Cold. Cold. Cold. Elle huddled into her jacket and flipped up her collar as soon as they materialized. She turned in a circle, trying to find the cave entrance.

Scotty got her attention. "Captain! There's someone, something out there in the rocks. Five of them. Humanoid, large."

Kirk frowned. "Phasers on stun. I want them conscious."

Elle stayed next to zombie-Spock as the security officers took down the group of cavemen.

Kirk approached the leader cautiously. "We mean you no harm. We're not your enemies, we're your friends. We only wish to talk to you."

The man scowled fearfully. "You are not the Others?"

"No. We come from a far place. We are different than you and the others. We wish to find them."

The man pointed at Elle. "She is Other. She will know where to go."

"I'm lost," Elle said. "I want to go to the others. Take us, please."

He stared at her, paralyzed by terror.

Kirk turned to look at Elle expectantly.

She shrugged. "Uhhh, I got nothing."

Scotty spoke up. "Captain, five hundred metres in that direction there's a foundation under the surface. A huge one. Registrations all over the place."

Kirk nodded. "Take Elle, see if you can find a way down."

"Aye, sir."

The native man freaked out and scrambled away. "No!"

"Okay," Kirk said. "I guess we'll all go."

Elle saw the tripwire the same time as Scotty. "Look! This is the thing."

"Is this a trap?" Scotty asked.

"Yup."

Kirk waved. "Bones, get in here."

The two doctors and zombie-Spock entered the cave. "Martinez, you and the security team will remain here at the entrance," Kirk said.

"Respectfully, sir, I'm assigned to Elle."

Kirk grinned ruefully. "You're right. Solomon, you and your team will stay here."

"Aye sir."

Kirk came back into cave. "Ready?" he asked, and tripped the beam.

A metal shutter came down, sealing off the entrance. The "cave" dropped, a high-speed elevator in disguise.

McCoy groaned. "Call Solomon and tell him to send my stomach down."

Elle giggled.

"We're slowing down," Kirk said, after a long few seconds.

The door slid open to reveal a woman in yellow waiting for them in the corner. She reached for her wrist band.

Elle darted forward. "Wait! Hi! I am Elle. These are my frie... these are mine."

The woman gaped at her for a few seconds. "I am Luma. Where did you come from?"

"Another place," Elle said.

Luma frowned. "You are not Eymorg. Yours are not Morg. What are you?"

"We are different," Elle said. "I am a girl. These are boys."

"Girl," Luma repeated.

Elle cleared her throat. "We need to speak to the Controller."

"It is here," Luma replied agreeably. "Come." She gestured further down the corridor and they started walking.

"Where?" Kirk asked.

"Here," Luma said.

"Where is here?"

"This place." Luma gestured further down the corridor.

McCoy put his hand on Kirk's arm. He was having a field day with his medical tricorder. "Jim, you're not gonna get anything out of her. Hers is literally the mind of a child."

"Leave it to the professionals," Elle chided jokingly. She looked up at the ceiling. "Spock?"

"...Elle?" came a voice from the ceiling.

"Spock!" Kirk said, almost vibrating with the need to go find him Right Now. "Where are you?!"

"Unfortunately, I do not know where I am."

"We'll get you, Spock," Kirk promised. "It won't be long."

"A practical idea, Captain. It seems unlikely that I shall be able to get to you."

Luma looked impressed. "The Controller speaks to you."

"We are friends," Elle said.

Luma led them to a large meeting room. Several other women were sitting in different spots, eating and listening to music. A few of the men were standing around, serving them. "Strangers," the one who'd come to the Enterprise said, surprised. "Luma?"

"They are from another place," Luma said. "This is Elle, girl. These others are hers. Boys."

"Hello," Elle said. "Are you the leader? What is your name?"

"I am Kara," the woman said. "I am leader."

"It is nice to meet you," Elle said, feeling like she was speaking to her toddler cousin. So not a huge stretch from talking to yourself, the tumblr part of her mind snarked. Shh. She refocused. "We have come from the same place as your new Controller."

Kara's interest sparked. "You are from very far."

