Jadzia Dax woke up in the middle of the night and rolled away from the wall onto her back. She lay still for a moment, wondering what had awoken her. Then she heard the faint noises coming from the front of the shuttle. With a sigh, she flipped off her covers, pulled socks onto her feet and padded into the cockpit. Bashir was sitting at a console, staring blankly at it. He didn't look up when she came in, which alarmed her slightly, because she had long ago noticed that Bashir had excellent hearing.

"Julian," she said gently and he raised his head, meeting her eyes. His face was nearly white now. "You should be asleep."

"I couldn't sleep," he muttered.

"Why not?"

"I had to sedate Miles. His fever is getting higher, and he was in pain."

"So are you," Dax said. It was obvious from the hunched position of his shoulders and the expression on his face.

He sighed heavily, then closed his eyes as if breathing had been an effort.

"If I don't figure out a way to treat this, we're going to die," he said.

"You don't know that," Dax replied.

"Yes, I do," he said. "This virus is adapting itself too quickly for our immune systems to combat it."

"We'll get you off this planet before anything happens," Dax said, promising herself as well. Bashir only gave her a tired look and turned back to the console. Dax sighed, reaching past him and shut the console off.

"You're about to pass out," she said. "Julian, you need to sleep."

He reached to turn the power back on and Dax caught his hand, pulling it aside.

"Computer, cut the power to the cockpit," she said and they were instantly plunged into darkness.

"Jadzia–"

"Don't Jadzia me," she said firmly. "You can work on this in the morning once you've slept."

"No," he said slowly and she realized he was looking past her, out the windows. "Look."

She followed his gaze with a frown and saw something flickering in the night outside. She moved carefully between the seats and leaned over the helm, peering out into the darkness. Traces of light flashed up and down the hills, across the small valley, rippling like water. She gasped as she watched the light change from a pale yellow into a vibrant purple then back again as it glanced down the slope of a hill and across the valley floor.

"What is it?" Bashir asked.

"I'm not sure," Dax replied. "I'm going outside to get a better look and see if I can get a tricorder reading."

"I'm coming with you."

"Julian–"

"Don't Julian me," he said, echoing her earlier words. "I'm coming." He had found strength somewhere to add firmness to his words. Dax relented, knowing she wouldn't win and he would just follow her outside, even if she ordered him not to.

She put one arm around his torso, under his shoulders, and Bashir put an arm around her shoulders for support. He wasn't shivering anymore. If anything, he seemed to be uncomfortably hot, and Dax was wary of taking him outside. She made him put a blanket around his shoulders and he didn't protest, which she took to be a bad sign. Doctors rarely made good patients and Bashir was notorious for arguing his health.

They left the shuttle and stood outside, in front of the presently incapacitated ship, watching the lights flicker across the landscape. Dax flipped open her tricorder, one-handed, and scanned the area.

"I'm getting the same readings I was before," she said.

"Are they any stronger?" Bashir asked.

"Yes, but not much." She reached up and tapped her combadge. "Dax to Kira."

There was no reply. Dax hadn't really been expecting one. She turned back to her tricorder. At least she could get a detailed analysis of the energy patterns now, as well as the light patterns. Perhaps there was some new information contained in this display that might help her locate the missing major.

As much as she wanted to stay outside and examine this phenomenon, she knew she needed to sleep, and so did Bashir. He gave a token protest when she led him back inside the shuttle, but let her put him back to bed. She turned to leave, but Bashir snagged her hand. Dax turned back to him, crouching down beside the two mattresses she'd piled on the floor for him.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I'm glad you're my friend," he replied.

Dax smiled in the darkness, then leaned over to kiss his forehead, brushing his damp hair away with her palm.

"And I'm glad you're mine, Julian," she replied. "Get some rest."

"Yes, sir," he said, and she heard the faintest of smiles in his voice.

She stayed with him a few moments until he was asleep again, then returned to her own bunk only to lie victim to insomnia as she thought of Kira's abrupt disappearance and the very real fact that she could lose two more of her friends if no one got their message soon.


Kira awoke in the middle of the night. For a moment, she lay still on the strange bed with no recollection of where she was or how she'd arrived there. Then the memories came back and she rolled onto her side with a sigh. The bed was bigger than she was used to, and the room felt different. Her quarters on the station had become her home and it was only now that she realized how much her life had changed and how she accustomed to it she had become. Not even five years ago she'd been fighting the Cardassians, struggling each day to drive them from her home. Then it had happened and she'd been shipped off to an old Cardassian station to work with a Starfleet crew. Somewhere along the line, a free Bajor, a stable life, and deep, secure friendships with aliens had become commonplace. If someone had told her five years ago that she'd be here now, missing an arrogant human doctor, an amiable human engineer and a fun-loving Trill scientist, she'd have called them crazy.

