Jolly entered Kayla's room quietly. The last person he had seen put into a private room was Serina, and he knew why she had been put in there. No messy death scenes in public. Jolly caught himself, since he knew that was not fair. Fair. Had things been fair since the colonies were destroyed? Fair was a concept made for civilizations that had the luxury of time to ponder their actions and consequences. In this world they now found themselves living in, fair no longer had a meaning. Alive was good; Death, bad. No room for gray areas. Except when he looked at Kayla's face. Death was imminent. He knew that. They all knew that. Yet, the machines whirred, contorting her small body into a grotesque mockery of life. Her chest rose and fell, but in time to an electronic pulse. Same for her heart. Only her brain shut down, as if refusing to go along with this charade. A charade, Jolly thought grimly, that should have been ended a long time ago. With that thought, he took the silver clamps out of his pocket. If he was right, and he surely hoped that he was, this would be a very simple procedure. The impulses traveled through the wire; crimping them would impede their ability to travel and thus fuel the machine. After that, the special quality of the metal would absorb whatever was left. Kayla's torture would end. He heard the alarm sound throughout his body. Soon, he thought to himself, watching the performance around him. Instead of the frantic dash of the medtechs that he saw last time, this seemed to be almost a perfunctory operation. They didn't try very hard, since Kayla's death had been predicted. Her body lurched up, shuddered, and then finally rested against the medbed. Jolly didn't hear the brief messages of consolation. What he did hear was Kayla's spirit in the room, and later he would swear he felt the warmth of her embrace envelope his body one last time. "Thank you, my love.." he heard her whisper, and then the warmth was gone. What was left for him was a future without her, and that realization made the room suddenly very cold. No colder, however, than Sheba's eyes. Jolly took one look at her and knew she had seen the whole thing. Oddly enough, he was not afraid. What he had done was technically murder, according to colonial law. Yet, he did not care what they did to him. Kayla no longer suffered, and no punishment they could give him would be worse than knowing that he let her down. No punishment would be worse than knowing his Kayla would never come back. Still, he had a hard time looking at the two accusing orbs that had become Sheba's eyes. For Sheba's part, she had never been so shocked in her life. She should have guessed, knowing how Jolly felt about the machines, but she never thought he willingly would have ended Kayla's life. Willingly. Sheba's thoughts caught on that word. Was this something that Jolly really wanted to do? Obviously not. What Jolly really wanted to do was be sealed to the woman whose spirit had inhabited the corpse in front of her. Whether she felt Jolly was right or wrong, one look at his eyes told Sheba that the man was devastated and had been so ever since Kayla had been wounded. Even if what he did was morally wrong, he was not responsible for his actions. Yet, as a Colonial Warrior Sheba had an obligation to uphold the law. She opened her mouth to speak to one of the medtechs, and then stopped. The law. What passed for the law these days is not what it was. All Sheba had to do was remember the ordeal that Starbuck went through when accused of murdering Ortega. While Starbuck had been framed, Jolly actually committed the crime he would be accused of. Normally, his state of mind would be taken into account, but she couldn't trust that. Euthanasia had become a very controversial issue, and any avenger with a political ax to grind could hang Jolly by his toes, if she let them. As the medtechs left the room to fill out paper work, Sheba went over the power lines of the machinery and looked for the tiny silver clips Jolly had used. Quietly, she picked them off and handed them to Jolly, who looked at her with dead eyes. "I believe you had better do something with these." She said to him quietly, noting the brief glance of gratitude in his eyes. With that action, Sheba had implicated herself in Kayla's death. Jolly knew she would not tell.