This time, they all went. Every 'Aryan' on the ship. Thomas was included, though it was understood that women would have less chance of finding Bashir. Men guarded men in Auschwitz. Women guarded women. In Birkenau, that would make a very large difference. Women and men were kept in two different sections of the compound, separated by electric wire. In the main camp though, three kilometers down the road, things were not quite so segregated. Thus the women of the Defiant would concentrate their search there, getting in wherever they could, even if it only meant searching camp records.

Thomas had to admit to a small sense of disappointment, though it embarrassed her. It wasn't that she was excited to see people suffering. That certainly wasn't the case, just as it hadn't been the case in the ghetto. She'd dreamed about that again last night. The same bearded man visited her each time she dreamt about it. Sometimes he accused her of some sort of betrayal, others he begged her for his life, and sometimes he shouted horrible, angry things at her from somewhere in the trees. Dressed as a partisan in rough clothes, he'd rush at her, brandishing his German Luger. She awoke before he fired.

Thomas shook her head and forced the remnants of the dream away and continued with her thoughts as if they hadn't been interrupted. She was disappointed because she'd always read about Birkenau. Auschwitz I was a relative haven by comparison, with its one tiny gas chamber and its sturdy brick buildings separated by organized streets. She forgot all that though as she materialized on one of the dim stone-covered streets. The smell, like Novak and the others had brought back on their uniforms, came to her immediately, despite the seeming peace of the still pre-dawn morning. There was death here, too. And then she remembered. She'd read a lot about this place too. About Block 11, the Death Block with its standing cells and punishment brigades. About Block 10, where the SS doctors performed painful medical experiments on helpless, powerless prisoners. About public hangings on the Appellplatz. About the sign above the gate that promised work would make them free.

This was where, in years and centuries to come, people would come to see the roomfuls of suitcases and shoes and brushes and artificial limbs and hair and empty cans of Zyklon B. This would be the museum, the place that would bear witness to the deaths of over one million people that died in all of Auschwitz, from here to Birkenau, to Monowitz and all its factories full of forced laborers. This was history.

It had been still dark when they were called out for roll call. No morning rations or lines to the latrines. The Germans were upset about something, though they never bothered explaining it to the thousands of gathered prisoners. A light snow began to fall just as the sun's haze began to glow on the lower side of the clouds of smoke above their heads. Still, they were not sent away for work. The Appellplatz was silent; the counting was done. Except for the biting cold and the fatigue in his legs, Bashir could almost count it a peaceful morning. But every few minutes the silence was broken when one of the prisoners fell or coughed or shivered too noticeably. He was pulled from the ranks and beaten severely and left to lie with the dead who had been dragged out of the barracks when the Appell started. The beaten one moaned for a few minutes more, and then silence regained its dominance. Bashir could almost hear the snow as it fell to the ground and half-melted in the mud at his feet.

While he stood, Bashir tried to count the days since he'd last seen the Defiant. He tried at first by counting forward from the fifth of February, the day he'd been transported. But he lost too many days right at the start. The train ride had been a blur. Was it two days or three? Perhaps four? And then there was the other camp, Block 11. He'd barely been conscious those days, and, though he had vivid memories of his time there, he really couldn't be certain how long it had taken. And after that the days and weeks had simply melted together into near monotony, broken up with only a few significant incidents. But who was to say on which day they had occurred?

Still, he could estimate. If he counted only three days for the train, he still ended up with five weeks.

Five weeks. More than a month. Captain Sisko, if he was still alive, would had to have left by then. And if the changeling had been telling the truth, and Sisko was dead, then Worf would surely have left him behind. Bashir was only one man, lost and buried deep in the Nazis' system. After five weeks, they'd have to assume he was dead. The Defiant would turn back, returning to his century without him. And he couldn't really blame them. Captain Sisko would have held out as long as he could, but eventually he would have had to weigh the good of the crew over the hope of one man. Dax might have protested. O'Brien certainly would have. But in the end, Bashir knew the captain had made the right choice even though it left him stuck in this hell. Liberation was still two years away. He'd never last two years. And the changeling would finally be rid of him and seek her amusement and revenge elsewhere. Maybe Hitler would win the war and there would be no liberation. Changelings could live for hundreds of years. There was no end to what she could do against an unsuspecting population. What kind of future, Bashir wondered, had the Defiant returned home to?

Novak had realized, by looking at the map provided by the ship's computer, that Auschwitz was much larger than Treblinka. But it was something different down on the surface. It wasn't even Earth any longer. It was some decrepit, foul planet all its own, where the mud never froze and the air was barely breathable. There was no sky, only billows of black smoke, pouring ash mixed with snow on the landscape. The majority of its inhabitants were humanoid but not human. They looked more like stick figures. Some didn't have all their clothes, and their arms or legs, bones barely covered with a thin layer of skin, showed. Their feet, though, were huge, caked with the sticky mud of the place. It seemed impossible that their thin legs could even lift them.

The other inhabitants looked human, fit and warm in their long, dark coats. But looks were deceiving, Novak mused, for these were the aliens. These were the monsters that had ceased to be human, not the stick men who stood stiff against the wind as they were counted.

The men began to mill around, breaking their ranks and forming new ones. There were more than a thousand of them, already more than at Treblinka, but this was just one group, in this one camp. There were dozens of other groups and dozens of other camps in the Auschwitz complex. This was just Birkenau, and Novak could see that it would take weeks just to search this one with the number of Aryans in the Defiant's crew.

As Lieutenant Jordan watched the roll call break up, he decided that even his phaser would do him little good here. It was just too big. They'd need an army of phasers or the Defiant itself to take out the Nazis here and their Ukrainian guards. But, of course, that wouldn't happen. The timeline, as horrible as this part of it was, had to be protected. Bashir, if he was here, if he was still alive, would be the only one they'd rescue. But as he watched the kommandos move out and past him, Jordan wished they'd found him at Treblinka. It would be worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack here. It was like finding the one piece of hay that was only three inches long in that haystack. No magnet would help.

There were just too many people to see all of them as they passed. The ones in the middle seemed to turn their heads slightly as they went by. Afraid to be noticed, Jordan decided. It would be easier as a prisoner, he realized.

Just then there was a commotion toward the head of the group. Jordan turned to look in that direction, knowing that he would miss the faces of the group as they passed. Still he couldn't help it. He watched in horror as the SS guard for the group grabbed one of the prisoners nearest him, yanking him out of the line as the others still marched past. The SS beat the man in the face until he could no longer stand on his feet. He was hanging there by the arm when the other SS man released the dog. The first SS laughed and let the man go. He moved away and watched as the man screamed. The dog had him by the crotch.

Jordan turned away, away from the man and from the group. He just couldn't watch anymore. He felt his breakfast working its way back up his throat.

"Something wrong?" The voice came with a hand that touched his shoulder.

Jordan turned quickly to see who had spoken. It was the SS, the dog-handler. He was tall and looked down at Jordan with considerable concern. Or was it suspicion? Jordan knew he couldn't look weak to the man. He had to swallow to keep from throwing up. But his hand was still on his stomach. "Ulcer," he lied. "I should have been more careful what I ate for breakfast. Too much coffee sets it off."

The dog-handler nodded, but he looked over toward his dog, keeping him in sight. "Yeah, but you have to have the coffee to be awake this early. Some days we're up before the sun."

"Our sacrifice," Jordan said, staring coldly at the man, "for the Fatherland." He really wanted the man to go away. He didn't want him to ask any questions, like where he came from and what he was supposed to be doing, standing there by the gate. Still, he had an idea. Jerking his head toward the end of the moving column, he asked. "Where are these Jews from?"

The dog-handler saw that his dog was finished and began to move away. "Oh, from all over," he called back. As he rejoined his dog, it became harder to hear. The victim of the attack lay motionless, a mass of black and white stripes covered with red, on the ground. "They say we've even got English in here somewhere."

Jordan nearly jumped and hoped he'd heard the man right. English. Had he said one or more than one? He couldn't tell. Still, the Germans never conquered England, never had a chance to deport its Jews. It had to be Bashir. "Where?" he asked, realizing that it could draw suspicion. Like the prisoners, he should try not to be noticed.

