"Ready to go?" the young man said, breaking his friend out of her thoughts.

"Huh?" she replied. Then she remembered their plans; "Oh, yeah! Yeah, I'm ready-- let's rock this!"

As they approached the nearby aircraft, the guy turned to her. "You okay there? You seemed a bit distracted."

"I'm fine. But where are we going again?" she asked.

"He was captured by the 'D' forces, but his other team is on the run." As they got in their seats, he continued to explain. "Remember what his instructions were?"

It took a second for her to process the info. "Yeah-- we weren't supposed to do anything unless things took a turn for the worst. Guess it got 'That bad,' huh?"

By now, they had left their home base and were heading towards their destination.

"That's the nice way of putting things. It got so bad that their own aircraft was set to 'self destruct' mode and later set off." Here, he looked at her. "Don't worry-- everyone else is safe for now, remember?"

Her face relaxed a bit. "Yeah-- that's good. Oh!" Here, she sat forward, staring intently at the console in front of her. "There are three signals coming from that field!"

"Yeah, but we're looking for four," the pilot said anxiously.

"Hang on-- let's cloak, and I'll zoom in with the camera to see," the young woman replied.

Jesse Kilmartin and Lexa Pierce hung back from Shalimar Fox and Brennan Mulray. After watching the Double Helix and the Dominion building go up in flames, not one of the group wanted to speak. Lexa was especially quiet-- the memory of what she had been told still scared her, like an axe in a guillotene.

Your expiry date is... fast approaching.

Your DNA structure was not fixed.

Something seemed just wrong about the way that guy had said those words. After what happened over these past few weeks, Lexa was hoping that the Dominion was lying to her this time-- besides, they had lied about everything else. Why should she trust what they say about this?

She snapped out of her thoughts to the feeling of a familiar, comforting arm around her shoulder. Ease seemed to flow through her as she looked into Jesse's blue eyes. "Lexa," he asked, "are you okay?"

Despite her distress, Lexa smiled. "Yeah, Jess-- I was just thinking."

He looked at her, concerned. "About what?"

She creased her eyebrows as she forced the words out. "The Dominion agents told me that my DNA hadn't been corrected." She shook her head, then laughed mockingly, despite the turn their conversation had taken. "It's got to be a mistake, though! I mean, those guys are professionals at lying, murdering-- you name it! What's to say that they're believable about this sort of stuff?"

Jesse smiled, but only said, "I hope you're right, Lexa. I hope to everything that you're right."

Looking smug, she replied, "One hundred dollars says I am right! Bet on it?"

He laughed. He was right earlier about Lexa's joke-making abilities-- put her under stress or get emotional, and she turned into a comedienne. And for some weird reason, it worked on him this time. "All right-- it's a bet." They shook hands on it. Looking forward, however, they saw that Shalimar and Brennan had stopped, and were staring at something that looked like their own Double Helix-- only this time, this one was larger than the other.

"What the heck?" Shalimar gasped.