Quark snorted. "There are no shape-shifters in this sector, you nitwit."

One of the Cardassians at the bar, a dal named Boheeka, turned away from the typically long-winded Lurian to interject. "It's true," he said. "He really is a shape-shifter. I saw him once, at the Bajoran Institute of Science. He can be anything he wants to be. He's one of a kind, they say. Nobody knows where he came from."

Quark felt himself go stiff with horror. "No."

"Yes," Boheeka said. "He could be"-he picked up a cocktail napkin-"this napkin! He could be...him!" He pointed to the Lurian, who had now fallen silent. An unusual state for a Lurian.

Quark looked frantically from the Lurian to the Cardassian. Was this a joke? A cruel, cruel joke? "Why isn't Thrax coming back?"

The other Cardassian shrugged. "Who knows? I, for one, won't miss him."

"Me either," added Boheeka. "He was arrogant."

Quark swallowed repeatedly, his throat having gone very dry. "He wasn't such a bad guy," he squeaked. At least Thrax was no shape-shifter, pretending to be a cocktail napkin so as to spy on a humble Ferengi proprietor.

A Bajoran woman walked into the bar then, drawing his attention; someone from the mines, probably, though they didn't often come into Quark's place unless they were looking for work. This woman's posture seemed to suggest otherwise.

"There you are!" she cried out, and walked straight up to Quark. She was pretty, young, with bright red hair and large, expressive eyes. If not for all the lumpy, cumbersome clothing, she might be something. He'd been thinking about hiring some dabo girls...

"I just wanted to let you know," she said, coming closer, "that I appreciated the opportunity." She came close enough then that Quark could smell her, a scent that was at once peppery and sweet, like Bajoran nyawood nyawood. With an almost imperceptible movement, she reached out her hand and pressed several strips of latinum into Quark's palm. The careful precision of the motion indicated that she did not want to make the transaction known to the Cardassians at the bar. Quark deftly slipped the latinum into the pocket of his waistcoat.

"Of course," he said, waiting to see what would happen next.

"I know that you have a lot of other Bajorans who want to work for you," she went on, "and I just hope that I made an impression on you...that you won't forget."

"Sure, sure," Quark said, thinking he might understand. These Bajorans! They always assumed he was going to be on their side, that he would be willing to concoct stories on their behalf, just because he had gotten himself mixed up with the business of selling supplies to them. He sighed. Well, at least there was the latinum, though it wasn't very much. He'd better get rid of her. "You did make an impression. But I'll have to think about it some more. There are quite a few others who are looking to work for me."

"Thank you," she said huskily. "Just let me know if...there's anything more I can do." She turned quickly and left the bar. Quark stared after the young woman, hoping he'd seen the last of her. She was sexy, sure, but something about her immediately suggested trouble, and he wasn't interested in getting mixed up in anything else-especially now that he had to worry about a new security chief.

One of the Cardassians at the bar let out a low chuckle. Quark turned to him, returning his lascivious implication with a meaningful grin, though he felt a little ridiculous about it. He'd never seen that woman before in his life, let alone had any sort of relations with her. Although he had, on occasion, taken part in such relationships with other Bajoran women, that was hardly the business of these depraved Cardassians. He cleared his throat and looked away, hoping to change the subject-particularly before the Lurian started to prattle again.

"So, ah," Quark said to the soldier, sitting down next to him, "tell me more about this so-called shape-shifter."

Rom suddenly materialized from somewhere in the back. "Brother!" he said urgently.

"What is it, Rom?"

"Brother-the Lurian-he's still here!"

The massive Lurian turned, fully capable of hearing Rom's warning, though the alien had almost nothing in the way of ears. Quark waved his hands. "Not now, Rom. We've got bigger things to worry about at the moment than Lurians." He turned to the hulk at the end of the bar. "No offense," he told him, and the Lurian shrugged.

Quark coughed and turned back to the Cardassian, hoping to trip him up somehow, for he was still working the angle that this was a ruse meant to make him look foolish, that there wasn't really any shape-shifter, and that Thrax would come walking through the door at any moment, the Cardassians in security all having a little laugh at Quark's expense. He could hope, anyway. But he had a bad feeling. The Lurian in the bar, the bizarre actions of the red-haired Bajoran woman, and the unconfirmed rumor of a new security chief-all seemed to mark the presence of some unhappy portent. Or, at the very least, the makings of some some kind of change on the horizon. Things had been going quite well lately; a change could only be for the worse. kind of change on the horizon. Things had been going quite well lately; a change could only be for the worse.

Quark scowled. The nerve of Thrax, resigning his post without even saying good-bye. It was enough to drive an honest man to drink.

