When Bashir woke again, gray dawn was just beginning to seep in between the boards of the walls. It was no warmer, but he could feel his hands again. He felt something sharp in one of the pockets but hesitated at removing his hand. His toes were stubbornly still numb, and he still shivered with the cold. Julian squinted around the car, trying to make out the forms of the other people. It appeared they were all still sleeping.

It was a good time, as good as he would get. No one would see him disable the communicator. He hated to do it. One last try, he thought. He pulled his hand from the warm wool pocket and dug through the layers of his clothes until he felt the hard metal of the comm badge. Without removing it, he pressed it. The clothes would help to muffle any sound. The same sick chirp greeted him. No communication with the ship.

Bashir sighed and removed his other hand. It held the sharp thing he had felt. He held it up to the dim light. A screwdriver, small like a jeweler might use, only slightly larger. It would work. He pulled out the comm badge and began to pry off its face.

Within a few minutes, it was a complete wreck. It wouldn't chirp. The translator wouldn't translate. And, unfortunately, now no one on the ship would be able to track him by its signal. He was cut off.

Then a thought occurred to him, and he pulled out the screwdriver again. Someone might find his comm badge eventually. He could leave a message there. English would be too recognizable, so he decided on Cardassian. He silently thanked Garak for all the Cardassian literature he had given him to read over the years. The symbols weren't as intricate as Bajoran, and any of the senior officers would be able to read them.

He was not quite sure what to write though. He had to keep it short. There was only so much space on the face of a comm badge, but also, he just didn't know enough. He knew he was in Poland on a train bound for somewhere. He assumed it would be a camp, but there were hundreds of those, if he remembered correctly. Finally, he just decided on "Poland" and "Arrested." There wasn't room for much more. He scratched symbols that were nearest to the syllables of his message into the face and then hurriedly put the screwdriver away. Then, as an afterthought, he added a set of numbers. Sisko would recognize it as a stardate.

A commotion was growing outside the train. Bashir could hear footsteps. Hundreds of them. And yelling. German again. He could no longer understand it, but he recognized it just as well. The people around him began to stir. Julian held his broken comm badge to the light. He shined its surface on his coat sleeve and looked at it one last time. Its shiny surface reflected back his own tired face and worried eyes. Folding it into his fist, he shoved it beneath some of the loose straw near his feet and tried to put it out of his mind.

The commotion was louder, and the other people were now fully awake. Andrzej said something to him, but it was all a jumble. He could no longer understand Polish. Bashir looked at him. He didn't seem to expect an answer. He nodded and Julian nodded back. Andrzej turned to talk to his cousin.

And then the noise was right outside the door. Julian heard the clatter of the lock, and the door was thrust open. Light from outside poured in, hurting Bashir's eyes. He blinked it away and stood up. There were people at the door. And a soldier. He pushed the people inside with curses and screams.

Julian could do little but stare as the people climbed aboard. Beyond the ones scrambling to get in were still many more, clutching their spouses and children and looking around with fearful eyes as they waited their turn. The car filled up quickly, but still the people were pushed aboard. He couldn't count them all, but Julian was sure that perhaps a hundred had already climbed inside.

Someone approached the soldier. It was the old woman, the one who had given him the clothes. "Wir haben hier noch einen Toten! Helfen Sie mir, ihn herauszutragen!" She gestured toward the corner. She must be asking about the dead man, Julian decided.

"Der kann mir gestohlen bleiben!" the soldier smirked as he pushed her away with the butt of his gun.

The people kept coming and they pressed close. Julian was glad that he'd been staying near the window. Andrzej pushed his way past some of them and pulled his cousin along with him until they were beside Bashir at the wall. This time he said nothing. No sarcastic remarks foretelling of their doom, no defiant words. Bashir could see the fear in his eyes as well.

When the door was pulled shut again, the car was filled from wall to wall with people. Bashir was pressed at every side. He was still tired and would've liked to sit down again, but there just wasn't any room. He was thankful for his height that allowed him to see over most of the heads around him. He could see out the small window as well, where icicles hung like crystal daggers. His breath blew out in wisps of vapor, but already the car was beginning to get a little warmer from all the people.

Bashir expected the train to start moving right away, but it stayed still. The air was filled with murmuring, fearful voices. Beyond them, he could still hear the commotion and shouting, doors being slammed and locked. They were still loading the train. He tried to remember how many cars he'd seen when the truck had pulled up the day before, but he hadn't really paid attention.

His stomach growled painfully, and he tried to ignore it by staring out the window at the old buildings in this Polish city. He wished he were certain of its name. Bialystok, he assumed, from what Andrzej had said earlier. Not that it would make any difference. He tried not to think about the Defiant and his home on the station. Instead, he concentrated on the architecture of the buildings he could see. Some of it would have been quite beautiful, he imagined, in a different time.

