[A.N. Sorry for all the delay. Life, stress, things. I hope to get back to writing soon. Also I do hope to go back through this in the future and flesh it out more.]

Spock sat still for a moment, then touched his hand to the hot and swollen place on his arm.

'Are you certain?' he asked.

'I'm certain,' Christine said grimly, sitting down beside him. 'It matches Alunan's most recent strain exactly. There's a puncture wound at the centre. It must have been a needle or some other sharp object. It certainly wasn't a hypo. Too messy.'

'I would have heard the noise of a hypo,' Spock nodded, pressing his fingers hard onto his arm. He could feel a slight roughness where there must be a little dried blood from the puncture wound.

'Do you remember anything touching your arm?' Christine asked. 'A stumble? An accident?'

Spock shook his head. 'Nothing like that,' he said. 'I very much doubt that this was an innocent accident.'

He sat thinking, remembering how Alunan had clapped his hand onto his arm as they were leaving in an unusually jovial way.

'It was not an accident,' he repeated. 'Alunan struck my arm as we were leaving. He must have injected the virus into my arm as he did so. He was very eager to test the strain.'

'But that's – ' Christine faltered. 'That's – '

'Illegal, underhand, dangerous,' Spock suggested. 'But it has happened. I would suggest our first move be to contact Alunan and speak to him about what he has done.'

'Yes,' Christine said in a musing tone. 'Yes, you're right. But this might be communicable, Spock. We're going to need to contact the transport authorities here and at Euston, the people in Alunan's lab, and – good god,' she said, 'what about the restaurant tonight?'

Spock pressed his lips together. This was proving most awkward.

'First I shall call Alunan,' he said decisively, going over to the comm and sitting down. 'Christine, could you connect me to Dr Aluman's lab?' he asked. The comm in this apartment was not adapted for the visually impaired.

'Of course,' she murmured, leaning over his shoulder and going through the process. 'There,' she said. 'It's going through now.'

Spock nodded acknowledgement and waited for the call to be answered. It rang for a long time. It was the early hours of the morning now in London but he knew that with Alunan's short sleep-wake cycle he was as likely to be in the lab then as at any other time. Regardless, the comm rang and rang.

'Perhaps he's sleeping,' Christine suggested. 'I would be if I were him. It must be 4 a.m. over there.'

'Hmm,' Spock mused. He let the comm continue to ring, and finally the noise cut off and there was a rather breathless voice saying, 'Dr Alunan's research lab. Hello?'

'I must speak to Dr Alunan,' Spock said without preamble. 'It is urgent.'

'Oh,' the woman's voice said. 'Oh, well, I'm afraid that's not possible at the moment.'

'If he is sleeping you will wake him,' Spock told her crisply. Whether it was the urgency of the situation or the virus in his system he felt that he had far less patience than usual.

'No, he's not sleeping,' the woman said. 'I – well, to tell you the truth, he's not sleeping. He's ill. He's was taken to the University College Hospital about half an hour ago.'

Spock's spine straightened. 'Explain,' he said.

'Can I ask who you are, sir?' the woman asked cautiously.

'I am Commander Spock. I have been working with Dr Alunan on his research,' Spock told her crisply.

'Oh, well that's fine,' the woman said, sounding greatly relieved. 'That's great. Perhaps you can be of help. We're afraid the doctor accidentally got infected with the virus he's been working on.'

'Accidentally,' Christine harrumphed from behind Spock's shoulder.

Spock frowned. 'It is very likely that the doctor infected himself quite deliberately,' he said to the woman on the other end of the comm. 'It is also very likely that he deliberately infected me when I was in the lab.' He stopped and drew in breath as an intense wave of nausea came over him. 'Do you have any information on treatment for this virus?' he asked.

'Spock, are you all right?' Christine asked quietly from behind him, and he nodded tightly.

'I don't know any more than you,' the woman said. 'Dr Alunan was very close with his experiments.'

Spock sighed. 'Do you have any information on how infectious this disease might prove to be?' he asked.