Doctor Moset was excited. Kalisi could see it in the brightness of his eyes, the quick, efficient way in which he laid out their equipment, checked the hypos she'd prepared. Funny, how she'd stopped thinking of him as Crell, somewhere along the line. They continued to sleep together, but much of the passion had fled on her end, replaced with a kind of fearful awe. If he knew that she was less than present at their physical meetings, he didn't seem to mind. Nor did she, particularly. Moset had been given a free rein by Central Command, a license to do whatever he deemed relevant to achieving new medical breakthroughs. A man with that kind of power was not to be denied, not if she still hoped to salvage a name for herself.

He leaned forward now, the two of them waiting for the first Bajorans to file in. They were at a medical center outside the Jalanda manufacturing camp, to give the required annual Fostossa booster to the workers and their families. Moset had wanted them both to be here. A day they could reflect upon with pride, he'd said.

"Are you ready to make history?" Moset asked, touching her shoulder. The lab was overbright, accentuating his pallor.

Kalisi nodded. He knew what interested her, understood her motivations well enough; she sometimes wondered if he was manipulating her, reminding her of the things she most wanted those times she felt less than committed to his agenda.

A dozen, fifteen Bajoran children filed into the room, led by a pair of soldiers and a middle-aged Bajoran woman, her face pinched and fearful. The children, all young, were subdued, staring at the smiling doctor with the hypo in his hand. The oldest was perhaps in her early teens; the youngest still possessed the rounded cheek and jaw of a child half that age, his eyes wide with anxiety.

"Where are their parents?" Kalisi asked. The soldiers shuffled the children forward.

"Working," Moset said. "But they'll be in to get theirs soon enough; the gul is excusing them from the lines early."

Kalisi nodded at the older woman. "Who is that?"

Moset blinked at Kalisi, a vague smile forming. "Whoever watches them, I suppose. Really, how could I possibly know?"

Kalisi watched as the children lined up to receive their inoculations, their small faces drawn with fear. The first two were boys, who submitted to Moset's quick hands and gentle smile without flinching. The third was a girl, perhaps eight or nine, with a beautiful head of thick black hair, arranged in curls. Kalisi didn't generally find the Bajorans to have much physical appeal, but the child was quite lovely. She was crying, and as the Bajoran chaperone tried to coax her to approach Moset, the little girl fixed her tearful gaze on Kalisi.

"Is it going to hurt?" she asked, her voice quavering.

Yes, but not today, she thought.

"No," she said calmly. "It won't hurt a bit. I promise."

The little girl stepped forward, her terror barely under control.

"Listen to Doctor Reyar, she knows what she's talking about," Moset said, exposing his small white teeth, and reached for the child, who gave Kalisi a pleading look, a silent appeal for there to be no pain...and then he applied the hypospray, pressing it to her too-thin upper arm. A faint, brief hiss and it was over.

"All done," Moset said, smiling again, releasing her.

The child rubbed at her arm, dawning relief breaking across her face. She turned a beatific smile to Kalisi.

"It didn't hurt," she said.

Kalisi could not return the smile. She looked away, wondering where this girl would be the day she learned that there would be no children for her, ever.

Less suffering, she told herself. A mercy. A mercy.

"You be sure to tell all your little friends," Moset said. "Inoculations don't hurt a bit. Nothing to fear."

The girl nodded happily, and Kalisi felt such a profound discomfort that she made an excuse about having forgotten the work code reader at the back of the lab, so that she might escape for a moment, to collect herself. To remember what was important.

It preoccupied much of her attention over the next few weeks, remembering those things which had once defined her ambitions. She found a way to avoid Moset's embrace for much of that time. Luckily, it wasn't difficult. He was busy, running more tests, working pathology, preoccupied with refining his new formula. When they did meet, it was often in the course of work; she continued to handle the machinery, smooth over programming snags, set the systems to collate the results he wanted.

It was late, the night he signaled at her door, a look of hunger in his sharp gaze. He seemed pleased, as well.

"Crell," she said, stepping back to admit him. "Has something happened?"

"I've just gone through preliminaries on the cultures I've been running," he said, smiling widely as the door closed behind him. "Concomitant to the vaccines we gave, thirty-six days ago. There are no indicators of malignant cell formation."

Kalisi nodded, understanding the relevance. One of his early sterilization formulas had filled the wombs of twenty Bajoran women with cancerous cysts and tumors. They had all died very shortly afterward. The formula was supposed to make better workers out of them, while sparing them the burden of children, but death was hardly conducive to productivity.

"That's excellent," she said. "What about the component isolation? You've found a way to replicate it?" There was a problem with mass-producing one element of the formula, a hormonal inhibitor. Thus far, he'd only been able to generate small amounts. Until he could make more, planetwide inoculation was unattainable.

