She waited until she was certain the guards were long gone. Then she rose ever so slowly, looking both ways. As she did, the wall at her back moved.
She gasped and turned. What she had thought to be a small beam attached to the wall turned into a liquid, then formed itself into a man.
The security chief. Odo.
She swallowed. He had caught her the last time, and nearly tried her for murder. But she had convinced him that she hadn’t killed that Cardassian chemist and he had helped her escape. She hadn’t expected to see him again.
“Kira Nerys, isn’t it?” Odo said, as his shape solidified.
She didn’t answer him, just watched him.
“I wondered who would be foolish enough to beam aboard a quarantined station.”
She swallowed hard, but lifted her chin in a defiant movement.
“Or didn’t you know that everyone is dying here?” He tilted his head. He was such a strange creature. His features weren’t completely formed, and yet she could see something in those eyes. A sadness, perhaps.
“You’re not dying,” she said.
“I’m not Bajoran or Cardassian.” Odo crossed his arms. “You do realize that I should tell Gul Dukat of your arrival.”
“I thought you said everyone is dying.”
“It was only a slight exaggeration. Dukat, so far, seems fine.”
“That’s no surprise,” Kira said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means those guards had this whole thing backwards. The Cardassians designed this plague to kill Bajorans, and now it’s backfired on them.”
“Do you actually believe that?” Odo asked. “You always struck me as such an intelligent woman before.”
She felt herself flush. “So you believe the Cardassian version?”
“Actually, I have a feeling that there’s something else going on entirely. Your people and the Cardassians are so focused on your hatred for each other that you can’t see beyond yourselves.”
She frowned. “What do you know?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just a hunch.” He tilted his head toward her. “Just like my hunch says it’s no coincidence that you’re here, now. What are you coming to do? Start a rebellion now that the Cardassians are weak?”
She swept her hand across the floor, indicating all the ill people. “As if that would do any good. Why isn’t anyone taking care of them?”
“Believe it or not,” Odo said, “someone is. It’s just there is so much sickness on the station that each patient can only expect a moment or two of personal attention a day.”
It was sadness she saw in his eyes. He was as helpless as she was. “Kellec Ton?” she asked. “He has been coming down here?”
“Is that why you’re here? To check up on him?”
She couldn’t answer that. Much as this shape-shifter’s demeanor made her feel like trusting him, she had been in this situation too many times to trust anyone in authority. “Is he still alive?”
“I thought you overheard those guards,” Odo said. “He’s in the Cardassian section, trying to find a cure.”
“Is he having any luck?”
“I’m not privy to the medical discussions, but from what I’ve seen, no. If anything, the plague has gotten worse.”
She shivered ever so slightly. Kellec hadn’t gone crazy, had he? He hadn’t started the plague, as those guards accused him of doing?
Of course not. What was she thinking? Kellec Ton wasn’t that kind of man. No matter what circumstances drove him to, he would never voluntarily take a life, let alone hundreds of lives.
“Is it as bad as they say?” she asked, not able to help herself.
“What do they say?”
“That anyone who catches this disease dies.”
He looked away from her, at the moaning people around them. He seemed smaller than the last time she saw him, as if the suffering had diminished him somehow. Or perhaps everyone seemed smaller in the face of this kind of anguish.
“From what I have observed,” he said slowly, “any Cardassian or Bajoran who is exposed to this disease eventually gets the disease. And anyone who gets it, dies.”
“So I’m at risk,” Kira said.
“I’m afraid so,” Odo said.
They stared at each other for a moment. Then he said, “I’m going to have to locate your ship and warn its crew away from here.”
She almost told him that she was in a scout ship, and that she had come alone, but he didn’t need that information.
“They left anyway,” she lied, “just after they brought me here.”
“I’m going to check anyway,” he said. “Because you made the biggest mistake of your life coming here.”
“Are you threatening me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I wish it were that easy. But this station is under quarantine. Anyone who comes here cannot leave, not until the quarantine is lifted, and I doubt it will be lifted anytime soon.”
She looked at him.
“I will keep an eye out for any illegal transportation devices, and in fact, I think I’ll recommend to Gul Dukat to raise the station’s shield so that no one can leave via transporter.”
“Then I will die here,” she said.
“You chose to come,” he said. “It was a bad decision.” Then he gave her a compassionate look. “If you stay in the Bajoran section, you’ll be all right.”
“And if I choose not to?”
“I can’t vouch for what happens to you.”
“Why should I care what happens to me?” she asked. “From what you say, I’m dead anyway.”
He sighed. “I have hope,” he said, although his tone belied his words, “that someone will find a way to end this thing.”
“You don’t seem like an optimistic man.”
He inclined his head toward her as a sort of acknowledgement. “I’m usually not. But your friend has brought his ex-wife aboard, and it took some doing. I have to believe she has the skills to help with all of us.”
