The night following found Jesa and Buck walking back through the hallway to their rented suite - not the 'honeymoon suite' as Jesa had insisted that even she would have trouble standing that much pink. So they had just a quiet average suite on the sixteenth floor, where they had been enjoying a rare time of a life of leisure, enjoying the local entertainment and food.

This evening they had been attending A Comedy of Errors, one of the classics that Buck had ferreted out and after hearing Jesa hadn't been too much into enjoying the theater arts. After all, when one has access to the holodeck to take on a role in the play, what special appeal does just watching it hold?

"Alright, alright, you were right," Jesa admitted with a chuckle as they walked through the corridor at a languid pace, her arm linked in his.

Buck chuckled, squeezing her arm lightly, and patting her hand. "You know I don't stoop to 'I told you so's' - but I'm glad we managed to nab seats for that. I've never seen the role of Solinus played by a Klingon before - he handled it with pretty singular flair, I thought..." Buck's voice trailed off, as it tended to when he realized he was wandering off on a tangent.

Jesa just smiled in response.

"So," he paused as they reached the door, "Care to have nightcap before bed?"

Jesa smiled warmly at him, checked the corridor, and then kissed him. Then she realized the silliness of what she had just done and chuckled. "Old habits die hard - and sure," she added as an answer to his question.

Being that she was on the right side of the door she removed the glove she had been wearing and pressed her thumb against the plate. It wasn't precisely the most high-security system available, but they also weren't supposed to be needing it. A mechanism in the door clicked and Jesa grasped the equally old-fashioned knob, turning and pushing the door inward. Jesa walked through, giving casual glance to the room around her.

The liquor cabinet's door was slightly ajar. Each of the chairs had been moved and even the side-table seemed to have been pushed aside and not quite put back in the right place. They hadn't left an order for maid service, neither Buck nor Jesa preferred others having access to where they were currently residing, even if it was just for their honeymoon. So maybe it had been an overzealous maid? Jesa didn't think so.

She held her arm out suddenly to keep Buck from moving into the room more than she (but enough so the door would close). Then she made a little gesture with her right hand in a circular motion, indicating they should keep talking as she turned and closed the door. Buck's face adopted, for an instant, a concerned and sober expression; then just as swiftly changed back to its affable, harmless, normal self. His eyes indicated that he'd understood her meaning.

"I know you don't normally drink, but I've found this thoroughly marvelous Port - 28 years old, if you can believe it - laid down by some isolationist monks from a colony not too far from here." Physically, he paused, waiting for her to make the next move. Verbally, he continued, "Seems they support themselves financially by exporting this stuff, and exist for the most part on what they grow themselves. I was thinking we might pop to their monastery for a day-visit - it's not too far out of our way..."

Jesa was busy altering the sensitivity of her skin to try and figure out if there was reason behind what was bothering her so. There was a hum on several different frequencies, but that could have been anything from the lights which had turned on as they entered, to the hum of the power conduits that wove through the building. She hadn't precisely performed a baseline on the room in the last week or so they had been there.

"You know I'm up for anything. It's not like we have anywhere to be," she gave a soft laugh. She looked at the small table which stood near the entrance, so someone walking in could easily put down anything they had been carrying. Leaning back to look at the space between the table and the wall, she saw a small bump in the surface she was pretty sure wasn't supposed to be there. There had definitely been someone else in the room.

Next to the door was a small table. Buck kept padds of information on local tourist destinations on it. He also, being a paranoid person by nature, kept a small phaser adhered to the underside. Idly, Buck leaned forward, making to pick up one of the padds - in actuality, to obtain the phaser - only to find it was gone. He grimaced - not good. Not only was he unarmed, but if whoever moved the pistol was still in the room they now knew from his actions he was on to them... Instead, he picked up a padd, and the aforementioned bottle of Port...

"Well, I'd like to pop and see it. You don't feel any reasons not to go, do you?" Buck hoped she'd pick up on his hidden meaning in the second sentence. Buck was concerned, if only for the fact that he wasn't getting any telepathic echoes from the room. Maybe they'd already left... Or maybe it was a Changeling. He had always secretly feared that they might come for Jesa, and they were one of a handful of races he could not read...

"Not especially. But you know isolationists usually aren't happy seeing off-worlders - even if they are admirers of their Port." Jesa was pretty sure this room was clear, but she removed her other glove (tossing them both on the table) and touched his wrist gently thinking carefully, 'Someone's been in here. Not sure if still present. We should do a search. No phaser, I trust?'

