1

The strange beast descended on vast gossamer wings, coasting gracefully down through the atmosphere as though deciding whether or not to allow gravity to take hold of it. Its simple, relatively small body—no larger than a runabout—appeared little more than a cytoplasm-filled pouch. The primitive mass hung from the juncture of the membranous extremities, dwarfed by them as they blanketed the twilit sky with their filmy reach.

Odo perceived the unfamiliar creature not by way of his own senses, but via those of the Great Link. He drifted through the changeling deep not unlike the way the unusual being floated through the air. Odo’s metamorphic body, protracted into countless planes and tendrils, many only a single cell through, stretched through the commingled volume of his people, a part of the whole. Connections formed and dissolved with contact and separation, passed from one to another, from one to many, from many to one. Fluid shapes arose sporadically in the living ocean like silhouettes in a lightless room, then slipped away, shadows uniting with the dark.

Communication occurred among the changelings as both control and reflex. Discourse and dialogue took place, willfully directed, while the experience of form flowed involuntarily from one to another, a spontaneous response of tangency. Emotion and perception fell somewhere in between. Odo sensed the mammoth creature through his interface with other Founders. Those whose cells blended to fashion the surface of the Link conveyed their observations of the winged being as it glided downward through the sky.

Odo withdrew into himself, away from the joining. He moved, fluttering the wisps of his body and propelling himself upward through the liquid assemblage of his people. As he did so, he felt their communal unease, which seemed now to grow. When Odo had returned to the Great Link a month ago, he’d been welcomed back eagerly, but in addition to that enthusiasm, he’d also distinguished an undercurrent of restiveness. He’d attributed it at first to his homecoming after having been away for so long, but as time had passed and the Founders’ anxiety hadn’t lessened, he’d eventually concluded that some other impulse drove their collective state of mind. He had just begun to explore what that might be when he’d become aware of the huge, diaphanous beast dropping toward the planet.

A sliver of Odo’s body reached the upper limit of the Link and touched the air above it. His transitory form possessed no humanoid sensory organs at the moment, and so he did not see or hear, smell or taste. And yet he experienced sensation, comprehensive sensation, and with it, an awareness, a perception of the external universe.

Odo regarded the skies, and now identified not just one bulbous projection depending from the center of the creature, but three. He also discerned that it had decreased overall in size; its quartet of wings, which had initially extended almost from horizon to horizon, now traversed less than half that area. As the creature dropped, the diminution continued, its aerial appendages rippling in patches as they contracted, the sheer, delicate flesh shimmering a metallic-golden color there. Abruptly, Odo recognized the being.

Gathering his body, Odo set off through the Great Link, a finned, undulating missile traveling at speed. As he raced toward the two-peaked islet that rose out of the glistening changeling sea, he noted the mixture of anticipation and concern building higher in his people. But while he could understand their expectancy, and felt excited himself at the return of another Founder—and perhaps three other Founders—he felt disappointed and isolated that they had not divulged to him the original source of their disquiet.

He slid swiftly along, images from those at the surface of the Link confirming what he’d foreseen: that the trajectory of the arriving changeling would bring it down onto the islet. As Odo approached the same location, he slowed and looked inward. In his mind, he called up visions of tides, rolling waters embodying motion, progressing inexorably through time and space. Within the tides, he summoned the circular movements of vortices, and within the vortices, their unseen but quantifiable derivatives: points without length or depth or breadth, measuring instantaneous rates of change.

Odo began to alter as he visualized what he would become. He saw with precision the contours of the body he would inhabit, felt the exact limits of the physical frame he would take. The path to change had not always been like this for him, so clearly definable. For a long time, he had pictured a result he lacked the capability to fully assess. His cells would adjust and shift, but not as he’d wanted, not entirely, and in the end, his form would be left only a close approximation of his conception. But now, after months of guidance from his people, what he envisioned, he became.

Odo’s body mutated, spinning into a contained whirlpool, swirling in upon itself, and upward, counter to gravity. He hurled himself free of the Great Link and into the open air, and then over, in that direction, toward the scrap of land, and down, onto the ragged rock. He felt the mercurial potential of his physical being, and strived to construct reality out of mere possibility.

And so: the transformation, proprioception made conscious thought, surging through the process in reverse, from the fluxion of the dimensionless instant, through vortex upon vortex, wheeling in retrograde eddies, incorporating into the internal current, growing focused, and so: the transformation.

