Kehin yawned as the small pair trudged down the street. "I think we stayed too late," he said, shivering and snuggling deeper into his oversized coat.

"But we were almost done," Ibis said sleepily. "Better to finish it."

They were almost to their shelter when they heard the voice from the shadows.

"Boy!"

The children froze at the harsh whisper.

"Is that him?" Ibis asked softly. "The man--"

"Girl, get out of here. I need to talk to the boy. Alone."

"She can't go alone! It's too dangerous!" Kehin objected, catching Ibis's hand and protectively stepping a half-step in front of her.

Mondrig stepped close enough for them to see his scowl. His clothes looked slept in, his hair unkempt. "If she tells anyone what we discuss, you will both regret it."

"I am Cardassian, I am not afraid!" Ibis said defiantly.

He appraised her, then smiled a little unpleasantly. "Then maybe she can help. I need you to bring me information, and supplies, without anyone else knowing it. Like before."

"I can't help you any more," Kehin said, a slight quaver in his tone. "You told me to go away."

"Now I'm telling you otherwise. For Cardassia--"

"I don't believe you want to help Cardassia! I think you only care about yourself! And I'm not helping you anymore."

"Oh? I think I can convince you otherwise. Maybe the girl should stay with me while you bring me what I need." Mondrig reached for Ibis; she stepped back warily.

"No! Ibis, run!" Kehin shouted in alarm.

She was already moving, sprinting down the street, her coat billowing.

Mondrig lunged, groping for the fabric, but missed.

"Leave her alone!"

Rage on his features, Mondrig turned to Kehin, hand raised, fingers clenched in a fist.

Kehin bolted, following Ibis.

Mondrig took two steps to follow the children, but tripped over the jutting edge of a crack in the paving, and tumbled to the street, cursing, then howling in pain.

Kehin didn't stop to look back. He kept running until he caught up to Ibis. "He knows ... where we stay.... We can't ... go back there...." he wheezed.

Behind them, they heard Mondrig yelling what sounded like a name. There were footsteps somewhere to the side of them.

Breathless, Ibis panted, "The clinic.... They ... will protect ... us...."

The rest of the weary research team had turned in for some sleep before the next long day. Bashir sat alone in the lab, poring over various test results that, maddeningly, continued to refuse to provide answers.

He slumped back in his chair, sighing. He was beyond frustration, spinning his wheels, and getting nowhere.

And, he realized as he sat there, he was disheartened by the fact that Tejral and Lausten had come up with a probable answer to the main environmental problem.

Why was he taking that so hard? It was a good thing -- the relief mission was finally doing more than just bandaging wounds, so to speak. But he was sitting here stewing over not finding a cure, and it was bothering him that someone else was having success.

It wasn't a comfortable feeling.

Bashir shook himself mentally. C'mon, Julian, snap out of it. Lausten's people deserve congratulations for their work -- and the Cardassian people certainly deserve solutions. Stop resenting Trey's accomplishment and focus on finding a medical answer too.

They'd been working from the same angles, the usual lines of research. Maybe he had fallen into a rut. Maybe he needed a new perspective.

"All right, let's try something different. That's always been a strong point for you, Julian," he muttered to himself in determination. "You've always been able to approach problems from angles that nobody else does, and find answers nobody else even thought to ask the questions about. That's the reason you were nominated for a Carrington Award. That's how your prion research started the furor at the Altair medical conference. You're the one who asks new questions and finds new answers from new directions...."

Okay, start anew. A fresh perspective.

He swivelled his chair to address the computer. "Computer--"

A PADD lay on the console. Something was bookmarked.

Hmm, looks like somebody else was considering new angles too--

He started to read.

After a moment, his jaw dropped. For a long moment, he stared at the contents of the screen.

Then he flung the PADD across the room with an obscenity.

"Commander Blake?"

Blake dropped his feet from the desktop and set aside the day's security reports. "What is it, Storie?" he asked the woman at the door.

"Mondrig. He's been seen."

"Mondrig!" Blake was on his feet and moving. They'd been trying to locate the murder and sabotage suspect for several weeks. "Details?" he demanded briskly.

"Those two children who've been hanging around with Dr. Ptacek -- they just showed up, saying Mondrig was chasing them."

The security commander slowed. "Chasing children?" He rubbed his cheek.

Storie nodded.

"Why the hell was he chasing those kids?"

"You'll have to ask them."

"I hope this isn't a prank or overactive imaginations," he muttered.

They reached the interrogation room, where the two children, draped in oversized coats, were sitting together on a bench. Kehin was perched forward on the edge of the seat, his feet firmly on the floor as if ready to take off at any moment. Ibis was sitting back, her short, slender legs not quite reaching the floor, but as perfectly still as Cardassian children were trained to be.

