Larkin had assured them both that Richard's boy would feel no pain - at least, not in the initial, ostensibly less invasive stage of treatments. Perhaps in some strictly literal sense, she had spoken the truth. What the child felt, rising with such force that it overwhelmed all other thoughts within his mind, long after the Adigeons first directed him to lie beneath the claustrophobic restraints and eye-piercing lasers of their DNA scrambling devices… What he felt, above all else, was terror.

A thin wail ascended quickly to a scream as Julian's legs pedalled frantically in the air. Wriggling free of the closest of the hospital staff, who had been unfortunate enough to be first to come within his reach, he tucked himself into a tight, protective ball. Arms and legs locked into sharp, hairpin angles against his body. He backed into a corner, away from the slender hands of the nurse as she attempted to reach out and subdue him, and peered through the narrow gaps of visibility with round, wet, desperately frightened eyes.

"Come now, Julian." One of the Adigeons fought, without much success, to maintain a level, reassuring tone. This particular female - darker in hue than most of her colleagues, with a strangely mottled appearance across the surface of her skin - held out a steady but tentative hand. "There's nothing to fear. Won't take long. And the sooner you come with us, the sooner it will all be over."

"What is it?" Doctor Larkin demanded of another one of her small, moderately bulbous assistants, who brought her closer to the epicentre of the room's surrounding chaos. She strode across the open threshold with long, confident steps, and with the nurse shuffling awkwardly in behind her. Her attentive gaze swept once around the room, and focused almost immediately on the child in the opposite corner.

Tears spilling in rivers over his red and swollen cheeks, head shaking so wildly that his tangled hair fell forward across his eyes, the boy pressed both hands against his knees until the pressure left reddened marks against his skin. His cries pierced that air, as if their sheer volume was the only means left to find him some protection. Richard looked on from the room's edge, away from the focus of the hospital staff. But suddenly, he started. The darker nurse had turned her eyes - in silent desperation - to him.

He could not go forward. The floor gripped his feet, paralysing him, as though a solid wall had risen between himself and the living storm in the room's far corner. Voices from all around had blended to a shapeless cacophony - faces melting to the periphery of sight. All that he heard were the constantly hopeless, despairing cries of his son.

"Would it hurt so much to wait for one more day, or two?" he pleaded, noting that Julian's eyes had sought him out, staring as though at his final source of hope and safety.

"No monsters here," Amsha had told their three year old son, who hesitated directly outside his bedroom door, and glanced once at the boy's watching father. "What if we all went in together? And we can help you scare them all away."

The voice of Hilary Larkin was as sharp as the crack of a fire-touched log. "I've already explained this to you, Mr Bashir. We have got to reinforce the alterations to your son's genetic code. To delay even a moment, once we've begun, would be to risk all manner of complications. If we don't start now, then even I won't be able to prevent, or even guess at the consequences."

Richard felt a harsh knot twist deep within his stomach. Confident but wary, with a sharp eye fixed on the child in front of her, Larkin took a determined step towards him. One hand went down to the pocket of her coat.

"It's all right, Jules!" Richard called to his boy. Julian flinched, displaying a mouth full of small, white teeth. He jerked away - once, twice, but the strength of the dark Adigeon was so many times more powerful than his own. Don't hurt him! Richard almost shouted. He watched Doctor Larkin make a single quick, sharp movement, a hand reaching towards the panicking child, and all of his struggles abruptly ceased.

Seeing Julian's body drop like a falling puppet, caught up by a pair of slender, mottled arms, Larkin exhaled with relief. "Let's go," she commanded, and replaced the hypospray deep within the pockets of her coat.

Richard could only dodge out of their way as the doctor and her staff bustled into the corridor, guiding a glowing, flat, rectangular antigrav - which floated between them, with Richard's boy stretched like a tattered rag doll along its surface.

"He's even cuter when he sleeps." A deep, sensual voice invaded the silence, although with less than a metre to travel. There was a controlled, slightly mocking tone behind it. A deliberate, steady rhythm - with hints of a predator calmly assessing its prey.

Bashir's head throbbed. A dry pain spread across his eyes, as of having been scraped away by thorns. Gradually, he became aware of another pain cutting deep into the muscles of his neck. And, yes - there was definitely something different about the unevenly cushioned segments of leather now pressing roughly against his back. Hard. Cramped. And restrictive enough to twist his spine into an uncomfortable curve.

And then, another pair of loud, overlapping voices. "…That showed'm didn't it - hm?"

"But we're not going to get in trouble, are we? I don't want to get into any trouble…"

"Shut up, Patrick."

Bashir groaned. A low, keening sigh escaped him as if at someone else's bidding, as he mumbled something soft and pained. Whatever he had said, even he scarcely comprehended the details.

He had not intended to make a sound. The voices stopped, their course suddenly halted, and he realised that he had begun to squirm - heavy and sluggish, robbing himself of his final chance of feigning sleep.

A face took shape in front of him, obscured for several long seconds by a clear, white glare that burned momentarily at the back of his eyes. But the living shadow continued to linger, close enough for a powerful fragrance to reach him through the short distance set between them.

"Hello, Julian." He knew that voice - recognising it well before his unfocused eyes could distinguish the woman's outline from the still fuzzy and increasingly nondescript array of tarnished metal behind her. Framed by a distinct black outline, a pair of large blue eyes were watching him directly. The dark haired woman laughed melodiously at Bashir's waking expression of confusion and vague annoyance. Her lips drew back into a broad crimson grin.

