Note: To my AtM readers, I wrote an Author's Note that is too lengthy to post here. I put it on my profile page instead.

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
to lie in cold obstruction and to rot…
to bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
in thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
to be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
and blown with restless violence round about
the pendent world…"

~ from Measure for Measure

The Viewless Winds
by
Stoplight Delight

Part I, Act I: A Bleak Awakening

Like a spent swimmer struggling through water choked with pond-weeds, Julian Bashir floundered towards consciousness. Muddled synapses fired and misfired as he struggled to remember what he had done to warrant such a stilted awkening. He had a vivid but disjointed memory of a reception room warmly lit with sparkling clouds of Meezan lightning beetles dancing behind the diaphanous walls of paper lanterns. A brilliant Vulcan doctor, immune to his flirtations but far too insightful about the intricacies of dermolytic eschar reclamation to be abandoned for more promising romantic prospects. A delicate stemmed glass, its bowl like an upturned Tonna shell, filled with a generous measure of Calaman sherry… ah, that was it. Overindulgence, without the adequate prophylactic rehydration or an anticipatory dose of the appropriate catabolic stimulant. A young man's mistake, and one that Julian thought he had left behind at the Academy.

But no liquor, however potent, had ever left him nearly this debilitated the following morning. He did not know if the genetic enhancements performed on his body twenty-six years ago had extended to the efficiency of his liver, but he had never seemed to suffer the same agonies of a hangover that had plagued some of his classmates at Starfleet Medical. Then again, he was not quite certain how heavily he had imbibed the night before. Professionally stimulating though the burn treatment symposium was, it was also tremendously draining. The images and archival recordings of devastating burn traumas (thermal, plasma, radiation, chemical), the panel of patients still undergoing treatment months after their injuries, and the vast implications when weighing historical rates such wounds in battlefield situations against the mounting tensions with the Dominion — all had left Julian uneasy, disheartened, and anxious about the future. In the light of that, an uncommonly generous indulgence in potent spirits was surely not out of the question.

But he had to wake up. Last night's keynote reception had been a much-needed surcease in the middle of a challenging week, but today he had a seminar on the use of cryogenic stasis to stabilize patients in need of transfusion or critical rehydration, and then the practical skills lab for prototype myelin regeneration tools. Hungover or not, Julian Bashir was not about to pass up the opportunities for skills development and collegiate collaboration. Any moment now, the morning alert would ring out from the computer interface by the panoramic window, and he had to wake up.

He was drawing closer now. A brilliant sliver of light seemed to arc through his fogged brain, and he endeavoured to open his eyes. The lids were sluggish, leaden, and they felt swollen closed beneath a crust of rheum that stung and crackled as the membranous muscles twitched. The effort was exhausting, and Julian had to fight the urge to slip back into the dragging darkness behind.

He was blinded by inertia, but his other sense were awakening. He could feel the rest of his body now, heavy and amorphous just beyond the borders of his mind. He could hear the low hum of circuitry and the buzz of an EPS conduit muffled behind a bulkhead. The frequency of these noises was unfamiliar, but after five years living aboard a Cardassian space station, all Federation infrastructure sounded strange to his highly attuned ears. It was the whoosh of a life-support air exchange that startled him instead: there was no need for life-support, and scarcely even call for climate modulation, on the clement shores of the eastern peninsula of Meezan IV.

Again he struggled to open his eyes, this time making an abortive effort to sit up as well. The muscles of his limbs and abdomen tensed, quivered, cramped uncomfortably and released, and his head thumped back upon a taut and unyielding surface. A ghost of a groan twisted his lips and tensed his vocal chords, but no sound escaped.

Where was he? What had happened?

'Easy,' a low voice, female, admonished. There was a rustle of cloth, and a cold hand settled on Julian's brow. 'It is better not to fight the sedative.'

Sedative? Julian's heartrate, typically a smooth and sublimely fit thirty-five beats per minute, almost tripled. He pondered the effort of trying again to rise, and instead made an attempt at speech. His lips parted with a dry little pop, and a bloated tongue clicked against the sandy coarseness of his hard palate.

'Lie still,' the woman instructed, her voice more commanding than soothing. 'You have need of water.'

Fighting the urge to struggle further, Julian focused on his breathing and on letting his eyelids flutter against the coarse crust glueing them shut. The woman moved off, and there was the clack and rattle of hollow metals — near, but not too near. Now the off-sync frequency of the noises in the walls took on a more ominous cast.

