.
FRAGMENT #2: INTEROGATION
"Wake up."
Chekov opened his eyes from a dream of being safe aboard the Enterprise and saw nothing. "What?" he asked, coming rapidly to full, panicked consciousness.
"Quiet." Someone was pulling him out of bed by one arm.
"What?" he repeated, vainly trying to orient himself. Looking up he could see the dim overhead lightling that burned all night in Theta-block.
Someone large was forcing him to his feet. "No talking."
"Melnick?" The ensign guessed.
The guard put his hand over Chekov's mouth. It also covered the ensign's nose and effectively cut off his breathing. "No talking," Melnick repeated softly and omniously as the ensign struggled. The guard shook him as if as a signal to cease that annoyance also. "Do you understand me?"
His lungs nearly bursting, Chekov nodded and was released.
'Something very bad is happening,' he decided, fumbling for his shirt.
His hand was knocked away and he was roughly turned in the other direction. Before he could open his mouth to protest, a big hand clamped around the back of his neck and he was rapidly guided out of the darkened room.
They paused in front of what Chekov calculated was a doorway. He could hear the clink of something metal... something that sounded like chain. His hands were pulled behind his back and something cold was put around the ensign's wrists.
He knew from the feel that the restraint was the Ekosian form of handcuffs. The familiarity of the sensation did not reassure him. Being handcuffed was never a good sign.
'Perhaps it's another interrogation,' he reasoned as Melnick placed a similar set of restraints around his ankles. A less optimistic voice in his mind asserted that he was probably being taken to be executed. Summary execution was, after all, the second most common reason why prisoners were roused in the middle of the night and taken elsewhere in this work camp.
There were more sounds of metal on metal as Melnick unlocked and opened a door. Whatever was outside this door was brightly lit. Chekov blinked as the guard pushed him forward into the brightness. Disoriented, he immediately stumbled and fell into something very solid -- probably a wall.
Snorting impatiently, Melnick picked him up. Instead of setting Chekov down on his feet again, the guard threw the ensign over his shoulder and set off down the corridor --- At least it sounded like a corridor from the echoes of his boots.
Chekov debated asking Melnick where they were going. Although he very much wanted to know, it didn't seem like a good idea to ask. Melnick had seemed rather adamant about his not talking. Beyond that, hanging upside down against someone's back wasn't exactly the proper position to initiate a conversation from.
Wherever they were going, it took them a rather long time to get there. Melnick's heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed down seemingly endless empty corridors. Occasionally they paused and passed through doors that had to be unlocked.
After passing through one such entrance into a hollow-sounding space, Melnick finally set him down. The floor was hard under the ensign's bare feet. It was very cold and slightly damp -- like cement. There was a single very bright light shining down on him. Chekov looked up at it. He could feel the warmth of it on his face. He knew it couldn't be good for his eyes to stare directly into the brightness, but light seemed to attract him irresitably.
"Do you remember me?" a voice asked from the dark perimeter of the room.
It was unfortunately familiar. "Yes, sir."
He could hear the interrogator rustle a stack of papers. There was a steady ticking noise in the room. The ensign decided that it must be a clock. It was almost insulting that there should be something as steady and normal as a clock in a room such as this one.
"State your name."
The ensign straightened. "Chekov. Pavel Andreivich Chekov," he replied, giving the man the same damned information he had last time. "Service number 6625D47."
"And your prison identification number?"
Chekov tried to keep his face blank, but his heart sank within him. This was new information. "9973."
"Assigned to Theta-B-3?"
That was his bed number. The man undoubtedly did not need to be told any of this. Chekov did not know his name, but had figured out from the reactions of other people that this man was the highest ranking person who had interviewed him. He was the last person to question the ensign before his "trial" and was quite probably the person who had had him sent here. "Yes, sir."
