Liz watched from the corner as Phlox worked. She'd insisted on watching him analyse the vial, she'd said she didn't trust him not to tamper with the analysis. It had been a bitter thing to say - and not true at all.

She was no longer truly frightened, but she was still angry - furious- and reeling from shock and grief. It seemed so trivial, when she thought of Palayjah, of Resba and Chenteel, but she might never go home again, to Enterprise or to Earth. She might never see her parents again. Never again see her brother, and his gurgling, toothy twin sons. And while she'd never really planned to have children, had never felt that yearning, the choice was no longer hers to make. And the man she'd been in love with - the man she'd been in love with THIS MORNING - was lost to her, even though he stood steps away.

"Have you found anything?" she asked, mostly to distract herself, but also aware she was conceding something.

He stared at her for a while before answering, his face filled with sadness.

Liz wondered what he might have been considering saying to her during that silence. Was it grief that he yearned to express, or was it remorse? And could there ever be words enough for either?

"I have," he said at last. "And, to my surprise, I must admit that at first glance, it seems genuine. Not a vaccine in the traditional sense, but a form of gene therapy, potentially for rendering an organism insusceptible to the plague agent."

"Oh..." Liz murmured. "So it would, what? Alter whatever biochemical receptors the plague virus uses to enter the host cells?"

"Well, we still don't know that it's a virus," Phlox replied. "But yes, I suspect something very much like that. And if the virus, if it is indeed a virus, can't enter the host cells, it can't modify them..."

"And so the autoimmune reaction would never start," Liz finished. "That sort of gene therapy would have to be species specific, wouldn't it?"

Phlox nodded. "That's very likely. And also where things get stranger. This therapy is not intended to work with the Denobulan genome. It could never have helped my Palayjah. But it might help us now. If we can figure out what species it is intended for, then we can perhaps reverse engineer some aspects of the virus itself. Which would mean we can finally identify it. And we'd have a head start on developing treatments, as well."

Liz frowned. "But, what if it is intended for Romulans? I mean, if Malcolm and Hoshi are right, then that will be the most likely scenario, wouldn't it? And we don't have any Romulan DNA sequences. Nobody does."

"We must hope that it is not intended for Romulans," Phlox replied. "Or perhaps that this Romulan Star Empire is peopled by one of the species in our database. After all, if we know nothing about them, then it follows that it's possible we've already met them."

Liz sighed, and took an unconscious step closer to Phlox. "I can't believe we could be that lucky."

"Whereas, I must believe it," Phlox replied softly. "Some good must come of this terrible day. As unimaginable as it feels right now, some good must come."

"Trip, are you okay?" Archer asked his friend with concern. When a man who could take surprise interspecies pregnancies more or less in his stride looked this shell shocked, it was something to be concerned about.

"Ask me something else, Jon," Trip replied tiredly, but firmly, not l oozing up from his scanner.

All right... "Is that transporter ready?"

Trip shrugged. "Um, yeah, I think. I sure wish we could test it some more, but failing that, it's as ready as it's going to get."

Archer shook his head. "We're running out of time, Trip. If Hoshi's right, then that ship could power up and leave orbit and any time, and we would miss our change of proving the Romulans caused this mess. They shouldn't get away with this."

"I don't disagree," Trip replied. "But a few more tests...I mean, does this mission even have personnel yet? Everyone we have down there is traumatized, or missing, or half-dead. Apart from the people that are actually dead."

"Liz and Phlox. I know neither will be happy about it, but they will just have to. We can't afford to wait any longer."

At that, Trip put down his scanner and stood up. "And what are you going to do if one of them refuses the order, Jon? Or both? Are you going to have them locked up as well?"

"Don't be like that, Trip," Archer sighed. "You didn't want Alice going down there any more than I did. Quite a bit less, I'd say."

"Doesn't mean I wanted her arrested," Trip replied. "What good did that do anyone?"

Archer considered some sort of speech regarding following orders and rank discipline, but his heart wasn't in it. "I didn't really want her arrested either Trip. And no, I won't hold Liz or Phlox to this order. But at the same time I'm not telling them that. We need to send someone to that ship."

"I could go."

"Trip, don't be stupid," Archer hissed. "We are not exposing anyone else. I'm not leaving any more people on Denobula."

"T'Pol thinks we'll get them back. I mean, not soon or anything, but a year or two..."

"I said, no. No one else gets left behind. Especially not you."

Trip met Archer's eyes. "And why not me? Shouldn't it be me? I've been on a drone ship, spent some time there. And, if we exclude Malcolm I'm the only one how has. So why exactly shouldn't I go?"

"He keeps volunteering to go, you know," Archer replied, blatantly dodging the question. "Malcolm. He keeps insisting he can handle it. He made exactly the same argument you just did."

"Yeah, well, Malcolm's an idiot," Trip responded, and Archer caught just a hint of mirth in it. "Plus, there's a war starting up here and he's missing it. That must just be killing him."

Archer chuckled bleakly. "Well, if we do go to war, I'll see if I can get it backdated to when the shuttle exploded. Then at least he can say he was heroically injured in it."

"Good idea, I think he'd like that," Trip replied with a thin smile. "Although, for my part, I'm really hoping that mining barge is just a mining barge.

Archer squeezed his friend's shoulder. "I do too, Trip."

"It's not going to be, is it?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Alright, Travis, understood,"

While Archer's orders chafed, Liz resigned herself to them. She certainly didn't want to be responsible for someone else being stranded here. Also, something about the sad, but stoic way Phlox had received his orders had opened her heart, just a crack.

"Thanks, Liz. We appreciate it," Travis transmitted back, clearly relieved. "Are you having any luck with that vial, by the way?"

"We're still searching the database for a DNA match," Liz responded vaguely, more focused on the upcoming mission. "Until we have one there's not much that we can... Oh wait, there's a match!"

"There's is?"

"Yes! There a... Oh wait, no. It's a nonsense match. Must be a coincidence." Liz replied, staring at the screen in profound disappointment. "It's come up matching the Valakians of all people, but they aren't even warp capable and..."

"Did you say VALAKIAN?"

Something about Travis's tone pulled Liz up short. "Yes...but I don't think..."

"No, LISTEN," Travis insisted. "These transmissions Hoshi detected going to that ship. She said they looked Valakian. We blew it off as a coincidence as well, but TWO coincidences?"

Liz frowned. "Well, the Valakians might well have cause to hate humans, if they ever found out we could have cured them, but didn't. And...oh! And Phlox. They'd hate Phlox! I was never the target. Phlox was!"

"Liz, what are you...?"

"But it didn't work...the man that Mettus... It would be personal... He could still be coming!"

"Liz!?"

Ignoring Travis's increasingly frantic calls, Liz ran though the corridors of the hospital, dodging gurneys and irate nurses. She tried the lab, Malcolm's room, the cafeteria, all to no avail.

"Mettus, where is your father?" she called breathlessly when she saw him idling in a stairwell. Her throat, still tender from before, was now so ragged from exertion, that she barely recognised her own voice.

"He went outside for some air," Mettus replied. "What's the matter with you?"

"Outside?"

Liz ran in the direction Mettus had indicated, until she reached a heavy door. She threw herself against it and burst into the shock of the cold night air.

She was just in time to see Sayden's blade catch the light as it was thrust up under Phlox's ribs.