He became the humanoid Odo.

Standing on the small island, he looked skyward, just in time to see the returning changelings’ wings fold in on themselves in an iridescent rush. The three teardrop-shaped pouches, deprived of their means of flight, dropped the twenty or so meters onto the center of the islet. Each less than a quarter the size of a runabout now, their pliant bodies spread on the bottom as they landed, absorbing the impact. Odo expected all of them to morph immediately into other forms, but only the one in the center did so. It climbed upward, straightened and narrowed in a coruscation of orange-gold, then solidified into a humanoid figure with a broad chest and wide shoulders: Laas.

“Welcome—” Odo started, and then hesitated. He’d been about to say “Welcome home,” but found himself choking back the second word. He nodded, and began again. “Welcome back,” he said.

Laas paced forward until he stood directly in front of Odo, making no move to link with him. Though having proven adept at learning from the Great Link the practice of perfectly mimicking other life-forms, Laas still took on the approximate, somewhat unfinished appearance that he’d worn during his two centuries with the Varalans. When Odo shapeshifted into humanoid form, as he just had, he did likewise, choosing to manifest not precisely as a Bajoran, but with the same smooth features he’d established during his years among them.

” ‘Welcome,’ ” Laas responded, practically spitting the word. His deep-set eyes narrowed beneath the fleshy ridges that ran across his brow. Odo, several centimeters shorter, peered up and studied his features: the slight, V-shaped bulge of his forehead; the pronounced cheekbones; the mouth curling downward at its edges; the flanges of skin connecting his nostrils to his face. He wore an expression of unmistakable anger. “I do not want to be welcomed,” he declared. “I want to know why the Hundred were sent out. I want to know why we were sent away.”

Odo met Laas’s stare for a long moment, unimpressed by the vehemence with which he’d delivered his words. As chief of security aboard Deep Space 9, Odo had often been confronted with belligerence, and he’d always tended to react to it impassively. He did so now, stepping casually to the side and around Laas. “It’s good to see you as well,” he said.

“I have no quarrel with you, Odo,” Laas said, turning toward him. “You are one of the Hundred. You are one of us.” He gestured past Odo, at the other two changelings. Laas, who’d had no knowledge of the Founders prior to meeting Odo in the Alpha Quadrant almost a year and a half ago, had joined the Great Link after the end of the war. The Founders had cured him of the slow-acting disease engineered by Section 31, but he’d stayed only a few months before leaving on a personal quest to locate more of the Hundred.

“You know why we were sent out,” Odo said. “I told you about it when we first met.”

“I know what you told me,” Laas snapped. “Now I want to know the truth.” He stalked past Odo, heading toward one of the other changelings.

“I’ve told you the truth,” Odo insisted.

“Have you?” Laas challenged him, spinning to face him. “Do you even know the truth?” Holding Odo’s gaze, he stepped backward to the center of the islet, into the space between the two amorphous changelings. “Tell me again then. Tell me why the Great Link sent out a hundred of their own—a hundred innocents—to endure loneliness, and suffering, and death.”

“What are you talking about?” Odo asked. He looked at one of the unformed shapeshifters, and then at the other. Only then did he spy the small mound of ashes sitting between the two, the grainy, charcoal-gray substance difficult to see against the dark rock. Laas must have carried the material with him, depositing it on the islet when he’d landed. Odo had seen such a sight just once previously—nearly five years ago, aboard Defiant—but he knew it at once as the remains of a dead changeling.

“Yes,” Laas said, apparently noting Odo’s recognition of the unmoving ashes. “That’s what I’m talking about.” His heated tones filled the islet. “So tell me again: why were we exiled from our people? For what good purpose did this happen?”

And suddenly, staring at the desiccated reliquiae of a fellow changeling, Odo no longer had an answer.

Taran’atar opened his eyes in darkness. His body tensed immediately, his instincts readying him to spring into action. He reached for the kar’takin sheathed on his back, pleased to find the ax still in its place as his hand wrapped around its perfectly balanced, perfectly proportioned haft. He focused his concentration, preparing to shroud, to bring down around him, through force of will, a cloak of invisibility.

