Max made his way to the clinic not really looking forward to it. Why was it so FREAKING cold in this damn station?!? He was bundled in jeans and a thick hoodie, and they were going to make him wear scrubs again. He shivered at the thought. Flipping cold as bloody... grumbles... When he reached the clinic, he palmed the door open and walked in looking around again.

He took a seat in the outer waiting area and sat down to wait. Dream came to the waiting room, "Max, you are little early, come on back. We have things to discuss." She backed up just little bit making space for Max to enter through the doorway.

"Hope you're ready for today, Max," shi said not really expressing any real excitement. "Hope you slept well last night because if you didn't, today is going to be a long and miserable day," shi stated taking a look at him for moment.

Max frowned at hir. "Define long and miserable, please?"

"Well, after we spend a few hours talking about your scans and what we need to start tracking, oh and your physiological tests later this afternoon... Shortly after that you will be doing some basic stress tests." Shi looked at hir PADD as shi spoke. "You didn't think you'd get to lay on a bed everyday while we did all the work, did you?" shi asked with bit of humor.

Max's shoulders drooped a bit as he proceeded hir through the door and he murmured under his breath, "I don't remember you being a sadist..." Louder he said, "So more poking and prodding and the added fun of making me run on a treadmill. Lovely..." and he mumbled his way through the door.

Hearing what he said under his breath shi smiled. "A treadmill? Nah. I was thinking the Stairmaster 3000," shi chuckled. "I'll have to get a holoshot of you sweating for your mates. I am sure they would enjoy seeing it." Shi walked him to a bio-bed patting it indicating for him to sit, "Still a few minutes before the rest of staff will be here. Congratulations, you get your own medical team Max," she joked with him. "But really, there's going to be about 14 others working on your case."

Max walked towards the biobed and stopped. "Why are there so many people on my case? I mean, surely, they have more important things to do? Heck there are how many ex slaves on the station that need help?" Max sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Dream. "Stairmaster really?? Oh, and just FYI Shir know it all, they've seen me sweat plenty of times! I'm quite active in the gym and they join me fairly often. Not to mention, you try keeping up with two Denmates," he made a silly face of mixed pain and suffering.

Dreamspirit chuckled. "Be glad you don't have a chakat as a denmate. We can be rather demanding at times," shi joked. Shi turned to the screens displaying Max's scans. "There will be some hard choices to make today. Some of them will change you..." Shi stopped for a second, then kept going. "Well, not change you as you look, that will be the same after all of this is said and done. But, your body will start demanding more fuel to burn," shi said as shi looked over the scans once again.

Max raises an eyebrow at Dream, "Care to define what these possible changes may be?"

"Well, for one, some days you'll feel more sexually charged and others you will feel like lead." Shi looking at him with flat expression. "Also, you will feel a lot of emotions that just come out of nowhere until your body adjusts to the new balance of things. There are also other things to discuss. The staff and I will be here to help you."

Max blinked a couple of times and squinted at Dream, "What the crap are you planning on doing to me?!?"

"Undoing the damage," shi said calmly before looking up as the rest of biomedical staff came in. "Welcome everyone, thank you for volunteering for this task. It is a odd one. The first of its kind and we hope, the last of its kind. We often see these things done to our kind, not to humans. Seeing that this was done by a very narrow-minded doctor and the work that was done was very sloppy, we have to be careful with what we do to Max." Shi paused and put a hand on his shoulder. "It is one thing to attack someone for being different. It is another to use your own kind as a weapon to do so. Like many of the refugees we have here, Max didn't have a choice in what happened to him. We normally would have more time to help Max like we do with other refugees but, Fleet and the Corps are riding my tail to get this case figured out and how to counter it. Remember that working on Max's case may save lives. Not just his but other people around him. There are others who have been affected by the madman who did this to Max. Our task here is to find the markers that make up the sleeper genes and rip them out. To do this we need to find the triggers. This will be a joint task between the psychologist and Bio-engineers. As it stands, Max has made the choice to keep part of the gene reconstruction, so we need to find a way to preserve that throughout the treatments. So, is there anyone other than Max that has any questions?" shi said as shi stood there waiting.