'Drink. Slowly.' A firm hand snaked under his neck, cupping the base of his skull and lifting it a few inches off of the uncompromising surface beneath. A steel rim, rough with rust, touched Julian's lower lip, followed almost at once by the lapping lead edge of a measure of water. Like the woman's hands, it was cold, and Julian sucked at it greedily. An intolerable thirst blazed suddenly through his mouth, his throat, his chest. He swallowed too quickly and coughed, sputtering wetly. The need to breathe overcame the other obstacles to motion, and he pushed himself up with one foot, rolling onto his right side and digging his elbow against something that did yield a little after all. As he cleared his airway, his left hand travelled up to scrub the grit from his eyes and he opened them at last.

The first glimpse of the light was blinding, but in a moment his pupils constricted and his optic nerves adapted and the glare resolved into a gloomy grey glow. Combat readiness training had taught Julian to assess his environment promptly when awaking in uncertain circumstances, but in this moment a more primal instinct held sway: his focus was drawn not to his broader surroundings but to the specific geometric pattern of a humanoid face. Blurred details clarified like an optical sensor brought to rapid calibration, and he found himself looking at the prominent cheekbones and distinctive brow ridges of a Romulan female.

"Who—?" he croaked, the sound catching in his parched throat. "How—?"

"I am Major Kalenna of the Tal Shiar," the woman said briskly. She offered him the bottle in her hand — dented, rusting and of unfamiliar design. "Drink. The sedative they use is very potent, and you are likely dehydrated after your journey."

Julian's eyes narrowed, suspicion born of decades of uneasy politics between the Federation and the Romulan Empire rising in his mind. But thirst was more powerful than doubt, and he took the canteen with his left hand. It shook, a bone-deep tremor that frightened him, but he steadied it with willpower alone and raised the vessel to his lips. He took a more careful mouthful this time, rolling it around with his tongue to soothe the dry tissues. It tasted thickly of calcium deposits and ozone, with a faint undercurrent of sulfur, but there was no indication of any toxin. He swallowed, then allowed himself a somewhat longer draft.

The water had an almost miraculous effect. The fog of bewilderment — of drugged bewilderment, if the Romulan was telling the truth — began to lift a little, and the unsteadiness in his hands faded away. The throbbing between his temples, almost unnoticed until it began to retreat, eased, and Julian hitched himself up into a more stable position on his hip. He was on a pipe-framed cot, some kind of webbing strung beneath a thin pad of foam. A blanket had been spread over him, and was now tangled askew about his legs. Fumbling with the bottle, he freed his right elbow of the burden of supporting him, and swung his feet down to the floor. His boots grazed the stone composite, and he felt a little jolt of relief. Wherever he was, they had left him his uniform.

Reflexively, he tapped the breast of his jumpsuit with the first two fingers of his right hand, but he was not at all surprised to feel nothing but fabric. Of course they had confiscated his combadge: any competent captor would have. But why had they taken him in the first place? To what end?

"What do you want with me?" he demanded, trying to adjust his seat on the unstable surface of the cot. The Romulan was sitting across from him, several centimetres higher on what was either an unusually broad bench or an uncommonly low table. It was bolted to the floor. "Detaining a Starfleet officer…"

He had meant to go on to cite the relevant passages of the treaty between Romulus and the Federation, but he found himself drawing in a labored breath instead. The throbbing in his head was not gone after all: it had merely retreated for a moment before coming back full-force. He leaned forward over his lap, bracing his elbows against his thighs, and raised the bottle to his lips again. Nausea lurked in his viscera, threatening to expel the water even as it trickled down his esophagus.

The woman's grim, appraising expression did not alter in the least. "I want nothing from you, Lieutenant, and I did not detain you. You are a prisoner, but not in the hands of the Tal Shiar."

He frowned at her. "Then what—" The intricacies of this question, too, eluded him, and he gestured vaguely with his first two fingers before pinching the bridge of his nose as if the pressure could quell his headache.

"We are both prisoners," she said, a careful measured quality now creeping into her tone. "We are being held as enemies of the Dominion."

(fade)

The air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. The cold room, Julian understood now, explaining both the chill of the Romulan's hands and that of the water. The life-support was functioning, but it was evidently not set to parameters that humans would consider comfortable for an indoor space. He estimated that the ambient temperture in this narrow room was below 290 degrees Kelvin. Looking down towards the heavy door with its thick, angular windows, he counted six cots in two rows, one along each wall with two low tables-or-benches down the middle between them. His was in the back left corner of the room, from the door's perspective. Across the way and one cot down lay the only other person in the room: a Breen in a dusky refrigeration suit, flat on their back with beak and visor pointed towards the heavy girders of the ceiling. If the other cots had owners they were not here, and they had left their bunks in strict military order, thin blankets folded crisply and corners squared.

