The image was lucid in Richard's memory. Chaffing, like the chill of a sudden Winter breeze, and almost holographic in the clarity of sounds and colours. The same dull, twisting pain returned unfailingly to his throat, with each new reminder.

The afternoon had been cool and clear, almost glaringly bright, and barely warmed by the rays of a far-away sun. Richard pulled the front of his roughly woven jacket a little further across his belly as he waited by the outer gate of Julian's school. A semi-intentional gesture, with hands that were pale and cold at the fingertips, and which afforded him scant protection against the biting chill. The fabric was stiff, with thick, dark threads - moderately starchy against the surface of his palms.

The main gate opened to release a stream of enthusiastically shouting children. The first group dashed past Richard, legs pumping like turbines, and missing him by only the merest of fractions. A girl at their front nearly overbalanced on a crack in the pavement, but righted herself with moments to spare and skidded in a sudden anticlockwise arc around the nearest corner.

Julian emerged at the end of this rapidly thinning exodus, in the company of three unfamiliar boys. The steps of these others had slowed and lengthened to match each other, even as they kept only slightly out of pace with those of Richard's son. They glanced back at their smaller, dark-haired shadow, whose halting voice tripped over itself in an attempt to stumble into their conversation. His high-pitched, nervous laughter - quiet, but excited - carried far in the afternoon air.

"Jules!" called Richard, a brief, clear summons.

He took a single step in the direction of the children. Stopping abruptly at the sound of his name, hands knitted together, Julian glanced first at the gathered parents, and then at the faces of his three young companions. Finally, he accelerated to a clumsy half-trot through a gap in the traffic, and closed the remaining distance to be at his father's side.

Only Richard had been in a position to see the trio of boys, now clustered together in a quiet, conspiratorial huddle. One turned to the others, laughing dryly beneath his breath. His friends paused to share the joke, following the boy's example as they joined him in a halting, exaggerated dance. Cruelly aping the awkward gait of Richard and Amsha's only son.

This- the father had resolved, his decision finally and irrevocably made. This would be the first thing for them to change.

"Jut three more hours." Lauren's voice was clear and steady. "I told you we could make it."

The question had not left Julian's mind, of what they expected to accomplish by going all that way. But for the moment, he listened. "Not long now," he muttered under his breath - surprised that the prospect was not bringing him any relief. But the time was approaching. He wondered anxiously if any of them had a plan.

"What if we land by the Western Quarter?"

"Too crowded," Lauren countered Jack's eager suggestion. "It's all multistory apartments and observation towers. Nowhere flat enough to land a shuttlecraft."

"Of course there is." Jack pointed to a position on their map, which he and Lauren were regarding intently - while Patrick sat less than a metre away. His eyes tracked the movements of Jack's fingertip. "We can touch down here, beneath this shelter. The Western Quarter has some of the oldest buildings in the system - from even before the Adigeons started replicating their construction materials. Even orbital sensors won't find us through the refractive metals in the stone."

"And what do we do after that?" the woman demanded. "Take the first local entity we meet and ask them they happen to any Human geneticists living in their city?"

"I don't see why not."

Jack had started to pace, as his companions' challenging silence continued to mount - increasingly thick and heavy until he broke it with a quick, frustrated outburst. "Fine! Find me a better idea!"

"I might have something."

The others turned back simultaneously - each as speechless and startled as if the answer had come from one of the cargo containers. Julian swayed a little, clutching the back of a chair for support - but the determination in his eyes was unwavering - always level.

"We need a contact on the surface, don't we? Just let me get to an open Comm. channel, and I can find us one."

His younger self would never have thought to try anything so deceptive. He had learnt a lot from the past six years - nearly five of those living so close to the Cardassian border. Any attempt to use subspace was to risk detection, but he was determined not to allow any opportunity to pass him by. Perhaps he might have even been excited by the prospect of adventure. Once.

How ironic.

"We can scramble the signal on a rotating frequency," he promised his travelling companions. "Redirect an encrypted message through multiple subspace relays. That would take Starfleet longer to trace than it will to communicate. By the time they pinpoint its source, we'll be gone."

His muscles ached, a sharp, strong pain - as though from hard metal clamped to every joint. Columns of bright colour were stacked along the left hand margin of the screen - the illuminated blocks suggesting a monitor that had originally been configured for Starfleet use. On an obsolete cargo freighter?