"Yes, very far. We are from a place that does not use Controllers."

"No Controllers?" Kara asked.

"No. We, girls and boys, live and work together."

Kara wrinkled her nose.

"We are friends with the Controller," Elle said. "We need to see him. It. Him."

"No one is allowed to see the Controller," Kara retorted. "It is forbidden."

"We are friends," Elle repeated.

"It is forbidden."

Elle glanced up at the ceiling. "Spock, a little help here?"

"What do you require?" Spock asked.

"Tell them to bring us to you," Elle murmured.

Spock hummed and then spoke. "Kara, leader, bring the others, my friends, to me. Bring them to the Controller."

"Yes, Controller," Kara said, terrified and reverent. "Come with me." She led them to the Control Room.

Elle stared at the black box in the center. Spock's brain was in that. She shuddered.

"Spock?" Kirk asked.

"Yes, captain, I'm here."

Kirk frowned. "Spock, you're in a black box tied in with light rays into a complex control panel."

"Fascinating. And yet I know that I am breathing, pumping blood, maintaining an internal temperature."

M'Benga spoke up. "Is it possible that you're re-circulating air, running heating plants, purifying water?"

"Indeed, Doctor. That is unquestionably part of what I am doing."

"Fascinating," McCoy said, and then harrumphed irritably when Elle grinned at him.

"How do we get him out?" Kirk asked impatiently.

"You cannot take the Controller!" Kara shrieked. "He must stay!"

"He must not stay," Elle refuted.

-/\-

Okay, watching brain surgery is not fascinating. Elle sat in the corner and tried to meditate. But the fact that brain surgery was literally happening six feet away from her made it impossible to be calm and clear-headed. She pulled out her PADD and started playing a puzzle game.

"Blue piece two down, three diagonal," Spock's voice said, over the speakers.

Elle jumped six inches off the cold floor and almost fell over. "Spock! For the love of the Great bird, please do not do that."

He was definitely laughing. "Apologies," he drawled.

But he was right. She moved the puzzle piece down and over. "Hey, Spock?" she asked, since he apparently wasn't busy supervising his own brain surgery.

"Yes, Elle?"

"Is there a way to store the information in portable units?"

"Why do you ask?" Spock asked.

"Well once we put your brain back where it belongs, this place'll shut down, and these guys'll have nothing to teach them."

"Good point," Kirk said, coming over from his own waiting corner. "Let's go supply hunting, Elle."

Asking Kara didn't help, so Kirk, Scotty, and Elle poked around all the rooms they could get into. Nothing resembling portable teaching units, just a lot more server farms. "We should be able to rig a control interface that lets us keep this running at least for a few days," Scotty mused. "After that, it'll all go dark."

"There's so much information," Elle mourned. "This is like the Ancients all over again."

"What?"

"From the show I'm watching, there's this brainsucker, it's like the teaching device, bt it gives you all the information. I think it's broken, in the show, or it'd be just like this one, but I don't know, because it's not like they give you a lexicon with the background information, but-" Elle stopped rambling. "Anyways."

"Anyways," Scotty echoed, smiling. "I think from what we've seen here, we can use units from the Enterprise and modify them to take soem of the information for the Morgs and the Eymorgs."

"Including equal rights?" Elle asked.

He snorted. "Including that, yes."

Now that they had a fix on the location, the Enterprise could talk to them. Scotty took charge, speaking to his 2IC and organizing supplies. Kirk and Elle went back to the Control Room, just in time to see McCoy's face go completely blank.

"I've lost it," he said, stepping away from Spock's motionless body. "All the information, it's just gone."

"That's okay," M'Benga said, stepping forward. "Excuse me, Doctor."

Bones moved aside and leaned against the wall.

Elle moved to his side. "You okay, Bones?" she asked.

Kirk grabbed the doctor's arm as Bones started to slide down. "Whoops, okay, sit down, Bones."

"I'm fine," Bones snapped crankily. "The mother of all headaches, but I'm fine. Losing all that information..."

