Chapter 2: Awakening

Jean Luc Picard, Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E called for Beverly Crusher his Chief Medical Officer, who came running. Beverly wasted not a second's time hurrying to Picard and Data, the pale man, across the scaffolding to the place where Buffy and Dawn lay unconscious.

Beverly came up short when she saw who it was. "Buffy, Dawn." She looked toward Picard. "No wonder Dawn refused to beam down."

"Yes," Picard agreed.

Beverly knelt down over her patients, and produced a medical tricorder. Buffy and Dawn had no visible injuries, but Picard noted the subtle change in Beverly's intense expression as she checked the scanner's readout. She glanced up at Picard, her tone somber.

"Severe theta-radiation poisoning."

"The radiation is coming from the damaged throttle assembly," Data said; he had been scanning the ship with his tricorder.

Beverly's blue eyes narrowed and squared her shoulders. "We're all going to have to be inoculated. . . and I need to get them"—she nodded at Buffy and Dawn— "to sickbay."

Picard debated reminded Beverly of the Prime Directive. But this was Buffy and Dawn, two people they had served with for several years. That said he knew this was in their past, even though they had not mentioned anything of this incident, they had to make sure that Buffy and Dawn knew very little of their future as possible. So as not to pollute their own future.

"Keep them sedated," Picard said.

"I intended to," Beverly said. "For the same reason you are reminding me of. They can't know too much about their own future. That they will one day be our shipmates. That said I will have only Dawn assist me in their care. Since only the senior staff knows about their longevity."

Picard nodded. "Tell Commander Riker to beam down with a search party and make sure he brings Buffy along. We need to find Cochrane, and she likely will be the best person to find him."

"Right," Beverly said, and pressed her comm badge. "Crusher to Enterprise. Three to beam directly to sickbay."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Dr. Beverly Crusher drew a damp hand across her forehead, trying to smooth back the sweat-darkened strawberry-blond strands that clung there.

Commander Dawn Summers, Assistant Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise stood looking down at herself. "I knew this was coming. I just didn't know when our trip to the past would be."

"You knew this was coming?" Beverly asked as she looked at the monitor as it showed her the rapid regeneration of Buffy and Dawn's cells. "It still surprises me at the regenerative ability you and Buffy have because of your being Millennial."

"Yes," Commander Dawn said. "And no, I can't tell you anything I remember so my past continues as I remember it."

Beverly nodded in understanding; time travel was tricky business after all. She changed the readout of the monitor to show Buffy and Dawn's radiation levels and nodded. They were dropping rapidly, that said if she did nothing Buffy and Dawn would be sick. "Do you remember if you two were sick or not?"

"No," Commander Dawn said. "Of course, back then I didn't know the drug used. But I do believe we both received hyronalin."

Beverly nodded as she prepared to hyprosprays and handed one to Commander Dawn. They administered the hyronalin. She looked at Buffy and then at Commander Dawn. Sometimes it was easy to forget her colleague and friend was nearly four hundred years old.

Commander Dawn smiled at Beverly and nodded. "I know."

Beverly looked at Commander Dawn and nodded in understanding. Commander Dawn had felt her feelings over seeing Buffy and Dawn and remembering how they did not age. "It's easy to forget you know," she said.

"If I hadn't known already," Commander Dawn said. "I would be having the same feelings you are at seeing my past self."

Beverly fanned herself with a hand. "We should find out why it's so hot in here!"

Dawn didn't reply as she knew what was about to happen as just then every light in the room flickered, then went dark—including every active monitor.

Beverly tapped her comm badge. "Crusher to engineering."

Static.

Her tone rose slightly as she said, "Crusher to bridge."

Static.

Beverly drew in a breath, unsettled. Losing power on the decks was not necessarily an indication that something ominous was occurring, but a power failure should have absolutely no effect on communications. For them both to go out at the same instant was simply too much of a coincidence for comfort.

Commander Dawn looked started and looked up at the walls; Beverly followed her gaze, hearing the noise, too: an eerie skittering movement inside the bulkheads themselves. Another skitter above, in the ceiling. She glanced up, unable to suppress a shudder of surprise, then caught Commander Dawn's gaze; the two of them stared at each other in silent recognition that something was outside ... and trying to get in.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Sweet, soothing darkness, from which Dawn was reluctant to rise; the first true rest since the war. She so enjoyed resting like this, being a Millennial could be hard on her at times, such as during the war. She had felt nothing but anger for a decade.

Voices, murmuring, fragmented, at times indistinct intruder on her sleep.

". . . got to take them; can't worry about the timeline, Dawn."

"I know."

Strange noises: the sound of rapidly moving metal against metal, like a hundred mechanical mice scurrying inside a wall.

"Coming. They're almost here ..."

"Wake up!"

"Let's go. C'mon, move it!"

"Wake up!" a feminine voice demanded, and Dawn grudgingly fluttered her eyelids to see herself looking down at her. "Come on, past me, wake up!"

"Where ... what?" Dawn blinked and lifted her head; as her dimly lit surrounding came into sharp focus, she could better see the woman's expression: wide-eyed, urgent, determined. And that was when her Millennial senses kicked in and she suddenly felt fear. Everyone but the other Dawn were afraid of something.

