13

60,063 (Kurillian calendar)

When Kurill Prime's Council of Senators finally voted on the resolution to join the Dominion, the final tally was two hundred and sixty-three for, seventeen against, and thirty-two abstentions, either through absence or resignation. The Adjudicator put her thumbprint to a padd that Dorek'itlan held out to her and that was that—the Vorta were part of the Dominion.

Weyoun didn't have the energy to be happy about it. He was, of course—abstractly. After fighting for it for so long, he could be nothing but happy. But he was tired, and recently his campaign to join the Dominion had been less about his conviction that it was the right thing, and more because he wanted the might of it behind him when the reproductive legislation went before the Council. Because he no longer trusted that his powers of persuasion would get it through the legislative process. If he had ever thought that—and he now couldn't recall if he'd ever been so naïve—it had been unbridled arrogance on his part. No, two things would make the reproductive legislation into law: lies, and the Dominion.

And now that Kurill Prime was finally part of the Dominion, the Founder was uninterested in any continued stalling on the legislation. Borath and Weyoun set a time to meet for one final overview of it, and then Weyoun would introduce it in the following day's Council session.

They worked silently for the most part, both of them knowing what needed to be done, until Borath abruptly put down his padd. "You never told me you were married to Eris Arethoi," he said, nonchalance dripping from his tone.

Weyoun glanced up at him. "And why would I?"

With a pleasant smile, Borath said, "Well, we do work closely together."

Looking back down to his work, Weyoun said, "Not that closely, believe me."

Unfortunately, Borath didn't take the bait. "I know Eris, actually."

"You knew her," Weyoun said blandly, without looking up.

There was silence from the other side of the table, and then Borath said, "Ah. She told you about our reunion the other day."

At that, Weyoun put his palms flat on the table and looked up, his eyes narrowed. "You must mean your chance meeting where you told her what was in a piece of legislation that isn't supposed to be public until tomorrow."

Borath didn't look the least bit apologetic. Instead, an absurd expression of self-righteousness crept into his eyes. "I had to warn her."

"Warn her?" Weyoun snapped. "There's nothing to warn her about. She won't be affected." Suddenly he stopped and stared hard at the geneticist. "That's true, isn't it, Borath?"

"Of course it is," Borath said sourly. Then, he sniffed. "I can't believe she married you. I knew there was someone else, of course; I'm not an idiot, but you, of all people."

"You outdo yourself, as usual, with your subtlety." Weyoun kneaded his temple—he'd been living with a nearly constant headache for at least a month now. "We have work to do. Focus on it, please. I have no interest in discussing my personal life with you."

There was silence as Borath hunched over the second padd that he always seemed to have with him. For the first time, Weyoun wondered what he was doing, but he didn't have the energy to ask. The other man's fingers hovered above the screen, and then he looked up abruptly. "Is she happy?"

Weyoun furrowed his brow. "I'm sorry?"

"Eris. Is she happy?"

The simplicity of the question made Weyoun chuckle with contemptuous amusement. "Why don't you tell me, Borath? After all, you did have a reunion the other day; surely you would have been able to tell if she was planning on leaving me?"

"That isn't what I meant," Borath muttered.

The truth, of course, was that Eris wasn't happy; not with him, not with the Founder, not with their world in general—and certainly not with Borath. He hadn't thought much about the fact that Eris and Borath had been involved, except to marvel wryly at life's little ironies.

Weyoun opened his mouth to say something snide, but then closed it and sighed. "We need to finish this so Isthitoi and Dulon can look over it," he said diplomatically.

Borath nodded, his features returning to their normal coolness, all evidence of whatever lingering feelings he had for Eris gone.

His question about her nagged at Weyoun for the rest of the day, though, so much that he left the Complex early simply because he knew he needed to talk to her.

She was waiting for him just inside the door when he arrived home, and she didn't even wait for him to close it before asking, "If I wasn't pregnant, would you have written the legislation differently?"

Weyoun looked at her for a long moment, then set down his briefcase. "Do you really need to ask me that question?"

Her eyes met his. The darkness that had been there yesterday had faded. "No," she said quietly. "I suppose I don't."

He desperately wanted to take her in his arms, but her coldness towards him had been palpable. It was hard to blame her. Logically, she seemed to understand that he hadn't had any choice; that one did not refuse a god's request, no matter how abhorrent. But he knew that emotionally, there was a tiny, rebellious part of her that didn't care about faith or obedience and only cared that the Founders had asked most Vorta women to abort their unborn children for a nebulous promise of help with their reproductive issues. He knew that, because he'd had to silence that part of himself, as well.