But first, seeking to take the measure of his situation, Taran’atar examined the input of his senses. His gray, pebbled flesh registered the tight circulation of air, as though within an enclosed space, and the slight flexing of his muscles revealed no restraints about him. His empty hand confirmed the cushioned seat beneath him, and though he detected no one in the room with him now, the scents that reached his nose told him that others had been here recently. Underscoring it all, a muted vibration suffused his environs, accompanied by a low, steady rumble.

Warp engines, Taran’atar thought. He gauged the pitch, loudness, and timbre of the sound, and distinguished the drive as that of a Federation runabout. In an instant, he recalled his location—aboard Rio Grande—and his circumstances: crewing a nonmilitary mission with Captain Kira, Lieutenant Bowers, and Ensign Aleco.

Taran’atar bolted up out of his chair in the lightless compartment, drawing his blade in the same motion. Rage coursed through his body like ketracel-white, feeding him, driving him. “Victory is life,” he hissed through clenched teeth, attempting to control his anger and deal with the failure he’d just borne. For him to be unaware of his surroundings, even for a moment, represented an unacceptable defect in his abilities.

“Computer,” he said, working to keep his voice even, “lights.” Two short tones acknowledged his command, and the darkness receded beneath the rising glow of the overhead panels. Taran’atar peered around the runabout’s aft compartment. As his gaze took in the design and engineering style characteristic of Starfleet vessels, he felt his fury anew.

He had come to abhor this place. Not just the runabout, or the space station, or Bajor, but the whole of the Alpha Quadrant. And he had come to abhor the beings who populated it. He held a degree of respect for some of those he’d encountered—such as Kira and Vaughn—and managed a tolerance for others—Ro, Bashir—but that did not mitigate his general contempt for the species and individuals here. He stayed for one reason only, for the same reason he’d come here to begin with: because the Founder had issued him those orders. But months after leaving the Gamma Quadrant for this undertaking, he still did not really understand the purpose he’d been assigned. Given that, and despite the words of encouragement Odo had offered during his visit to Deep Space 9 two months ago, Taran’atar believed that success had completely eluded him here, and always would. Worse, he realized that his time on this mission was not simply futile, but also detrimental to his effectiveness as a soldier of the Dominion.

Taran’atar glanced down at his hand, at the ax clutched before him in a posture of attack. How often had he wielded such a blade against a foe? He remembered vividly sending his kar’takin slicing through the face of the Hirogen he’d fought in the Delta Quadrant, and before that, burying it in the chest of one of Locken’s misbegotten Jem’Hadar on Sindorin. Flashes of memory from back in the Dominion played through his mind: his steel tasting the blood of the Ourentia as his phalanx put down their reckless uprising; a well-thrown knife delivering relief from a power-mad Vorta whose unchecked ambitions threatened the life of a Founder; under orders from his first, cutting through the rugged hide of the ninth and removing his still-warm hearts, an example to the other Jem’Hadar of the consequences of disobeying an order during combat. Taran’atar’s blades had carved through the flesh of scores of different species, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands. For his twenty-two years, he had served the Founders, had defended their empire in uncounted campaigns. But now he felt useless to his gods.

In his hand, the thin blade of the kar’takin reflected the overhead lighting. Taran’atar looked at it, the urge to use it to fight his way back to Dominion space a strong one. Instead, he struggled to suppress his wrath. He returned the ax to its scabbard. No weapon, no matter its utility or lethality, would aid him in vanquishing his newfound enemy: sleep.

“Computer,” he said in a low growl, “time.” An automated voice responded, and Taran’atar calculated that he had slept approximately one hour, forty-seven minutes. His hands squeezed into fists.

Taran’atar’s need for slumber—several hours, a couple of times per week—had developed not long ago, just prior to Bajor’s official admission into the Federation. Deeply concerned about his new vulnerability, he’d gone to Odo for assistance. The Founder had instructed him to allow a medical examination by Dr. Bashir, who’d determined his sleeping to be a consequence of no longer ingesting ketracel-white. The amalgam in the white’s carrier solution of enzyme and nutrients, coupled with the delivery method, somehow forestalled the necessity for a Jem’Hadar to rest. Unable to reproduce the effect by other means, Bashir had offered no solutions. Taran’atar had then appealed to Odo to sanction his return to the Dominion, but the Founder had denied the request, and had even suggested that being more like the people he’d been sent to live among might provide him a fresh perspective from which to learn about them.

