The corridor extending to a long, geometric tunnel, seeming to trap and amplify even the weakest of echoes. Hard soles, connecting with the surface of clean, gleaming tiles, were louder and nearer with every beat. Julian's wide, attentive eyes stared along the length of the passage. He had already ceased fidgeting at his father's side, where Richard spared a two-second glance in Julian's direction, finding a nervous blend of curiosity and trepidation in the eyes of his boy. The child was hunched a little, still, and tense - as though to shrink away from the steady rhythmof footsteps drawing near.
The white-faced stranger was smaller than she had appeared in their earlier communications, lab coat billowing outwards with the breeze that her steps created. "Hilary Larkin." She stopped to address Richard Bashir, her right hand straight and tense as she extended it for him to shake. "We spoke over subspace."
Uncertain of what response he ought to give, Richard nodded. "I remember."
The boy glanced nervously at both older Humans - each one easily twice his size. His gaze lingered longest on the face of his father, searching for a cue on how to react to this china-white woman who had come into their midst.
Minute creases of middle age had started to form around the corners of her mouth and beneath her heavily shadowed eyes. But her pale, smooth face was free of any further blemish. Hair the colour of moist soil, gleaming in the light, was clipped back into a harshly perfect bun behind her head. Looking down towards the child at Richard's side, Larkin's scrutinising eyes gathered every detail of his upturned face. "You must be Julian," she said with all the sincerity of a computer running through a script. "It's good to meet you, finally."
"He… Hello." Julian's mumbled reply had struggled through a soft, uncharacteristic stammer. He continued to watch as the woman's hand reached down to just below the level of his eyes.
"Go with the lady," said Richard, giving the boy a gentle push. Larkin was already taking his hand, leading him away down the lengthy passage.
"This is your room now, Jules."
Despite his father's encouragement, the boy still hesitated just beyond the entrance. He cast a silent glance around the clean, but sparsely furnished space. A bed, a covered window, and a single child-sized chair pressed up against the outermost corner. Gleaming black monitors, arranged in a line, stretched from end to end across one wall, where sculpted images of vivid, exotic fauna were caught in the middle of an energetic dance around their edges. Julian stared at this garish but oddly empty display, and tightened both hands around the chest of his bear.
The unreadable eyes of Larkin's nurse turned slowly to peer at Julian, as her willowy hand reached out to rest upon his shoulder. "This way," she instructed him in a soft and airy, whispered voice. "Let's find out how much of the city we can see through the window."
The boy fidgeted quietly, glancing over one shoulder with eyes as round as two bright pennies. "Go on," said Richard, struggling not to choke on his moment of faltering confidence. Slender, milk-white Adigeon fingers wrapped lightly around Julian's back, sharp and colourless when contrasted with the darker tones of his skin and hair, and the grey-blue fabric of his jumpsuit.
As the pair settled upon the bed, Julian scrambled towards the window and knelt at the point where a high window provided a view of multiple high, pointed rooftops. They were strangely matched, Richard noted. The small, brown Human and the elongated body of the taller, milky-pale nurse. The muscles had tensed around Larkin's eyes and mouth - turning her face just slightly hard as she directed her attention immediately to Richard.
"Mister Bashir, if you have no objections, then there are still some matters we ought to address. This will only take a moment."
Still with both hands pressed against the windowsill, Julian's gaze broke momentarily from the view. He watched his father accompany the doctor as they retreated across the polished yellow-white floor.
"From what I can understand of these results, our initial tests have proven quite promising," she informed him, pausing for a cursory glance at a thick, square padd in her hand. With no easily perceptible movement, her eyes had again made contact with his. Her voice showed no sentiment beyond quiet, level efficiency. "If everything continues to go smoothly, as they have done so far at least, I see no reason why we can't begin as early as tomorrow."
She paused, and Richard realised that the doctor's strange hypnotic gaze had been studying him for many minutes longer than he had noticed.
"Are you certain that you want this, Mr Bashir?"
"Of course I…" Richard faltered. The gleam in Larkin's eyes was even brighter than when she had first spoken. She held him motionless - like an insect in a museum display. Her eyes narrowed only fractionally, but the expression brought a tense, blunt pain into her visitor's throat.
