They saw her then, the ghost become living and visible. The Cardassians turned away from their victims, the one crumpled upon the ground and the other still bleeding where he stood fastened to the wall.
A greater fire leapt, as though her heart had broken open and poured out its contents, a rushing wave that slammed against the Cardassians' amazed faces. The weapon's forcecaught both guards together, lifting them from the red-mottled ground and casting them broken upon the dark field beyond. With exquisite, pleasurable slowness, she turned the flame toward the officer, illuminating him, a new and purified thing that yielded its own puny weapon from a suddenly outflung hand.
Kira gathered her breath into herself, a heated joy that filled her lungs. She closed her eyes, knowing that the child had seen as well, the child had already seen this in her sullen dreams. She had seen this.
The air turned into fire. She could feel the weight of the armament in her hand, as though it were an extension of her arm, a burning vein running straight from it to a point between her breasts. She knew the watching child was gone, no longer separate from her; the child saw everything from behind her eyes. She opened them and saw the refugee camp spiralling below her, the ragged buildings pushed away by the fiery column at their center.
Another voice spoke inside her head. Whatever you want . . . I can give it to you . .
She didn't care where the power came from. In this world, there were no lies or truths. A murderous rage swept through her body, granting its own incendiary grace.
In the night sky of memory and dream, Kira rose higher; she could gaze upon all the Cardassian occupation forces, their disbelieving faces turned toward the new sun that had bloomed in the darkness. There was no weapon in her hand now, but she no longer needed one; a sweep of her arm sent a angel's holy fire toward the horizon, a rain of death at her intoxicated command. The surface of this world would be scoured clean . . .
"Kira!"
Who had spoken her name? She turned in air, face contorted with anger. Her burning hand struck toward a visage that she could barely discern.
Something grabbed her around the shoulders. Darkness enveloped her and she fell, striking an angle of hard metal a second later.
She opened her eyes and saw Commander Sisko standing hove her, the bare and empty walls of the holosuite chamber behind him.
Against her shoulder, she turned her face, feeling a child's sobbing well up and burst inside her. The tears were a child's tears, not of shame, but of incalculable loss.
CHAPTER 13
"You were lucky the commander found you in there." She looked over the diagnostic results on her data padd. Some of the brain-scan numbers were a little out of line, but returning to normal.
"Tell me about it." Lying on the examination table, Major Kira gazed up at the infirmary's ceiling. "Or better yet, don't."
"I'm not joking." Dax set the data padd aside. "It could have been much worse. From what we've been able to tell, the strength of the CI-modified holosuite's effect has actually increased—and on an exponential basis. Even an exposure of limited duration, a few hours or so, could have the same impact that we saw in the subjects who had spent a cumulative total of several weeks under its influence."
"How long was I in there?"
"Believe it or not, seven point five minutes, from the time the door closed to when Sisko hit the shutoff control."
Kira rubbed the corner of her brow. "It seemed like hours. Especially . . . toward the end . . ."
"That's the time-dilation effect. There had been some indications of it before, but never to this degree. That's why we had O'Brien wire an alarm into the unit; as soon as it went off at Ops, the commander was on his way there." Dax began putting back the rest of the instruments she had used. Properly speaking, it should have been Bashir's job to run a post-stress check on Kira, but he had collapsed, near exhaustion from the hours he had already spent in the research lab. She would check her results with him when he had gotten at least a couple more hours' sleep. "It might be of some value if you told me exactly what you experienced while you were in the holosuite." Dax glanced over her shoulder at the major. "Is it anything you would feel free to talk about?"
"Nice of you to ask." Kira had sat up, leaning forward with her hands against the edge of the table. "Sure, why not? I can't see how I can embarrass myself any more than I already have."
She listened to the major's description, categorizing the hallucinated perceptions and actions as classic revenge fantasies, with delusions of grandeur. Though there was an interesting philosophical question posed, one that Dax would have to think about later, when there was more time. Just whose delusions had they been? Kira's, McHogue's . . . or those of a starving child in a Bajoran refugee camp that no longer even existed?
"Lock me up and medicate me," said Kira, throwing her head back to gaze at the ceiling again. "I'll go quietly."
Dax smiled. "I don't think that will be necessary. Just don't do it again."
"That'd be against medical advice, I suppose."
"It's against my advice, at least. And—as you might imagine—against Commander Sisko's specific orders. He asked me to tell you that."
Kira groaned softly. "Just my luck that he was at Ops when I tripped the alarm. I seem to have this memory flash of him looking like he was going to pull my head off with his bare hands."
She had long experience with knowing how intimidating Benjamin could look when he was angry. The fact that Major Kira could even talk about it indicated how much ego strength she carried around with her.
"I'm sure it was directed more toward McHogue than it was toward you. If there were anything that he wanted to do with his bare hands, it would be to dismantle that holosuite until it was particularly small pieces of scrap. Then he'd commence doing the same to McHogue."
"Maybe I could help him." Kira refastened the collar of her uniform, where the tip of one of the instruments had read out her vital signs. "Maybe I could do anything at all around here."
"'They also serve, who stand and wait . . .'"
"What?" Kira stared at her.
Dax closed the instrument cabinet. "Just something I've heard Benjamin say; a quote, some Earth source that he didn't identify to me. Though actually, if you study the ethnography of enough cultures across the galaxy, a similar sentiment or variation thereof is quite frequently encountered."
"I suppose you're right; I can remember hearing something pretty similar from Kai Opaka." Kira stood up from the examining table. "Well, right now I'm not going to put up any argument about it. I'm beat; what sounds good to me is going back to my quarters and collapsing for a shift or two. That session in the holosuite—seven minutes or whatever it was—really took it out of me."
"That's the depletion of the brain's catecholamines; very similar to the aftereffects of certain chemical use. There's no sign of permanent damage, but it will take a little while for the neurotransmitters to reach their proper levels again." Dax hit the control panel beside the door, opening it for Kira. "However, you are correct about the proper course of treatment: sleep, and plenty of it. I don't think we need Dr. Bashir to write you a prescription for that."
After Kira had left, Dax tapped her comm badge and was connected to Sisko's office at Ops.
"Well? How is she?" The commander's voice was level and controlled, but Dax could detect the tone of concern in it.
"She's fine, Benjamin; or as well as can be expected. The time spent in the altered holosuite didn't have as much of an impact as her being relieved of full duty has had."