Taran’atar had acquiesced—he had no choice but to do as one of his gods commanded—but in the weeks since, his dissatisfaction with his own capacity to function well as a Jem’Hadar soldier had grown. He had obeyed the will of the Founders his entire life, and he always would, but how could he serve them on Deep Space 9, by living among Bajorans and humans, Andorians and Trill and Ferengi? And of what use could he be to them, how effective could he be, if he continued to require sleep?

No use, he thought now. It had been that realization that had set him on his present course of action.

To his left, the door to the aft compartment slid open, followed by the sound of somebody stepping inside. Taran’atar turned to see Captain Kira standing there, the central corridor of the runabout visible behind her. She looked different to him now than when he’d first come aboard the space station. Back then, she’d worn the ocherous uniform of the Bajoran Militia; now, she clad herself in the black-and-gray of Starfleet. Like him, he thought, she’d been forced from her world and into the insidious influences of the Federation.

“Taran’atar,” she said, “I just wanted to let you know that we’re only an hour out from the Mjolnir.”

He looked at her face, and though she’d conducted herself competently during the time he’d spent in the Alpha Quadrant, his ire built within him once more. Quickly reining it in, he said, “Acknowledged.”

“Would you like to join us up front?” she asked, hiking her thumb back over her shoulder.

“No. I prefer to be alone at the moment,” he told her. “Unless you are ordering me…” Odo had instructed him to follow Kira’s commands.

“No, not at all,” Kira said. “I just thought…well, never mind.” She took one step out of the room, then peered back at him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Taran’atar said. Then, not wanting his terseness to invite additional questions, he added, “I’m fine, thank you, Captain.” Kira nodded and offered a half-smile, clearly not convinced, but she headed back toward the front of the ship. The door eased closed behind her.

It will not be long, Taran’atar thought, looking at the spot where Kira had been. One hour until the rendezvous with Mjolnir, where Bowers and Aleco would disembark Rio Grande. With Kira, he’d travel the next leg of his journey, and then…and then maybe he could finally bring his time away from the Dominion to an end.

Odo stared at the ashes of the fallen changeling. Anguish washed over him like a cold and bitter wind. He stood motionless, arms at his sides, feeling as though he’d been assaulted.

Perhaps this explained the combination of rising anticipation and upset in the Great Link, he thought. The Founders had espied Laas and the other two changelings descending through the sky, but also must have perceived the inert mass of the fourth. From his own experience, Odo understood the devastating impact that the loss of one of his people had on the rest. Difficult as the death of a cherished family member or loved one might be for a humanoid, the demise of a Founder meant that and more; the Link lost not only an individual, but a literal piece of the whole as well. Odo had suffered the grief of personally witnessing the deaths of two changelings, and after the first of these, he’d also experienced the terrible sorrow that subsequently had come to pervade the Great Link.

Laas paced back across the islet, his soft footfalls a lonely sound in the still setting. Around them, the silently rolling changeling sea mirrored the coppery gloaming. “Why?” Laas asked again as he came abreast of Odo, his voice much quieter now. “Why did our people send out the Hundred?”

Odo searched for an answer different from the one he had been told, different from the one he had some time ago recited for Laas, but he could not find one. “You know why,” he repeated. His gaze still rested on the gritty, leaden remnants of the lifeless changeling.

“No,” Laas insisted, though gently. “I really don’t know. Please tell me.”

At last, Odo looked up. He sighed, a quick burst of air from his mouth, a habit he’d developed long ago, during his years on Bajor with Dr. Mora. “Our people sent out a hundred of us to learn about the galaxy,” he explained, “and then to return that knowledge to them.”

“But why send newly formed changelings?” Laas asked. His inflection implied a genuine lack of comprehension.

“Because the Great Link felt the need to hide,” Odo said. He looked around, past the margins of the islet, and out across the expanse of their people. “They used to travel the stars, discovering all they could about the universe, meeting other species, but…”

“But,” Laas echoed, his tone clearly expressing not a question, but a prompt.

“But they were feared by solids,” Odo continued, recollecting the tale he’d been told when, after being drawn to the Omarion Nebula, he’d established contact with the Founders. The changeling leader—she did not actually lead the Great Link, but had taken the mantle, first, of communicating with Odo in his humanoid form, and later, of directing the Dominion’s war machine against the residents of the Alpha Quadrant—the changeling leader had welcomed Odo back, and had shared the reasons for the seclusion of their people, as well as the reasons for the Hundred. “Some solids were suspicious of their ability to shapeshift, and changelings were hunted and sometimes killed. For reasons of self-preservation, the Great Link isolated itself from others.”