"I see you've learned some manners since the last time we spoke." The interrogator had a flat, unemotional voice. Somehow that was worse than gloating would have been. The man never seemed to have any doubt that Chekov would eventually do whatever they asked. "What do you think of our facility here?" the interrogator asked quite conversationally. "I understand that you are adjusting well to your new surroundings."
Chekov made no reply. He looked down at the floor. There was a dim reflection of the light above him.
"I trust you no longer feel this is all a trick or a hallucination." The interrogator struck a match. The ensign could barely discern the tiny point of light. "Do you?"
The smell of whatever substance the interrogator smoked filled the room. It was nauseatingly sweet. "No, sir."
"Then perhaps you'll answer my questions in a satisfactory manner this time."
The ensign flexed his shoulders restlessly. "What are your questions?"
"Where do you come from?"
Chekov took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I cannot discuss that with you fully."
"Guard," the interrogator ordered mildly.
The ensign braced himself for the blow. It landed hard across his shoulders.
"You do not come from this planet," the interrogator continued. "That is clear from the instruments you carried with you and certain irregularities in your physical make up."
Chekov wondered exactly how he differed from these people. No one had remarked upon specific differences in his appearance.
"Are you Ekosian?"
"No." This was a persistent fear of his captors.
"Then where do you come from?"
Chekov closed his eyes and waited for the next blow to come. It seemed to take forever for the guard to step forward and swing his truncheon. The impact knocked Chekov off balance. He stumbled forward and would have fallen had the guard not caught him. The ensign could tell immediately from the smell and sound of him that it was Melnick. Chekov had almost forgotten that he was still there. It was strangely comforting to know he was being tortured by someone he knew.
"No nonsense, Mouse," Melnick cautioned him, setting him back on his feet.
Whatever the interrogator was smoking glowed dimly in the darkness. The smell of it was beginning to make Chekov sick. "What is your mission here?"
"I have no mission here." He swallowed and looked up at the bright light on the ceiling to re-orient himself. "I am here by mistake. There must have been an accident. I don't have an explanation. I should not be here."
"No, you should not," the interrogator agreed. "That much is clear. We must determine, however, if your presence here is merely a misfortune for you, or a matter of great import for us. Doctor..."
'Oh, God.' Chekov clenched his teeth so he wouldn't say it out loud. 'Oh, God.'
Why a doctor? Were they going to maim him as they had Fid and Felder? He could taste the acrid flavor of his own panic in his mouth. He couldn't run. He couldn't fight. He couldn't even see what was coming. It was incredible. These primitives couldn't be doing this to him. He couldn't be this helpless against people who were barely civilized.
He took a step backwards as something rattled towards him.
"Hold him," the new voice ordered.
Melnick wrapped sturdy hands around the ensign's upper arms and moved him back towards the center of the circle of light. The doctor's instruments sounded as though they were made of metal. These people seemed obscenely fond of metal. Most things here were made of cold, unyielding metal. The doctor must have rolled his instruments with him on a cart of some sort.
"No vision?"
Chekov couldn't tell who the question was directed towards. When Melnick shook him, he realized he was supposed to be answering. "What?"
"You're completely blind?"
"No, not completely." He searched for some point of light to focus on. There was nothing light about the doctor. "I estimate that I have lost between ninety to ninety-five percent of my vision."
The doctor -- Chekov assumed it was the doctor -- reached out and took him by the chin. His hands smelled strongly of chemicals.
"Do you have tunnel vision? Partially occluded?" he asked, turning the ensign's head from side to side.
"I can perceive light sources, but am completely unable to focus." Chekov wondered where this was going. Were they going to do something to his eyes?
A small point of very strong light was suddenly inches away from his face. The ensign drew back in surprise, but Melnick was a solid wall that prevented him from going anywhere.
"Still," the doctor commanded tersely. The small light moved in very close. "Don't blink."
Chekov obeyed, momentarily transfixed by the light as it shone in first one eye and then the other.
"Look up."
Why were they doing this? What significance could his blindness possibly hold for them?
"Now to the right.... Left." After a moment the doctor pulled the light further away. "You can see this?"