Max winced at the term "RIP" when it came to his genes.

One of the techs raised his hand curiously.

"Yes?" Dream motioned to the tech that raised a hand.

"Ma'am, exactly how do you plan to find out what the triggers are? It could be anything, audio, visual..." the tech asked.

"Yes, you are correct, however you failed to include physical triggers. Today, closer to the end of the day, we will start some stress tests. However the medical staff will take care of physical tests and visual, audio tests will be done privately with a doctor and psychologist and everything will be recorded for review later. We have one recording of a trigger. The sound of someone crying. Some of these triggers could be anything simple and we may not even find all of them. We need to do our best." Shi stood there for a moment, "Anything else?"

Everyone remained quiet and waited expectantly while Max just felt like he wanted to sink through the bio-bed and into oblivion. He muttered under his breath, "You're one sadistic kitty.... I think you're enjoying this." A bit louder he said, "And what do you want to do first, Herr Frankenstein?"

Shi laughed, "Funny you say that, because looking at your DNA, you're lucky you aren't green with bolts popping out of your neck!"

Max gave hir a look, "You are SO not funny, you grape soda on four feet."

Shi laughed again. "All right everyone, you have your tasks in your PADDs, if there are no more questions, let's get to work. I have a dinner date with a friend tonight and I don't want to be late for it," shi said patting Max on the back.

Max smirked, "Should I carry a time card login on my wrist, so people can get extra credit for tinkering with me?"

"Believe it or not Max, you may be one our harder cases. We may need time to work with the refugees, but most of their problems are rather easy because they are engineered correctly..." Shi broke off hating how shi said that. "As much as I hate to admit it, the LNAW knows what they are doing and do it correctly. You DNA was messed with and messed up. You weren't supposed to survive. Your mission or whatever it was, was never carried out. Its lying dormant in your head. If T readers can't find it or haven't seen it after mucking around in your head as much as they have, then it's a biological program. Your whole body's been changed. We have to look at every micro inch." Shi gave him a PADD, "Here is a list of things done to you that you may wanna look over. Seeing that you have skunktaur DNA spliced into your body, it is able to do some things it couldn't have in the past. And if a skunktaur's ability to swap genders pops up, it maybe because the DNA is doing more than adapting, so we need to look at what they did and didn't do." Shi sighed, "Max, I am sorry you have to go through this, but read that PADD while I get few things ready. We'll try a few things we learned from some of our refugees."

Max took the PADD and looked at it then got a fairly confused expression on his face. "Umm, Dream... What language is this in?"

Shi took the PADD and looked at it. "OK, I'll have to make a PADD with layman terms." Shi put the PADD down. "So, DNA is more than building blocks. It also determines what our bodies do. For example, you're having a cub. That is something DNA is instructing your body to do. It rebuilt your reproductive... " Shi stopped, "You getting any of this?" Shi asked.

Max gave hir a deadpan expression. "I'm not a complete idiot, Dream," he said too occupied to remember that he really didn't know hir well enough as Max to just call hir Dream. "I know I shouldn't have been able to have a kid with Swytch. No one was more surprised than we were. Also, going from no mental powers to becoming something a Blackpaw calls an anchor. From nothing Talent-wise to being so completely mentally bonded to Swytch like two minds so blended together that a T5 was afraid to try to untangle them? I mean, how can a little genetic tinkering do all that? And if they did it so badly, am I going to end up as a puddle of goo on the ground? Am I going to burn out? Am I going to wake up with boobs one day and end up swapping back and forth like Swytch?" he let out a frustrated growl. "This kind of crap only happens in bad fiction novels and B-rated sci-fi vids."

Shi watched him for a moment. "We don't know what you'll be doing yet. We still need to look closer at the DNA used on you and who it came from. Max, you may be more than just you. We don't know yet. You see, DNA is made up of molecules called nucleotides. Each nucleotide contains a phosphate group, a sugar group and a nitrogen base. The four types of nitrogen bases are adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. The order of these bases is what determines DNA instructions, or genetic code. For now, we can give you a blocker. That will stop further changes. Changes that were already made won't be affected."

