Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 057 - Fearful Symmetry

by Olivia Woods

  “Kira,” she told Yeln, but she was watching Bakka. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s been better. You from Dahkur?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Figured. I recognized the accent. Long way from Hedrikspool. Is that where they picked you up?”

  Kira ignored the question, compelled to ask one of her own. “How long have you people been here?”

  “Weeks,” Yeln said.

  “Months,” said Alu. “Bakka’s been here the longest, but he’d already lost count of the days when I got here. Now he couldn’t tell us even if he knew.”

  Kira was gradually becoming more aware of her injuries. She felt her lower lip with her tongue. It was swollen and scabbed. She reached up and touched her forehead, feeling the puffed edges of a nasty laceration.

  Alu knelt down next to her. “That must hurt,” she said. “You’ll get used to it, I’m sorry to say.”

  Kira peered at her and in the dim light she made out the fact that Alu’s left eye was swollen shut, and much of her face was covered in bruises.

  “Between the conditions in here and the excuses they come up with to beat us every few days, the pain becomes routine,” Alu said.

  “She’s right,” Yeln agreed, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a mutilated forearm of extensively scarred tissue. “Acid burns,” he explained. “Bajorans are sent here for one reason: to suffer. Bakka there, they kept him awake and on his feet for days because they thought he knew something about the resistance, then beat him unconscious when he wouldn’t talk. When he woke up, they started over. Only this time they cut off one of his fingers every time he dozed. They kept it up until they’d taken every digit on his left hand.”

  “Did he tell them anything?” Kira asked.

  Yeln’s eyes narrowed. “He didn’t know anything. Bakka was a carpenter from a speck of a village in Musilla. The only thing he’s guilty of is being Bajoran.” Yeln sighed, shaking his head. “We’re not even people to them. We’re vermin. I’m sorry to tell you this is the worst place you could have landed yourself.”

  Kira said nothing.

  From far away, a noise shook the air, a sound she recognized: the slide and snap of a heavy gate slamming shut. Somewhere in Elemspur, someone started screaming. Bakka suddenly became agitated and Alu went to his side, trying to comfort him.

  Speaking softly, Yeln asked, “So what did you do to piss off the spoonheads?”

  Kira looked away. “Wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Yeln grunted. “Yeah. Aren’t we all?”

  The days that followed were torment. Kira studied their cage for flaws that she could exploit, and remained watchful for any opportunities she could seize. She peppered her cellmates with questions, seeking any information that might help her to devise a plan of escape. Every avenue was a dead end. The fusionstone walls of the cell were solid and thick; Elemspur had been a monastery before the Cardassians took over, and the ancient artisans responsible for its construction had built it well. The floor-to-ceiling lattice and its gate were a duranium composite, beyond her ability to damage. The high ceiling was a metal slab studded with lighting elements and what she thought might be access panels, but they were all beyond her reach. The Cardassians, for their part, were mostly absent, taking precious little interest in their prisoners.

  Bakka, Kira learned, was gravely ill. He had developed some kind of infection prior to her arrival, one the Cardassians seemed perfectly content to ignore. It was making him delirious and weak. He slipped into unconsciousness a day after she awoke and died shortly thereafter. It was two days more before the Cardassians saw fit to remove the body. Heralded by the metallic snap of locks releasing, the heavy cell door swung open to admit five Union soldiers. Three of them were armed and kept their disruptor rifles trained on the remaining prisoners, while the other two opened the gate, bagged up Bakka, and hauled him out like so much trash. There was nothing Kira could do but watch.

  They were fed once during those first few days: through a slot at the bottom of the gate came meager portions of a rancid soup that made Kira vomit not long after she’d forced it down. A dripping pipe in one corner was the only source of water, which they collected in their hands or with torn sections of their grimy clothing. The pipe stood over a fetid drain that served as the room’s only sanitation.

  Day by day they grew weaker. Yeln and Alu both wept. Kira kept silent, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, moving as little as possible to conserve her energy, taking refuge in prayer. But she was finding it increasingly difficult to think, to focus.

