Through the Looking Glass, Darkly

Posted on Fri Jan 2nd, 2026 @ 12:57am by Lieutenant Commander Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell

1,436 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: For Bajor!
Location: Bajor - Ashalla

Dust drifted in lazy spirals through the ruined safehouse, stirred by the rasp of MU Dean’s breathing. He lay half-upright against a cargo crate, one shoulder wrapped in a bandage already turning black where the blood seeped through. The others pretended not to watch him struggle; pretending was easier than accepting that their numbers had thinned to the bone.

A cracked window let in a thin slice of Bajoran dusk. Wind slid through the fissure with a soft wheeze, like the building itself was mourning. The floor was littered with broken glass, old ration packets, and the inorganic stink of a dead Nausicaan shoved into the far corner. No one had bothered to cover it. Today’s dead could wait.

MU Michael Stevens paced the length of the room with a limp he insisted wasn’t a limp. His boots left streaks through the dust. His fists opened and closed in restless waves.

“I swear,” he muttered, “if this universe throws one more surprise at us...”

“Then what?” Dean’s voice was a shredded whisper. “You’ll pace harder?”

Stevens scowled, but an involuntary smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth. The banter tasted bitter, but it was something to hold onto. He jabbed Dean lightly with the end of a metal rod he’d scavenged from the wall. “Keep talking and I’ll let you bleed out just to make the room quieter.”

Dean coughed a laugh that turned quickly into a wince. “Please. You need me. I’m your moral backbone.”

Stevens snorted. “Then we’re all crippled.”

On the far end of the room, MU Bonnie sat on the remains of an old transporter pad, her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped loosely around them. Her silence cut sharper than any insult. She watched the two men like a scientist observing animals in captivity. No judgment. No sympathy. Just attention, coiled and waiting.

MU Rhenora Kaylen stood with her back to them all, one hand braced on the cracked window frame. The fading light painted her jawline in harsh angles, catching the smudge of blood on her cheek where someone else’s life had brushed her skin. She didn’t wipe it away. She stared out over Ashalla with a calm that looked like poise, but was really calculation.

The broken table, nothing more than a durasteel slab atop crates, sat in the center of the room. Rhenora had cleared the dust from its surface with a slow, deliberate motion the moment they’d arrived, as though refusing to conduct business on anything unworthy of strategy.

She hadn’t spoken since they’d limped in.

Stevens finally stopped pacing, planted his rod against the floor, and leaned on it like a cane he refused to admit he needed. “We can’t just sit here. Dane’s either dead or crawling somewhere in our universe.” He flicked a finger toward the far wall as though the portal still shimmered there. “We should’ve followed him.”

Dean scoffed. “Yes, please. March us all back 'there' again. We’ve done so well with that.”

Stevens glared. “At least I fight.”

“At least I think,” Dean shot back.

A tiny shift sounded from Bonnie’s corner, just the brush of her thumb against a strip of fabric. She’d taken it from Rosa’s personal effects earlier, folding it over and over as if the motion kept her tethered to something only she could see. Her eyes flickered once toward the men, then to Rhenora’s back, then closed again.

The dead Mirror Rosa had been carried out, the symbiont salvaged by the Primes but the host gone. It hung over the room like an unfinished sentence. Everyone felt it. No one said her name.

Stevens gestured broadly. “Well? Are we going to sit around waiting for someone else to kill what’s left of us? Or...”

Dean cut him off with a rasp. “Maybe we try something smarter for once.”

Stevens threw his arms up. “Smarter than chasing the tyrant who abandoned us through a portal? Sure. Let’s hear your genius plan.”

Dean tilted his head. “Replace them.”

Stevens blinked. “Replace who?”

“Our counterparts.” Dean’s smile was thin and humorless. “The Prime versions. They’re soft. Trusted. Too comfortable to see us coming.”

Stevens barked a laugh. “You want to… what? Swap places? Kidnap and impersonate? That’s your big idea?”