"I look forward to the information withdrawal," M'Benga said dryly, his hands swift and sure as he continued to reconnect Spock's brain. "This is exhilirating and the most terrifying thing I've ever done."

"Amen," Bones muttered.

It took another two hours to finish the surgery. Spock lay there, unconscious but whole. "We need to get Spock back up to the Enterprise," M'Benga said. "There's a whole slew of neurological tests we need to run, and I need to start transcribing as much information as I can before we lose it."

"McCoy, you and M'Benga get Spock up to the surface, get back to the Enterprise. Elle, you too."

"But the girls," Elle protested.

"We'll get Uhura down here," Kirk said. "Don't worry. We can handle this."

"They're not gonna like it," Elle warned.

Kirk put his hands on her shoulders. "You saved Spock. You completed your mission. You need to let us handle the rest. Go back to the ship."

Elle gritted her teeth and sighed. "Yes, sir."

He kissed her forehead. "Thank you. Go on."

Elle and Martinez helped the two doctors wheel Spock through the corridors and into the elevator. "Are you sure he's okay?" Elle asked.

"He already woke up once and spoke, he's okay," McCoy assured her.

"Okay."

They beamed back up to the Enterprise and rushed Spock to medical. Elle followed at a slower pace.

"You injured?" Nurse Renner asked.

"Nope. Just got back with Dr. McCoy. I'm here for my post-mission exam."

Nurse Renner's jaw dropped. "You, came here, of your own volition?"

"It's the protocol, right?" Elle asked.

Nurse Renner motioned Elle to a biobed. "You get a sticker. Gold sticker. Possibly an award. Only person on this boat to ever actually follow protocol."

Elle giggled. "Well, if I didn't Bones and Chief Giotto would have my head. And my snack privileges."

Nurse Renner laughed. "Understandable. Well, you're fine medically. How do you feel?"

Elle glanced over at the private room where Spock was. "Nervous," she said.

Nurse Renner patted Elle's hand. "Understandable. Go have lunch and find someone to hug."

Elle smiled. "Is that a medical prescription?"

"Absolutely."

Elle hopped off the biobed. "Thanks." She dragged her feet towards the door. "I, can I..."

"I'm sure Dr. McCoy will give you news as soon as he has any," the nurse promised. "Go on, now."

Elle shuffled out of sickbay with a sigh. She ate lunch with a couple of lt's from engineering and made her way to the Rec Deck.

"Hey, Elle! Racquetball?"

"I just ate," Elle replied, waving the ops ensign off. "Thanks, though."

The ensign sat down next to her. "You okay?"

Elle put her head down on the table, resisting the urge to cry. "I wanna help and I can't," she said, voice smooshed into the table.

"Didn't you just come back from the planet with Mr. Spock?"

"Yeah."

"Then I think you've done plenty, don't you? You found Mr. Spock's brain."

"Well yeah, but they would've done that anyway," Elle complained.

Ensign Rialto laughed. "So? Anyone can do any job, but you were the one that helped the captain do it. What are they doing now?"

"Evacuating the locals to the surface."

"See? You may be a tough little teen but I'm pretty sure the security officers are much beefier than you." Rialto gave her a hug. "You did what you were asked to do, and I'm positive that you went above and beyond, so you've got nothing to feel bad about. Just, bask in the glow of surviving another zany Enterprise mission."

Elle hugged him back. "Thanks," she said, her heart a little lighter.

"You are very welcome." He tapped her nose. "You fit in with the rest of us just fine, you overachiever, you."

She laughed.

It was still hard to wait, though. Elle wandred through the rec deck, taking invitations to play or relax, she wrote poetry with a couple of Uhura's people from Linguistics, and assisted in The Great Reconstruction of a pillow fort, torn down in the last crisis with the Klingons. It was bedtime, and still no word from either the captain or Bones. Elle went to her room, took a shower, and sat down to watch TV, Simba in her lap.

At 0034, the comm chimed.

"Elle here," she said, jumping on the comm and scaring poor Simba.

"Hey, Elle. Spock's okay. He's in a regular sleep now, and we need volunteers to monitor him." Bones sounded exhausted.