With a tiny smile, she said, "You shouldn't let your personal life interfere with your work."

"I know." Hesitantly, he reached for her hand, and she didn't pull away. "Somehow I can never seem to put that into practice."

Her fingers gripped his tightly, and then she said, "I'm worried."

"About what?"

"Everything."

He was silent, wishing that he could blithely say there was nothing to worry about. Eventually, he replied, "I'm trying to make our world a better place."

There was a wry look in her eyes. "I know."

The next month was nearly an unmitigated disaster. When the reproductive legislation went before the Council, the Complex erupted into a frenzy. Crowds gathered outside to protest, though not violently—the benefit, Weyoun supposed, to middle caste concerns. His poll numbers plummeted. Isthitoi's fared slightly better, Hegira Exarchate being plagued by an even worse than normal birthrate, and Dulon's were abysmal enough that when Weyoun went to offer his encouragement in the face of public excoriation, the other man was stumbling out of a restroom looking green.

Weyoun tried not to roll his eyes and helped his colleague back to his offices, where, once seated at his desk, Dulon moaned, "My career is over."

"You were just reelected," Weyoun said bluntly. "It's one of the reasons I chose you." In his own head, he couldn't resist adding, It's my career that's over. Privately he'd already told Leto not to expend too much of her energy on his reelection campaign. She'd looked like she wanted to argue. Crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at his miserable colleague, he said, "We need to make sure this passes. Quickly."

Dulon laughed, though he didn't sound amused. "Afraid I'm going to try to redact my name from the legislation?"

"Oh, I know you aren't," Weyoun said mildly. Dulon looked up quickly at the implicit threat in the words. The number of Jem'Hadar in Tira City had markedly increased since Kurill Prime's admittance to the Dominion, and rumor had it that a number of politicians were negotiating for their services. Weyoun wasn't one of them, but now that his associations with the Founder were known, it was widely assumed that he already had their services. He'd found it a useful assumption on a number of occasions.

Once or twice in that month of arguments, scathing interface messages and calls, and general bedlam in the Complex, Weyoun wondered about Borath. Of course, there was no legal requirement for a consultant's name to appear on the legislation he or she had assisted with. Unsurprisingly, the geneticist had demurred when asked if he'd like recognition for his work. His life would be unaffected by all of this. That annoying thought was at least somewhat tempered by the fact that Weyoun's association with him was at an end. They never needed to see each other again, which no doubt pleased Borath as much as it did Weyoun.

Eventually, the protesters dispersed and the debate in session became less heated. But the legislation didn't pass quickly. As the monsoon began, it still hadn't come to a vote, which the Founder, through Dorek'itlan, made clear to him was unacceptable. He was tempted to ask what the hurry was, as clearly no one in the Dominion particularly cared about the political ramifications the legislation had on any of its co-authors. They all wanted it passed swiftly—only then could their careers begin to recover. But the Jem'Hadar? What did it matter to them? Weyoun had never gotten the impression that the Jem'Hadar had any fondness for the Vorta. The reproductive issues of another species, in fact, probably seemed trivial to them.

He was tempted to ask, but he didn't. While he'd never gotten the impression that the Jem'Hadar overall had any fondness for the Vorta, he knew that Dorek'itlan had a distinct dislike for him. The feeling was mutual.

He was stretched thin; overworked and exhausted and wondering, half-seriously, if he'd made the wrong career move when he'd gone into politics. At least, he thought, things couldn't become much more stressful.

Then Eris went into labor.

At least he was home so he could call an armored vehicle to take them to the hospital. He joked to her, as they sat in the back seat, her face even paler than normal and sweat standing out on her forehead, that she probably would have taken the metro if he hadn't been. It wasn't very funny, but she smiled gamely and said, "Actually, this time I might have taken advantage of being a senator's spouse."

The vehicle hit a newly-formed pothole in the road and rocked hard to one side, making Eris wince and the bag that he'd packed for the two of them slide into his legs. Labor could last days, and he didn't plan on leaving her side while she was going through it.

By the time they got to the hospital, she was in too much pain to speak, and he was doing his very best acting so he would appear calm and not as though his heart was cantering along arrhythmically while Eris bit her lip bloody to keep from making a single sound that would betray her agony.

The obstetric nurses took one look at Eris and had a stretcher for her within the minute. Within five she was in a birthing room, changing into a hospital gown and being hooked up to IVs and electrodes on a bio-bed. A nurse started a painkiller drip and Eris's eyes slid blearily shut. She seemed more passed out than asleep, at which point the other nurse conducted a quick examination.

