A/N: I don't own "Star Trek."


B'Elanna and Seska began by looking at a map of Dr. Zimmerman's apparent trajectory through the quadrant. They sat in a small shuttle that Seska owned, which was currently on autopilot. The two women stood at a small, hexagonal consol, which displayed a three-dimensional star chart, in a translucent hologram. Red dots marked where Zimmerman's holograms had been sighted, and a large blue dot marked the last spot the real Zimmerman had been seen.

"What some bounty hunters have done is try to follow the trail of his holograms," Seska mused. "But the problem with that is, Zimmerman doesn't just leave his holograms behind him. He sends them out in shuttles, aboard starships, in all different directions. So what we need to do is plot his course between it all."

"To do that, we'd have to know which directions those starships and shuttles were traveling in when Zimmerman's holograms were found aboard, and how long they'd been traveling, so we can mark a starting point for each." B'Elanna said.

They poured over the databases, and made contact via the small viewscreen with the various authorities and bounty hunters who'd encountered Zimmerman's holograms. It took half the day, but they finally had a course plotted. Zimmerman, it seemed, was headed out of the Alpha Quadrant. The farthest they could track any sightings of him or his holograms was a colony at the very most outreaches of the Alpha Quadrant, where an Andorian mercenary had purchased medical supplies from a bald Terran calling himself "Louie." It was an anarchic colony, like Turkana IV, a place where Zimmerman could probably live and work undisturbed by local law (because there was none). The odds he was still there were slim, but it would be the best place to find some leads.

The journey would have taken weeks, maybe months, but luckily a colleague of Seska's was able to recommend a wormhole that could cut their journey by almost two-thirds. Within days, they were landing at a docking bay on the harsh, unnamed moon of a ringed gas giant. B'Elanna and Seska stepped out of their shuttle wearing long hooded robes, sheltering them from the burning sun as well as un-gentlemanly gazes. Beneath their billowing, earth-colored robes, B'Elanna wore her two-piece Klingon armor, and Seska a black body suit, both covered from head to toe in weapons and scanning equipment.

"This was too easy." Seska surveyed the colony suspiciously. "Bounty hunters and authorities have been tracking after Zimmerman for months, but you and me find him in a matter of days?"

"We haven't found him yet." B'Elanna reminded her. "And as for that course we put together, well, you and I just have a better network of contacts to talk to than most people."

"You mean I have a better network of contacts. Because I'm a depraved nymphomaniac who has a thing for sleeping with my superiors. And their friends. And their friends' friends."

B'Elanna tilted her head. "I wasn't going to say that, but yeah. Pretty much."


They spent much of the rest of the day asking around for information. "Asking around," here, often meaning, pretending to seduce men or women with empty promises, to get some information; threatening them with knives or phasers to get a little more; and finally breaking a few fingers to get the rest. They tried some combination of the above on more people than they could count. Many nights later, their journey finally took them to a small, filthy restaurant/bar, called Amarie's. Or maybe everyone just called that because the owner was named Amarie; the building had no sign.

Amarie was humanoid, sort of. She was tall, with a blockish build, and had a bumpy face that B'Elanna thought looked like the offspring of a Terran warthog and a Cardassian swamp lizard. She was crowned with an unruly jungle of black fuzz which could only be called "hair" because of the position it occupied at the top of her head. Her bright pink garments clashed oddly with the grimy, smoky setting of the bar, and its customers. Most unusual (but not unheard of for a species) was the fact that Amarie had four arms, and was putting all twenty fingers to work at a complex piano in the corner of her bar.

The bar itself was tiny, filthy, and had only four visible customers: two Terrans and a Ferangi, who were gambling at a card table, and an Andorian who sat passed out in a chair with a half-empty bottle of ale in his lap.

Amarie looked up when B'Elanna and Seska entered, still playing her song. "More lesbians! Oh boy!" She laughed hardily, as if she'd made a joke.

"That's the nicest thing anyone here's called us so far." B'Elanna folded her arms.

"Let me guess," Amarie bellowed, "You pair of love birds want a table, right?"

"Service would be nice." B'Elanna answered. "But we're mainly here for information."

"Oooh! I can help with that! Amarie knows everyone on this colony worth knowing. Have a seat." Amarie took one hand away from the piano and slapped a small table next to her. When she took the hand away, she saw it was covered with black-brown grime, and grimaced. "Yech…Here, I'll just have it cleaned off for you two ladies!" Amarie leaned back and practically screamed, "Horn-rat! Get'cher ass over here!"

