When I awoke, looked out, there was a reddish-orange sun to be seen, a planet with a faint Saturn-like ring and a few moons.

And spaceships as far as I could see, floating and moving in the darkness.

I opened the panel for the sink and the oddly-blue mirror they had given me.

I had a beard. Shaving every morning was just something I did. Just a little lather. A simple disposable razor. A habit left over from my life forgotten, maybe. I hadn't thought about it. My bearded face looks back at me from the alien mirror. I remember I had a father.

I remember… nothing about him except, he made me feel protected.

Before I finish my morning wash, stretch, dress, eat routine, the door opens.

Zach and Ike look worried, agitated. When they hold out a screen to give me orders, I catch a blur of unguarded thoughts from Zach for the first time. I think he realized it because, I can only say it this way, his feathers were ruffled.

They took me, still in my night tunic and barefoot, down the hall, opposite the direction of the gym and that examination lab, to another lab, a larger one.

Half a dozen people stood about, dressed in yellow suits that seemed like Earthly haz-mat or radiation suits.

Behind one face-shield, I recognize Doctor Bluewings.

I see a machine that could have been an MRI, a tunnel with a rounded-triangular opening in the front, a table leading into it. I'm supposed to lie down on that table.

All the while, I'm trying to tell them all they can be safe, protected, free from harm!

Nobody gets it.

They move me to the table, and I hop up onto it, sitting, feet dangling off one side.

They turn my feet so my legs are straight out on the table. The table glows, hums softly under my legs, and I can't move them.

One of the haz-mat suits shuffles over toward me. These elegant, elfin avians look so clumsy, uncomfortable, in bulky suits, forced to walk on the ground so hard.

They're putting something in my mouth, a cushioned bar placed between my teeth, held in place by a strap run behind my head.

Two suits secure the strap, and are about to push me down on the table when a third suit moves in close, watching me. It's Doctor Bluewings. And she's close enough to touch. And she's holding her screen, so I grab it.

Our minds meet.

Words strangle around the bar between my teeth. Thoughts cascade out from me, through her screen, into her, my thoughts of peace for her, for all her people, for all the peoples of the universe alike!

As they pry my thumb from her tablet-screen, and force me down on the table, I see in her face, and lingering in my mind:

She has it now!

The table glowed and hummed. I couldn't move except to blink, move my eyes.

The hum grew slowly louder.

I was able to see Doctor Bluewings turn to others, and I heard her chattering-clacking voice, saw her thrusting her screen emphatically toward others, who cringe back.

The table floated into the tunnel. I hear yelling. Feeling doped, hazy, sleepy. My skin starts tingling.

In a slow-motion dream I see Zach and Ike forcing Doctor Bluewings out the lab door. She was chattering madly. I never learned any of their speech. I don't think she was making words. It was like a desperate song, a melodious screaming, as she struggled with them.

In her elegant hand, her tablet-screen went black as space.

I was floating into a glowing, humming tunnel, tingling, so very sleepy but oddly sharp.

There was a car. I was a passenger. Something had gone terribly wrong. The car left the road. We were flying. The world tilted, spun….

Then my skin was screaming.

Fire! Ice! Crushing! Ripping! Every kind of searing pain. I… can't…

Paul left a lot of the pain out of the diary somehow, or I don't think I would have survived experiencing it. I don't know how he did.

It wasn't even just physical pain. Horror. Desperation. Futility. Fear! All of this at once, in an instant.

Vulnerability.

Every day, I still feel it. Every day. Like my entire nervous system, spinal column, and brain were being pulled from my flesh. Paul couldn't hide all the pain from his diary, and I can never forget it.

Whatever it was they did, they took the Gift. Alien science ripped from him the potential for universal peace. Somehow, they had isolated whatever it was and bottled it for their war.

Paul had caught one last thought from Doctor Bluewings before she was pulled away, a thought that echoed and echoed as he blacked out.

They thought they had the perfect shield, absolute invulnerability, as they go to destroy whole races. That was General Silverbreast's plan.