  On the seventh day, the cell door unlocked again, and once more five Cardassian soldiers filed in. The one in front trailed what looked like heavy black rubber tubing that was attached to a cannon-like nozzle on a shoulder mount.

  The next two guards took positions of readiness outside the lattice, weapons drawn, while a fourth unlocked the gate and rolled it aside. He touched a control on his cuff and one of the panels in the ceiling opened over the holding area. A long vertical pole extended down, stopping at about the height of a man. The guard then headed straight for Kira and forced her to stand, binding her wrists in manacles that were joined together by a square of metal with a small hole in the center. He pulled Kira to the middle of the cell and then raised her arms toward the pole, threading it through the hole in the shackles and locking them in place.

  Another touch on the guard’s cuff, and the pole retracted partway. Kira gasped as her bare feet rose up off the floor, her entire body weight becoming the burden of her manacled wrists.

  The guard turned to await instruction from the fifth soldier to enter the room, a glinn who was consulting a padd near the outer door.

  “Listen to me, I beg you,” Yeln pleaded. “This is a terrible mistake! We haven’t done anything!”

  “Please!” Alu cried. “We’re innocent!”

  “None of you is innocent,” the glinn told them. “Now be quiet or I’ll have this entire cell gassed.” When he was satisfied there would be no further outbursts, the glinn’s eyes returned to the padd and he began to read aloud. “Kira Nerys, you have been found guilty of numerous acts of terrorism and homicide, the sentence for which is death. Trial to confirm this verdict has been waived. Sentence to be carried out following medical interrogation.”

  He nodded to the fourth guard, who produced a serrated knife from behind his back and cut Kira’s soiled clothing from her body. The guard then moved aside as the Cardassian with the shoulder mount stepped forward, opened the nozzle, and blasted Kira with a jet of cold water. At such high velocity, the water pounded her like a mallet, forcing the air from her lungs. She was vaguely aware that Yeln was screaming, that the guard who had stripped her was beating him to make him stop, that Alu was trying to protect him.

  Kira gritted her teeth against the punishing jet. But it wasn’t just water; from the smell and taste she could tell it contained some kind of industrial cleaning agent. She forced herself not to breathe.

  “That’s enough,” the glinn shouted over the roar.

  The water ceased, and finally Kira took in air, gasping as her lungs expanded. The manacles suddenly detached from the pole, dropping her to the floor. She fell to her knees and savored the rush of blood back into her hands.

  Her relief was short lived. The fourth guard walked over to her again and pulled her up by her hair, then proceeded to drag her naked out of the cage. She could hear Alu weeping, but no sound came from Yeln. Kira prayed that he hadn’t been beaten to death, but the blood she saw pooling near his head made her fear the worst.

  While the Cardassian with the hose relocked the cage, the fourth guard forced her to stand before the glinn, who was eyeing her with disdain. “And here I thought you’d have more fight in you. I’m almost disappointed. Still, we won’t be taking any chances.” He smiled and showed her a hypospray. “This will make certain you’re…cooperative for what comes next.”

  She stared into his eyes but didn’t actually
see them. Instead, she found her reflection in his dark irises, saw her sunken cheeks, her hollowed eyes, her long, dripping mane, and she knew with certainty that she would never leave Elemspur. That hope was gone. She was going to die…and so she had nothing left to lose.

  As the glinn leaned in to press the hypo to her neck, Kira seized the moment and smashed her forehead into the glinn’s nose with all her might.

  Howling in agony, the glinn covered his face with his free hand, blood gushing between his fingers. Kira reached out with her manacled hands in time to snatch the sidearm from his holster and immediately fired it over her shoulder, into the face of the stunned fourth guard, who was still holding her by the hair. She felt a clump of it rip from her scalp as he fell backward, dead.

  Her moment had come. Without the fourth guard at her back, there was no longer an obstacle between her and the other soldiers. She spun around to face her soon-to-be executioners, turning her weapon on them, a final act of defiance so they would see her face as they killed her, and remember.