Major Kira Nerys sat in the captain's chair of the Defiant, cradling the cup of raktajino that she'd carried up from the mess hall in her hands. The mess hall replicators were the only ones that worked. She had woken up for duty two hours ago and checked the status of the repairs. It had been decided the night before—was it really night? It was hard to tell anymore with the change in time—that sensors were their main concern, followed by main power. The forward sensors were literally gone, as Dax had put it, and it would take at least the better part of the day to get main power back up and running. Nearly half the plasma relay was out of commission.

Kira sipped her coffee and tried to ignore the frustration she was feeling. She was in charge of looking for the missing crew members, but there was still no way for her to carry out that task. The sensors were still out. The transporter logs from the shuttle—what they could get of them—were wiped. Dax was working on unscrambling any recurring data fragments, but that could take hours, or days, considering the shape the shuttle was in. And communications were no good either. They were all still just as lost as they had been the night before.

By the time the train began to move, the sun was almost straight over head. Noon, Bashir thought. How long had he been gone? It was hard to tell. There had been a time change when he was beamed down to the planet. It was late evening on the Defiant, but it had still seemed early here, with the sun just beginning to go down. Now it was noon. So that was the better part of a day, at least.

The train jostled and moved slowly past the buildings, bringing new ones into view. Bashir's legs ached from standing still for so long. There really was no room to sit, but some of the other people had managed to crouch down a bit. Andrzej and Vláďa were crouched beside him. Vláďa had fallen asleep on Andrzej's shoulder.

Leaning on the wall, and trying not to push too hard at the people around him, Bashir slowly slid down as best as he could. Andrzej gave him a quick, small smile and sighed. "Jedziemy na południe," he said.

Bashir didn't understand a word. Well, this is it, he thought. He took a breath and was about to speak but hesitated. He had a thought. It was worth a chance. "Andrzej," he began, pronouncing the name very carefully, "parlez-vous français?"

Andrzej regarded him confusedly for just a moment. But then he nodded. "Oui, un peu."

Bashir sighed, much relieved. "Good," he said, in English, then he switched to French. "Mon français est meilleur que mon—" He stopped. He had never had to think how to say Polish in French. "Polsky," he finished and gave a sheepish smile, hoping that he'd at least come close with the word.

Andrzej smiled too, but he didn't repeat his earlier statement. He sighed heavily and looked up at the ceiling above them. His smile disappeared and he whispered, "Nous allons mourir."

It took a moment for Julian to get used to hearing French again. He hadn't used it for over five years. We're going to die, he thought. That's what he said. He didn't want to hear that, even though he knew there was a high probability that it was true. He didn't want Andrzej to think it. "Non," he told Andrzej, touching him lightly on the shoulder. "Nous allons vivre. Vous et moi et Vláďa. Ensemble. We're going to live," he repeated, more for himself than for his companion.

Andrzej looked over at him and shook his head, but Bashir saw some hope in his eyes. "Non," he said, "nous allons mourir de faim. Nous n'avons pas de—" He stopped looking for the word. "Jedzenia," he said finally.

Bashir couldn't understand the last word since Andrzej had spoken it in Polish, but he could easily guess at what it was from the rest of his statement. Food. We don't have food. As if in response, Bashir's stomach rumbled again. He looked around. Where he could see, he saw bags and suitcases. The people that had been put on the train in the morning had brought bags with them. Andrzej and Vláďa had been arrested the night before. They hadn't had time to prepare provisions. They'd probably been taken off the street just like himself.

The train was moving very slowly. Even for this time, Julian thought. There must be too much weight on it, if they packed all the cars as full as this one. In all truth, Bashir didn't expect they'd find much food once they reached their destination, but they didn't have a chance on the train, unless the new people shared. They'd all looked hungry, and each of their bags was small. They wouldn't share with strangers. They would feed their own families. He couldn't really blame them.

A replicator would be nice right about now, he thought ruefully. He was beginning to get cold again, so he wrapped the extra shirt tightly around his legs and stuck his hands back down in the pockets of his coat.

Ensign Mylea Thomas took a moment to stretch her fingers and pop her knuckles. Then she plunged her hands right back into the circuits and conduits before her. She only had the minimum training in engineering that went along with being a pilot, but with a careful schematic beside her, she could make progress. With only three engineers on board the ship, everyone was having to pitch in. It wasn't the most exciting work, but it was necessary. As much as Mylea loved history, she really had no desire to spend the rest of her life in it, orbiting the planet in a wrecked starship.

She wouldn't have minded visiting it though. History, that is. There was quite a time going on down there. World War II. It was one of the most fascinating eras for her. Mainly because it scared her, horrified her. She'd always been drawn to things like that. Wieland had jokingly called her morbid. Maybe he was right.

