18

RURI SCREAMED, COLLAPSED. PRIA WAS CRYING SOMEWHERE IN THE dark, a sound that epitomized pain, that sank into his mind with steely fingers, gripping him, forcing him to hear.

Eli?

Confusion, there was blood and such horrifying, overwhelming guilt—and he sat up, barely holding back a shout, sat up to the cool stillness of a room, big, he couldn’t see

.

“Eli, are you all right?”

The shape next to his bed, a deeper shadow. Benny’s voice, warm and calm and concerned, a gentle hand touching his shoulder. Eli took a deep, trembling breath and blew it out, the dream still fresh in his mind, in his heart.

“I’m—fine,” he stammered, but it came out weak. Pathetic, you’re pathetic, murdered your wife and now you can’t, won’t take responsibility—

“Stop it,” Benny said, his voice sharp and clear and too loud. Eli started, anxiously looking around in the darkness, waiting to hear the murmured, sleepy protests of the other men

and why was Benny here? He didn’t sleep in the common room, he had his own room. Didn’t he?

And what am I supposed to stop?

“You think you killed her,” Benny said. “That’s what.”

That was too strange to think about. It was late, Eli was confused, and Benny wasn’t supposed to be at his bedside, especially not if he’s going to read your mind.

“What—why are you here?” he asked, keeping his voice low. He didn’t hear the night noises he had grown used to, the snores and sniffles, the rustlings of sleep

and as his eyes started to settle into the dark, he saw that the cots around his were empty, that he and Benny were alone.

“What’s going on?” he asked, feeling a stab of real worry. “What’s wrong?”

“Some things are happening, outside,” Benny said mildly. “Though really—what do you care?”

Eli blinked, sat up straighter. He ran his hand over his beard, rubbed at his eyes.

“What do I—”

Benny continued on. “I mean, you don’t live here, isn’t that right? You live in there. You stay in there.”

He reached out and tapped Eli on the side of the head. Eli could see that Benny wore a slight half smile, could see moonlight reflecting from the white of his teeth, from the shine of his eyes.

“Where is everyone?” Eli asked. He could hear thunder rumbling outside, a faraway sound.

Benny stood up from his crouch, sat on the edge of the cot next to Eli’s. It was where Leo was supposed to be, shifting his bulk restlessly through the night, snoring to beat the band. Benny turned on the small lamp between the two beds, throwing the room into dim reality. Definitely empty. Even the guard’s cage, down at the end.

“Don’t worry about everyone else,” Benny said. “I know you have questions, a lot of them, but I’m going to ask you to trust me, just for a little while, okay?”

“But—”

“Do you trust me? Can you trust me?” Benny’s kind, caring face, that half smile.

Eli nodded.

“Good,” Benny said, sitting back slightly, resting his hands on his knees. “Listen good, now. I thought we’d have more time here, but circumstances have changed, and we need to get some things cleared up, you understand?”

No, Eli thought, but nodded again.

“This will be hard for you to believe, but I need you to believe it, just for a short time,” Benny said. “Everyone is gone. They were called away, all right?”

“But not us,” Eli said. He still felt confused, more than ever, but somehow not as worried. Benny had a way of making things seem

possible. That wasn’t the right word, but it was as close as he could get.

“That’s right, not us,” Benny said. “Because it’s time for us to go our own way

time for you to go back to your life, and me

” Benny’s smile grew. “I’ve got places to be, myself. But for that to happen, you have to trust me, to accept what I’m telling you, even if it seems

well, crazy. And you have to make a decision.”

Eli looked into Benny’s dark, kind eyes and waited.

“The place we are now, this place—it’s a place created by sickness, in a way,” Benny said. “Created by emptiness, really, by lack of understanding. It’s not a bad place, but it’s not a real place, either.”

Eli shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s all right,” Benny said. “That’ll come later, maybe. For me, this place has been about learning and teaching. It’s only one of the places I am

. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but never mind, that’s the way it is, sometimes. Things don’t always make sense, do they?”

At last, something Eli could agree with. “No, they don’t.”