If they'd told her she'd be stuck two hundred years in the future, she'd really have thought them insane. She felt a little off balance now herself, being ripped from the life she'd gotten used to over the past four years. This wasn't her world; it belonged to Trenlei Kira. Here, there was no one she knew. No Dax, no Bashir, no O'Brien. Not even the Emissary. At least, probably not. She felt a longing for home she'd never known she could ever feel. Kira had no idea she'd developed the ability to miss the station, with its stark Cardassian architecture, its problems and its chaos. She even missed Quark. That was unnerving.

She rolled onto her other side, her back to the window. For a few minutes, she stared blankly into the darkness, then closed her eyes and willed herself back to sleep. That was one aspect of her old life she hadn't forgotten at least.


The next morning, Kira got up and dressed in her Bajoran uniform. She had just finished eating a replicated breakfast, and appreciating how much more advanced replicator technology had become, when Holl contacted her via the comscreen on her wall to let Kira know they would be heading back to the site. She was sending Renoura, she said, and sure enough, he was there ten minutes later. They beamed back to the building they'd been in the day before. The crew was gathering again, along with Trenlei and Talan. In addition, there was a human woman about Kira's age talking with Toll and Trenlei. The major recognized human ethnicities enough now to know that the woman was of Asian decent. She had the same colour of skin as did Keiko O'Brien, the same dark hair and dark eyes. She was short, and her manner reminded Kira of no one so much as Dax. She appeared to have the same mixture of energy and decorum, evident even in her stance.

"Major," Trenlei said, waving her ancestor over. Kira joined them and the new arrival extended her hand. "Major, this is Professor Emily Magellan. She's one of the foremost scientists on this planet and an expert in temporal anomalies. She came down from Fenth last night to help us. Professor, this is Major Kira Nerys, our visitor from the past."

"Professor," Kira said, shaking the woman's hand.

"Major, good to meet you."

"Is it?" Kira asked.

"The scientific community here has always suspected that this planet has temporal anomalies. You are our proof."

"I just want to get back to my own time," Kira said frankly.

"And I intend to help you do that," Magellan replied.

"All right, let's go," Trenlei said, raising her voice so that everyone around her could hear her. In an order probably born of habit, several members of the team climbed onto the transporter pad. Holl tapped her neck and requested transport to their site. Kira had no idea where the transporter controllers were; they weren't visible, but they were obviously familiar with where Holl and her crew wanted to go. They vanished and Trenlei gestured to the rest of them to step up. Kira climbed onto the transporter pad beside her descendant and, a moment later, was standing back in the grass near the foot of the hill. The crew members who had arrived before her were already setting up their equipment. Holl and Anouar came over to join them.

"Major, I'd like to show Professor Magellan where you came through the anomaly," Holl said.

"All right," Kira agreed. Anouar left to help Renoura and the rest of the team with the equipment. Kira led Holl, Magellan, Trenlei and Talan up the hill. Her original fall marks were slightly obscured by footprints made by the team the previous day.

"Just there," she said, pointing to the spot. Magellan took out a tricorder, flipped it open and stepped down.

"Careful," Holl warned. "It's steeper than it looks."

Magellan nodded, secured her footing, and extended her arm in a slow circle, the tricorder beeping as she moved.

Halfway through her arm's arc, her hand vanished up to the wrist. With a collective gasp from the group, save for Talan, Magellan pulled her arm back sharply, then looked up at Holl, shock written on her face.

"We didn't have any results like that," the Betazoid said.

Very carefully, Magellan extended her hand again. Again, it vanished.

"Stay there!" Holl said. "I want to get a reading of exactly where that is."

Magellan complied as the other scientist took out her own tricorder and began taking readings.

"It appears to begin at your wrist and extend in a fifty centimeter diameter," she said.

"Major," Trenlei said, gesturing to Kira. Kira nodded and stepped down carefully next to Magellan. She reached her hand out toward the other woman's, but nothing happened. It stayed visible, even next to where Magellan's hand was presumably floating, disembodied, in the past. Kira turned to look up at Holl, who stepped down beside them and tried to reach through as well. Only Magellan's hand went through the anomaly.

"Maybe we'd need to be right where she's standing," Holl said. She and the human switched places, but got the same results; Magellan's hand vanished but Holl's did not.

"Presumably, there's something about you that brought you here, Major," Magellan said. "And something about me that would allow me to go back there."

"But if you did, you might get stuck," Holl pointed out. "As Major Kira seems to be stuck here."

The human scientist nodded.

"What if we programed my tricorder with a message? Are any of the members of your crew scientists, Major?"