He drew in a deep breath again, feeling distinctly unwell. Christine put her hand on his shoulder and said, 'Spock, go lie down. I'll talk to her and get all the information I can.'

'No,' he said. 'No, I should not – '

But another wave of sickness came over him, and he felt his skin begin to prickle with heat. He did not feel totally able to take in everything that was said to him, and it was vital to look at this problem clearly.

'Very well,' he nodded finally, with great reluctance. 'Take over.'

He vacated the seat and moved unsteadily to the bedroom, where he lay down on top of the bedclothes and listened to Christine talking urgently on the comm in the other room. He tried to listen intently but the illness was coming over him in waves and the sound seemed to slip away into a muffled blur. He was aware some time later of the sound of voices and hands touching him, manhandling him onto something that was relatively hard and cold. Christine's voice rose above the others saying clearly, 'We're moving you to the hospital, Spock. It's just a precaution. You don't need to worry.'

He could feel a bitter taste in his mouth as if he had vomited, but he was completely unaware of such an event occurring. He turned his head, trying to work out where Christine was. He could hear Sacha's claws ticking on the hard floor but could not quite manage to form words. There was no need to leave instructions for her care. He knew that Christine would look after her. Christine's hand slipped into his and he gave pressure on her fingers, then let go. A blanket was wrapped over him, straps secured, and a moment later he was being carried out into the cold outdoors and wet flakes of snow were drifting onto his face. He wondered what time it was. He seemed to have lost his time sense in that fevered sleep, and now the cold outside was making him shiver despite the insulated blanket over the top of him.

Christine watched in concern as they loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance. She was certain that Spock had understood what she had said but the unknown nature of this virus was a worry. She was torn between staying with him and remaining behind in order to try to sort out some of the chaos that the virus had left behind. She had been successful in contacting most of the people who had attended the dinner that evening, but it was by no means certain that they were the only people who had been exposed. Dr Alunan's aide couldn't be sure how communicable the virus might be, and it seemed that the only thing that could be done was to wait.

She hovered between getting into the ambulance and going back into the house, and then one of the medical technicians said, 'You'd better come, ma'am. We need to be sure you haven't caught this too.'

'Can I use a comm there?' she asked crisply. 'It's imperative that I contact people about this.'

'Yes, of course,' the man nodded. 'There'll be a comm available in Commander Spock's room.'

She looked back at the house briefly, then called Sacha to her, explaining quickly, 'She's Commander Spock's guide dog. There isn't anyone else to take care of her.'

The man demurred for a moment, then said, 'I guess that's fine if she's a service dog. You can arrange care for her later if you need to.'

'All right,' she nodded. She was already holding a small bag containing Spock's cane and a few necessities in it. Sacha came to her and together they climbed up into the back of the ambulance. The dog sat down with her head resting on the gurney close to Spock's own head, and Christine sat in one of the seats nearby. She was not overwhelmed with concern because at the moment Spock's symptoms were not severe, but she couldn't be sure what might develop.

At the hospital she accessed the comm in Spock's room and began again at the careful process of trying to establish whether or not this virus was likely to spread. Tiredness was aching through her body and she wanted to just lie down and sleep, but this was too important to let go. The staff in the hospital were capable but were not exactly bio-medical researchers, and could not help much beyond making sure that Spock was comfortable.

She sighed and looked at him between calls. He was lying very still, his face pale, eyes closed. He was sleeping rather than unconscious, at least. A hundred other times in sick bay flitted through her mind when Spock had been cast down by injury or some unknown alien virus. She had been through this so many times before. But Spock had always recovered. He had always recovered.

She turned back to the comm, where she was trying again to contact Dr Alunan's lab to discover what his condition was now and if there was any extra information that could be extracted from his records. She found herself making contact much sooner this time since it was now morning in London. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock that hung on the wall opposite Spock's bed. Five a.m. She would have loved to have been asleep in bed.

'Look, can you just send all of Dr Alunan's records to me here?' she asked the lab tech who had answered her call, irritation and tiredness edging her voice.

'I'm sure that the doctor wouldn't be happy at all about that,' the man said doubtfully.

