Chapter Text
Quark squats low on the rough stone ground. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“Tch tch tch… c’mere little guy… I’m not going to hurt you.”
Craggy stalactites loom overhead, casting jagged shadows across the rocky walls. The only light source is a dim glow from the portal window on the high security locked doors. It’s also the only egress from the chamber. Unless you count a small hole in the rock, about a foot off the ground.
“I know you’re in there fella. We’ve been playing this game of chase for a week, so I think we should be on a first name basis by now, hmm? What can I call you?” Quark squints into the hole, hardly big enough to fit his fist. “How about… Mo. I had an action figure named Marauder Mo once, it’s a strong name full of great greed. You should feel honored.”
Quark cocks his head toward the hole, listening. There’s the background drip drip drip in the caverns, the muffled voices of others down the hall, the slight buzzing of the electrical systems, and… Yes, it’s still there -- a faint chittering.
“I’m Quark. Don’t worry, I want to be friends. It’s been just you and me in here for quite some time, we may as well get to know each other a little better. I’m sure it gets lonely in that wall, as lonely as my dank cell, not a friendly face for sectors in any direction...”
Quark sighs. His stomach gives a loud gurgle. The metal bowl several feet away has been licked clean some time ago, and the Telfa broth it once held is a distant memory.
Quark takes a couple of sharp shallow breaths, then steels himself. HIs tongue pokes out through his lips in concentration.
“I don’t want to hurt you… I just want…. To eat you!”
In one quick motion, he jabs his hand into the hole. A look of elation as his fingers brush something.
Then the something skitters up his arm. Quark yanks his hand out of the hole. Little legs skitter up his neck, across his head, then it pauses on the inner rim of Quark’s right lobe.
“EEEEEEEK.” Quark’s piercing shriek reverberates off the walls.
Quark bats at his ear, whacking himself in the head. He jumps up and down in hysteria, flailing his limbs for several long moments. Finally, he calms enough to pat himself down. Once he’s satisfied it’s now longer on him, he shudders and deflates. With a deep weariness, he plonks himself down on the ground. The cold stone leeches in through his thin jumpsuit.
A chittering from the hole again. Two antennas poke out, then a chitinous little face peers at Quark, mocking him.
“Fine I lied. Your name isn’t Mo.” Quark scowls at it. “I’m calling you Beetle Bonanza after my favorite recipe. One day you’ll get to experience it. First I’ll boil some slugs into a slurry. Then, I’ll chop you up and sprinkle you in, chilling the mixture to a nice, firm aspic. I’ll top it off with all those little legs as a garnish. Mmm, the crunchiness…”
Quark drifts off into an imaginary respite from his present situation.
Which, of course, lasts only a moment before the thudding approach of footsteps down the hall disrupts his reverie.
Quark runs a finger down the rim of his lobe. He catches snatches of Kardasi:
“...not so big and scary now are you, prisoner?” Laughter. “Razor-backed…”
“No, I heard it had… gnashing teeth… claws as long as my neck…”
“...nightmare…”
“Gul said… we'll put the nightmare with that spineless big-eared blabberworm.”
Well at least they can recognize the size of my lobes, Quark thinks.
More laughter. “...eat him alive!”
“This’ll be fun!” The voices are clearer now, right outside his door. Beeping emanates from the wall panel as the guards type the code for door controls.
Quark gulps. His blood pounds in his lobes at whatever fresh horror waits outside his door. Ferengi instinct overwhelms and he hunches over in a cringe, wrists together in supplication, attempting to make himself look smaller and not worth the effort of maiming.
“Hey twerp, it’s your lucky day. Solitary ends early -- need somewhere to store this thing, didn’t seem fair to subject any of the other prisoners to it.”
A cold scaly face grins at him through the porthole window in the doors, Gil Derak. Prison guard here for two years after being demoted from border patrol due to a spasmodic trigger finger. Has three small children and a bent for cruelty.
“Derak, good to see you again. Ho-how’s little Egren and uh um Ka-kaldok was it?” Quark stammers out. There’s static in his head instead of the last kid’s name. Probably hasn’t had his first molting yet anyway. Quark’s rising anxiety ebbs as he concentrates on his pitch. “They still pestering you for regova eggs? Can’t be easy to afford these days -- I heard about the recent uprising from the Bajoran scum. But I have a contact a couple sectors over who can give you a hell of a deal--”
“Not gonna talk yourself out of this one, worm,” says the other guard. Quark hasn’t caught his name yet.