"There's no time to explain," the other Dawn told Dawn. "I need you to sit up."

"Buffy?" Dawn whispered.

"She's fine," the other Dawn replied. "We're waking her up also."

Dawn pushed herself up and got off the bed; she looked around and spotted Buffy getting off another bed and smiled. As both she and Buffy looked around, they noticed something. Everything was astonishingly different, in fact definitely more advanced than anything they had seen.

Dawn looked at her counterpart. "How far?" she asked.

"I can't tell you anything," the other Dawn said as she rushed Dawn and Buffy toward a hole in the wall. "If I were to tell you too much it could alter my past."

"Dawn!" The strawberry blonde said. "Take them and go!"

At once, the other Dawn grabbed Buffy and Dawn's arms with no-nonsense firmness and began to steer them toward the wall tunnel.

"Those doors won't hold much longer," the other Dawn shouted over her shoulder. "They're going to be right behind us!"

The woman lingered, casting a worried glance at the door, then her surroundings. "We need a diversion. Is the EMH still online?"

The other Dawn glanced at a console. "It should be. The holobuffers are still functioning."

The woman quirked her lip in disgust, but her worried gaze remained on the door, which had begun to creak as if something was pushing against it. "God, I hate those things." As she spoke, the door let out a screech and began to buckle inward; she wasted no more time, but looked upward and said, "Computer—activate the EMH program."

At that precise instant, the other Dawn pushed Dawn and Buffy into the tunnel; she gestured for them to hurry along, but they lingered—and watched as, out of thin air, a man appeared. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency," he said.

"Twenty Borg are about to break down that door, and we need time to get out of here," the woman shouted in one urgent breath. "Create a diversion!" And she began to run toward the other Dawn and toward Buffy and Dawn, who had crawled into the tunnel but listened to the conversation behind them.

The man's tone grew irritated. "This isn't part of my program. I'm a doctor, not a doorstop."

By then, the woman had climbed into the tunnel, and as she prepared to pull down the hatch, she called back with equal irritation, "Dance for them; tell them a story—I don't care. Just give us a few extra seconds!"

With a loud clank, the hatch shut. Buffy and Dawn waited for both the woman and the other Dawn to crawl past them before at last following them.

"Are they ECON?" Dawn whispered to her sister.

"I don't know," Buffy whispered back. "But I know this; we should be suffering from radiation sickness for at least a while still. And I feel no ill effects from the radiation."

"I don't either," Dawn replied.

"Does your Millennial sense tell you anything?" Buffy asked.

"I'm feeling lots of fear from everyone but myself. But if she is really my future then she likely remembers what we're about to go through. That said I'm also feeling there is something I need to be doing and it's not with these people."

"Could she be subconsciously steering you," Buffy wondered.

"Maybe," Dawn said.

"Alright," Buffy said.

When the group ahead of them was out of sight, they struck off in another direction.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The tunnel was dark, overheated, close, but desperation and adrenaline spurred Jean Luc Picard until he crawled at phenomenal speed, gasping from the heat and exertion. Only one thing could be worse than encountering the Borg on his own ship's engineering deck—and that would be to encounter them here, in a claustrophobic Jefferies tube. Certainly, if they were in here, his gasps would give away his location.

Yet he could not bring himself to really slow down—only enough to glance over his shoulder from time to time at the unrevealing darkness behind him.

At last he neared the first intersection, and he forced both breath and pace to ease before he dared take the turn that led eventually to an access ladder and deck fifteen. It was only then that he permitted himself to think of Data and the obscene existence that awaited his friend. The thought provoked a shudder; with Data's already-incredible strength and brilliant android brain added to the collective, the Borg might become truly undefeatable...

A sharp pain across the skin of his throat made him gasp, pulled him backward; he tried to draw in a breath and could not. He dropped his phaser and clawed briefly at the cable strangling him—then wedged his boots against the tube wall and slammed with all his strength backward, away from the pressure.

A body behind him—smaller than expected—groaned as he smashed it back against the opposite wall.

The cable loosened at once; he took advantage of his position and plunged an elbow backward.

To his astonishment, he felt nothing but ribs and soft flesh.

As his attacker emitted a high-pitched yelp, he whirled about.

And in the dimness saw two sweat-slicked faces: Buffy and Dawn. For a second, he wondered if they were the two from his time, then he remembered that Riker and Commander Buffy had beamed down. He noticed that Dawn had picked up his phaser and that it had been Buffy that had been the one to attack him.

"You two," Picard whispered, moving toward them. "How did you—"

"Back off!" Dawn said; the phaser in her grasp remained steady. "Just because we know our future selves know who you are. We don't. So I take it we are on a spaceship from the future since we met my future self. Why were we brought here?"

"On the second question, you had radiation poisoning," Picard said. "We brought you here to treat you."

"Since you likely know who we are, you know we didn't need your treatment, but thanks all the same," Dawn replied.

"You are correct, you are on a starship," Picard said. "Let me show you…" He brushed himself off, then rose to a crouched position and began moving again. "Follow me."