“I’ve stayed here because of the people, you could say,” Benny said, his gaze thoughtful. “Representations. Aspects of character, of thought

but I’m getting off topic. I’m here to help, do you believe that?”

Thinking of all that he’d seen, of how everyone reacted to Benny, how he reacted, even now, Eli nodded. He heard thunder again, distant, but closer than before.

“And you’re here because you think you killed your wife,” Benny said.

That familiar cold metal in his gut, the rising ache. He’d never said it to Benny, never admitted it aloud. “I did kill her,” Eli said, his voice dry in his mouth.

“You think you did,” Benny said.

Eli felt a flash of irritation. What was all this, anyway? “No, I don’t think I did, I did it. I killed Ruri.”

“You think it,” Benny said, patiently. “You live it, again and again, by keeping it in your mind.”

Eli frowned, feeling agitated now, angry. “So? I keep it in my mind. I feel bad about it, I

I deserve to be punished.”

“And as long as you believe that, you will stay here. If things were stable, outside, that might be all right, at least for a while longer. I wish you had more time

but things are speeding up, now.”

Benny’s smile was brilliant. “Time is moving,” he added, dreamily, almost to himself, before refocusing on Eli.

“You think you deserve to stay in the pain, to repeat it,” he said. “You think that you murdered your wife, and lost your relationship with your daughter because of it.”

To have it laid out so casually, so matter-of-fact

Eli felt the heaviness in his belly rise into his throat, choking him as he nodded. “Yes.”

Benny reached forward and took his hand, looking into his eyes. “I know what it is, to stay in pain,” he said. “You think it’s beyond your control, that you don’t have a choice

but you can decide to let it go. Because here’s the thing—even if it’s true, even if you actually murdered her, it doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever happened, it’s the past, now. For you, this place—” Benny glanced around at the dim, empty room. “—is like a cage of the past. It’s a trap. And you can leave it behind. You can—you must—choose to set yourself free.”

Tears trickled from his eyes, he couldn’t help it, no longer cared. He felt desperate, felt he was being offered some impossible dream. “How? How?”

“By understanding time,” Benny said. “By knowing the truth. You already know it, most people know it, but they let themselves forget. They hang on to the pain because it’s familiar, because to let it go might mean having to change. It’s easier to keep the pain than to ask the questions, to find out why you think what you think, to question why you do the things you do. Nobody wants that, nobody wants to tear themselves down, rebuild from the beginning, only to have to do it again, and again. But the nature of time, for beings like you and me—it has to be about movement. It has to be a process, not a goal. There is no goal.”

Eli shook his head. “I know that, but—”

“You don’t know it,” Benny said, his eyes flashing with something like anger. “Listen, Eli, hear what I’m saying with your gut, not with your mind. You think that holding yourself responsible for your wife’s death, that staying in a place like this will help somebody, somewhere. You think your relationship with your daughter is something that is, a noun, a thing that can be broken, or fixed. Neither of those things are true. Time moves. Ruri is dead, she died long, long ago, and you are alive. What you have with your daughter isn’t a thing, it’s a process, a verb, it’s something you create with each and every moment.

“If you want to atone for Ruri’s death, then do it. Understand the process you have with your daughter, as much as you can, work with her to make each living moment worthwhile. But repeating the guilt, living in the pain, in the past—it doesn’t work. It denies time. It denies life.”

Eli held fast to Benny’s hand, his tears flowing freely now. He felt compelled to tell Benny that he was wrong, somehow, that he needed to feel bad, to stay where he was

but a part of him knew better, too, knew that Benny was telling him the truth. He’d told himself that he’d broken his daughter’s heart

and then clung to the guilt, using it, letting it victimize both of them instead of trying to understand the process of their relationship. So many years, wasted. How could he live with that, with knowing that? How—

“There’s the trap, again,” Benny said, a hint of smile in his eyes. “Do you see? Get past the blame. See what’s in front of you, see her. Let it go.”

Eli shook his head, but not in denial of anything. It was such a leap of understanding, of faith, to accept—time moved. Was it really that simple? Could it be as easy as just deciding?