"I'm on my way." She tucked Simba under her arm and marched over to Sickbay.

"Good, you brought the fuzzball." McCoy tugged her towards a chair. "I just need three hours. Chris is on duty, if anything happens, holler."

"Cool." Elle watched him bustle out of sickbay and turned to look at Spock. He looked alive now, a slight green flush on his cheeks as he breathed.

Simba trilled peaceably and Spock turned towards the sound.

Elle plopped Simba next to Spock's elbow and the tribble burrowed into Spock's side, near his heart. Simba purred like an outboard motor, pleased as punch to be with its second-favorite person.

Elle watched them both.

-/\-

"Elle, sweetheart?"

She sat upright, scrubbing her eyes. "Huh? Spock?" She glanced over. Spock was still asleep, Simba now in the curve of his neck and shoulder, still trilling. "Oh." She turned to look at the captain. "You're back."

He smiled at her. "We're back. We've finished evacuating the compound and helpin the Morgs set up their new combo civilization. They are very confused by being able to receive and retain their knowledge, but they seem to like it, the Morg especially."

"And the Eymorg?" Elle asked.

Kirk snorted. "They're just relieved to have indoor heating."

Elle laughed. "Nice." She stood up and stretched. Her spine gave a delightful rat-tat-tat of popping joints. "Ahhhh. Maybe once they get their civilization back up, they can go back to their compounds and retrieve all that knowledge."

"We'll just have to wait and see," Kirk said. "Maybe when you're older you can come back and check."

"Maybe," Elle said.

Kirk looked over at Spock and smothered a grin. "Pet therapy, Elle?"

"Tried and true," Elle retorted.

Simba noticed Kirk and started to wiggle away from Spock, chirping delightedly.

"Oh, no, you stay over there," Kirk said, flapping a hand at it.

Simba purred and went back to Spock.

"Simba likes you, though," Elle said, giving him puppy eyes.

"That Tribble can like me from over there," Kirk said, cracking a smile in spite of himself. "Go to bed, Elle, it's my turn to keep watch."

"Actually," Bones said, coming back into Sickbay, looking more like a night owl and less like an exhausted pigeon, "both of you can go to bed and get out of my sickbay. Thank you, Elle, for staying up. You, captain, can come back in the morning aftter you've had breakfast." He spotted Simba. "The tribble can stay."

Elle and Kirk walked back to their quarters. "Sleep well, captain," Elle said.

He hugged her. "Thank you, Elle. Good night."

-/\-

The next morning, Elle had three new pictures on her computer monitor. They all featured a startled Spock with a tribble "staring" at him from a spot on his chest. Elle almost laughed herself sick, and promptly forwarded the pictures to Lady Amanda.

She skipped breakfast and went down to sickbay. Kirk was already there, telling Spock all about the Morg and Eymorg situation. Spock listened intently, petting Simba with his free hand as he sipped a mug of plomeek broth.

"Good morning," Elle said, poking her head in.

"Good morning," Kirk said, and waved her in.

Elle came to stand next to the bed. "How are you, Spock?"

"Better, now that I am in my own body," Spock replied. "It is very disconcerting to realize the differences only after the fact."

"So did you like it better, being in control of a compound instead of a body?" Elle asked.

"I did not," Spock decided, after a moment. "It was too, impersonal." He glanced down at the tribble. "You are here to pick up your tribble?"

"I mean, I don't have to," Elle replied, shrugging. "You can keep him if you want."

He stared down at the tribble for a moment.

"Actually, I have to go," Elle blurted, "I'm late for class, can you keep him? Thanks!" She turned on her heel and bolted out before Spock could reply.

McCoy caught her outside the door. "No running in sickbay," he scolded.

She froze. "Sorry."

He patted her arm. "Nice job, though." He winked at her and went into Spock's room.

Elle grinned. "Tribble love strikes again," she said dramatically, throwing her hands up.

One of Scotty's henchmen walked past and gave her a look.

Elle blushed. "Hi." She hustled away, hands in her pockets, still grinning.