She hoped he was alright. He was one of the missing. Like the others, she hoped he was down on the planet. And she hoped he wasn't. There were too many places to get into trouble. He was German. There was a war going on to stop the Germans. Nearly the whole world was fighting them and their few allies. It was a dangerous place to be. But it was the only place to be right now besides the ship. And he was not on the ship.

As soon as the sensors were operational, they'd be searching for him and the other missing crewmembers, so Mylea was happy enough to be helping to fix them. Chief O'Brien was pretty sure the forward sensor array was hopeless, but with the laterals they would be able to scan at least a part of the planet's surface.

A wire snapped and shocked the tip of her finger causing her to flinch back. She shook her hand a few times while drawing a quick breath in through her teeth. The tingling faded and she looked at her hand. There was no wound. Just a mild shock, she thought, but she would try to be more careful in the future.

The sun was dropping again, and, with it, the already low temperature. The train moved slowly and noisily along the tracks, its clanking and clamoring nearly drowning out the murmur of its inhabitants. There was not a lot of talking, except from the children. But Bashir was even surprised by them. They were pretty calm, all told. They were hungry, but only the littlest among them really complained. They've been doing this for a while, he thought, in the city. They must have been rationing there as well. It made him sad to think of the children. Childhood was supposed to be a happy time. He knew that was not always the case, but no child should have to live through this, to die like this. He knew—how could he not know?—that most of them would not survive.

The ache in his own stomach was becoming harder to ignore with each hour. At least they seemed like hours to him. He couldn't really tell. But it was sunset again. He had been there for at least a full day. He hadn't thought he'd be on the train that long. He suddenly wished he hadn't disabled his communicator just yet. He could've tried to contact the ship again. They might have communications fixed. Or sensors.

But the hope faded as fast as it had come. What could they do about it? They couldn't just beam him out of the train. He took his hands out of his pockets to rub his shoulders. He couldn't feel his feet anymore either, and wasn't sure it was from the cold. He'd been crouched in this cramped position for far too many hours. He needed to stretch and move around.

Slowly, bracing his back against the wall, he inched himself up to his full height. He still couldn't move around, but he could feel the blood returning to his feet. About half the others in the train were standing up, but most were leaning on each other, half-sitting and talking quietly among themselves. Occasionally someone shuffled and pushed to get to the corner by the door. A bucket had been set up there for people to relieve themselves. He could smell it all the way on the opposite side of the train. Every once in a while, they would dump it out the crack beneath the door.

Bashir thought about his time in ore-processing on Terok Nor when he and Kira had accidentally ended up in a parallel universe. It had been hot and dirty and hard work. But he would trade it for this in an instant. On top of the cold, the foul, stale air, and the hunger, was the unknown. The only thing he really knew about where they were going was that most of the people who arrived were killed.

One thing was the same as that ore-processing center. He was thirsty. He hadn't had anything to drink in over a day, and his mouth was dry and sticky. But he couldn't ask any of the people around him for water. They barely had enough for themselves. Looking out the window, he remembered the icicles. It wasn't the best way to get water, but as a doctor, he knew it was more dangerous not to have water at all. Reaching out into the frigid air beyond the train, careful to avoid the barbs on the wire that crisscrossed the window in a tangle, he snapped one of the icicles off.

But then he was in a predicament. He couldn't pull his hand back through the wire without dropping the icicle, and there were too few of them left on the window to risk that. Using his other hand then, he pushed his fingers through on top of his other wrist. Then he very carefully tipped the icicle up until it lay along his extended hand and touched the fingers of the other. Very slowly, then, he pushed the icicle back toward his other fingers until he could hold the tip of it and pull it through on its own. But in his haste once he had the icicle, he scraped his first hand extricating it from the wire. There was a trickle of blood, but it didn't hurt much. His hand was nearly numb already.

It was a fairly large icicle, and he knew Andrzej and Vláďa would be thirsty too, so he broke off a piece of it and then crouched back down. Vláďa was awake by now, watching him, as Andrzej slept against him. Bashir handed the larger piece of the icicle to the boy, gesturing that he should share it with his cousin. Vláďa snatched it from him quickly and snapped the piece in two, shaking his cousin's shoulder with his elbow before he hungrily took a bite of his piece. "Děkuji," he said, still crunching the ice.

Bashir couldn't understand what he said, but he was sure it was "thank you." He noticed his own piece was beginning to melt in his hand, so he followed Vláďa's example. It felt good to eat something again, even if it was only frozen water. The piece was gone quickly though.

A hand touched his shoulder. "Benjamin," Dax's scolding voice came from behind him, "is that all you're eating?" She released his shoulder and walked around the table to sit across from him. Anyone else would probably see the same serene expression she carried most of the time, but he could see Curzon in her eyes, and just a hint of a mother's worry, rebuking him for not taking better care of himself.

