Bashir and Company Family Medical Practice

Algiers, Algeria

Earth


─•~:~•─


Rain Kaimeao walked through the crowded streets, letting her eyes scan the face of every person who walked by, looking for any sign of recognition or hostility.

No one recognized her, no one stopped her.

In fact, for the most part, the people of Algiers simply continued with their day, a few pleasant civilians waving at a uniformed Federation Marine walking through their streets, but most not paying Rain any mind at all.

Any other day, this would have been a perfect place to walk with Zelina, she thought to herself.

Rain suddenly turned down an alleyway, out of sight from the crowds. Tactically, the Engine was telling her to double back on her chosen path to the Doctor's office. But the girl named Rain didn't want anyone to see her crying again.

Zelina hadn't called in weeks. Every time she called, Rain only ever got one response.

Vybach. I'm busy. Patrol Duty.

It was a lie, of course. Rain knew Zelina's schedule well enough that she knew, for a fact, standing patrol duty wouldn't have occupied the Captain to the point that she couldn't return calls.

No, there's only one truth here, she thought, fighting the tears, She's avoiding me.

Why? I just want to talk…

And that's all Rain wanted to do right now.

She didn't want to see this mysterious Doctor in Algiers. She didn't want to drop onto an enemy planet with her Secret Squirrels or Ninjas.

She didn't want to be a Marine anymore.

But there was no sense in turning back now. Rain had already come most of the way to the office.

She took a moment to assess the building and concluded in her mind, It was probably just a doctor's office.

The building was not at all defensible, if violence became nessecary. As was her duty as a Marine, Rain had her assault phaser at her hip, to say nothing of the cache of rifles and photon launchers back in the hotel.

Rain walked through the glass doors, and discovered an empty waiting room, with a single young Receptionist seated at the desk.

The young man looked to be reviewing a rather thick medical textbook when he noticed his new visitor and smiled, "Good Morning, Madam. Did you have an appointment?"

Rain nodded and produced an isolinear chip with the needed details.

She hadn't decided to speak yet, hoping to maintain her anonymity that much longer.

The Receptionist picked up the chip and ran it through his reader, "Ah, the special case. The Doctor is waiting for you in his office, Ms. Tom Collins, the first door down the hall on your left."

Rain made her way to the indicated room, stopping for a moment to assess egress routes and zones of fire.

Satisfied she would be able to engage any targets safely, she entered the room and saw the Doctor seated at his desk.

Dr. Julian Bashir was not quite a celebrity, but still very well known to anyone in the Federation.

Bashir's service both before and during the war had become famous, including the first studies of the Changeling Race that led the Dominion.

He was a handsome, classical gentleman, with a distinguished grey beard over his olive-coloured face

"Good morning, Major Rain Kaimeao is it?" He said politely, offering a handshake to Rain, "I'm Doctor Julian Bashir. A pleasure to meet you in person."

Rain smiled and leaned against the edge of the biobed, "I was ordered to see you, Doctor. I'm told that you have a certain level of expertise in... unique fields of medicine."

"You mean the treatment of Augments, of course. Yes, I'd say I have some knowledge of that field. I'm one myself, and I regularly consult with a group of three other such individuals like ourselves, Major," Bashir replied as he readied his equipment.

Rain was shocked, "You mean...there's more people like me?"

The Doctor waved a tricorder over Rain, "Well, not quite like you. Anna McClair was a classmate of mine while I was attending medical school, we shared the hurling pitch on numerous occasions. We still stay connected, all the busyness of being the new president aside. She's told me quite a lot about your abilities, and they appear to rival even my own"

Rain was at a loss for words.

Augments were the only group of people in the Federation who could be – legally – persecuted for being who they were.

If Julian Bashir was really like her, and there were others like him and Rain out there, clearly the old laws would have to be revisited.

"May I ask... how did you get your treatment?" Rain asked with equal parts of curiosity and fear.

Bashir smiled, "Hard as it may be to believe, I wasn't always a talented surgeon. When I was a child, I had a rather challenging time with learning disabilities. While other children my age were learning multiplication and chemistry, I could barely tell the difference between a cat and a dog."

