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The guard turns the corner and Worf snatches his wrist, spinning him into the wall and bringing the phaser up between them so the sound is muffled when he fires. There is a split second afterwards where he can feel the Starfleet security uniform ripple and melt in his fist, but then he's dropping the changeling’s body and scanning the corridor, phaser held out before him. It is not his typical choice of weapon, but attacking liquid with a blade would be inefficient. He cannot afford inefficiency. Not on this mission.
The corridor is empty. Overriding the lock will not present a challenge – since working with Starfleet intelligence he has garnered many new means of getting into and out of secure places. The corridor is lined on one side with closed doors. He has an extraction route planned that will pose the least risk of encountering enemy forces while minimising the time it takes to reach the beam out point, given the likelihood he will be dealing with… injured captives. The door is suddenly in front of him. It is the correct door. The lock, as expected, does not present a challenge.
The door slides open and on the shadowy floor lie two humanoid bodies, bound at the wrists with their hands forced behind them, blood congealing on their faces and matting their hair. William Riker and Deanna Troi. For a fraction of a second, he holds perfectly still in the doorway, staring, but then – the subtle rise and fall of two chests breathing.
He crosses the room in two strides and drops to a crouch, drawing a dagger and reaching for the cuffs at Riker’s wrists – with sufficient delicacy and application of force, the locking mechanism can be levered out of place. He feels the faint heat from his old commander’s body in the cold dark of the cell, smells the iron tang of human blood overlayed with drying fear-laced sweat as he works, conscious of Troi lying out of sight behind him. He almost has the lock, but then one of Riker’s fingers twitches, and before Worf can react the cuffs are wrenched from his grip as the man bound by them twists around to face him.
The light from the corridor falls on blood-flecked grey hair, Worf watches as Riker’s wild blue eyes focus on him, widen in recognition – and he jerks away as though burned. He kicks himself back into the far wall, bruise-swollen face contorted, and shouts "Get away from me! Don't come any closer!”
“Captain—” Worf starts, but Riker cuts him off.
“I know you're one of them! That’s one trick you’ve used up. Find a better one." His breaths stutter, though he is trying to sound undaunted. An injury of the ribs, or concealed panic. He is glaring at Worf with defiant contempt.
Worf starts another attempt to placate him, but Riker’s gaze lands behind him where his wife is still unconscious, and he becomes frantic. "Don't you touch her either! Can't you see she's had enough? You touch her again and I'll -" he breaks off, voice ragged from emotion, exhaustion, but fear forcing him on. "I swear I’ll-"
"Captain Riker, I am not a changeling." Worf keeps his voice calm and stays where he is, raising his hands in the way humans find placating. He thinks of his years as ambassador, diffusing derailed negotiations, and not of how his friend is cowering away from him. "I will prove it to you, in whatever way you wish."
Riker narrows his eyes, assessing, disbelief still evident in his features.
"Ask me something you trust that only I would know," Worf suggests, conscious of the time they're taking, the window of escape growing slimmer. Conscious of the way he can feel Riker looking at him, looking for evidence it's not a trick.
"Basic information is no good, who knows what they've found out about all of us. Blood is no good either," Riker says, more to himself than to Worf. Behind him he can still hear faint, even breathing.
Finally, Riker locks eyes with him, levels his gaze. “You tell me something. Tell me something no one would know but—but Worf. Nice try, but I’m not going to give you anything you can use. Against any of us.”
Well. Worf takes a deep breath, expecting something to simply present itself… But nothing does. It has been a long time since he had managed more than the occasional visit to the Troi household, but before that there were – they were – they had (not enough time, is what they have, before someone notices the bodies in the corridors and raises the alarm) … He must think of something fast.
“Y—” he starts and immediately stops, because You were the first person I knew who could ask me to calm down without making me angrier is both functionally unprovable and far too personal. Everything he thinks of after that is, of course, far too impersonal, mere facts that anyone with access to Starfleet records and enough diligence could find in theory, away missions undertaken together, events both mundane and catastrophic from their time on the Enterprise. Then come things he has no reason to believe Riker will remember, the shared glances on the bridge or in meetings, the countless minor victories they’d won at eachother’s sides, the times Worf had been certain he’d ended their friendship only for Riker to burst out laughing at whatever foolish thing he’d said. And after that, things Riker had not been there for, things they had only discussed on subspace calls from Deep Space Nine, or later the times few and far between when he would sweep across a space port in his ambassador’s robes to where his friends stood waiting.
He realises that, for all his meditation on the way to this forsaken corner of space, his presence of mind has deserted him. He realises that all the things he knows in his heart to be true would prove nothing to say aloud, because in the years when it counted, he had been unable to. His oldest friend is looking at him and seeing a stranger. He is at an utter loss for how to prove himself otherwise.
“… Worf?” Deanna Troi’s weak and ragged voice hauls him back to the present. He resists the urge to help her up lest she show the same fear Riker did, but already as she comes to she seems steadier. She fixes him with her deep black stare, discerning. He hopes fervently that she will be able to sense something a changeling could not replicate.
“Is it him?” Riker asks. Without looking away, she answers.
“It’s him.”
That confirmation is all it takes for the rescue to resume as planned. It takes seconds to break the cuffs and haul each of them to their feet, although neither are able to walk far unaided, so they proceed as a unit of three with Worf in between them, holding as much weight as they’ll give. Should they be attacked he would have to push them off to draw a weapon, and dimly he considers whether or not it would be faster to throw Riker over one shoulder, tuck Troi under one arm and run, but neither is necessary. They make it to the beam out point the very same second the alarm starts blaring.
“You took your damn time,” Rafaella says in his ear, the lights of the transporter already flickering in his vision. “Straight to sickbay, I’m assuming.”
Straight to sickbay, where the wounds of the past days will be erased from his friends’ bodies. A great relief it will be to see their faces unmarred by open wounds and swelling, but he cannot shake the feeling that something deeper here is broken. Something that will not be so simple to fix.