Kellec Ton’s ex-wife? What had Kira heard about her? Not much, except—she was Starfleet. The Federation. That had to take some doing.
“What makes you think one person will make a difference?” Kira asked.
“I’m looking at it from a practical standpoint,” he said. “She’s not Bajoran or Cardassian.”
“And so has no stake in developing the disease further?”
“Actually, no,” he said. “She has a chance of staying alive long enough to develop a cure.”
Chapter Fourteen
PULASKI’S EYES ACHED from the strain of staring at the Cardassian computer monitors. The LTDs here were set on a different frequency than the Federation mandated. These settings were not designed for human eyes, and were creating a serious version of eyestrain. She leaned back in her chair and with her thumb and forefinger massaged the bridge of her nose.
Ten hours of work, and it felt like only a moment. Ten hours. She thought she might have something, but she wanted to rest for just a second, to allow the hope to diminish.
The mood on Terok Nor, the hopelessness, had infected her more than she wanted to admit. She had tried to get Kellec to leave the medical section, but he refused to go. She thought of actually giving him a sedative so that he could sleep, but she couldn’t do that. They might need his clear thinking.
At least she had convinced Narat to rest. What she wanted to do was to place the three main doctors on a rotating schedule, two on and one off at all times. This might continue for days, and it would do no good for Narat and Kellec to court illness by shorting themselves on sleep.
When Narat returned, she would convince Kellec to go. No matter what it took.
She would be doing the same in their shoes, though. One of the reasons she wanted to set up the new system was so that she ensured she would get some rest. Right now, she was the fresh one, seeing things with a new perspective, but over time that would change. She wanted all of them to have an advantage.
br /> She sighed and stood, stretching. Even the chairs were poorly designed, at least for her human form. Apparently Cardassians had the assumption of height working for them. She had to rest her feet on the base of the chair instead of the floor, and that was playing havoc with her back. She turned and looked out the office door at the medical section’s patient areas.
Ogawa was taking care of the Bajorans in the medical section, offering kind words and comfort. Marvig was below, in the Bajoran section, working in the corridors with the people too sick to make it here. Eventually, they would switch places. Pulaski had seen the Bajoran section on one of her short breaks, and it had been the worst thing yet on Terok Nor. Dozens of sick and dying people, with no one to care for them except their own families—if they had any families left.
Some of them were already weakened from years spent as Cardassian prisoners or as workers in the ore-processing area. Pulaski had no idea what working with uridium did to the immune system, but if uridium was like any other ore, it weakened everything it came into contact with.
Governo was ministering to the Cardassians. His bedside manner was gruffer and blunter than either Ogawa’s or Marvig’s, and the Cardassians seemed to appreciate that. They were the kind of patients who wanted the unvarnished truth—rather like Klingons in that respect—so that they could make decisions from there. Only the Cardassians were too sick to attempt to die with honor, as a Klingon would have done. Or perhaps it wasn’t part of their culture. She didn’t know. She had never really made a point of studying Cardassian social habits.
“Are you all right?” Kellec was behind her, his voice soft in her ear.
She nodded. “I needed to think.”
“Staring out there helps you think?”
“There’s nowhere else to look,” she said.
“Up on the Promenade, there are windows that look out to the stars,” Kellec said. “I go there if I need a moment alone.”
“I’ll remember that,” Pulaski said. “But that wasn’t the kind of thinking I needed to do.”
“You’ve found something,” Kellec said. He knew her so well. They had spent years apart, and it felt as if they had only been away from each other for a few hours.
“I think so.” She turned away from the door and came back to her chair. She put her hands on it instead of sitting in it, more out of courtesy to her back than any other reason. “Let me show you.”
She ran her fingers across the flat control board, punching up two holographic images. They were of the virus, its perfect form sinister to her, as if it had already imprinted itself in her subconscious as something evil.
Kellec stood beside her, staring at the images. “You see something here that I’ve missed.”
“Yes,” she said. She lowered her voice. “These are not the same virus.”
“Katherine,” Ton said. “I’ve been studying them for days. They’re exactly the same.”
“No,” she said. “I double-checked your work and Narat’s. You examined the viruses at first and thought they were the same. The computer reported that they were as well. From that point on, you’ve only been working with one form of the virus, pulled from the same culture.”
He frowned at her, then peered at the images. He touched the control pad, making the images larger. “I don’t see the difference.”
“It’s subtle,” she said, “and this system, sophisticated as it is, isn’t calibrated for such tiny differences. Apparently, Cardassian medicine is a lot more straightforward than the types we practice in the Federation.”
He glanced at her, obviously not following.
“These systems,” she said, “are designed for Cardassian physiology only. And why shouldn’t they be? Even though several species come through Terok Nor, most everything here is geared toward Cardassians. On starships, and throughout the Federation, we’re dealing with a wide variety of species all the time. Small things—infinitesimal things—can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.”
