“Perhaps, at least with some of them. But the sooner we remove the symbionts, the better their chances for survival.”

Bashir smiled, his mind already racing. “Then please hold off for as long as you can.”

He left the ward at a run.

Bashir focused his attention on the computer terminal before him, tuning out the shrieks and screams of the dying as best he could.

As in his previous round of computer queries, no record remained of any relevant pharmacological work by anyone named Bethan Roa. Reasoning that Roa’s serum would have been present in trace amounts in his symbiont’s neural fluids, Bashir accessed the database of Gheryzan Hospital. He knew that the state-of-the-art facility’s symbiont trauma center had treated the Roa symbiont after Jadzia Dax’s sister Ziranne had rescued it from a ring of symbiont thieves. Working quickly, he searched for the symbiont’s confidential medical records. As he navigated through the database, he began making plans to crack Roa’s files open, recalling a few “hacks” he had learned from his holoprogrammer friend Felix.

Damn.Bashir’s heart sank. Whatever medical records Gheryzon Hospital might have had on the Roa symbiont had apparently been either deleted or sealed. The Commission had been thorough indeed in its cover-up—a whitewash for which he now felt partly responsible. I should have demanded that the Commission allow me to study Roa’s formula five years ago. People are dying because I thought it better to let them keep their damned secrets.

He sat in silence for perhaps a minute, despair threatening to overwhelm him.

Then it occurred to him that Roa’s formula would also have been present in at least one other place.

His hands moving with preternatural speed, he made a second query.

A few moments later, a jubilant grin spread across his face.

Torvin waited as long as he felt he could. But less than twenty minutes after Dr. Bashir had left the room, four of the afflicted joined Trills in Ward C suddenly took an abrupt turn for the worse. With the assistance of a trio of other surgeons and several medical technicians and nurses, Torvin removed a quartet of radiation-injured symbionts from their convulsing, screaming hosts. Although Torvin was trained to maintain an emotional distance from his patients, the sight was almost too horrible to behold.

Two of these hosts, both of them males, died with what Torvin could only regard under the circumstances as almost merciful swiftness. The third, an elderly woman, hung on for nearly ten minutes, shrieking in agony until the very end. Torvin pronounced the fourth host, a comatose young woman who had never regained consciousness, dead not six minutes later.

One of the dying joined patients who lay restrained on a nearby table suddenly screamed. The haggard middle-aged woman’s eyes were wide open, gray-clouded and sightless. Her limbs strained against their restraints as she began to convulse vigorously enough to break her own bones. Torvin took a quick step backward, then directed a pair of med-techs to prepare to remove her symbiont as well.

A scant two minutes later, Torvin held a laser exoscalpel over the struggling woman’s bare abdomen, preparing to begin the extraction process.

“Stop!” barked a voice from behind Torvin. It startled him, almost making him drop the scalpel.

He turned angrily toward the source of the sound, only to be greeted by an incongruously ebullient Dr. Bashir. The human physician was holding up a loaded hypospray as though for inspection.

“I’ve reconstructed Bethan Roa’s formula,” he said.

Torvin felt his eyes narrowing involuntarily. He couldn’t afford to permit himself to believe that it might be true. He realized for the first time that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Bashir might actually succeed in his quest.

“Where did you find it?” was all Torvin could think of to say.

“Roa wasn’t the only symbiont whose tissues would have carried traces of the formula,” Bashir said quickly, his words tumbling out in a rush. “It was also present in Duhan Vos’s medical records. Apparently, the Commission opted merely to seal the records of his admission to Gheryzan Hospital rather than to delete them altogether.”

Torvin’s eyebrows shot skyward, and he noticed that several nearby nurses and medics had paused to stare. This was not a conversation he wanted to have in front of them. He felt his skin redden with anger at the violation of his fellow commissioner’s confidential records. And though he was curious about exactly howthe Starfleet doctor had managed to do such a thing, he decided the question was moot. The human obviously possessed considerable talent in fields other than medicine, and the deed had already been done.

“You had no right to break into Vos’s files,” Torvin said, suddenly realizing he was gripping his exoscalpel almost tightly enough to shatter it.

The human’s smile gave way to a look of quiet determination. “You may, of course, feel free to file an official protest with Starfleet Command. In the meantime, we have lives to save.” He approached the patient who still lay restrained and convulsing on the table.

Torvin stepped into his path, raising the scalpel in a gesture of warning. It occurred to him only then that its glowing orange blade was still active. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I simply can’t allow you to put this woman’s symbiont at risk with an experimental procedure.”

Bashir took another step forward, as though daring Torvin to use the scalpel as a weapon. The hand that carried the hypospray didn’t waver. But then neither did Torvin’s scalpel.

Torvin began to repeat himself. “Doctor Bashir, I’m afraid I can’t permit you to—”

Moving more quickly than Torvin thought possible, Bashir weaved around him, evading not only the scalpel but also the grasp of a burly male med-tech who had evidently tried to run interference for Torvin.

With a loud hiss, Bashir’s hypo deposited its contents directly into the convulsing woman’s abdominal pouch. Cursing, the med-tech grabbed Bashir in a wrestler’s hold and began dragging him bodily toward the door. Though the human doctor was a good deal smaller than the medic, he was clearly determined not to be moved quickly or easily.

Anger seared Torvin’s breast. Though he shared Bashir’s compassion for the unfortunate hosts who were losing their lives, such blatant interference with his medical practice simply couldn’t be tolerated. “You’d better believe I’ll be telling your superiors about this, Doctor Bashir. Your Starfleet career is finished.”

“Maybe,” Bashir said, still struggling against the med-tech’s grip. “But that hardly seems as important as all the lives you’re prepared to sacrifice merely for expediency’s sake.” He gestured with his head toward the woman who lay on the table. Torvin spared a glance at her.

And noticed that she had stopped convulsing. His first thought was that Bashir’s unauthorized treatment had killed her. Then he noticed that she was beginning to take deep, regular breaths.

“Let him go,” Torvin said. Bashir fell unceremoniously to the floor.

“I think it’s clear that you don’t want these hosts to die any more than I do, Doctor Torvin,” Bashir said, still sprawled on the floor while the med-tech continued eyeing him warily. “I also think you realize that your world’s ‘symbionts first’ ethic is what’s largely to blame for all the upheaval your people have been experiencing lately.”

Torvin quickly examined the woman, his plisagraph reporting that her vital signs now appeared unaccountably stronger. The symbiont still needed to be removed for radiation treatment, of course, but doing so didn’t appear to pose a mortal threat to the host. It was the closest thing to a miracle Torvin had ever seen.

Torvin’s earlier anger at Bashir quickly yielded to a flash of self-loathing. Had his own loyalty to the Symbiosis Commission made him lose sight of what was right and what was wrong? Had he forgotten what it meant to be a doctor? If I had taken the cost of the Commission’s secrecy into account, then perhaps Doctor Renhol would still be alive.