Julian groped for his own blanket, flinging it out of his lap as he tried to straighten his spine. It was difficult to do so. When lying supine, his weight had been evenly distributed over the mesh straps of the cot. Now that he was sitting, they sagged beneath him so that the pipe that formed the long side of the bed dug into his lean thighs. He moved as if to take another mouthful of water, then scoffed and planted the bottle next to his boot. He fixed the Romulan woman — Major Kalenna of the Tal Shiar — with a cold stare.

"That's impossible," he said. "I was on Meezan IV. The Dominion can't penetrate that far into Federation space undetected."

"Apparently they can," said the Major. "What is the last thing you can remember?"

The shell-shaped glass. The Vulcan doctor, with her elegant robes and her rich, dark complexion. The paper lanterns with their delicate passengers. No. Now that the fog was clearing from his brain, he dimly recalled dragging himself across the elegant anteroom of his well-appointed suite. Exhausted after a long day of dynamic learning and emotional strain, he had crawled into the sumptuous bed without even bothering to kick off his boots. It was a bad habit he'd picked up in medical school, and it had only been aggravated on Deep Space Nine, where until the Cardassian mattresses had been replaced no one had bothered with bedsheets.

Perhaps it wasn't such a bad habit after all, he reflected, staring down at the familiar black trousers. It looked like they had taken him just as he was, and in this unfamiliar place he preferred the sturdy, functional familiarity of his uniform to his colourful Bajoran silk pyjamas.

"Where is this place?" he asked softly, reluctant to lift his eyes to the woman again.

"The Jem'Hadar call it Internment Camp 371," she answered. "I do not know the coordinates, but we are deep in the Gamma Quadrant."

Now Julian did look up, comprehension dawning. "You were part of the lost fleet," he said. "The joint task force; the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order, lost in the Omarion Nebula. I thought there were no survivors."

No other survivors, he meant, of course. Garak and Odo had escaped, by means not widely broadcast. In fact, Julian was not sure how much of the account he had been given of events aboard the flagship he should actually believe, but he had never gone to Odo for corroboration. He was not sure whether this was a gesture of trust in Garak, or merely a reluctance to approach the Chief of Security on an obviously sensitive matter.

"There were some," said Kalenna, her sharp eyes suddenly glazed with the thousand-yard stare common to veterans of every world. "Many have died since. This place is not suited to the Cardassian constitution, and my people… my people are not suited to the recreation of the Jem'Hadar."

"Are there other prisoners here? People who weren't with the fleet?" Julian asked. He had forgotten the canteen, but as he shifted on the cot, his boot struck it and he was obliged to swoop down a staying hand before it could spill. As he brought it into his lap, his greeter's expression finally shifted.

She frowned, her lips pursing sourly. "Be careful with that," she admonished. "Prisoners are only permitted two litres per day, and you have already consumed a fifth of my ration."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Julian said reflexively, hurriedly holding the bottle out to her. She waved him off.

"Keep it," she said. "Drink it. You can repay me when you are issued your own. I expect they will be along to fetch you for intake soon enough."

"Intake?" He did not like the sound of that. A memory of a debriefing report flitted through his mind with photographic precision. Miles Edward O'Brien, Chief Petty Officer, Incident Report for Stardate 47944…

Kalenna curled her lip in a peculiarly Romulan fashion, making a soft snort in the affirmative. "And your interview with the Vorta who runs the camp," she said. "Drink. You'll want your wits about you."

She got to her feet, and only then did Julian see that her grey uniform was threadbare and filthy, showing the wear of the long months in captivity. Just how long had it been since the disastrous mission to destroy the Founders' homeworld? Two years? Not quite, but near enough. That he could not recall the precise date did not speak well of his faculties. He took another swallow from the canteen, hoping to drive the last vestiges of the drug from his mind.

The Romulan stopped before the door, craning her neck to peer out of the window. There was no telling what she saw, but she seemed satisfied that the way was clear. She slapped a panel next to the door, and it slid open with a hiss.

A bitter bolt of betrayal struck Julian. Would a Dominion military prison let inmates wander in and out of their cells at will? Clearly the woman was lying, though to what end he could not imagine. He surely held no particular interest for the Tal Shiar — at least nothing that would appear in any of his official files.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked, unable to keep the challenge from his voice.