“Snivelling little eavesdropper.” Derak laughs viciously. “I’ve had a long day with Dukat over this prisoner, and I’ve been looking forward to you two meeting.” His tongue licks over his mottled teeth, mouth twisted in a nasty grin.
A panel in the cell door slides open to reveal… not a vicious chained beast-like being, or a rabid Klingon, or any of the other horrible possibilities that had flashed through Quark’s mind. Instead, all he can see through the small opening is the guards holding a metal storage container, about the size of a large stewpot.
Quark straightens a little from his cringe. “I don’t get it. Is there someone in there?”
Derak holds the container, while the other guard unclasps the top. There’s hissing as the airlock releases. Derak, still watching through the top window, pitches the container forward. Something viscous sloshes forward with the momentum.
Dousing Quark from head to toe in the thick substance.
Quark sighs. Just a practical joke then. He’s not looking forward to sleeping in wet gooey clothes.
The guards wait a few moments, chuckling as Quark attempts to wipe it off of him. The stuff clings together though, and any glob he peels from himself sticks to the rest of it.
“Very humiliating. Ha, ha. You really got me good this time,” Quark grumbles after a couple attempts.
“You sure you didn’t mix this up with that shipment of bio-neural gel packs?” Derak seems disappointed with the results.
A buzzer sounds from a distant part of the prison. Derak growls in frustration.
“C’mon,” the other guard says. “We can check on the aftermath tomorrow.”
Then they’re off, and Quark is alone once more.
Except as soon as they’re out of earshot, the substance congeals around him. It peels off of Quark in thick ropes, oozing together, coagulating into a giant monstrous form, looming several feet over him.
Quark regains his cower. He’s almost doubled over in his cringe. His supplication hands thrust up in front of his face, as if that will protect him from whatever this is.
Ropes of ooze radiate out from it like tentacles, then sharpen to points.
“Heeeeelp!” Quark shrieks, knowing no one will. The tentacle spikes flail at Quark, narrowly missing him. He falls onto his butt and tries to scuttle away, but there’s nowhere to go. He dodges another, which crashes into the cave wall instead.
A low vibration from the thing deepens into a grumbling, “RRROoOooAAAaaRRRR!”
Quark’s ears ring with noise, and he wraps his arms around his head. “I can hear you! I can hear you! Sheesh. You’ve got anger issues.”
Mercifully the roar fades to a subdued grumble.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want from me,” Quark mutters from where he’s contracted himself into a little ball on the ground. “But I expect it’s in both of our interests not to attract the guards back here.”
Silence from the thing at last. Quark tentatively unclenches, peeking up from under his arm.
“I thought as much.”
A few of the spiked tentacles dart toward him again. Quark flinches. They stop several inches short of him.
It understands language. It reacts to what he does. Quark can work with that.
The thing hasn’t touched him at all, after the initial splash. Looming, growling, threatening… but stopping short of any further physical contact. Quark is aware his physical prowess isn’t a match for whatever this thing is, dodge as he might.
Anger issues indeed.
Quark acts with a healthy amount of respect. Palms open to show he means no harm, he moves into a more comfortable crouch on the ground where he can talk to the thing face-to-face.
Or rather face to…. Amorphous threatening blob figure.
“Can you talk? Words?” Quark directs his question toward a larger protrusion near the top. “I’m happy to make your stay at the Raskor Detention Center as comfortable as I can as your cellmate, but we’re going to have to establish a way to communicate beyond scare tactics.”
Pause. The creature seems to be considering the situation. Not that Quark’s sure how one could even tell, but he has the definite impression it’s assessing him.
The pointed tentacles soften, then retreat into the main figure. It (he?) is still amorphous without definite features, but now more humanoid in size and shape. Quark takes that as a good sign.
“I’m Quark, formerly of Frek’s Freighting Company, and future owner of Quark’s Resort Moon, home to all the relaxation, titillation, and inebriation your lobes can handle.” No reaction. “I’m still working on the pitch. And the moon. And, first, escaping from this place…”
Quark lights up with sudden optimism. He glances toward the door, then lowers his voice, and the creature leans in to listen, if it is able to listen without ears. “Hey that’s a pretty impressive thing you can do. With my knowledge of the place, and your abilities, we could be quite the team, uhh Mr. --?” Quark waits. “Or Miss? I’ve never met one of you, so you’ll excuse me if I can’t tell. But I’ll need something to call you.”