Still, the dog-handler was too far away, and the sloshing of feet in the mud was too loud. He didn't quite hear. "Stay off the coffee!" the SS yelled, patting his stomach and smiling widely as he stepped over the dog's victim.

Jordan tried not to run as he hurried toward the nearest barrack building. The workers were gone now. He hoped it would be empty. He stepped inside and looked around, checking under all the bunks and even climbing up onto the brick wall that ran down the middle and led to a chimney on one side. From there, he could see the tops of the bunks. He ran the length of it. And when he was satisfied that there was no one inside, he jumped down, pulling his comm badge from his pocket as he did.

"Jordan to Defiant," he called.

"Defiant," Sisko's voice answered. "Are you secure, Lieutenant?" He sounded concerned and surprised. Communication with the ship was dangerous and therefore only for emergencies.

"Yes, sir," Jordan answered. "No one can see or hear me. I think he's here, sir."

There was a slight pause. "How do you know?"

"One of the SS, he said there were English here," he said, rushing the words out. "I couldn't quite hear him, so I don't know if he was talking about one man or more, but he definitely said English."

"Hold on, Lieutenant. Prepare for transport."

Thomas heard a clicking sound. She'd just entered the yard between Blocks 10 and 11. The guard at the gate had questioned her, but she'd put him off by saying she'd been ordered there by the Gestapo. He seemed satisfied and let her in. Still there were others in the yard. Three prisoners were hanging by their wrists on tall posts near the covered windows of Block 10. And the guard could still see her from his place near the gate.

The clicking came again and she made her way purposefully toward one of the doors of Block 11, where the Gestapo would be. She hoped there was no guard on the other side of the door. She stepped up to it and tried the knob. The door opened easily. It was unlocked and unguarded. She'd been lucky. She closed it quickly and then edged forward to check the connecting hallway. Looking right and left, she pulled her comm badge from her pocket. She pressed it, opening the channel and then held it close to her mouth as she moved back toward the door. "Thomas here," she whispered.

"Clear for transport," came the answer on the other end.

She checked the hallway and door again and then replied. "Clear."

The transport came quickly and within seconds, she was standing on the Defiant. Sisko was there and so was an SS officer. He removed his hat, and she could see that it was Jordan.

"We need to know if there were any other English people in Auschwitz," the captain told her.

Thomas wasn't sure why they were asking now, why they had pulled her from the planet as if it was some emergency. "I don't know," she admitted. "There could have been, I suppose. If they were traveling and got caught in one of the wrong countries. There was even an American here at one point. None were taken from England directly, I'm pretty sure. There were POW's, but I think they were in Monowitz."

"One of the SS said something about English being in the camp, in Birkenau," Jordan explained for her.

Thomas understood now. They were asking if it was Bashir the SS had spoken about. "Well, it could be him," she said. "We know he was on one of those transports. He had to have come here or to Treblinka. And I really doubt he'd be sent to the gas right off. He's young and intelligent, and he was very healthy at the time."

Sisko watched her carefully, but there was a light in his eyes, a brightening of his features. "Then it sounds like," he stated, "the odds have turned in our favor."

The changeling watched him as he worked. Bashir still stumbled occasionally and fumbled with his tools. But he was more alert now, no longer the Muselman. He didn't seem to want to die anymore, though it could hardly be said that he was trying to live. He was more passive about it all. Death or survival seemed to weigh equal with him. And Heiler wasn't quite sure what to do with such an attitude. When he had wanted to live, she made him wish for death. When he wanted to die, she had denied it. But now he was teetering precariously on the border between the two, and she didn't know which way to push him off.

Still, she had more practical worries for the moment. The work on this crematoria was almost done. She would have to find him a new kommando before one of the other SS did. She also had to worry about transferring Heiler. She had to keep Bashir in sight. It would be too conspicuous to merely abandon Heiler's persona and take another in the new kommando. There was no way to explain Heiler's disappearance. So she had to pander to her so-called superiors tomorrow and beg for the transfer.

Tonight she had to bribe one of the other SS to trade with Heiler. They were still building barracks for expansion in the other parts of the camp. She would try taking Bashir there. The work would be difficult for him, but not impossible. No more than the work he was doing now. Of course, he wouldn't know the kapo there. He might not get sent to retrieve the soup every day. The kapo here was easy on him. She'd make sure that wasn't the case in his new assignment. She didn't want him to die, but she didn't want him to be too comfortable either.

Things went differently the next morning. The search was now concentrated on the men and Birkenau, though the women would still search key areas, such as the prisoner records. Thomas was sent back to Block 11 and its Gestapo files. Barker was glad that he would not be dealing with the Sonderkommando this time. He'd had nightmares about it from Treblinka. This time, Novak had drawn that card, though he had other areas to search first. The breakup of roll call was still their best chance for seeing all the prisoners, so most of the Defiant's away team were stationed near gates and intersections of the camp's roads. Afterwards they would branch out to other areas.

Barker watched the work group passing him. They seemed healthier than the others he had seen. Their faces were not as tightly drawn. They weren't as thin, though they still dragged their feet when they marched. They were better dressed, too, not in the mismatch of old, worn clothes with a stripe of paint on the back, but in the gray and blue stripes. They even wore regular shoes, not clogs.

They left through the main gate, marching right past Barker. The group he'd watched the day before had only a few SS to guard them. This one had more and they were headed in the direction of the main gate. Barker could guess where they were going from the map he'd had to memorize. The railroad line. They were going to greet a new transport. They were better dressed and healthier so as not to frighten the new arrivals.

A few of the prisoners looked over at Barker as they passed. Barker ignored them and concentrated on the taller ones, straining hard to match their faces with the doctor's as it might look after five weeks in this place. Then he decided it wasn't worth the effort. These men were thin but not emaciated. Bashir, if he was among them, probably wouldn't have changed so much. He'd always been thin. Bashir would look like himself, and Barker didn't see him here.

Szymon coughed. It happened just after the roll call had been counted. He'd stood in line for two hours without making a sound or movement, and it took Bashir by surprise. It was a small cough, barely audible, though it did cause the SS to stop in his tracks. Bashir watched him out of the corner of his eye. The man scanned the ranks of prisoners looking for the source of the sound he had heard, but he seemed unsure of the direction. Bashir prayed Szymon wouldn't cough again.

He didn't. But if one was standing near enough, as Bashir was, one could hear him struggling, nearly choking as he held it in. The SS still watched the group warily though he resumed his original path. The roll call was released and Bashir and Szymon both moved toward their kommando. Szymon was slower, though, than usual, and he cleared his throat as he ran through the crowds, trying to get the coughing out of his system.

Bashir looked around, trying to spot Heiler. But the changeling was far enough away that he didn't have to worry. He turned to Szymon, helping him along with his good arm. "What's wrong?" he whispered.

Szymon looked back at him like he'd seen a ghost. Bashir realized that for all Szymon knew, Bashir hadn't spoken since before the incident and Piotr's death. Still, there was no time for such considerations. Szymon waved his hand away. "Nothing," he lied. "I'm fine."

Julian didn't believe him. He touched the man's face before he could turn away. It was hot despite the hours they'd just spent in the cold and sleet. "You have a fever," he said. "You can't work." He needed to be in a hospital. A fever here was deadly, as was just about anything else.

For a moment, Szymon became the man he had met the first day at the barracks. "You can't work," he retorted, pointing to Bashir's left arm.

"Good point," Bashir said, conceding the argument. They would both work, no matter their respective conditions, because work at least held the chance of survival. Bashir wondered though, if it was typhoid fever. Would Szymon's sickness endanger him and the other members of the kommando or the barracks where they slept?

There was no more time to discuss it, however. The kommando was formed and the kapo was beginning to count them. It was roll call all over again, but this one wouldn't last as long. In a few minutes, they would be running again, marching at double-time to the nearly completed gas chamber where hundreds would be slaughtered in the coming years. Bashir never forgot that. He thought about it every day as he passed out of the gate and onto the muddy road.

Lieutenant Barker had drawn the hospital this time, much to his relief. Anything had to be better than the extermination areas. Besides, the Nazis did try to match skilled workers with their previous occupations. They might have put Bashir to work there. Or he might just be a patient. Either way, it was a good place to look. And with the insignia of an SS doctor, Barker would have free reign to roam the buildings.