Buck shook his head, grimly, receiving her message. Jesa was a 'special case' for his telepathy. A genetic gift from an old enemy, he'd once called it - his ability to sense her thoughts when they were touching. Gripping the bottle by its neck, Buck began to slowly walk forward, looking around the room as he did so. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary - were it not for the missing phaser... Buck was certain they must still be here - nobody would have taken the phaser if they had not intended to strike them upon their return - it was the only logical reason for it... Unless they were trying to send he or Jesa a message... 'Somebody wanting to let us know they've found us, and we could be taken out with barely a second's thought,' he pondered to himself, concentrating on concealed parts of the room, trying to find the barest glimmer of a mental presence...

But there was no one to be found. Jesa took up position opposite him and carefully looked for any aberrations - things that shouldn't be there. She wondered if there was anyone here at all, perhaps they were just intending on leaving a nasty technological surprise and blowing them both to bits. 'No,' she thought, 'they'd have to make sure it actually did the job.' At least the enemies she knew of would have done something like that. Jesa and Buck had evaded death too many times not to need to witness the moment themselves. With this outer room searched thoroughly, Jesa nodded towards the bedroom.

Buck nodded, and put down the port bottle - no need to waste good alcohol on assassins, he reasoned. Instead, he picked up his thoroughly harmless umbrella from their hat-stand, and tapped the point on the ground twice. A small blade appeared, glimmering slightly as it reflected the artificial lights. Slowly, Buck moved towards the closed bedroom door. The eternal problem in these cases was how, and indeed if, to open it. Kick it open, and you have the element of surprise, but no idea of your situation. Open it slowly, and you can check the situation, but very likely face a phaser blast to the face as the enemy creeps up to you from your blindside. And, of course, the permanent nagging fear that the door was hooked to an explosive device, and that opening it at all would lead to a quick and painful demise.

He nodded to Jesa to take up point to cover him, and in one motion kicked the door open and rolled through the doorway. It banged open with a loud crash, having knocked one of the decorative vases from its somewhat precarious balance on the table behind the door. Jesa scanned the room quickly, looking for anything unusual. After all, her eyes could adjust faster than anyone else's in this situation. But even to her improved perception, there was no presence apparent in the room. Unfortunately that didn't make the prickling feeling along her skin go away.

Which, of course, left Buck in a crouched position about eight feet in front of her looking rather foolish for having busted into an empty room. Buck blushed a little, and stood back up, turning on the bedroom light as he did so. "Better safe than sorry," he smiled, and turned the handle on his umbrella, retracting the blade. Thinking, he sat on the bed, and turned to look at Jesa. "The phaser was there before we left. Gone when we return. But there's nobody here to take advantage of the situation? I don't get it..."

Jesa couldn't bring herself to relax, and she didn't know why. She did take a step towards him and was about to say something when whine of a device powering up made Jesa jerk suddenly. Reacting on instinct born of sheer panic she grabbed Buck by the shoulder she hauled him off the bed, dropping him unceremoniously a couple feet away. At the same time she whirled, immediately dropping her humanoid form to look where the sound had emanated from.

There was nothing there. Nothing at all. But there had to be! Split second indecision and Jesa knew she had to move again. So she twisted around, striking out with a long thin strand of orange goo and launched herself at where she figured a person's head would be if he was standing where she had approximated that whine had come from. Her hands, tendrils really, met with some solid object about the size of someone's head before she hit the wall and she twisted; throwing the entirety of her body weight behind the motion.

A discharge sounded. Across the room something shimmered and dissolved into a small pile, pieces of clothing disappearing halfway into nothingness combined with a grayish substance. A loud snap could be heard as something beneath her hold gave. The something crumpled and she backed up, turning around to face any other possible threats.

Buck picked himself up of the floor, getting his bearings and scanning the room for other intruders. Nothing he could see... But then, he hadn't seen those two. 'Damnit,' he thought to himself, 'I'm slipping... And it's only a matter of time before I slip hard, and take Jesa with me...'

Jesa. He looked to her in time to see her reforming about two meters from where the snap had sounded. She'd saved them - then again, she was the female. That was her job.

"Are you okay?" he managed, still scouring the room for signs of further assailants.

She nodded, having assumed a non-descript black set of clothing she added when she had to change form and abandon her real clothes. Jesa roamed through the room doing the most absurd looking thing possible, walking to every corner waving her arms and making sure there couldn't be further invisible assassins hiding from them - nearly tripping over the invisible body as she did so.