"Yes." Chekov followed the light as it moved slowly back and forth in front of him.
The light disappeared. "Look up."
He felt it in the difference of heat on his face before he could see it, but something was being passed slowly in front of the ceiling light.
"You can see my hand?"
It didn't look at all like a hand. It was a dark blob with no fingers waving back and forth. "Not clearly."
"Can you see what I'm holding?"
Chekov opened his eyes very wide, letting in all the light he could. It still looked like a long blob. "No."
The doctor took his hand away. Chekov waited, listening to see if he could detect what the man had been holding. The was no sound of the doctor putting anything down. The bastard hadn't been holding anything.
The ensign flinched as a cold circle of something pressed against his chest.
FRAGMENT #3 -- MELNICK
Melnick hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him down the corridor. The guard stopped and unlocked something and then opened a door and carried him into a darkened room.
When Melnick sat him down on a bed, Chekov thought for a moment that the guard had carried him back to Theta-block. The ensign must just be misjudging sounds and sensations. Then Melnick turned on a dim light near the bed -- a lamp perhaps.
There were no lamps in Theta block.
The guard put a thick blanket over the ensign's bare shoulders.
There were no thick blankets in Theta block.
"Sir..." Chekov began uncertainly.
"No talking." The answer was at least reassuringly harsh.
'This must be a continuation of the interrogation,' Chekov reasoned as Melnick wrapped something around the ensign's icy feet -- a jacket perhaps. He could feel buttons with his toes.
"Can you see me?" Melnick asked.
The ensign could feel his heart thudding inside his chest as he shook his head.
As the doctor had previously, the guard put his hand in front of the light source. Chekov followed it with his eyes as he moved it back and forth. When he finally dropped his hand out of sight, the ensign turned back to the indistinct mass of darkness in front of him that he knew was Melnick.
"If you can't see, then how do you know where to look?"
"I can hear you breathe." Chekov turned his head and listened for the presence of any others nearby. All he could discern was the slow ticking of the clock.
Melnick picked up something that sounded breakable.
"Drink this," he ordered putting it to the ensign's lips. It was coffee -- or something much closer to coffee than what was served in the prisoner's mess.
It was warm enough to scald Chekov's tongue a little as he swallowed a larger mouthful of it than he would have on his own. He could hear the guard sip from the mug himself. Melnick must have poured it before he was called to convey the ensign to his interrogation. The guard picked up something else that sounded like paper. There was a small cracking noise and then the sound of chewing. Maybe Melnick was eating something wrapped in paper.
"Open your mouth," the guard commanded holding out something that smelled like candy.
Chekov obeyed cautiously. Melnick impatiently forced his jaw down with a thumb on the ensign's chin and placed a small square of something on his tongue. It began to melt immediately. It tasted something like chocolate -- slightly bitter, but very, very sweet. Chekov's body hadn't had enough sugar for what seemed like a very long time. It didn't realize this until the tiny piece of candy was half-melted on his tongue.
As if he heard the ensign's body's unspoken demand, Melnick put another piece of the chocolate-ish candy to Chekov's lips.
When he opened his mouth and allowed the guard to place the morsel in his mouth, the ensign remembered the way 7728 often smelled of chocolate when he returned from his mid-night sojourns. He could hear Melnick licking the last bits of candy off his fingers over the crinkling sound of the wrapper as he returned the treat to a drawer near the lamp.
"Are you really an alien, Mouse?"
"The blood samples should establish that my origins are elsewhere," he answered warily. So, this is how they would continue the interrogation. Try to win his trust, then...
"I don't know," Melnick said. The ensign could hear him sipping more coffee. "There is something strange about you."
He fell silent for several moments. Chekov turned his head towards the slow ticking clock, wishing he could make out its face. He wondered how long he'd been up. It felt like hours. It might have only been twenty minutes.
"Here." The guard put the coffee cup to his lips again and forced him to drink deeply of the chickory flavored beverage. "That feels better, doesn't it?"