He was surprised by the stench, though, as he neared the buildings. Hospitals were supposed to be clean. He hadn't expected it. Though after he gave it a little thought, he wasn't all that shocked. The Nazis didn't care if the inmates lived in squalor and died by the thousands. Why would they care about letting them have a clean, sanitary hospital?

There was a line of people already waiting to get in. Some of them scattered as he approached, fearing his uniform. Barker let them go without a word. He couldn't see yelling at them for skipping out on their work details. They had enough worries, besides, none of them would dare question him. They all stepped back as he passed them into the doorway of the first building.

All motion came to a complete stop when he did. Those who were standing, the doctors and orderlies, immediately came to attention. Those who couldn't stand watched him fearfully. Some even held their breath.

"I'm very sorry, Herr Obersturmführer," one of the doctors said, approaching with his head down. His voice shook slightly, barely perceptibly when he spoke. "We did not realize there was a selection today."

"This isn't a selection," Barker answered, trying to sound stern. "I'm looking for one prisoner."

The doctor raised his eyes at that and then immediately dropped them again. "What is his number, Herr Obersturmführer?"

Good question, Barker thought. If we knew that, Bashir would be a lot easier to find. "I don't know his number. But I think you would remember him. He's an Englishman. A doctor."

The doctor didn't answer right away. He was hesitating and Barker saw it. He had heard of Bashir.

"Where can I find this prisoner?" Barker asked again, raising his voice. "Is he working here or not?"

"He is no longer here, Herr Obersturmführer," the doctor answered finally, rushing the words out. "He was here only for two days. He treated minor wounds. He was returned to his barracks."

Barker tried to keep the emotion out of his face. This was a major clue. Bashir—it had to have been Bashir—had been here before. "Which barracks?"

"I don't know, Herr Obersturmführer." The doctor spoke more confidently now. "The Scharfüher who brought him here did not give us much information. He said he would return for him in two days and he did. The doctor did not speak German or Polish. We could not speak to him."

Damn. So close. They'd almost been pointed right to his barracks. Barker tried another track. "When did he leave?"

"On Sunday, Herr Obersturmführer."

Barker counted the days in his head, trying to remember the calendar for this time. It was Wednesday. They had missed him by three days. Only three days! They had still been in Treblinka on Sunday. The wrong camp. If they'd searched here first, they might have found him.

Barker risked a smile for the doctor. "Very good. Carry on." He could hear the sigh behind him when he turned on his heels and left through the still open door. Strangely, the lines of prisoners were gone. The yard in front of the building was empty all the way to the barbed wire fence.

Szymon didn't look any better at lunch, though Bashir was convinced now that it was not typhoid fever. Without a better examination, he couldn't be sure just what had caused Szymon's fever, but like the man in the hospital, it could have been just about anything. The cold, hunger, dysentery, anything.

Szymon wanted to take off his coat, but Bashir wouldn't let him. Szymon knew better anyway. Taking off his coat would draw attention. Luckily for Bashir, Heiler did not seem to be on duty today, but the other SS could still be a threat. It was best to work as quickly as possible and to keep quiet. The one who stuck out was the one who got beaten or killed. The mass survived.

When Heiler returned just after lunch, Bashir moved away from Szymon. He learned his lesson with Henri and then Piotr. Heiler would kill any friends she knew he had. That is why he had stopped talking. He didn't want her to think that Max or Szymon were friends. He didn't want them to die because of him.

Heiler kept a close eye on him after lunch. He was never more than twenty meters away, and he constantly hurled insults at the workers in German. Occasionally he'd throw in an English one for good measure, never forgetting to add the characteristic accent. It made Bashir nervous, having the changeling so close. He tried to ignore her, but sometimes she'd come up right behind him, yelling at him to work faster. Toward evening though, she stepped too close and when Bashir stepped back, he tripped over one of Heiler's shiny, black boots.

"Get up, you stupid pig Jew!" Heiler snarled. But of course he made it impossible to actually get up, kicking Bashir when he sat up, or knocking his hand out from beneath him. "You have work to do! Get up!"

One of the boots landed directly on his shin with a force that stung. Out of instinct, Julian grabbed his leg. She started to plant another one, but was distracted when Szymon coughed again. It was a great hacking cough, this time, not a quiet one. She stopped kicking Bashir and turned away toward the sound. But by then it had stopped. Bashir made sure he was standing again before she turned around. He was already back to work.

His leg throbbed, but he found he could stand and walk on it without much trouble. It was bruised, but not broken, but he couldn't stop to look at it to see how bad the damage was. Roll call that evening was long, cutting into the prisoners' free time, but he tried to look at it positively. The cold air would help to keep his leg from swelling. Still, by the time he had returned to the barracks that night, it had turned purple just where she had kicked him and a knot had formed just below. He packed it with snow he gathered from the near barracks while he sat outside. He had to get the snow from right near the building, otherwise it was covered and mixed with mud from the prisoners' shoes.

He got up when it was time to go inside. It hurt more trying to walk around the prisoners on the floor, but he managed to avoid most of them. Unfortunately though, he bumped his shin on the bunk as he climbed up, sending pain shooting up his leg. He gritted his teeth until the pain subsided and then finished his climb. Once up on the bunks, Max gave him a piece of cheese he had salvaged from the train, and he thanked Szymon for helping him today. Max smiled when he heard Bashir speak, but Julian ignored him. He didn't plan on saying anything more.

Szymon still worried him though. The cough had been real. His face was red even in the dim light of the barracks. He was sweating even though it was cold, and he refused the blanket that had to serve all four men in his bunk. He'd eaten the cheese Max gave him though. At least he still had an appetite.

Jordan stepped inside the block with the others, the last of the prisoners to go in. One of the block functionaries locked the door behind them, but he seemed to take no notice of the fit stranger that had entered. A few of the prisoners eyed him suspiciously, but he simply eyed them back, checking their faces to see if they were familiar. He found a place to lie down on the floor. He didn't want to take one of the bunks away from the prisoners. He didn't want to make trouble. He was in danger enough as it was.

He closed his eyes when the lights went out, along with everyone else, but he didn't go to sleep. He was waiting. He assumed they would all fall asleep quickly, and then he would search the room more thoroughly, this time with a miniature tricorder, specially made by Chief O'Brien.

It had taken the better part of the evening to argue his case with Captain Sisko. Everyone agreed that it was too dangerous to search for Bashir as a prisoner, but Jordan believed it was probably the best way to find him. He was just another man with a shaven head and a striped uniform. It smelled just like everyone else's too. He'd gotten the uniform from a dead man earlier in the day. He'd finally convinced the captain that he understood the risk and Sisko had allowed it. But only at night. He would only be a prisoner after evening roll call and before the one in the morning. Under no circumstances was he to be counted among the prisoner population.

It grew quiet quickly, just as he had planned. But it was difficult walking the length of the room without stepping on someone else who had been sleeping on the floor. One of the men stirred as he passed, and Jordan had to stuff his tricorder back inside his shirt pocket quickly. But the man fell back to sleep and Jordan moved on. He had left his shoes on the floor where he had supposedly been sleeping. He felt the top of the brick wall that divided the room, but it wasn't hot at all. So, setting his tricorder to warn him of any movement beyond tossing and turning, Jordan climbed up onto the wall and began to scan the top bunks as he looked for faces.

He couldn't see everyone. It was dark and some had their heads turned away from him. So he used the tricorder with them, checking height and weight, and DNA readings. Occasionally a prisoner got up and nearly ran to the bucket at one end of the barracks. He returned after relieving himself, and Jordan was afforded a few more minutes to scan uninterrupted.

The night was half over by the time he'd finished the top two rows on each side of the barracks. He stepped down off the wall and began to scan the bottom bunk and the floors. When he was about a third of the way down one side, a small light in the corner of his tricorder's display began to flash red. He froze. Someone was coming. He checked the scan. Whoever they were, they were still fifty meters away, not even inside the barracks. He let out a slow breath and moved on, keeping a close eye on the tricorder screen.