“It’s never easy,” Benny said. “But it is that simple. Stand up, Eli. Come with me. Decide to move on, to explore, to see what there is to see.”

Eli looked to the guard’s cage, a flutter of panic in his chest at the thought of trying to escape—and saw that the security gate next to it was standing open, the dark hall beyond as empty as the bunk room. There was a deep rumble outside, thunder again

except Eli could actually feel it now, could feel the building tremble all around them.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

Benny closed his eyes for a beat, then opened them again. “It’s time to leave, Eli. Will you come with me? Can you?”

Eli felt the wetness on his face, felt the strength of Benny’s fingers around his, and nodded. He hurt inside, but not the way he expected, the way he’d come to know and despise himself for. He felt

cleaner. He felt hope.

“I’m ready,” he said, and let Benny help him to his feet.

Ro headed to ops, ticking off her mental list as she hurried to the nearest lift, only half seeing what was in front of her—people running by on the Promenade, headed for quarters or to secure their stations against new attacks.

—half-dozen parasites still unaccounted for, twenty-two teams out with handheld scanners and trackers, general population mostly secured in quarters with motion detection set up through environmental control—

Pairs and trios of guards, Federation, Bajoran, and Cardassian, stalked to and from the seventeen sites of parasitic activity that had been reported—primarily areas where medical emergencies had been called owing to someone’s collapse. In spite of the repeating explanation that calmly blared through the station’s comm system, there was a lot of confusion about what was happening. Parasites had been spotted at eleven of the seventeen emergencies, most by security she’d dispatched to each scene. The others had apparently escaped.

—still no ID track on thirty-four people

and three Cardassians wounded by Bajoran mobs, no serious injuries. Or lethal, anyway, but they all should have foreseen that it was asking for trouble, having teams of Cardassians run through the station, weapons drawn. It wasn’t going to be an easy report to deliver.

Running into the Chief again after he’d come aboard the station had been the only bright spot so far, though there’d been no time to enjoy it. She’d always liked O’Brien, from their days on the Enterprise. And she guessed the feeling had been mutual—he hadn’t scowled at her or gaped in outrage when he saw her, unlike many Starfleet officers who knew about her past. But he’d only had time to nod to her as he hurried toward engineering, led by Nog and Shar.

Ro hit the turbolift call, angry at how things were playing out, angry that the UFP had let it get to this. That was the problem with the Federation; they were always looking at the big picture, which meant they tended to miss the details.

Surprisingly, the lift was empty. Inside, Ro sighed, leaning against the wall as it carried her up to ops. Even with the adrenaline pumping through her system, she felt a hot, grainy kind of weariness. She knew her assessment of the Federation wasn’t fair; tactically, they couldn’t have done anything but what they had done, or at least nothing she could think of, but the fallout was murder. Besides the chaos and confusion, there were parasites running loose on board, at least six. Dr. Bashir seemed to think they wouldn’t survive very long outside of their carrier bodies, but how long was that? An hour? A day? A week? And what if he was wrong, what if the soldiers could change gender—not an uncommon survival trait in some species—start a new colony? Or there was more than one female on board? If that was the case, they were exactly where they started.

The lift deposited her at ops, where it was only slightly more orderly than down below. Every station was manned and backed up, the tension palpable as people spoke and moved quickly, hurrying to get information where it needed to go. Ro headed for Kira’s office. She could see the colonel standing, talking to a blurred face on her com screen. The intensity of the discussion was obvious, Kira’s hands knuckled on the desk, her shoulders high and tight.

Akaar or Asarem, or both. Ro didn’t envy her position. Kira had decided to see what the female parasite had to say without alerting any of her “superiors,” and while Starfleet had a way of overlooking renegade conduct when things turned out well, the current situation didn’t qualify. The big secret was out, the parasites knew that their enemy knew about their activities, and it appeared that they’d had some kind of plan in place, all along. Ro had gotten word from Bajor of what was happening on the surface. It seemed that infected citizens—and there were dozens, if not hundreds—were attacking people of high rank, in the Vedek Assembly and government offices. It was still too early to tell if the parasites were taking hostages or making demands, the reports had been sketchy, but it had all started at about the time Gard was being implanted, no question. And if Ro knew anything at all about the woman she’d grudgingly come to respect in past months, it was that Kira wasn’t trying to pass off her blunders as anything less than they were. She’d broken the chain of command, and would own up to it.