“Harrumph,” the creature grunts in something approaching a humanoid voice. Then, more clearly. “No.”
Quark blinks. “Miss No?”
“Hmph. Odo.”
“Odo, odo… Don’t know that one.” Quark taps at the side of his head. “The prison translator tends to be glitchy, but my implant is usually pretty good…”
“My… name… is Odo.” The creature’s voice is a low uncertain creak, each word a deliberate struggle.
Nevertheless, it (he?) manages to pack an impressive amount of derision into these four words.
“My apologies, Mr. Odo! I look forward to getting to know you. This will be a lucrative partnership for both of us --”
“ No .”
“No WHAT?” Quark yells, then motions at Odo not to speak. “Shhh… hear that?”
Odo cocks his head-shaped protrusion in uncertainty. He follows Quark’s attention to the door.
A tense minute later, the guards clamber outside their cell.
“Damn Klagore causing trouble again. Need to teach him a lesson,” the guard mutters. Quark is all too familiar with the Nausicaan prisoner's temper.
“Plenty of opportunity for that. But for now, this entertainment will have to do.” Derak peers through the small window. “How are you two getting along? Saved some of the show for us I hope?”
The cruel smile twisting his mouth quickly falls to a scowl however. Quark glances to Odo, who has dissolved his barely humanoid form back into a puddle. “C’mon, performance anxiety? You were sent here ‘top security’, claims of an untameable monster of vicious nature from Gul Dukat himself. Least you could do is push this twerp around some, bit of fun for both of us, eh?”
Odo doesn’t move.
“We were having quite the pleasant conversation before you arrived,” Quark chimes in. He’ll pay for this later, but he may as well have his fun where he can. “Great guy, we’re becoming fast pals.”
Quark thinks he hears a scoff from the puddle, but it’s hard to tell.
“Quite the contradiction, pleasant and you ,” Derak sneers. His heart’s not in it though, preoccupied by Odo’s immobility.
“C’mon Derak, I’m sure you don’t want to stand around here all night,” the other guard says. “Maybe it died in travel. Air pressure in the cargo hold or summat. Who can tell, thing like that.”
Derak narrows his eyes at the two of them, but after a long moment grunts in agreement. They clamber back down the hall.
Quark relaxes. “Real piece of work that guy. Did you see the look on his face when you just sat there like a bogpool though? Hah!”
Odo remains still, and Quark’s chuckle trails off into silence.
“What are you, shy? You aren’t hurt are you?”
A low rumble from the puddle, but no movement.
“So --” A growl cuts Quark off. “Well --” Growl. “Mr. Odo, I --” Growl.
Quark huffs. He stands up, intending to rest in his normal sleeping spot across the cell. As soon as he nears Odo, however, the puddle surges into a thousand spikes, looming over Quark in a great wave.
Quark, with a yelp, lands on his ass. He's been doing a lot of that recently, and he'll have a bruise on his tailbone to show for it.
“It’s just that, well, usually I sleep over there, and --”
“STAY! AWAY!” A roar this time.
Quark, hands out in the universal gesture of no harm, scoots his way back to the other side of the cell.
“Fine, have it your way.”
Quark decides, just this one time, not to press his luck. It’s been a long, hard day of nothing, followed by terror and confusion, in a long hard couple years of alternating boredom and fear, and Quark is tired.
He lays down on his side. The ground over here is uneven and rocky, unlike the groove he’s managed to smooth out in the opposite corner over the years. A puddle would be comfortable anywhere right? He didn’t need to steal Quark’s spot.
Quark positions himself so the echo of the cave will alert him to any movement from Odo, and accepts this last thing taken from him as yet another unjust indignity in his miserable life.
---
Somehow morning comes.
The door panel clangs open.
Quark doesn’t remember drifting off, certainly doesn’t feel like he’s had any rest, but the noise startles him awake all the same.
A bowl of thin regva stew clatters to the ground, liquid spilling over the sides.
Quark scrambles over to lick at it before it seeps into the stone. In his hunger-clenched frenzy, it takes a moment before the events of last night seep back into his awareness.
