By: Paula Stiles


Summary: Bashir spends five (or was it seven?) days in Isolation in
Internment Camp 371. Occurs immediately before "In Purgatory's Shadow."


Disclaimer: Paramount owns all of the Star Trek characters, including
Bashir and Kukalaka. The story, however, and what I do to the characters
in it, is mine, mine, mine--for what it's worth.


Warning: No sex (sorry) but there are some fairly creepy parts. I
wouldn't recommend it for kids.


Note: This is the first time I've posted a story here, so please be
kind. I've tried to follow the guidelines from the FAQs. Please let me
know if I've made some major gaffe. I'd appreciate any constructive
criticism that anyone might have, but, please be specific. "It sucks"
doesn't help me much. 



				      ISOLATION



O'Brien: "So, what are you telling me? That my baby's just...sad?"

Bashir: "Perhaps he's become prematurely aware of life's existential
isolation."

 O'Brien: "You're sure it's not a rash?"

Bashir: "Look on the bright side. He'll probably be a great poet."

"Business As Usual"


Day Zero

     "You can't do this! You've already cut our rations once this
month!"

     General Martok put a hand on Bashir's shoulder. "Doctor, perhaps it
is unwise to press this issue." Bashir shrugged the Klingon off and
glared at the Vorta camp commander.
    
     "If you want to kill us, why don't you just shoot us right here
instead of wasting any more resources on us?" Behind Bashir, the other
prisoners shifted uneasily as their Jem'Hadar guards closed in on him.
Bashir ignored them all, focussing all his attention and anger on the
Vorta. The Vorta, like the Jem'Hadar, was genetically engineered to be
loyal to the Dominion, and merciless to its enemies. Martok and Bashir
were enemies of the Dominion--and now, its prisoners.

     The Vorta shrugged. "Believe me, Doctor. The moment you become
dispensible, I will be very happy to sign your termination order. For
now, however..." he nodded to Ikat'ika, the Jem'Hadar First. "Put him in
Isolation. Five days should be sufficient to render him more obedient."

     Bashir heard Martok grunt in shock. Sitla, the Romulan officer who
shared quarters with him and Martok, sucked in her breath. Five days in
Isolation was a long time.

     Two Jem'Hadar guards stepped up to either side of Bashir. They
grabbed him by the arms. He looked at Martok and Sitla. "Don't worry.
I'll be back."

     As the guards hustled him away, he heard Martok mutter, "Yes, but
what kind of shape will you be in?" His words chilled Bashir. Bashir had
only been at Internment Camp 371 for four weeks (32 days, to be exact),
but Martok had already done two years of hard time. Martok had lost an
eye during his captivity. Chances were, that the General was far more
familiar with Isolation than he would care to admit.

     Bashir didn't struggle as the guards dragged him down the hall.
There was no point. When they got to the Isolation cell, however, and he
saw just how small it was, he fought to get back out to the prisoner
barracks. The Jem'Hadar had to beat him nearly unconscious to subdue
him. Then, they stripped off his uniform and stuffed him in. They threw
in a few handfuls of ration bars, and slammed the door. With the door
went the light.



Day One

     Bashir lay stunned for a few minutes. Finally, he stirred and tried
to untangle himself. It was difficult; by feel, he discovered the
narrowness of his new quarters--that they were neither long enough for
him to lie down flat in, nor tall enough to stand up straight. There was
a drain in the center of the floor. It was clean, save for a strong reek
of Dominion disinfectant. *At least they cleaned up after the last poor
bastard they threw in here,* Bashir thought, then wondered who that
prisoner had been.

     The walls were cold, but not wet. They felt like dressed
stone.There were fusion seams at the corners of the walls, ceiling and
floor, but nothing that he could work on; he was stuck in here for the
duration. Maybe he was in one of the older sections of the asteroid.
Before it had been a prison, Internment Camp 371 had been a mine, but
the mine had long since been tapped out.

     He had hoped that his eyes would adjust to the dim light after a
few minutes, but the dark remained absolute. If there had been any
illumination, he would have detected it. Bashir saw nearly as well in
the dark as a cat, due to genetic enhancements his parents had had done
to him when he was six, but even he needed *some* light to see by. Thank
God nobody knew about *that.* It would be a toss-up who tore him apart
first--The Dominion or the Federation. Even the genetically engineered
Jem'Hadar would feel little sympathy for him, because he was an enemy of
the Dominion.

     Well, light wasn't absolutely necessary for survival. Air was, and
he was getting that--from a spigot sticking out of the upper left-hand
corner over the door. He found a water spout sticking out of the bottom
half of the right hand wall near the door. It trickled out along the
floor and down the drain, making that part of the floor damp. He had to
lie on his side in the runoff to drink because he couldn't get his hands
cupped under the spout--it was too near the floor. This meant that
staying hydrated and dry at the same time was impossible.