“But they still wanted to expand their knowledge of the galaxy,” Laas offered. “And to gather intelligence about the dangers that awaited the Link.”

“Yes,” Odo agreed. “So they sent us out, with a genetically imprinted drive to return.”

Laas did not respond immediately, and after more than a few seconds, Odo turned from peering out across the Link and back toward his compatriot. Laas raised his hands and gripped Odo firmly about the upper arms. Slowly, he said, “That does not make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense?” Odo asked.

“Sending newly formed changelings—infants—on charges of exploration and intelligence,” Laas said. “Why attempt to gather information in such an unstructured, uncertain manner? How could they abandon a hundred waifs in unfamiliar space, with no tools or instructions, with no life experience whatsoever, and expect them to execute a successful mission?”

Odo listened to Laas’s questions, and found himself unable to provide reasonable responses. He peered over at the pair of other, living changelings, and saw them spilling across the islet toward the Link. He wondered where Laas had located the two, whom he inferred belonged to the Hundred. As Odo considered what Laas had said, he had to admit that the justification he’d been given for seeding him and the others throughout the galaxy did not seem to bear up under scrutiny.

“And if the Founders were so concerned about the constant threat posed by monoforms,” Laas went on, employing the term he used to describe non-changelings, “then how could they deliver infants from the Link into their midst, with no guidance and no protection?”

Odo looked back at Laas. “Solids are not inherently a danger to changelings,” he argued.

“No?” Laas said, his voice rising again in obvious agitation. He raised an arm and pointed toward the pile of flinty remains. On either side of the ashes, Odo saw, the other two changelings had slipped from the islet and rejoined the Great Link. “This Founder,” Laas said, stalking back toward it, “died by the hand of a humanoid, killed for no other reason than the ability to alter form at will.” He locked eyes with Odo from the center of the islet, the brace of jagged peaks behind him a dramatic backdrop. “Have you so quickly forgotten the Federation’s attempted genocide of our people?”

“That was an action undertaken by a small subset of the Federation, a few individuals,” Odo protested. “And even that came only after the Founders had already launched the war.”

“Odo,” Laas said, shaking his head from side to side, “you have no sense of objectivity in these matters. Your love for a monoform blinds you to their bigotry.”

Odo felt the return of an old inclination: to deny his feelings for Nerys, as he had done for so long. But denial, he knew, would convince Laas of nothing but Odo’s unwillingness to be honest. Ever since his return to the Great Link after the end of the war, Odo had determined not only to be honest in communicating with his people, but to be open as well. He knew that his efforts to convince the Founders to join in peaceful relationships with others beyond their world would require them to trust in both him and his motives.

“I love Kira,” he told Laas. “But my emotions for her do not alter facts…facts like my overriding feelings for the Link, which are evidenced by my continued presence in it.”

“Your ‘continued presence’?” Laas questioned. “According to Vannis, you’ve recently come back after being away for more than three months, much of it spent in the Alpha Quadrant.” Before arriving on the planet, Laas must have had contact with the ship Vannis commanded. “So much for your commitment to our people.”

“I left to track a potential threat to the Great Link,” Odo claimed truthfully, thinking of the rumors of an Ascendant. He knew that he would also have to detail investigating the rumors that eventually led him to Opaka Sulan, as well as to admit his time with Nerys. Laas had clearly learned of his travels, and so revealing anything less would doubtless be perceived as subterfuge, undermining his words. But before Odo could say more, Laas spoke again.

“Did you find any Ascendants on Deep Space 9 or on Bajor?” he said. He took a step forward, in Odo’s direction. “Or perhaps in Kira’s bed?”

Odo shook his head as he folded his arms across his chest. “Is that intended to provoke me?” he asked. Odo had contended with enough criminals—Quark came to mind—to know when somebody baited him. “The Founders know the reasons for my time away from here, including my time in the Alpha Quadrant,” he said calmly. “They also know that I’m here now, that I didn’t remain with Kira.” But just mentioning the prospect of staying with Nerys, just the notion of making a life with her, sent a thrill through him.