"I believe so," he said. He stepped toward her, reached out to stroke her neck, touching the ridges there in a way he knew she liked.

"But I didn't come here to talk, Kali," he said softly.

Kalisi let him pull her closer, not sure she had a choice anymore. Not sure if she had ever had...but fairly certain that she'd lost her grasp of what had once been important to her, after all, and that she couldn't seem to get it back.

Lieutenant Commander Elias Vaughn did not immediately recognize the turning in his stomach as he walked from the ship's bridge to his quarters, but it wasn't troublesome enough to warrant much consideration. Today had been mostly the usual-various reports from contacts, along with his observations for his superiors in special ops-but then there had been something new, something unexpected. An alleged dissident from the Cardassian Union had contacted his ship's CO today, apparently from the Bajoran system. Vaughn could not imagine where this Cardassian had found the means to get in touch with any member of the Federation; he only knew that it was information that should be passed along. Alynna would want to know.

His stomach twitched again as he reached the hall of officer's quarters. It took a moment for him to identify the gnawing sensation-it was hunger. Simple hunger. Vaughn knew that his metabolism was beginning to slow, an unwelcome effect of his age-and sometimes, he had to admit, he got so busy that he forgot to eat. He found the revelation to be annoying-infuriating, even. His ninetieth birthday had come and gone, and he thought he might even remember turning ninety-one sometime in the recent past. They seemed so close together now, it was hardly worth keeping track...

He found himself feeling somewhat contemplative as he entered his quarters. He had taken care of himself over the years, but there was no denying that he was slowing down, that he had already slowed down-though he believed it was confined strictly to the physical realm. The very idea of diminishing mental acuity was enormously unwelcome. Still, seven decades in Starfleet was a long time by anyone's measure, and those years weighed only more heavily with the passage of time.

He didn't have time for food now, or for daydreaming; he put in a call to Vice-Admiral Nechayev, tapping his fingers impatiently as he waited for the transmission to engage.

"Elias," the cool-faced woman addressed him. Vaughn smiled pleasantly at her. the cool-faced woman addressed him. Vaughn smiled pleasantly at her.

"Alynna," he replied. "I have a piece of interesting news. It may trickle down to you from my CO's weekly formal report, but I felt it was worth contacting headquarters on my own as soon as possible."

Nechayev gave him a nod. "You're on the border, is that right? Gathering intel?" "You're on the border, is that right? Gathering intel?"

"That's right. A Cardassian dalin contacted our ship today. He was asking to be put in touch with someone of authority within the Federation. The captain sent it on to the politicos, but I thought it might be of particular interest to you."

"A Cardassian dalin," Nechayev repeated, interrupting. Nechayev repeated, interrupting. "Regarding what, exactly?" "Regarding what, exactly?"

"After a great deal of rather...strained conversation, he informed my CO that he is a dissident among his people, and he's seeking assistance from the Federation-specifically in the matter of the Bajoran occupation."

Nechayev looked surprised for a split second before regaining her traditional composure. "Assistance?" "Assistance?"

"He claims to be in league with a group who oppose the occupation of other worlds. He mentioned the border colonies as well. He seemed sincere, but then-I trust you know something of the situation out there, Alynna."

"Yes," she said smoothly. she said smoothly. "I do." "I do." She paused, seeming to consider. She paused, seeming to consider. "Remind me, Lieutenant Commander, what is the nature of your current assignment?" "Remind me, Lieutenant Commander, what is the nature of your current assignment?"

Vaughn was taken aback by her use of his rank. Was she reprimanding him for deviating from task?

"I am a mission specialist, gathering and analyzing intel along the Union-Federation border," he said evenly. "And if I may speak freely, Admiral...I thought, given your past experience with the Bajorans, you might be interested in information-"

"The Federation is not interested in the Cardassian Union's relationship with Bajor," Nechayev said. Nechayev said. "We are interested in their relationship with us." "We are interested in their relationship with us."

Vaughn was surprised, but hid it, studying her careful neutrality with interest. They were not close, he and Alynna, but had known one another for many years. He knew that she'd fought to see the Federation get involved with Bajor, after an intel mission she'd undertaken shortly before the Cardassian's occupation of that world. Perhaps her failure to do so had haunted her, somewhat, had made her the aloof, tightly composed creature she was now. Perhaps she simply preferred not to revisit a painful past.

"I am hereby reassigning you," Nechayev said. Nechayev said. "I'll put in the paperwork to have you sent back to Starbase 375. From there, you're to reestablish contact with this Cardassian as quickly as possible. Do whatever you can do to develop a relationship with him. Learn all you can from him, and report back to me." "I'll put in the paperwork to have you sent back to Starbase 375. From there, you're to reestablish contact with this Cardassian as quickly as possible. Do whatever you can do to develop a relationship with him. Learn all you can from him, and report back to me."