"I'm not very hungry, Old Man," he said. He looked down at his plate again and picked at his food.

Dax just gave him a small smile and reached across the table to touch his hand. Then she drew her hand back to cup the raktajino that sat in front of her on the table.

"Any luck with the transporter logs?" Sisko asked, taking another small bite as she watched.

"Not just yet," she answered unhappily. "We lost parts of the shuttle before the emergency force fields came down, too."

Suddenly the lights in the mess hall became brighter.

"Main power!" they said together and smiled.

Sisko forgot his food and slapped his comm badge. "Sisko to O'Brien."

"O'Brien, sir."

"We've got main power?"

"That we do, sir, but we'll still need to regulate our power flows. Keep things rationed a bit."

"I'll work on it, Chief," Dax volunteered.

Sisko was not quite through yet. "What about sensors, Chief?" he asked hopefully.

"Well," the chief hesitated, "they were more damaged than I first thought, but we should be able to get limited use of the port lateral sensor array."

"That's still good news, Chief. Keep it up. Sisko out." He turned to Dax with a brightness in his eyes that had been gone for more than a day. "Old Man," he grinned, "let's see if we can't find our people."

Kira was already on the bridge when they arrived. She was standing, leaning over one of the consoles. She looked up when she heard the turbolift doors open. "We're able to scan about two percent of the planet's surface at a time. It's not much, but it's a start. This is your planet, Captain, where do you suppose we should begin?"

"Start with the most heavily populated areas," Sisko replied, making a guess. Where would a changeling beam his people anyway? "If they're down there we should be able to get a signal from their comm badges."

Kira nodded. "Right, sir." She took her seat.

The turbolift doors opened again, allowing Worf to enter the bridge. His face was still stern, despite their small victory over main power and port lateral sensors. He walked stiffly to Sisko's chair and stood at attention.

"What do you have to report, Commander?" Sisko asked.

"Beyond the damage to the ship," the Klingon began, "we have found little evidence of the changeling. But what we have found is quite conclusive." He glanced at the PADD he was holding and began his report. "Dr. Bashir's medical logs indicate the anomalous blood sample taken when the crew was blood-screened before the ship departed Deep Space Nine. It belonged to Lieutenant Julie Whaley, whom the nurse identified as a changeling. His further logs indicate that the samples had been destroyed, against his orders by that same nurse. The computer shows an equivalent amount of organic material destroyed in sickbay at a time index three minutes after the power drain began in the stasis unit."

"So that's when the shapeshifter replaced Nurse Hausmann," Sisko interrupted. He couldn't help but notice that Worf seemed comfortable with this investigative role. Back in his element, I suppose, Sisko thought.

Worf seemed annoyed by the interruption and rolled his eyes a fraction of the way up to the ceiling. Hardly noticeable. "Yes, sir. Nurse Hausmann," he continued, stressing the name to indicate that it was not Nurse Hausmann at all, "continued to report for her duty shift until just before we reached this sector. We also noted another sizable amount of organic matter disposed of during the second night."

That caught Sisko's attention. "How much organic matter?"

"That equivalent to one human female's arm," the Klingon answered with satisfaction and handed the PADD he had been holding to Sisko. The computer had managed to reconstruct a schematic of the organic material. The changeling, for once, had slipped up. "Lieutenant Whaley's arm," Worf added for emphasis.

Sisko heard a sharp breath drawn behind him. Dax was looking over his shoulder at the PADD. "That explains a lot, Benjamin."

"The blood in the sample," Sisko finished for her, "was human. It was from Whaley's own arm. The changeling destroyed the samples, because it thought Bashir would figure it out if he had them to study." Another thought struck him then. "He wasn't alone."

"Sir?" Worf asked, not understanding.

Sisko looked up at him and then looked to Dax. "Doctor Bashir. He wasn't alone. Someone notified us that he'd been transported. No one notified us of the others." He stood up and quickly walked to the Engineering station. The lieutenant sitting there looked up at him over his shoulder. "Can we find out where the missing crewmembers were when they were last on this ship?"

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, turning back to his console. "Shouldn't be too much of a problem."

Worf and the others waited silently. Worf looked guilty, like he was disappointed in himself for not finding out that information before. But then it was hard to tell with him. Most of the time, he hid his emotions well.

"Got it, sir," the lieutenant said.

"On screen."

The large central viewscreen immediately came to life, displaying a diagram of the ship in two planes, from the side and from above. Thirty-four points of yellow light marked the location of each missing crewman twice, once on each plane. Just looking at the overhead schematic, fourteen of them were largely grouped together. One of the others was in the transporter room. One was in sickbay at least a deck above all the others. Bashir. The other was in the shuttle bay. The changeling.

