In less time than he could find to prevent it, a name had forced its way through Bashir's mouth - a whisper that was barely a voice, spoken from the depths of his throat. "Sloan."

His view of the visitor was now clear, each detail of his face resolving itself far too easily as Julian's eyes adjusted to the poor illumination. Watching intensely, he tracked the man's progress as he rose from the chair in which he'd been seated, and crossed to the nearer end of the room. Have to wake someone, he thought. He's dangerous. But what would that accomplish, except to divert the intruder's attention to Corinna and her family?

"I remember you."

"Of course you do." Sloan shrugged again, turning to look over his shoulder. A corner of his lip twitched into a near imperceptible smile. "I would hate to think that I'd ever been so forgettable."

"How did you get in here?" demanded Julian.

His adversary dismissed the question with a wave of one hand. "I'll leave that to your imagination," he said. "By the time you do figure out the answer, I'll most likely be long gone anyway. But I know how you enjoy a challenge."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"Do I flatter myself?" But he continued without a pause, giving Julian no chance to respond. "In any case, it hardly matters. I for one did go to all this effort to argue over such minutiae."

"Why are you here, then? Was your accomplice or whoever that was less successful than you hoped he would be?"

"Yesterday morning is nothing to do with me."

"You're lying."

"On the contrary, Doctor. I'm only here to help."

"Oh, really?" There was no point in concealing the extent of his misgivings. "Then are you telling me it's simple co-incidence, that you always show up at the point when everything starts to go horribly wrong?"

"What leads you to that conclusion? I've only ever met you once before now."

"Twice," Bashir corrected him. "And why would you of all people be going out of your way for my sake?"

Again, the same controlled expression, which fell just short of true sincerity. "All right. I confess. The truth is, Julian. I've come to like you. You're an intriguing man, and deep down, in spite of your somewhat misguided hostility, I think that you are just as intrigued by me."

As he stepped closer, the cold blue of Sloan's eyes did not waver. "I'm not asking you to 'like' me in any sense of the word, and you don't have to say a thing to confirm what I'm about to tell you. But I do suggest that you listen, at least. Your life may depend on it."

Bashir shuddered. The suspicious frown on his face deepened still further. But he did not speak.

"Smart man," Sloan commented. "And now to the business at hand. I will not confirm or deny any of those things I've no doubt you suspect me of, so if I were you I'd save myself the trouble of asking. But what I do have at hand - which might interest you - is data gathered from several studies pertaining to the circumstances of our last encounter."

"Meaning what?"

Seeing that he finally had the complete attention of his younger companion, the pale-faced intruder nodded in quiet approval. "It has to do with the long term effects of certain artificial toxins. In normal circumstances, we had already made absolutely certain that these would have been minimal. It wasn't what they were designed for, after all. What our best scientists could not predict, unfortunately, was how different this reaction would be when combined with previously altered DNA."

Bashir was unable to prevent a shake of his head that was almost too slight to be felt - never mind seen. He remembered longing to escape from the immediate effects of the poisoned air, the constant churning in his stomach, the burning pain deep inside his lungs. The potential for long term consequences had never gone entirely unconsidered. He'd already been scanned so many times that he felt like a rat on a laboratory table, and secretly performed several additional scans on himself to make sure that nothing could possibly have been missed.

The smaller man's expression shifted a little, as if he had plucked the thought directly from Julian's mind.

"You may have already experienced some of the initial signs," he went on. "Loss of motor control, periodical weakness, hand tremors… And I assure you, none of this would have shown up in any test. In all our projections, it happens slowly - but it is inevitable. I'm afraid I don't have a workable time frame for you. But the bottom line is, by the time you are able to quantify the results, it will be too late. Your cells will have broken down at the sub-molecular level, and you will die."

A flush of warmth rose quickly to Julian's face. "Assuming that I believe a word you're saying," he said. "How is any of it supposed to help?"

"Did you forget the most fundamental lesson of diagnostic medicine?" Sloan challenged him. "The first step to any solution is to understand the problem. But I do know of one person with some degree of expertise on this subject, the same woman who first drew our attention to this issue. A geneticist by the name of Larkin - Hilary Larkin."

He paused. "Sound familiar?"

"Maybe."

Larkin… Bashir's prodigious memory ran through a catalogue of names and faces, but he already had a clear view of the image forming in his mind. Pale. Round cheeks, red like polished apples. Narrow but kindly dark blue eyes. Larkin… Wasn't she…?

Seeming to see his present company move to some level of realisation, Sloan nodded slowly. "She was a doctor," he confirmed. "Unfortunately, I couldn't possibly tell you where she is right now. But I believe you may have encountered her once before, during that trip you took to Adigeon Prime."

Corinna was still pale and half asleep when she greeted Julian on the following morning, but she had never been able to summon much of a voice before her first coffee of the day. She clasped her mug and watched him fold the blanket into an ever-tighter bundle. "Just leave it on the back of the chair," she said in answer to his questioning stare. But her eyes held a question of their own.

