by Неизвестный
Ah—brave words, Commander. The voice and image began to fade. Perhaps you should be on your way . . . and see what you find.
He was alone again, the images gone from the mirror before him. The water motion rippled through the wall and its connecting girders, then was stilled. Only the dead, and the not alive, surrounded him.
His path lay outside the Promenade. He turned and began walking.
Something was moving—something was alive—where no living thing should be. She raised her tear-wet face from the knees she clasped close to herself; from where she sat huddled against a corridor bulkhead, she turned and looked over her hunched shoulder. Rage, an all-consuming fire, blossomed in her heart, rolling through her veins to the ends of her fingers, like the blazing force that had scoured the station clean of all that she loathed. Her knuckles were white bone where her hands clutched together, her wrists pressed tight against her shins.
She uncoiled herself and stood up, staying crouched in the corridor's shadows. The distant sounds of footsteps and breathing, even the soft tap of a heartbeat, jostled against her keen hearing; the anger they evoked notched higher at the base of her throat. She could taste it, like warm salt pooled under her tongue.
The sounds indicated that the intruder was not the station's other occupant, the thing that flowed in and out of the walls and ceilings, the only creature that had remained after the purifying fire she had unleashed. That thing had once had a face, something she could have remembered and put a name to; no more. She could barely tolerate its presence, and that only because it had made itself no different from the station, a necessary component. It knew its place in the new scheme of things.
Cautiously, she moved down the corridor, staying out of any direct line of sight. She wanted to see the intruder first, before it could have any warning of her approach. That was always the best way; her knowledge, her skills, in the proper eradication of enemies, came from a long time back. From another world, one where events and consequences had never worked out as satisfyingly as they had in this one. In some future time, she knew—a time when she was able to think again, and not just sense and react—she would have to consider that entity who had made such glory and justice possible.
She halted when she perceived a shadow stretching along the gridded floor; a dim overhead light silhouetted a human figure from behind. Drawing back into herself, she made ready.
The figure stopped, as though it had sensed her presence. She ground her teeth together in fury, nails digging into the flesh of her palms.
Into another small pool of light, the figure stepped forward. She recognized his face—or knew that at one time she had been able to. Faces and names didn't matter now, though; in this cleansed world, there were only two categories beyond herself. The enemy . . . and the dead.
"Kira?" The figure stooped and peered toward her hiding place. "That's you, isn't it?"
A moment of wonder, a fragment of the emotions that she had purged herself of, stayed her wrath. She spoke from the shadows. "How do you know my name?"
"Why wouldn't I?" He took a step closer. "Don't you know mine?"
She laughed in scorn. "Don't know, and I don't care." She felt her hatred turning toward her own gut like a thorn, for having been tricked into having words with the creature, whoever he was. As if there could be any question as to what he was. She closed her hand into a fist and saw white sparks leak between the fingers.
"But you're not Kira . . ." The figure shook his head sadly. "You're just a little piece of her. One that he's changed and made into a mockery of everything you were." His gaze become one of pity. "Just an echo; that's all you are. From when you stepped into his world, and left a bit of the real Kira behind."
Her fury rose inside her, but was stifled by the other voice that sometimes spoke for her. "Oh no, Commander," she heard herself saying. "This is the truth revealed, just as the one before had been."
"What did you do to her?"
"Can't you see?" The voice in her mouth drew blood with a needle rather than a knife blade. "Such a nice, strong echo—all I had to do was cut away the soft, weak parts, and expose the diamond at the center of her soul. Don't tell me, Commander, that you didn't know such a thing existed there all along. Didn't you consider yourself to be her friend? Didn't you know how badly she had been hurt, how many terrible things she had seen, and how she thirsted for revenge? Such a purifying emotion, I think." The voice was laughing behind its words; she felt dizzied for a moment, as though each syllable was about to hammer through her brow from the inside. "All I did, Commander, was give her the chance to . . . go with her precious feelings. To expand upon them, as it were. And you might be surprised at how well she did, given the opportunity."
The face of the figure standing before her turned grim. "I think I'm finally beyond being surprised at anything that happens in your little world, McHogue."
"Good for you—" The voice lost its laughing edge. "Then you won't be surprised at what a pure instrument of murder our Kira has become here. Pure, in that she no longer needs to make a distinction between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the strong and the weak, between those who inflict suffering and those who meekly receive it. She's found a better way, Sisko; I've shown it to her."
"You've shown her nothing; she doesn't even exist here. All you ever do, McHogue, is talk to yourself."
No longer laughing, and with an anger rising to match her own. The voice was like broken glass at her lips as it spoke. "Once again, Commander, you've managed to annoy me. I really don't like that kind of talk—especially here. This is my home. I won't have it."
"Why?" The figure looked around the corridor as if searching for someone, before returning his gaze to her. "Because it's the truth?"
"Truth, Commander . . ." The voice had started to fade, to fall back from where it had come. "I'll give you truth." Then it was gone.
She raised her head and looked into the gaze of the figure standing before her. He said nothing . . . but he didn't need to. She saw the worst thing possible in his eyes.
Pity.