"Show me a time index," Sisko ordered quietly, still watching the screen. "Put them up in the order they disappeared."

The points of light winked out and then began to return, beginning with the transporter room and two small, yellow dots in Engineering. They expanded outward from there. Just at the end, the light in sickbay popped on and then the shuttlebay. "Show me other life signs at that time on the ship, in a different color."

The screen changed again, the schematics being filled in by small red dots reaching into nearly all areas of the ship. Forty-seven red and yellow dots per schematic. The full crew compliment. Still, from Engineering out, there was a circle of yellow dots without a single red to break them up. Only Bashir and the changeling and the transporter stood apart, yellows surrounded by all red.

"The changeling started here," Sisko said, pointing the transporter room. "And it transported all the crewman stationed in this area, and then fanned out from there. The shuttle's transporter capacity is two. Why did it skip from here"—he pointed to the last two dots to show up before the one in sickbay—"and then jump to sickbay and only take Bashir? There were other people there." He looked back at his officers. Kira was watching him now, too, and he couldn't help but notice the concern in her eyes and wrinkled brow.

"Revenge," Worf stated bluntly. "It was angry about the blood samples, or the reprimand."

Sisko raised his eyebrows questioningly, hoping Worf would take the hint. He did. "His medical logs recorded a reprimand to Nurse Hausmann—by this time the changeling—for destroying the blood samples against his orders."

Sisko remembered the blood he'd found in the transporter room. It worried him even more. The changeling had likely killed that crewman in the transporter room, someone it probably had little or no contact with. His hopes of finding Bashir and the others alive plummeted again.

Everyone was too quiet, too still, watching him. "Any luck yet, Major?" Sisko asked returning to his seat.

"Not yet, sir. I've begun the search in the southeast section of the largest continent. The most populated, as you suggested, but we're moving out of sensor range there."

"We'll have to keep to daylight until the cloak is fixed. Scan wherever you can."

Looking up through the wire that covered the window, Julian Bashir could see the stars. They were familiar to him, like old friends, dreams he'd had long ago standing on the veranda of his family's house in Knightsbridge. He had wanted to be a part of those stars, to reach as far as he could go. These stars were like his neighborhood.

Somewhere up there was the Defiant. Somewhere far beyond that was Bajor and a space station that would not be built for four hundred years. Julian Bashir drifted off to sleep not knowing if he'd ever see that station again.

It was mid-day again and the train had been stopped for nearly two hours. But the doors never opened, not to give the prisoners food or water or even to remove the dead. Julian Bashir couldn't be sure just how many dead there were. There were just too many people packed into the car. He couldn't see where one ended and the next began. All the ragged coats and dirty faces blended in together in one large mass of misery.

And this day was colder than the last. Out the window he could see only a white landscape of snow on the hills and trees. They'd stopped in the middle of nowhere, quite literally, and for apparently no reason at all. He could hear voices from the other cars, yelling, pleading for just a little water or food. He could hear the same voices in his own car, but the Germans didn't seem to care. They didn't even come within sight, and they didn't yell back.

"Peut-être, ils sont partis," Andrzej said, standing up beside him.

Bashir regarded his companion for a moment. His face was grave. He didn't seem optimistic. And Bashir thought it unlikely that the Germans would just leave them on the train to die as Andrzej had suggested. If nothing else, they probably needed the train. Andrzej laughed a small hollow laugh when Julian told him that.

"Probablement," he sighed.

A shot rang out in the crisp winter air, and Julian turned back to the window, craning his neck to try and see what had happened. Around him the noise had both risen and fallen at the same time, with some people driven to panic and others terrified into silence. There on the snow, at the very edge of his vision, was a small brown blob. A swatch of red slowly spread beneath it. Bashir shook his head sadly and looked back to Andrzej. "Ils ne sont pas partis," he whispered.

It was at least another hour before the train moved again. Twice more, they'd heard such shots, and Bashir wondered why anyone else would've tried to escape, knowing that the Germans were ready to shoot them down. Part of his mind, though, was more interested in just how they escaped off the train in the first place. He was starting to think that almost anything was better than this.

Only one icicle remained in the window, and Bashir hoped they would reach wherever they were going before that one was gone. He didn't think he'd ever been this hungry. Three days without food. Some of the things he'd seen Quark eat were beginning to sound pretty good.

Sisko looked up at the screen. A map of the continents of Earth was displayed there, with about one fourth of their surfaces highlighted. The highlighted area extended almost in a single band reaching from left to right on a line even with China, just north of the Tropic of Cancer.

"That's what you've scanned," Sisko said.

"Yes, sir," Kira replied. "We haven't detected any of the missing crewmen yet. We'll need to move the ship so that we can scan some other areas."