He'd just finished when the tricorder showed the range of whoever was moving as being inside the barracks. But it was mostly quiet. The only sounds were the groans of some of the men. No one was up. Jordan could even hear the wind howling outside. But he hadn't heard a door at all.

And then he saw it. Something long and black moved by the door at the far end of the barracks. The scanner showed another behind him. Then two more showed up. And four more after that. It wasn't until one of them bit his toe that he actually saw what they were. Rats.

It took hold of him and he instinctively cried out, waking some of the others. As he danced around, trying to remove the rodent from his foot without stepping on anyone else, he shoved the tricorder back into hiding. Other men began to scream. The rat at his feet was easily half a meter long, maybe more. And Jordan wasn't counting the tail. It was huge and it did not want to release its hold. Its claws began to dig into his foot as it tried to hold on.

Jordan stumbled backwards until he fell back into his place, landing on his hard wooden clogs. He grabbed one and began beating the rodent with it. It took ten good hits before it decided it wasn't worth it. Jordan kicked it away and fumbled around his bundle for his coat. Finally he just jumped back onto the wall, taking his coat and shoes with him. The rodents seemed too busy on the floor to notice. Jordan saw that those on the bunks hardly moved, completely undisturbed by their fellow inmates torment.

He contemplated calling the Defiant right then. He'd checked the barracks out. No Bashir. Just rats. No reason to stay. But one of them on the bunks was watching him. Apparently the noise had woken him up after all. "Don't let the block elder catch you up there," he warned. "He's killed people for less."

Jordan didn't know what to say. "Thanks," he finally managed. The man turned over and went right back to sleep. Jordan sat up there the rest of the night, holding his bleeding toe and trying to decide just how he'd gotten himself into this. He didn't sleep. It was too dangerous to sleep.

His tricorder warned him with three clicks when it was 0400. The rats by then were gone, or quiet, and the men had all gone back to sleep, trying to catch a little rest before they had to get up for work. Jordan slipped on his coat quietly and tapped his comm badge five times. He counted the seconds before the Defiant's transporter beam caught him. He didn't even make it to ten.

Dax stood inside one of the warehouses. She'd been transported there because it was empty, at least empty of people. No one would see her beam in. It was still early and the prisoners had not yet come to work. But it wasn't empty. It held shoes. From floor to ceiling, from wall to wall. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes. Some were small, the shoes of children who were still too young to walk. Some were fancy, shoes meant for a dance or social function but not for work. Some were summer shoes, some were winter. Others were ordinary, everyday shoes. Some were brightly colored. Others were simply brown, the color of the leather used to make them.

Dax had never seen so many shoes. She thought about the people she'd seen in Bialystok ghetto. They had survived the transports thus far. They were still safe in the semi-freedom the ghetto walls provided. Hungry, but safe. But had they lost their children, their parents to places like this? Were these their shoes?

Dax had lived for seven lifetimes, most of them on Trill. But some of her hosts had traveled extensively throughout the Federation and now beyond. She'd seen death. She'd seen famine. She'd seen the devastation of the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor and a whole planet inflicted with a terminal disease by the Dominion. But nothing yet had prepared her for those shoes.

She stood there transfixed by the immense pile that even spilled out the open doors. She didn't move, not until she heard the voices. Yelling. Someone was yelling. Dax forced herself to turn, leaving the shoes behind. She stepped out into the dim sunlight of Poland's winter morning. The smoke was acrid here. This area, Kanada, as it was called by the workers, was near the back of the camp, near where they burned the bodies of the gassings that took place in the main camp and in the abandoned farmhouse here in Birkenau. It was so near, she could see it from this section of the camp. She had only to walk a little to the north.

Another building she saw was overflowing with suitcases, another with what looked at first like straw. As she walked closer, she could see that it was hair. Human hair, piled as high as the shoes. A worker passed her, head down. She walked fast, but Dax grabbed her arm. "Where are the clothes taken after they're sorted?" she asked.

The woman had grown stiff when Dax touched her. She stood shaking now, afraid to answer. She didn't even look up. Dax quickly released her arm, hoping that she hadn't hurt the woman. The woman turned and pointed to another large warehouse a little further down the road. "Thank you," Dax said. "You may go."

The woman scurried away, obviously anxious to be out of Dax's sight. Dax wondered who she was, what kind of life she had led before coming here. Was she someone's daughter, someone's wife? Was she a mother? Did she have to sort her children's shoes?

She turned away. She couldn't help the woman. Right or wrong, this time had already happened and the woman belonged here. Only Julian could be saved. Julian didn't belong. The building the woman pointed to was not far away, so she walked there. She didn't know exactly why she had asked about the clothes. She hadn't even known for sure there would be such a place. Perhaps she'd only find a large pile of clothes spilling out the doors into the muddy streets just like the shoes. But she felt she should do it. There were no men here working, not until the next transport of shoes and clothes and hair came. She would take the time to have a look through the clothes.

She was surprised when she entered to find an orderly warehouse, with clothes hung from bars or folded on shelves. It looked more like a primitive store than had the other warehouses. A single woman was working there. She was startled by the opening of the door, but she hurried over to Dax. She dropped her head and gave a report.

Dax ignored the woman's words as she looked at the hanging clothes. There were fur coats and leather jackets, silk shirts and ties. Scarves and vests. "Is there something in particular you are looking for?" the woman asked, still not looking up. She sounded just like a store clerk, Garak in his shop, only she cowered with fear, even as she offered her services.

"I need a gift," Dax said, making something up. "I want to just look around."

"Of course," the woman said. "If you find something, please tell me so that I can mark it down. If the inventory is not correct—"

Dax held up a hand to stop her, remembering her role. "I don't need you to remind me of what will happen if the inventory isn't correct. If you don't mark it down, I'll report you myself."

The woman nodded and left, scurrying back to her work. Like little frightened animals, Dax thought, and she was ashamed that she invoked such fear. But she knew it wasn't really her. It was the uniform and all the others who had worn it here. Dax wasn't willing to hurt anyone, she was only sharing the persona for a while.

She turned her back on the woman and moved further into the warehouse. She passed the coats and looked through the jackets. There were leather ones, and wool ones, jackets for fighting the cold or for just conducting business. There was nothing unusual for the time. She wasn't sure why she was hoping to find Julian's jacket. It had been five weeks. His jacket may have been sent back to Germany. There was little chance that it remained here, waiting for some SS officer to choose it as a gift.

Still, she felt compelled to keep looking. She moved on to the shirts, skipping by all the silk shirts and regular cotton shirts. There were sweaters, more like what she was looking for. A swatch of color caught her eye. Blue, bright blue. She knew it. It was the same color as her own uniform back in her quarters on the Defiant. She pushed the other clothes out of the way revealing the colored shirt. It was a long-sleeved, high collared shirt, with a zipper running up the front. And it was a material never seen before in this time on this planet. It was Julian's.

"I want this," Dax yelled. The woman hurried over. She looked at the shirt.

She was a brave woman, Dax decided, because she didn't bother to hide her obvious distaste for the fashion. "It's not very flattering, but it's sure to be warm."

"It's an interesting material," Dax said. "Have you found anything else like it? Maybe in black."

"Yes, ma'am. There was a whole suit like it," the woman answered, showing some excitement. "A very unusual outfit, if I may." She began to walk away, taking the shirt with her. Dax followed. She went to a shelf loaded with folded trousers. It only took her a few minutes of sorting through the black ones to find the pants to Julian's uniform. Dax felt her eyes begin to tear, but she fought it. She wondered if maybe she had passed his shoes earlier.

The woman held the pants up for her inspection. Dax admitted they were unusual but made a show of feeling the fabric. "My brother is a textile manufacturer. He's always looking out for something new. He'll be very excited by this." But she hadn't seen the jacket. "You said there was a whole outfit. Was there a jacket perhaps or a vest?"

The woman thought for a moment and then remembered. "Yes, a jacket, but it was damaged."

Dax's heart jumped. Had he been shot? But she looked at the shirt the woman still held. No holes. No blood. "Damaged how?"

"One of the sleeves was missing," she answered. "Unless it was supposed to be that way. It was a very unusual suit."

"I want it for the fabric," Dax explained. "Not the suit. I'd like the jacket, too."