A girl who appeared to be only six or seven hurried over, with a cleaning rag. The child's red-gold hair was bound up in a messy bun and covered with a piece of scrap fabric. Her clothes were filthy and filled with holes, and her face was speckled with bruises and welts. She looked human, except for a row of small curved horns running down her forehead—a Ktarian trait. The girl looked around timidly, then began cleaning the table closest to where she was standing, but not the one Amarie had smacked.

"No!" Amarie hollered into the girl's face. "This one!" She pounded the table again, and the girl hurried over.

Seska and B'Elanna both watched with unmoved faces. B'Elanna felt a stirring in her chest, watching the child rub frantically at the table like her life depended on it. But this girl was getting as good or better treatment than most Terran children in the Alliance. You had to be tough on Terrans, because they were naturally so much weaker than Klingons or Cardassians. It was the only way to prepare them for the harshness of the universe. At least that was what B'Elanna's own mother had said to her growing up, after she disciplined B'Elanna.

Amarie chuckled at her two customers, and said loudly enough for the girl to hear, "Little retard's not worth the table scraps I feed her. But some Ktarian businessman's sending me a case of latinum every three months to keep her alive. So," she shrugged.

B'Elanna and Seska took a seat, both stealing one more glance at the child. She had taken refuge under another table, wiping underneath with her rag, while singing softly to herself in Ktarian.

Amarie, still under the impression that B'Elanna and Seska were homosexuals, summoned an Orion waitress, whose green body was covered with almost nothing but some black scraps of net. B'Elanna had to admit, this green woman was quite sexy. But even straight women enjoyed admiring each other's bodies, and B'Elanna didn't have time at the moment to dissect her feelings. She and Seska ordered some Romulan ale, which tasted like it had been watered down with tribble piss, and got started interrogating Amarie.

"So! What information can I help a Klingon and a Cardassian with?" Their host clasped two hands together, while the other two continued at the piano.

Seska folded her hands under her chin. "Dr. Lewis Zimmerman."

The three gamblers glanced up from their game at the mention of Zimmerman's name, then quickly returned their attention to their cards.

Amarie swayed to her own music, pretending to think it over. "Dr…Lewis Cinnamon?"

"Zimmerman." B'Elanna said through clenched teeth. "Terran. Light skin. 'Bout forty. Bald, except for some brown hair on the sides of his face. Wide nose and lips, brown eyes."

"Scientist." Seska added. "Works with holograms. Ring any bells?"

Amarie arched her hideous head up to the ceiling. "I seen a bald Terran…fits your description." She pointed at B'Elanna with both right hands. "He was here a few months back. He asked me for directions to the Beta Quadrant. Haven't seen him since."

"How much is Zimmerman paying you to feed bounty hunters that story?" B'Elanna asked.

"He didn't pay me for the last bloodwine he ordered." Amarie snorted.

"Bloodwine?" B'Elanna said. "That's funny Miss Amarie. Because I happen to know that Dr. Zimmerman was diabetic, and never touched alcohol of any kind."

"Really? Hmm. Guess he had a death wish."

"Know something else, B'Elanna?" Seska asked. "Just a rare, little-known fact. When a Kossinian has all four pinky's twitching, that's a sign of mental stress. One of the most common ways to tell if they're lying. One of my psychologist friends told me that, anyway."

Amarie immediately clenched all four fists.

B'Elanna found herself glancing at the child again. The girl was still crouched under the other table, staring at Amarie with wide eyes. B'Elanna left her seat and came up behind Amarie, drawing her three-bladed dagger.

"Y'know why I think you like to pick on your little cabin girl here?" B'Elanna jerked her head in the child's direction. "Cuz you've got no power on this rock. My friend and I can do whatever we want here, and no one's going to show up to bail you out." B'Elanna lowered the knife to Amarie's upper-right hand, and forced the fist opened. "Now you're gonna answer my questions again, correctly this time, or I'll start chopping off fingers."

Seska drew a phaser, and took a position between B'Elanna and the table of gamblers, in case any of the card players had ideas about interfering with B'Elanna's interrogation.

Amarie swallowed. "Actually…" she suddenly brought one of her left hands back down onto the piano, and quickly played a bizarre series of notes.

