Author's note:

Here we are, another chapter of this happy little tale. I can't address reviewers as I used to in author's notes, as per the new rules with review replies, so I'll just say thanks to everyone who has reviewed, and I'll reply individually where I can. The burning question of death by mosquito bites will be answered by former science officer Captain Janeway.

Less than half an hour ago, he'd been grudgingly doing paperwork and bemoaning that as a fate. Fate was ironic; now he would have given anything to be back in that position. He was too busy to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

The six people on the away team materialized in sickbay – Chakotay, Torres, Kim, Kessel, and two other crew members he didn't recognize at first glance. He went to B'Elanna first, out of a sense of loyalty, and gasped. Her face was flushed deep red. Sick heat radiated from her body; she was more like a bank of coals in a Starfleet uniform than a living being. No tricorder was necessary to tell him something was seriously wrong. That was one nasty fever.

"B'Elanna," he said. Her eyes were glassy and rolled wetly towards him. They tried to focus, but slid away from him after a moment. She muttered something deep in her throat and slumped over. He struggled to get his arms under her. The heat coming off her was sickening; people weren't supposed to be that hot. One hand clutched at his uniform shirt for a moment before letting go and going limp. Her brow was bathed in sweat.

He staggered as he lifted her to the biobed. The probe to his medical tricorder skittered away from his fingers as he grabbed for it convulsively. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the doctor helping Kim to another biobed. Harry was in no better shape. His face was soaked in sweat and was an ugly, yellowish pale. His eyes stood out, dark rings under them, staring out deliriously at Paris. The doctor seized a hypospray and administered it, taking a moment to read the sensors over B'Elanna's biobed.

"Thirty cc's of provaline, Mr. Paris!" the doctor said urgently. Paris swallowed and looked for another hypospray. Fear made him clumsy; his hands were shaking and he could barely load the vial into the hypospray. His throat closed down. B'Elanna was pregnant. The thought of losing his wife and his daughter at one swoop was terrifying. And just this morning, she'd been joking with him.

Somehow, he managed to push his fear away and do his job, getting each member of the away team onto a biobed and getting treatment started. All of them had the same blazing fever and delirium. None of them responded to his questions or even seemed to recognize where they were. There were six patients and only himself and the doctor to treat them; pandemonium ruled sickbay.

It seemed to be all they could do just to keep the patients from getting any worse. According to the readings, Harry's fever had increased two entire degrees in just the short time he had been there. The provaline slowed it down for a while, but it lost its effect quickly.

"Doctor. Mr. Paris. Report."

He turned from B'Elanna's bedside to see Captain Janeway. She was standing by Chakotay's bed, one hand on her fallen first officer's face. Chakotay didn't seem to register her being there. The tattoo stood out starkly against his pale brow.

"The away team is sick. They all have high fevers and they're delirious. They beamed up a mosquito before...this happened," Paris began lamely. "There was a weird looking virus in the mosquito."

Janeway raised an eyebrow. "A mosquito?"

Paris's face twisted. "Well, a Delta Quadrant mosquito," he admitted. "Here." He held up the sample jar containing the insect. "I don't see how somebody could die of a mosquito bite, but...," he trailed off.

Janeway nodded slowly. "Mosquito bites won't kill you. The viruses they carry are another story," she said. "Dengue fever, West Nile virus– a whole host of them. It can get ugly. I've seen it before."

"You have?" the doctor asked.

"Yes," she said absently, studying Chakotay's readings. " I have some background in virology. On the Al-Batani. I had to help contain an outbreak of Tulian encephalitis on Bolephus III."

"We're a little shorthanded," Paris said. "We could use some help."

Janeway turned to look at him, her features set in stone. "Agreed," she said archly. "We'll need to quarantine the members of the away team. I want samples of this virus, and a full bioscan of each crewman. And of course, update me on any change in their condition." She tapped her combadge. "Janeway to bridge."

"Bridge here," Tuvok replied.

"Mr. Tuvok, you are to take command of Voyager until further notice. Brief me at the beginning of every shift. I also want every crewman with a medical rating of five or higher assigned to sickbay. I'll be in the biolab."

"Of course, captain," Tuvok said impassively.

Wow, Tom thought disjointedly, good thing our captain has her mad-scientist side.

The captain left sickbay for the biolab. After a few more rounds of treatment, the patients were stable. They were pumped full of sedatives and vaccines and anything that could do some good. The quarantine fields were in place. Everything that could have been done for them had been done.