She rubbed her hand over her face. She had washed off all of her make up earlier and didn't care how tired or dishevelled she looked. She just wanted answers.

'I don't give a damn how happy he would be about it,' she said sharply. 'He has deliberately infected a person and we need to know if this thing's going to spread. We could be looking at an epidemic. He lost the right to secrecy when he infected Spock.'

'Now, that's a serious allegation to make,' the man said doubtfully, but by the way his eyes were flicking away from the screen Christine was sure that he suspected that the allegation was true.

'It's a serious thing to do to another person,' Christine replied tartly. 'Now, I want those records over here in the next half hour or I'll be forced to go through legal means to get hold of them.'

She had no idea what legal means she might have at her disposal, but the threat seemed to give the man pause. His eyes flicked away from the screen again and she had the sense that he was fiddling with his hands just out of view. Then he said, 'All right. All right, Lieutenant Chapel. I'll have them sent over.'

Christine smiled. She had wondered if introducing herself with her rank would help when she opened the call, and she got the sense that it had. Maybe the man thought that she could bring the weight of Starfleet to bear against Dr Alunan's lab.

She cut the communication and called up the hospital in London to see if anything more could be discovered about Alunan's reaction to the virus. There were even more barriers there due to medical confidentiality, even when she stated her medical qualifications and her interest in the case. She felt too tired for these battles. She was used to working long shifts through times that she should be sleeping, but the worry she felt over Spock made her tireder still.

On the floor Sacha looked up at her, then grunted and flopped back and closed her eyes. It was obvious that she thought the lights and activity were completely unnecessary at this time of night.

Christine looked back to the doctor on the screen. Her eyes felt hot with tiredness.

'Is there any way at all that you can let me know something?' she asked. She had already been passed from person to person and had finally been connected with a doctor who had been working directly on Alunan's case.

'If you arrange for Commander Spock's primary physician to contact me,' the woman said, 'then I could discuss details of the case with him. I cannot share it with friends and family who aren't officially part of the team treating Commander Spock.'

Christine felt like punching something. 'I've been working closely with Alunan on this virus,' she said, the frustration tightening her voice.

'I understand that,' the woman nodded, 'but this isn't the lab. This is a hospital, and we're concerned with the patient and patient confidentiality, not with the research he may have been carrying out.'

Christine turned away from the screen momentarily, biting down so hard on her fist that she left bluish tooth marks in the skin.

'Surely you can see that it's all connected?' she asked, trying very hard to stay calm.

'Yes, of course I can,' the woman said. She sounded tired herself. 'But I still don't have the ability to disclose medical records like that. Not to – '

'Friends and family, I know,' Christine sighed.

She glanced at Spock in the bed. He was still sleeping, his vital signs low but steady. She understood why McCoy was so often enraged by red tape and bureaucracy. She bit her lip into her mouth and looked back to the screen. The woman there seemed to soften at the sight of her distress.

'I will share what I can with Commander Spock's physician,' she promised. 'You'll have to see what you can get out of him. And I should tell you one more thing,' she said, leaning a little closer to the comm and lowering her voice. 'I shouldn't be releasing this to anyone but from what I've seen of you I can be pretty sure you're not going to be running to the press. Dr Alunan died half an hour ago. That's why I'm free to talk to you now.'

Christine sucked in breath. She felt as if her heart had suddenly leapt up into her throat.

Trying to keep her voice steady she said, 'Doctor, do you believe that the symptoms that killed him will manifest similarly in a Vulcan-human hybrid?'

The woman shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said tiredly. 'Dr Alunan was Exoxinian and his species has a very unusual method of extracting oxygen in the lungs. I really shouldn't be saying any more, but the virus seemed to break down cells in his lungs which are vital to the transference of oxygen into the blood system. He died of anoxia.'

'Vulcans are far more efficient at extracting oxygen from the air,' Christine mused, glancing at Spock again, her eyes going automatically to the blood oxygenation readings above his head. They seemed steady.

'I will send the data to his doctor,' the woman promised. 'Meanwhile, I'd advise you to keep an eye on his cell integrity. That's all I can do.'