That assertion might have been true, but even then Sisko had doubted the other's words; doubted, but had not pressed him on the matter. The mix of emotions that he had detected in Odo's face and voice—rage and fear and a swirling confusion—had been too close to his own, the product of stepping into the brightly lit nightmare into which McHogue had twisted his son Jake's summer fantasies. Such knowledge was shameful, something to be hidden away, clutched tight to one's own belly; he had too much respected Odo's privacy to order him to reveal what he had found inside the holosuite. If Odo had found some clue to his origins, the mystery of his created nature, it remained his secret.
But what Odo had left there in the holosuite, left the way that all who had entered McHogue's world left some small parts of themselves behind—the "echoes" that McHogue fastened upon and nourished in the forcing ground of unlimited possibilities, a nursery for insanity and murder—that was something Sisko had known of, but hadn't wanted to think about.
Until now, when he had to confront the results of that process.
He stepped back from the mirrorlike wall, looking up and across its breadth. His vision had sharpened, or Odo—the inanimate yet sentient thing that bore Odo's face and essence—had chosen to show itself more fully. The original Odo, the Odo who had existed in the great reality outside McHogue's skull, had been an entity personifying the notions of fluid and protean, an embodiment of constant change. The echo of Odo that Sisko now saw before him, an echo magnified and made louder, silently deafening, by McHogue's powers in this world, was both less and more than what the original had been. Whatever the shapeshifter's true nature—and Sisko knew that that might always remain a mystery—here in the CI technology's revealing illusions was the static, frozen development of that nature, a Life-in-Death like that encountered by so many other travelers in uncharted realms.
Sisko could see now how far Odo had been subsumed into the fabric of Deep Space Nine. The mirror wall that held the keeping face was Odo, as were the heat-twisted girders stretching overhead; they rippled with the same in-place motion, stone dropped in water, as Sisko's gaze passed across them. And farther: the metal flooring held the blackened corpses, as though they were cradled in Odo's protective embrace. As far as Sisko's vision could reach: walls against other walls, and the twisted doors within them. Even thespace between them, the stilled air; everything locked into place, eternal and unmoving.
"Constable . . ." Sisko reached out to touch the sleeping face behind the mirrored surface. "What have they done to you?" he murmured.
Another face was discernible, behind the closed eyes of Odo's visage. Sisko drew back his hand, his fingertips having encountered only smoothed glass; he could feel the other watching him, a thin smile already forming. When the whispered voice came again, he heard the other's words seeping through.
You should be glad for me, Commander . . . this is what I want . . . what I've always wanted . . .
He stepped back, looking above himself, as though he might spot McHogue hovering like a puppeteer deity, invisible strings radiating from the outstretched fingers. He saw nothing there; he dropped his gaze again to the image whose barest rudiments had filtered through Odo's, as though they were antique photographic transparencies laid one on top of the other.
You see? The words sounded different. What a generous sort I am, to let people find out what it is they desire, and then to give it to them. To cause it to be. Odo so loved the station—his only home, his only real family—and now he's part of it. Just as he wanted.
"But it's not him," Sisko spoke aloud, his voice tightening with contempt. "It's a lie—there's nothing here of Odo."
Nothing but the truth, whispered McHogue's smiling voice. That's the risk everyone took when they stepped inside here. That they would see things they might have preferred to remain hidden. The mocking smile showed in the wall's depths. That they might become things . . . the same way.
"You've left the truth behind; you wouldn't know it if it did find its way in here." He shook his head. "There's no one here but you now."
Ah—brave words, Commander. The voice and image began to fade. Perhaps you should be on your way . . . and see what you find.
He was alone again, the images gone from the mirror before him. The water motion rippled through the wall and its connecting girders, then was stilled. Only the dead, and the not alive, surrounded him.
His path lay outside the Promenade. He turned and began walking.
Something was moving—something was alive—where no living thing should be. She raised her tear-wet face from the knees she clasped close to herself; from where she sat huddled against a corridor bulkhead, she turned and looked over her hunched shoulder. Rage, an all-consuming fire, blossomed in her heart, rolling through her veins to the ends of her fingers, like the blazing force that had scoured the station clean of all that she loathed. Her knuckles were white bone where her hands clutched together, her wrists pressed tight against her shins.
She uncoiled herself and stood up, staying crouched in the corridor's shadows. The distant sounds of footsteps and breathing, even the soft tap of a heartbeat, jostled against her keen hearing; the anger they evoked notched higher at the base of her throat. She could taste it, like warm salt pooled under her tongue.
The sounds indicated that the intruder was not the station's other occupant, the thing that flowed in and out of the walls and ceilings, the only creature that had remained after the purifying fire she had unleashed. That thing had once had a face, something she could have remembered and put a name to; no more. She could barely tolerate its presence, and that only because it had made itself no different from the station, a necessary component. It knew its place in the new scheme of things.
Cautiously, she moved down the corridor, staying out of any direct line of sight. She wanted to see the intruder first, before it could have any warning of her approach. That was always the best way; her knowledge, her skills, in the proper eradication of enemies, came from a long time back. From another world, one where events and consequences had never worked out as satisfyingly as they had in this one. In some future time, she knew—a time when she was able to think again, and not just sense and react—she would have to consider that entity who had made such glory and justice possible.
She halted when she perceived a shadow stretching along the gridded floor; a dim overhead light silhouetted a human figure from behind. Drawing back into herself, she made ready.
The figure stopped, as though it had sensed her presence. She ground her teeth together in fury, nails digging into the flesh of her palms.
Into another small pool of light, the figure stepped forward. She recognized his face—or knew that at one time she had been able to. Faces and names didn't matter now, though; in this cleansed world, there were only two categories beyond herself. The enemy . . . and the dead.
"Kira?" The figure stooped and peered toward her hiding place. "That's you, isn't it?"
A moment of wonder, a fragment of the emotions that she had purged herself of, stayed her wrath. She spoke from the shadows. "How do you know my name?"
"Why wouldn't I?" He took a step closer. "Don't you know mine?"
She laughed in scorn. "Don't know, and I don't care." She felt her hatred turning toward her own gut like a thorn, for having been tricked into having words with the creature, whoever he was. As if there could be any question as to what he was. She closed her hand into a fist and saw white sparks leak between the fingers.