In the Dominion prison camp, Tain had used a complicated encryption algorithm do disguise his transmissions from the Jem'Hadar. The old man had been inexhaustible, Bashir recalled, slowing only after his failing body could no longer support his efforts. It wasn't going to happen again - not this time. Not ever. Stepping clumsily forward, Bashir positioned himself before the screen. The response to his call was far quicker than either of them expected.

"What in Hell…?" O'Brien started to say. "Julian? You've got every ship from here to Vulcan on alert for you and your genetically engineered friends."

Bashir jerked away as though dodging a snake. "You know about that?"

"Everyone knows about that," insisted O'Brien . His voice tapered to nothing, as the first moments of shock finally began to ease. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed to a concentrated frown. They shifted a fraction, as though trying to peer beyond the limited boundaries of the screen. "You look terrible."

I don't doubt it. Bashir pushed the thought impatiently to one side. There was too little time to expend on such a point.

In a moment of self consciousness, he glanced down and cautiously flexed his hands. His knuckles protested, stiff and cold - and increasingly difficult to move. But when he looked up again, the Chief's had changed his expression to one of mild embarrassment.

"Sorry."

Julian shook his head. "Don't be," he insisted through clenched teeth - which he fought to keep from chattering. "It's not… as bad as it looks. I'm… uh - I'm fine. Really."

"Julian-"

He hunched his shoulders like a tired old man and pulled the blanket even closer around them - in a search for the warmth and strong, even pressure that it had once appeared to promise. End the transmission. End it now. It was a palpable, demanding thought - as strong as if one of aloud. There's nothing you can do to convince him. But he pushed it aside. There were things he had to know. And if anyone in this universe could be counted on for the information they needed, it had to be Chief O'Brien.

"Please, Miles." Perhaps a quiet appeal, infused with just the right degree of urgency, could silence the other man's protests. "There isn't a lot of time."

"Then shouldn't you begetting back to that Institute place of yours…?"

"No," said Bashir, quietly. He hesitated in the claustrophobic silence, his mind labouring hard enough to bring an ache to the underside of his skull. But with this single word, all indecision vanished. "This could be my last chance. I have to take it."

"Last chance?" his friend demanded. "For what?"

"I…" Bashir shook his head. "Never mind."

"All right." O'Brien sighed, lips pulled back from tightly gritted teeth. "There wasn't a lot, but I'll send you what I can."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," the engineer cautioned. His brown tensed slightly. "If the files are believable, then your Hilary Larkin'll not be easy to find. As for Naron… Yeah, there was a file. But it was pretty well buried - let's just say, a challenge to get to. And I get the feeling that it was supposed to be much larger."

Bashir was quick to reach the only natural conclusion. A pattern was emerging, gathering but disconnected like the passing of a torch beam through an unlit room. "Deleted?"

"I don't like what's happening here," the Chief said, quietly. "Just so as you know, Julian. You're not the only one who's been making enquiries."

"What do you mean?"

O'Brien watched the screen with a fierce intensity. "There are people on the station," he insisted. "Asking us about where you might have gone. I'm not supposed to tell you any of this. They tell us they're from Starfleet Command, but… I don't know. I don't usually mind keeping secrets, and you know as well as I do - we've had our share of unexpected guests. But this time, it's…"

"…Different," Julian guessed. It was far from Starfleet's habit, for its officers to turn up so unannounced.

Miles O'Brien was ominously silent.

"You don't trust them."

"Can't say for sure," O'Brien answered, with a furtive glance over his shoulder. "Odo's definitely suspicious, and Kira too, I'd say. The captain…? Yeah. I think so. And Dax, but she might just be picking something up from Sisko. He's told us to co-operate with these people, for now, but I don't know that they're giving him a lot of choice. If they say they're from Starfleet Command, and the bigwigs back on Earth aren't telling us anything to deny it - then what can you do?"

He stopped. "Sorry - I don't mean to bring you extra problems…"

"No." Bashir raked a hand through his hair. He had spoken distractedly, his mind already overflowing with a flood of new concerns. But it was sincerely meant, and he could only hope that the ruddy faced engineer knew how much he appreciated the effort. "No. It's all right. Thank you, Chief."

He shivered invisibly, holding back a long, sub-vocal groan, and clenched his hands, gathering the grooves they had created at the blanket's corners.

"We're still keeping our eyes open," promised Miles, unexpectedly cutting through his friend's introspective silence. "And so should you. Watch your back, all right?"

"Don't worry, Miles" There was no cause for evasion or ambiguity in Bashir's response. "I intend to."