"All right," Blake announced, looking from child to the other. "Tell me what happened."

The young Cardassians looked up at the tall, muscular human. Their solemn expressions didn't tell him much. But then, in his experience, most Cardassian children looked like that, most of the time.

"Well?" he prompted.

Kehin spoke up. "We were coming home from the memorial garden. He came out of the shadows. He told me he wanted me to get him things. And when I said no, he tried to grab Ibis to make me do what he wanted me to."

At the other side of the room, Storie's eyes widened, and she opened her mouth.

Blake gestured her to keep quiet. "Mondrig tried to kidnap your friend to make you help him?"

Kehin nodded.

"But I ran too fast," Ibis blurted out, then drew back into her delicate silence.

"What did Mondrig want you to do or get for him?"

The boy shook his head. "I don't know. We ran before he said."

Blake felt a sense of foreboding. "That was probably smart," he said briskly. "Where did you see him?"

Now Kehin hesitated, as if unsure he wanted to tell the burly human too much.

"If you don't tell us, we can't catch him. If we can't catch him, he might try to find you and Ibis again. Or maybe other children."

He capitulated. "He was at the University Plaza."

"Did you see which way he went?"

"No." Kehin looked down. "We ran."

Blake nodded sharply. "That's all right. That was the right thing to do. And it was right to come and tell us, too. Storie, get a detail ready. We're going over there right now."

"On my way."

"Do you kids need somebody to walk you home?" he asked after the lieutenant left, as the silence between the three of them grew longer. "I can make sure you get home safe."

"No," the girl spoke up again. "We want to stay with Dr. Ptacek."

"Mondrig knows where we stay at nights," Kehin explained. "He might wait for us there. We should stay here."

Blake felt a stirring of righteous anger. Mondrig, the Cardassian who'd helped the Ferengi slavers steal children, the one who'd instigated a riot, the man who might be responsible for the sabotage of the emitters in the storm, a man who could well be a murderer, the shadow who'd managed to avoid arrest for weeks, might be waiting for these children. For a second, he had thoughts of setting a trap. But these children's lives were dangerous enough, he wasn't going to put them at risk even more.

"Don't worry," he replied brusquely. "We won't let him hurt you. You stay here as long as you like."

Dr. Ptacek moved silently through the dimly-lit clinic, her feet gliding across the floor from one field-isolated quarantine ward to the next. Normally, each biobed would have been isolated. The energy requirements, however, were simply too great, in the current situation. So each ward of plague sufferers was kept isolated, and every person who entered and exited the chambers passed through a bio-field to protect the rest of the clinic, its patients, and anyone who might be visiting or working there.

Many patients slept, some with the aid of sedatives or alpha-wave inducers. Some tossed and turned, coughing hoarsely or breathing heavily, unable to sleep or afraid to close their eyes in case they might not wake up. Night shift nurses and medics wearily checked vitals, provided medication, or simply sat beside their patients. No one paid much attention to Ptacek. She felt like some kind of night specter, her blue Andorian skin and gray medical garb melting into the shadows.

She paused for a few moments in one of the wards, listening for one particular breath. Then she made her way to that bedside. Dr. Parmak, their Cardassian associate.

The Cardassian doctor had agreed to serve as a living experimental subject for a compound Aya had concocted. It wasn't expected to be a cure, but if it worked as hoped, it would make their dying days a little easier and less painful for the Cardassian victims of the Dominion plague, as the staff now referred to it. But as always with something new, there were concerns about possible side effects, and very little time to run extensive tests.

Ptacek studied her patient's monitor. The biobed registered breathing, heartbeat, temperature, oxygen absorption, and the functioning of a dozen other major physiological systems.

All good. Stronger than they had been that afternoon. And Parmak was sleeping more easily than he had in the past week. The palliative seemed to be doing its job.

At least it was something. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside the biobed. Reaching for the Cardassian's chart, she began to review his readings.

The late night commissary was almost empty, only a handful of the small tables occupied by relief team personnel slumped over beverages or actually asleep, heads resting on arms with their plates or cups pushed aside.

"Mind if I join you? Or are you actually asleep like everybody else in here?"

Vak and Jake both started and sat up at Aya's cheery question.

"Who's asleep? I'm dead, and my brain's too tired to realize it," Vak mumbled, blinking. "Either bury me or start the caffeine transdermally."

Aya laughed, a bright sound that stirred several people from their naps. "How about you, Jake?"

"I think I'm just asleep," Jake said, sliding his chair over to make room for the newcomer. "Ooh, my raktajino's cold.... So, what's got you so perky at this time of night? Or is it morning and I missed sleeping entirely?"