Her anger burst forth, unstoppable. Her throat tautened as her head was flung back. Fire leapt from her heart.
She had been born in fire. She remembered that moment, when she had risen into the sky above Bajor, above both the weak and the strong in the refugee camps. A burning angel, rising on wings of coruscating radiance, looking down upon all who deserved her wrath, who deserved death and ashes in their unfleshed jaws. She had risen above what she had thought was a dream, an illusion . . . a lie. And what she had realized in that perfect moment was the truth, the world that was more real than any other, because it had battered free from the most secret chambers of her heart.
Even now, she felt the ceiling of the corridor burst open, torn by the thrust of her shoulders as she mounted higher. Far above the figure that had confronted her, that had dared to say it knew her, knew her name, dared to say that she had any name other than vengeance.
She let her hands spread wide, a white-hot sun in each palm. The firestorm rolled like a churning tide through the corridor, washing away the puny thing that had stood before her. The face that she had almost been able to recognize tumbled away from her. The arm that had been lifted across his eyes to shield them was already ashes, the bone inside crumbling like a charred branch.
Above the fire she had unleashed, above the dead like other dead, she stepped higher, heart singing with a fierce joy, tears turning to steam against her own flesh.
He awoke in pain. Made blind by the brilliance of the light flooding what had been his eyes; his nerve endings were heated wires, exposed from beneath the tatters of his skin.
"That's enough of that—"
As soon as the voice spoke, the wind died, the wind that had carried him helpless in its swirling grasp. His spine had shattered against one of the bulkheads, limbs wrenched from their sockets. A storm, in the space between one scalding breath and the next; there had not even been time in which he coul
d have wished to die.
"I apologize for letting things become quite so rough on you." McHogue's voice spoke out of the darkness above him. "But sometimes people just won't learn any other way. Most unfortunate—but necessary."
Sisko rolled onto his knees, pushing himself up from the floor with his hands. The pain had ebbed out of his body, leaving him weak and dizzy, but able to open his eyes. He could see his undamaged forearms; balancing his weight with one hand, he touched the flesh beneath the uniform sleeve and found it whole and unscarred.
A few meters away, the image of McHogue leaned back against the bulkhead. Sisko could feel the amused gaze resting upon him. "Where . . . where is this?" He lifted his head and looked about the space. "How did you . . ."
"Really, Commander. And after all your boasting about how nothing could surprise you anymore. Once more, I'm disappointed in you." McHogue shook his head sadly. "Did you really believe I'd let Kira—my Kira—just blow you away like that? Like a dead leaf at the end of summer? I didn't even find it all that amusing to watch. I hope you learned something from it, though."
"Nothing . . . that I didn't know already." Stiffly, he managed to get to his feet. Sisko reached behind to steady himself against the nearest girder. "It's all false. These things here . . . these echoes . . . they're all just you wearing different masks."
McHogue shrugged. "That's partly so, I admit. But again, a matter of necessity. And didn't I tell you that I dealt in truth here? It's not as if all those who have entered my presence, both here in the station and below in my city of Moagitty, haven't derived some substantial benefit from their transformation. There's a certain matter of immortality, for one thing; with their essences incorporated into mine, they shall live forever. My victories will be theirs; the universe I create is my gift unto them." His smile returned, but without any trace of mockery. "As I've maintained so often before, I am a very hospitable entity."
"Is this why you brought me here? To boast of your powers?" Sisko leveled his gaze at the other. "You'll have to pardon me if I'm still not impressed. You can parade around in your little world all you want, and go on talking to yourself . . . and it will mean nothing."
"Somehow, Commander, I knew you would still doubt me and my accomplishments. But I didn't save you in order to carry on this running argument. My generosity knows no bounds; you came here, whether you knew it or not, to find something, and it's my wish to make that discovery possible for you." McHogue made a sweeping gesture with one hand, toward the distant end of the corridor. "Continue, my dear Sisko. You're not done yet."
He was alone again; the smiling image had vanished, like a candle flame snuffed out between two fingers. Another light spilled along the passage, from the open doorway he could see farther on.
Empty, lifeless space spread before Sisko as he stepped onto the Ops deck. The instrument panels showed their monitoring of the station's continuing functions, the unconscious maintenance of DS9's homeostasis. Slowly, he turned where he stood, his gaze searching . . .
And finding.
He had perceived that he was the only living creature there. He was not proven wrong, when a chair before one of the consoles swung about revealing the figure that had been sitting there.
An image with his face.
His voice: "I've been waiting for you." A smile formed on the face of Sisko's own echo. "For a long time."
He nodded slowly, acknowledging its existence. He knew he should have expected it.
"That's right," said the echo. It stood up from the chair. "But you forgot, didn't you? Because you didn't want to remember. That you had left something of yourself behind, just like all the others, when you first came into this world. That bright summer place . . ." The echo looked around the Ops deck. "Very different from here. But . . . the same as well. In its essence."
"Because it's you, isn't it, McHogue?" Sisko regarded the seeming mirror before him. "Everything here is you."