It didn't help him as much as he thought it might have. Glancing at the chronometer, he was surprised to see that two hours had gone by. Now, all he could do was sit by his wife and his friend. Both of them were in a stupor of fever and sedatives. Their eyes stared up at the ceiling, dead and glassy, giving him the disturbing feeling that they were gone, leaving behind only their shells. Even though he could pull up the EEG of either one and see it wasn't that way, it gave him the creeps.

"Hang on, guys," he said, feeling his throat tighten.

The sound of a whispered conversation made him turn. Over on the other side of the sickbay, the EMH was bending over Ensign Kessel. Her eyes were open, and she was talking to the doc about something. That surprised him; what with the virus and the amount of drugs percolating through her bloodstream, she was lucky to be able to form syllables at all.

Still, maybe she could tell him something about what had happened. He got up and stopped for a moment, torn between his desire to see what she knew and the equally strong desire to stay by B'Elanna and Harry. Then he pressed on, glancing back as he made his way through the ward.

Kessel looked awful. The pasty white skin of a woman who had lived her life in the biolab had turned yellowish and even more pale. Her eyes were glassy. With fangs, she might have made a passable vampire – one who had just had a meal of tainted blood. She was shuddering visibly. The instruments overhead told him more: her fever was there, but not so bad as theirs. Her heart rate was oddly slow. That was an anomaly; everyone else had elevated heart rates.

Now that he looked, there were other anomalies. Kessel had a fever, but hers was a good two and a half degrees below everyone else's. She was apparently able to talk to the doctor, so she was aware – at least on some level. That was promising.

"Ensign," the doctor said as he approached, "this is...a most unusual request."

"I know," Kessel said vacantly. "I just...," As Paris came over to stand beside the doctor, she trailed off. It took her a few seconds to focus on him and register his presence.

"Hey," Paris said. "What happened down there?"

"The mosquitoes," Kessel said. "They stung Harry...then Chakotay...then Torres...then me. I saw that...that virus. Didn't look right. Then everyone just started...getting sick and dropping." She sighed heavily. "I tried...I should have known...,"

"You did what you were supposed to do," Paris said. "Now look. Captain Janeway is going to take some bioscans of everybody, and we'll figure out what this is, and we'll beat it. If we can figure out why it is you're in better shape than the others, then we can--,"

The doctor gave him a troubled look. "Mr. Paris," he interjected.

Paris gave him a puzzled look. The doctor simply looked down at Kessel. "Ensign?"

Now he was doubly puzzled. Kessel sighed and closed her eyes.

"I don't consent to that," she said finally.

Paris stopped and blinked. Was anyone going to explain what was going on?

"I don't want Captain Janeway to have a scan of me," she said. "I want...er...was heisst's...," she stopped, clearly searching for the phrase she wanted. "Medical confidentiality."

Tom Paris glanced over his shoulder where B'Elanna and Harry lay somewhere between life and death, then back at the ensign.

"Are you kidding?" he asked.

Her eyes swept across his face, searching for understanding. "I'll do it," she volunteered. "I know what to look for. I'm a biologist too. I scan alien life forms all the time. I can scan myself."

Tom shook his head and smiled, mostly to diffuse the shock of this outlandish request. "You have a fever of a hundred and four. No way are you fit for duty. Come on, are you a spy or something?"

Only once the words were out of his mouth did it occur to him that might be it. After all, everybody had thought Seska was just a loudmouthed Maquis engineer; nobody had ever thought she was actually a Cardassian spy. Had Kessel known much about Seska? If the reference meant anything to the dark-haired ensign, she didn't show it. She simply shook her head.

"Not a spy," she said. "Please. I just...I can't. I have reasons. Good ones."

"And what would those be?" Paris asked.

Kessel's face was pinched as she looked down at the floor. "I can't tell you," she breathed. "Please...I swear I'll give her...what she needs. Just not a bioscan."

Paris opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, when the doctor intervened. "We'll talk about this later," he said smoothly. "Mr. Paris, begin scans of the other patients."

Paris gave the doctor a puzzled look, but moved over to B'Elanna's biobed and began to run the scans for the captain. The doctor followed him over to begin Harry's. Once they were out of the ensign's earshot, Paris pulled a face at the doctor.