Sisko studied the map again and began to determine a new heading. But, of course, navigation had gone out when everything else had. He glanced at the helm. Ensign Thomas looked back at him, waiting for his orders. At least she was from Earth. She would be familiar with the geography.

"Ensign, we're going to have to pilot this ship manually using only maneuvering thrusters. Use the port sensor readings to determine a heading. Let's go just north of the area already scanned. Major, sensors on screen."

Both acknowledged his orders. In a moment, the main viewscreen changed to show a partial picture of Earth's surface surrounded by blackness. There was no way to identify the area. Thomas had turned back to her console, fingers playing over the controls. She watched her readings carefully for a few minutes. Sisko didn't pressure her. With only partial use of one of the lateral sensor arrays, it wasn't easy to see where they were, let alone where they were going.

"Computer," Sisko called, "cross-reference sensor readings with known geography of Earth in the mid-twentieth century. Enhance image."

"Working," the computer droned. Then the rest of the viewscreen filled in with a more detailed picture of the same area of Earth, but this time showing more of the surrounding areas. The land mass now on the viewscreen was easily identifiable as Spain.

"Thank you, sir," Thomas said. "I've got it."

"Engage thrusters." Sisko waited and then the ship began to move, altering the view on the screen until they were looking at the western coast of France. Sisko would've liked to head east from there, over the continent of Europe, but that was not the way the planet revolved, and they couldn't use the thrusters continuously. The last patch of land disappeared from the viewscreen as the Defiant headed out over the Atlantic Ocean.

"Major, I don't expect we'll find much there," Sisko said. "What's our range for scanning the surrounding space?"

"Less than five hundred kilometers," she replied.

"Well, it's better than no sensors at all." Sisko really didn't want her to find anything on those particular scans. But he had to know. "Let's see if they're out there."

Julian Bashir was lost in black sleep when the train began to slow down. Whispers began to spread throughout the train, emanating from the watch, a few men posted at cracks and windows to keep a look out. People started stirring. Bashir heard them, but didn't want to wake up. He was not comfortable or warm, and he was still very hungry, but with his eyes closed and his head bowed and sleep beckoning him back, he could almost forget some of that.

But then the train stopped. Everyone became completely silent. Bashir opened his eyes and turned to see Andrzej and Vláďa, their eyes wide and their faces full of apprehension. Julian wanted to ask where they were, but was afraid to break the silence in the car. Bright light filtered in through the cracks in the boards on the walls. There was the sound of movement outside.

Suddenly the door was flung open, pouring the blinding light into the faces of the dazed passengers. The noise was incredible. Dogs were barking viciously. SS officers were shouting in German. Prisoners in striped uniforms were yelling in Polish, pulling people from the train. The people were too dazed at first, but then the car began to empty quickly.

Bashir stood up with Andrzej and his cousin and followed the others out the door, leaving his extra shirt behind. He glanced behind him as he did and noted there were at last a dozen corpses and sick people still inside. A rough hand on his shoulder pushed him down the small ramp that had been placed at the door, but he caught himself before he fell. Almost immediately he noticed the smell.

The scene before him was of utter chaos. Thousands of people stood in front of the train, gripping their families and asking questions of the striped prisoners who shouted back at them and sometimes pointed to the sky. Luggage was torn away from the passengers who refused to drop their bags. SS officers, both men and women, were shouting orders, pulling families apart, men to one side, women to the other. Despite the chaos, they managed the task fairly quickly and within seconds it seemed, all the passengers were grouped, separated by gender and age. Bashir could see the old woman who had given him the clothes. She stood silently and did as she was told.

It was cold out in the air. But at least there was no wind. The air in the train had been stale and stank of bodies and excrement and decay. Out in the open the air smelled different, but not clean. An orange haze hung above the lights, and the air had a sickly, sweet, smoky odor to it. Bashir knew the smell. Flesh. Burning human flesh.

The two groups were formed into lines which then began to move. Vláďa was clinging to the sleeve of Andrzej's coat so as not to lose him in the crowd. Andrzej, for his part kept close to Julian. He had a look in his eye like he wanted to say something, but he didn't. Bashir watched him and noticed, for the first time, that Andrzej was limping. He was about to ask about it, but Vláďa broke in first. "Kde jsme?" he whispered to his cousin.

"Nie wiem," Andrzej whispered back.

At that someone ahead of them turned around. "Słyszałem, jak więzień rozmawiał o tym," he said. "Auschwitz."

It was the only word Bashir understood of the whole exchange, but it was enough. Auschwitz was a name every student knew. It was the largest, most infamous of all the concentration camps of the Holocaust. Bashir shivered and it was not from the cold.