Weyoun watched, his hands clenched into fists and his fingernails biting into his palms, and he assumed the nurses had forgotten about his presence there until the one who'd just examined Eris turned to him and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Uldron, everything looks normal so far."

"Does it?" he said, surprised when his voice came out sounding so calm.

The nurse nodded. "Most women come earlier because of the pain, before the worst of the labor even begins. The baby has just begun entering the birth canal, and at this point we normally expect labor to last a few more days."

Watching seismic waves of pain pass over Eris's face for the last hour had practically given him an ulcer; he wasn't sure how he could handle the nurse's nonchalantly-predicted 'a few more days', but knew that he had to. Anyway this had been something he'd been aware of. Intellectually. The fact of it was a completely different matter.

Suddenly, he realized the nurse was still speaking. "…we'll teach her some pain management techniques when she wakes up. Judging by her tolerance so far, she should pick them up very quickly." Her colleague adjusted one of the IVs and left the room, and the nurse asked, "Will you be staying, Senator Uldron?"

He'd been staring at Eris. At least, with the painkillers rendering her unconscious, the deep lines in her forehead had smoothed out. Her bottom lip was scabby. "Staying?" he asked. "Oh, yes, of course—it's permitted, I assume?"

Giving him what he supposed was meant to be a reassuring smile, she said, "I'll have a cot brought in for you."

Though he doubted he'd sleep, he nodded, and, once she'd left, he pulled the room's single plastic chair over to the side of the bio-bed. Hesitantly, he reached out and put his fingers on the back of Eris's hand where it was resting just below her breasts. Even though he knew she wasn't delicate, the bones in her hands felt fragile, like hollow bird's bones, and it stopped him from wrapping his hand around hers despite knowing it was foolish.

The delivering obstetrician stopped in to check on her during those first hours. He seemed like a competent man, and after checking her charts and the readings from her bio-bed, pronounced, as the nurse had, that everything was normal. It was much easier to find this reassuring after having watched Eris sleep for hours.

A cot was brought but he didn't bother with it. Watery gray daylight was still creeping in through the room's window, and even when it ceased to, he wasn't tired. This was especially true when Eris woke up—her pain returned, and though she gasped that it was no worse than before, he found that hard to believe. When the nurses returned to teach her their 'pain management techniques', he was asked to leave, and so he wandered to a mostly empty canteen on the same floor. An interface mounted in one corner informed him that it was 24:30, and so he bought himself a kava from the automated machine, not because he was tired, but because there was nothing else he could imagine consuming so late in the evening.

For a few minutes, he stood next to a table, watching the day's news scroll by on the interface. Flooding in Yara. Tech stocks up. Three more Jem'Hadar platoons deployed throughout the mid-eastern exarchates. Reports of children disappearing out of Tira City slums. Landing pads completed for Jem'Hadar ships in ten more cities.

He sipped at his kava and wondered how long he needed to stay out of the birthing room. There was one other man sitting slumped in one of the canteen chairs—had he been ordered out of his wife's room as well?

It was easy to lose track of time standing there, watching scenes of the monsoon flash by on the interface and other bleary-eyed visitors coming and going from the canteen. Eventually he returned to the birthing room to find Eris alone and struggling to control her pain; her breathing was ragged but other than that she wasn't making a sound.

He slid into the chair next to the bed and stroked her ear, and she turned her head to look at him. "You know," she said in a strained tone, "you don't have to stay."

"Yes, I do."

That made her smile, and after a second, she put her hand on his. She fell asleep that way, and Weyoun just watched the rise and fall of her chest as the night passed.

"Weyoun," she said hoarsely, and her voice brought him out of his state of half-sleep. The bio-bed's hum must have lulled him into it. What time was it? Did it even matter? Leaning towards her, he asked, "Yes?"

Her breathing had deepened and evened out, and she seemed to be managing her pain better. "Do you want to name the baby Deimos?"

His chest tightened for a second. He hadn't even thought about a name—he hadn't even gotten used to the idea yet that on the other side of this ordeal, he'd be a father. "If it's a boy," he said. "Deimos Arethon."

Eris smile and rolled her eyes. "If you insist." Then her eyelids slid shut again, and he shifted to get more comfortable.

The pain killers ceased being effective at the same time that Eris started bleeding.

Schoolyard beatings had taught Weyoun that there always looked like there was too much blood; the way it smeared made minor damage look like bleeding out. A bloodied nose could look a fatal wound.

Still, there was a lot of blood coming from Eris.

