I awoke on the bed in my cell. My restraints had been removed by the guards and I had been left on my side with my blanket covering me. My cell was in lockdown, the riot doors were down and I could see or hear nothing outside my metal box. I felt nauseous from the phaser, and I guessed from my reaction, that it had been set to heavy stun. I had probably been out for an hour or so.
I struggled to sit up, feeling my head spin as I did so. Through the fuzzy nausea, I tried to remember what had happened. Gradually the fog cleared, and I remembered what had taken place. I remembered shouting, questions. Then, like a thunderbolt, I remembered it all. I had hit Sloan, I had hit him in the face. And it had felt good, really good, though I wondered how long it would put me in lockdown for.
I sat leaning against the wall, wondering what to do. I took my old rank studs from their hiding place and looked at them, remembering how proud I was to receive them, how happy I was to wear them. Another wave of phaser-nausea swept through me, and I closed me eyes, waiting for it to clear.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in the Infirmary on DS9. I was conscious of my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I looked round. Jadzia was lying on one of the examination beds, heavily pregnant. She suddenly sat up.
"Did you kill me?" she asked in a strange, distorted voice.
"No," I replied, whispering
"Do you believe that?"
"Yes, with all my being" I replied, confidently. I did, that was the truth. I had not told anyone anything that could have been used against her.
The scene melted away. I was still in the Infirmary, but now I was watching an operation. I walked closer to see who was being operated on. On the table , skull wide open, revealing a pulsating brain, was a person in a Starfleet uniform, the blue of Starfleet Medical. I looked closer, it was my face. I was on the table. As I watched, the me on the table opened its eyes and looked straight up into my own. I felt a jolt of electricity course through me as our eyes connected.
"Do you know what lies within yourself?"
The scene changed again. It was Sloan on the table this time, and a life support machine whined in the background. One faceless surgeon looked at me
"He is dead"
The other turned
"He died a long time ago. He died in flame"
The scene shifted, now I was in 371. A guard stared at me
"Do you know what happened here?"
Then Garak
"Can you trust yourself?"
General Martok
"Is your fight honourable?"
He reached out and tapped my head
"Only you know the truth."
Finally, Jadzia appeared and 371 melted away into the whiteness
"You did not kill my baby, you know who you are"
"Why are you telling me this?" I said weakly. The Jadzia figure lost some definition, became nebulous.
"You walk with the Sisko. You keep him strong for the battles he must face. You have kept him strong when he has fought our enemies, you guard him from harm and enable him to carry on. The Sisko taught us about bargains and rewards. This was our best reward to you, to thank you for your service to the Sisko."
I felt weak for a moment, then I was back sitting on my bed in the cell. What had happened? It had sounded like an Orb Shadow, but how? There was no Orb here, that was certain. Maybe the reach of the Prophets was much further than we had thought before? I tried to stop the analytic thoughts and instead concentrate on the imagery. That seemed much more important, somehow.
The memory of what I had seen was still strong three days later when the riot doors rose and I was allowed out for association. I was met with excited greetings from the others
"You hit Sloan, didn't you?" Squeaked kabe'Etana "We saw the mark on him as you were bought back"
"Yes, I did hit him" I replied, telling them the whole story about the interrogation. One I had finished, I turned to Laren
"I need to speak with you?" I whispered
I told her exactly what I had seen, and why I thought it was an Orb Shadow. She sat and listened, with awe on her face. When i had finished, she sat silently for a few moments, then turned and whispered
"The prophets are telling you that you are innocent. They see everything, they alone can truly judge you and they have."
A sentence that changed the world.
I clung to them as the years passed by. Every interrogation, every lockdown, every day of the prison routine. O'Brien and I drifted apart as the war ended, his life was changing, deep space was changing, the Federation was changing, but my life was in stasis, just the same, a mindless routine stretching into eternity. I lost communication privileges for six months after a particularly major breach of the rules, and after that, I lost touch with O'Brien and never really spoke to anyone from my previous life. I had never been allowed to talk to my mother, she probably believed I was dead.
Laren guided me through my eventual conversion to the Bajoran religion, completing my initiation ceremony over the course of association times. I learnt to meditate, to seek answers from the Prophets. Now I knew that they were watching me here, as well as DS9, I felt comforted. I had no more visions, but that was irrelevant. Sloan could not touch me, I was innocent.
Kabe'Etana moved on, she was released and allowed to return to Ktaria. Sonak was also freed. A few new people were brought in during the immediate aftermath of the war, however they moved on fairly quickly. One was a genuine Dominion spy, who had passed battle plans to the Dominion. His presence caused tension in the whole block. We did not know how to behave around him, he was the enemy, but then, to the rest of the universe, so were we.
I had been in Starbase 53 for thirteen years, thirteen long years of hearings, case-building and continuing detention, when Harry Kim and Chakotay were brought in. We knew them by reputation before they ever arrived. Among the Alpha Quadrant's most wanted, they had stolen classified material and a prototype starship and attempted to use Borg technology. We had been expecting people with some sort of superhuman aura about them, after hearing all about their crimes. We were all a little disappointed when they arrived, an older man with a tattoo on his forehead, and a younger Asian man, who were put into adjacent cells after their late-night arrival. I watched for a while before going back to sleep. Whatever exploits they had got up to before, they wouldn't be doing anything else now.
A few hours alter, I was awoken by screaming, an unearthly howl of desperation. Gradually words became clearer
"We have to go back. No! Let me go back. We've got to help them, we've got to go back"
The crying faded slightly, and I could hear another, deeper, voice mumbling
"Calm down, remember where we are. It's all over now, they're gone, it's all over."
I thought again of Odyssey, the feeling of being utterly helpless. I wondered what he had left behind.
Gradually we got to know each other. I learned that they were both ex-Starfleet officers, the sole survivors of Voyager, the ship believed destroyed in the Badlands. It transpired that the ship had never been destroyed, but instead had been transported to the Delta Quadrant. The ship had been lost as they attempted to use a new warp technology to get back, only Kim and Chakotay had survived. They had stolen the technology to send a message back in time, to save the ship, but had been attacked and disabled by a Starfleet ship moments before they were able to send the signal. Instead of saving their crewmates and themselves, they had condemned themselves to a life in here, in 53, or somewhere similar.
Harry Kim was a genius. He was issued with a PADD almost straight away and would occasionally show me what he was working on. It was maths beyond the capability of my genetically engineered brain, and I was amazed to learn that Kim had none of my genetic advantages. He explained to me that he was working on phase corrections for transwarp tunnels, and I would see him typing into his PADD long into the night. When he did finally fall asleep, he would always wake up a few hours later, screaming. . He could only be calmed by his friend Chakotay.
Life carried on like this for a few months. Chakotay and Kim were never interrogated and the guards treated them kindly. I was still persona non grata and treated with anything from disdain to outright contempt. I was jealous of their preferential treatment and also depressed and angry at myself that I could be jealous of something so petty. I was beginning to see the futility of my life, just as I had earlier during my imprisonment. I was finding less comfort in the Prophets, their profession of my innocence had been a long time ago, and little had changed for me since.