"A metaphysical conceit, Commander." The echo's voice changed slightly, letting the other's seep through, as though from behind a mask. "I'm afraid I don't see the point in discussing it any further. Why should I make any distinction between myself and this universe? The question that should be asked isn't whether you exist here, my dear Sisko, or any of the others, for that matter; the question is whether McHogue exists anymore!" The mask of Sisko's voice turned radiant with triumph. "I've become the universe!"
"This universe," said Sisko. "This little, shabby world inside your head—that's all."
The echo looked pityingly at him. "You still don't understand, do you? You never realized the agenda I had from the beginning. No one did—not General Aur and the Bajoran provisional government, nor that fool Gul Dukat and the rest of the Cardassians; none of them. And certainly not you, Commander. Otherwise, you would have known that this isn't the limit of my ambitions. There is no limit." The voice had shed all pretense of disguise, becoming openly that of McHogue, a cry that echoed against the space's circumference. "With every tiny scrap of life that I've taken in and added to myself, even down to an insignificant, broken creature such as Ahrmant Wyoss—with every one, this universe has grown and become greater. And now it's time to go from inside here"—the image smiled and tapped the side of its head—"to out there." It turned and pointed to the stars visible in the central viewport.
Sisko looked up at the vista of worlds beyond counting, then back to the image that bore a mockery of his face. "It's not your ambition that knows no limits, McHogue. It's your madness that does."
"You doubt, Commander, because the process of transformation is not yet over. There are so many more lives that I need to bring inside my own, their little souls to be added to my great one. It will take a long time, I know. Or no time at all, perhaps—in the twinkling of an eye, as it was once said. Already, eons are as microseconds to me. When time itself ceases to exist—because I have abolished it—you shall see, as others have already seen, that this waiting, this mere game that you have called your existence, was but an illusion all along."
"Spare me the mystical claptrap." Sisko hardened his heart, let the cold rigor of his thoughts become an armor against the other's words. But there were things McHogue had said that he knew were true. A dire process had begun: McHogue had both his city of Moagitty on Bajor and Deep Space Nine as part of his world; the stable wormhole and all the treasures onto which it opened would continue to be an irresistible magnet for all the intelligent entities, humanoid and otherwise, of the galaxies. They'll all pass through this sector eventually, thought Sisko. And they would all experience the effects of the CI technology; there will be no escaping it. And then inside each one of them will be a little piece of McHogue. A seed of this new universe—he could see it, like a speck of infinite darkness. And another time would come, when McHogue was greater than the universe that had been his progenitor. Then the transformation would be complete, Sisko knew. Another reality would have supplanted the old; the unreal would have become the real. And all that exists—all that could exist—would be there, inside the head of the smiling figure that had stood before him.
The face behind the mask had faded, along with McHogue's voice. Sisko watched and said nothing.
"It's a shame you won't experience that, Commander." McHogue's voice had become almost a whisper from some distant point. "In your case, I'm going to make an exception. You've reached the limits of my hospitality. I'm afraid that it's time for you to cease existing . . . in this universe or any other."
The last trace of McHogue disappeared from behind the echo. Sisko found himself gazing into the image of his own face again, with no other force inhabiting it.
His face . . . and behind it, something that he could still recognize, something that was yet a part of him.
"There can't be two of us here. That's not possible." The echo's voice came from deep inside, as though the words were the result of long brooding. "You'll have to go." The image's hand lifted and reached for Sisko's throat.
His
strength had been depleted by the rigors of his passage through this world; he found himself unable to struggle, to tear loose the grasp that choked away his breath. Both his hands tugged futilely at the echo's tautened forearm.
Even as Sisko gasped for air, his knees buckling beneath him, he could look into his echo's eyes. And see what this part of him had become.
The echo's face—Sisko's face, transformed but still the same—was an emotionless mask, cold and inhuman, divorced from all feeling. Behind the dead eyes, no concern existed for his son, for Dax or Kira or Bashir or for any of the DS9 crew members; for no other living thing. There was only the desire, the will to command, to control, to bend reality to one's own inexorable will.
"That is right," whispered the echo, watching life dwindle in his hand, the last spark dying. Sisko could hear the words spoken in his own voice. "Now you know the truth at last. The truth that you kept hidden even from yourself."
A wavering shadow swept across the echo's face, through which its cold gaze burned toward him.
"The truth," came the voice to his ears. "That I am what was always inside you. When you searched for murderers, you looked everywhere but in your own heart."
No . . .
He could not speak aloud. A vise of iron clasped shut upon his throat.
In that world, in the universe that had collapsed to the width of a man's hand . . . a world that had already turned lightless, without air . . . he closed his eyes. Looking for something in that darkness . . .
Something that he found. That had always been there, just as the other, his echo, had told him. But not in his heart. But somewhere else, as real and unreal as the other's fist locked upon his mortal flesh.
That didn't matter. In a world without time, there was no need for breath. In the eternity between one heartbeat and the next, he opened his eyes.
His echo no longer stood before him. But a door, that slid open, spilling bright, false sunlight against his face. He walked slowly toward it, letting the sharp-edged radiance slip through his open hands . . .