O'Brien leads a salvage team to Empok Nor, an abandoned Cardassian space station in the Treba system, to obtain needed spare parts for DS9. The team includes Nog as well as Garak, whose help is needed in disarming the booby traps the Cardassians left behind. However, the team soon finds themselves stranded on the station and stalked by three Cardassian soldiers - test subjects for an experimental drug to heighten their racial xenophobia - and Garak too has now been exposed to it.