     Bashir gathered up the ration bars and counted them. There were
only ten. Damn them. That was only half of the new daily ration
allowance.  There was a lesson in this, of course: protest a cut from
six to four bars per day and end up with two. Dominion logic. Pity he
was too pig-headed to comply. He certainly wouldn't have wound up in
this little room for five days, with bad water and starvation rations.

     Bashir stashed the bars in the dryest corner and settled himself as
comfortably as he could--sitting upright with his back against the wall
and his feet propped against the door. What a perfect torture for him.
His long legs were already cramping. He had always admired wild giraffes
for their grace, especially in full gallop, but right now he wished that
he had been built more like a penguin. If he'd never been genetically
altered, he'd probably be built like his father--short and
bandy-legged--and not be bothered by this coffin at all.

     *Dad would have done great, here,* Bashir thought. *He could have
talked the Jem'Hadar to death.* Thinking about his father, though,
brought back Bashir's last visit home, and the screaming match that had
followed. Hastily, he decided to change his train of thought. 

      That was when he became aware of the unnatural quiet. All he could
hear were his own small, personal sounds, nothing from outside his cell,
at all. It frightened him; if he listened long enough, he might hear
something that wasn't there. He could try a song, maybe. That was it.
What was that tune that Miles liked to sing whenever he got drunk?

     "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids./In fact, it's
cold as hell./And there's no one there to raise them--if you did./And
all the science, I don't understand./It's just my job five days a
week./A rocketma-a-an, rocketman.' His voice was unnaturally loud inside
the cramped space, and the acoustics were horrible, but he kept belting
out the song, over and over, anyway. Might as well give the guards a
show.




Day Three

     Two days later (at least, he thought it was), he had lost his
voice. It was just as well. Rocketman had lasted for about two hours (he
had calculated it by how long it took for Miles to sing it). Then,
Bashir had tried Louie, Louie, (another of Miles barroom favorites), The
English National Anthem, Rule Britannia (briefly), even the Federation
anthem--all 117 verses of it. After three ration bars and two long
sleeps (by which he calculated that it had been a day and a half to two
days), his voice crashed completely.

     Now, he sat in the dark, twiddling his thumbs and muttering to
himself. He was a little worried about his holding power; twiddling had
seemed tedious, at first, but now he was coming up with all these
interesting combinations...

     *I need to get out of here,* he thought. *Before I start sucking my
thumb--or my toes.* He could feel a strong urge to crawl back into the
womb. It would be so easy to become incontinent, to curl up in a ball
and let his mind go blank. He knew it would get worse.

     Somehow, when Starfleet had discussed the definitions of adventure
in its promotional material and Academy courses, it had left out the one
that included shivering in a tiny, stone, cold box in one's wet t-shirt
and shorts. Maybe he had missed it during one of his many cramming
sessions for finals.

     "Just three more days," he croaked out loud. "I can do three days.
No problem." The silence closed in after his words, smothering him.


Day Four

     The whispering began shortly after ration bar six and sleep three.
Bashir hoped that he wasn't eating the bars too fast. His stomach was
not cramping as badly as it had the day before. Now, however, he felt
light-headed and his mood was swinging freely back and forth between
rage and depression; his blood sugar was dropping.

     When the whispering began, it was so quiet that he accepted it
without qualms. As it became louder, he realized that what he was
hearing was not there. He could not quite make out what the voice was
saying, but it sounded like the dream he had had after being attacked by
a Lethean. Left in a coma, he had heard the voices of the
medical team trying to save him as whispers.

     Bashir hugged his knees, shivering. *Its okay. Its all right,* he
told himself, then stopped abruptly. It took him a moment to determine
whether he was thinking or had spoken out loud. Thinking, he concluded.
Hallucination was normal in these situations, he reassured himself. It
would stop after he got out. *If* he got out.

     Two more days. He sincerely hoped that they would not forget.



Day Five?

     The whispering was louder. Sometimes, it was emphatic. Sometimes,
soothing. Bashir couldn't make out the words but sometimes, it sounded
like a muffled countdown. He plugged his fingers in his ears but since
the sound came from inside his head, this made no difference.

     He ate the last ration bar, then slept. The pain in his stomach
woke him again. This last day seemed to stretch out far longer--if that
were possible--than any of the others.

     "Please, oh, please," he groaned. Just hurry up and get me out of
here.

     Then, he heard something else. He froze. There was a skittering in
the corner near the door, then a squeak. Bashir's skin crawled at the
sound. Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't his skin that was crawling.
Something was actually creeping up his left leg. Bashir stared,
wide-eyed, as Kukalaka, the stuffed bear he had cherished since he was
four, appeared on his knee. He shouldn't have been able to see the toy,
of course, but could--quite clearly. *It's just a hallucination. It's
not real,* he insisted hysterically to himself.