"My parents decided that I needed some additional help, and so they travelled outside the Federation and located a doctor who performed protein growth enhancements and serotonin production enhancements in my brain, knowing full well they could both spend the rest of their lives in prison," He continued, still waving his tricorder above Rain.

"Were they successful?" Rain asked, already knowing the answer.

"Major, by the time I was thirteen, I was already reading at university levels. In fact, for many years I had to go out of my way to hide just how far ahead of my peers I truly was. But after a time, it simply stopped mattering, and I realized that I could do better simply as I was rather than pretending to be someone I wasn't," Bashir replied, shining an optical light in Rain's eyes.

She blinked but didn't flinch which was not the reaction the Doctor had expected.

Next, he took an orthotic hammer and gently tapped both of her kneecaps.

Her reflexes were again far beyond expectation.

Rain could read faces as easily as a child could read a picture book. She asked, playfully, "Something the matter, Doctor Bashir?"

"Well, Anna told me you were unique, but this is really unexpected," said Bashir, next holding up a pen, "Can you identify the chemical composition of this ink?"

Rain had several options at this point.

She knew from memory the exact manufacturing process of every manual pen-making company in the Federation, from design to end sale. Something of a personal hobby.

Her eyes could pick out the depth and fluidity of the ink which gave her more clues.

For this, she decided to go with her sense of smell.

She made a show of taking a long sniff and replied, "Polypropylene Glycol and toluene as the wetting agent."

"Impressive" Bashir replied, shocked at her exacting analysis, "Well, this certainly confirms more than a few of my suspicions."

He sat at his desk and continued, "Rain, May I call you that?"

She nodded.

"Can you tell me more about your enhancements? How they were performed, where and by whom? That sort of thing?"

Rain felt herself tense up.

That information was something that very few people knew the truth about.

The only person she had told was Zelina. Not even Mark – her closest friend – or her daughter Kayla knew the whole truth.

Bashir looked up and noticed that the Major had straightened her posture and was not merely looking at him, but tactically assessing him as a warrior would, "Rain, I promise that you can trust me. There are no monitoring devices in this office. Anything you say stays between us"

Rain quickly assessed Bashir.

His heartbeat and pulse were steady, his eyes were at normal dilation, his breathing was deep and regular, and his perspiration was normal.

No signs he was lying, not even subtle ones.

If her assessments were wrong, she still had her assault phaser too.

"I don't know exactly who. Or where. I was a child, perhaps five or six years old...and the scans indicated that I'm only seventeen, or was that in error?" Rain replied quietly.

"My own scans confirmed that, yes. You are a Human Woman, of Asian descent, possibly Han Chinese or Korean but without further testing it's indeterminate. And based upon your telomere reductions, brain development and hormone levels, I would estimate you are seventeen years of age."

Rain thought for a long moment. It still made little sense to her.

She had over a decade's worth of memories, as clear to her enhanced mind as the conversation she was having just now with Julian Bashir.

One possibility was the sensory deprivation of the cage.

Until she escaped, Rain had never left the twenty-by-eighty-foot room, furnished with a bed, a small desk, a metal chair, and a basic sonic shower for sanitation.

All the training was done in that room. Weapons, tactics, studies, technical instruction...all done by men and women who never revealed their names to Rain and wore medical masks to hide their identities.

When she was fed, it was at various times and with different people each time.

And the pattern repeated itself over and over again, for endless days, nights, weeks, months, and years.

The only thing that ever broke up the monotony was when the various men and women studying and training her had decided to hurt her.

Not physically – though it was painful – but instead by robbing her of the only thing she knew, innocence. Rain shuddered when she remembered those times.

She'd be lying in bed or seated at her cold metal desk.

First, a hand going where it shouldn't, and then a whisper in her ear. And after….

With effort, she suppressed those memories and tried to focus on the matter at hand, "Is there anything else your instruments can tell about me, Doctor?"