  She felt the kiss of a hypospray on the back of her neck. Her weapon discharged, but the shot went wild, blasting harmlessly into one stone wall of the cell. Kira felt her muscles betray her and she collapsed, feeling only surprise that the glinn had recovered so quickly.

  “Take her to Entek,” the glinn shouted. “Now!”

  Reality fades in and out. She never loses consciousness, but her perceptions are chaos. Colors swim. People and objects distort. Sounds slow to dull, incomprehensible groans, or blare painfully inside her skull. Moments of clarity come and go, and she clings to these as long as she can. She’s aware of being gurneyed through dim stone corridors, of coming to rest in a room filled with machines. Cardassian machines. Interrogation room?

  Dry gray hands affix metal objects to her forehead, her temples, the base of her skull. Someone very close, a woman, asks what will be done with her. A man replies, saying the body will likely be filed back in the Order archives. Kira turns her head, sees herself in another gurney next to her own. Mirror?

  More voices talking, machines turning on, and suddenly her entire life flashes across the broken landscape of her conscious mind.

  She plunges into darkness for a time and floats among shadows. They’re arguing, shouting. Everything is a haze, but the shadows are slowly resolving into men: Cardassians, and one of them has a face she knows.

  Dukat.

  “…You’re bluffing,” says the other Cardassian, a civilian.

  “Don’t be naive,” says Dukat.

  “Even if I agreed to this, you cannot expect my superiors to believe my report without Kira’s body.”

  Dukat moves toward an instrument tray, picks up an empty hypo, presses it against Kira’s bare shoulder, and extracts a vial of blood. He pops the vial and holds it out to the civilian. “Make one.”

  The civilian hesitates, then takes the vial and departs. Dukat watches him go.

  “Sir, this one’s awake.”

  Kira tries to move, but her limbs feel like clay. The most she can manage is lolling her head toward the voice. She sees her reflection again, stirring, a guard standing over her.

  “Sedate her,” says Dukat. “She has a long journey ahead of her, and she’s going to need her rest.”

  “What about the Bajoran?”

  “I want her memories of the last seven days altered. She’s to believe she’s been in the Dahkur hills the entire time, hunted by Cardassians and unable to return to her unit. Give her back her clothes and her belongings and leave her somewhere safe. Make certain you aren’t seen.”

  Then she feels Dukat’s breath on her neck, but she doesn’t see him in the mirror. Strange. Not even when he begins whispering in her ear as her world once again starts to fade. “You’ll never know how close you came to your end, Nerys. I sincerely hope you won’t waste this second chance…. You’re so very much like Meru. And whether you know it or not…I’ll always be watching.”

  Captain Kira’s hands pushed against the doors of the Tear’s ark. She slumped against it, shaken by the flood of memories that had been restored to her-the fear and self-loathing, the humiliation and degradation, the brutality and hopelessness.

  She remembered the rest: finding herself back in the hills, thinking she’d somehow lost the Cardassians she believed had been hunting her for seven days straight. Lupaza’s relief at finding her, saying the cell had almost given her up for dead as she led Kira to the group’s new base.

  And she remembered the long talk with Shakaar afterward, in which she admitted her despair to him, and how she’d almost lost the will to survive…until she recalled his words to her. They’d become her lifeline, and from that day forward, she fought for the future.

  In a strange, sick way, she now knew she had Dukat to thank for that. By having her memories of Elemspur expunged, he had allowed her to hold on to that moment after the death of the hara cat, when she had decided to live. She was in his debt…and she hated him more than ever.

  He knew about me. He knew I was Meru’s daughter. He knew I was with the resistance. He knew it the day he walked into the security office on the station while Odo was interrogating me in the death of Vaatrik!

  He knew all along, and he pretended he didn’t.

  “I’ll always be watching.”

  Kira slammed her fist on the altar.