     The bear stood up on its hind legs on Bashir's knee. One small calm
part of Bashir's brain at the very top of his skull noted that Kukalaka
wore a top hat and held a cane. In a polite, British accent that sounded
like his voice, only three octaves higher, the toy began to sing: "Five
days, more days, more days, five days/The Vorta threw a par-ty and
didn't invite me/Five days, more days, more days, five days/Oh where, oh
where, could Ika-t'ika be?"

     AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! Bashir screamed with every decible of what
little voice he had left. Not much came out. He slapped wildly at his
knees. Then, he tried to jump to his feet and flee. This was a mistake.
As he stood up, he slammed his head against the ceiling. Stunned, he
fell heavily to his knees, then slumped down against the door.

     Some dreamy time later, the door against his grated open, and his
aching head thumped hard on a metal floor. He shut his eyes tightly,
blinded by the glare, and huddled in a foetal curl half in and half out
of the cell.

     "That fool Vorta," he heard Ikat'ika growl from above. "Get him
up." He was grabbed on either side and hauled to his feet. He hung
miserably in the guards grasp. He opened his eyes to slits. The blurry
image of Ikat'ika wavered before him.

     The JemHadar First reached out and grabbed Bashir's chin. He turned
Bashir's head back and forth, making Bashir's neck ache. "Feh," said the
First. "He's bleeding and he stinks. Go clean him up before you dress
him. Then, bring him before the Vorta."

     "Yes, First," the guards intoned in unison. They dragged Bashir off
down the hall and shoved him under a sonic shower turned up high. The
shower hurt but he was too far gone to care. Just when they had gotten
most of the grime off him, and he was beginning to revive, the guards
decided the shower was over. One of them brought in Bashir's uniform and
threw it in his face.

     "Put it on," he snapped. Painfully, Bashir dragged his uniform back
on. He managed to stand, but still couldn't walk very well. The two
guards grabbed him by his elbows and hauled him to the Camp Commander's
office, where the Vorta was giving First Ikat'ika instructions for the
next day.

     Bashir had enough sight back now to notice that the Vorta was
surprised to see him. "What is he doing here?" he demanded.

     "Sir," Ikat'ika said, with more than a little contempt. "He was due
to be released back into the general population. I took it upon myself
to see it done."

     The Vorta glared at his JemHadar First. "*I* run this internment
camp, not you, Ikat'ika."

     The First's face remained impassive. "I was merely following your
*original* orders, Sir."

     The Vorta opened his mouth, then paused. Finally, he shrugged.
"Yes. Fine. Whatever. Put him back with the others, then."

     Ikat'ika turned to Bashir's guards. "Take him back to the
barracks."

     "Yes, First!" the two guards shouted. This time, Bashir had the
presence of mind to get in a "Yes, SIR," himself. It was another
mistake. Ikat'ika stepped up to him and backhanded him so hard that the
guards had trouble holding onto to him.

     "It is too bad that you still have need of a tongue to serve the
Dominion, Doctor," Bashir heard the Vorta say through the ringing in his
ears. "Otherwise I would let Ikat'ika cut it from your head right here.
Take him back to the barracks."

     The guards shoved Bashir out the door. As he stumbled out, Sitla
was waiting for him. She kept in step beside him, but just out of reach
of the guards. "Are you all right?" she asked.

     "Of course," he replied, almost cockily. "Five days. No problem."

     She looked at him strangely, but did not pursue it. "I'll go tell
Martok you're out." She ran ahead of the guards to their barracks.
Bashir stared after her. "What was *that* all about?"

     One of the guards looked him up and down, and laughed. "She thinks
you're a liar, that's why."
     "What?" Bashir said blankly, then stopped. "Did you hear that?"

     "I heard nothing," the guard snarled. "Now *move!*"

      "Five days, more days. *She* knows you're lying but you don't
know," squeaked a singsong, little voice in his ear. Then, something
soft, furry and brown dropped on him from above--cutting off the light. 



     Bashir awoke with a start. It took him a minute to realize that he
had been dreaming and was back on Deep Space Nine. He called for lights
and waited for his heart rate to sink back to normal levels. It had been
months since he had escaped from Internment Camp 371. He really wished
that this particular dream would just stop. The station counselor had
assured him that eventually, it would. He was less sure. He had
neglected to tell the counselor about the hallucinations.

     Once he felt a little calmer, he got up and went into the bathroom.
He turned on the light, splashed some water on his face and looked in
the mirror to see just how bad he would look in the morning.

     A Jem'Hadar soldier glared back at him. He gasped and backed up
against the door. His reflection copied his movements. *Oh, God,* he
thought. *Oh, please. Not again...*

     From the bedroom he heard a squeak, then the phut, phut, phut of
little bear feet, just outside the bathroom door.