A flash of metal, the blade of the knife—he saw it extended toward him again, glistening on the other boy's palm. Thesmile curled at one corner of the boy's mouth, beneath the dark eyes that watched Jake with conspiratorial delight.
He saw the other thing as well, on top of the stone the boy crouched beside; the thing that had been alive and whole when Jake had closed his eyes, and now was broken. But still alive. A jagged piece of shell had slid to the water's edge.
"Go on!" commanded the other boy, thrusting the knife's handle closer. "You know you want—"
Disgust and anger welled up inside Jake. His arm lashed out on its own, knocking the blade away, sending it spinning in the sunlight, bright silver above the creek's rippling surface.
He scrambled to his feet, his breath choking in his throat, and turned and ran. Behind him, he could hear the other boy laughing, the sky echoing with it as Jake reached his hand toward the horizon and the door to the sunless corridors that were his home.
The flash of metal stabbed his vision, as though the point of the pryblade had leapt the course of the Promenade. Even as Odo shoved the people around him aside, he knew that he had waited too long, knew that he had betrayed himself and his duty by holding back and watching. The weapon rose above Ahrmant Wyoss's head, his fist clenched rigid at its hilt; the man's eyes had opened wide and glaring now, as though the pressure of the madness inside his skull had broken through the last barrier membrane.
Someone screamed, a high wailing pitch of fright. The crowd surged back from Wyoss, the space around him expanding as the Promenade's visitors scrambled back from the naked blade. The humanoid wall in front of Odo tightened almost solid; he grabbed two different sets of shoulders and pulled them apart from each other, wedging himself through the gap and reaching ahead to drive another opening. The wave of panic had blocked his sight of Wyoss; shoving aside more bodies, he dove toward the retreating front of the crowd.
Odo saw then what had triggered Wyoss's sudden action. His own attention had been so focused on its target that he had lost track of anything else happening on the Promenade; he had only been vaguely aware of the turbolift doors opening few meters away from Wyoss. That was what he was waiting for, realized Odo. Waiting for—
Two people had emerged from the turbolift. Talking to each other, not perceiving the outbreak of chaos their entrance had caused . . . until it was too late.
He could see who it was, see that the ones who had stepped onto the Promenade deck were Major Kira and Commander Sisko. In a distant corner of Odo's memory, there was just space enough for a microsecond flash of what Quark had told him about a booth reserved for a conference. . . .
Then there was no time at all. With his hand straining desperately forward, Odo launched himself over the last ring of bodies. Even as Commander Sisko spotted the arc of descending metal and raised his forearm to ward off the blurring stroke aimed at him.
CHAPTER 2
For a moment, he saw nothing. One of the figures blocking Odo's path scrambled backward, away from the glittering pryblade in Ahrmant Wyoss's grasp, as though the weapon's curving path was about to scythe through every exposed neck on the Promenade. Odo fell onto his side, quickly rolling onto his hands and knees, and looking up in time to see a spark fly from the pryblade as it clanged against the turbolift's doorway.
Major Kira had reacted first, dropping into a crouch and using the uncoiling thrust of her shoulder to propel both herself and Commander Sisko out of the blade's path. The jarring impact of metal against metal shot through Wyoss's arm, snapping his head back, teeth clenched against the shock.
In another few seconds, before Odo could do anything to assist, it was over. Sisko rolled with the momentum that the major's thrust had given him, coming up against Wyoss's legs with enough force to stagger him against the wall. The pryblade flew out of Wyoss's grasp, then skittered across the Promenade deck, as Sisko brought the butt of his palm straight up into the underside of the other man's chin. An elbow check to the abdomen dropped Wyoss writhing to his knees.
"I've got him." Odo pulled Wyoss's arms back and snapped a pair of restraints onto his wrists. He pulled the unresisting form to its feet. "Are you all right, Commander?"
Sisko brushed down the front of his uniform. He nodded, then glanced over his shoulder at Kira. "A little adrenaline overdose, Constable, but nothing serious. How about you, Major?"
"Don't worry about me." Kira glared at the man slumping from the hold Odo had on the restraints. "Who the hell is this creep, anyway?"
Odo detected an accusatory tone in Kira's voice, as though it had been his fault that the weapon had come within a few centimeters of her head. "The suspect's identity has already been established," he said stiffly. "There are a great many things about his background, and his motives, that remain the subject of an ongoing investigation."
Head lowered, Sisko peered into Wyoss's slack-jawed, semi-conscious face. "Is this connected to the, ah, incidents that you spoke to me about previously?"
"I'm afraid that's likely to be the case, Commander."
"I see." Sisko straightened back up. "We'll need to discuss is matter further. Have a complete report ready for me by the end of the shift."
Odo gave a quick nod in acknowledgment. "Come on—" Wyoss's head wobbled on his neck as Odo propelled him forward. "Go about your business," he barked at the circle of gawking faces. "There's nothing to see here." Leaning down, he scooped up the pryblade with his free hand. "Move along."
A path opened through the bodies, and Odo shoved thesuspect toward the security station at the other end of the Promenade.
"Now I'm the one who needs a drink." Commander Sisko managed to show a thin smile from across the booth's table. "I think that little unpleasantness drew more attention from me than I was prepared to give."
Kira nodded, rubbing her eyes. "It certainly woke me up." She tilted her head back, trying to dispel the fatigue she again felt advancing upon her. "Has there been something going on aboard the station while I was away, that I should know about?"
"Perhaps . . . though I'm not sure yet." The creases in Sisko's brow grew deeper. "I'll have to give you a briefing as soon as I've gotten some more details from Odo. Let's just say for now that our encounter out there was not the first of its kind—though it was the first where I seemed to be the target."
When she had recovered more of her mental energy, Kira knew she would have to examine the commander's troubling statement. An environment such as Deep Space Nine had a difficult time keeping out the galaxy's brain-sick refuse; much of the station's mission was to facilitate passage through its docking ports. Theoretically, entry could be denied to anyone posing a threat to the welfare of the station or any of its crew, but as a practical matter, there wasn't time to do more than the most cursory screening procedures. It was the age-old problem of access—and the abuse of same—in an open society. She and Odo had had discussions about it in the past. that the only way to truly secure the station would be to lock it down tight as it had been under the control of the Cardassians. And doing that alone would defeat everything the Federation was trying to accomplish here.
Determining where Odo stood on the issue had been difficult; Kira knew that the security chief's first loyalty was to DS9 itself, the only world he had ever known, just as hers was to Bajor. In his own way, Odo was as much a patriot as she considered herself to be. Everything else came second for him, just as for herself, as she had to admit when she examined her own heart's allegiances. To know that was also to recognize a certain coldness and calculation that entered into her dealings with everyone else, who didn't share the exact same agenda—such as Commander Sisko and any other representative of the Federation's Starfleet. Maybe that was why so many other crew members saw her and Odo the same way, as rigid and uptight, steel-spined—oddly so in his case, given that he regularly reverted to a complete liquid state.