A frustrated Max laid back on the bio-bed. "This is just so messed up. What did I ever do to deserve this? I mean, there have been some good things. I'd never have met Swytch or Jackie OR had a kid of my own if none of this had happened. The thing is, I want to be able to see my kid grow up. It would be nice to be able to have more than one. Hell, it would be nice to give Jackie the kid she wants. I just don't know if what happened the first time was a complete accident or the standard considered the norm now," Max said as he ran his hands through his long white hair managing to make it stick up everywhere like a bit of a wild person as he looked at Dream. "Dream, help me..."

"Well, we'll start with RNA, there are many ways we can approach this," shi said as shi popped a tube into the hypospray and pressed it against Max's neck. "You'll see your little one grow, and getting that bunny pregnant won't be problem later. But right now, it would be best to avoid it. My kind wouldn't even think about bringing a child into the world till we had everything lined up and ready," shi informed him. "As of right now, we don't think you can get her pregnant, but we don't know that for sure. This hypospray should stop any of the other changes happening in your body. So, you won't be swapping genders anytime soon." Shi looked at the readouts on the screen. "Once we find the DNA strands that we need to pull out or replace, we'll start from there. As it stands right now, it is too risky to just rummage around. So, get the gown on and be ready to have things stuck to your face," shi said.

Max sighed and grabbed the hospital gown. "This thing has more holes than a bad mystery novel. And its FREAKING cold in this damn station!" he grumbled as he stripped down right there and put on the hospital gown. He wasn't kidding either, he had been working out. He started to shiver standing there in the gown.

"I swear things like this were invented just to make patients shut up and do as they're told because they're worried about people seeing their asses." He rubbed his neck where the hypo had been applied scratching at it. "What are you planning on sticking on my face?" he asked curiously.

"Oh, this and that," shi joked. "Just a few things to get a deeper read on your brain." As shi turned around, shi stuck silver disks on his temple and two square diodes on his forehead. "These are to stay on during the tests and treatments and sometimes overnight. Depending on what's going on with whatever test we are running. Now, we need to test your brain," shi smiled. "You'll be going with one of the other doctors and a psychologist." Shi motioned to one of the rooms with a closed door that was located across the room. "If you need me, just call."

Max watched hir leave and then gave the waiting Doctor a long-suffering look and trudged after her muttering something about breezes and shrinkage as he grumbled the whole way.

Max's new physician was a mouse morph whose attitude screamed "Mad Scientist". She was completely enthralled with Max's problem and wanted to dig in right away. So, Max was subjected to more tests. Stress tests, neurological scans, tissue samples, more T scans and E scans, and he wasn't surprised when there actually was a Stairmaster. Eventually, one of the Doctors had to give him a topical because the injection site where Dream had tagged him was still itchy for some reason.

One of the techs explained it was probably just irritation from all of the testing. At least they kept him moving enough to stop shivering so much. Eventually they let him put on his regular clothes and escorted him to another office; this one the residence of a psychologist.

Max stood outside the shrink's door looking at it, hand half raised as if to ring the chime. Then he heard in his mind, a very gentle voice. "I know this is one of the harder parts of this whole process and you're not sure what to do or who to talk to about some of it, but I would like to help if you're willing to take that last step and ring the chime..." Max blinked. So the shrink was a telepath, lovely... "Actually, if you had your shields up I couldn't read you at all, my E rating is much higher than my T rating, you just happen to not be shielding and you're broadcasting like a communications relay," the voice smirked. Max just banged his head on the door in frustration, shields dummy! The person on the other side took the head bang as a door knock and said, "Come in, Mr. Pilumnus."

With a sigh, Max palmed open the door and walked inside. The office was furnished comfortably and very warmly. It looked more like someone's sitting room than anything else. There was a nice wooden desk with a comfortable seat behind it and sitting in that seat was a pretty lynx morph. She had bright amber eyes and her fur was beautifully colored and patterned like the original species from Earth. She had almost blue-black shoulder length head hair and a curious twinkle in her eyes.