"Dax is. And she's a joined Trill. She's got three hundred years of problem solving experience behind her."

"Good," Magellan said. "We could use that. I can program my tricorder to send out a signal to your shuttle. Healer Talan, we could send the vaccine back as well. Will it work on infected humans?"

"I believe so," the Vulcan replied. "We conducted tests using a live virus on microbes, and the results were all positive."

"We can include instructions on the vaccine's administration on the tricorder. Captain Kira tells me one of your crew members is a doctor?"

Kira nodded.

"Good. Talan, can this Dax oversee the treatment until the doctor is well enough to take over?"

"If she can follow clear instructions then she should be sufficient," Talan replied.

"She can," Kira confirmed.

"Good," Trenlei said. "Let's get on it. Major, I think it would be best if you recorded a personal message to Dax as well, so she knows that you are safe and that this isn't a hoax."

Kira felt relief wash through her at the prospect of being able to contact Dax again, even if it wasn't in person.

"Of course," she said. The three of them stepped up to Trenlei and Talan's level again and began working on the message.


Dax was hard at work on the engines when the shuttle's computer alerted her to the fact that she had an incoming message. She almost gave herself a concussion scrambling from her access hatch. In her mind, she heard the ticking of the seconds as they slipped away, taking Bashir and O'Brien's lives with them. Rubbing her hands on her pants, she hurried into the cockpit and hit the receive commands on the com display. Kira's voice washed through the cockpit, making Dax's breath catch in shock.

"Jadzia, this is Nerys. I'm all right, but this is just a recording. I hope you get this. I know by now you've figured out that I'm missing. I traveled through time thanks to an anomaly in the hills near that small lake. I'm two hundred years in the future, and I'm working with some scientists. We've managed to make a small break in the anomaly, but only one of the scientists seems to be able to activate it, and if we send her through, she might get stuck back there like I am here. If you go up the hill toward the lake, you'll find a tricorder and four hyposprays containing a vaccine for the virus that's made Julian and Miles sick. The tricorder has instructions on how to administer the treatment. It also has all the information Professor Taima Holl and her team, including Professor Emily Magellan, have collected on the anomaly. Hopefully, working together, we can get it open long enough for me to come back through. I'm all right for now and safe. Kira out."

Dax grabbed a tricorder of her own and rushed from the shuttle, running up the hill. She was glad she'd decided to move the shuttle; the distance was less than a hundred meters, not a full kilometer. She found the tricorder and the hyposprays just as Kira had indicated and felt her heart swell with relief. She tapped her combadge, hoping against hope that it would work.

"Dax to Kira."

There was no reply and Dax held back a curse, scooping up the equipment and running back to the shuttle. Inside, she hurried into the mens' cabin, tossed her own tricorder on the small table and flipped open the odd looking one. There was a set of detailed instructions on administering the vaccine. Dax could tell by the clarity and the tone that the doctor who had sent them was Vulcan. That was a relief; there would be no overlooked instructions, nothing that hadn't been covered.

She crouched down beside O'Brien, who was still sedated, and very carefully read the instructions. Then she picked up one of the hyposprays with a red label. These, she understood, were vaccines developed for those that had been infected. The remaining two hyposprays were booster shots to be given once the treatment had taken hold.

She pressed the hypospray to O'Brien's neck and injected the vaccine. Then she grabbed the other red labeled hypospray and turned to Bashir. He was sleeping restlessly under a pile of blankets. Dax injected him as well and he groaned, opening his eyes with some effort.

"It's a vaccine," Dax whispered. "Your fever should start to drop within half an hour, and you should be feeling better within about three."

"How–" Bashir started to ask, his voice strained.

"I'll explain later. Go back to sleep for now."

He complied and Dax set the two empty hyposprays on the far end of the table. She left the room, taking the two tricorders with her, and headed to the cockpit. There, she downloaded the information Kira had sent across and began reviewing it.

Two hours later, she rose to check on her patients only to find Bashir up and about, kneeling on the floor beside O'Brien's bed, taking readings of his vital signs. O'Brien was awake, too, and sitting propped against two pillows. They looked up when Dax came in and she was instantly relieved to see they could both focus on her again. They still didn't look well; O'Brien's face was flushed and Bashir was paler than normal, and they both smelled of sweat and illness, but they were awake and aware.

"My temperature is thirty-seven-point-two," Bashir said. "It's a bit higher than normal for me, but definitely acceptable. Miles is still a bit feverish, but barely. What did you give us?"

Dax explained the situation to them, then provided Bashir with the medical instructions from the tricorder. He read them over and appeared impressed.

"Now what?" O'Brien asked.

Dax sighed.