Ro hesitated outside of the office as Kira finished her conference, breaking the comm with a slap of one hand before waving her inside. She was pale and tense, her arms folded tightly as she turned to look at Ro. Ro quickly and dutifully gave her report, and though Kira listened intently enough, her gaze fell away a number of times, hearing other thoughts, her mind working on multiple levels.

Ro wrapped it up and waited, prepared to add a dozen new commands to what was already on her internal list—but Kira said nothing for a moment, the seconds ticking past for what seemed a long time. Considering how quickly things were happening, Ro supposed it was.

Finally, Kira met her gaze and nodded once, sharply, as though deciding something. “Right. Good. It sounds like you’re on top of it,” she said, her voice sure and strong. “I need you to get Nog, ch’Thane, and Chief O’Brien to the Defiant, but do it quietly. Bare-minimum crew, Nog will know who. Dax is already there, but she’ll need to be alerted that we’re ‘go’. Direct channel, go through my office. I’ll get Nguyen to cut us loose. Macet will spot us, even cloaked, but we can deal with that when it comes up

“

She was half talking to herself, and as Ro understood what she was planning, she felt her heartbeat pick up, her weariness suddenly a million klicks distant.

“You’re taking the Defiant out,” Ro said, wonderingly. Without authorization, obviously.

“Asarem Wadeen tells me that she can’t get through to the Ashalla monastery,” Kira said, and Ro saw that in spite of her demeanor, the colonel was afraid, too. On the verge of terrified. “There’s been activity at five other sites, at least. Hostages have been taken. Six senior members from the Chamber of Ministers, an as yet undetermined number of prominent vedeks from the Assembly

and B’hala, the Central Archives, and the shrine at Kendra are now under parasite control.”

Ro nodded, a bit surprised that the news hurt. She was no patriot, but if they meant to make demands, the parasites couldn’t have chosen better people or areas to target. Except for the Orbs

“Gard had to mean the parasite mother, the matriarch, and the Orbs are the only artifacts anyone calls the Tears,” Kira said, as though reading her mind. “She’s at the monastery, Ro, I know it. Kill the mother, maybe all the females die. Even if they don’t, it will stop them from spreading.”

“Did you tell them that?” Ro asked, tilting her head at the blank screen.

Kira shook her head. “Akaar was too busy ordering me to stand down to hear what I think. He says he’ll deal directly with DS9’s officers from here on out

and Asarem only had time to tell me that Kasidy Yates and the Sisko family have been abducted. Keiko O’Brien and her children were left behind to pass along a warning, that any sudden moves by the Federation will be dealt with harshly. They’re safe, at least.”

Captain Yates was already past due to give birth, by a week at least. Ro understood the fear she saw on Kira’s face a little better.

“I’m to confine myself to this office until the admiral gets here,” Kira continued, “at which time he’ll take my report, and then coordinate with the Federation and Asarem as to contacting the parasites to discuss their demands. A delegation of top mediators is already forming for a holo con.”

“That could take days,” Ro said.

Kira smiled at her, a tight, humorless smile. “Which is why I’m going to try and stop her myself. Since I’m officially out of the picture, the negotiators can argue that I was acting on my own. If I get caught, which I won’t.”

As bad as things were, Ro was unable to help a small smile of her own. No wonder Kira had given her a chance; the woman was no more Starfleet material than she was, and had the confidence to back herself up. What the colonel said next made the smile disappear.

“I’m leaving you in charge.”

What?!

“What?” Ro croaked, the sound much weaker than the exclamation of her thought. “You can’t.”

“I can,” Kira said. “You’re my chief of security. You know what’s happening at every level, you have access to everyone, you’re more than competent enough to handle this. All you need to do is what you’re already doing

keep everything and everyone moving, find those missing bugs, and when Akaar shows up, do what you can to stall him.”

