Chapter 2:
In the middle of space, just behind where the Enterprise had stopped itself, the two Q were congratulating themselves on a plan very well pulled off. "You know Q," Q1 pointed out while laughing his metaphorical head off, "Getting Data down to his quarters by blowing up his Replicator! That was genius!!"
Q2a just waved off the compliment like it was nothing, chuckling some himself. "It was nothing big. The cat was safe after all." This comment sent the younger Q howling into laughter again. "But to be perfectly honest, I've often wondered what it would look like if a Replicator blew up like those old time ovens used to."
Both Q were quiet for some time, genuinely contemplating the concept. Then they both started laughing like hyenas three seconds after the thought.
After they finished their jovial celebration of sorts, Q2a turned to Q1 in a very serious manner and asked, "Did you incorporate those "advancements" we talked about into the portal clones? They won't be able to easily adapt to their new environment if you did not do it properly."
Q1 sobered immediately upon the question. He nodded affirmative and backed it up with a verbal response. "Ofcourse I did. I wasn't born last millennium you know. They all have the photographic memory that all Star Fleet cadets have, along with learning and reading speed comparable to the android's. The vampires have also been equipped with what you've told me their real counterparts have. But the one with the chip, since that could be so easily removed, I replaced with numerous neural clusters that would basically do the same job."
Q2a nodded his approval. "And their memories?" he asked.
Q1 nodded his head in understanding. "I did my best as they were coming out. They're all intact, none of the gaps that might have been there had we not done this. Also, it will take just over a week for them to fully regain their memories. Maybe sooner if they end up jogging one another's memories with certain traits. A week was the best I could do under the circumstances."
"It's good enough." Q2a supported. "It should give them the necessary time to heal from whatever mental traumas they were suffering when this Key portal picked them up. What I don't understand is how it happened in the first place. The Buffy that I first met never had a sister. In fact she was an Immortal, and they're all foundlings."
Q2a just shrugged his (metaphorical) shoulders, and willed himself to the interior of the ship, where in his natural disembodied state he could watch several many things all at once. Soon, Q1 joined him, waiting and watching for the strangers they had deposited to wake up, and the events that would transpire soon after.
Approximately five hours later in Sickbay, all of the bio-beds were occupied, and the Chief Medical Officer was starting to pull her hair out. Four of the strangers that had come through that phenomenon, as people were starting to call it, were completely human, normal, and for the moment just asleep. As far as their vibrational sequence, the aspect that Star Fleet found most easiest to discover people or items from alternate dimensions or realities, and how to tell which universe specifically they came from, they were completely normal. As far as she or anybody really could tell, they were from this reality.
The other two though, two males, one with brown blond highlighted tips hair and the other with completely bleached blond hair, both things long thought of being in the ancient past, were dead. Well, not really. As far as the average medic could discern they would be. No respiratory activity, no circulative activity whatsoever, and their bodies were colder than space to the touch. But they did have brain activity. That's what confused the hell out of her. How could somebody, anybody human have one without the other? If it weren't so damn frustrating, it would be the greatest discovery in Star Fleet Medical history since the hypo-spray.
The final straw in her bad day of all bad days was Data. Apparently some power overload had destroyed half his quarters, and when he went to check it out, another power surge had occurred and apparently he was caught up in it himself. As far as both she and Geordi could determine, Data was fully operational. Nothing was wrong with any of his systems; all of his parts were completely intact and in perfect working order. He just wasn't on.
Geordi was checking his power management system and his power source right now, while the good Doctor went back and forth between all of her new patients. They had been naked when they came out of the phenomenon, so the medical staff had just put them in the standard blue pajama like wear that all patients of the Sickbay wore when they became a resident.
It was when Beverly was checking on the young red-haired girl that any change since the strangers had come in, began to happen. The blond young woman in the bio-bed next to the redhead began to wake up, as was obvious from the readout of her brain waves above her head. Yet from her body, one couldn't tell if she was alive, asleep, or completely awake with her eyes closed.
Buffy was awake. She just had no idea where she was, who she was, or for that matter what was going on. But she was awake. And ironically the first thought she had when she awoke was 'I'm hungry.'
Her next thought led to her first reaction. 'Where am I? Where can I get food? And come to think of it…who am I?' The next realization was that she had amnesia and that she was in a hospital. And for some strange reason she did not really remember, she did not like hospitals.
"Aaaahhh!!!" Buffy sat up screaming at the top of her lungs.
Beverly, startled out of her wits, jumped and then turned around to the blond and put her hands on her shoulders, trying to comfort the obviously scared and traumatized girl. "It's all right, it's all right!" she kept repeating, trying to get the girl to calm down enough to listen to her. Buffy stopped screaming but the look in her eyes, like a scared animal, and the way they kept looking around, told the Doctor that she was still in shock. She needed to get the girl calm.
