| “Hail the Versant.” Cinn ordered, finally noticing how slick his face had gotten from sweat and wiped his face with his sleeve. Curiously, he didn’t get a response. “Ravenholm, I said hail…” Freeing his eyes from the cloth, the Bajoran saw that the viewscreen was a hash of digital static. So were the displays on his armrest. All of the consoles were hash, and... he was alone on the Bridge, the lighting washed out in a stunningly familiar way.
“Theurgy is whole again.” Captain Ives stated. Jumping out of the chair, Cinn turned to see hir standing by the turbolift. She in her female form he saw, her hands behind her back. “The Wenn’s journey is approaching its end.” A somewhat vague statement, but his pagh itched in a way it hadn’t in ages. Instead of confusion, a sense of finality brought some understanding to him.
“The Wenn's linear existence ends.” Stark was sitting at Ops, the chair turned around to face him. “Darkness shall not pass. The light of the Wenn will obliterate the shadow before it falls upon Bajor.”
“We have a plan!” said Cinn, and tried not to bellow at the Prophets. “Everything we have is ready to force that aperture closed. I have come here to do exactly what you want me to do, and you are keeping me from doing what I must.”
“The Wenn has forgotten.” Ducote looked up from the Mission Ops table, his face free of the accusatory tone that one would normally take with a line like that. “The Wenn must leave the Theurgy to save it. That is the pattern that had to be altered. To preserve Bajor, and all else in your linear existence.”
“But what can one man do against that?!” Cinn's patience was wearing out, a dark hand gesturing to the viewscreen as if it was still showing what was happening outside.
“What can one do against the many?” A new voice filled the Bajoran’s ears, one Cinn had never heard in person, only in recordings. Turning towards it, to his astonishment, the Emissary himself was there. Benjamin Sisko, sitting at Engineering. “One ship against an entire fleet? That’s a hell of a Plan B!” said an unfamiliar woman’s voice. It echoed through the room, the source unseen. “The right one can do whatever is needed.” The Sisko picked up a round object from the console, tossed it between his hands while he walked towards Cinn, and then and held it out for him to take.
Wrapping his fingers around it, the curiosity in his pagh was impossible to ignore. He looked down from the Emissary's face, and saw a metallic ball with a red light in the middle. It looked like it had moving parts, like a puzzle. Cinn turned it over, looking into the red center... only to be blinded by an impossibly intense light. |