It had not been an easy decision to make.

Scholar studied the post-embryonic lifeform on the examination table before her, its limbs moving in that clumsy feeble way common to newly borne mammals. It was one of a pair of fraternal twin females birthed due to the experiments on her two most recent subjects; beautiful in the strange way that humans could be with its skin soft and flush, sun-colored hair dusting an otherwise bare head, eyes the color of the dark-hued wood-bearing trees native to this planet...and five fingers to her four.

Though one of the two post-embryonic forms possessed some genetic material harvested from her own being, one would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between pure human and human/alien hybrid...if there was any difference ultimately. Therein was the problem and the source of her decision. The experiment had only served to prove a hypothesis that she had not shared with anyone, not even the Overlord -and that was that only *one* dominant species could thrive on this world...

...and that species was human.

Scholar's people were dying -a few knew it, and even fewer accepted it, but it was true. It was difficult to believe that the denial of body and heart in favor of the religion of scientific conquest had blinded her people to what was happening all around them, but she herself was one of only 100 females born during the most recent reproductive cycle on a world that teemed with millions -and of those, none had been fertile. No more fertile females meant no more contributions to the creches that continually repopulated her planet...and even males born of the creches lately had been sickly, less capable of producing healthy seed.

Slow, eventual, death for an ancient race.

The results of her experiments had given her hope that this trend could be reversed ...but it couldn't be on *this* world. Here, human would dominate alien, both genetically and eventually, she suspected, in common reality.

Scholar lifted the wriggling infant, so tiny and yet, heavy enough to tax the strength of one like herself. So small...so helpless...so innocent... She could destroy this creature and its twin along with all of the evidence of her partial success -and therefore, before the eyes of her planet's Council, a complete failure- and start again. New test subjects. New experiments. Therefore, maybe, new results that would be more agreeable to those she served. But she couldn't.

Thus had come this decision.

Scholar held the tiny creature closer to her thin chest and furtively made certain that she was alone before exiting the examination chamber.

********************

A throbbing ache radiating from his temples greeted Napoleon Solo's return to the world of the waking.

But this time, it was a good sort of pain because, for once, it cleared his head and he could think. Illya was still here -it wasn't something that he could explain, but he was as certain of this fact as he was of the sun in the sky. He and his partner had always had a high degree of awareness of each other -lately, it had become stronger. Perhaps the drugs his captors had forced on him had confounded that link for awhile, but all drugs passed through the body eventually...and he knew Illya was here.

And Illya needed him.

Napoleon pushed himself into a wobbly sitting position. Think! He had to *think*! No cage on Earth was completely inescapable if one knew what to do and this prison, alien though it might be, was unlikely to be different. If he could not force his way out, he would wait until one of his jailers came *in*. Whatever his captors were, they were relatively small, almost delicate, and if he could overcome even one of them and force him to--

A seam appeared in the featureless wall across from the disbelieving UNCLE agent, immediately becoming a doorway in which a familiar figure stood, cradling a tiny wriggling *human* form. Scholar considered her startled test subject. "Do you wish to leave or not?"

********************

Illya Kuryakin regarded the tiny, newborn girl in his arms with a disbelieving sort of wonder. Upon awakening from a confused miasma of nightmares, he had found this little bundle of life at his side and despite his earlier fears, had been blindsided by a sudden conviction -*his*. This helpless little creature was his -and Napoleon's. He could see the both of them in the tiny form -from the tuft of nearly-black brown hair to the crystalline-blue eyes that mirrored his own.

This conviction had been followed by another: regardless of the circumstances of its birth, he could love it -and *no* child of his and Napoleon's would be raised to be nothing more than a subject of alien curiosity.

Somehow...some way...there *had* to be a means of escape.