She smirked at him and said, "You're not bad looking yourself Mr. Pilumnus, but we are here for other issues, yes?" she grinned at him.

Max had the good graces to turn bright red and to look embarrassed. "Right... Shields... Sorry about that, the whole telepath thing is still new to me and I forget sometimes that I tend to sound like a megaphone." He concentrated for a minute and brought his shields back up like he should have been doing the entire time. "Sorry about that," he said sheepishly.

The lynx morph laughed, "Don't worry about it Mr. Pilumnus, it's quite flattering honestly and as I said earlier, I'm not a very highly rated T, you're just very loud at times is all. Also, I'm not a morph, I'm Caitian. My name is Dr. Sands, you probably couldn't pronounce my Caitian name, but the equivalent is 'Sands of Time', or just Sands for short," she supplied.

Max gave her a curious look. "I didn't know Caitians were empathic or telepathic," he stated.

Dr. Sands nodded absently, "Usually we are not, but just like every other species there are occasionally a few mutations that lead to mental abilities. Although my Grandsire swears there is chakat somewhere in our family tree so who knows really," she grinned. "If you would, please take a seat and be at ease. Would you like a coffee or a cup of tea?" she asked graciously.

"No, thank you Ma'am, I don't think caffeine would improve my mood much and I would probably just sit here twitching randomly with the added energy boost," Max confessed.

Dr. Sands smiled and nodded then looked at her notes. "Well, I have everything here that isn't classified by Starfleet. Your story is quite interesting and while it doesn't go much into your past, I think I get the gist of most of it and what happened. Mr. Pilumnus..."

Max raised a hand to interrupt her, "Please, just call me Max. If we are going to talk about my parents not hugging me enough, let's just stick with Max," he said with a sour face.

Dr. Sands raised an eyebrow at him but nodded. "Very well, Max. As I was saying, I've already had sessions with your Denmates."

That surprised Max. "You have?" he asked incredulously.

Dr. Sands nodded, "Yes. I was always assigned to be your specific mental evaluator and that leaves me open to your mates. You have two very devoted Denmates, Max. They are quite worried about you, though they won't show it. Swytch might as well be a mother bear the way hy feels protective over you. From what I've read, if it weren't for hys mental bonding with you, you'd need a lot more than my help. Even without hym here, I can feel hym on you. Like a protective blanket against the cold. I'm willing to bet even now you know exactly where hy is and vice versa."

At that Max nodded, his head unerringly pointing in the direction Swytch was when he thought about hym.

Dr. Sands grinned, "That is one heck of a mental link. It is something VERY few people share with anyone. There are hardly any relationships in the universe where two people are actually sharing everything with each other. Even the telepathic races don't normally bond this closely." She noticed the look on Max's face as she said that and cocked her head at him, "And you worry that it is your fault, hy is bonded with you. That if you had not come along hy would have found a nice normal mate to have a life with," she said shrewdly as she looked at him sadly. "Max, while you may worry about that, there is no doubt in hys mind that you were meant for hym. Without you, there would be no Arctyc. Do you regret that as well?" she asked.

Max shook his head. "I didn't say that I regretted any of it, I just worry that all of this will hurt hym in the end. Hy could have had a normal life if I hadn't been sent in as a ticking time bomb. What if I end up hurting hym or Jackie? What if I hurt my son?" Max almost whispered as he sank lower in his chair.

Dr. Sands looked at Max with compassion, "I have a feeling this has been weighing on you for some time now. Would it help to know that neither Swytch nor Jackie even brought that up as a worry? Jackie is more worried that she tricked you into Denmating with her."

Max snorted, "While I may be a bit naive and a pushover at times, Jackie didn't trick me into anything. Swytch just had to knock some sense into me to see what my heart already knew," he said with a bemused smile.

"Then I would recommend you show her how you feel as often as you can, she will get over her insecurities in time, with love and support from both you and Swytch," she said with a smile.