Shrunken down, just like me.
Julian gazed around at the tumble of block buildings flanking the ancient cobblestone streets. Except for the faint echoes of some distant, semimusical noise, the city was utterly still. No people at all were in evidence, not Ezri, Nog, or anyone else. This realization made the small hairs on his neck stand up like vigilant soldiers.
At least Ezri was right about the monsters,he thought, seizing the notion for whatever small comfort it provided.
Perhaps, he thought, his friends had already gone inside the cathedral. That was where they’d said we were all going, after all. Into the cathedral. He knew that they had come here with him in search of healing. And this place was where he kept every cure and remedy he had ever studied.
Whatever he had not yet forgotten was either here, or nowhere.
Julian had to crouch to get through the door to the gallery at the cathedral’s perimeter. Once inside, he bumped his head painfully on the ceiling when he tried to stand up straight. The great gallery was cleared of the rubble he recalled from his previous visit, and it was as empty of people as the surrounding city. But the gallery was now only a narrow corridor, lined with makeshift walls of bricks and plywood. The low ceiling forced him to walk stooped over as he made his way toward the now-tiny staircase—
—which he now saw led up to a library doorway so small that not even Kukalaka would have been able to wriggle through it. There’s no help here,Julian thought, looking back over his shoulder at the way he had come. He saw that the door through which he had entered was now impossibly small as well.
Panic electrified him. Trapped!
He turned his head toward where he remembered a large external window ought to be. It was boarded up, but the wood didn’t look very strong. Curling into a fetal position on the marble floor, Julian braced his back against a gallery wall and pushed his feet against the wood with all his strength. He heard the building itself groan, as though its ancient bricks and mortar were actively struggling against him.
The wooden barrier suddenly gave way in a shower of chips and flinders, and his own momentum launched him like a missile through the window frame—
—and into a large, white, brightly lit chamber. He looked up and saw three people, two human women and a dour-faced Vulcan male, sitting behind a long table, gazing at him in expectation. All of them wore blue Starfleet uniforms.
“Well, MisterBashir?” the Vulcan said. He sounded impatient, and not very much fun. “Which is it? A preganglionic fiber, or a postganglionic nerve?”
Starfleet Medical School,he thought, recalling a particular variety of panic he thought he’d locked safely away years ago. The oral exams.
“I…I’m afraid I don’t know…I can’t recall the answer to that, sir.”
One of the women, a brassy redhead with bright cherry-colored lipstick, glared at him as she pressed a large red button on the side of the table. “Another defective,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “He needs to be placed with the others.”
A pair of burly, white-clad hospital orderlies were suddenly flanking him, as though the woman had conjured them from thin air. They took his arms in a firm grasp, lifting him between them so that his feet couldn’t touch the ground. Before he could protest, they had whisked him out of the room and into a long, sterile-looking white corridor.
“This way, sir,” said the one on his right. Julian saw that the man’s collar bore stitching in the shape of three letters: DEE.
“We’ve got the perfect place for you,” said the other one. DUMwas stenciled onto his collar.
They came to a stop before a small, open room whose broad entryway crackled with the telltale blue glow of a security force field. Four people stood, sat, or reclined in the chamber. As the orderlies placed Bashir on his feet and set about lowering the force field, one of the figures in the cell, a black-clad, goateed young man, leaped up onto a table. Atop his head was a wide-brimmed top hat. Tucked into the hatband was a large card bearing the inscription IN THIS STYLE 10/6.He regarded Julian in nervous silence, his eyes brimming with suspicion, his body bowstring-taut.
Julian knew he’d seen the hat before, as well as the lettering on the orderlies’collars. He supposed he’d seen both images, and perhaps some of the other oddities he’d encountered here, in the illustrations from some beloved children’s book whose title he could no longer recall.
The man in the hat, however, he recognized immediately.
“So who’s the new plebe, hmmm?” said the goateed man, his words spilling out like rapid-fire projectiles. “This is a private club, hmmm? We’re not accepting pledges at the moment. Try us again in a few months, hmmm?”
“Take it easy, Jack,” said one of the orderlies, standing in the entryway, the force field now down. Turning to address the other three people in the room, he said, “I want you all to meet Jules. You and he will be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”
“I’m notJules,” Bashir said to the orderlies, who did not appear interested in responding. “My name is Julian.”
“Hi,” said a rotund, sixtyish male with a fringe of wild white hair who stood in the center of the room. He was smiling beatifically and holding a bottle whose neck bore a tag emblazoned with the words DRINK ME.
“I’m Patrick,” he said to Bashir. “Don’t mind Jack here. They say he’s antisocial.” Patrick punctuated the last word by turning the first two fingers of both hands into pantomime quotation marks. “But Jack’s not like me. Or Lauren.” He gestured toward a corner divan on which a young, dark-haired woman was sprawled in a languorous pose.
“Charmed,” said the woman, her body’s contours concealed very little by her tight-fitting scarlet jumpsuit. She smiled up at Julian with a predatory glint in her eyes that made Julian blanch. A silver tea service was arranged on a table beside the divan, and she sat up and began filling a quartet of delicate porcelain cups. “Welcome to our little tea party.”
“I don’t belong here,” Julian said to the orderly nearest him, stammering as he groped for the right words. “These people are having…unintended side effects. From…from their genetic, ah, resequencing.”
The orderly smiled condescendingly. “That’s right, Jules. Just as youare. Or have you already forgotten why you’ve come here?”
Then Julian noticed the silent, sandy-haired young woman who sat alone on a straight-backed chair in the opposite corner. Her eyes were vacant, set in a delicately structured face as pale as a classical marble statue. Sarina Douglas,Julian thought, recalling how someone who looked very much like him had once helped her regain the ability to speak and interact with the world. The romance that they had almost shared now seemed dreamlike, as though it were a memory that belonged to someone else.
Sarina abruptly lifted her eyes and looked around the cell. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said, smiling broadly though her voice was hoarse and weak. “I heard every word you fellows were saying.” Then she locked her gaze with Julian’s. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us, Jules.”
“Get in, Jules,” said the smiling orderly.
“Now,” said the other one, who was scowling dangerously.
“No,” Julian said. He took a step back.
“You’re one of usnow, Jules,” Lauren said. Jack and Patrick grinned.
“No!”Julian screamed, backing away from the open cell. The two orderlies approached him. Both were scowling now, their thick biceps rippling beneath their short sleeves. The larger and meaner of the two grabbed for him. Julian twisted to the side without thinking, allowing the big man to overbalance himself and plunge hard onto the tile floor.