Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Soul Key by Olivia Woods

personal destiny demanded. Moved once again by Shing-kur’s selfless devotion, Iliana insisted that they each takea remote subcutaneous kill-switch, to use against any one of her inner circle at will should any of them ever be compromised, or become disloyal.
    It was the nearest thing she would ever know to exchanging vows with another.
     
    “The more I learn about her, the more amazed I am that Intendant Kira has survived as long as she has,” Shing-kur said between bites of a plant that looked a little like a Bajoran desert cactus. “You’d think her superiors in the Alliance would have put down a megalomaniac like her long ago.” She paused, her rising concern coloring her eyes a bright orange-red. “Aren’t you going to eat your dinner?”
    Iliana spared a glance at her cooling slab of roast porli before shaking her head. The refrigeration unit full of Bajoran delicacies had been a pleasant surprise when it was found among the cargo taken in one of her organization’s recent pirate raids, but she found herself unable to think much about food at the moment. She felt strangely ill at ease, almost as if she’d forgotten something important, and the feeling had already utterly sabotaged her appetite.
    Seated across the table from her in the otherwise empty Grennokar mess hall, Shing-kur made another attempt to engage Iliana in conversation. “I’ll say this for her, though: When the Intendant embarks on a new scheme, she doesn’t fool around.”
    “Then she and I do have something in common after all,” Iliana said, absently rubbing the hand that held the Paghvaram. The bracelet felt cool against her skin.
    “Well, she definitely lacks your imagination, but she is resourceful,” Shing-kur acknowledged. “She actually seems to be manipulating her patron, the Klingon regent, in much the same way we’re manipulating her.”
    “A fitting symmetry then,” said Iliana, now acutely aware that something was wrong. Her hand and wrist were growing colder, as if the bracelet were made of ice. She raised the artifact to her eyes, catching what seemed like a flicker of movement in the tiny bead of green it carried. Iliana gazed deeply into the Paghvaram at that moment.
    Then the Orb fragment gazed as deeply back into her. And all at once, Grennokar was gone.
    She was enclosed instead in whiteness, surrounded by a void in which only the cadence of her heart seemed to exist. She became aware of its echo, a sympathetic rhythm that did not fade, but seemed to gain strength…and she understood that it was not an echo at all.
    Somewhere in the perfect emptiness, another heart was beating in tandem with hers.
    She turned and saw herself…yet not herself: Iliana Ghemor as she might look today, had she never been altered to replace Kira Nerys—the ghost of a life she’d never lived, her black hair and her gray, ridged skin achingly familiar, like a lost reflection.
    The specter was watching her intently, and Iliana suddenly saw the truth behind the other’s deep brown eyes—the essence of who she was, and all she had ever been, revealed in shards of memory that seemed to explode from her like broken glass, fragments of a life that assailed Iliana, assaulted her.
    Mocked her.
    No.
    The Cardassian’s expression had changed. Where once there had been confusion and curiosity, now there was alarm. There was no mistaking the abhorrence Iliana saw in the familiar eyes, the utter loathing, the undisguised contempt.
    And there was something else in those eyes now: resolve.
    Iliana recoiled as the other woman took a determined step toward her.
    Stay…away…from…me!
    “Nerys!”
    Iliana gasped as the white nothingness all around her abruptly vanished, along with her nemesis. She was once again back in Grennokar, the accusing stare of her distorted reflection replaced by Shing-kur’s vermilion worry. The Kressari’s hands held her own tightly, covering the Paghvaram.
    “Nerys, are you okay?”
    “What—what just happened