Bashir looked at his readout on the terminal, "This is quite possibly the most extensive set of genetic augmentations I've ever seen. Enhanced senses, healing abilities, memory recall, cognitive functions, reflexes, and sight."

"You'll likely live half again as long as any human woman, and you will likely remain in peak physical condition until the day you die. But it's not merely a case of throwing the kitchen sink in. There's an elegance to this work. I'll admit that as a Doctor, I'm rather impressed."

Rain sighed, "Nothing I didn't already know. I'm glad that yet again doctors waste my time. I'm putting off valuable time that I could spend training my spec-ops groups for this."

"Well fortunately for you Major, I do have a purpose here. Anna asked me, privately, to see if I could determine who was responsible for making you the way you are."

Rain rolled her eyes, "All respect to your legendary reputation Julian, but if a Strategic Planning Adjunct from the Borg can't figure it out, I doubt your quaint little office could."

Bashir smirked, "Ordinarily you might be right. But have you or your Borg friend ever heard of Section 31?"

"Is that some sort of nightclub or a title of a legal disclosure for doctors to ask me annoying questions?"

Bashir's entire complexion went deadly serious, "Not quite. Officially, they don't exist. To be honest, I'm not even sure if they're still around. The man I knew as director of the section died 16 years ago in front of my eyes."

"They are an intelligence agency, possibly a branch of Starfleet, though it's been a very long time since they reported to the Admiralty if they ever did."

He continued, softly, "They've been a force behind nearly every controversial event you can think of. Classified or otherwise. What brought them to my attention was when I identified the virus that nearly caused genocide amongst the Changelings."

"No one in Starfleet Medical or any private practice could have utilized the number of resources that were put into making this virus. And based on the quality of work I'm seeing here with you, Rain, logic suggests they may be the architects behind your creation."

Rain completely switched off any kind of sarcastic reaction and switched her mind into deadly seriousness.

If there was any truth to Julian's statements, it would answer a great many questions that were dogging her for her whole life.

She stood up straight and said, "I need to know everything that you know about this organization, Doctor. Every last detail, no matter how insignificant you may think it is."

"That might take some time..."

"I have plenty of it, now. And I'd consider it a personal favour to the Corps."

Julian returned a smile of his own, "My wife Ezri is a Starship Captain, USS Aventine. She's told me that after some reluctance she'll be taking on one of the so-called Marine Combat Teams. I suppose a favour with you could ensure the cream of the crop gets assigned."

Rain was about to confirm the Doctor's request when her wrist comm beeped.

It annoyed her that she had to wear the device, but she had responsibilities as a Marine to fulfill.

She opened it to check the message, and her posture again shifted into seriousness.

Mark had declared Protocol Midnight. The message was simply read:

***FLASH FLASH FLASH***

PROTOCOL MIDNIGHT IS NOW IN EFFECT FOR ALL FMC CALL-SIGNS

ALL COMBAT-READY CALL SIGNS AND ALL CALL SIGNS ABLE TO RESPOND ARE TO REPORT TO NEAREST STAGE POINT ON BOUNCE

THREAT CONDITION 2. AT TIME OF MSG UFP IS UNDERSTOOD TO BE IN A STATE OF HOSTILITY WITH THE ROMULAN REPUBLIC

WAR ACTION IS CONSIDERED STRONGLY POSSIBLE

STOUT HEARTS, OVERLORD 1-9 SENDS

"I have to go," Rain said as she quickly left out the door, making a point in her mind to call Julian later by secured QC.

When she made it back outside and onto the street, a noise drew her attention to the sky.

Hundreds ofRaptors, Fighters, and an Akira class Raider were racing across the sky, heading straight north as fast as they could.

The ships would likely stop at Scapa Flow to take on extra supplies and equipment before heading into orbit to join up with Home Fleet.

Rain's place was at Camp Nath.

As OC-Spec Ops, she would be the first wave for any attack on the Romulans, either dropping with The Secret Squirrels straight onto Mol Rhihann or leading the Ninjas into action to neutralize some other target.

The local Transport hub would have her at the camp in moments.

And when Rain won this war, her next would be against Section 31.