IT HAD TAKEN Jake and Nog a few wrong turns in the maze of narrow passageways and crawl spaces that led over, under, and behind rooms along the Promenade before they found a small spy area looking into Quark's Bar. The cleanliness of the passageways bothered Jake. He almost wished for the gray dust to return. He hoped these passageways had a different ventilation system because they overlooked the main part of the Promenade, although part of him wondered if they weren't clean because they overlooked the part of the Promenade still in use.
As they wound their way toward Quark's, he had mentioned, in a whisper, that perhaps they should find Chief O'Brien and report this maze of tunnels. But this time, Nog was the one who wanted to go on. He had become enamored with the idea of finding a place to spy on his uncle, a place that would guarantee Nog would never go home to too much work or too much fighting again.
When they found the room, its size surprised Jake. After that much work, he had expected to find a room the size of the first spy hole. This one was no bigger than a storage closet, and it had only one gratelike spy hole. A small stepladder led up to it. The spy hole smelled like Romulan ale and Caxtonian sweat, a nauseating combination.
"This has got to be it," Nog whispered gleefully.
"I think we should find Chief O'Brien." Anything to get away from the smell. Jake was willing to bet that this tiny room trapped all the noxious odors from Quark's.
"Of course you do," Nog whispered. "Now that I've finally found something good about this place."
"That's not it," Jake whispered. "I'm getting nervous."
"Maybe because you're making too much noise." Nog climbed on the ladder. When he reached the top, he stood on tiptoe, trying to see through the grate. He couldn't even reach it. He braced himself to jump, but Jake stopped him, figuring a crash of Ferengi and ladder would probably bring the entire station to the room.
"Someday," Nog whispered, "I'm going to build a place built for people my height."
Jake frowned. Another detail fell into place. This was clearly Cardassian built then. If Quark had made the tunnels, everything would have been Ferengi height. "Let me see if I can look out this one."
Nog climbed down, and Jake climbed up. The ladder was sturdier than it looked. A bead of sweat ran down his face. The room was hot and had grown hotter since they arrived. It was clearly built for one spy, not two.
Even with the ladder, the spy grate was too high for Jake to see through. But he could reach the top with his hands.
"Boost me up," Nog whispered. "If you hold me, I'd be able to see."
Jake didn't relish balancing Nog on the ladder top, but the quicker he tried, the quicker they could leave and inform the chief of the maze behind the Promenade.
Nog climbed the ladder. Jake backed to the edge, braced himself against the wall, and cupped his hands. Nog stepped in them, his heavy shoes digging into Jake's palms. Nog pulled himself up to the spy grate and hung there for what seemed like an eternity before he spoke.
"This is some kind of trick."
"What is?"
Their whispers had grown softer, as if they both expected someone to overhear them.
"My uncle's bar is empty. It's never empty at this time of day. This is a trick."
Jake wished he could see.
"What's going on?" he whispered.
"Nothing. There's not even a Dabo girl by the table.
No one's—" Nog stopped speaking suddenly as the voice of his uncle filled the spy hole.
"They can't keep my bar closed forever. And to keep us prisoner! I'll complain to Commander Sisko when he returns. Maybe then he'll do something about Odo."
"I thought this had nothing to do with Odo." The second voice belonged to Nog's father, Rom. "I thought it had to do with that statue—"
Quark's gasp echoed in the enclosed space. "Who did you mention the statue to?"
"No one, brother."
Nog signaled that he wanted to get down. When Jake lowered him, Nog didn't meet his gaze.
"You had to have told someone."
"I didn't, brother. But there were a lot of people in the bar at the time."
"Well, I don't like this," Quark said. "It's interfering with my profits. I'll have to take it out of your salary …"
Their voices faded. Nog had reached the floor, his head bowed. Jake climbed down.
"Something's wrong," Jake whispered. "My dad would never close the bar. Or trap your uncle inside."
"Well, he did," Nog whispered back. "They'll kill each other in there, trapped together like that."
Jake put a hand on his friend's back. "No, they won't. They grew up together. Your uncle needs your dad. They'll be all right."
"I hope so," Nog said. "What do you think's going on?"
"I don't know," Jake said, "but I think we'd better find out. Let's go back."
They left through the same door they had entered. Nog led the way, jogging through two rooms and one crawl space. The boys emerged into a small gray room with no spy holes and two identical passages heading off in two different directions. Jake remembered coming through here but hadn't paid much attention.
"Which one?" Nog asked, the panic starting to creep slowly into his voice.
Now Jake wished for the dusty corridors where following their tracks would have been no problem. But in these tunnels and rooms, there was no dust, and he wasn't sure which tunnel they had come out of the first time.