“Your presence here is for the purpose of swaying the Great Link to your views of monoforms,” Laas said. “Do not deny it. Your goal is not to help the Founders, but to change their way of thinking. Once you’ve done that…or maybe even if you don’t…ultimately, you will return to her.”

Laas took another step forward, and suddenly, his body quivered. Golden ripples emanated from the center of his torso outward, like the influence of a stone dropped into sun-drenched waters. Odo watched as the ripples of light spread, quickly encompassing Laas’s entire form. His body shortened and contracted, but retained a basic humanoid shape.

Odo waited until the effulgence retreated, congealing into definite colors and textures. When the effect finished, Laas no longer mimicked the shape and characteristics of a Varalan. His form had metamorphosed into something else, Odo saw. Into some body else.

It was Nerys.

The face of the Dominion spread across the floor of the transporter platform. Vannis stood on the Jem’Hadar bridge, just outside the alcove, peering in at the shapeless, gelatinous form of the Founder. Its face was no face at all, a glistening orange-gold surface devoid of features. Vannis recognized it as a changeling, but not as any particular changeling. This could have been the same shapeshifter who last month had issued her orders about the revolt on Rintanna, or it could have been one whom she had never before met.

Whatever the case, it mattered little to her. A Founder was still a Founder, and the Founders were gods. They spoke only rarely to her—to any Vorta or Jem’Hadar or other humanoid, as far as she knew—so when they did, she listened. She knew that she served the Founders well, but she strived to serve them better than any other Vorta did, than any other Vorta ever had.

After securing the transporter console, Vannis turned fully toward the Founder. The shining mass stirred here and there, pushing outward, pulling inward, rising and falling, almost as though breathing. The urge to ask how she could serve the Founder nearly overwhelmed her, but she fought down the impulse. Too often she had witnessed the sycophancy of her people—had even practiced it herself—only to see a Founder respond with loathing and contempt. Over time, she had come to understand such reactions to be a by-product of Vorta behavior and demeanor, and not simply of the Vorta themselves. Since that realization, Vannis had labored to modify her own conduct in order to avoid incurring the disdain of her gods.

And so now she waited.

Before long, the Founder shifted, a small portion of it drawing upward near its center. Its flesh then moved again there, and developed into the shape of a mouth—not into eyes or a nose or any other facial characteristics, but only into a mouth, which immediately spoke. “What is the situation with the Overne?” the Founder asked, its voice high enough to be categorized as traditionally female.

Vannis stepped over to the center of the threshold dividing the transporter alcove from the rest of the bridge. “The agricultural plague on Overne III has been eradicated,” she reported. “But foodstuffs are low and, even rationed, might not last through the winter in the northern hemisphere.” The Overne served an important role within the Dominion, manufacturing both ships and weapons for the Jem’Hadar. They operated facilities in several systems, but their primary drive production and starship assembly took place in plants on and around their home planet. Recently, a mutant virus had destroyed crops worldwide there, threatening the population with famine.

“The foodstuffs might not last the winter?” the Founder said, her tone impatient. “When will you know with certainty?”

“Within the next two to three weeks,” Vannis said. Then she realized that in answering the Founder’s question directly, she had failed to provide other important and relevant information. She quickly added, “But we have a solution ready.”

“And what is that solution?” the Founder demanded. Although Vannis had seen the effect before, the faceless mouth unnerved her a bit as it formed words.

“We have brought another world, Rindamil III, into the Dominion,” she answered. The planet had been located just beyond the perimeter of Dominion space, and now marked its outer boundary. The Rindamil themselves lacked warp capabilities—although they did possess rudimentary transporter technology—and had not yet ventured past their moon, but she had personally introduced them to life beyond their world. “If necessary,” Vannis further explained, “this new Dominion planet will provide food for the Overne.”

“Why are you waiting to see if it will be necessary?” the Founder asked.

“Because the Rindamil foodstuffs cannot fully support the populations of both worlds,” Vannis said.

“They don’t have to,” the Founder asserted. “They only have to support the Overne. The starships and weaponry needed to protect the Dominion are the priority.”

“I understand,” Vannis said. “Shall I commence transfer of the foodstuffs at once?”

To her surprise, the Founder did not reply right away, and Vannis had to suppress a compulsion to fill the hush that followed with her own voice and words. She wanted to make sure that she had not angered the changeling, or failed her in some way. But she knew that seeking such assurances would only serve to infuriate the Founder.

