Isn't it obvious? Bashir stared, eyes revealing the sudden incredulity that had briefly deprived him of his ability to answer. He winced.

"I gave you some painkillers just after your last treatment," Larkin maintained a careful contact with his eyes, although the words she spoke sounded moderately brusque. "If I'm not mistaken, they should be wearing off by now."

Speech remained difficult, but Julian sensed a need for his voice to strengthen - which would have to come with practice. "Then it worked."

"It worked," confirmed Hilary Larkin. "There was nothing I could do to stop the cellular breakdown, and I can't guarantee that the effects will ever completely heal. They may still return as you get older. But doubtless you'll learn to manage it, with time."

And with enhanced adaptive capabilities and accelerated sub-cellular rejuvenation. Assuming of course that I can find the strength. Never underestimate the value of a father's gifts. Gifts that he never should have received - a life that had never been his to claim. Why else would the Federation have gone to so much trouble, to take it all away?

"What's this, then? One more 'advantage' of being engineered?"

"Do you still think that everything you've accomplished is nothing more than the result of genetic manipulation?"

"Isn't it? I would never have needed to come here if…"

"But you came," insisted Larkin.

"There weren't a lot of other options." This woman had been the one to restore Bashir to life. Surely, she must have known how close to failure he had come. His recent memory, even the extensive series of medical scans had given him no cause to doubt his own assessment. He was not at the best angle to be permitted a clear perspective, but he could see well enough to know - the display at his side was maintaining a constant watch on his neural activity. Unsurprising, as he could also feel the thin, metallic pressure of a synaptic monitor across his brow, and he was certain that the continued weakness and the ache in his head were not concealed from sight.

"I couldn't find any existing medical records from my early childhood. You know that, Doctor. Whatever there might be could just as easily have been faked, there wasn't even evidence of deleted files. And Jack was right - or so everyone seems to think. Thanks to you I'm one of them."

"Jack?"

Bashir struggled to keep his thoughts in focus, including his recollection of the ones who had originally abducted him. "I was travelling with others," he explained hesitantly. Then it was done. Whatever the outcome, this woman had been told about his little group of fugitives. "They helped me get this far. But we…"

We were separated. His head ached as though with a clamp behind each eye. Don't know where they are, Doctor. So don't ask. I don't even know how long ago they left.

But Larkin's face showed no surprise. "I see…" she muttered, and glanced around her. Whatever she expected to see gave no sign of materialising from the walls of the narrow, cluttered room.

"I understand why you couldn't locate any records," the middle aged woman continued, one hand tapping against the surface of her tricorder. "I was never in the habit of keeping any more than minimal notes. Not entirely scientific in the strictest sense, but that did make it easier for me to disappear - when I needed to."

"I…" It was difficult to argue with her assessment. "I was told that you were staying out of sight."

Larkin studied him for a long moment, saying nothing, but had begun to tap her tricorder instead against her opposite palm. She frowned to herself, briefly contemplating - but not seeming to notice - the gradual movement of her hands as they closed around the portable scanner.

"Don't," she told him finally in a low tense voice. "You really shouldn't ask me this."

Sensing the conflict of divergent impulses rising to the surface of her tired blue eyes, Bashir watched her even more closely. "Why?"

"Believe me," came the doctor's response. "It isn't something you want to get yourself involved in. There are some things that are simply… safer, not to know."

A jolt of shock stabbed directly into Bashir's stomach. We're a little beyond that, don't you think? But only one protest found escape. "I doubt it's anything you can protect me from."

"Then perhaps you should be told," Larkin conceded. "The fact is, I've been persona non grata in the Federation for quite some time now. Until three years ago. I was offered - or, at least, I was told I would be offered - a chance at redemption. There's little in this story that you wouldn't have been able to guess before too long. And these secrets… They don't deserve to be kept."

"What do you mean?"

Larkin looked up. "They called it simple research," she told him quietly. "Protection from a mortal enemy, and if I helped them, I would be allowed to return without the fear of any penalty. But I suppose you already know about Starfleet's experiments into developing biotechnology?"

…To use against the Dominion. Bashir could almost have completed her sentence himself. It was a powerful enemy. And yes, he had heard.