The woman looked up at her briefly and then dropped her eyes. Her voice fell to barely a whisper. Fear had returned. "It's not here, ma'am. It was damaged. It couldn't be repaired. We didn't have the fabric."

Dax stopped her again. "Where is it?"

"With the scrap, ma'am."

Dax thought for a few moments. She didn't really need the jacket. She hadn't needed the shirt or pants either. It was just that they were Julian's. She wanted to take them home. She wanted the jacket, too, no matter how many sleeves it had. "Find it. You have until this evening before roll call. I'll return for it and those things, wrapped, if you don't mind."

"But ma'am, I'm supposed to. . . ." The woman was stammering now.

Dax ignored her arguments. She had the uniform. She had the power. "Then get someone else to look for it. One day. If you can't find it today, then I'll just take those. But I want her to look hard for it." She looked at the woman. She was neither frail nor overly thin. They must get more food here, she thought. Still, Dax didn't know what else to offer the woman for incentive. "I'll give you each a loaf of bread if it's found. Not that stale garbage you usually get. A fresh loaf. One for each of you. You can eat it or trade it. I don't care. But I want the fabric."

She waited for the woman to nod, and then turned on her heels and walked out the door. She sighed once the door closed behind her. She felt ashamed for bullying the woman but exhilarated at finding Julian's uniform. They could know for sure that he was here, at least. Or he had been here. Either way, they were getting closer. She felt now that they would find him. Dead or alive. They'd find him or find out what happened to him.

Max lifted one of the bags and threw it down from the truck. He'd already fumbled through it at the platform. There was no food inside. None of the bags he'd found had any food. The people on the train must have been very hungry. Perhaps they had come from a ghetto, half-starved before they arrived. Or maybe the other prisoners had simply gotten to the food first. This one was a bag full of clothes, summer clothes for children, a towel and wash cloth for cleaning, and an extra pair of shoes. There were other things, trinkets, memories, but Max hadn't had time to look at everything. He wasn't supposed to be looking through them at all.

As he grabbed the next bundle—a bundle of blankets, dirty and smeared with filth, but still warmer than anything he had in the barracks—Max looked up at the complex of buildings that housed all those things they removed from the trains. Perhaps Hanna's doll was there somewhere or the pictures from his wedding. Sofie's hair.

Max pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Memories like that only caused pain. He threw the blankets down and reached for the next bundle. But he still looked at the buildings. A door opened. An SS woman walked out. But she didn't walk like an SS. She walked like a woman.

She was tall. The hair under her cap was dark. She turned to where Max was working. She was not so far away that Max couldn't see her face. She was attractive, with a slim face and expressive eyes. Max was drawn to those eyes. They expressed a lot of things as they watched the men working. None of them was hatred.

She walked closer, turning her head as she scanned each man working. Everyone who saw her worked faster. Pretty or not, she could kill any of them for being lazy. But Max kept watching. She didn't yell at them. She didn't say anything. In fact, she seemed to be looking for something, or looking for someone. All the others turned away from her, trying to be nothing more than the baggage they worked on. But Max had the feeling it wouldn't be a bad thing to be the one she was looking for. Still, he knew enough not to push his luck. No one got that uniform easily. He put his head down and worked too, but he watched her from the corner of his eye.

She stayed there the whole morning, walking from one end of the area to the other. When it was nearly time for the noonday meal, she turned slowly away. She took a few steps, but stopped. She turned back and caught Max's eye as he watched her. He froze. His mind told him to work, to work harder now than he even felt he could. But his body just wouldn't move. She held him there for a minute in her eyes. Then she sighed and turned away again. She disappeared from view, and Max went back to work.

Bashir checked his ankle when they sat down for lunch. It would be too dark by the time they returned to the barracks. He wanted to see it in the light. But he didn't want the SS to see him checking it. Heiler, of course, knew the extent of his injuries, but the other SS might not have. If he did, he might label him unfit for work, and Julian would go to the gas. He waited until they were away, eating lunch themselves, and then he pulled off his mud-caked clog and lifted his leg to his other knee. The original swelling had gone down. But the double-time marching and the walking and work had jarred the shin too much. The bruise had begun to bleed again, and he could see the blood pooling on either side of his ankle near the heel. He couldn't see his ankle at all on one side. It was swollen.

He finished his lunch, pouring the last of the foul, cold soup down his parched throat. It was time to work again. But he decided he would try the hospital again, after roll call. If he could get in, he was sure he could get a bandage. There was nothing much to do for the bruise except to wrap his ankle and stay off of it. Staying off of it was impossible, but wrapping was something he could do.

It was getting late. Nearly the whole away team was assembled. Only two were missing. Lieutenant Jordan had just left as the others were returning. Sisko worried about him after the last night. He'd come back with an injury and a story of a meter-long rat that liked to eat people. And yet he was still willing to go back. Sisko admired his dedication. But he wished he was the one to go instead. He was a man of action, generally speaking, and was not given to sitting around while others worked. But he was black, and, for the first time in his life, that made a difference. It limited his ability to perform his duty. It limited his freedom, and he did not like it.

Dax was the other one who had not arrived yet, and Sisko worried about her more than Jordan. Jordan had an explanation for not being there. Dax did not. Something might have happened. Thomas had tried to reassure him. The inmates wouldn't dare hurt her; they were too frightened of her. But Sisko feared the Nazis, not the prisoners. Every time his crew went down, he worried that they would lose their cover, that someone would ask them too many questions, and they would end up in Block 11 where the Gestapo interrogated its prisoners. Thomas had already told him what she heard in there.

And Dax was late. After fifteen minutes, Sisko was forced to leave the transporter room and meet the away team in the mess hall. They were tired and hungry and wanted to get through their debriefing so they could shower and go to sleep. The days started early down on the planet. Sisko left word with the transporter officer to tell him as soon as Dax called for transport. He hoped she would call soon.

The mess hall was packed. There were only a few empty seats. Most of the away team had stripped off their coats and jackets and were sitting in their shirt sleeves. They looked less like Nazis that way. Sisko appreciated it. Kira was there as well. She looked just as frustrated as he was. He knew she wanted to be on the planet, too. But since women were less needed than men, there was no point trying to cover her nose so she could pass for Aryan.

There was little new to report, unfortunately. Bashir had not been spotted in any of the work details they had seen. A cumulative record was being kept of each of the groups and their possible destinations for work. They didn't want to waste time by searching the same kommando twice. Half the group had given their report by the time Dax's call came. Sisko blew out a long breath and then answered.

"Nice to hear from you, Old Man," Sisko chided. "You're alright?"

"I'm fine, Benjamin," her voice assured him. "I'll meet you in the mess hall."

No one spoke as they waited for her to arrive. They were becoming quite a loyal bunch, Sisko noted proudly. They had been concerned, too.

The door hissed open and Dax stood before them. She was still dressed as SS from head to toe, but she was smiling as if to say, "See, I told you I was fine." But her eyes didn't share the amusement. They carried instead a sadness in them, but also a hint of hope. She clutched a brown paper package to her chest, hugging it tightly.

She stepped inside and handed the package to Sisko. She didn't explain the gift, and she didn't sit down. She was waiting for him to open it. "What is it, Old Man?"

"Julian's," she answered in a small whisper.

Sisko tore the wrapping open and was met with black cloth. He pushed the wrapping aside, absently letting it fall off the table. He was more concerned with the cloth. He unfolded it and held it up. The gray, quilted shoulders of a Starfleet uniform became visible first and then one of the sleeves fell out. The other sleeve was missing, torn away where the gray quilting met the black cloth.

Everyone was silent, and Sisko found he couldn't speak either. But his breath began to quicken in his chest and his face became hot. All the previous clues had pointed to the fact that Julian was in the camp, but until now they'd had nothing conclusive, nothing that would say it was definitely their doctor. But there was no mistaking this. The Nazis had him. And Sisko wanted him back.

The blue undershirt was just beneath the jacket and Kira grabbed it quickly. She unfolded it and laid it out on the table. Sisko noted that it still had both sleeves. Kira was running her hands over every inch, checking it carefully.

"It's fine," Dax said, breaking the silence. "I already checked. No holes, no blood. It's fine."