"Doesn't matter," he said, shoving past Nog and leading down the tunnel to the right. "If we pick the wrong one we just come back here and take the other."
"I'd like to get out of here today," Nog muttered.
"We will," Jake said. "There has to be more than one way out of this place. We just have to find it."
He closed his eyes, imagined the layout of the Promenade and then tried to insert it near the tunnels. Then, making his best guess, he followed the tunnel to the right.
At first the way looked familiar. Then they passed through two unfamiliar closet-sized rooms and a long crawl space. Jake was almost convinced they hadn't come this way the first time.
"Why does it always take longer to leave than it does to arrive?" Nog asked.
"Because we're paying attention this time," Jake said.
The crawl space opened into a large, well-lit room. As Jake levered himself down, he promised himself that they would turn around if the room proved unfamiliar.
As Nog landed beside him, Jake surveyed the room.
He had never been there before. He knew that the moment he examined it. The room had no view holes, even though it did have a chair and what appeared to be a supplies cabinet. Three narrow passages lead from it, counting the one Jake and Nog had just come from. The air here was cool and filtered. It had the processed scent of some of the maintenance areas in the lower decks.
But that wasn't what made it different. The wall directly across from Jake made the room different.
He tapped Nog on the shoulder and pointed. Nog turned.
"Oh, no," he whispered.
They both stared at the bank of panels lining the wall. At least ten of those panels were viewscreens. Jake walked up to them. They didn't appear original to the station, although they were of Cardassian design. They appeared almost new.
"This is a Cardassian spy hole," Nog said. "I've seen holos of these in my uncle's programs. There's one he's kept for Cardassian use: The Secret Conquerors of Bajor, where—"
"I don't want to know," Jake said. He tried to ignore most of the uses of the holosuites. He stared up at the empty viewscreens, his own image reflecting back at him. A streak of dirt ran along his face, and his clothes looked like he'd been playing in the mud.
"We're the only ones who know about this," he said, and that knowledge made his heart thump. "We've got to get out of here."
"Where is out?" Nog asked.
"Let's go back to the room over your uncle's bar.
The second tunnel out of there should take us back." And the sooner the better. Jake crouched and cupped his hands so that he could boost Nog back into the crawl space.
The light overhead suddenly turned red. Then, with a cranking noise that filled the room, steel panels slid from the walls and slammed closed all three entrances. The echo of the booms made both Nog and Jake cover their ears.
Then the wall of monitors flickered into life. One showed the Ops center. Another two screens were different views of the Promenade. Another was of Jake's father's office. Screen after screen popped on, revealing all the important areas of the station. And only Ops had people in view.
"We're trapped!" Nog shouted. He ran for the steel walls and began examining them, looking for a way out. Jake frowned at the monitors—something was wrong about them—but he didn't have time to think about it. He went to the steel walls, too, and looked for an opening mechanism.
The red light made everything seem as if it were bathed in blood. His own skin had a reddish cast, making it appear unfamiliar, not like his skin at all. He got metal splinters in his fingers as he worked the edge of the walls.
He found nothing.
Nog had moved to the monitors, looking in all the panels. "There's got to be a way to open these walls," he said. He could be clever about mechanical things when he wanted to be. Jake took out the tricorder he had slung around his neck and did a quick reading to see if it showed anything. From what he could tell, there were only monitors here. The controls for the door were somewhere else. Probably outside the room.
"If we could figure out how we triggered it, we can get out," Nog said.
Jake watched his friend, then his gaze was drawn to the monitors. They looked like they were running on real time, not some kind of tape. That meant the system tapped into the station's existing communications systems to get this kind of picture. If it happened all the time, O'Brien would have found it by now. *This place only ran at odd moments, moments of crisis, moments when …
Jake studied the scenes in the monitors. Odo's office was empty. So was his dad's. And Kira was running across Ops, shouting orders. "I don't think we triggered it," Jake said slowly.
"We must have," Nog said. "Why else would it trap us?"
"The red light," Jake said.
"A warning system?"
Jake nodded. "Our warning system. The station's on red alert."
That statement made Nog stand up. "It can't be."
"It is. Look at Ops."
"So that's why my uncle's bar is empty."
"And why everyone looks so busy in Ops."
They stared at the monitors for a minute.
"Where's your dad?" Nog asked quietly.
"I don't know," Jake said.
Nog went back to the panels near the monitors and began to open the ones that he could. "Come on," he said. "Help me. We'll die in here if we don't find a way out."
"I don't think so," Jake said, sinking in the chair. "I don't think we'll die unless they blow up the station. I think we've found the safest place of all."
And somehow that thought terrified him even more.