He thought it was the third day; at least it was light outside and that seemed right. He seemed to recall an entire day of waiting and watching her fight through pain until she could receive her next dose of drugs. The doctor, when he stopped in, reported cheerily that everything was going well. All that blood, he assured Weyoun, was perfectly normal; just the amniotic sac rupturing, as well as the result of small tears in the vaginal wall as the fetus made its way towards birth. "We'll repair those surgically after the baby has been born," he said with the true lack of concern that Weyoun had come to associate with those in the medical profession.

The nurses were slightly more sympathetic—no doubt they'd seen so many spouses horrified by the amount of bleeding that they found it easier simply to be comforting.

"We can give her a blood thickening agent if her bio-signs look all right," the current nurse on duty said gently. It may have been one he'd met before; by that point he'd had so little rest that everyone was beginning to look the same, just one gray-smocked figure after another parading into the birthing room.

He was beginning to understand why the rich opted for cloning instead of natural birth.

Eris never cried out in pain.

And it was obvious that the pain was excruciating. Her breathing was shallow; she alternated between gritting her teeth and biting her lip, sweat poured off her, and once, when Weyoun tried to hold her hand, she flinched and drew it away because she'd been clenching her fists so tightly that her fingernails had gouged bloody tracks into her palms.

In the corridor at one point, he heard screams coming from another birthing room. With a shudder, he stepped back inside to keep vigil over Eris.

The baby's head crowned, and within moments everything was over. The suddenness of it emptied Weyoun of all emotion for several blank, long moments.

Then the baby let out a loud, piercing wail and the nurse that he thought he'd seen before handed him the screaming bundle and said, "You have a son, Senator Uldron."

He had no idea what to do. Surely they should have given this…this…terrifying, fragile thing to its mother? And then, through the gaps in the nurses and the obstetrician gathered around Eris to repair her myriad wounds, he caught her eye. She was smiling slightly—the breathing tube almost obscured it—with her head thrown back on the pillow, and she gave him a tiny nod.

So he took a deep breath and looked down at the baby—at his son—and nestled the infant closer to his chest. He was still crying, but little by little he quieted, and all Weyoun could do was stare at this tiny creature that he'd helped to create. He wasn't much to look at, really. Just a small, wrinkly, pale creature with a too-big head that was covered in black fuzz, eyes still screwed up in fury at having been forced into being born.

Just then, the baby's eyes opened, and they were the same blue-purple that Eris's were.

One of the nurses came up behind him, smiling. "He'll be able to see you in a week or two," she said. Weyoun didn't answer, unable to keep his eyes off his son, but the nurse seemed to understand. After a moment, she told him, "Miss Arethoi's post-partum operation is finished, and now that the baby has been born we can increase the strength of the pain medication. She'll probably sleep for the next several hours."

"She needs it," Weyoun said—a little banally, truth be told—as he glanced towards Eris. Her eyes were, indeed, closed.

The nurse just smiled again and moved aside for the obstetrician, who apologetically held his hands out. "I apologize, Senator, but I have to bring him to the newborns ward now."

Weyoun looked at Eris again. She would have liked to hold their son, but he supposed there would be plenty of time for that later. Handing the child to the doctor, he said, "Of course. I assume we can see him again once my wife wakes up?"

"That's usually possible," the obstetrician said before nodding once and exiting the birthing room.

Weyoun caught the door, watching as the man ferried that tiny, incredible life to the newborns ward. He felt utterly full of a bursting, transformative emotion—he was a father; he was responsible for another life; a life that couldn't have existed at all without him. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt before.

Then, he went cold. Suddenly, incongruously, two armed Jem'Hadar met the doctor in the corridor. One of them exchanged a few inaudible words with the Vorta, then reached forward and took the baby, meeting no resistance from the doctor. Weyoun's legs felt bolted to the floor, too heavy with shock to move, and before he could force them out of their torpor, the Jem'Hadar marched away, disappearing from sight.

That finally galvanized him into action, and he strode down the corridor until he reached the point where it branched off. There, he hesitated. The Jem'Hadar had gone right, towards the side stairwells. If he hurried, he might be able to catch up with them before they boarded their own armored vehicles and disappeared to…wherever they were going.

And if he did, what then? What was a single Vorta going to do against two Jem'Hadar? They hadn't even bothered to unarm themselves to come into the hospital. These were not people he was prepared to deal with. They'd kill him.

His own cowardice made him sick, but he turned away to follow the doctor down the other corridor, catching up with him just as he was entering a door that said 'authorized personnel only'.

