Prynn covered her eyes with one hand, trying to rein in her emotions. “I don’t know what to think. I just know we were so close…and he deliberately killed her. My father killed my mother. Again.”

“You’ll get no argument from him on that,” Dax said. “He really believes that’s true, that he’s killed Ruriko twice. He may be more devastated by this than you are. But there’s something you both need to understand and accept before this goes any farther: Ruriko Tenmei died a long time ago, as a hero, saving lives. The thing that was in sickbay wasn’t her.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I’m telling you is that Dr. Bashir’s latest tests have confirmed what he feared all along: the damage to your mother’s brain was too extensive. There was nothing left of her to bring back. She was all Borg.”

“That isn’t true. I saw her, I heard her. She responded to me. She said my name.”

“Did it?” Dax asked, deliberately dropping the female pronoun. “It’s hard to know exactly what it actually said, isn’t it? I mean reallyknow beyond any doubt. And the drone never said anything else, did it?”

“Why did she respond to me, then?”

“Julian believes it was a form of imprinting,” Dax explained. “You were the first life-form the drone encountered when it regained consciousness. It targeted you for assimilation. But as weak as it was, with so many of its implants removed or neutralized, it need time to re-create its assimilation system. Do you understand what I’m saying? You weren’t that thing’s daughter. You were its target.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Dr. Bashir will confirm it if you ask him. It’s up to you. But if you believe nothing else I tell you, Prynn, I hope you’ll believe this, as someone who once, in an earlier lifetime, allowed her spouse to die and remained estranged from her daughter for eight years because of it: neither you nor your father will recover from this unless you do it together. You need to decide if the grief and anger and hate you feel right now, and the self-loathing Vaughn feels, are stronger than the love I know you share.”

Prynn shook her head, “I don’t know if I can do this, Ezri.”

“Prynn,” Dax said softly. “It was the Borg that killed your mother. Don’t let them destroy what’s left of your family. Don’t let them win.”

Prynn said nothing, and after a moment Dax stood up and departed, promising to look in on her later.

As Dax expected, Vaughn was waiting for her in the corridor, a confused expression on his face.

Dax pressed an index finger to her lips and gestured for him to follow her. She led him up to deck one, and suggested they go to his quarters. Inside he asked the question that she knew he needed to ask.

“Why did you lie to her? There are no new test results. Ruriko wasalive in there, somewhere, despite what the Borg implants were making her do. That much Julian was certain of before the end. He told me himself. She really was regaining her humanity, even if it wasn’t strong enough yet to fight off the assimilation imperative.”

“That’s right, I lied,” Dax said. “Someday you can tell her the truth, Elias. Maybe when she’s found someone who means to her what Ruriko meant to you. But until then, she won’t understand that you didn’t really kill Ruriko to save Prynn, or even to save the Defiant.You did it for Ruriko. So that whatever wasleft of her wouldn’t have to live one instant with the horror of turning her own child into a monster.”

Vaughn closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Dax saw that they were rimmed red. “I think I finally understand what L.J. was trying to tell me before I left the station.”

“L.J.?” Dax asked. “You mean Admiral Akaar.”

Vaughn nodded. “He warned me not to take Prynn on this mission. He said he wasn’t worried about the crew; he was worried about the two of us.”

“There’s something to be said about taking the advice of your elders,” Ezri said lightly, knowing she didn’t need to remind him that Dax’s life spanned over three hundred years.

Vaughn laughed bitterly. “I might have guessed you’d still have some pearls of wisdom to dispense.”

Dax shook her head. “Not really. Just a little common sense. Give her time. Give yourself time. And try to forgive yourself.”

After Dax left, Vaughn sat on the edge of his bunk and stared at the deck for long minutes. His tears fell silently.

22

“Kira to bridge,” she whispered. “I’m about to enter engineering. Stand by.” Leading with her phaser rifle, Kira hit the control for the Jefferies tube seal, and the doors split, opening into light.

She heard no sound save the thrum of the warp core some distance away. Peering out, she saw that the tube opened into another junction room, with other tube entrances surrounding her, except for the single door that led out.

Taking a deep breath, she moved toward the door. It opened at her approach, and she turned into the next room quickly, searching for a target.

She had to creep through a few more sections before she finally spotted Montenegro in the warp-core chamber, bent over the master systems display table, his back to her. Knowing an easier shot would never come, Kira took aim with her rifle. Montenegro didn’t turn, but she sensed a change in his attitude that made her certain he was aware of her. He was already a blur of motion as her finger pulled back on the trigger. The beam missed him, and he was gone from sight. Kira cursed and doubled back in the hopes of cutting him off from another direction.

“Well, well,”Montenegro said, his disembodied voice cutting through the vast engine room. “So the gullible little Bajoran has made it all the way to the end of the maze. I almost wish I had some cheese to reward you with. You know, I think that’s the thing we like most about your people, Colonel. As meat goes, you’re so very easy to steer.”

Kira spun as she crept around a corner, searching for the source of the voice. Keep him talking.“Is that what we are to you? Meat?”

Laughter. “What else? You’re lower life-forms, Colonel. Get used to the idea. You think walking upright, developing language, building starships, and fighting wars is a sign of superior intelligence? You have no idea what true intelligence is capable of.”

“So tell me,” Kira said, firing off a shot at a shadow that disappeared too quickly. The phaser blast blew a hole in the wall where the shadow had been.

Laughter again. “Careful, Colonel, you might shoot something important. Not that I’m surprised. Humanoids think too much with their glands, and not enough with their brains. That’s why you’re all so easy to conquer.”

“My people have been conquered before,” Kira said, climbing up a ladder to the upper level. “It didn’t last. I seriously doubt you’ll do any better.”

“The Cardassians? Please, Colonel. That only underscores my point. A more useless species of humanoids we’ve yet to encounter. But you Bajorans—you’re the biggest joke of all. There you are at the threshold of time, space, and omniscience, and you squat on your mudball waiting for something to come through to you, rather than step inside yourselves. That’s just one of many things we plan to correct.”