And so again she waited.

At last, the Founder said, “You will wait two weeks only to assess the severity of the Overne winter and its impact on the food supply. If there is any possibility of a shortfall, begin shipments from Rindamil III at once.”

“Acknowledged,” Vannis said. She peered over at the transporter console and took note of the time. She would follow the orders precisely.

“Before then,” the Founder continued, “I want you to take a ship to a moon orbiting a world near the Anomaly.” She listed the Dominion designation and coordinates of the planet, which Vannis also committed to memory. “A tribe called the Sen Ennis resides there. A Founder was told by a former inhabitant of the moon that a member of a race calling themselves the Ascendants spent some time there when its ship crashed, although it has since departed.” Vannis assumed the Founder referred to Odo, whose recent travels she had learned about from Weyoun. “I want you to go there and determine whatever details you can about the incident, about the Ascendants themselves, about their return to this region of space, about their technology…whatever you can learn.”

“Acknowledged,” Vannis said again.

“Do you have anything to report?” the Founder then asked.

A number of items passed through Vannis’s mind—the new trade agreement with the Alorex, the construction of the education center on Karemma, the resumption of subspace-relay operations on Callinon VII—but she knew that since none of those issues bore directly on the security of the Great Link, the Founder would have no interest in any of them. “No,” she said. “I have nothing else to report.”

“Then send me home,” the Founder said. After the last word, the lips that formed her mouth sealed and blended back into her changeling body.

Vannis quickly returned to her position before the transporter console, specified the appropriate settings, and beamed the Founder back to the planet below, to one of the numerous small islands scattered throughout the extent of the Great Link. Then she turned to the rest of the bridge, quickly scanning the Jem’Hadar that worked at various stations and picking out the ranking soldier. “First,” she said, and when he looked over at her, “prepare to break orbit.” She enumerated the details of their destination, as provided by the Founder. “Best possible speed.”

The Jem’Hadar first acknowledged the order and set his crew to work. As the impulse drive came alive and sent a familiar vibration through the bridge, Vannis crossed to a console and operated the controls there. She searched the Dominion databases for any information she could find on the Ascendants, as well as for the available data on Rindamil III and its people. In order to learn what she could about the Ascendants, it might help to be familiar with whatever body of knowledge about them already existed. She would also plan her own part in the Jem’Hadar assault on the Rindamil, should it be needed.

It would be a busy month.

Odo reacted to the provocation without thinking. He started toward Laas, intent on forcing him to surrender the guise of Nerys he’d perversely assumed. Odo imagined himself melting into his native, liquid state, hurtling forward, driving into Laas, and wrenching him out of his inflammatory appearance. But after two quick strides, he stopped, regaining control of his emotions just before he reached Laas.

Odo looked across the short distance that separated him from the counterfeit figure of Nerys. The very idea of Laas—or anybody—appropriating her form filled him with revulsion and anger. As he regarded the pretender, though, he saw that not all details had been accurately reproduced: six horizontal ridges, instead of five, decorated the bridge of this Nerys’s nose; the hair, pulled across the top of the head and arcing down the side, fell a couple of centimeters longer than it had the last time Odo had seen her; and the auburn uniform designated the real Nerys’s former position in the Bajoran Militia, and not her current captaincy in Starfleet. Laas obviously remembered his time aboard Deep Space 9 inexactly, some of the knowledge he did retain now out of date.

“Are you going to attack me?” he asked in a voice that closely approximated that of Nerys, though not quite with her true intonation. “How like a monoform you are.”

Odo did not rise to the taunt. “Why are you doing this?” he said. “Why are you acting like this? I’m not your enemy.” Uncomfortable conversing with a simulacrum of the woman he loved, he recalled a time when the changeling leader had enacted a similar masquerade. Odo hadn’t known it at the time, owing to the precision of the impersonation. Now, though, he focused on the inaccuracies that differentiated this fraudulent version of Nerys from the real one.

“At this moment, I consider the entire Great Link an enemy of the Hundred,” Laas vowed. He indicated the dead changeling. “This one adrift, alone for centuries, then found by humanoids, experimented on, and finally killed in a paranoid frenzy. Me—” He pointed a finger at himself, tapping the chest of the imitation Nerys. “—living among monoforms for two hundred years, tormented, miserable. The same story for the other two.” He motioned to either side of the islet, evidently to include the other two changelings he’d brought with him, though they’d already glided back into the Link. “For what?” Laas concluded, in a way that did not invite an answer. But Odo volunteered one anyway.