"Explain what I just saw," Weyoun demanded, not bothering to announce his presence.

The doctor turned around, looking very unhappy to see Weyoun standing in the doorway, but not terribly surprised. "I'm afraid you can't be here, Senator—"

"I told you to explain to me what just happened," Weyoun interrupted in a hard tone.

The doctor hesitated, and then, with an air of resignation, he paced over to a table where a lone padd was sitting. Picking it up and handing it to Weyoun, he said, "It passed this morning." For a moment, Weyoun continued staring at the other man, holding the blank padd in his hands, but then he powered it on and started at what was in front of him.

"The Jem'Hadar got here before the full text of the legislation had even been transmitted to us," the doctor went on, though Weyoun didn't look up from the padd. "Their First brought it." There was a pause while Weyoun read and reread one section of the reproductive legislation staring him in the face, a tide of cold fury swelling in him, and then the doctor said, "Forgive me, Senator, but…aren't you a co-author of that legislation?"

Weyoun put the padd down, took a deep, slow breath, and finally turned around. "Thank you for reminding me," he said shortly. Then, regarding the doctor with a frosty expression on his face, he said, "I don't suppose you know where they're taking the infants."

Spreading his hands in a gesture of ignorance, the doctor replied, "I'm only an obstetrician."

It took a certain amount of willpower to restrain himself from curling his lip in contempt. "Of course you are," Weyoun replied, before throwing the padd down on the table. He turned to go, but then said over his shoulder, in a tone that carried a hint of a threat, "Make sure my wife is well looked after."

"Of course, Senator," the doctor replied.

When Weyoun stepped back out into the corridor, it took a moment for the haze of disbelief and rage to clear from his vision, and then, without a backward glance, he strode to the lifts, punched the button for the metro station level, and waited for the interminable lift ride, and then metro ride, to his destination.

No one stopped him when he reached it: Yelar Industry's main research and development building, duraplastic domed and airy. The dome covered the lobby, letting in the dull, dark, and gray light of the monsoon, filtered through the wash of water running over the plastic, and the sound of artificially built waterfalls and burbling fountains inside drowned out the pounding of the rain and hail.

He didn't stop in the lobby, making a curt motion with one hand to the receptionist at the greeting desk, whose cheerful expression subsided into trepidation as he stalked past her. He remembered the way to his destination perfectly.

Weyoun flung Borath's office door open, noting with fierce satisfaction that he'd startled the other man out of his chair and onto his feet. "I wrote that reproductive legislation myself," he began furiously, "and we agreed that the mandated terminations would not affect any pregnancy coming to term in the next month!"

Borath arranged his features back into his typical haughty expression, and, obviously trying to sound insouciant, said, "Weyoun—how good to see you after so many months. I had to make some last minute changes before it went before the Council. It passed, by the way. Congratulations."

For a moment, Weyoun stood still, his whole body clenched tightly in coiled rage. Then something snapped in him and he strode forward, rounded the desk, grabbed Borath by his collar, and shoved him bodily against the wall. "Congratulations?" he hissed. "My wife just spent four days in labor and when she finally gave birth a Jem'Hadar took the baby—took my son right from the doctor's arms."

For a second, Borath struggled, but Weyoun's hold didn't falter. "Ah, is that where you were?" he said, his eyes darting uneasily to the left and right. "I was trying to contact you when the legislation was going before the Council…I thought we might need your vote to make certain it passed…"

"Why did that Jem'Hadar take my son?" Weyoun demanded, jamming his fist against Borath's windpipe.

The other man choked for a second, then replied in a strained voice, "I assume they want it to test the genetic re-sequencing."

"What?"

When Borath tried to squirm away, Weyoun pressed down on his throat again. It was a tactic that had been used on him many times in both the slums and the exarchate school. Old, old habits. "You said you wrote the legislation yourself," Borath coughed, "so you must remember the section lifting restrictions on genetic re-sequencing?"

"You insisted on its inclusion."

"Correct. Because the Founders asked me to work on something for them, and now I can without being arrested for bio-crimes."

"They asked you to work on re-sequencing the Vorta genome?"

"Yes."

Weyoun abruptly loosened his hold and Borath pushed him away, but Weyoun's appetite for violence had dissipated. He turned, dropping his arms to his sides, and looked helplessly upwards, closing his eyes. "What am I going to tell Eris?" he breathed.

"Tell her the baby died." Borath's voice was hard and hoarse, and when Weyoun whirled back around to face him, he was rubbing at his neck. The other man's eyes were narrowed. "It's close enough to the truth."