"Out," Kalenna said simply. Then she seemed to understand, because she turned on one worn-down heel and tossed her head in tight disdain. "I did not lie to you, human. I am a prisoner, just as you are. They let us move about the compound at will, with the exception of the isolation barracks and the administration wing. There is nothing beyond the atmospheric dome but the emptiness of space. There is nowhere to run."

Then she was gone. Alone with the silent, perhaps sleeping Breen soldier, Julian sagged back against the wall, closing his eyes against the pounding in his head.

(fade)

They came for him ninety minutes later. Major Kalenna had not returned, the Breen had not moved even a millimetre, and no other prisoner had entered the barracks. Julian was lying on his side, knees tucked up for warmth beneath the thin blanket, when the door slid open and two Jem'Hadar bearing wicked-looking rifles stomped in. They flanked the door, boots planted wide, scanning the narrow space as if an ambushing enemy might spring from the tritanium-panelled walls. Another soldier, broader than the first two and with an air of command they did not possess, strode past them and towered over Julian as he picked himself up off the mattress, rolling back onto his elbow again. His head swam. The sedative had not yet cleared from his system.

"On your feet," the Jem'Hadar commanded. When Julian was slow to obey, a rough hand seized him just above the elbow, hauling and shaking him at the same time. "I said on your feet!"

But the blanket was tangled about his legs again, and he stumbled, one knee grazing the floor while the Jem'Hadar held him aloft by his humerus. Julian struggled to get his boots under him, even as the guard started off for the door, dragging him behind. He slipped, scrambled, had a fleeting moment to reflect that if he did not manage to get up he was staring at the grim prospect of a dislocated shoulder or a nasty spiral fracture, and found his feet at last. He shuffled and jolted after his handler, made clumsy by the rough treatment and the residual chemicals in his bloodstream.

He was marched down the corridor, the two Jem'Hadar with their rifles at the ready following in his wake, and into a broader space where heavy pylons supported a bleak dome. This seemed to be some sort of common area: from the shadows and the edges of the space, wary eyes watched. The prisoners were keeping a judicious distance from the striding guards, and Julian caught only brief glimpses of their faces as he passed at an awkward trot. He saw at least one Cardassian, lean and haunted, but if there were Romulans among them he could not pick them out.

Several clusters of pod-like buildings opened onto this barren atrium. Having come from one, Julian was led into another. Here the corridor was cleaner and better lit, and another pair of Jem'Hadar stood guard before a rippling force field. As the prisoner approached, one of them touched a control panel to drop the field. The moment Julian and his rough-handed escort were past, the force field crackled back to life, leaving the armed soldiers behind.

This corridor, like the other, had six heavy doors opening onto it. The Jem'Hadar officer marched to the last one on the right and touched the panel beside it. Instead of opening, the door sounded a chime. After a moment, its seal released and Julian was shoved over the threshold. Caught off-guard and off-balance he fell inelegantly forward, catching himself against the edge of a sleek desk. The Jem'Hadar seized him by the shoulder and pulled him back two paces. Whether the guard placed undue pressure on his clavicle in the process, or whether the drugs had gotten the better of him at last Julian did not know, but he crashed to his knees, his free palm outthrust to brace his fall. The door hissed closed.

The figure that had been standing behind the desk with its four narrow command plinths rounded it with a strange, catlike grace. Blinking fiercely to clear his speckled vision, Julian stared up at the approaching Vorta. He tried to lift one knee, intending to rise, but the grip on his shoulder tightened and the full force of the Jem'Hadar's thickly muscled arm held him down. Making an effort to square the other shoulder, at least, Julian forced his face into calm, impassive contours.

"Well, now," the Vorta chuckled. "Not a very elegant entrance, was it, Doctor? I was told humans were a clumsy species, but I did not expect such a colourful demonstration."

Julian said nothing. He did not know if the interstellar agreements governing the treatment of prisoners of war applied in the Gamma Quadrant, but in any case he would not expect the Dominion to uphold them. His own obligations, however, were clear. He had no intention of answering any questions that extended beyond his vital identification, and he certainly was not going to rise to the bait of idle remarks.

"I hope you'll forgive the delay in greeting you," said the Vorta. "Ordinarily I make it a point to greet all of our special guests immediately upon arrival, but with the amount of medication in your system it seemed wiser to let you sleep it off. You posed quite a conundrum for the extraction team. The dose of anesthetic required to keep you under was considerably greater than anticipated."

