“We’d better get a move on. Ready?”

“If that changeling is halfway across the planet by now, we’re sunk.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Bowers. “There’s nothing here to interest it. When we showed up it was just waiting in that wreck. It’s ready to leave.”

Probably since the day it got here,Nog thought.

“After two years it’s got to know the Dominion doesn’t know it’s here,” Bowers went on. “We’re its only way out. It may be scared, but it may also want to find us again even more than we want to find it.”

The nonessential equipment they had left behind did not appear to have been disturbed, and Nog packed it up regretfully. He hoped Bowers was right about the Founder sticking around, but he was afraid Bowers was wrong.

They were headed farther north when Bowers gestured frantically for quiet and Nog froze, then glanced down at his tricorder. Just on the edge of their sensor range was the Dominion ship. And inside, again, were the faint humanoid readings they had picked up when the first arrived.

Bowers had doubled back to where Nog stood and now hissed in his ear, “We’re going in, and this time, no noise!”

Nog nodded to show he understood.

They approached the ship from the south, under the engine pylon. Although Nog was now familiar with the interior of the ship, the act of returning felt even more surreal. The smell of decay and moss still pervaded the air, and Nog tried not to wrinkle his nose. His feet sloshed as he moved toward the source of the humanoid readings: the bridge. Try as he might, he had a difficult time picturing the Founder sitting calmly within the wreckage, surrounded by attending corpses.

Then he turned the corner and she was there, waiting, sitting on her haunches in a puddle of brackish water. She looked up at them, calmly, her face blank of expression. “I thought you left,” she said, in a voice that sounded as young as she looked. She seemed completely unaffected by the Jem’Hadar skeletons less than four meters away.

“No, we didn’t leave,” Bowers said. “We returned to our ship. But our vessel is still in orbit.”

Her face didn’t change. “Why?”

“We wanted to find you,” Nog said, finding his voice. She turned her attention to him but didn’t say anything. “To apologize,” he improvised. “We didn’t mean to hurt you before.” Ezri had been less than thrilled to discover they had hit the Founder with a phaser blast.

She regarded him carefully. “It didn’t hurt,” she said. “It surprised me. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Yes,” he said. “Another Founder showed us how to do it.”

At that the girl did react—she looked angry. “No Founder would show you how to do that,” she said. “You’re lying.”

Bowers was shooting him a warning glare, Don’t make her mad,but Nog had figured from the beginning that the only way to close the deal was to put Odo on the table. “Maybe not a Founder who grew up with you,” he said shrewdly. “But what about one of the Hundred who were sent out to live among solids? That’s who our friend Odo was.”

Now she looked suspicious as well as angry. “I know about Odo,” she said. “He rejected the link. He caused the death of another Founder. He was cast out.”

“No,” corrected Nog. “He went back to the link, after the Federation and the Dominion made peace.”

“There is no peace between the Federation and the Dominion,” she said.

“There is,” Bowers interrupted. “We even have a Jem’Hadar living among us in the Alpha Quadrant. He was sent to us by Odo.”

She considered this. “I understand that kind of peace,” she said. “You have Vorta, also, overseeing you, and many Jem’Hadar.”

“No—” Bowers started to say, but Nog quickly interrupted.

“I don’t understand what a Jem’Hadar is doing there myself, actually. If you come back with us, I’m sure Taran’atar will tell you all about it. You could even order him to accompany you home,” he added, ignoring Bowers’s incredulous stare. I win, everybody wins.Looked at in the right light, it was even, finally, putting one over on Constable Odo.

“Taran’atar. This is your First?” she asked.

“He’s First aboard our station,” Nog said.

“My First is dead,” the Founder said, and pointed at a body across the bridge. Her look turned almost melancholy. “I miss First.” Incredible to think anyone could actually miss a Jem’Hadar.At various points throughout the mission, Nog had found he missed everyone he knew on board the station—with one exception.

“I’m, uh, sorry for your loss,” Bowers said into the sudden silence.

“I miss Second, I miss Fourth…” As though aware of how that sounded, she stopped. “I do not miss Third,” she said decisively.

“Good riddance,” Nog agreed under his breath. Bowers elbowed him in the ribs.

“Do you have a name?” Bowers asked the girl.

“What use would I have for a name?” she replied. “I am but a drop in the ocean.”

“Aren’t we all?” Bowers muttered.

“Why did you come back?” the Founder asked.

“We came to invite you up to our ship. When we leave, we can take you with us.”

“To your quadrant.”

“For a short while, yes,” Bowers said. “From our station, we’ll send a message to the Dominion, let them know we found you. You’ll be able to go home. That is, if you want to.”

“Your station…where you have your Jem’Hadar.”

“Absolutely,” said Nog, who could see her waving goodbye from the platform already, Taran’atar packed and at her side. He tried to look so sincere that it hurt.

She regarded him carefully for a moment, then turned back to Bowers. “I was taught to believe that solids can never be trusted.” Before Bowers could respond, she added, “But I trusted my own kind to come for me, and here I have been these two years. I’m ready to leave this place. I accept your offer.”

*  *  *

Vaughn marched into science lab one and looked into the faces of the officers awaiting him. Their guest, the young changeling, was studying the corpse of a Borg drone stretched out on a lab table. “Report,” he said.

“Sir,” Shar began, “we’ve decrypted the data encoded into the neuroprocessor and have been able to verify the Valkyrie’s mission to the Gamma Quadrant. Apparently since its assimilation seven years ago, the ship and its crew have been used by the Borg for reconnaissance, as a prelude to larger-scale incursions by the Borg if new species are detected and determined to be desirable for assimilation.

“Three years ago, during the Borg’s most recent incursion into Federation space, the Borg ship that attacked Earth apparently updated its Federation database from the ships it destroyed and transmitted that knowledge to the collective. Two items in particular that caught the collective’s attention were the Dominionand changelings.The Borg spent the next year erecting a transwarp conduit that would open into the Gamma Quadrant, and eventually deployed the Valkyrieas their advanced scout for the express purpose of finding a changeling and attempting its assimilation for the continued ‘perfection’ of the collective. The encounter with the Jem’Hadar ship two years ago was the result, in which both ships were destroyed.”

“Do we know if the collective ever learned what happened to the Valkyrie?”Vaughn asked.

“We can’t be certain,” Bowers said. “But we know the Jem’Hadar managed to do considerable damage to the Valkyrievery early in the battle. As far as we can tell, the drones aboard were cut off from the collective almost immediately. It’s very possible that the Borg decided they weren’t prepared to deal with that much resistance. Or it may be that circumstances forced them to deprioritize the Gamma Quadrant—according to the Pathfinder database, the Valkyrie’s mission to the Gamma Quadrant coincided with the Borg first contact with Species 8472.”

Vaughn nodded thoughtfully, recalling that the extradimensional alien civilization the Borg had encountered had very nearly destroyed the collective, and might have become an even worse scourge than the Borg had it not been for intervention of the U.S.S. Voyager.Small wonder that the Dominion became a lower priority to them. “Excellent work, gentlemen. We need to make this data available to the Dominion as well as Starfleet Command.”