Chapter 3

When Harry had been arrested, tried, and convicted by the Akritirians a year before, it had been the worst experience of his life until that point. Maybe even still. Battling the Borg and Species 8472 was scary, but it was at least what he'd been trained for. The Akritirian prison – prison in general – was not something he really had much experience with, apart from a few simulations at the Academy that certainly did not compare. The only thing that had made the experience of being dumped into the Akritirians' amoral version of a prison remotely tolerable – the only thing that had kept him alive, in fact – was the presence of Tom Paris.

As he stumbled around the dusty surface of the planet that was his latest interstellar prison, Harry was grateful he hadn't been retrofitted with any "clamp" and that he could see the sunshine. Already, the place had two advantages over his last prison stay. But without Tom or B'Elanna – whom he was beginning to fear was dead – he wasn't sure how he was going to survive a labor camp in the middle of nowhere, much less plot an escape.

And then he ran into a very familiar face: his own.

"Who are you?" the lookalike asked.

"Um, I'm Ensign Harry Kim, from the Federation starship Voyager," he answered tentatively. "Who are you?"

"Well, my name's Harry Kim, but I don't know what the hell the rest of that meant."

"Your name is Harry Kim?"

"Yes," the lookalike answered. "Yours too?"

"Yeah."

Harry stared at the mirror image of himself for a moment, drawing in a sharp breath. He understood now why Seska was still alive and why Cardassians who had never heard of Starfleet were selling humans to labor camps. He and B'Elanna hadn't just been blown off course; they had crossed into some kind of parallel universe.

As he looked around the camp, Harry realized it wasn't really a universe he wanted to be part of.

B'Elanna Torres did not like being restrained.

She had awakened to find herself trapped in a chair, and from the jostling of the deckplate beneath her feet, she could guess that she was on a ship traveling at impulse. The two Cardassians who had found her must have taken her captive; she remembered bucking and kicking as violently as she could while they hustled her down the corridor, but she didn't remember being rendered unconscious.

She fought again now as she tested the strength of the restraints. Her wrists were secured in a locking mechanism behind the chair, and using her fingertips to explore it, she could tell it had an electronic lock. It would do no good to try to break free by sheer force.

She was also gagged, tightly, which only served to demean her. B'Elanna knew from experience that humiliation could be a great motivator. As soon as the gag was out, she was going to use her freed mouth to tell the Cardassians exactly what she thought of them.

The door to the room opened, and a Cardassian approached her. She thought she recognized his face from her time in the Maquis, when they'd memorized the faces of all the most vicious military leaders. What was his name? He came closer now, leaning down toward her, and her eyes widened involuntarily as she awaited his next move.

Damar.

He removed the gag from her mouth, and she spat in his face. He didn't flinch or even bother to wipe his gray cheek.

"I'm sorry we had to do that," he explained, "but we had to make it look like we were taking you to the detention cells."

Detention cells. That must be where Harry is.

"I'm not in a detention cell?"

"No, you're on a shuttle we procured. You see, we're with the Obsidian Order. We're getting you out of here."

"Thank you," Harry said gratefully as his counterpart gave him a drink of water. He sipped it slowly, appreciatively, before handing the cup back. He was reclining against the wall of a makeshift shelter, getting some relief from the heat of the planet and some much-needed rest after his beating on the Cardassian ship.

"It's the first thing everyone learns here," his mirror self explained. "Find a shelter, find water, and find food. It's the only way to keep up your strength. The Cardie guards don't feed us enough, and when somebody gets weak…" Harry didn't really need him to finish the sentence.

"How long have you been here?"

"Six months. I was captured running arms to the Terran Rebellion in the Badlands." The other Harry grinned with pride. "This is where the send the worst offenders."

"I wasn't involved with any kind of rebellion," Harry said. "My friend and I – we were just going about our business on our ship."

The other Harry nodded. "The patrollers are supposed to take border violators to Terok Nor for processing, but sometimes they just sell them to the work camps. The guards here pay by the head because the Alliance pays them by the kiloton of ore."

Before Harry could ask any of the number of questions running through his mind, they were interrupted by a woman's voice. "I found a few icoberries on the tree by the rock pit." Silhouetted against the bright sky as she entered, she continued, "It's not much, but it's better than that fish-rot soup they served for lunch."

"Thanks, babe," the other Harry called back. "We have a visitor. You're not going to believe who came off the latest transport."

As the woman came nearer, Harry could make out her form in the relative darkness of the shelter. "Seven?"

"Harry?"

"Look, if you're trying to rescue me, why don't you take off these restraints and let me move to the front of the shuttle?" B'Elanna asked her captor.

Damar sighed heavily. "Please understand…You could be the answer to all our problems, but we can't take any risks with you."

"The answer to your problems?" she echoed.