"I have a high tolerance," Julian said coldly, remembering too late that he did not plan to engage in this conversation. But the choice of words had angered him. Medication, dose, anesthetic, as if he were a patient in their care. As if they had been treating him, not drugging him into submission in service of an interstellar kidnapping.

"That you do," cooed the Vorta. He looked at the Jem'Hadar soldier and smiled unctuously. "There's no need to restrain him, First. I'm sure the good doctor will behave himself." He shot a cool glance at Julian, his voice thinning considerably as he added a curt, "Won't you?"

Julian neither spoke nor gave any positive sign, but the clamping hand withdrew. His shoulder throbbed where the powerful fingers had dug in, but he resisted the urge to roll it. He corrected his posture, briefly considering climbing to his feet. He didn't, not so much because he feared they would prevent it as because he was feeling increasingly lightheaded and it was probably a good idea to stay where he was. He was tempted to sit back on his heels, but quelled the urge. If he was obliged to kneel, he would at least keep his spine straight while he did so.

"What did you give me?" he asked, voice and eyes carefully unyielding. Instead of the anxiety and violation he felt, he infused his tone with academic sternness and a wisp of contempt. "There could be adverse effects, longterm sequelae. Human physiology is not like—"

The Vorta laughed, an airy and yet somehow mirthless sound that echoed off the walls. This room was the same width as the barracks where Julian had awakened, but less than half the depth. The rear of the pod had been partitioned off — living quarters for the Vorta, perhaps? The prison's supply of Ketracel White was probably kept back there, too. That might be useful knowledge.

"Oh, I have nothing to do with collections," he said. "You would have to ask the team who brought you here — but they're long gone, of course. Off to their next effort for the glory of the Dominion. You're in my keeping now, Doctor. I hope we shall be great friends."

He said this last in a breathless, insincere way that reminded Julian of a schoolchild reading an assigned passage without understanding or enthusiasm, except perhaps for mocking the old forms. The Vorta turned crisply on his heel and strolled back behind the desk, touching one of the computer terminals and skimming pale eyes over the screen.

"Doctor Julian Bashir, Chief Medical Officer of the military outpost Deep Space Nine. You're quite a prize, you know. We are honoured to be called upon to house you here at Internment Camp 371." The Vorta cast a poisonous smile back over his shoulder. "Isn't that so, First?"

"It is an honour to serve the Founders," the Jem'Hadar said stonily. "In whatever way they see fit."

"Indeed it is," said the Vorta. He turned again, clasping his hands. "But where are my manners? We haven't introduced ourselves. I am Deyos, and this is First Ikat'ika. How do you do? That is how you humans put it, is it not? How do you do?"

"I'm not the prize you think I am," said Julian, spitting out another terse contradiction to mask the gulf of terror opening in his chest. "I am not privy to classified military information. I'm a doctor. And I don't imagine Alpha Quadrant anatomy and medicine are of much use to you."

"Oh, we don't want you for your knowledge, Doctor," the Vorta clucked, condescension once more on the upswing. "In that respect I assure you, you're quite insignificant. No, you're useful in another way entirely."

Absurdly, Julian felt his pride bristling, injured by this blithe dismissal of his skills. This silver-tongued bureaucratic warmonger's opinion didn't matter, and in any case Julian had been arguing the same thing himself just a moment ago in a clumsy attempt to belay thoughts of interrogation. Yet the words were salt in an old wound. You're quite insignificant. They burned, deeply and perniciously, no matter how disdainfully his intellect brushed them off.

"I'm of no use to you in any way," he argued. "Starfleet will be looking for me. My captain will come for me. You'll be overrun by starships before you know it."

"Starfleet isn't looking for you. No one is, not even the redoubtable Captain Sisko," said the Vorta. "You're supposed to be at a burn treatment conference, remember? No one on your little space station even knows that you're gone."

"The conference authorities will notice when I don't turn up for my scheduled seminars," said Julian, his voice still steady and his faith unshaken. "Attendance is monitored for ongoing educational requirements for licensure."

"True," said Deyos. "It's taken, but it's hardly enforced. Even if you were to miss a session or two, they wouldn't come looking for you."

"It doesn't matter." Julian thrust back his head a little farther, a prideful little jolt of his chin. "I'm due back at Deep Space Nine in four days' time. When I don't return, there'll be questions. They'll find out that the last time I was seen at the conference was during the keynote reception, and they'll start looking."

