A group of the crew are on an abandoned station, with a killer.
To replace a failing part on Deep Space Nine, O'Brien leads a salvage team to Empok Nor, an abandoned Cardassian station of the same design, bringing Garak along to disarm its booby traps. They find stasis tubes, two recently emptied, and a dead soldier from an elite unit. Their runabout is destroyed, stranding them, and the two revived Cardassians begin killing the team one by one.
Garak goes hunting and kills both soldiers, then turns on the survivors. He has been exposed to the same psychotropic drug the soldiers were given to heighten their xenophobia, and he kills Amaro before taking Nog hostage to lure O'Brien. O'Brien agrees to fight him hand to hand but has rigged his phaser to explode, disabling Garak. Back home, O'Brien admits he meant the trap to kill. A tense fifth-season thriller, it shows the danger beneath Garak's charm and the wartime past O'Brien carries.