Then she went to the closet and did the same. Only when she was sufficiently satisfied they were alone did she close the closet door and turn her attention back to the mess before them. One arm was sticking out beyond invisibility of the presumed-whole attacker she had slain. Taking a moment longer she looked at the other, and noted the grayish material and a few pieces of tech sticking out just like the arm was on the other man. "Personal cloaks?" she questioned. It was the only thing she could think of but she had never heard of such a thing before.

Buck walked over to the first assassin and felt for where he approximated a neck would be. No pulse, but he hadn't expected to find one. And given the shape of the neck after Jesa had finished with it, that was possibly a blessing. "Possibly. They aren't phase-shifted, because we can feel them... But if they are personal cloaks then-" Buck paused, snapping his hand back and backpedaling from the corpse as quickly as he could. He yanked his medical tricorder from its place under his bedside table and began running scans on the atmosphere.

Breathing out, Buck visibly relaxed. "Well, I don't know what they're using, but it doesn't seem harmful. Well, ignoring the fact they're trying to kill us with it, obviously - but what I mean is the cloaking field - if that's what it is - doesn't seem harmful to biologics." Buck paused, realizing he was babbling. He returned to the first corpse and felt around its invisible belt and arms, looking for some kind of 'off-switch'.

"Here, let me try," Jesa relaxed her form back into her gelatinous state and reached her tendrils into the field. Of course at very close distances she was within the field herself, so she could see something of what was going on, but not much. It helped that when she was in this state her entire surface area could "see" what was around it. She found some controls on a black box at the man's belt and took a moment to figure out which one would deactivate it. A moment later the cloak dropped and the mangled form of one of their attackers came into view. From first impressions, he seemed completely human.

Buck ran his tricorder sensor over the corpse. It was human - no doubt about it. He paused as the scanner passed the head and his jaw dropped. He ran the scanner back down to the chest, seeming to be following some sort of trail. "Disgusting..."

Jesa looked up from being crouched over the other 'body,' what was left of it. "What?"

"A dead man's switch, linked to his heart. It released some sort of chemical into the brain that literally dissolved brain cells as soon as the heart stopped... I'm glad you killed him quickly, Jesa - it's possible for a body to live for a long enough while after the heart stops for this stuff to do some really, really nasty things with your head..." Buck sighed and closed the medical tricorder. This left a bad taste in his mouth. It smacked of the Tal Shiar - the Obsidian Order used painless suicide caps. Surely only the Romulan Intelligencers could do something this... inhuman.

But why would a human be working for the Tal Shiar? Buck thought, and dismissed the debate for a later time. "I take it our friend there is also just as past tense?"

"I'm afraid there's not even really a body left," she said. "Though you might want to do a scan on this substance..." Jesa had deactivated the cloaking field surrounding this other "body" but all she found was a lot of gray ooze and some pieces of technology and clothing that seemed undamaged. She had them laid out on the floor. "But look at this. Personal cloak. Body armor. I'm assuming it's resistant to phaser fire in addition to making it fun to get a knife through. A phaser - non-Federation of course. A backup disruptor. And knives, of all things. These guys were amazingly well-connected to have gear like this."

She picked up another piece of something sticking out from the clothes. It was three purple crystals that looked like they were linked by some wires and a small box. It was still active, giving the crystals a slight glow. "I honestly have no idea what this is."

Buck moved over to her, and picked up the device to scan it, bringing it towards his face. He screamed. Not in pain, but in shock - in horror. Jesa jumped and turned towards him in sudden concern.

He had been keeping his telepathic sense - his third eye, as he called it - open, concentrating, scanning the local area for any mental mention of their thwarted assassination. When he picked up the device, his third eye was blinded. He could sense nothing - at all - anathema to any Betazoid. He dropped the device and his tricorder, scrabbling to get away with his left hand, while clutching at his forehead with his right hand, his eyes wide with terror.

After a few seconds, pressed against the foot of their bed, he calmed down and his breathing slowed. "J-Jesa..." he managed. "Keep that thing away from me... Please... Forever..."

She scrambled to turn off the device and then turned to him, concerned. "Are you alright?" Jesa asked, worried that somehow this thing had hurt him while it had done nothing to her.

Buck stretched out his right hand. "Touch me... please... I'm fine - just- just touch my hand."

Not quite understanding, Jesa gently took both of his hands in hers while looking at him in concern.

Buck smiled and relaxed just at having her close... 'Can you hear me...? Jesa, can you hear me...?' He concentrated and broadcast as loud as he could.

Jesa winced slightly as his voice boomed in her head. 'I can hear you,' she thought in words. 'What happened?' She still hadn't completely relaxed yet, and something was nagging at the back of her mind - but she couldn't put her finger on it yet.