Max Zeidl clung to his wife with a grip of iron. He must have hurt her arm, but she said nothing, nor cried out. And his grip never lessened. He was determined not to lose her in the crowd. For seven years, they'd been together. He was not going to lose her now. She and their daughter were all that he had left. They had left their home in Teplice after the Munich Conference had given it and the rest of the region to the Germans. And in leaving their home, they'd left their belongings, their families, and their memories. What few belongings they'd managed to take with them remained behind in the ghetto. Only two bags had come with them to the train. And now those two bags, as well, were taken from them. But Max didn't care about that. He had Sofie and Hanna.

Max and Sofie had talked together quietly in the night while their daughter slept. He hated that he had so little food to give her. Sofie had tried to be optimistic. Wherever they were going had to be better than being cooped up in the cattle car that stank of too many people, both alive and dead. But now, she said nothing. She walked stiffly, clinging to her child and her husband as if in shock.

Max was in shock. It was not possible. None of what he saw made sense to him. It could not be reality. It was a nightmare, a scene from the gates of hell, he was sure of it. But it could not be real. His mind tried to make sense of it, but was unable. He didn't hear the screams, the shouted commands, or even the dogs his eyes could see. Only his arms worked properly, binding him to his family. Live or die, heaven or hell, they should be together.

He screamed when they began to pull her away. He refused to let her go. She cried and resisted them, insisting that she stay with her husband. Hanna bawled loudly, tears streaming down her little cheeks. But their arms were stronger than his, weak as he was from the train, and they tore Sofie from him. They held him back and pushed her away to the other side. A gulf was between them. It was only a matter of meters, but he felt somehow that it was more than that. He stared helplessly at them, memorizing them, burning their images into his memory. And he heard himself tell them not to worry. They'd meet again in the camp. Be strong and brave, and they would see each other again. "I love you!" he shouted. Sofie cried and held their daughter close.

Captain Sisko closed his eyes tight and tried not to think. He smiled, remembering the advice Doctor Bashir had given to Dax when she'd had to return to the Trill homeworld for medical treatment. She'd claimed she was too excited to rest. Sisko had assured her that the technique usually worked for him. His smile faded. He'd lied. He'd been trying that technique for going on two hours now, and he was no closer to sleep than when he'd started.

His own mind told him it was pointless to stay awake. It wouldn't help anything. The ship was being repaired as fast as possible under the circumstances. And exhausting himself would not bring back his missing crew. Even if they found them, they still wouldn't be able to transport them aboard. And O'Brien had told him it could take weeks to fix the transporter. There were other priorities.

His body, for its part, fairly ached from fatigue. He and everyone else left on the vessel were pulling double and even triple shifts. Everyone, including the senior staff, was engaged in helping O'Brien and his engineers with repairs, while also searching for the missing crew members. Progress was slow on the repairs, but at least it was progress.

But there was still no sign, however, of the missing people. Sisko had to admit that he was at least partially relieved by that. They'd scanned the surrounding space in a radius of nearly five hundred kilometers. The crewmen would've had to have been transported to the planet's surface. At least there, there was a chance of survival.

Sisko called for the computer to play some soothing music, a violin concerto by Mozart, and tried again to clear his thoughts. This time it worked. He was asleep before the music ended.

Bashir could see the SS man at the front of the line. He disinterestedly waved his finger left or right, sending the train's passengers one way or the other. Occasionally he stopped to ask them a few questions, and then he waved them on, one by one. Another prisoner in a striped uniform stood beside him, apparently as a translator.

As it neared their turn, Andrzej turned around and grabbed Bashir's arm with a strength Julian wouldn't have thought he had after their days in the train. "Tu dois," he whispered urgently, then he stopped as if he were struggling for the vocabulary. "Tu dois," he began again, "regarder Vláďa."

Watch Vláďa? Bashir shook his head. "Pourquoi?" he asked. But then it was nearly Andrzej's turn in front of the SS. Only one man stood between them.

Before he turned to face him, Andrzej whispered one word, "Promis!"

He spoke with such intensity, such fear in his eyes that Bashir could only nod. Andrzej removed Vláďa's hand from his sleeve and whispered something to him that Bashir couldn't hear. The SS was watching, but he was looking down at Andrzej's legs when he turned around.

"Warum humpelst du?" he asked.

Andrzej stood up straighter, the defiance Julian had seen in him returned to his stance. But he didn't answer.

The prisoner beside the SS then spoke up, "Dlaczego kulejesz?"

"Straciłem prawą stopę w wypadku dwa lata temu," Andrzej calmly replied.

After the translation, the SS man actually laughed, not aloud, but Bashir could see his shoulders shaking from it. The SS man flicked his finger to the left. Andrzej glanced back once more to Bashir, and then slowly limped away to join the others going off to that side.

Then it was Vláďa's turn.

The SS man looked him over. "Wie alt bist du?"