Lieutenant Jordan hadn't given up his nighttime mission. He'd just altered it somewhat to avoid dealing with the rats all night. He showed up at the barracks just after roll call and moved among the inmates until time for curfew. He was able to see most of the inmates that way, as they ate dinner and socialized. He also planned to show up at the latrines in the morning, even though they smelled worse than even the smoke. Everyone came to the latrines, and he would watch their faces as they marched out again.

He started by watching the line of men as they waited for their rations. He could see what they ate, the dirty hands they ate with. He knew they didn't have a choice, but it still sickened him to watch it. He didn't bother getting in line himself, even though his disguise might require it. They needed the food, lousy as it was, more than he did. He had a nice enough bed back on the Defiant, and a replicator in the mess hall that could make anything he wanted for dinner. Of course, he hadn't used it yet today. He felt he needed to look thinner. He needed to look hungry even if he didn't act it. He would only eat once a day until they left this place. That was the promise he'd made to himself.

He didn't see Bashir in the line, so he went inside and looked around the bunks. He couldn't see the top bunk, but he didn't think it wise to stand on the wall. He'd been warned about what the block elders thought of that. But most of the men weren't lying down yet. They sat up on the upper bunk, dangling their legs over the side and Jordan could look up at them. He also listened to what was being said as he passed. He'd gotten Chief O'Brien to alter his already modified badge so that he could toggle the translator on and off at will. He turned it off now and listened for words he understood, English words that would indicate if the doctor was among the inmates.

The block elder emerged, and Jordan turned the translator back on. The block elder yelled that the door would be locked in ten minutes. Jordan walked quickly toward the door, not wanting to run and show too much energy. He had to push his way out, since everyone else was pushing their way in. But he watched their faces as he passed, especially the ones who were taller than himself. He thought about the meeting of the away team last night. He hadn't been there, of course, but he'd read the report earlier in the day. Bashir had been to the hospital. Barker had reported that the Jewish doctor there had not said that he was injured, but that he'd treated the injury. Still, Jordan thought it might be a good clue to keep his eye out for injuries as well. Once he was finally outside, he stopped just past the door. Each man would have to pass him as he went in.

Some still stood milling around, staring blindly at the world in front of them. They made no move to go inside. Some were helped by friends who led them inside. Others were simply left to themselves. They were so thin, like skeletons covered thinly with tight-stretched skin. If they weren't wearing shirts, Jordan felt sure he could have counted every one of their ribs. They were pale, he could see that even in the dim light outside. He hadn't seen them in the line for food. They were starving. They were already dead. Thomas had told them about these, to not be surprised when they saw them. Muslims, they were called, or Muselmen. The walking dead.

Jordan watched the last of the healthier inmates pass through the door. The block functionary there began to move toward the door to lock it, but one of the Muslims was still standing, making no move to enter. Jordan hadn't wanted to go back in. He'd have to wait then and hope for a clear moment to transport. He certainly didn't want to still be there when the rats came. But he couldn't leave that man out in the snow no matter how close to dying he already was.

The man didn't even seem to notice when Jordan touched his shoulder. "It's time to go in now," Jordan told him, letting the translator change his words to German. He turned the man around and the man didn't resist. So he steered him through the still opened door. The functionary locked it once they were in, and Jordan was left to take a place on the floor once more.

By morning, the entire crew knew. Dr. Bashir was, or had been, somewhere in Auschwitz, most likely Birkenau, and the Defiant would not be leaving until the away team either found him or conclusive evidence of his death. While most weren't heartened at the idea of remaining in this century, there were no more complaints. Everyone who remained on board the ship carried out his or her duty with renewed conviction. They were back to double shifts now, sixteen hour days, taking over the duties of their fellow crewmates who were already leaving again for the planet's surface.

Word was leaking out about conditions in the camp. The away team could be heard discussing it over dinner or just before breakfast. Kira listened intently and read every word of every report. The more she heard and read, the more she felt the sense of dread and horror that had filled her at Gallitep. She had thought that she would never confront anything so horrible the rest of her life. Gallitep was the pinnacle, the epitome of cruelty, degradation, and murder. But with every report, she found that Auschwitz was eclipsing it, a feat she would never had thought possible.

It was huge, that camp down there. Birkenau, itself, had more inmates than Gallitep. And that was the living. Whole trainloads had passed its gates only to die in the gas chambers in the old farmhouse at the north end of the camp. And the Nazis were in the process of building four more chambers with crematoria attached. No more need for funeral pyres. They would burn the people in ovens. The first of the four, according to the computer library and the evidence provided by the away team, would be finished early next week. The Gypsies, an ethnic group Kira had only heard about from Thomas's short lecture, would be the first to try it out.

She had gotten sick the first day she had entered Gallitep and was confronted by the survivors. She had had nightmares for weeks from the things she had seen and from the stories they told her. But it had all made her fight harder for her people and her world.

Now she felt helpless and frustrated. She had her duties on the Defiant, but they were minor and ordinary, little more than monitoring systems. She hated just sitting still. Every moment she got, she studied the map of the camp and records indicating what kind of activity went on within each of its boundaries. She and O'Brien discussed it sometimes over coffee, before the captain came on duty. He was anxious, too, wanting to go down there and find his friend. Unlike her, he was not held back by his appearance or his species. He was held back by responsibility. He had to constantly reroute power from other systems to keep the warp drive up to specs. It was a priority Sisko insisted on. The ship had to be ready to leave as soon as Bashir was found.

Kira was not content with just staying on the ship. And she'd already worked out a plan with one of the nurses, Hausmann. If something went wrong, with either the away team or Julian—if he was still alive—then she would beam down, despite the risk. She had a uniform prepared and hanging in her quarters. Nurse Hausmann had synthesized skin ready to cover her nose ridges. She could be changed and ready in less than ten minutes. And she wasn't going to let Sisko or the Nazis hold her back.

Blocksperre was called again in the morning, and for nearly fifteen minutes, Bashir thought the changeling had decided to leave him at the mercy of the selection. The door remained locked and the inmates grew anxious. He was concerned about Szymon and hoped that he would be able to stifle his coughing and disguise his fever. If he'd been allowed, Bashir would have gone outside to get some snow and rub it onto Szymon's head to cool him down. But he was not allowed.

For himself, Bashir was neither worried nor relieved. If he stayed for the selection he would be sent to die. If not, he would be with her, and he never knew what that would mean. She changed more than her appearance at every meeting. As he waited, listening vaguely to the murmur of voices around him, he thought about what dying in the gas would be like. He remembered that it was a form of cyanide gas. Cyanide killed quickly, depending on the dosage and method of delivery. Ingested in concentrated form, it could kill instantly. But as a gas, in a large room—and he knew the size since he'd helped to build it—he wasn't sure. It would depend on the amount of gas, the number of people in the chamber. Would they all simply fall asleep or would they gasp in pain and panic and trample each other as they suffocated? He was hungry and tired, and it was hard to puzzle such things out.

He hadn't quite come to any conclusion when the door opened. A white-coated soldier entered. The selection. Everyone got down from their bunks and stood, hats off, at attention. The doctor was alone though. He'd always seen a group come together. The doctor took out a clipboard and read off a number. Bashir listened and then repeated it back to himself, slowly translating the digits in his head. Hundert tausand sieben hundert. . . . It was his number. And he was surprised at how much fear he still had inside of him. It was only when he stepped forward and got closer to the doctor that he recognized the face of Chief O'Brien.

It had taken two days of discussion and even the promise of certain favors—which she did not intend on carrying out—for Ensign Thomas to get permission to enter the Gestapo files. She'd nearly given up when the agent in charge had propositioned her. He was a particularly unattractive man, with a round face and greasy hair. His double chin seemed pinched by his collar, and he reeked of insufficient personal hygiene.

It might take weeks to get the proper paperwork and permission, he had told her. He would have to write to Berlin to confirm her orders and identity. But if she were to agree to a more personal meeting, he'd try and speed things along. Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to contact Berlin after all.

