Julian seems to have recovered a few of Vik's victims in #503... perhaps revenge?
But the murder attempt by RealVik was in 434...?
The reason I ask the question is that I think there has to be a significant relationship between Vik and Julian. Some of this covers the same ground as laguna85's post.
Using a rifle with a scope, Julian shot a gun out of Vik's hand in 273, thereby allowing Adrian to get Amy and Hayley away. This is the first we see of there being any kind of connection between Vik and Julian. And if this is the first time they've encountered each other then surely we can't believe that Vik somehow knows who Julian is by the end of it.
By 434 I don't think we've seen any signs that the two have come to know each other any better, have we? But that's when Vik apparently attempts to kill Julian by using Pink Clouds on Patricia to get her to shoot him. And this is a planned attack, because Vik has already primed Patricia before Julian even checks in. Vik expected Julian to come to the motel -
that motel.
In 492 Vik sells Kanti, Katie, and Alex to someone. In 499 he picks up Laura and Amy and the implication at the bottom of that page is that he intends to sell them to the same person.
In 505 both Kanti and Alex imply that the someone in 492 was Julian. (I suppose they could be unreliable witnesses however, if Julian wanted them to say that.)
In 507 though, when Vik meets his apparent demise, he's on the phone selling Laura to someone who probably isn't Julian. Presumably he's going to keep Amy. So who is getting Laura? Someone with an interest in her, or someone with an interest in Pink Clouds?
I think that the implication of all of the above has to be that Julian has been involved with Vik's Pink Clouds project from the beginning. Which almost certainly means it
was a project. In 273 Vik realises that Julian has betrayed him and that's why he tries to murder him, whilst laying the blame elsewhere. But it appears as though he still subsequently sells the women to Julian.
Plus there's the ring that Vik gave to Amy, which turns out to be some kind of Kuppler device.
Why is all of this important?
In 314 Rain stops Marliese using the antidote on Alex and Katie: "Something very important has begun. We need to find Vikram Puntambekar, and they are going to lead us to him." But the blood monster - Cherry's blood monster; Julian's Cherry's blood monster - gets him first. And it brings him back to the motel as part of The Cloud. Which possibly makes all of this relevant.
And for what it's worth... his sister Kanti is (probably) in there too. And if sample #49 was part of a project, then it would seem that Vik knowingly gave a sample of Pink Clouds to her. And I'd say an implication of 091 is that Vik used Pink Clouds on her to get her to give that sample to Q, because it would seem that she didn't normally do that. While the intention would probably have been to frame Q, it's pretty obvious what Q would have to do to prove that it really was Pink Clouds. So it's possible that's Vik's respect for Kanti was probably already fairly low when the story began.