  And then there was the civilian in the treatment room, a man she now recognized: Corbin Entek of the Obsidian Order. Entek who, when he kidnapped Kira six years ago to use her as a pawn against Tekeny Ghemor, had mixed his lies with just enough truth to keep her off balance. She never mentioned the incident with the hara cat to anyone, but of course Entek had learned of it when her memories had been imprinted onto Iliana, and he used that memory against Kira, making her doubt its authenticity just as he had made her doubt her real identity.

  But now she knew the truth, at least as far as her own life was concerned. The Orb of Memory had separated fact from fiction. What had become of Iliana between that last day at Elemspur and her sudden, savage return was still largely a mystery.

  She was wearing my face. She had my memories.

  So what did Dukat do with her?

  6

  Ro’s door chimed three times before she finally shouted, “Go away!”

  There came a fourth chime; not the door this time but the familiar tone that heralded an announcement from the station’s main computer. “Medical override engaged. Privacy locks deactivating.”

  Ro was livid. She looked up from her console and prepared to give Dr. Tarses an earful as the door opened. “Dammit, Simon, I don’t have time for-Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

  Nurse Etana Kol offered her a knowing smile as she barged in, medical kit in hand. “Now is that any way to treat your old deputy?”

  Ro turned back to her padd. “You quit, remember? How do you expect to be treated?”

  “Ouch,” Etana said, looking around at the disarray of Ro’s quarters for someplace to set down her kit. “Well, I’m glad to see that your big, bad attitude is back-even if it is misdirected at me. By the way, I love what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Don’t try to be funny,” Ro snapped. “And don’t make this about me. I recommend you for your Starfleet commission, and what do you do with it? Out of nowhere, you transfer to the medical department.”

  “Out of nowhere?” Etana said, finally pushing the padds on the dining table to one side and laying her case flat on top of it. “Are you kidding? Laren, I was the medic for my cell during the occupation. My girlfriend is a Starfleet nurse I didn’t get to see very often, even though she’s stationed here. Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me you didn’t see this coming?”

  Ro didn’t answer immediately, but when she did, it was with slightly less heat. “All I’m saying is that your timing could have been better.”

  “Not for me,” Etana said. “After Bajor joined the Federation, the opportunity for Militia personnel to transfer to Star
fleet made it exactly the right time. I thought you’d understand that.”

  “Fine, I understand it. Are we done? I’m busy here.”

  “Well, you’re gonna need to take a break. I didn’t come here just because I missed the yelling. I’m here as your physical therapist.”

  Ro scoffed. “Tarses gave up, did he?”

  “If he’d given up, I wouldn’t be here,” Etana said pointedly. “Somebody took a spill down in engineering, and he was called away. But before he left, he was adamant that you can’t continue to put off your rehab. You need to get back on your feet.”

  “I don’t need my feet right now. I need some peace and quiet so I can work.”

  “What’s that smell?” Etana asked, sniffing the air. “When was the last time you took a shower?”

  “Good-bye, Kol.”

  Etana sighed and moved to the console. She reached across it and snatched the padd out of Ro’s hand.

  Ro’s eyes flashed. “So you’ve grown a pair, is that it?”

  “Let me lay this out for you, Laren,” Etana said. “Doctor Tarses pulled off a minor miracle so you’d have a chance to walk again, and you’re squandering it.”

  Ro kept her voice level. “Ensign, give that padd back to me immediately.”

  “Respectfully, Lieutenant, Doctor Tarses-“

  “I don’t report to Doctor Tarses!” Ro shouted, throwing herself out of the chair in an effort to reach far enough across her console so that she could snatch back her padd. Her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she fell hard against the panel, wrenching her shoulder. Grimacing in pain, she barely succeeded in settling back into her wheelchair.

  To her credit, Etana didn’t rub the obvious in her face: that Ro’s inability even to stand by now was pathetic. Instead, she kept her voice subdued. “I get it, Laren. You need to prove something. You want the universe to see that nothing’s going to hold you back.”

  “It’s not about me,” Ro snarled.