The thought of lowering herself to physical bribery had sickened Thomas, but she had kept her reaction to herself. German women were expected to bear ethnically pure children for the Fatherland and Füher. She could hardly afford to act a prude in her current disguise. She agreed, but haggled with him over a time. She wasn't free until evening, after roll call. One of the Blockfüherinen was leaving early for weekend leave, and Thomas was needed to count the women in her block. But she would meet him later in his office here.

But, of course, she planned to be back on the Defiant by that time. All of which meant, she had to find something good today. She could not return tomorrow without having to again face this man who might, at the least, wonder why he'd been jilted and keep her out of the records again. At worse, he could demand a more timely payment for his kindness.

She was glad he had other business to attend to and had not accompanied her personally into the office where the records were filed. She didn't want to waste any time, though, in case he changed his mind about waiting or someone else decided they needed the office. She found the B files quickly and rifled through them, hoping that the doctor's name wouldn't be there, and just in case it was, that he had used his real name. It was. And he had.

But the file was in German and though she knew some, reading it was still very difficult. Besides the Nazis often used euphemisms and jargon that she wouldn't have learned in any language course. She would have to scan the files for translation back on the ship. Things would have been easier on their first trip to Berlin if that had been possible. Stevens, in Engineering, had suggested a portable scanning device, like the late-twentieth century computers had. He replicated one and managed to update it a bit. The original was too bulky and required an external power source. The modified one was a work of genius, at least in Thomas's eyes. Stevens had gotten creative. He not only made it smaller and gave it an internal power supply, but he designed it to fit into the clip of the Luger she carried. She just hoped she wouldn't need to shoot anyone.

Before she used the scanner however, she checked the door again, placing her ear to the wood and listening for movement. She heard nothing. She quickly laid the file open right there in the drawer. She drew her weapon and snapped the clip out. One by one she held the clip over the documents, scanning them into the memory of the tricorder she carried in another pocket. The scanner was slow, by Starfleet standards, but she couldn't complain. That would be impolite. It was a relatively thin file, all told, and it only took her a few minutes to scan the whole thing. She closed the folder and replaced it in the cabinet.

Once that was done, she knew she had to go back out and face that Gestapo man. She really hoped he was too busy with something to talk to her. She wanted to just slip past him quietly. But then she remembered, she wouldn't have to slip out at all. She could simply disappear, transport to the ship and download the information. No, it would be sloppy. The man knew she had come in. She had to go back out, otherwise she'd cause confusion and, most likely, suspicion. So, after straightening her uniform and checking to make sure all her modern gear was stowed safely away, she put on what she hoped was a sly, see-you-later smile and placed her hand on the door knob.

She stopped though, frozen by a memory of another door opening on a cold, dark street to desolation and fear. It was a strange sensation but one she was having more and more often. She was starting to realize now that it wasn't just a dream. She was remembering. It had to be a memory from the ghetto before she had been attacked on the train. It faded quickly though, without giving her any answers. She decided she would ask Dax that evening, or maybe Novak. Right now, she had a duty to perform. She replaced her smile and opened the door.

Bashir had known better than to take that face at face value. O'Brien and his shipmates were gone. Besides, the chief hadn't said anything as they left the barracks, and he wouldn't have known anything about Blocksperre or that there was going to be a selection. Bashir had reasoned then, that it was just Heiler trying out a new face, a new game with which to torment him. Using O'Brien's voice, the Irish lilt that still visited sometimes in Bashir's restless dreams, she had told him to wait and left him standing near the fence and in easy view of one of the guard towers. She had spoken quietly so that the Ukrainian guard in the tower wouldn't overhear. Dropping the accent, and slipping back into German, she yelled something to the guard. Then O'Brien, the changeling, had left him to stand in the early morning stillness with the sun barely topping the horizon.

It had been three hours, and the guard had watched him carefully for every minute of them. His gun never wavered from pointing directly at Bashir's chest. Perhaps O'Brien had offered him some especially nice bribe to watch him so carefully. Or maybe he simply enjoyed his work. Whatever the reason, the man did what he was told.

The changeling, once again as Scharfüher Heiler, returned after another hour, when the sun was well up into the sky somewhere behind the billows of smoke. Bashir was so stiff by then that he could barely move when she told him to follow her. He had no other plans for the day, so he followed, wondering idly if she would kill him today. He didn't have far to go. She led him to the latrine building. Everyone else was at roll call or locked in the barracks so the place was empty.

Heiler's body changed into that of Whaley and the changeling sighed. Bashir said nothing, nor did he move at all. He watched her carefully though. She looked around her noting the filth and mud. "I don't have legs," she said. "So you wouldn't expect these would get tired." She sighed again and Bashir could tell she was in one of her gloomy moods. Still, she was just as unpredictable. She could just spend the day talking to him. Or she might decide he hadn't yet been punished enough for whatever crimes the solids had committed against her people. Selection or not, he could very well end up dead.

She was watching him. "You could show a little sympathy," she admonished. "This takes effort, you know. Being solid is your natural form. It takes more work for us." She turned away from him, slowly pacing the length of the building. "Did you know I volunteered for this mission. I thought I could do it. It's not just replacing people. That part is easy. Even learning everything about you solids only takes a few days. But it's so hard being alone."

She came back to him, standing close. She sounded tired and even sincere. He didn't care. Loneliness was the least of what she deserved. "You know, in the Link," she continued, "one of your centuries was so short. It flew by. A decade was the wink of an eye, if we had had them. But now. . . ." She let her voice drop off. When she resumed it was with a greater sense of despair. Bashir had never seen her so emotional. "Now, I'm alone. It's only been a few weeks and it's an eternity. Four hundred years!" she exclaimed, emphasizing each word. "Four hundred and thirty actually. I thought I could stand to be away from the Link, but now. . . . It's hard when you're alone."

She stopped as if waiting for a reply. Bashir didn't speak. She would probably hit him for it. But he was sure she would hit him for anything he said, so there was no point wasting his breath on words. She turned her head, distracted by some distant noise that Bashir could no longer hear. "We have to move," she said. She took him by the arm and pushed him out the door.

The wind was strong now, blowing ice across his face and stinging at his eyes. It was nothing new. That had been happening since the day he arrived in this time. He imagined it would continue to the day he died. Spring could not come to Auschwitz. She led him into another barracks. Its inmates had already gone off to work. Like all the barracks he had ever seen, including his own, it was scarcely cleaner than the latrines. She leaned back against one of the bunks and watched him. Bashir, once again, simply stood where she had left him, just inside the door.

"You're not much for conversation, are you?" she said. An edge had come into her tone. "I probably should have left you in your barracks. You should be thanking me for saving your useless life. And this isn't the first time. You haven't thanked me once."

That was a good point, Bashir decided. Not that part about thanking her, but the saving of his life. She had done it several times now, but she had also nearly killed him just as many times or more. He didn't feel the need to thank her, but he was curious as to why she did it. She obviously wanted him to be punished, and yet she stopped on the brink of his death every time. Even when he had been willing to give up himself, she had forced him to the hospital for two days of recuperation. He had noted the selection the next day. She had saved him then as well. But why?

Bashir opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. Whaley watched him expectantly. "Wh- I don't understand," he said finally, remembering that a question would earn him a blow, "why you bother to save me."

She didn't even have to think about her answer, and, by her tone, an unknowing observer might have thought the two of them had been friends for years. "You're the only one I can talk to," she said. "No one else here knows me. I can be myself with you." She smiled. "Or anyone else, for that matter.

"Still," she warned, "I wouldn't get too comfortable if I were you. I will last the four hundred and thirty years. You, on the other hand. . . ." She didn't finish the sentence, but Bashir knew what she meant. He would die eventually, whenever she grew tired of him. "I think, when I do get back to the Link, that we'll have a lot to learn from this place." She started pacing again. "Yes, a lot to learn. You're a pretty good test of such facilities actually. You escaped from our prison camp, you and that Cardassian friend of yours. We should have killed him immediately. But I can see now that we were much too lenient with you. Except for that period in isolation, you were allowed to walk around freely. You're a murderer, a vile being who can't even keep his own word, and we treated you like a guest. This place has been much more effective."

