Description: Ascendance The warning lights flared to life an instant before the red-alert klaxon resounded through the security office. A crimson glow washed over the banks of consoles in the compartment as the siren shrieked its call to emergency stations. At the master panel, Selten--Newton Outpost''s security chief--consulted the readouts and identified the cause of the alarm at once: "Breach in specimen storage." Around him, his alpha-shift staff mobilized immediately, drawing their weapons and racing to their general-quarters assignments. Selten saw them dash through the doorway and past the compartment''s rectangular viewport, which looked out onto the adjacent corridor. Only Ensign Connor Block remained in the security office with him, crewing access control. "All checkpoints are locked down," the ensign reported. "All security doors are confirmed closed and all force fields have been raised." "Acknowledged," Selten said as he silenced the alarm in the office and restored normal lighting. He then worked the communications controls on his panel, opening a complex-wide comm link that would carry his voice across the subterranean outpost, both on the upper level, where the twenty-one members of his Starfleet Security team protected the facility, and on the lower level, where forty-five Federation Department of Science researchers and technicians lived and worked. "This is Lieutenant Commander Selten. There has been a breach in Corridor Four, Compartment L," he announced, reading the source of the alarm from his console. "All security personnel, report to alert stations. All others, withdraw to your nearest safety compartment." Throughout the complex, various spaces had been set aside and secured for the protection of the scientific team in case of emergency. "This is not a drill." "Checkpoint data show that seven scientists, including Doctor Norsa, and two technicians entered Corridor Four thirty-seven minutes ago," Block said. "The Changeling visitor was with them." Norsa, an Argelian biologist, served as Newton Outpost''s chief of staff. The Changeling, Odo, had arrived in the Larrisint system a week earlier. Selten operated his console, checking the outpost''s internal sensors. He inspected the readouts for Corridor Four, the section of the facility housing all specimen chambers, where the scientists stored both organic and inanimate objects for study. Scans showed rapid movement across a considerable area within and without Compartment L, but no steady combadge signals and no definite life signs. The readings suggested that the ten individuals who had entered the area had all met a violent end, but Selten''s exacting Vulcan mind considered that interpretation of events only a possibility, and he concentrated on gathering more information. The security chief worked his controls, calling up images from the monitors surrounding the compromised compartment. He watched on the display as what looked like a torrent of liquid metal flowed past in multiple locations. Sensors tracked the motion, but they continued to register only indeterminate life signs. Selten tapped a control surface that tied him in to his entire staff, but not to any members of the scientific team. "We have activity in Corridor Four," he said, "including the movement of a sizable fluidic mass in the direction of the access door." Only a single checkpoint allowed entry to and egress from the specimen chambers. Since Compartment L sat at the farthest reach of Corridor Four, the only direction to travel from there was toward the door. "Could that be the shape-shifter?" Block asked once Selten had closed the channel. The security chief understood that the ensign did not refer to Odo. Rather, he spoke of the specimen that the Changeling had come to Newton Outpost to help study, which the scientists had listed for the security contingent as POTENTIAL SHAPE-SHIFTER. "Possibly," Selten said. Although his sensors still detected no definitive life signs, including none corresponding to any known types of shape-shifters, he could conceive of no other reasonable explanation for what he saw. He called up a secondary configuration on his console and accessed the automatically recorded feeds from in and around Compartment L, surveying the images collected in the moments just before the red alert had begun to blare. The first showed Norsa and five other scientists lined up along the viewing ports, gazing down into the outsize chamber. Measuring ten by twenty by fifty meters, the space had recently been expanded to those dimensions in order to accommodate the specimen, which had been discovered on an asteroid by the crew of U.S.S. Nova. Another feed provided a view directly into the chamber. The great silver mass brought to Newton Outpost for study filled the footprint of the compartment, its inert surface rising and falling in sinuous, static swells, giving it a depth of between one and two meters. Selten watched as Odo emerged from the decontamination chamber that led into the compartment. A technician and another of the scientists remained inside decon, while the second technician waited outside in the corridor and observed through a viewport. Odo peered back over his shoulder, then proceeded once the inner door had glided closed. He took two paces forward, then dropped onto his knees directly in front of the mass, which looked to Selten like a lake of molten metal, frozen into stillness. Odo leaned forward and laid his hands atop its matte silver surface. The security chief saw the Changeling''s hands begin to shimmer. Odo''s flesh softened, as though melting. His fingers liquefied, seeming to disappear into the large shape sprawling away before him. Selten waited to see what would happen--what had happened--but for a moment, nothing did. The security chief had never witnessed two shape-shifters merging--linking, they called it--but he understood the concept. The living nature of the specimen remained conjecture, though, and so Selten did not anticipate Odo and the great bulk dissolving into each other. It therefore did not surprise the security chief when, after the Changeling''s hands deliquesced, the tableau grew motionless. "The mass is moving rapidly down Corridor Four," Block said. "It is approaching the entry door." Selten returned his attention to the status panel, but then motion caught his eye. He looked again at the playback on the display and saw that Odo had pulled back from the silver mass, the specimen''s shape changing and rushing upward. Its surface, formerly lusterless, suddenly gleamed. At the top of its reach, its amorphous curves shifted, hardening into straight lines and flat edges, forming into contours resembling those of a hammer''s head. It surged down, toward Odo. It struck him with tremendous force and sent him hurtling backward. Odo''s body impacted the bulkhead hard, flattened, and ruptured. What had been the simulacrum of a Bajoran man exploded into a gold-orange spatter. "Ten seconds from the door," Block said. Selten quickly worked his controls to display a live feed from the monitor surveilling the Corridor Four entry. As with all the security checkpoints within the outpost, a large, thick metal door stood closed when not in use. Additionally, the red alert had initiated the automatic lockdown of the facility, and a force field had been activated at each access point within it. The great silver mass flowed at high speed through the corridor. It slammed into the force field erected in front of the door. Electric-blue patches sparked into existence as a result of the contact, and jagged streaks spiked across the surface of the specimen. The undulating mass did not reverse its course, but like a dammed river, it collected where its forward progress had been halted, its level rising toward the overhead. Within just seconds, the image on the screen became completely obscured, preceded an instant before by a vibrant blue flash. "The force field in Corridor Four is down," Block said. The security chief glanced back at the recordings of the specimen chamber and saw the shining silver mass swiftly expanding. It quickly grew to cover not just the deck of the compartment, but the volume of space above it. The specimen blotted out the monitors within the chamber, but those outside captured the reactions of the scientists. All but the chief of staff lurched backward, away from the viewing ports, while Doctor Norsa threw herself toward the nearest control panel--doubtless in an attempt to sound the alarm or to take some other action--but too late. The still-growing mass burst through the viewports, shattering them and inundating the corridor like a deluge. It swept the scientists from their feet, and Norsa and her colleagues were abruptly lost from view. "Commander, the door in Corridor Four is showing signs of stress," Block said. "I don''t think it''s going to hold." "How can that be?" Selten demanded. In addition to being fitted with force fields on either side, each of the security checkpoints within the outpost had been constructed of multiple plates and installed to withstand powerful forces on their own, including the yields of energy weapons and high explosives. A simple lateral force, even applied by as massive an object as the Compartment L specimen, should not have been able to compromise any of the doors. At his station, Block worked his controls. "The door isn''t being strained from the outside," he said, "but from within." That''s impossible, Selten thought but did not say, recognizing at once the illogic of such words. It didn''t matter that the security door had been designed to be not only impervious to liquids, but airtight

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