And it’s not as though I have anything better to do…She’d had a brief, unhappy romance with one of her co-workers soon after coming to the ministry, a man who had since transferred to the private sector; she was not ready to engage in another relationship anytime soon, much to the displeasure of her rather traditional family. Pursuing this minor mystery had become something of a fixation for her, one she was eager to solve. The sooner she could put this behind her, the better.
The lab was small but brightly lit. Within an hour of her arrival, the artifact was once again transported in its shipping container. She thumbed the lock and lifted the heavy object onto the work table, thinking that perhaps she had lost her mind, after all. If she’d told Kalisi that she’d started to believe she was having visions of ancient Cardassia…
Just thinking it made her feel incredibly foolish, but she’d come this far; she was determined to see her folly through. She looked at the thing, the case—the “ark,” in Bajoran vernacular. It did not appear that the object had been disturbed since she had seen it last. Traces of red Bajoran dirt still smeared the outside of the container and rested in the crevices of the characters and stones that stood in relief from the object’s flat paneled sides.
Miras ran her fingertips down the side of the object, as she had before, wondering if she would be able to open it again. Perhaps there had never been an opening, she thought to herself; perhaps she had been slowly losing her mind ever since her first encounter with this thing. Why not? Maybe the Bajorans had visions because of some mind-altering chemical in the materials of the box, or in the Orb itself, one that gave Cardassian women frustrating dreams and irrational notions. But the seam was indeed there.
Miras gently pried at the corner…and stepped back in amazement as a brilliant light spilled from the vertical opening in the case. She knew she should be closing the case, calling for help, but the sense of tranquillity that she recalled from her prior experience had returned, compelling her to further open the case. The Orb inside was illuminated so brightly that she could not even make out its size or shape, and after a moment, she could see nothing at all, nothing but a white, piercing light that flooded her vision, her reality, her thoughts.
Blind and confused, she struggled to maintain her senses. From a pinpoint of distinction within the harsh flood of brilliant light, the shimmering figure of a woman began to appear.
“Miras.” The Hebitian woman’s voice was as gently rolling as the hills of the surrounding farmland, melting into place all around Miras as the impossible whiteness began to recede. “I have been waiting.”
It was the dream…But this was no dream, this was happening. The woman led Miras inside the sparsely furnished little house of black brick, and walked to the heavy wood table. She reached into the obsidian box—
—and brought out the mask, turning to Miras. Miras half expected everything to dissolve as it always did as soon as the mask appeared, but she knew better, too. This, this whatever it was, vision,was real.
“The mask of Oralius,” the woman said, and handed it to her.
“Oralius,” Miras repeated, taking the delicate carving. She frowned. The Oralians had been a cult of some kind that had been extinct in the Cardassian Union since Miras was barely more than an infant. It was something that was rarely discussed, a topic that seemed distasteful to most, a superstitious holdover from an unfortunate time.
“Go ahead,” the graceful Hebitian woman coaxed, and Miras slipped the mask over her face.
She turned to find herself alone in the house—but it wasn’t the same house anymore. This new place was made of cool stones, coated thinly with delicate mats of velvety green foliage. Miras could smell the pungent odor of food cooking, foreign and overpowering. The ceiling was very tall, accommodating a rickety wooden ladder that stretched to a sleeping loft against the far wall. The loft was equipped with a door, situated very near the peak of the ceiling. Miras watched as an old man, an alien man with smooth, ruddy skin and an oddly slender neck, climbed up to the loft and exited through the door. After a beat, Miras followed him. He’d walked out onto a large wooden porch that overlooked part of a lush forest, with trees so giant and bizarre that Miras knew with certainty that she was not on Cardassia Prime.
Bajor?She believed so.
The man seemed unaware of her presence, and Miras continued to follow him as he walked down a set of stairs that had been built against the side of the porch, toward the back of the small home. When he reached the ground, he lifted a wooden hatch that revealed yet another staircase, this one curving down into an underground passage that had been dug next to the foundation. Miras seemed to float after him down the darkened steps and into a small chamber. The man did not sense her presence as he knelt down before a little hollow in the wall, a hollow that accommodated a four-sided object, tiled, bejeweled, with an oval lens on each face. Miras knew what he would do before he even did it; he opened the ark, and brilliant light spilled into the room.
She shielded her eyes from the glare of the Orb, washed over again with light before the room suddenly went dim. As her eyes adjusted, she found that she had been transported to yet another place—a room lined with books, and there were two other men in the room with her, Bajoran men. The cold, heavy air smelled of incense. From what Miras had read on the subject, the Bajorans’ clothes indicated that they were religious officials of some kind. In fact, she knew who they were, she knew what their raiment denoted without quite knowing how she knew it. These men were Kai Arin and Vedek Gar Osen. The names and titles were unfamiliar, but she knew them anyway.
The men were engaged in an argument, a debate, perhaps, but Miras could not be sure what they were saying. One man, the younger, departed the room—dismissed, she thought. The older man sat down at a desk and began to read from a book, a very old one.
Miras tried to call to the older man, for she was convinced that he was in danger, and when she saw the first man reenter the room, she became sure of it. The younger man crept up behind the elder and slid his hands around his narrow throat.
Miras tried to scream, to move, but she could only watch, silent and still and horrified as the old man thrashed in futile resistance, as his attempts to break free grew weaker. She tried to pull at the mask she wore, hoping that if it were removed she would be transported away from here, this nightmarish experience concluded, but her limbs were like fog and she had no control over her hands, her fingers. She was not even sure if she was inhabiting her own body anymore.
The younger man closed the book that the dead man had been reading, and removed the ceremonial headpiece from his lifeless body. The vision became more dreamlike, blurry and indistinct, things occurring in a jerky, clicking fashion. The murderer looked up, and Miras wanted to shield herself and could not. He seemed to be looking for someone, looking for her—and she realized suddenly that he, too, was wearing a mask, one that bore a strong resemblance to her own. He hadn’t been wearing one before, she was sure of it. He seemed to be looking right at her, and he reached up and pulled his mask away—
—and Miras was finally taken away from the unfortunate scene, just as she registered that the face beneath the mask was no longer Bajoran.
It had been Cardassian.
There was almost no time to consider what it meant, for Miras was suddenly home again, at the very center of Cardassia City, the environment grainy and one-dimensional, like a very old image capture. She recognized it, but at the same time she did not—for the capital of Cardassia Prime lay in ruins, great heaps of smoking rubble and debris blocking the streets, the aftermath of a devastating attack. Bodies were everywhere, Cardassian men, women, and children. The stench of death and burning composite was terrible, cloying.