Quark freezes where he is, on his hands and knees, butt in the air, broth dripping from his mouth. He sits back primly on the ground, attempting to regain some amount of dignity.
Odo has since reformed into his amorphous humanoid-sized figure, this time with an attempt at a head and arms. He’s upright and still.
“Good morning, Mr. Odo,” Quark says tentatively.
“Just Odo.” The rough rumble of this sends an odd thrill through Quark’s lobes. Quark decides not to examine that too closely.
“Okay then just Odo.” Quark pats at his mouth with the back of his hand. “You seem marginally less grumpy. Nothing like a good night’s sleep and a meal to smooth everything over, I hope?”
“Hmph.”
Odo’s arms are empty. So is the ground in front of the door, minus the lingering stain from Quark’s bowl. Quark shoots to his feet. He stands on tiptoes to look through the window down the hall and bangs on the door.
“Hey! Guards! We only got one meal! Let us out!” A hungry cellmate is an irritable cellmate, to say the least, and an irritable cellmate is not in Quark’s best interest. He knows that from sordid experience. “Bring another stew! Or release us to the cafeteria! One or the other! Help, guards!”
“ Stop ,” Odo growls out.
Quark flinches, but stops. He looks wistfully to his half-finished bowl. “You could… finish mine. I guess.”
“I… don’t… eat,” Odo says in that slow gravelly way of his.
“Oh,” Quark says. He has no idea what to do with that. He sits back down on the ground to sip at his stew. To his delight, there are chunks in it. Actual protein. “At the very least, we’re not supposed to be confined to this cell. Not that the common areas are any better, worse in many ways mainly due to the company, but I was beginning to go mad in here. My solitary’s up and you just got here…” Quark pauses. “Unless you’re too high security to leave the cell?”
“Hmph.” Odo’s favorite refrain it seems.
Quark shrugs. “All the more reason for us to bust out of here. Now how small can you make yourself? Can you slip through any crack, or --?”
“No.” Second verse same as the first.
Quark sighs in frustration. “What, are you here willingly? This isn’t justice. Cardassians don’t do justice. We’re going to rot here, innocent or not, unless we can--”
“No!” Odo growls. “No.... to teaming up with the likes of you… ” His voice gains confidence as he continues, “or anyone else… in this wretched hive of villainy… and ‘no’ to any ill-advised plan you have for escape.”
Quark is stunned into silence for a beat, at so many words from this strange, taciturn being in a row, but recovers quickly. “But you haven’t even heard any plans of mine --”
“No.”
“But you don’t even know me yet.”
“No.”
“But --”
“I know enough. I don’t consort with criminals.” At some point the amorphous figure has become more defined into a generic humanoid form: one head on a neck, a spine with upright posture, two legs, and two arms folded squarely across his chest.
“Says my prison cellmate,” Quark mutters. He spreads his hands in quick apology. “Who is an upstanding citizen and wrongly convicted I’m sure.”
“Do you ever, ever shut UP?” Odo roars. On the last word he takes a step towards Quark, growing larger and sharper as he looms over him.
Quark yelps then regains himself. “Touchy subject, okay. Fine. We’ll talk about something else.”
“Leave. Me. Alone.”
“Whatever. I’ll let you discover for yourself how lonely and maddening prison can be without a single ally, and when you come around, I’ll still be here, and we can escape together.”
“Hmph.”
Quark heaves a sigh and mutters, “Or I’ll figure it out on my own someday. Or die trying.”
---
Now that there’s someone else in the cell with him, the quiet background noises of the prison are somehow worse. There’s a misconception about Ferengi sometimes, that because of their sensitive hearing any cacophony must be overwhelming. That’s not accurate. While a particularly high-pitched or loud single noise can be painful, otherwise the more variety of sound a Ferengi can experience at once the more enjoyable. A sensory buffet for the ears.
At least on the freighter ship, in addition to the rattle of the machinery and eerie whoosh of space, there was always some amount of chatter to eavesdrop on from the Ferengi crew. The cells in this prison, however, are directly carved into the rocky surface of the moon, blocking all sound except for the moisture, guards in the hall, and the occasional insect.
At one point, Quark tries crossing to the other side of the cell, with half a mind to go back to watching the hole in the wall. Mo at least was a better conversational partner.