“I’m saying,” Dean murmured, “they already think we’re monsters. So why not let the monsters wear their faces for a while?”

Silence grazed the room like a cold hand.

Stevens shifted his weight. “You’re delirious.”

“Not that delirious.” Dean wheezed. “Tell me it wouldn’t dismantle everything they care about.”

Stevens opened his mouth, then closed it again.

The window’s last light slipped away, leaving Rhenora’s reflection in the cracked pane, a fractured silhouette. She turned slowly, her gaze sweeping the room. Stevens fell quiet under it; Dean straightened as much as his body allowed. Bonnie lifted her chin.

Rhenora walked toward the table, her boots whispering over debris. She didn’t look at any of them, not yet. Her breathing was even, controlled. Her posture was the calm of a predator choosing where to sink its first bite.

She reached the edge of the slab and rested her palms on the cold metal. The room seemed to lean toward her.

“When Dane left,” she said softly, “he took our future with him.”

Stevens swallowed. Dean watched her with hollow-eyed focus. Bonnie’s fingers stilled at last.

Rhenora lifted her gaze. “But we are not a future that needs a tyrant. We are a future that needs a purpose.”

Her voice held no anger, just clarity sharpened to a blade.

“The Prime Universe interfered. They tilted the balance. Dane fled rather than face what he had built crumbling beneath him. He is no longer our concern.”

Stevens blinked, startled. “He abandoned us.”

“And you expected loyalty from a man who carved his philosophy out of suffering?” Rhenora’s tone was almost gentle, almost amused. “Dane taught us one thing: power is an ecosystem, not a crown.”

She straightened.

“Dean’s thought is crude,” she continued, “but not wrong. Our counterparts live lives cushioned by trust. They hold keys, knowledge, alliances. If we wish to take back control of our destiny, we must step into the shadows of theirs.”

Stevens frowned. “You’re actually considering this?”

“I’m refining it.” Rhenora tapped one finger against the slab. “We don’t need to replace all of them. Only the ones whose absence would tilt the frame. Influence bends more worlds than bullets.”

Dean smiled faintly through the pain. “Knew you’d appreciate the artistry.”

Rhenora graced him with a single, cool glance. “Your survival buys you one compliment. Don’t waste it.”

Bonnie finally stood, unfolding from her perch like a specter gaining shape. She crossed the room with quiet, fluid steps and stopped beside Rhenora. Her gaze traveled across the table, across Stevens, across the empty space where Rosa had once stood.

“There will be resistance,” Bonnie murmured. Her first words of the night were soft but heavy, as though pulled from somewhere deep.

“There always is,” Rhenora replied. “But resistance is just a sign that we’ve chosen a path worth walking.”

Stevens rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You’re all insane.”

Rhenora’s smile was small. Razor-thin. “Insanity would be pretending we haven’t already lost everything today. What remains is opportunity.”

Bonnie’s voice brushed the air again. “We will need a new base. New faces. New lies.”

Rhenora nodded. “And new ambition.”

Dean let out a shaky breath. “Then we’re actually doing this.”

Rhenora rested both hands on the slab again, anchoring the moment.

“Not simply revenge,” she said. “Reinvention. We will infiltrate their world, dismantle their foundations, and build something of our own from the hollow places they never guard.”

The wind sighed through the window. Dust settled. The room exhaled with them.

Stevens shifted uneasily, but his eyes gleamed with the sharpness of someone tasting purpose again. Dean leaned back against the crate, pained but satisfied. Bonnie’s expression remained unreadable, but the tilt of her head signaled alignment.

Rhenora stepped back from the table, silhouette carved by the dim light.

“We move at dawn,” she said. “Tonight, we rest. Tomorrow, we begin the quiet undoing of another universe.”

No one argued.

The safehouse held the weight of their losses, but beneath it, coiled like a serpent warming to life, was the first pulse of their new ambition.

TBC

 

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