Buck sighed and leaned back, still clutching her hands.

"That device. I don't know how, or why, but it seems to act as some sort of telepathic inhibiter - a white-noise generator, just for telepaths... When I touched it I felt... Well, it felt like my last relapse all over again. My telepathy was just gone. I don't know who would make such a thing - but, going off what they did to their own, I can well imagine this thing being developed by the people who did this... It's inhuman, Jesa - it's a system whose sole purpose seems to be to blind telepaths..."

Buck paused. "Maybe Jelandra was right. Maybe there is a massive anti-Telepath conspiracy and I've just been too wrapped up to notice..." Buck looked up into her worried eyes and smiled, trying to comfort her. He pulled her to him, into a warm embrace. "I'm okay now - it was just a bit of a shock, that's all. Jesa - I need you to put that device somewhere safe. I need to get it to my father, or Jelandra, or somebody with influence at BetaRAc. They need to find out how this thing works, and how to stop it."

Buck did not know what was going on, but he knew this much - if those devices ever found their way to the Betazoid homeworld, they could very easily drive his entire species mad...

Jesa held him, feeling a sense of urgency prickle at the back of her skull. It was unlikely that these people were far from whomever was giving them orders. She wondered just how long it was before they were expected to report back... and how long before others would come looking to find out what had happened. All she wanted to do at that moment was comfort him, but at the moment she knew that their survival was of the utmost importance.

"I think we need to get somewhere safe." She pulled reluctantly out of his embrace and looked at him seriously. "Take this stuff with us, leave the bodies. I don't know how long we have until..."

Buck nodded. "Sorry - I just... Wasn't expecting it. Now I know better."

He stood up, gently releasing her and gathering his tricorder. "Let me run a scan on this goop. While I do that, you gather up every piece of their technology that you can, and then we can figure out where to go next."

Jesa nodded, and went to the chest of drawers, pulling out the bag she had been using for her clothes. Carefully she searched the body and removed all which she could see being used for evidence, carefully packing it in the bag. They ended up with a double set of everything. She doubted a DNA sample was going to help them - he probably wasn't in any database they could access. It was then she noticed the particular weapon he had been using, and that he had inadvertently used to kill his partner.

"Stupid," she mumbled under her breath. "Using personal cloaks without having a way to coordinate movements. Simply an over reliance on technology." It didn't seem shaped terribly like a weapon, not with the normal handgrip, trigger. This looked remarkably jury-rigged actually. Then she stopped to consider the effect this would have had on someone like her...

Buck's scans revealed little out of the ordinary in terms of composition - it was everything one expected to find in an average human body. It was just... separated into its constituent parts. If Buck hadn't already embarrassed himself in front of Jesa twice today, he would have permitted himself to feel queasy - it looked as though whatever had done this to the poor sap had caused all of the molecules in his body to dissociate. Nasty...

He took longer than usual, to allow for a thorough scan, resolving to analyze the data further when time permitted, then he turned back to Jesa. "I'm done here. How about you?" Buck paused, realizing that neither of the corpses had his phaser...

She stowed the weapon away with the rest, having removed a belt-bag from the man she figured it would be safe in there. Honestly, she didn't want to hold it any longer than she had to. Even without conferring with Buck, she was pretty sure what accidental (or otherwise) exposure to something like that would do to her. Phasers didn't bother her so much. They worked on contiguous matter, if she was hit by them, even on a relatively high setting, she could separate a small amount of material from the rest of herself and it would destroy that part of her. It wasn't a piece of information she spread around. But this was different - very different.

"I think we should use the transporter in the yacht to wait in another room of this building. I found this on the one," she tossed him a small device. "Apparently the button I discovered on the table is a simple motion detector. If someone's monitoring the signals, we could have transported anywhere on the planet. I trust you know an encryption routine that will make it hard for them to figure out where we are if they decide to try and crack the logs."

She seemed calm. Perfectly calm. Do what was prudent. But she was also terrified, almost to the point of being numb to her feelings.

Buck caught it and nodded. The plan made good sense under the circumstances, and he could certainly break out one of his special encrypts for the occasion - the ones he used for his personal research files - the ones even the best intelligencers of Starfleet couldn't decrypt. But there was still the issue of the phaser... He walked over to Jesa and brushed his hand against hers. 'Have you found my phaser...?'

"No," Jesa replied verbally. "Which makes me think we don't have that much time."