Weyoun stared at him, feeling all the blood drain out of his face. "Easy for you to be so cavalier. You're not married to her."

"I'm not married to her because she preferred you," Borath retorted, his voice rising with bile. "So go back to her and be the man she expects you to be. Make something up. You're good at that, aren't you, Senator?"

His mind was a violent haze of clashing thoughts; he was furious and afraid and horrified about his stolen child and yet he knew he couldn't be because if what Borath said was true, then the Founders needed the baby; needed his son. And he could not disobey the Founders.

With effort, he forced down the maelstrom in his mind, squared his shoulders, and drew in a breath. "Are the Founders really going to perform tests on the child?" he asked in a controlled voice.

Borath narrowed his eyes. "The Jem'Hadar will perform the actual tests, as I've been given to understand it. The Founders don't concern themselves with such menial tasks, as you well know."

Weyoun clenched and unclenched his fist. He did know. That, in its way, was a relief—he couldn't hate the Founders. But he could hate the Jem'Hadar. "Tell me about this re-sequencing," he said in a low tone.

Borath uncrossed his arms, eyed Weyoun, and then touched his throat. "Come with me," he finally said, pulling his ID disc from a pocket. He waved it across the handle of a second door at the back of his office, which opened onto a darkened lab. The lights clicked on as the two of them entered, and Borath walked straight to an interface terminal set into a bulky piece of equipment. "Sit down," he said, gesturing brusquely towards a stool sitting in front of an electron microscope as he seated himself at the chair in front of the interface.

While Borath logged into the interface, Weyoun yanked the stool over and perched on it. "The re-sequencing will eliminate or alter a number of qualities," Borath said flatly as his fingers flew across the touchpad. A new screen flickered on and letters scrolled across the terminal.

Encoded DNA strands, though beyond that, Weyoun had no idea what to make of any of it. He leaned forward, staring at the jumble of genetic data. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't know why. The Founders asked me to do it and I did." Borath glanced at him. "Like you."

Weyoun flicked his gaze towards Borath, but didn't respond to this. "What are they planning on eliminating?" he asked instead. His memory yanked him back to that moment in the hospital as he had seen the Jem'Hadar take his peacefully quiet, newborn son, like the child was a rifle or a case of rations. He swallowed hard and squinted at the screen, forcing himself to read the letters of each individual DNA strand.

Without looking up, Borath replied, "Taste. Aesthetics."

"Why aesthetics?"

"Because I needed the space and the Founders didn't feel it was an important enough genetic trait to keep." Borath glared at the interruption and added, "And sexual reproduction."

"Reproduction?" Weyoun asked. Everything seemed to come painfully back to that. He shook himself and asked, "Why go to all the trouble of this…re-sequencing if we're just going to die out in a few generations?"

"I didn't say it will eliminate reproduction itself, I said sexual reproduction." When Weyoun just shook his head mutely, Borath sighed and met his eyes. "I assume you were there when we were offered entry into the Dominion?"

"Of course."

"It's my understanding that the Founder specifically expressed interest in our cloning technology."

Weyoun stared, understanding dawning on him. "Yes, she did."

"Well, there's your answer." Borath shrugged, as if there was nothing shocking in this idea. Maybe to him there wasn't. He'd had months to get used to the idea, and anyway, he was a geneticist. And, Weyoun realized, one of Kurill Prime's foremost experts on genetic re-sequencing, specifically in clones. "Cloning," Borath went on. "We'll all be cloned in perpetuity, with our memories being transferred from clone to clone."

The only sound in the room for a long minute was the hum of the interface terminal. "Are you sure?" Weyoun finally asked.

"Of course not." Borath grimaced at the interface, then raised an eyebrow at Weyoun. "It's an educated guess. That being said, I put great stock in my educated guesses."

Weyoun's mind reeled for a moment. Cloning himself had never been a possibility; he'd never be wealthy enough, and there hadn't been need; anyway. Not with Eris—

As her name crossed his mind, he felt as though he'd been punched in the gut again. He'd forgotten, just for a minute, what had happened in the hospital. A hard, cold knot settled in his stomach and he had a feeling that this time, it wasn't going anywhere, and that he wasn't going to forget again.

"So that's what all of it was for," Weyoun said, pushing the knot to a place that he could ignore it, if not forget it, and still staring intently at the interface. "The reproductive legislation—the Founders don't want us to have children because they'll be cloning us."

"That would be my guess," Borath said lazily.

Out of the corner of his eye, Weyoun could see the other man watching him, and he finally turned to look at Borath, his face an impassive mask. "You don't seem to have a problem with it."