The moment she did, a holographic hum cut through the air. B'Elanna, Seska, and the child saw Dr. Zimmerman materializing, standing on the table the three gamblers were sitting at. Well, not the real Dr. Zimmerman; it was one of his holograms, obviously. He looked just as Zimmerman had in most of the pictures B'Elanna had seen of him, dressed in that white lab coat and brown professional slacks. But this hologram had one thing the doctor never had in any of those photos; a phaser rifle. The female Ferangi and her two human companions stared up at the hologram, not daring to move.

"Holographic energy weapons," the doctor took aim at B'Elanna. "…are as good as the real thing, when you get rid of those pesky safety protocols!"

B'Elanna brought her knife under Amarie's chin and pulled the four-armed bartender in front of her, barring her sharpened teeth at the hologram.

"Hmm," the hologram pursed his lips. "I should've anticipated a hostage situation. Sorry Amarie. Perhaps the good doctor should have left you with a few body guards, instead of just me. Trust old Lewis to be a cheapskate. But fortunately," he took aim at Seska. "I've have been programmed to improvise!"

Seska almost aimed her phaser back at the hologram, but stopped, remembering that he was, well, a hologram. She slowly began to lower her phaser, as if in surrender. Then, just at the right moment, she pressed the trigger and vaporized the table that the hologram was standing on. The hologram's eyes bulged as he collapsed to the floor, still clinging to his holographic rifle. The three gamblers stumbled out of their chairs and backed away.

The next five minutes were a firefight between Seska and the hologram. The Cardassian ducked and dove under and behind tables and the counter, while the hologram shot at her. B'Elanna and Amarie rolled around on the floor, B'Elanna threatening her with the dagger, while Amarie struggled to throw the half-Klingon off her back. The gamblers, meanwhile, busied themselves with raiding Amarie's credit register behind the counter, while the drunk Andorian rose from his snooze and began helping himself to the alcohol in the back.

"Where's Dr. Zimmerman?!" B'Elanna demanded.

Amarie hollered something rude in a language B'Elanna didn't speak.

Seska dodged another phaser blast from the hologram, ducking back behind the counter. The Ferangi and her human friends were splitting up the money from the register, arguing over shares. Seska interrupted their debate by seizing the register, and hauling it over the counter at the hologram. Not surprisingly, it soared right through his chest with a holographic hum.

"Sticks and stone, Madame." The hologram took aim again.

As the chaos continued, the little girl emerged from the table, and curiously approached the piano. She looked like she'd discovered a giant toy that she'd never been allowed to play with. With a sharp memory inherited from her Ktarian parent, the girl recalled the notes Amarie had played to summon the hologram. She punched the keys with her pointer fingers, apparently having never played a piano before, but knowing exactly which keys to press. The moment she did, the hologram vanished.

Seska stared at the child over the counter. "Thanks!"

The girl looked up at Seska, as if she'd never heard this phrase before.

B'Elanna and Amarie, still on the floor, paused their struggle to look up at the girl.

"Normally," Seska said with mocking kindness, "When someone says 'thanks,' you're supposed to say, 'you're welcome.'"

"Oh." The child blinked.

"Hey! Kid!" B'Elanna barked. "What else can that thing do?"

The girl looked at B'Elanna. "Open a door."

"To where?"

The girl shrugged.

"Do you know how to open the door? Do it!"

The girl was not startled by B'Elanna's shouting. Calmly, she turned back to the piano, and played a slightly longer set of notes.

The floor opened up right underneath B'Elanna and Amarie.

They went tumbling down a metal tube, like the slides of a child's jungle gym. The little girl peered over the opening, watching them fall, but didn't follow.

The tunnel dipped and turned like a roller coaster. B'Elanna forced Amarie under her like a mattress, preparing for a landing. She heard Seska calling her name, and then the sounds of the Cardassian tumbling after them, having lept into the tunnel. As it turned out, B'Elanna wasn't able to make sure she landed on top of Amarie, but didn't have to anyway; the tunnel deposited them on a soft bouncy floor. They were in a small round room, with almost blinding white walls. The floor was padded with a sea of old cushions, mattresses and mats, from various alien cultures. It was cold in here. But B'Elanna and Seska's robes had become so badly torn from the fight that both women tossed them off. Seska now sat in their black jumpsuit, and B'Elanna in two-piece armor.