He didn't know how they would find him, whisked out of the heart of Federation space and smuggled back through the wormhole somehow, halfway across the Galaxy in a place even a Tal Shiar representative who had been here for almost two years could not identify. But that wasn't his problem. Jadzia would find some forensic evidence of his abduction — a residual transporter signature, maybe, or an anomalous reading on the Meezan planetary sensor grids. Odo would put two and two together, somehow. At his tactical console onboard the Defiant, Worf could track a dikironium cloud creature through a plasma storm. And Captain Sisko would never abandon the search.

"No," the Vorta cooed, pursing his lips in a grotesque parody of sympathetic regret. "No, I'm afraid not, Doctor. There will be no questions. No glorious hunt. No daring rescue. You won't even miss out on those educational credits of yours."

Fear, cold and scabrous, clenched Julian's heart. He did not understand what the Vorta was saying, but the tone of saccharine certainty was positively corrosive, burning through his faith in his comrades to the wellspring of terror beneath.

Fighting the rising tide, Julian twisted his lips into what he desperately hoped was a disdainful sneer. "If you — if your extraction team — tried to stage my death, good luck," he snapped. "That's been tried before, and it didn't fool them."

"Stage your death?" Deyos parroted, almost shrill with delight. "My, my, you are an imaganitive species. Such a peculiar talent. Difficult to see the evolutionary advantage. Imaginative, but not especially bright, I see. Tell me, Doctor: why would the Founders bother with such ridiculous theatrics, only to deposit you here to live out the rest of your little life in penal obscurity? Your knowledge is of no use to all-knowing Gods: you've said so yourself. The medical miracles you're so proud of are child's play to them."

He gazed at the Jem'Hadar soldier, smiling almost dreamily. "And a good thing, too, isn't it, First?"

The First said nothing, but Julian twisted to look up at him, trying to ignore the way the contortions constricted his jugular vein and aggravated the drug-induced dizziness. His head whipped back towards the Vorta, who was smirking delightedly.

"What are you saying?" Julian croaked. All pretext of strength was gone from his voice. His heart was stuttering in his chest, and his lungs twitched and spasmed with the effort of drawing breath. He could not feel his hands, or his legs below the knee: only cold weight. Stress-induced vasodilation, the clinical part of his mind parsed crisply. A late-stage symptom of vasovagal shock.

"I think you know what I'm saying." Deyos was rolling the words around his tongue, savouring them. "No one will look for you, because as far as they're concerned, you haven't gone anywhere. You'll conclude your conference, catch your scheduled transport back to your precious space station, and be back at work the next morning, cheerful and competent as ever. Captain Sisko, all your loyal friends — the ones who surely would have searched so faithfully for you if you did disappear — they'll never even know you're gone."

For a cavernous eternity, Julian could not speak. The edges of his vision were receding, growing dark and narrowing into a hazy tunnel through which the Vorta leered gleefully, relishing every nuance of his expression as the true horror of the situation overtook him.

"No," he whispered at last, a hollow, broken syllable that shattered in the dead air. "No. That's not… you can't…"

"Oh, I can't do any of it!" said Deyos. "All I can do is keep you here, out of trouble, while your replacement goes about his glorious work. All this is the Founders' doing: their brilliant plan, their flawless execution, their triumph in the days to come. It's beautiful, isn't it, Doctor? The perfect solution."

Distantly, some part of Julian's unnaturally limber mind was unspooling the countless implications: that the shape-shifter who had replaced him would in a matter of days be installed in a position of supreme trust in one of the most fortified positions in the Federation, if not the entire Alpha Quadrant; that the Dominion had infiltrated the Klingon High Council and Starfleet Command, and it had been arrogant of him (of all of them) to assume Deep Space Nine was immune to such incursions; that Deyos must be absolutely certain that there was no scope for escape, no hope of rescue, to have handed a prisoner such an ironclad incentive to run. But the rest of him was reeling, fracturing under the weight of unimaginable calamity, skittering off into the distant recesses of his brain as the room listed perilously to starboard.

"Take him out and let him meet the other prisoners," Deyos said, cool contempt and satisfaction in a voice that was muffled by the roaring in Julian's ears. "He'll have plenty of time to make friends, I'm sure."

Iron hands clamped on both arms, again just above the elbow, and Julian was hauled up. He could not keep his feet under him: his knees and ankles were rubbery and unresponsive. He was half carried, half dragged through the noisy door, down the corridor and past the force field and the two Jem'Hadar guards. He was struggling to catch his breath, to gain some semblance of control over his body or his mind, when he was flung forward into the atrium, falling in a boneless heap onto the seamless stone floor.

(fade)