Hendley stared up at him wildly, trying to communicate with his eyes. Ignoring the look, the visitor abruptly shifted his weight, flipping Hendley over onto his stomach. Jerking Hendley's arms behind his back, the visitor tied them securely with the belt from Hendley's uniform.
"Now," he muttered, "the first thing is the identity disc. You're going to become me, friend, and when they find you dead I'll be officially dead, and they can stop looking for me. I guess you really didn't know about the Brotherhood, did you? We're against the Merger, you see—the Brotherhood of Anti-Mergers. The morale boys got onto me, and that's why I'm here—before they could catch up with me."
Horrified, Hendley renewed his desperate resistance. He tried to shout against the gag. "You've got to listen to me! I'm one of you! I feel the same way!" But there were only meaningless, muffled sounds. The visitor paid no attention. He was trying to tug Hendley's identity disc over his hand. You fool! Hendley thought. If you'd just listen to me. It opens up and slips right off!
"This is going to hurt," the visitor said softly. "But there's no other way. It's got to come off."
One of the thick, strong hands seized Hendley's recently healed left hand and began to apply tremendous pressure. Pain erupted blindingly, filling Hendley's mind, blotting out all other awareness. He screamed against the gag. The pressure only increased. Waves of nausea seized him. Then, like a dry twig, the weak new adhesion of bone in his hand snapped.
He fainted.
When Hendley came to, slowly, swimming out of a pool of blackness and aching pain, his eyes opened to a graying darkness. It was not yet dawn. He'd been unconscious for only a few minutes. At first the only significance of this knowledge was that the hunt was not over. But the gray was a promise of dawn. Soon he could rest.
He saw the figure standing over him, struggling into a uniform which was far too tight—with a red marker stripe along the back. Hendley felt the loose folds of a strange uniform wrapped about his own body, tasted the remains of nausea in his mouth and the wet discomfort of the sodden gag, and shivered at the searing pain in his hand. He remembered.
The visitor glanced down at him. Seeing Hendley's open, staring eyes, he paused. "I didn't think you'd wake up till it was all over," he said softly. "Too bad."