"Why should I?" Borath replied. "Cloning offers me what every scientist most wants—immortality." He eyed Weyoun knowingly. "And what most politicians want too, for that matter."

Weyoun thought of Deimos; thought of his infant son, whom he'd never even had a chance to think of by his name; life taken from both of them long before it should have been. People that meant so much to him, just gone.

"I don't care about immortality for myself," he said slowly. He didn't finish the sentence aloud, uninterested in allowing Borath further into his personal life. It wasn't the immortality for himself that was important—it was immortality for all the people he cared about. Eris, Foros, Leto, Kilana, the people he'd worked with over the years whom he considered friends.

There was a careful look on Borath's face, as though he was trying to ascertain if now that Weyoun knew a fuller extent of the Founders' plans for the Vorta, he'd be forced to take some sort of drastic action. "You're not suggesting it bothers you?" the other man asked.

Weyoun raised a cool eyebrow. "Of course not. I serve the Founders in all things."

"Likewise," Borath said, almost reflexively. He hesitated and his hand twitched upwards towards his throat, where Weyoun could see a purple bruise beginning to form. "There's one more thing," the other man said, regarding Weyoun begrudgingly, as though he was wresting this final bit of information from the geneticist by force. He supposed, with a twinge of dark amusement, that he had.

"Go on," Weyoun said.

Borath turned back to the first screen, where a model of the double helix Vorta genome was still rotating. He entered a few keystrokes and the model stopped rotating as the image zoomed into a section of the double helix. "You believe the Founders are gods, don't you?" he asked, swiveling away from the interface terminal and leaning back in his chair as he faced Weyoun.

"The Founders are gods," Weyoun replied immediately. Even if he hadn't believed it, they had proved it with their return; their vastly superior technology; their engineered Jem'Hadar. "Are you suggesting otherwise?"

Borath rolled his eyes. "Of course not." There was an undercurrent to the other man's tone that Weyoun recognized—a sick kind of clinging to the fact that everything they'd done had been in the name of faith; that their gods had asked them to do something and Vorta did not disobey their gods. Putting his hands on the arms of his chair, Borath began, "The Founder asked me to do something that's…been very difficult, but I think I've finally accomplished it." When he received only silence in response, he went on, "The Founders want our worship of them to be instinctual. Genetic."

Weyoun glanced at the section of highlighted genome. It was there, he assumed, that this new code would be inserted. "I don't understand," he finally said. "Any Vorta alive would be happy to serve the Founders."

"That's the point," Borath said intensely. "That conditional. That's what they want to eliminate."

"But they're gods. There is no conditional."

"Don't be naïve," Borath said, giving him a pitying look and turning away. "They're gods and they want to stay that way."

For a long time, Weyoun didn't speak, staring instead at the interface. Borath had changed everything. He had single-handedly re-written the lives of the Vorta.

And, Weyoun realized tiredly, he didn't care.

"Anyway," Borath said briskly, "now that you know about it, you can help me."

"What help can I possibly be to you?" Weyoun scoffed.

Though Borath looked sorely tempted to reply in kind, he said instead in that lazily haughty tone of his, "You're selling yourself short, Weyoun. You're an intelligent man, aren't you?" Eyeing him disdainfully, he added, "Eris must have thought so, at least."

"Stop talking about Eris," Weyoun said in a low, dangerous tone. Every time he heard her name a stab of sick horror went through him. He'd done so much lying—a skill that he'd always prided himself on; a talent for politics and diplomacy which had somehow snaked its way into the most personal part of his life, so that he'd been feeding lies for months to the person who meant the most to him in the world. In the galaxy. The universe, if the Dominion ever expanded far enough that such incomprehensible distances mattered.

Borath just shrugged lazily. "I'll consider the subject off-limits. As to how you can help me, you're still the only one who knows the full extent of this. The Founder has confided in me that the Dominion will require DNA profiles of every Vorta on the planet. I'll need your help to…arrange that." There was an 'unfortunately' implied in that sentence, buried under Borath's words.

Waving a hand, Weyoun said, "Fine." If the reproductive legislation could pass, anything could.

"No doubt the Founder will send further instructions on that front," Borath said, sounding disgustingly cheerful.

Weyoun just wanted to go sit somewhere in the dark, where he didn't have to think or see or hear anything. Standing up, he said, "I'm sure she will." The door to Borath's office was open, and without another word, he walked through it. To his credit, Borath didn't say anything, either.