Vláďa shifted nervously on his feet, and kept looking toward Andrzej's departing back. "Nerozumim německy," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

The translator took the cue. "Ile masz lat?"

"Osmnáct,"Vláďa answered. The hand flicked to the right. Vláďa shook his head, still looking to the other side where his cousin had gone. But a guard standing nearby yelled ferociously for him to move on. Vláďa took a halting step to his right and waited again.

Go, Bashir thought to him, wishing that Vláďa could hear. He knew now why Andrzej had made him promise. Andrzej had limped. He wasn't healthy enough, not for work. And work was the only reason they would not go straight to the gas. Vláďa took a few more steps, and it was Bashir's turn. The SS man sized him up quickly and pointed to the right. Bashir hurried to catch up with Vláďa.

When he reached him, Vláďa's face had gone pale. He was terrified and shocked. He'd just lost his cousin. His only family. Bashir took him by the arm and forced him to walk with him so as not to get beaten by the guards.

They were led into a long room, and the guards and prisoners yelled something out to them in their respective languages, none of which Bashir understood. Vláďa looked around him like a caged animal though, his brow constantly furrowed and his eyes wide. Bashir looked around and saw that the other new arrivals were removing their clothing. Those that didn't were screamed at and beaten by the guards.

It was cold even with all the layers of clothes he was wearing, and Bashir dreaded having to take them off. But he took off his coat. One SS officer was watching him, staring coldly with a slight smile on his face. Bashir's own face began to feel flushed. He was humiliated and not a little angry. But he was also helpless. He couldn't run from here. He couldn't fight. And he couldn't leave the frightened young man with him all alone.

Vláďa, too, began to undress. Soon the whole room was a mass of naked, humiliated men shivering in the cold. Julian tried his best to look unaffected, to show strength to both his captors and his young companion. He knew enough of what this place had to offer. He only hoped he was strong enough to stand up to it until, somehow, Sisko and the others would find him.

On the train, as he sat with his eyes closed before falling asleep, he'd begun to lose his faith. They would never find him. His communicator was disabled, and he wouldn't have been able to keep it with him anyway. He was far away from his transport site, lost on a planet with billions of other humans that would look just like him to an orbiting sensor array. But stepping out of the train into the hell that was Auschwitz—and this was only the door to that hell—he'd changed his mind. It was all still just as impossible for them to find him, but he decided he needed to hang on to that faith. He needed something to hope in if he was going to survive.

Several veteran prisoners moved throughout the group pushing cards into the newcomers' hands. Bashir looked at his. It contained a six-digit number. The group began to move forward, and Bashir was thankful for the movement. It would help to warm them, if only just a little. But then he saw the large open doors and felt the draft from outside. The SS officer still watched him with his smug grin as he and Vláďa stepped out into the mud and slush.

They entered another building. The group moved haltingly, starting and stopping, edging itself forward. Bashir could see above most of the heads in the room, but he couldn't make out what was happening in front.

"Du!" Bashir jumped, in spite of himself. The word had come from right behind him where only the new prisoners had been. Slowly he turned. The SS officer was standing not six inches from his face. "Du bist Engländer," he snarled.

That was simple enough that Julian could understand, but he wondered how this German could know that he was English. Bashir nodded, unsure of his voice if he should try to answer. He'd thought it best not to draw attention here, that to blend in was the safest course. But this officer had picked him out of the crowd and knew more about him already than should have been surmisable.

"Komm mit mir!" the officer said. His hand gestured that Julian should follow.

Bashir hesitated, but knew that was likely more dangerous than going with the officer, though his mind raced coming up with reasons the guard had singled him out. He forgot about the cold and found it harder to breathe, but his left foot stepped out to take the first step.

"Ne!" Vláďa whispered, taking his arm. The SS heard this and stopped. "Ne!" Vláďa whispered. "Zůstajn!"

The SS took one step forward and covered the distance between them. His arm swung out and struck Vláďa full-force across the face, causing him to fall back onto the others. The officer looked to Julian again. "Du," he spat menacingly, "Komm!"

Bashir started to follow, watching Vláďa's face as he left, memorizing it. He would find him again. He'd promised Andrzej.

The SS led him outside again, behind the building. There was no one else around. Bashir stood in front of him and tried not to shiver. And he tried not to look ashamed. It was hard, standing there in the cold with nothing to cover himself.

The SS eyed him coldly and then smiled. "A word of advice," he said in perfect English, without even the slightest accent. "Don't look the Germans in the eyes. I've observed that it's a good way to get yourself killed."

Bashir stared at the man in confusion. And then the man smiled again. His eyes gleamed and their color faded away, leaving nothing but an almost clear, gelatinous liquid in their place, staring back at him ghoulishly. Bashir shook involuntarily as he watched the eyes form back again. The changeling.