"I need to be certain that you've thought this through." The low, intense half-whisper was soft enough to force her audience to heed every word. "Above all else, I need for you to be certain. Because from the moment we begin the procedure, it can never be stopped, and never reversed."
When had Richard ever thought about anything else? It had been so long already, that the memories had already faded to dim, grey ghosts. When had he last been able to breathe with freedom, without the pain of worry clenching around his heart. Even the most restless nights, when thoughts of sleep had mocked him from just beyond his reach, had never been as painful as the sight of Amsha sitting quietly at the kitchen table, light from outside shifting over the tears that had gathered in her eyes.
"Right." Richard held the doctor's gaze as resolutely as he could manage, but his voice was hoarser than he had intended it to be. He nodded, lips set into a tight, determined line. "Tomorrow."
It happened so often. The sudden departure of a steady, background hum was as startling to Bashir as an unanticipated noise might otherwise have been. And as heavy as the warm, lethargic air that had continued to press down against his chest. Eyes closed, every breath deliberately even, he felt a slight chill of air passing to the very back of his nostrils. The same blunt ache shifted to the back of his head, as though in answer to the summons of gravity.
But you can't stay here forever. The field was down. It had to be. There was no need for him to look, merely to ascertain that much. Alone, surrounded by darkness - he noted every moment of discomfort within his gut, at the imagined spectres coming forth from places he would never see. And as long as he made no move to find them first, the real intruders could not be far beyond those constructed from shapes and shadows.
He swivelled around and rubbed his head, before pulling the band from his arm and dropping it to the unoccupied mattress at his side. The level floor seemed to dip and spin, grey spots dancing briefly across his eyes - as a thermal draught might lift a dust cloud to obscure the form of distant landscapes. Still close to blind in the deepening shadows, he stared past outlines that were still only partly distinct from the shapeless background. His legs held their balance with grudging tenacity - but with both hands firm against the mattress of the thinly covered bed, his feet held fast to the cold, uncarpeted floor.
A whispered call, as soft and mocking as any he'd heard, came briefly from the lightless spaces at the corridor's outer edge. It trailed away, ending in a laugh that drifted through the air like an approaching omen. Bashir shuddered at the chill creeping down his back. "Hello?" His voice was subdued, but no less forceful despite its persistently anxious undertone. "Is somebody there?"
Two steps forward, but still he froze once more where he stood - pulse quickening, senses heightened as he strained his eyes to gaze into every formless shadow. His balance faltered slightly with the thundering of his heart, and the dizzying rush of blood now coursing through his brain. His focus was sharp and narrow, like a piercing spotlight that illuminated nothing, and he noticed just as suddenly that the whole of his body had started to tremble.
"This isn't funny," he called - but his throat was tight. Whatever voice he mustered was barely there. He wondered how a textbook would define the fear as it centred in his stomach. Irrational. The answer came, entirely unprompted. foundation. Of course his professors had described the physiology behind these autonomic reactions, dryly cataloguing the ways in which the nervous system of a frightened humanoid could feed the terror that it had caused, turning any natural response into an endless, self defeating spiral.
There was only one way to break the chain. Focus. Breathe deeply. Think about anything else but the clammy sweat across his skin, the weakness in his limbs, how small he had become in this lonely, isolated room.
Lightless places all around him, with nowhere left to go, even the comforting solidity of a bench surface, wall, or mattress was already outside of the reach of his hands. Somebody was toying with him - teasing him, as a child with a stick would torment a slow-moving bug. No other person would find them here. Not before this game was played to its conclusion.
"This is growing tiresome." Feeling oddly ridiculous, he noted with some surprise that he had somehow found enough of a voice to challenge the empty air. "Whoever you are, either show yourselves, or go away."
Perhaps he imagined the soft tread of footsteps behind him. Perhaps the shadow at his left was no more substantial than an illusion of shifting light. An arm clamped around his throat, tightening before he could cry out against it. Too late, head already fuzzy and desperate for air, he recognised the cold pressure just below his right ear, and heard the breath of chemicals escaping. Far from imagined had been a touch of fabric against one cheek and the rough, dry pressure of a hand across the lower half of his face.