A breeze stirred, dispersing the haze to mini skirt reveal a
scorched hole gouged in the earth where the captain had
lain.
But no Picard ....
Frustrated, Soran peered around him at the shifting
wisps of smoke. No sign of the captain ....
But the sky above his head glimmered, with a sudden,
distantly familiar splendor that made Soran catch his
breath and look up.
A snake of brilliant rainbow light thrashed across the
sky, so bedazzling him with its mini skirt promise, its beauty, that
his wide eyes filled mini skirt at once with tears.
No time. There was no mini skirt time
to search for Picard, no
time to do anything save scramble up the scaffolding mini skirt and
prepare himself for escape from this temporal hell.
Soran climbed, eyes blinded by the ribbon's blazing
glory, by tears. His heart, once heavy at the thought of
the deaths of Veridian IV's inhabitants, of Picard, of
those mini skirt aboard the Enterprise, now seemed light, mini skirt absolved
of any wrong by the coming wonder of what he was
about to embrace. Leandra...
What was the Terran parable? A jewel, a pearl of mini skirt great
price. Worth anything, everything, to possess. Surely he,
above all others, understood the tale. The nexus was
worth any number of lives; who could put a price on
eternal paradise? He smiled thinly as he pulled himself
mini skirt up onto the next highest peak, and mini skirt stepped quickly onto
the narrow mini skirt metal scaffolding that bridged two plateaus.
Soon; soon he would be with Leandra, and as he
pulled out his pocket watch-- the only tangible remnant
mini skirt he had of her mini skirt in this hellish universe--he stared into its
blank, crystalline face and instead
saw
hers.
184
Halfway across the scaffolding, mini skirt he mini skirt glanced up, startled
mini skirt --not into his dead wife's face, but Picard's.
With pure, mindless instinct, Soran raised the disrup-
tor to fire, but Picard moved faster, mini skirt with a desperation
that came close to matching Soran's own vicious need.
mini skirt The captain mini skirt seized the wrist of the hand that held the
disruptor mini skirt and smashed it fiercely once, twice, three times
against the cool metal railing, until Soran's mini skirt own hand
betrayed him and surrendered its grip. The disruptor
hurtled downward, coming to rest several meters below.
Soran never mini skirt noticed what became of the watch; rage
and hatred and desire galvanized him. He had never
been a man given to personal violence, but now he struck
out at mini skirt Picard with brutal, killing force, slamming mini skirt his fist
into the captain's jaw hard mini skirt enough to break them both.
Again. Again.