Night was falling by the time he boarded the train to leave Yelar, and even by the standards of the darkly monochrome Kurill Prime monsoon season, it was dark and colorless outside the metro tube. He felt…tired. So tired that for the first time, it occurred to him that he could just…give up. Fade into some kind of obscurity. Except he couldn't, not really. He worshipped the Founders and he couldn't walk away from that. And he loved his wife, despite what he was about to do.

The train entered one of the many tunnels along its route and in the bright, harsh lighting, Weyoun caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window. There were lines at his eyes that he hadn't noticed he had, creases on his forehead and around his mouth; and dark purple was smudged under his eyes, bruise-like. He looked old and tired, and the day wasn't over yet. He knew without planning that he needed to find the delivering obstetrician and make him alter the hospital's records on the birth. The fact that there wasn't a body…he'd deal with that later. It would all be dealt with, because it had to be, just as he'd dealt with every other inconvenient fact in his life and sublimated them to his own will.

There was a weird muffled quality to the sound in the hospital, though Weyoun thought, after he noticed that light seemed to have the same quality, that it was probably just him. The obstetrician already had the record altered and ready for inspection. Time seemed to stretch as Weyoun stood there, staring at the padd. Undersized second liver; brain damage due to insufficient in utero filtration. Undetectable in pre-natal scans.

A time of death was listed as being only minutes after the time of birth. His son might as well have never existed. It was better if he thought of it that way, that the child's life had been a weak, tiny flicker of a flame, now blown out, instead of—

Images flashed through his mind; invented, though they felt real enough to make him nauseated—injections, mutations, vivisection—

He made himself stop and hand the padd back to the doctor, jerking his head in a nod.

Then he couldn't put it off anymore, and he walked slowly down the corridor to the birthing room.

For a few minutes, Weyoun just stood in the open door, staring into the room at his wife. She was paler than normal, her hair disheveled and still sticking to her forehead where sweat had plastered it earlier. She looked small, hooked up to the IVs and electrodes and breathing tube; fragile, when he knew that she wasn't. Purplish-red blood was still spotted on the sheets.

The tightness in his chest increased, reaching a suffocating peak, and he forced himself to exhale slowly and step inside. Maybe she wouldn't wake up. She'd just been through four days of excruciating, exhausting labor and had barely gotten any rest; and she was so full of painkillers now that how could she do anything but sleep through his visit?

But as he sat down quietly, lowering himself slowly into the chair next to her bed, Eris's eyes opened stickily. Their violet clarity was clouded with a drug haze, but her mouth twitched, with herculean effort, into a smile. "How's the baby?" she asked in a soft, hoarse—and unmistakably, heartbreakingly happy—voice.

Weyoun thought, for a moment, that the ache in his chest might split his whole body apart, and then sick guilt swept over him so hard that he was grateful that he was sitting down, because his legs felt weak even without having to support him. Under normal circumstances, the lie that he was about to tell never would have gotten past Eris. She would have seen through him; known he was lying; that his emotional state wasn't enough to compensate for the slight variance of his tone, the twitch around his right eye that only she ever saw. But now, now, pumped full of painkillers and Founders knew what else from the labor, he could lie to her. He could lie and she'd never know the difference.

He didn't want to take her hand, but he knew that he had to. "The baby—" he began, and then paused as his throat constricted. The contented look on her face bled away as she recognized the strain in his voice, and he found himself clutching at her fingers, more for his own comfort than hers. "There—there was something…wrong. He didn't make it."

For an interminable minute, Eris stared at him without blinking. Then, she swallowed hard—the rise and fall of her throat a visible struggle—and turned her face upwards towards the ceiling. Her eyes closed and then she opened them again and stared at the blank white expanse for a moment which went on and on until it stretched to such brittle thinness that Weyoun felt absurdly that the room was going to shatter around him. As her eyes stayed glassily open, he started wondering if she was so drugged that she'd as good as lost consciousness, but then her tongue wet her lips and she asked, "What was it?"

What was the genetic defect, she wanted to know, that one of them had passed on to their child; what problem that had gone undetected in every pre-natal exam. They had repeatedly been assured that the fetus was healthy and unaffected by the gamma-ray burst, after all.

"I don't know," he replied, willing his voice not to shake. "We can deal with it later."

She actually smiled then; a skull's rictus that made him want to crawl away into a dark corner. "All that blood for nothing," she said, and then her eyes closed, her face turned away from him, and she didn't speak again.

When he was sure she was sleeping, Weyoun buried his face in his hands. His cheeks might have been wet. He didn't know. Later, in the long afterwards that seemed unreachable and remote and impossible, he wouldn't remember much of this night, and he wouldn't try to.