“All right,” he said. “What infinitesimal thing have I missed?”
She pointed to the image on the left. “This is Virus B, the virus that’s killing the Bajorans.” She punched in a label that ran across the bottom. Then she pointed to the image on the right. “This is Virus C, the one that’s killing the Cardassians.”
Kellec peered at both screens. Then he made them larger. “I must be tired,” he said. “I can’t see the difference.”
“You are tired,” she said. “This is why I want us all to have a few hours of sleep a day. But that’s beside the point. Look here.”
She pointed to a single strand on Virus B’s DNA.
“Now,” she said, “compare it to the same strand on Virus C’s DNA.”
He closed his eyes and brought the heel of his hand to his forehead. “How could I have missed that?”
“You weren’t looking for it,” she said. “They look so much alike—‘”
“Don’t make excuses for me, Katherine. I should have caught it.”
“Why? You thought the viruses were the same.”
“But they manifested differently.”
“Yes,” she said, “and that’s completely logical given the differences between Cardassian and Bajoran physiology.”
“But Cardassians and Bajorans don’t get the same diseases. We all know that.”
It wasn’t like Kellec to go into recriminations. He was exhausted. She had to get him focused on something else. “You brought me in here for a new perspective.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
“Well, I have more.”
He frowned. “This is the part you were reluctant to tell me.”
She nodded. “And frankly, I’m relieved Narat isn’t here. Are you sure we can talk here without being overheard?”
“No one out there is listening,” Ton said.
“And Dukat?”
Kellec shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he would be. It’s not the way he usually does things.”
“Good,” she said.
“Why?”
She took a deep breath. “Because Virus B, found in the Bajorans, is mutating into Virus C and killing Cardassians.”
Instantly Kellec’s face went white; then he did the same thing she had been doing. He quickly checked around him to make sure no Cardassians had heard. If this information got out, Pulaski didn’t know what Dukat would do with the news. But from the reports she had heard, she doubted he would stop short at wiping out most of the Bajoran people to stop this.
“How can you be sure it’s not the other way around?” Kellec asked.
She punched up a different image. “Watch,” she said.
She had a time-lapsed image of the Bajoran cultures that Kellec and Narat had been using. Over a period of a few days, the Bajoran virus mutated. She highlighted the new viruses in red.
“What made you look for that?” he asked.
“I saw how closely they were related. I knew we weren’t dealing with a coincidence. Kellec, you and Narat are right. This is an artificially created virus.”
“You mean it’s designed to go from Bajoran to Cardassian?”
She nodded.
He gripped the back of the nearest chair. “If the Cardassians find out about this—”
“They’ll wipe out every Bajoran they can find,” she said. “And it will kill the Cardassian source of infection.”
“You can’t condone that!” he said.
“Of course not. But the Cardassians strike me as the kind of people who can justify such a thing.”
Kellec sank into his chair. “I don’t know what we do now, Katherine. We need this information to find a cure. But I want to wipe it all off the system.”
“I already have,” she said. “These are my files, coded to me only.”
“That’s precisely the thing that will get you in trouble with Dukat.”
“I know.” She touched the screen and the images disappeared. “But since I destroyed the ma
terial, he can’t accuse me of spying, now can he?”
“Katherine, we needed that.”
She shook her head. “It’s enough to know it. The comparisons are gone, that’s all. We have the knowledge. Now we have to use it.”
“Swear to me you won’t tell Narat.”
“I wish we could,” she said. “He has a keen mind.”
“It’s also a Cardassian mind.”
“I know that too. And for that reason, I won’t say a word.”
Kellec squeezed her arm. “Thank you, Katherine.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “We haven’t found a cure.”
“But we’re one step closer than we were before you arrived. Narat and I never would have found that.”
“You would have,” she said.
“Just not in time.” Kellec pushed his chair closer to the console. “At least now I have a bit of hope.”
She prayed that that was enough to sustain him. Because the mutation of the virus worried her. She would have expected it to go the other way. She had actually been looking to see if the Cardassian form mutated into the Bajoran form when she found that she had the process exactly reversed.
She wasn’t sure what that meant yet, besides the obvious results that Kellec envisioned, should the Cardassians discover how the virus traveled. But she didn’t like what she was thinking, and she didn’t know how to clear the suspicions from her brain.
Were an oppressed people wrong in doing anything they could to get rid of their oppressors?
She turned back toward the patients in the outer rooms, and got her answer.
Yes, they were. Some prices were too high, no matter what the cause.
Chapter Fifteen
QUARK RUBBED HIS LEFT EAR with the back of his left hand. It felt as if something were tickling the edge of his lobe, and not in a pleasant way. He leaned across the bar and surveyed his business.