“For knowledge,” he said flatly, again reiterating the justification he’d been given for the Hundred. But as with Laas, he found that he could no longer countenance that explanation. Right now, he wondered why he had never questioned it.

“How can you say that?” Laas asked sharply, and the rebuke abruptly took Odo back to Deep Space 9, to a time when the Dominion had occupied the station. Odo had plotted with Nerys, Jake, and Rom to thwart the Cardassians in their efforts to destroy the Federation minefield obstructing the Alpha Quadrant entrance to the wormhole; the mines provided a vital function, preventing the Jem’Hadar from sending reinforcements for the war. Instead of doing as he’d promised, though, Odo had linked with the changeling leader. As a result, Rom’s attempted sabotage had been discovered, and Rom arrested and sentenced to death. Nerys had understandably demanded an explanation of Odo, and when he’d told her that he’d been linking with the Founder, and that the war really had nothing to do with him, she’d asked the same thing Laas—utilizing her face and voice—just had: How can you say that?

“I don’t know,” Odo confessed now to Laas. “It’s what I was told. I had no reason to disbelieve it.”

“Don’t you see,” Laas said, “that we have every reason to disbelieve it?”

“That may be,” Odo allowed, “but I never lied to you. You don’t have to fight me.”

Laas stepped forward and looked up with Nerys’s eyes. “You’ve lied to yourself, Odo,” he said, “and that means you’ve lied to me as well.” He circled around and headed for the edge of the islet. “And the Founders have lied to us both,” he called back.

Odo turned in time to see him descend from the rock surface and into the golden flow of the Link. Laas did not morph immediately, but strode out into the great assembly of changelings. “What are you going to do?” Odo called after him.

Laas stopped and looked back. “I’m going to learn the truth,” he said. Odo watched as his form—Nerys’s form—began to sink into the living swells, merging with them. In seconds, only the Great Link remained.

Sadness beset Odo…not for Laas, but for Nerys. Even with the distress and woe he already felt for the deceased changeling, this fresh emotion touched him in a deeper, more personal way. Witnessing the facsimile of Nerys disappear into the gleaming ocean of the Founders reminded him of when he’d done the same, leaving her alone on this undersized chunk of rock. He’d known that it must have been difficult for her, but not until now had he understood it in such a visceral way. It troubled him to think that, just recently, he’d forsaken her again.

How can I keep doing that to her? he asked himself, because those had not been the only times he’d abandoned her. He recalled again his betrayal of their resistance cell during the Dominion occupation of Deep Space 9, which had led to Rom’s arrest. Although Odo had later helped to rescue Rom, that action still did not justify his disloyalty. Even after Starfleet had expelled the Dominion forces from DS9 and re-taken the station, his friendship with Nerys had not immediately revived. For weeks, their working relationship had been horribly strained, their personal association nonexistent.

For Odo, the memory of that time felt raw, as though it had only just occurred. These days, he shouldered the weight of his separation from her, knowing that their love persisted despite the distance between them, but back then, loving her from afar, his estrangement from her had been almost unbearable. Nevertheless, it had been Nerys’s strength that had allowed them finally to talk, and ultimately to reconcile. Looking back at that long night of conversation, of tears and laughter, of resentment and forgiveness, he realized that it had been then that they had cemented the foundation for their eventual romance.

As Odo stood looking out over the rise and fall of the surface of the Great Link, he knew that Laas had been right: he would go back to Nerys, and sooner rather than later. In the months since he’d last seen her, he had reconnected with his people, had endeavored once more to learn from them, to teach them in turn, and to understand the agitation they’d exhibited since he’d rejoined the Link. Now, he’d also welcomed Laas back, witnessed the return of two more of the Hundred, and learned of the death of another.

And yet what filled his mind most was Nerys.

Odo raised his head and peered up at the sky, past the brilliant flare of the nova, and toward the formation of stars he knew lay in the direction of the Bajoran wormhole. He stood like that for a long time, as though he could see into the Alpha Quadrant, to Deep Space 9, and to his future with Nerys.

But what he saw in his mind was the past.