"It's almost morning! And nothing like a little success makes the thought of dawn even brighter!"

"Success?" Jake repeated, exchanging a hopeful glance with Vak. "You've found a cure?"

Her elated eyes dimmed a little and she glanced sideways, making a face. "Put your stylus away, nothing that good. But I might have something that'll help with the bronchial swelling. Ptacek woke me, said Parmak is looking better! We're going to try it in more patients in one of the wards today. And I think I've got some new ideas for the lab. Can't wait to get back to my research!"

"New ideas?" interjected a familiar voice.

"Hi, Julian! Sit down, join us," Jake greeted. "Forgive me for saying so, but you look like you haven't slept again."

"I haven't. No time." Bashir's gazed stayed fixed on Aya Kato. "You said you had some new ideas?"

"Yes." She took a sip from her cup. "Last night, after the meeting, I was reviewing some old research--"

"Let's discuss it somewhere else," the doctor interrupted curtly.

"Okay--"

"Now. Let's go." There was no room for argument.

Surprised, Aya nodded and rose from her seat. "Okay."

Vak and Jake watched them walk away, then the Bolian turned his attention to the human.

"Bashir looked ready to explode -- is that ... normal for him?"

Jake shook his head. "I've never seen him look like that before. I mean, I've seen him angry, and I've seen him exhausted, and preoccupied, and so wrapped up in his work that he'd forget to eat all day -- but I've never seen him look so.... I don't even know how to describe it. Suspicious? Accusatory? Like he thinks she did something wrong and he's about to give her a dressing-down?"

"Aya?" Vak shook his head in disbelief. "Everybody loves Aya -- she brings fresh air, new energy, just by walking into a room. And she's been working her fingers off, just like everybody else here. What could she possibly have done?"

"What is it, Julian?" Kato asked, looking up at him, puzzled..

Bashir caught her arm and kept pulling her along. The strength of his enhanced grip was irresistible. He didn't speak until they reached the lab and sealed the entrance behind them.

"You said you had some new research avenues?" he demanded.

"Yes. I thought we could try--"

"Where did you get your ideas?" he interrupted.

She stared, trying to understand his reaction. "Julian, what's wrong?"

"Where?"

"Actually, I was reviewing some of your downloaded papers from one of the Starfleet Medical Journals about your efforts against the Teplan Blight, looking for a connection since both that disease and this one were created by the Dominion, one way or another."

Tension eased out of him with a long, slow breath.

"And the one about your theory on viral genetic cross-over between species. Just in case we wind up having to deal with that here."

Julian nearly staggered in shock. "My what?"

"It was quoted in a journal I'm not familiar with." She looked around. "I left the PADD here in the lab...."

His hand shot out and tightened around her wrist. "This PADD?"

Her gaze followed his movement as he picked up the device from the console with his other hand.

"Yes, I think so." She reached for it, but he didn't release it.

His stomach churned. "What made you think that was mine?"

"I guess I don't know that it was yours. I assumed it was because of the contents, the research papers on the list, and the first ones were yours -- I assumed the next one was too...." She shook her head. "Julian, I can see in your face that something serious must be wrong, but I don't know what it is. Tell me what happened."

"This isn't mine."

"Oh." Kato was unenlightened. "I suppose I had somebody else's, then. But--"

"Where did your ideas come from? The palliative compound we tried yesterday, and the research you planned to start today?"

"As I said, I worked from your research papers on the blight."

"Not from the viral research identified there?"

"No, I'm afraid I hadn't had time to read it--"

"Thank God." Julian almost sagged as he released the young woman's wrist.

"Julian?"

He studied the PADD, unable to keep a look of revulsion off his face. "I'm sorry, Aya. I wanted to be sure. These first entries, yes, they're from some of my papers. But this last one, that's not mine. And I had to know you hadn't used it."

"Why?"

"It's from Crell Moset's research on Bajoran prisoners."

"Crell Moset...." Concentration gave way to shock. Kato shuddered involuntarily. "How could you possibly think I would turn to that ... that monster for research avenues? He violated every ethical principle I swore to live by!"

"The author isn't identified. If you hadn't downloaded it, there was a chance you didn't realize what you were working with."

She couldn't help staring at the device. "Maybe whoever else was using it, didn't realize what they'd found?" she finally suggested.

"Moset's work isn't included in standard Federation databanks. To have downloaded that information, someone would have had to have known exactly what they were looking for."

"One of our people is using that war criminal's experiments?" Kato shook her head in disbelief. "Have we really become that desperate?"

"Never," he replied, making the single word a vow by deleting Moset's article.

"But who...?"