"I've been trying to figure out a way to break through the temporal anomaly and at least contact Kira, but I haven't been able to yet. I assume the scientists in the future are working on the same thing, but only one of them can actually open a path in the anomaly and no one else can cross through."

"Kira got there somehow," Bashir said. "There must be a way to bring her back."

"We just haven't found it yet," Dax agreed. "I'm going to keep working on it. Both of you still need to rest and get your strength back."

"What we each really need is a shower," Bashir said. "And a change of clothes."

"That, too," Dax agreed. Bashir pushed himself to his feet and Dax noted that his movements were steady again, and he wasn't shivering or sweating anymore.

"I'll take over as doctor again," he told her with a smile. Dax grinned back.

"Good. I'll be working on this anomaly if you need me."

She returned to the cockpit and had managed half an hour's work before the communications array signaled another incoming message. Dax hit the receive commands and Kira's voice once again flooded the cabin.

"Kira to Dax. By now, you should have been able to administer the treatment to Bashir and O'Brien. Talan says they should be on the mend now. We haven't had any more luck on this side, and I assume you haven't had any, either. I want you to come to the place where I went through the anomaly in half an hour, at fifteen hundred forty-five hours. We've left another tricorder with only this message on it. In half an hour, we're going to see if you can actually see Professor Magellan if she puts her hand through the anomaly. Maybe if we have a link to your time, I could make it back through. Kira out."

Bashir hurried in as the communications ended. He had obviously showered, shaved, and changed his uniform. He looked much better now, and smelled better, too.

"Was that Kira?" he asked.

"A message sent by a tricorder like last time," Dax said, shaking her head.

"I administered the last of the treatment," Bashir said. "According to Healer Talan, this will protect Miles and I permanently."

"Good," Dax said. "How long until he can begin work on the engines?"

"I want him to rest until at least this evening," Bashir said.

"Then I want you to do the same," Dax told him. "But I would like your permission for Miles to help me in half an hour when Kira wants me at the time travel site."

Bashir nodded.

"As long as he doesn't work too hard and you let me come with him to monitor his condition."

"Agreed," Dax said.

"I'll go replicate him a hat and let him know."

"I'm going to keep analyzing the data the scientists sent through. Maybe I can come up with something before we leave."

She could not. Twenty minutes later, as O'Brien emerged from his cabin, showered and dressed in a fresh uniform, Dax had made no progress. She rose when O'Brien came in, smiling at him.

"It's good to see you back on your feet again, Chief."

"It's good to be out of that bed," O'Brien said with a grin. "What are we going to try?"

Dax replayed the message Kira had sent, then filled him in on her lack of progress with the data provided to her. She shouldered a pack with water, food and her equipment in it as Bashir gave O'Brien his hat. The doctor put on his own and gave Dax a pointed look until she donned hers as well. They set out up the hill. Once they'd reached the spot, Dax took her equipment from the pack and gave the bag to Bashir. He pulled out a water ration and handed it to O'Brien.

"We all need to keep hydrated, but you and I especially," he said. "But don't drink too quickly. We haven't eaten much in the past few days."

O'Brien nodded and took the water ration, tearing it open and sipping it. Bashir handed him a bland field ration as well. He took one for himself and munched on it as Dax and O'Brien began scanning the area.

"We still have three minutes before Kira wanted us out here," Dax said. "I'm getting the same readings as before."

"What about those lights we saw last night?" Bashir asked.

"There was still no difference in the readings," Dax said. "For all I know, it could be that we can actually see the energy fluctuations at night."

O'Brien opened his ration and ate it slowly while they waited. Dax kept scanning the area, hoping for some tiny change in the energy readings that might indicate a break in the temporal anomaly. Suddenly, the readings right in front of her spiked and a hand appeared about one hundred and twenty centimeters above the ground. All three of them started and Dax scanned it quickly.

"Human female," she said.

"I can hear you!" a woman's voice said from the other side. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes!" Dax said. "Who are you?"

"Professor Emily Magellan. Who are you?"

"Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax," she replied. "Is Nerys there?"

There was a moment of silence, then Kira's voice came through the anomaly:

"Jadzia?"

Dax saw her relief reflected on the faces of her crew mates.

"Nerys, thank god. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. We haven't made any progress, though."

"Neither have I," Dax sighed.

"Try coming through yourself, Commander," Magellan said.

Carefully, Dax stepped forward and stretched her hand out toward the other woman's. Instead of vanishing, she simply reached past Magellan's hand. With a sigh, she shook her head.

"Nothing," she said. O'Brien moved down to stand beside her, scanning Magellan's hand and the area around it.

"The time line is distorted around her hand," he said. "But it's localized right here." He reached out with his left hand toward the future scientist's. As soon as his hand passed her fingertips, it vanished.