"Everything's fine." Julian smiled reassuringly before turning away from her dark, anxious eyes.

Images whirled around in his mind, as apparently substantial, but elusive as dust in a hurricane. He wondered if he ought to say more. But he could already picture her reaction, and especially how she would respond to reports of what Sloan had said before he'd disappeared from sight like the edges on a cloud of smoke.

Not yet, he thought. You've given them more than enough to deal with already. Later, maybe. But not yet.

The night had continued for five more hours at least, but Julian had not been able to sleep through any of them. Instead he'd replicated himself a cup of sweetened Tarkalean tea, and seated himself at the table, holding it in both hands and staring into the shadows until his drink had grown so tepid it was barely drinkable.

"What is it?" Corinna asked when she saw the still troubled look upon his face.

"Mm?" Julian looked up, startled, and blinked. "Oh. Er… Nothing. Nothing at all. Just thinking."

"That's understandable." Still with the same nervous smile, the woman rested a hand upon her cousin's shoulder. "There's a lot to think about, isn't there? Listen - I have to get Meg off to school. But how about we all have a hot breakfast first?"

"I'll help." Glad to find some distraction from his constantly cycling memories, Julian dropped his bundle on the back of the chair and started towards the farthest wall.

But Corinna moved to intercept him half way. "It's all right - I've got it."

"Don't you trust me any more to operate a replicator?" Her companion challenged her, with a steadier voice than he felt.

Corinna nodded, chuckling quietly to herself. "Very well, if you insist," she conceded. "I'll go wake that lazy family of mine, and you can take care of breakfast."

Seventy three minutes after the table had been cleared, Julian and Liam were seated at each other's side, where Corinna's husband was taking great delight in showing their guest a painted scale replica he'd constructed of Kirk's Enterprise. It was his most treasured project - something which had taken him over six months to build and then another week to paint in the detail he wanted.

Neither made any mention of the previous day's events, as though sensing each other's preference for silence and distraction. As Julian's gaze traced the model's perfect, white curves, he recalled the boyish thrill that he and Miles had shared, wandering more than a hundred years back through those wide and brightly lit corridors.

Both men watched Corinna enter through the front door. But before acknowledging either of them, she slumped into the nearest chair and rubbed a thumb and forefinger across the bridge of her nose.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked Julian.

"I'm fine," he responded, but echoed the gathering storm behind her eyes. "Are you?"

She nodded, looking tired.

Liam approached his wife, with an expression of quiet concern deeply etched across his brow. Corinna rested one cheek against his hands, as he massaged away some part of the morning's tension and bent to kiss her hair. "Mm," she murmured, closing her eyes for barely a moment. "That's nice."

But when she opened them again, her smile had not returned. Her face was anxious, gazing over to where their youngest daughter sat on the floor with a child's computer propped across both knees. Finally, Julian sensed a question emanating from behind his own quietly subtle frown.

"I spoke to the local gold-squad." Corinna's answer was soft and tight, and carried a trace of barely noticeable hesitation. She made contact with Julian's nut-hazel eyes, but even this faltered a little as she continued to reveal what she had learned.

"The man they have in custody - Commander Russell tells me he's been able to find an official record, and that he thinks there's some kind of involvement from one of those crazy factions that pops up every now and then. This one's just a minor splinter group - they call themselves the Purity Front - or Anti-gens. Which is the worst pun I've ever heard, if you ask me. But then… I don't know. But apparently it's got something to do with protecting our species from…"

She hesitated. But Julian was more than capable of giving voice to the words that hovered between them.

"…People like me."

"Those sanctimonious bastards," Liam hissed. Julian responded with nothing more than a soft, resigned sigh.

"Maybe. But I suppose it's something I'll just have to get used to from now on."

Liam's eyes were closer to steel grey than the major's striking shade of near-black. But they blazed with a brief but angry fire, which lent him an uncanny - although passing - resemblance to Kira Nerys. He paced across the same three steps, grinding his teeth and locking them together to keep a string of profanity from reaching his daughter's ears. Then he stopped, closed his eyes, and took several false starts before he finally managed to speak.

"I… Honest, man. I fail to see how you can be so calm about all this."

Julian lowered his gaze to where both hands were tightly clenched across his lap. "Trust me, I'm not."

As though disconnected from a faulty power source, Liam's head immediately ceased its barely voluntary shaking. He blinked, mouth still open - but with the anger and incredulity now all but drained from his face.

Corinna took the opening. "So what happens now?"

Julian noted quietly that his hands were still tensed into a pair of tight fists, muscles and tendons raised along the back of his arms. "I'm not sure." Rising to his feet, he stepped past his audience and made for the exit.

A silent addendum came to his thoughts. But I know what I have to do.

…And where I have to go. He rubbed the skin at the centre of his brow - in the area just above his nose. But if anything, the ache only worsened, and there was an extra pressure now - a hand coming to rest upon his shoulder. He looked to see Corinna's still querying frown - and realised that he had failed to conceal the unsteadiness of his hands.