B'Elanna brought her dagger back up to Amarie. "Is Zimmerman hiding in here?"

The four-armed alien nodded reluctantly.

"Show us!"

"I don't know where in here. I just sold him the use of these underground tunnels. He never let me see what he was—"

B'Elanna jabbed her dagger closer to Amarie.

"I DON'T KNOW!"

The alien looked to be on the verge of hysterics. B'Elanna gave up. She and Seska looked around around the room, searching for a door. None was visible. They stood up, and began trudging through the cushions, scanning the white walls with their tricorders.

"We're in some kind of underground cave," B'Elanna mused. "The walls and lighting here are all holographic."

Seska suddenly stopped at one spot in the wall. "Hey!" She stuck her arm through. "The oldest trick in the book! The wall's not solid here."

They ran through. Amarie lingered behind, unarmed, and took a seat on the cushions.

B'Elanna and Seska emerged in a hallway, with a flat white ceiling, floor and walls, and found themselves facing…Zimmerman?

"Greetings visitors!" The doctor said cheerfully. "You're very clever to have found Lewis Zimmerman's hideaway. Unfortunately, the doctor is not in."

Seska and B'Elanna examined their tricorders, and exchanged glances. It wasn't the doctor, just another hologram.

"Where is he?" Seksa asked the hologram.

The hologram shrugged. "How should I know? I'm just a hologram. Nobody tells me anything."

"Computer," B'Elanna tried. "Locate Dr. Zimmerman."

It turned out that there was a computer in here—one with Zimmerman's voice. "Please specify which Dr. Zimmerman," The computer answered, in an insufferably cheerful tone.

"The real one!" B'Elanna hissed.

"What is real?" the computer asked. "How do you define 'real'? If 'real' is just what you can see, touch, taste, than the Zimmerman standing before you may perfectly well be a real Dr. Zimmerman…"

"He has a point!" the hologram smiled.

B'Elanna snarled, and slashed her dagger through the hologram's throat. The hologram, naturally, wasn't affected. B'Elanna shoved past him, Seska close behind her, and they stormed down the hall.

"How rude!" the hologram commented.

The hall ended in a room with three sets of doors, none of which would open. They tried commanding the computer to open the doors, and were answered with, "Which doors?"

"ANY DOORS!" B'Elanna shouted.

"Very well." A pause. "A lavatory door in an alien castle in the Gamma Quadrant has now been opened. Are you happy?"

Seska scanned the door with her tricorder. "B'Elanna, these doors...aren't."

"You're kidding me!" B'Elanna threw up her arms. "Are we in some kind of mad house?!"

"Here!" Seska found a spot in the wall with her tricorder. "Come on!"

Both women ran through the holographic wall, and came into yet another white hallway.

"I'm not picking up any life signs so far, B'Elanna," Seska warned.

"Well obviously he's masked them somehow!" B'Elanna spat. "I'm going to check for Terran DNA. Or any organic material, come to think of it."

"Good idea."

The two women continued through the maze of corridors, false walls and false doors, running into Zimmerman after Zimmerman.

"Ah, we have company!" One Zimmerman said, looking up from the PADD he was typing on. "Would you like some entertainment?"

"What's that?" Seska snatched the PADD from the hologram and examined it closely.

B'Elanna looked over Seska's shoulder. On the screen of the PADD was written a short message, first in Cardassian, and then in Klingon: WHO FANCIES A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK?

B'Elanna grabbed the PADD from Seska and hurled it to the sterile floor, causing it to break in a small cloud of smoke and sparks.

"We could've analyzed that," Seska said angrily. "It might have given us some clues!"

B'Elanna was already marching away, to a fork in the hallway. She chose right, and smacked into an invisible rock wall, which had been holographically designed to appear like a long hallway. Seska rushed to make sure B'Elanna was okay. She didn't have any visible injuries; Klingons had strong foreheads like Cardassians.

"Always look before you leap!" the hologram advised.

Neither Seska nor B'Elanna looked back at him. They turned carefully down the other hallway, holding their tricorders out before them, to check for any more false hallways.

"Trying to make sure you aren't fooled again?" Another hologram stepped out from another corner, dressed in a white, pom-pom-covered clown costume.

Seska muttered, "This old cockroach has way too much time on his hands."