The ensign nodded. Although it wasn't the best coffee he'd ever drunk, it was warm.
Melnick gave a half-laugh. "Your lips were turning blue."
The guard unexpectedly leaned forward and put his mouth over the ensign's. It took Chekov a long moment to realize that Melnick was kissing him. After a moment wasted in pure astonishment, he jerked away.
"Don't be stupid, Mouse." Melnick grabbed the back of Chekov's head with one hand and the ensign's chin with his other. "Don't make trouble for yourself."
He let the smaller man struggle for a moment just to realize how futile resistance was. Then he drew him forward and kissed him again, his big mouth pressing hard against the ensign's face.
'Why is he doing this to me?' Chekov thought, still hearing the clock tick heedlessly on in the background. 'I am an alien -- a disabled alien who has been starved and beaten for week and reeks of disinfectant soap. Surely there's nothing erotic about that. He just assisted in my interrogation. How can he be doing this now? This is insane.'
Chekov could taste coffee and chocolate on Melnick's tongue as the guard forced his lips open and kissed him deeply.
'I can't just sit here,' the ensign decided. 'I can't just let this happen to me. I've got to fight. I've got to think of a way to make him stop.'
He wasn't brave enough to bite Melnick's tongue as it explored the inside his mouth. Somehow, irrationally, he still believed that this might all be a mistake -- something that could be resolved. Summoning all his strength, he wrenched his head away and out of the guard's grasp.
He felt Melnick immediately grab his shoulder, but the guard only held it rather than using it to pull him back into position. Chekov listened to the sound of Melnick breathing. He was breathing through his nose in loud, short bursts, as if very angry. The ensign could hear his own breath -- not extremely steady -- as he sat frozen with Melnick's fingers digging into his shoulder for what seemed like eternity.
The guard's breathing gradually slowed. He removed his hands from the ensign's shoulder. "Sit up."
Chekov obeyed slowly.
"Listen to me, Mouse. I don't want any fuss about this," Melnick warned sternly. From his tone, one might think he was scolding a child for throwing a tantrum. "Do you understand?"
Chekov did not understand. He stared at the dark mass in front of him and wondered how much of it was Melnick.
"You are usually very sensible," Melnick said, lifting the blanket off the ensign's shoulders. "But it sometimes takes a long time for an idea to get through your thick head. So I'm going to give you a little time to think. I'll give you another chance. But next time, I want none of this nonsense. Understand me?"
Chekov found himself nodding, although this was not completely comprehensible and the parts that he did comprehend were not acceptable.
"Stand up."
He almost failed on his first attempt, but Melnick caught him around the waist.
"Now bend over onto my back," the guard said, planting his shoulder in the ensign's midsection.
Chekov obeyed, thinking that Melnick was slowing the entire process down as if at every step to demonstrate how strong he was and how helpless the ensign was. He lifted Chekov easily. The ensign could hear the clink of the chains around his ankles as his feet lost contact with the floor. Melnick paused and went back to turn off the lamp as if showing off what a small burden the ensign was.
As they passed down the corridor, the ensign was aware of the way Melnick's hand rested on him. It seemed to burn against his flesh. When he tried to wriggle out from under it, Melnick gripped him more tightly.
"Your crew cleans D-block tomorrow, don't they, Mouse?" the guard asked.
The ensign said nothing.
"Don't they?" Melnick repeated, squeezing him.
"Yes, sir," Chekov choked in reply.
The guard came to a stop. He balanced Chekov on his shoulder while he used both hands to unlock the ensign's ankles.
"There you go," he said, lowering the ensign to the ground. "Pay careful attention to the surroundings in D-block tomorrow. I don't need to say more than that, do I? I don't need to point out how easily you could become a resident there, do I?"
He tilted the ensign's face up. Chekov didn't pull away. He just squeezed his eyes closed and waited for it to be over.
"No nonsense, Mouse," Melnick warned him, turning him around and unlocking his wrists.