He has to pass by Odo first, though, who at the proximity growls out, “You stay in your half of the cell and I’ll stay over here.” He seems to have nothing better to do than stand stockstill and watch Quark. It’s unnerving.
Better sleeping spot, a tendency to stay more dry and warm through the night, and the slightest bit of stimulation to keep him from going mad. Every time Quark thinks he doesn’t have anything left to get taken away from him, he’s proven wrong.
One day, though, Quark will have his own moon, the exact opposite of this one. The airwaves will resonate with a raucous cacophony of people in all shapes and sizes, the moans of pleasure from the massage parlors, the clinking of dabo tables and yells of joyous gamblers, the roar of drunkards at the bars, the chewing of exotic foods at his restaurants, and, above all, the victorious clinking of latinum filling Quark’s pockets. Everyone in the galaxy will want to visit, and Quark will welcome them all, so long as they can pay the price.
Rule of Acquisition #226: “The more relaxed a customer, the more relaxed his pocketbook."
Not just the sounds, but the smells, the taste, the swirling colors, the triumph of it -- Quark can imagine it all so clearly it feels almost in his grasp. Like it’s already happened and he’s just living out the prologue.
First, however, he has to find his way off this moon and to do that he desperately needs accomplices. The past couple years have definitively borne that out. Every strategy he’s tried, every plan he’s attempted, every one of them has bombed spectacularly at some misjudge of character who takes it upon themself to ruin Quark’s best efforts.
(Second is finding the necessary start-up capital, and available real estate, but the Great River provides, so Quark has no doubt he can figure that out later.)
Quark shifts and turns over in his dank corner. If he’s too far back, a stalactite drips right into his ear canal.
Drip drip drip
If he lays on his side, a rock digs into his hip, but if he lays on his back, well, the rock is still there digging in his hip somehow.
Drip drip
Quark sighs and toss onto his other side. This is untenable. He can hear himself breathe . There’s one new sound however: a faint oozing sound.
Across the cell, Odo is in the same place that he’s been for the entire day. Sitting back against the wall, “legs” bent in front of him, and head turned in Quark’s direction.
“Are you really just going to sit there staring at me all night too?” Quark huffs. “Towards me. Whatever. You don’t have eyes, but it’s still disconcerting.”
Odo grunts. Quark hates how even this small acknowledgement is a balm to his ears. As unideal as this situation is, Quark wouldn’t trade it for one more minute in solitary, with nothing but his own thoughts rattling through his head.
Quark huffs and groans, flopping from side to side but it’s no use. “I don’t hear you breathing, you don’t breathe do you? Uncanny.”
“Hmph.”
Several minutes pass in near-silence. Except the constant dripping.
“You're still better than my previous roommates. Maybe you'll kill me in my sleep eventually, but anything better than Rom's gas after too much runkaroach milk. Some sounds aren't better than none. Rom's my brother, real nitwit. I'm guessing you also won't wake up screaming in your sleep from nightmares - you are the nightmare. Like Karlok did - that was my Klingon roommate - fortunately he was only here for --”
“I don't sleep.”
Quark will trick him into conversation yet. “Huh. Even better. Since you’re apparently not a criminal, you won’t steal my stuff either I bet. Well I don't own anything at the moment, but the principle stands --”
“I never said that.”
“You are going to steal my stuff?”
“I never said I’m not a criminal. Just that I don’t consort with them.”
Quark quirks a browridge at that but decides not to press it. “Whatever you are, at least you don’t talk all the time like that one bald guy, hmm, Morn. He would not shut up. About his mother, about his favorite drinks, about that time he robbed a bank. Just on and on and --”
“I can't imagine what that’s like,” Odo says flatly.
A double take that he heard that correctly, then Quark lets out a bark of laughter in surprise. “And you're funny!”
A disbelieving grunt from across the room. “Do you need another display on just how ‘humorous’ I can be, or will you leave me alone in peace?”
Quark gulps. “Right, well, sleep tight, don't let the razortoothed bed beetles bite. Or um. Whatever you do instead of sleep. Just sit there in a blob and glower at me? Not sure how a blob can glower but there you go, and --” Gulp. “Ok.”
A long silence with only the dripping and Odo’s faint liquid sounds.
Quark whispers, low enough for only a Ferengi to hear, normally, but who knows about goo-men. “Good night, Odo.”