Tauvid Rem, an Idanian, hides a phaser in his sleeve and answers the door of his quarters to confront two Finneans, who demand that he relinquish an item. Rem pretends to relent and tries to draw his phaser, but one of the Finneans beats him to the draw and vaporizes him. They weren't supposed to kill him, so now they'll have to wait around for the woman Rem was supposed to meet. Meanwhile, Odo notices a beautiful woman waiting at Quark's bar. When Odo tries to shoo away the amorous barkeep, the woman, Arissa, mistakes Odo's intentions for romance and comments on his "bedroom eyes," making Odo get flustered.
The pair meet again when Arissa gets hauled into Odo's office for trying to hack into some passenger manifests using a dataport behind her ear. She explains that she's looking for Tauvid Rem, who has information on her daughter, whom she gave up as an infant. Odo shows her to Rem's quarters but discovers the poorly hidden remains of the vaporized Idanian. Odo drops the charges against Arissa in sympathy of her plight, but he catches her again hacking into a computer not long afterwards. She gives up a data crystal, which has encrypted information about someone's daughter, and admits that she's actually a member of the Orion Syndicate looking for information to help her escape the clutches of a gangster called Draim.
Odo puts Arissa into protective custody and secretly transports her into his own quarters. There they have a heart-to-heart, and Arissa recalls her troubled backstory of getting roped in as "net girl" and spy for the syndicate. Odo promises to protect her, and the romantic sparks are clearly flying. Odo leaves to interrupt Bashir in a spy holosuite program for advice on whether to pursue her, and Bashir suggests he seize any opportunity even if his heart gets broken. Odo returns to Arissa, and they kiss.
After a discreet commercial break, we find Odo and Arissa in bed, where the changeling admits that she's the first woman he's ever been with. They go for round two, this time with Odo using his shapechanging to spice things up. Odo's conquest is the talk of the station, and everyone is gossiping by the time he arrives for work. But while he's away, Arissa has arranged to make a deal with the two Finnean assassins, who are prepared to kill her despite any deal they make.
Odo receives another Idanian, who tells him that Arissa is actually an undercover agent who was given a completely new identity and set of memories to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate. The data crystal actually contains her memories. The pair discover that Arissa has stolen the data crystal from the science lab, knocking out O'Brien in the process. Just before the Finnean assassins can kill Arissa, Odo and the Idanian ambush them, and the three of them manage to disarm the assassins. Afterwards, the Idanian explains that the memory wipe was necessary to fool Draim's telepaths, but Arissa's investigations will be sufficient to put the gangster away for good.
Odo is visited by "Arissa," though he realizes that's not her real name. She's been surgically restored to her original Idanian appearance. The spy regretfully informs Odo that she's married but assures him that the woman she once was did love him. Odo smiles, though his heart is broken, and does not look back as she leaves.
Tropes
- Accidental Adultery: Arissa's real self is married, so she was essentially cheating on him when she slept with Odo, but neither of them knew she was married at the time. Once her memories are restored, Arissa explains the situation to Odo, but assures her that the person she was when they were together did love him.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Bashir says to a female holosuite character, "You just jumped out of an airplane at 20,000 feet and yet, there's not a hair on your head out of place."
- Brain/Computer Interface: Arissa has a 'dataport' behind her ear.
- Cyberpunk: The episode brushes against some common cyberpunk conventions, such as high-tech gangsters, jacking into computers to hack them, and downloading memories.
- Deep Cover Agent: Arissa, so deep that even she doesn't know she's an agent on account of her altered memories.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Odo has his heart broken just as Bashir warned he might.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The way Arissa talks about men using and touching her makes her sound like a Sex Slave. Her cover backstory also describes her being a "net-girl", meaning that she was paid to let people enter her mind via her dataport.
- Dramatic Irony: Before meeting Arissa, the Finneans establish between each other that they're going to kill her after the deal concludes.
- Fat and Skinny: Sorm and Traidy.
- Geeky Turn-On: Odo first finds Arissa interesting when she informs Quark that someone on the second floor is using a device to cheat the dabo wheel.
- Gossipy Hens: Arissa's reference to Odo's "bedroom eyes" travels around the station at roughly Warp Nine, and so does speculation about her spending the night in his quarters.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Sorm and Traidy shoot a man in the cold open and accidentally vaporize him."Huh. I thought it was on stun."
"Look what you did to the carpet!" - MacGuffin: Everyone wants the data crystal, which contain Arissa's true memories.
- Memory Gambit: Memories were backed up and temporarily deleted from the host body in order to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate while fooling telepaths, leaving only a vague trigger to guide the agent back at the end of the mission.
- Moment Killer: Bashir is about to smooch his holo-lady when Odo shows up and inadvertently cockblocks him.
- Not So Above It All: In Ops, Worf listens irritably to Dax and Kira speculating about Arissa spending the night in Odo's quarters. He snaps that Odo can take care of himself, then seems to remember he's not interested.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: O'Brien's fake accent momentarily disappears when he sees Odo talking to Bashir.(as Falcon) "Car trouble, Mr. Bashir?" (as O'Brien) "Hi, Odo."
- Resignations Not Accepted: According to Arissa, you don't leave the Orion Syndicate unless they let you.
- Shipper on Deck: Everyone is ecstatic when they learn that Odo has found someone he’s interested.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Arissa is annoyed that everyone who talks to her is only interested in her looks. When Odo first meets her, she assumes he's hitting on her.
- The Syndicate: The Orion Syndicate, the series' go-to for organized criminal activity.
- Transferable Memory: The data crystal contains Arissa's memories.
- Typecasting: In-Universe: O'Brien gets rather annoyed that he keeps getting cast as Falcon in Bashir's secret agent program.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Arissa says that Odo has "bedroom eyes," quite flustering him.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is a riff on the Film Noir movie The Narrow Margin.