Now, she leaned in close to him, her smile impossibly wide, until she was close enough for a long-fingered hand to brush against his chin. Bashir flinched.

"What have you done with me?"

His voice when he spoke was hoarse and uncertain, as though he was no longer accustomed to its use. He swallowed back a mouthful of nothing, sensing the protests of his stomach after every sudden movement. A challenging glare passed from his eyes, straight to the woman in front of him - even through this residue of still unsettled nausea.

Instead of an answer, he received only a quiet smile, the teasing expression of a woman with a secret to keep. A light of gleeful cunning glinted briefly across the surface of her eyes, as she shifted languorously back and continued to gaze at the face of her captive. And he was a captive, Julian realised. What else could he be? Careful to maintain a vigilant watch on every one of her movements, he widened his attention to include the rest of his surrounds.

The structure around him was clearly artificial, multiple blocks of grey and white locked tightly together with hard, straight seams. Reinforced walls sloped inward at the top, giving way to a ceiling so close that a standing man could have reached up and touched its lower surface. A subliminal vibration emanated from the metal ground, rising steadily upward through his feet, and only lightly touching the air as it went. He supposed it would be missed, if suddenly absent, but even this was scarcely enough to call a truly audible sound. There were only two things he knew from which it could possibly have originated. Either the soft hum of a generator, or the engine of a small and mildly aged ship.

Then we aren't at the Institute any more. Bashir wondered what inner notion could have made him so certain. But he had no doubt that they had travelled quite some way already. The silence was thick as a continually expanding cloud, and with nowhere to escape beyond those thickly padded bulkheads.

With more effort than the movement ought to have required of him, he shifted his position and brought both hands up to clutch the sides of his head. He was starting to shiver, cold and fatigued although the air around him bore no obvious chill. And she knows it, he thought despairingly. Somehow, he doubted that there was much that he could hide.

The woman's eyes continued to stare. "Well?" she asked him, suggestively. "Did you miss me?"

"What?" groaned Julian, shaking his head in spite of himself. "What are you talking about? I don't even… I hardly know you."

"Then you weren't thinking of me?" she teased with mock disappointment, but still with a flavour of avarice behind the suggestion. Bashir's involuntary shudder reminded him even more strongly of their initial encounter. "Not even a little?"

"Look." Bashir sighed, and ran a shaking hand once more over his face - entirely unable to find a position that was comfortable. "Just - at least can't you tell me what this is all about. Where… where am I?"

"A ship."

This answering voice had not come from the woman in front of him. Startled, Bashir's attention went immediately to its source. A partially closed partition afforded only the narrowest view of anything beyond. But there was enough of an evenly rectangular gap to reveal the movement of two more figures. Previously unseen, but certainly heard. They were Human, he noticed - or as Human in appearance as he had ever been himself.

The older of the two was positioned in the pilot's seat, with a tight fitting suit revealing the shape of a broad and slightly rounded torso. Wisps of thin white hair floated around his head, and he looked on the scene with an expression that alternately fretted, and pleaded. The other man stood with a clearer view, head turned, twisting his back just slightly to allow him to glance over one shoulder. Neither were entirely unfamiliar, and Julian was not at all surprised to see the leader's pale face and dark, piercing eyes.

"We got you away when you were sleeping." Jack let forth one of his most sharply high-pitched, wicked chuckles. "Clever of us, wasn't it?"

What? Even the frustration invading Bashir's response was not enough to give his thoughts a recognisably audible shape. As forced as it was, even his voice failed utterly to rise above a low, half mumbled groan. An incomplete curse had snagged against the back of his throat as he rested his head again in both open hands, breathing deeply, and with the same dull, dry ache returning to his over-tired brain.

"Never mind that, either," said Jack from where he stood in front of the dividing partition. "It's just the drug wearing off."

Certain that the weight descending upon him was induced by far more than mere chemical influence, Bashir pressed two fingers hard against his eyes. "What drug?" he demanded, weary exasperation still clouding his response.

"Just a bit of merfadon - nothing so alarming."

"And where did you get access to…? No. Wait. I don't want to know."

Although it would never have been at all difficult to guess. They broke into the medicine cabinet, he thought. There were times, after all, when the most likely of explanations was indeed the one that made the most sense. Somehow, they got past Security and overrode the locks.

"Don't look so worried. It's not like this was the first time." Jack turned back towards his snowy-haired companion, who had remained at the helm. "Can't you do something to make us go faster?"

"Leave him alone," accused the woman, with her painted lips curled into a snarl. She shifted back a little, allowing herself to become a part of their small ensemble. The oldest of them had looked away, anxiously wringing his hands, face twisting as though to herald the approach of oncoming tears.

"All right, then." Bashir wondered, with a brief, tense sigh, why he was not offering more of an argument. He noticed with the passing seconds that his head had begun to shake. What could his efforts accomplish when, in truth, he had little idea of where to find the energy. "So. You've stolen a shuttle." He paused, a tight frown adding to the tension ache at both sides of his head. "That's… Very well. But… How far do you think you're likely to get?"

"How far do you think?" challenged Jack, his own eyes gleaming as fervently as two dark stars. "Back to the beginning of course. Isn't that what you've been wanting all along?"