B'Elanna sighed, as they neared another fork in the hall. "Whatever he's been working on for the rebels, it must be big, for him to have put so much effort into this damned fun house just to hide it."

As they turned the corner, a Zimmerman working at another PADD commended, "Secret projects for the Rebels…"

Another further down the hall, sipping coffee, added, "…giant rat mazes…"

The women turned another corner, and found two more Zimmermans, at a little table playing chess. "…I'm two for two!" the holograms finished in unison.

Not surprisingly, B'Elanna turned the table over, sending holographic chess pieces flying. She and Seska tromped over the upside-down table.

"Such violent outbursts!" one of the Zimmermans said.

"I believe that was a checkmate," said the other.

"Here!" Seska exclaimed suddenly. "I'm reading something organic…and it's got Terran DNA!" she rushed towards another false wall.

They stepped through, and found themselves in a painting studio, modeled after Earth's 16th century. False sunlight streamed in from tall glass windows, revealing the English countryside. They were in a round castle tower. Five or six Zimmermans sat at easels around the cluttered room, dressed in Renaissance garb.

"Shhh!" one of them brought his paint brush to his lips. "Class is still in motion!"

"Are you students?" asked the nude model, who was posing in the center of the room like a Greek statue. It was—unfortunately—another Zimmerman. "Or are you just here to observe?"

B'Elanna refused to allow herself to be frightened or disturbed by the sight, and returned attention to her tricorder. "My readings are getting stronger, Seska. This way!"

Seska was eying the nude Zimmerman with interest. B'Elanna grabbed her friend's arm and pulled her along. "Come on!"

She led Seska to one of the windows. The window was a solid hologram, not a false wall. But the readings of Terran DNA were coming from right behind it. B'Elanna found the hatch on the window and pulled it opened. The sunny farmland remained on the glass, as if it were an image on a viewscreen. Behind that "window" was a large room. A dark, cavernous room, cluttered with tools and PADDs and study desks. B'Elanna and Seska lept through the window and began searching the study. Zimmerman was in here, the tricorder said so. But it was dark; the only light came from the doorway leading to that painting studio. The study reeked of a thousand odors B'Elanna didn't want to identify. Alien insects scattered as they moved through the room. Zimmerman must've been mad to be working in a place as rotten as this. But then again, that whole maze proved that he probably was mad.

"Look!" Seska pointed.

Over against the far wall was a high-backed computer chair, facing away from them. In the shadows on the wall, they could see the shape of a human man, hunched over. B'Elanna and Seska put away their tricorders and took out their phasers.

As they inched closer, B'Elanna realized that there was a good chance it wasn't Zimmerman. It was probably a stuffed dummy, or another hologram, with a bit of his DNA stuffed inside of it, to fool their tricorders. If so, she just wanted to find out for sure and get it over with. She strode past Seska, grabbed the chair, and spun it around.

Inside the chair was skeleton, with just some hints of flesh and hair clinging to parts of the skull and bones. Tattered remains of a white lab coat and other clothes clung to the body. The eyes and facial features were long gone. A few insects crawled around the body and on the chair, munching at the fabric and rotted flesh.

"No," B'Elanna whispered, as Seska pulled her tricorder back out.

"It's him." Seska said scanning the body. "Here's our Dr. Zimmerman."

"No! No it's, it's another hologram! It's a trick, he faked his own death…"

"I'm getting all the readings of a Terran cadaver." Seska said flatly. "He's been dead for approximately a year. He died from a combination of radiation poisoning, diabetic complications, and alcohol poisoning." Seska's eyes traveled to an alien liquor bottle, now empty, that sat on the desk before Zimmerman's corpse. "I guess he figured his time was up, and decided he had nothing more to lose."

B'Elanna could do nothing but stare.

"Well," Seska shrugged. "The bounty was 'dead or alive,' so it's no difference to us."

But it was a difference to B'Elanna. Because in some way—and she wasn't certain how—Zimmerman had won.


Amarie is from a "Next Generation" episode called "Unification." I didn't know her name or the episode she appeared in until looking it up. I just recalled a funny alien woman with four arms, talking to Commander Riker, and decided to give her a cameo in this story. I assume the "real" Amarie is a kind woman, and would never abuse a child. But I thought she'd make a good villainess. Naomi and Amarie's parts in this chapter came to me while I was listening to the song "Castle on a Cloud," from the musical "Le Mis."