Odo had brought a small drawstring bag with him. He reached down beside him and set the bag on the table. From inside it he took the empty black casing for the CI module that he and Chief of Operations O'Brien had pulled from the holosuite. "You know what this is, don't you?"
The other's eyes opened wide enough that watery blue pupils could be discerned. A few seconds ticked by before he managed to shake his head. "Never saw it before in my life."
The little hesitation told Odo that he had hit the target with his first try. If he hadn't got the response he wanted here, he had a short list of other miscreants to move on to.
"I don't appreciate being lied to, either." Odo set a fingertip on the gleaming black surface. "Given the record you have in my files, I might have hoped that you would have learned the value of honesty by now."
A new layer of sweat seeped into the folds of the man's neck. "Hey . . . I haven't done anything like that in a long time. I'm clean—"
"I'm the one who makes that determination." He pushed the casing a few centimeters closer to the freight handler, then drew it back, like a chess move he was considering. "Now, it would certainly be . . . unethical to plant items in an individual's file. But what I've found useful in the past is to not remove quite everything from a particular individual's file—an individual such as yourself—but to leave a few . . . interesting items in there. Little improprieties, shall we say? Simple matters, of just stepping over the line of DS9's regulations now and then—incidents that someone might not even be aware that I know about." Odo smiled. "It's remarkable how well such information can insure an individual's cooperation when needed."
The other's eyes narrowed again. "You're lying."
"Am I? Perhaps we should go down to the security office and find out. But I promise you—" Odo leaned across the table, his voice dropping a notch. "If I'm not lying, then you'll leave the security office in wrist restraints. And your next stop will be a Federation criminal court."
"All right, all right." The freight handler's face now looked as if it had been boiled in sweat. "Look, I don't even know what that thing is—and I don't wanna know, either. I didn't even like doing a job for that guy. Gave me the creeps."
"But you apparently didn't mind getting paid by that person. Because you did the job, after all. Though I'm still wondering how you managed to get these devices aboard the station. I've been keeping a close watch on what comes in from these loading docks."
An expression of smug self-satisfaction lifted a corner of the freight handler's mouth. "There's ways."
"If I had the time," said Odo, his voice level, "we'd talk about that a little more. But right now, all I require is a name. Who paid you to smuggle these into the station?"
"I dunno . . ." Smugness changed to fear. "It ain't worth it to me to squawk."
"Perhaps you should reconsider whether you're more afraid of this other party than you are of me. Whoever he is, he's not around, and there's no need for him to find out whatever you might tell me. Whereas I'm sitting right in front of you, and I can guarantee you some unpleasant consequences if you maintain your silence." Odo looked at his own hand as he raised and held it above the empty module casing. "All I need is a name."
Small yellowed teeth bit into the freight handler's lower lip. Then two syllables blurted out. "McHogue."
Odo drew a blank; he had no recollection of ever having heard the name before. But he carefully maintained his facade, to keep the other from realizing.
"I see. . . ." He nodded slowly. "McHogue, is it?" He picked up the casing and deposited it back in the drawstring "Why don't you run along now and go about your business? Just as if you hadn't had this conversation with me. Just be sure to stay where I can find you."
With a look of relief, the freight handler scuttled out of the manifest office.
Odo sat still for a few moments longer, both to give the freight handler time to disappear, and to draw his own ruminations together.
A name unknown to him . . . that made it even more interesting. And, as was always the case with unknown elements, perhaps more dangerous.
He pushed the chair back from the table and stood up. Once outside the manifest office, he headed for the nearest turbolift.
The voice spoke inside his head. He had wanted to hear for himself; now he regretted that decision.
. . . it hurts does it but that's good it hurts and it bleeds I hurt and bleed good that's good. Red on blade—don't—it's too bright redbright hurtgood—I won't I promise I'm sorry—I'm sorry—red is here red and bright and hurt—I'm sorry bright my hand red and bright and you hurt—red and dark . . .
Chief Medical Officer Bashir pulled the headphones from his ears and handed the apparatus back to Jadzia Dax. "Well. That was . . . interesting. To say the least." He shook his head, as though the voice—murmuring, growling, even crying out beneath the weight of the drug—had left some tangible residue inside.
"I told you," said Dax. She stowed the rarely used headphones in one of the laboratory's equipment drawers. From the bench beside her, she picked up her data padd. "It's all been transcribed." She smiled. "You would have been much better off reading it instead."
She was right so often—in the calmly stated fashion all Trills had—that he had long ago ceased feeling any sparks resentment on such occasions. Bashir took the data padd as she held it out to him. On its screen, the outpouring of words that he had just listened to now scrolled upward, line by line. Even in that reduced form, they were disturbing.
"How much of this do you have?" He tapped his finger against the data padd. "In terms of actual time, that is."
"Six point four hours." Answers like that always came from Dax with mathematical precision. "From my monitoring of the subject's vital indicators, I determined that some fatigue factors were beginning to be apparent. I thought it best to discontinue the drug flow and let him get some rest."
"Any sedation?" As much as Bashir had agreed to assist with Dax's investigation, the welfare of the subject was still a priority with him.
She shook her head. "I felt it was contraindicated, given the amount of pharmaceuticals already present in his bloodstream. Plus, the nonstop verbalization seemed to have had a significant cathartic effect on the subject; he had ceased struggling against the restraints as he had been doing before, and there was much less of the contorted facial grimacing he had previously displayed."
"All right. I'll check on him and make sure of his condition." Bashir raised the data padd again and studied the transcription of Ahrmant Wyoss's drug-induced rantings. The voice was still echoing inside his head.
. . .red and dark . . . bright it hurts . . . good . . .
With an effort, he forced the memory back into silence. "Have you already done an analysis on this material?"
Dax nodded. "I had the station's computer do a preliminary breakdown and cross-indexing of key phrases and imagery. As I suspected, there's quite a lot of underlying structure here; it's not just a chaotic profusion of fragments unrelated to each other. The concept formation is admittedly unpleasant, but it is consistent."
"So I see." His initial repulsion, triggered more by the violence than the words' overt graphic nature—a doctor was used to seeing blood—had abated enough that he could begin studying the transcription. "It's really as if the subject is describing the contents and experiences of another world. There's parallels, of course, to our normal shared universe but everything's skewed toward . . . I don't know . . ." He searched for a means of description. "A rage-filled hurtling into death. Or is that too baroque a construction?"