"Well?" B'Elanna demanded impatiently, pacing the length of the science laboratory, and back, for probably the twentieth time.
"Well," replied Ensign Kim, "all of this walking around you've been doing isn`t actually making me work any faster, funnily enough."
"Harry," she reproached him, "you've lost your edge. Back on Voyager with Janeway breathing down your neck you would have had this finished in an hour."
"Be that as it may," said Kim, "I'll still have it done faster than anyone else you might have hired. Or, if you'd like to test that theory, I can just –"
"No, no, that`s quite all right, stay where you are. Oh, I'm sorry, Harry, I`m just scared to death for her."
He frowned. "For who?"
"The woman who was breathing down your neck for seven years. I'm afraid she might have gotten herself into a mess she can't escape from."
"Àre you doubting the Harry Houdini of the Delta Quadrant?" Kim glanced into B'Elanna's uncomprehending eyes. "It's an expression of Tom's."
B'Elanna quickly looked away. "Oh, I see. Twentieth century trivia, right?"
"Actually, Harry Houdini goes all the way back to the late nineteenth century. He was a brilliant escape artist, quite possibly the greatest in human history. His most famous trick was called the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked cabinet filled to the brim with water."
"Fascinating."
"But he never had to navigate a wormhole or wrestle with the temporal prime directive."
"No," said B'Elanna distractedly, "I don't suppose he did."
"That's why I never worry about Captain Janeway," said Kim, still displaying the misplaced optimism of youth. B'Elanna felt a momentary pang of regret for having brought him into this. She sincerely did not want to be the one to tell him that Starfleet was not incorruptible, nor his hero invincible.
"Listen, Harry…"
But Ensign Kim had held up one of his hands, and was staring intently into the screen on his workstation. "Hang on a minute, B'Elanna. I think I`ve got what you're looking for."
"You've identified the substance?"
"I think so. I`ll have to run a few more tests to be sure, but –"
"What is it, Harry?"
A sigh escaped Ensign Kim's lips. He had not particularly missed this dimension of B'Elanna's workplace personality. "From what I can tell, what you've got here is some type of biologic agent, most likely a virus. But my molecular analysis indicates that it`s been modified. Someone has been synthesizing it in an artificial environment."
"Then what is its natural environment?"
Kim shook his head. "I don't know. So much has been done to this thing that I'm having trouble identifying its unadulterated form. If I knew a name for it, even a generic name, I could try to match it with something in the Starfleet database."
"Psychic Sisters."
"What?"
B'Elanna had stopped pacing, and her eyes were wide and unblinking. "It didn't occur to me until just this second," she said, "but months ago, the same woman that I met today told Chakotay about a drug called Psychic Sisters. I didn't make the connection at first, because she described it in a completely different way, she offered it to him, said she knew where to get it. The same day, Tom's father died, and Chakotay believed that he had been poisoned by that drug. Cassandra, led me to believe that whatever is in the vial is what keeps the Borg hybrids alive, and that somehow they'd been cut off, and that Starfleet was responsible."
"Borg hybrids? B'Elanna, what are you talking about?"
"What if this substance and the Psychic Sisters drug are one and the same? That would mean the same thing that killed Owen Paris and that may be affecting Captain Janeway, is keeping these women alive. Harry, search for Psychic Sisters in the database and see what comes up."
Wordlessly, Kim did as he was told, although he could hardly understand why. A moment later, the screen on his workstation faded to black.
"I don't understand," said Kim. "I've been locked out of the system."
"That means," replied his grim companion, "that we have to get out of here. But it looks like I was right. We'll have to find another way."
Far away on the marina, the man who called himself Balthasar checked his watch again and grimaced. He was not acting according to plan, and this bothered him immensely, as it made him ever fearful for his own life, and the lives he was trying, most likely in vain, to protect. When he saw B'Elanna's thin frame approaching, he relaxed visibly.
"You received my message."
"So I guess," she said coldly, "that you're Chakotay's friend. It seems I had you confused with someone else a little earlier today."
"That should teach you to go looking into things that don't concern you."
"The safety of my friends will always concern me. I suppose you know Chakotay is missing. I'm not sure how that speaks of your friendship."
"Chakotay is not missing," scoffed the diminutive man. "He simply doesn't know where to look for answers, so he is doing what is predictable of his character to do, which is to seek out Janeway. He would have done that no matter what I told him. Just as you only acted in an utterly typical fashion today, when you had a flash of insight and immediately put it in writing in a Starfleet laboratory. You are impulsive, but then you can't really be blamed for it."
"I can't tell if that's racism, or if you just don't like me."
He cocked an eyebrow, but displayed no other reaction. "I asked you to meet me here because I want to tell you to stay away from this. It doesn't concern you, and if you try to involve yourself, you'll most likely get killed, or get someone else killed. Do you understand me? "
"I understand perfectly, but I'm afraid I can't walk away, not just now. "
"Could you really live with yourself if you were responsible for ending the life of young Ensign Kim? "
B'Elanna narrowed her eyes. "I'm going to say this once. The Cassandras are launching an offensive on Starfleet, and they don't seem to me to be all that concerned about casualties. I have been offered protection in exchange for information on a drug called Psychic Sisters. And I intend to get that information sir, whether you help me or not. "
Balthasar had turned his back, and was walking slowly away. "I can't help you. "
For a moment B'Elanna stood in dumbfounded silence, watching him go, but then anger overtook her. "You can't help me, or you don't want to risk your own neck? "
Balthasar stopped in his tracks, though he did not turn around. "I have nothing for you, " he said. "Find Peg O'Shaughnessy. She's the only one who knows. She's the only one who was there. But keep in mind that this war will be fought inspite of us all. Fear your friends, B'Elanna, and not your enemies; it's the only way to survive. "