"So," he said. "We're just going to let Kessel skate on a bioscan? Come on, doc. She's better off then they are, and we have to find out why."

The doctor did not answer for a few moments, aligning his instruments. "Mr. Paris, I've learned one thing in my time practicing medicine," he said. "Upsetting a patient unnecessarily is foolish. Upsetting a patient who is confused and disoriented is doubly foolish. Merely because she's in better condition than Lieutenant Torres or Ensign Kim doesn't mean she is thinking clearly."

Paris examined B'Elanna's readings. "Doc, B'Elanna's fever has gone up three-quarters of a degree in just the past few minutes. We can't wait. If they keep up this kind of fever, they could...," He trailed off. What would happen with that kind of fever? A lot of things, none of them good. Brain damage, permanent disabilities, even death. The thought made his stomach churn.

"That's another thing," the doctor said, and gave him a serious look over the biobed panels. "We must. We're medical personnel, Mr. Paris. Medical personnel do not treat a patient against that patient's consent."

"What?" The idea sounded preposterous. "Doc, this is the nastiest virus I've ever seen. What if Harry and B'Elanna die because some ensign is having a paranoid moment? Come on. We need answers, we need them now, and every minute counts. Besides, Captain Janeway wants a scan."

The doctor turned his attention back to Harry. The limp forms on the biobed seemed so lost and helpless. Even now, their fevers were beginning to creep back up and so were the viral counts in their bloodstreams. Everything they did seemed to be just piling up more sand against the tide. It held back the flood for a few crashes, but then their efforts turned to wet muck under the onslaught.

"We'll have to advise Captain Janeway of Ensign Kessel's decision," the doctor said.

"Well? What if she orders her to submit to a bioscan?" Paris pressed.

"That is her decision as captain of the ship," the doctor said pedantically. "She is bound by Starfleet ethics – not medical ethics. The two are different."

Paris grinned. "Well, I'm Kessel's superior officer," he pointed out. "How about we just cut to the chase here and I order her to get scanned?"

The doctor shook his head wordlessly. Somehow, Paris had just known that was coming. His voice changed, becoming more placatory. To his ears it sounded almost whiny, and he hated it. He couldn't stop it, either, and he hated that too.

"Doc," he said, "come on. This is my wife, and my best friend. This virus seems to eat provaline for breakfast. They're half dead, and we've got to find out why. Maybe I'm insensitive or whatever, but I'd rather risk upsetting one person than letting three die. Now look. This is the first officer of the ship, and the chief engineer, and the ops officer. We're playing games with their lives here!"

"I realize that, Mr. Paris," the doctor said testily, "but while you are working in my sickbay, you will follow medical ethics. Give her some time and try talking to her again."

Paris closed his eyes and heaved a mighty sigh. This whole thing was ridiculous, he thought. Everything had happened so fast. It felt like all he could do was struggle against the tide. The disaster that the away mission had become, the sight of his wife and his best friend laid out while a virus raged through them relentlessly, the one person who might have an answer refusing to help, and the doctor arguing with him over ethics. Ethics! The lives of people he cared about were at risk. That was ethics?

If circumstances had been different, he might have been willing to indulge some weird paranoia on Kessel's part. As it stood? No way. Time was something they just didn't have. Besides, hadn't Captain Janeway ordered the doc to use that hologram that knew all about Cardassian medical experiments on prisoners?

Tom glanced over at the recalcitrant ensign. From where it looked from here, she had fallen asleep. He checked the doctor, who was bent over Chakotay's biobed. Then the answer hit him.

Very carefully, Tom leaned over his wife's biobed. One look down at her pale, wan face told him the right thing to do. It was simple, really. He was leaning over B'Elanna's biobed, but the scanners he called up were over Kessel's. It was better this way. She could have her paranoid moment, but Captain Janeway would have her biodata. The scanners were silent; she wouldn't know until later. Once B'Elanna and Harry were out of the woods, then they could hash it out all they liked.

Ir was the right thing to do.

He didn't have time to read them, but he was pretty sure there wasn't anything to be concerned about. She wasn't a disguised Cardassian like Seska. The bioreadings weren't right. No copper-based blood, so she wasn't a Romulan, and no extra organs, so she wasn't a Klingon. So what was the big deal, anyway?