Forgetting himself, Bashir glanced up at her at that accusation. He immediately dropped his eyes again, but she had already seen it. "Yes, you. Do no harm. Isn't that what your oath says, the one you hold higher than even your oath to Starfleet? You harm. You murder. You were at the helm when the Jem'Hadar first boarded the Defiant three years ago. You fired the weapons that destroyed one of our vessels. How many do you think you killed then?" She let her voice raise, ignoring the fact that someone might overhear. "And what about Odo? You destroyed him without even a hint of remorse!"

Bashir's brow furrowed as he tried to imagine what she meant. Odo was a friend. He would never hurt him willingly.

"I meant your supervisor," she explained slowly, as if dealing with a dense child, "in ore processing. You stole a phaser from one of the guards and shot him, full power."

He remembered now. The alternate universe, the one where humans were slaves and Kira had wanted him tortured to death on the Promenade. He remembered talking with one of the nurses about it a millennium ago, before all this happened. She knew about that. How could she know? Had she read the thoughts in his face or in his mind? Unless perhaps she had been the nurse. Perhaps he had been talking to her.

"We replaced you," she stated, as if it were obvious. "We know everything you know. We know all about your enhanced DNA and even that stuffed bear you keep in your quarters. Don't you think you're a little old for that?"

Agitated that they had gotten off on a tangent, she pulled the one-sided conversation back around to Bashir's crimes. "Even here you harm people, your fellow prisoners."

Bashir closed his eyes, not wanting to hear anymore. He had done all those things, but none of them had been murder. He had shot down the Jem'Hadar ship to save the Defiant and the lives of its crew. He had shot that other Odo in self-defense. And Piotr. . . . No, he told himself. She shot Piotr.

"But it was your refusal to carry out the order that I gave you that killed him. You knew the terms. You let him die."

"I . . . I couldn't decide," Bashir stammered in a whisper. "You didn't give me a chance."

"You obey here!" she yelled. "You don't have to decide! You do what you're told. Did you have time to decide when you killed Odo? Or did you just shoot? Did you question your captain when he told you to fire? Oh, you care so much for your precious Piotr or that Frenchman. Jews! Whose lives were over once the war began. They had no future, no worth! But do you care for my people? Do their deaths cause you grief?"

She dropped her voice. "You want to know why I save your life, you who aren't worth one tenth of even one of the lives you destroyed? I save your life so you can pay for them. But I promise you this, " she said, coming so close that he could feel the air when she spoke, "you will never live again outside these fences. But you will live until then." As she spoke she began to unbutton the first two buttons on his coat and on his shirt. Bashir did nothing to stop her. Anything he tried would only cause him pain.

"On the day they come to save you, the Soviets or the Americans or anyone else, that's the day I will kill you." She placed her hand directly on his chest and he was surprised by the cold of it. It felt fake, like some synthetic thing, a piece of rubber placed against his skin. "But" she continued, speaking almost seductively "until then you will live, and your days and nights will be filled with pain and the memories of all that has been taken from you." Her lips were so close to his cheek that, had she been someone else, she might have kissed him. But he knew her better than that, and he feared her touch even before it began to pierce his chest.

It was small at first, a mere pinprick, and he felt more nausea than pain when she slowly poured the thin band of herself into him, squirming like a worm between his ribs. His instinct said to grab her hand and pull it away, but to touch the SS was not allowed. His hands twitched as she writhed inside him, and his breath caught in his throat. His chest began to burn as the band in him thickened and moved its way toward his heart. Now it was pain, made worse by the horror of what was happening. He wanted to pull away but it was as if another hand had gone inside him and took hold of his heart. His knees trembled but he willed himself not to fall, afraid that his heart would be ripped from his chest if he did.

He struggled to breathe against the pain and the foreign thing inside him. His heart pounded against the pressure he felt. His left arm was going numb. He looked at her. She had to stop or she would kill him and break her promise. But she stood directly in front of him, staring coldly into his eyes. She was neither smiling nor snarling. Her face was a blank, a stone wall as cold as his cell in Block 11.

He fell, but she released her grip, letting the strand of herself pull back until it found a grip on one of his ribs. She pulled him up that way, her hand still flat against his chest, until his face was again inches from hers. She was fuzzy. His eyes wouldn't focus. She changed. A man stood before him now, his face a contradiction to the uniform he was wearing. "Do you recognize this face?" Whaley's voice asked. When he didn't answer, she pulled him closer. "Do you recognize this face?"

It was the face of a prisoner, one of the others who shared the bunk with Max and Bashir. He was the last of its original inhabitants. All the others before Bashir's arrival had died. Bashir nodded weakly. He couldn't answer. He could hardly breathe.

"Follow it in the morning," she said, keeping the prisoner's face. "We've been transferred." She changed again, back to Heiler and pulled the strand back into her hand. With nothing to hold him up, Bashir fell, pinning his left shoulder beneath him. He made no move to rise or even to roll over.

"Don't be late back to your barracks," Heiler told him, still speaking with Whaley's voice. Bashir didn't see him leave, but he heard the door close.

Chief O'Brien was still working on the warp drive. They had the minimum power they would need to get back to the twenty-fourth century now, but O'Brien wasn't satisfied. He didn't want the minimum. The minimum didn't leave room for errors, and until they got to a starbase, this ship was going to be full of errors. They were becoming easier to predict now, but half-way around that sun approaching warp ten was not the time to have to try and prevent one. Now was. The ship could rest and save her strength while the engineering crew worked to give her more.

O'Brien wanted to reach at least the middle range of the required engine strength. He'd like to get it higher than that, but the changeling had really torn things apart. As things stood, it would take three minutes just to break orbit and then nearly forty seconds more to switch from impulse to warp. Six minutes before they reached the threshold at which the ship would be thrown forward in time. It wasn't good enough.

O'Brien, due to his duty shift, had not been at the debriefing meeting the senior staff and away team had every night. But he'd seen the uniform. The nursing staff had it laid out on one of the biobeds in sickbay. They had made the excuse first of scanning it, seeing if they could detect any injury to the doctor or any residue of gas. They had, happily, detected neither, but the uniform hadn't moved.

O'Brien knew what they were up to. Bashir had made friends with the senior staff, and he was close to them. But the medical staff was his staff. He worked with them every day. He knew each of their names when O'Brien didn't, when maybe even the captain didn't. They were there when he stayed up all night with a patient. They shared his devotion to medicine like none of the senior staff could. Not one member of his staff, Federation or Bajoran, had ever asked for a transfer. Some of them had even asked to be transferred to his staff, not to DS Nine and not to the Defiant. But to Julian. He was their doctor, and the uniform was a tribute to him, a way of saying they hadn't given up and they hadn't forgotten.

O'Brien appreciated the tribute. Each day that went on, each clue they found, made Julian's death more real. And O'Brien was ninety percent sure that he was dead. He hadn't been able to go down to the planet, but he'd read every report, smelled the odor the away team's uniforms left in the corridors. He saw their faces just before they beamed down to that place. He had even found a report on the computer, a document smuggled out of the camp just this month that survived after the war. Twenty thousand people, it claimed, had died in Auschwitz since the beginning of the year. Julian was just one man, and a kind man, more apt to give away his food and starve himself than to watch others go hungry. He was not the sort to fight over a piece of bread or sit silently in the face of cruelty.

The ten percent that still held hope was in two things. Julian's experience in the Jem'Hadar internment camp and his genetic enhancements. Julian had protested a decrease in rations for the prisoners which resulted in a stint in isolation. Maybe he had learned from that what speaking out could do in a such a situation. Maybe he had learned to just exist quietly and keep his head down. Maybe he survived that way. And maybe his enhanced stamina gave him strength when around him others were losing theirs. Maybe he didn't have to have as much food to function.

These were the two things that O'Brien held on to, while he waited for news of his friend. But his doubt led him back to sickbay after his shift was up. The nurse watched him when he entered, but she didn't ask him if she could help him as she usually would have. She could tell he hadn't come as a patient. The uniform was still there, with the sleeves placed loosely across the torso of the jacket. In the dim light, at first glance, it was almost like Julian was lying there himself, but O'Brien knew that was just what he wanted to see. He stepped up to the bed and touched one of the sleeves, the blue one, for a moment. And then he did what he came there for. He held Julian's comm badge up to the light, looking at the marks scratched there once more before he placed it on the uniform. Then he walked away.