“You can’t,” Ro said again. “I can’t. Nguyen, maybe, or—”

Kira glared at her. “No time for this, Ro. You know you can. Do it. Put Etana on security, Nguyen can keep ops running, Chao can take over engineering. I’ll tell Bowers to back you.”

With that, Kira turned and hurried out of the office, head high, not looking back. Ro stared after her, but only for the space of a few heartbeats. There wasn’t time for anything more.

She was behind Kira’s desk in two strides, opening a secure channel before Kira paused at Nguyen’s station, the colonel still not looking back to see how, if Ro was managing. She felt a rush of fear, of being overwhelmed by the scope of what she’d been ordered to do, but it didn’t slow her fingers, didn’t make her voice tremble as she called Nog, then alerted Dax.

You know you can. Do it. Kira’s voice in her head, or was it her own? It didn’t matter. It was the truth. She could and would handle the station until Kira came back, or until Akaar had her physically dragged down to security and tossed in one of her own cells.

But I’ll kick every step of the way, Ro thought, and found the thought to be surprisingly uplifting. She was about to give him a real reason to despise her; it was about time.

From the house they were taken to a small shuttle and flown to an undisclosed location, Jake doing what he could to keep everyone calm, himself included. It wasn’t easy. Kas was scared, and watching her run trembling hands over her swollen belly again and again, almost compulsively, made him feel small and helpless as they sped through the Bajoran night.

When they finally landed, a handful of monks stepped out of the dark and used weapons to motion them off the shuttle, leading them to a large, ancient stone structure. They were aliens, but looked Bajoran. Possessed, Jake figured, and Kas, Grandpa, and Aunt Jude agreed. They’d all heard one of their captors refer to himself as “this body” while still on the shuttle

and though they seemed capable of expressing emotion, none of them did. All of them wore empty, hollow expressions, as though their faces were masks.

The stone building was a monastery, if the aliens’ garb was any clue, and Jake recognized it as the big one in Ashalla. They were jostled through a dark corridor, their conversation ignored by the monk-aliens, as they had been since being taken. Jake instinctively stayed close to Kasidy, and saw that his aunt and grandfather were doing the same, crowding around her as they were led to their next destination.

“At least they left Keiko and the children alone,” Kas said, not for the first time, holding her belly tightly. Jake nodded, exchanging a look with his grandfather.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring, the look on his face a little less so. Jake hoped he was right.

Ahead of them, a square of light as a door opened. The monk in front of them stopped just outside, gesturing for the hostages to go in. Jake stepped in front of Kasidy and entered first, hoping very much that they would be treated decently—and that whatever their captors wanted, Bajor or the Federation would be able to give it to them. Fast.

“Jake?”

Jake hesitated in the doorway, blinking. The light was low, but seemed very bright after their walk through the dark.

“Sulan?”

The former kai sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at him with an expression of concern. A wounded man lay next to her, his head propped up by a cushion

.

Vaughn, that’s Commander Vaughn.

He’d been hit in the shoulder, and though the wound didn’t look too horrible—Opaka or someone had bandaged it up—he was unconscious. Three “guards,” more Bajoran clergy, stood at the front of the room, weapons drawn, their faces blank.

“Sit,” said one of them, her voice toneless. She wore a prylar’s gown. She smiled chillingly, emotionlessly. “Don’t make trouble or we’ll kill you.”

Behind Jake, his family had filed in. “We won’t make trouble,” Jake said. The alien ignored him, seemed to look straight through him; it appeared that the conversation was over.

They situated themselves on the floor—there were no chairs in the room—doing what they could to get Kasidy comfortable with floor pillows, leaning against the back wall. Jake introduced Opaka Sulan to the others, relieved that the elderly woman’s placid demeanor had an immediate soothing effect on Kasidy. Grandpa and Judith seemed to calm down, as well; Jake knew that he felt better. In the short time he’d known Opaka, he’d come to respect her, very much.

And we’re here, being watched over. Whatever’s happening out there, we haven’t been slated for execution.

Not yet, anyway.

Jake settled to wait, glad at least that he was with people he loved.