As quietly as he could, he transferred the readings to a PADD. Then he got Harry's, then B'Elanna's, then Chakotay's. Finally he rose. The doctor looked over at him curiously. Tom harrumphed and brandished the PADD in wordless explanation. Old skills rose to his mind and lips easily; skills he thought he'd left behind him. How to lie easily, and how to slide out of an uncomfortable situation.

"Okay," he said pleasantly. "I'm going to bring these down to the captain. We can talk with Kessel in a little bit." He jerked his head at the dozing ensign. Careful, don't overdo it. Don't look too sympathetic. "Besides, maybe after some sleep she'll be clearer in the head."

"All right," the doctor said, and returned to whatever he was doing to Chakotay.

Paris made himself scarce from sickbay as quickly as he could, sliding out the door and down the hall. He grinned down at the PADD. For the first time since the away team had materialized in sickbay, he felt like he had won something. Captain Janeway would be able to figure it out.

The captain herself was deep in mad-scientist mode, poring over a screen that displayed a blown-up version of the virus. It was just about as ugly as the mosquito that had carried it, he thought. It pulsed on the screen in multicolored life, with little prongs and claws sticking off it as if to grab unwary passersby. Which was, after all, just about what it had done.

Captain Janeway took the PADD without looking at him. "Thank you, Tom," she said archly. "If I can see how the virus is affecting them, I can probably get a better idea of what it's doing."

"I hope so," he said. "Say...Ensign Kessel is doing better than the others. Lower fever, plus she can talk. At least for a while. She's sort of out of it, though."

Janeway nodded. "Interesting," she mused. "How are the others?"

Tom shook his head. "We've had to sedate them and try to bring down the fevers," he said. "I'm afraid they'll cook from the inside. It's awful. Are you going to be able to help them?"

"I think so," she said reflectively. "None of our standard antiviral therapies hold it back for very long. It mutates quickly. But it's got a weakness. All forms of life do. If I can see why Kessel is doing better, that'll give me an idea where to look."

Now he was sure. It had been the right thing to do. But Harry and B'Elanna were very far from out of the woods, and he wanted to let Captain Janeway do her schtick in peace, so he left the biolab. Once Harry was on his feet again, he'd make a biolab for the Chaotica serials. Chaotica's Evil Lab of Bio-Doom, perhaps. That was something to hold onto. Captain Proton and Buster Kincaid would live to bring Chaotica's Evil Lab of Bio-Doom to its knees. Yes sir. Not too far in the future, either. It might be silly, but it was something to hold onto, and he needed that right now.

So he went back to the sickbay, and did the only thing he could do. He sat with his wife and his friend. He started new rounds of antivirals when the old ones stopped working and their life-signs started creeping towards the red zone again. He stayed with them tirelessly. The doctor had Chakotay and Kessel under control.

Glancing over at the ensign showed that once again, she wasn't fitting the pattern. Her numbers were holding steady. Her heart rate was still way too low, especially when compared to the larruping heartbeats of the others. How come? He was curious, but he didn't have the scientific background to figure it out. All he could do was have faith in Captain Janeway. She had the scientific background. If anyone could do it, she could.

He was surprised to see her standing in the doorway, and more surprised to look at the chronometer. Two hours had passed while he sat his lonely vigil He hoped she had good news. A second look at her face told him he might not want to ask. Captain Janeway's face was set in stone, her lips pressed into a firm line. An icy air seemed to surround her. Paris swallowed and tried mightily to keep from asking the question he desperately wanted to ask.

She ignored him, though, and walked up to where Kessel lay dozing on her biobed. She put balled fists on her hips and waited. It didn't take too long before Kessel stirred and noticed the captain, blinking like a little girl roused from her nap. Captain and ensign observed each other for a few silent moments.

"Captain," Kessel said.

"Ensign," Janeway said coolly. "You haven't been...completely forthcoming with us, have you?"

Kessel looked puzzled. "I'm sorry?" she asked.

"Your bioscans," Janeway supplied icily.

A look of horror came over Kessel's face. Paris took a step forward. What was the problem? He'd only had a moment to look at her bioscans, but it was enough to see she wasn't a disguised Cardassian or Klingon or anything like that.

"But, I--," Kessel said. Slow realization slid over her features, replaced by solemn resignation. For a moment her eyes touched his and then slid off to stare at the floor. She swallowed and let out a large sigh, visibly composing herself.

"I always knew this day would come," she said dully. "But to answer your question, captain: No. I have not."