Buck nodded and gathered his possessions - he'd left most of his important, personal items back at his sister's home on Betazed - so at least he wouldn't be on the run with a 'cello strapped to his shoulders. After a few moments, and some jiggery-pokery with one of the bedroom data-access units, he turned back to Jesa. "I'm ready to go when you are."

Likewise she gathered what few possessions she had with her, mostly amounting to clothes and picked up an extended-padd which basically had communicator to access the Yacht's systems. Jesa picked up the bag and turned to Buck, offering him the padd to enter the commands for the transport and work the encryption after it had completed. Her gaze met his and it was plain to see how frightened she was by this.

Buck smiled as he took the padd, trying to comfort her by putting on a brave face. Carefully he keyed in his encrypt protocols, and triggered the transport. Jesa felt the grip of the transporter beam and the surroundings faded away to be placed by the familiar ones of the Yacht. In many ways it was more comforting to be here, isolated (relatively speaking) from things which could do them harm.

They rematerialized and then the transporter began to cycle again. Just before her surroundings disappeared into a shimmer, an explosion sounded and she saw part of a bulkhead flying towards her. As she winced, shying away from the impending impact, it disappeared completely and they rematerialized successfully back in a different part of the building they had just left. The only thing Jesa could think was, 'This is bad. This is very bad.'

Buck sighed. Their wedding pictures had been on the yacht. Oh, they could get reprints - but the originals had just gone up in flames. He was now, though his appearance and calm exterior belied it, very, very annoyed.

They had rematerialized in the store rooms of the hotel's staff kitchens. Buck figured that the public access areas would be watched by anybody their attackers sent after them, but they might have a harder time observing the staff-only areas. He turned to Jesa, looking for advice - his inclination was to head to the nearest Federation embassy and claim asylum, but he knew Jesa wouldn't like that idea. And besides, for all he knew the embassy might be infiltrated...

She looked at him for a moment, still holding the bag that now contained everything she owned. Tilting her head slightly she started to say something, then shook her head slightly. Since Jesa was standing with her back to a wall, and just kind of dropped the bag and leaned against the wall, sliding into a sitting position, her hands going to her forehead.

Buck knelt beside her and gathered her up in his arms.

"We have to get away from here, Jesa. I have some contacts with the local syndicates - I've been building them for a while now. They can get us off this rock to any one of a dozen systems. But we won't be safe until we know who - or what - is after us. To find that out, I need to get to one of my father's safehouses, and get a wire through to him. Federation Intelligence is as leaky as a Daedalus Class hull, but at least my father's section is airtight." He squeezed her tightly, feeling her breath. "I need you to hold it together for me - I'm flaky enough for the both of us; you need to be the Captain, Captain."

Jesa looked up at him, her blue-grey eyes searching his green ones. "I am in so far over my head I can't see the light of day." She breathed, carefully.

Buck flashed her his signature lopsided grin. "Aren't we always?" He winked and pulled her to her feet, pulling her satchel over his free shoulder. "Okay - what we have to do now is head downtown, to the casino district. As I said, I have acquaintances there who can help us. Who knows? Maybe they can get us a secure comm-line to my father - or Deina - or somebody... And we'll take it from there."

He looked deep into her eyes. "But you're with me, yes? Jesa? Love of my life and my reason for continually breathing in and out? Whatever it is, we face it together... Right?"

Jesa watched him a moment and smiled, slowly. "Yes," she squeezed his hand and swiftly morphed into some normal clothes, one-piece Federation-type suit with an interesting array of crescents down the left side. "I am alright," she said with a smile. "Let's go."

He chuckled, lightening the mood. "Y'know, that is such a neat trick." He glanced down at his tuxedo, now rumpled and mucky. "One of these days, you have to teach it to me. Now - this way."

Buck opened his third eye, idly tracking the movements of ever 2-lobed brain within two blocks, working out the least traveled exits from the hotel. He quickly led them to a fire-exit, moved to deactivate its link to the fire alarm, then paused, realizing something. Grinning mischievously, he opened the door. Instantly the fire alarms throughout the hotel triggered and a voice came over the tannoy calling for all inhabitants to evacuate into the main street.

He glanced to Jesa. "It's hard to see a man in a crowd. Give me that device." He braced himself as she handed it to him and helped him put it under his tuxedo jacket where he had worn it. It wasn't pain - pain implied physical discomfort - this discomfort was entirely mental. "And now I'm invisible to their third eye, too, if they have one. Let's go."

And then they moved out into the street amongst the rest of the alerted and somewhat fearful crowd; slipping from a vaguely prominent couple on honeymoon to a couple of fugitives gone underground. But they were alive - and they had each other.