The Cardassian nodded, moving one gray finger toward her very slowly, as if afraid she would lash out again (a reasonable fear, B'Elanna acknowledged). He didn't make contact with her, but she got the gist when his finger stopped a centimeter away from her forehead.

"Haven't you ever seen a Klingon before?"

"Klingon? Yes, of course, we're in the Alliance."

"Alliance?"

The Cardassian frowned at her reticence but explained, "The Klingon-Cardassian Alliance that dominates this region of space. The internal sensors on the ship said you had…Terran…lifesigns."

"My mother was Klingon, but my father was human," B'Elanna said, and Damar had a paroxysm of excitement over her revelation. "Why does that matter?"

"What's your name?"

"My name?"

"Please," Damar beseeched, "tell me your name."

"B'Elanna Torres." As soon as it came out, she realized it was her second mistake of the day.

"I knew it." Damar held up a small device. "I'll need a sample of your DNA to confirm it." Before she could protest, he had quickly withdrawn a few drops of her pinkish blood. He headed away from her, saying nothing, and leaving her still in the restraints.

Harry watched in some awe as his counterpart and a woman who looked an awful lot like Seven of Nine, minus the Borg implants, kissed a passionate hello. When they parted, his counterpart turned to him, with a grin Harry hadn't seen on his own face since the start of their ill-fated journey into the Delta Quadrant. "She's really something, isn't she?"

"You're Annika Hansen," Harry said to the Seven lookalike.

"Yes," she answered cautiously. "Do I know you?" She looked at the other Harry. "Do you have a twin you haven't told me about?"

"Babe, this guy says he's Harry Kim, too," his counterpart explained.

"Oh, yeah?" Annika took three steps toward Harry, and without warning wrapped one arm around his neck and kissed him. It took Harry a second to register what she was doing, seconds in which his tongue lay idle in his mouth in confusion. "He sure doesn't kiss like you."

The other Harry grinned again. "Good, then I guess I have nothing to worry about." They shared a laugh at Harry's expense. "Babe, he thinks he crossed over from a parallel universe."

She sized up Harry for a moment. "We should bring him to the meeting tonight. Let the Indian decide what to do with him."

"No way," the other Harry said, taking a seat on the floor of the shelter. He handed Harry a few berries. "I really hate that guy. I'm not letting him get his sweaty hands on some clone of me."

"You're not thinking straight," Annika ridiculed. She took a moment to eat a berry. "Chakotay told everyone to be at the meeting tonight. He might have a way to get us out of here."

"Might, might, might. All I'm saying is, if we try our luck at an escape on the ground, we can be out of here tomorrow."

"Did you say Chakotay?" Harry interrupted. They looked at him. "Tall, dark hair, funny tattoo on his face?"

"No tattoo," Annika told him, "but tall, dark, and handsome. He says he has an escape plan in the works. He has half the camp wrapped around his finger." She looked affectionately at Harry's counterpart. "The other half are wrapped around his."

"Can you take me to meet him?" Harry asked. If Chakotay in this universe was like the resistance leader he'd been in the Maquis, then he might be able to help them escape. Plus, it's better than hanging out with these two. There was something about the way his counterpart kept calling Seven of Nine "babe" that was making Harry very uncomfortable.

"B'Elanna Torres," Damar explained, calling up an image of her on the display panel. "Half-Terran, half-Klingon. Daughter of sub-regent Miral and her…employee John Torres."

Finally freed from her restraints, B'Elanna crossed the room to look at the image on screen. It was her own face, but framed by long, wavy, Klingon hair. She could guess what kind of employee her father had been – it was evident from the slight sneer on Damar's face – but she didn't understand her mother's job. "What's a sub-regent?"

"Miral worked directly under the regent. She was in charge of this sector of space. Administratively, militarily, socially, financially. We all worked for her."

"You keep using the past tense."

Damar tapped the panel, causing the image of the other B'Elanna to disappear. "There was a development recently."

In other words, she's dead.

B'Elanna let out a breath, shaking her head slightly. "I'm just trying to wrap my brain around all of this. My mother was a powerful leader, and my father some kind of sex slave. And I'm in some kind of alternate universe where the Obsidian Order is a benevolent organization."

The door to the quarters opened, and in walked a Klingon in full armor. "I wanted to meet her."

Damar nodded. "B'Elanna, this is Gowron, your assistant. You're going to be the new sub-regent."

"What?" She whirled around to face him. "Where's your B'Elanna Torres?"

Damar and Gowron looked at each other. "After we verified your DNA," Gowron explained, "it was necessary to ensure that you could infiltrate the Alliance without suspicion."

"So you assassinated her."

"We took the necessary precautions," Damar explained, somehow managing to neither confirm nor deny B'Elanna's accusation. "You will take her place, with help from us, and we can finally turn the Alliance around."

"What exactly is it you want to accomplish?"

Gowron's beady eyes bored into her, showing his sincerity as he answered simply, "Peace."