Dukat had been busy. He’d twice tried to contact the glinn he’d tasked to monitor the shape-shifter’s movements in the past week, and twice been told that he was unavailable. He hadn’t focused on it overmuch, but he wondered at a man who would dare try the prefect’s patience.

A third day, a third attempt, and the garresh working communications couldn’t put him through fast enough. When the glinn finally showed his face on Dukat’s office screen, he did not look happy.

“Why have you not returned my calls?” Dukat asked.

The glinn tightened his jaw. “Sir, I regret to inform you that my men—that I have lost track of the shape-shifter.”

“How long ago?”

“Sir. We have been searching for its tracks without rest—”

“When?”

The glinn took a deep breath. He looked exhausted. “Four days, sir.”

“Did I not explain to you that he was to be closely monitored at all times?”

“And we did, sir. We have. It left the village in Dahkur, and we tried to follow it, but it approached one of my men. When he asked it to go with him, it—it turned into a bird and flew away. He was…startled, sir.”

Startled.Dukat said nothing, and the glinn was quick to fill the silence, his desperation lending him voice.

“How can we track a thing that becomes water, or a stone, or a snake? With all respect, sir, we don’t have the technology to keep it under surveillance.”

Dukat hovered between anger at the glinn—impertinence on top of incompetence—and a kind of weary resignation, that he should have the only sharp mind, it seemed, in all of Central Command.

“It chooses to be a man,” Dukat said, patient through gritted teeth. “It seeks out the company of other sentient beings. Go to the towns, ask questions. Cover the whole province, if you must. Someone will have seen something.”

The glinn nodded sharply. “Yes, sir.”

“And report back as soon as you’ve established his whereabouts. Do not approach him, or try to contain him in any way, do you understand? I will not indulge your ineptitude twice.”

He cut off the transmission, shook his head. If Odo were ever to come to Terok Nor, it would have to be of his own volition. For now, keeping track of him would have to do, if his soldiers could manage it without his direct supervision.

Dukat picked up the padd with his schedule for the day, turning his attention to other matters. Truly, it was a wonder he ever got anything done.

11

When she got the upgrade memo from the science ministry, it was all Kalisi could do not to scream. She read it three times, her blood pressure steadily spiking.

…and you will receive the newly calibrated RV7 models and have them installed before the end of the next quartile…

She read it again, then stood, agitated, pacing her small closet of an office. Only the year before, Cardassia Prime had gifted Doctor Moset’s facility with a brand-new computer system, state of the art—and backwards compatible with their outdated hardware. Since her arrival at the facility, Kalisi had spent countless hours elaborately reprogramming the system to get their aging equipment online and networked. And now the science ministry had actually come through with new hardware for the lab. Hardware that was, of course, incompatible with last year’s computer system.

Kalisi couldn’t stand it. She went to find Crell.

It was midweek and late, so she headed for pathology, fuming all the way. She exchanged nods with a few other workers, but no pleasantries; they all knew what she was to Moset, and his blatant favoritism had distanced her from anyone she might have looked to for friendship.

He was happy to see her, in his distracted and quirky way. They hadn’t been lovers for long enough to breed too much familiarity, and he seemed to enjoy listening to her complain. She ranted about the ministry for a spell, as he nodded appropriately, shaking his head in shared frustration. She didn’t expect him to offer any solution, and wasn’t disappointed. He had been distant lately, in a way she’d come to recognize as a precursor to some new twist in his research.

“Well, it won’t be for much longer,” he said finally, smiling his thin smile. “This might be among the last upgrades we’ll have to suffer.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re an educated woman,” Crell said. “You can see that the resources here on Bajor are dwindling.”

“Yes, but the projection for dropping below quota is still decades away.”

Moset leaned against the metal table behind him, cocking one eyeridge in a melodramatically cryptic expression. “That’s just what they wantyou to think.”

Her irritation was no pretense. “What do you mean?”

“That’s propaganda, newscasts aimed at home. From what I hear, Cardassia will pull out of here less than a generation from now. Possibly within the next five years.” He smiled with faint distraction. “I’m hoping for sooner, rather than later, of course.”

Kalisi was surprised. She’d heard rumors, but hadn’t believed them. Crell was well-respected, though, and had earned a number of influential friends in the science ministry and Central Command. If he believed it, he had reason to.

“What will happen to the Bajorans?” she asked, not sure why it was the first question that came to mind.

His playfulness fell away, his demeanor suddenly uncharacteristically grave. “Considering the declining state of their society and their ecosystem, in my estimation they’ll be lucky to die off quickly.”

As if to illustrate his point, a lab assistant wheeled a cot through the room’s far entrance, a cadaver, mostly covered by a sheet. A Bajoran woman. Her skin was nearly white beneath the bright lights.

“If you’ll excuse me, Doctor,” Crell said, nodding at her. “I have some work to do. Perhaps we can continue this conversation at a later time?”

Kalisi nodded, already backing toward the door she’d entered by, as the assistant parked the corpse in front of Crell. She wasn’t particularly squeamish, but wasn’t interested in watching a dissection, either. She turned, thinking. She still had to decide how to handle the ministry’s “gift.” It was reprogram again or reject the computers…

She glanced back at Moset as the door slid open, and saw the Bajoran woman twitch.

Kalisi stopped, peered closer at the body as the door slid closed again. The assistant had disappeared, and Crell was pulling back the sheet to expose the woman’s bare body, so strange and smooth, no ridges crossing her midriff. Kalisi was sure she had moved, like a shiver, when he had lifted the coverlet.

He tapped at a recording panel and lifted his scalpel, leaning over the naked alien.

“Subject is mid-20s—ah, 26, I believe, no history of disease before end-stage Fostossia—”

There!The Bajoran’s hand this time, a spastic movement.

“Crell,” she said, forgetting herself as he brought the blade down.

He paused, looked up at her.

“She’s still alive,” Kalisi said.

He blinked, frowned. As though he was still waiting for her to get to the point. “Yes?”

“I thought—I mean, I suppose…” She wasn’t sure what to say, not sure what was happening. He acted as though performing a vivisection on a living person—a Bajoran, but still a person—was something he did every day.

He smiled, straightened slightly. He glanced about, confirming that they were alone.

“You have a tender heart, Kali,” he said. “This woman is already dead. Terminal coma. The disease was untreatable by the time she came to us. Better we learn something from her death, don’t you feel?”

Kalisi took a step back to the table, unable to look away from the Bajoran’s face. She saw it now, the quiver of her thin nostrils, a slow beat at her temple.

“What could you hope to learn?” she asked.