Vaughn nodded. "Am I to inquire about his world's relationship with Bajor?"

Nechayev looked surprised again. "Bajor?" "Bajor?" she repeated. she repeated. "No, Commander." "No, Commander."

Vaughn arched one brow. "This man claims to want help from us. If his request is legitimate, can we afford to turn our backs on him?"

"The Federation is in a precarious position with the Cardassians right now," she said. she said. "This man surely has an ulterior motive, but he could still prove to be very useful, if he's handled carefully. We can't afford to misuse this opportunity." "This man surely has an ulterior motive, but he could still prove to be very useful, if he's handled carefully. We can't afford to misuse this opportunity."

"Of course not," Vaughn said. "But if there is any chance that he could give us something that would allow us to step in to the Bajoran situation-"

"Let's let Bajor worry about themselves," Nechayev said, Nechayev said, "and we'll worry about the Federation." "and we'll worry about the Federation."

"Yes, sir," Vaughn replied, though he did not like her answer. He disconnected the call, and stared at the replicator in the wall, no longer hungry at all.

Recently, Dukat had taken to spending much of his spare time going over surveys and estimates, seeking new sites for mining operations on Bajor's surface. In spite of the quotas he'd been meeting-sometimes even exceeding-he continued to hear rumors and to catch implications. The Detapa Council had become even more vocal in recent months; Kotan Pa'Dar and his lackeys wanted Cardassia to withdraw from Bajor. It was funny, how things changed; a few decades with enough to eat, and it seemed most of Cardassia had forgotten why they'd come to Bajor in the first place.

He sat at his desk in his private office, a well-appointed room adjacent to his quarters. It was from here that he usually spoke with family or with his political contacts-any conversation that he did not wish to be logged. It was also where he did most of his research, a place he was unlikely to be disturbed.

If they only knew what they were thinking of throwing away... Dukat scanned another list of estimates from the site in Rihjer, where there looked to be a heavy vein of duranium, relatively close to the surface. There were half a hundred locations just as promising... Dukat scanned another list of estimates from the site in Rihjer, where there looked to be a heavy vein of duranium, relatively close to the surface. There were half a hundred locations just as promising...

The signal on his personal comm was most unwelcome, but he answered it, hoping it might be Odo. They'd had few casual conversations since the shape-shifter had come to the station, although Odo seemed to have an aptitude for his new position. The new man, Russol, spoke highly of his abilities. Dukat was more intrigued than ever, and took a certain pride in having the fascinating creature at his beck and call. He had made it clear to Odo that his door was always open.

"Sir, I wonder if I might speak to you a moment. I'm just outside your quarters."

Basso. Dukat looked at the handful of padds he still wanted to review. "Actually, Basso, perhaps you could-"

"It's about Kira Nerys."

Dukat sighed. He'd expected the visit, sooner or later. "All right. Come in."

He didn't stand, made no effort to express welcome to the Bajoran. "Yes?"

Basso took a deep breath. "I've waited for your instructions regarding Kira Nerys since her arrival here," he said evenly. "I did what you have been asking me to do for years. We found her, came up with a reason to get her here-she's here here."

Dukat waited, perfectly aware that Basso would get to the point sooner if he said nothing.

"Did you know she's a person of suspicion in the death of Vaatrik?"

"I've heard."

Basso looked surprised, but only for an instant. "Odo will be bringing her in for interrogation. Will you...shall I have Odo bring her directly to you?"

"That won't be necessary," Dukat said. "I'd prefer you not trouble the shape-shifter. Is that all?"

The Bajoran was obviously frustrated, and had apparently worked for Dukat long enough to feel entitled to speak freely. "I don't understand. You've had me searching for her since she joined the resistance. We have her, now, on Terok Nor, and you act as though-that is, you don't seem..."

Dukat let him trail off as he decided whether or not to explain himself. He didn't need to, of course, but he wasn't without pity; in Basso's position, he'd probably hope for an explanation himself.

"You needn't concern yourself with Kira Nerys any longer. I'll see to the matter personally."

"But her connection with the Shakaar cell-"

"-isn't at issue, here," Dukat said. "She's on my my station. And she can't leave without my knowing it. Let her pretend for a while, that she still has some control. When she starts to get desperate, I'll bring her in for a discussion about her options. By then, she'll be ready to listen to reason." station. And she can't leave without my knowing it. Let her pretend for a while, that she still has some control. When she starts to get desperate, I'll bring her in for a discussion about her options. By then, she'll be ready to listen to reason."

"You underestimate her," Basso said. "She's a terrorist. She might be here to assassinate you."