"You…?" He frowned, the next breath catching momentarily in his throat, but with no surprise, he realised quickly. He'd been wondering when this story might come again to the fore. "You were involved in all of that? Why?"

"I'm an expert in genetic engineering," Larkin explained. "And the Jem'Hadar are genetically engineered. I've seen your research too, Julian. I know you're as aware of that detail as any other person in this quadrant."

Well, yes. But… He didn't care what they had done, nor about any of what had happened before now. They had not been at war when this project had commenced, nor even when it had reached its conclusion. And if he had known that his studies of the Jem'Hadar would be used in such a manner… Larkin was a doctor, after all.

Her head turned slightly, blue eyes seeming to have caught something in Bashir's reaction.

"You think that I shouldn't have agreed, perhaps," she deduced. "Perhaps I should have told them no, from the moment that Starfleet Intelligence hinted that they might have regained some interest in me. Believe me, this all started as a legitimate research assignment - at least as far as I was ever told. I had no idea what I was really getting into. By the time any of us realised any differently, it was far too late to back away. I hadn't worked in the Federation for, it must have been… Yes. Decades. But Starfleet can be very persuasive. They offered me a chance to return, and Earth is still my home."

"Now that stinks of a cop-out, and I think you know it."

"The Federation hasn't earned any loyalty from me." There was an even harsher edge to Larkin's rebuttal. "And from what I've heard they haven't done a lot to help you either. Where else would you have gone, if not for this facility? I've seen children taken to back alleys and basement clinics because their parents had nowhere else to go. And why? The Federation decided since the Eugenics Wars that they were wrong to want the best possible start. It was hundreds of years ago, Julian, and I never forced this procedure on anybody."

That's not the way I remember it.

"Then what you're saying is, you think the laws are wrong?" Bashir challenged her. "And by extension, that makes you right?"

Larkin's gaze was level as she met his challenge with her cool, only slightly fading blue eyes. "Closing us down would not have made the slightest difference to the number of Human parents wanting to make this decision. And my own mistake was absurdly simple. I expressed opinions that didn't fit in the warm and happy Federation paradise. I tried to provide a better option than would have been permitted in their utopia. And for that, well…"

She snickered quietly. "Out of sight, out of mind. Which brings up another question. How did you know to look for me here?"

Silence grew more conspicuous with every second that passed. Julian remembered the face of the man who had watched him in the night. The distant, analytical gaze, the cool but dangerous congeniality in his voice. Studying him closely, Larkin nodded as though to confirm some inner belief.

"Then they are still looking for me," she muttered. "Who was it? Lawrence Appleton?"

"He was killed," Bashir whispered automatically. He shuddered, head still throbbing, and with the heat of blood already rushing to his face. He had not been a witness to the man's final moments, but he was no less certain that there was truth in his words.

Larkin's own gaze sharpened as she regarded him pensively, muscles tightening noticeably around her eyes.

"Sloan."

Denial was pointless. Every corporeal impulse urged Julian to allow his eyes to close - not to open them for several hours, at least. But the same sharp voice still cut through his waking thoughts.

"Did he mention me by name?"

"I… I think so." He cursed himself for the vague, unsatisfactory response. But there had been a mounting intensity in the woman's interrogation, enough to give him reason to hesitate. "Yes. But I don't see…"

"Then I'll ask you this," said Doctor Larkin, her voice now a full tone lower. "Have you given any thought to why this man might have contacted you? Has he given you reason to believe that he would tell you all of this, just to help?"

"Well, he must have…" Bashir stopped, frowning hard. No, he realised. And he had asked those very same questions, a hundred times or more. But they had never quite succeeded in rising beyond the edge of his consciousness. He watched Larkin through half-focused eyes. "You think someone did this to me. Possibly even… Deliberately?"

"Consider the facts," Larkin prompted. "What do they tell you?"

Bashir frowned at her, his thoughts still a little sluggish. He thought back to the words that had first led him on this course. "They knew," he whispered, realising suddenly. "It was never about accidental contamination. They knew I would have no choice but to look for you."

"What else did you expect?" said a new and unidentified voice, itself emerging coldly from the shadows.