Turning to her head nurse, "Alyssa, get me 2cc's morphine!" Then she turned her attention back to the struggling young woman. "Calm down, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right, you're safe now. Calm down!" the Doctor soothed in a gentle voice.
Suddenly, Buffy, entirely on instinct, locked on to whatever was holding her. The woman in front of her. Without even thinking, Buffy just grabbed the woman, and flung her back away from her like she was little more than a scarecrow.
Beverly, along with the rest of her medical staff, were amazed at the strength the small girl had. And all of the readings said she was human, but no human could throw another across a room like the blond just did the red haired doctor. No one however was more surprised than the young woman who did it.
Once she was no longer being restrained, Buffy stood up and got control of her emotions and instincts. She knew that, given her size and the Doctor's, she should not have been able to do that. About a second after Buffy was on her feet though, no less than six men in gray and black uniforms with yellow collars were covering her, each one holding a strange gray pistol-like weapon. Buffy backed up some, gulping and thought of raising her hands in surrender. But judging by the tense atmosphere in the room, not to mention how these guys looked like they were on a hair trigger, Buffy determined that the best coarse of action was to remain completely still.
On the other side of the room, Beverly was getting up from the floor, with help from a couple of nurses. When she saw her patient, still scared out of her mind, surrounded by the Security officers that the Captain had assigned to watch them, she immediately went into what her son sometimes called "Mother mode".
"Stop! Get away from her!" she ordered as loud as she could. Moving forward and forcefully moving the Security officers away from her patient, she continued, "Leave her alone. It was a reflex. She's scared and confused, and I will NOT have you terrorizing my patients! Now get back to your posts!" she ordered.
Turning to Buffy, Beverly smiled as gently as she could, waiting for Buffy's reaction. Buffy continued to watch the guards for a few more moments, and then turned her full attention to the woman that had probably just saved her life. Then she suddenly made the connection that this was the woman she had just thrown across the room. Her eyes were suddenly filled with a tearing concern and her expression conveyed all the guilt she felt over her actions.
"Oh my god! Are you ok? I'm-I'm so sorry," Buffy apologized. "I-I-I didn't even think, I'm so, so, so sorry. Are you ok? Are you hurt? I'm so sorry!"
Beverly smiled, knowing instantly that this young woman truly was sorry for her instinctive reaction. The Doctor took a couple more cautious steps towards the traumatized woman, being careful not to scare her too much and tried to allay her fears. "I'm fine. But right now we're more concerned about you. Are you feeling all right? Any pains, or discomfort, or problems moving or anything?"
Buffy blinked. She had not expected that kind of answer to her questions of if she had injured this kind woman. Judging by the blue jacket, and the blue collar that most of the people working in the room were wearing, she judged the woman to be the doctor in charge here. The ones with the yellow collars were obviously some kind of guards or security people. She also noted that everybody was wearing the same black and gray uniforms, except for herself and the few others on the beds, who were wearing blue silkish pajamas as far as she could tell.
"Uh…" Buffy couldn't think of a proper response to the Doctor's question. Physically she felt fine, she just couldn't remember a thing as far as who she was or where she came from, how she got here…stuff like that. Apparently she could understand speech, and understood a few basic things like doctors, hospitals, and general "world" stuff. She just couldn't remember anything about herself.
When the oriental looking nurse came up to the red haired doctor and handed her some gray tube thing and said, "Here you are Doctor," Buffy suspected it to be some kind of tranquilizer or something. Immediately she came to her answer, "I'm fine. I was just startled, I think. Uh, no pains or anything. No broken bones either as far as I can tell."
Beverly nodded and handed the gray tube back to the nurse. "Thank you Alyssa. Watch the other patients for any change." At that Buffy noticed once again that she wasn't the only one on the beds. On the bed right in front of her was an elfin redhead that for some reason she felt an immediate affinity for, like she was her best friend or something like that. For all she knew, she probably was.
When Buffy looked up again, Beverly was noticeably closer. Buffy blinked in surprise, but didn't really react in any other way. Beverly spoke in a gentle voice, one that she often reserved for her more disturbed patients. "Are you all right? Physically I'm sure you're fine…but are you all right?"
Buffy just shook her head, still looking at the girl on the bed. "I can't remember anything."
"What?"
"I can't…remember anything," Buffy repeated.
"What do you mean, "anything"?" Beverly asked for details.
Buffy shrugged, trying to remember the specific word. "I, I don't know who I am. I don't know how I got here, hell, I don't even know where I am."
"You're on board the Enterprise, in Sickbay. It's a starship with Star Fleet. We were passing through an empty sector of space when some kind of phenomenon deposited you six in our Engineering room." Beverly explained all that she knew about it helping Buffy to sit back on the Bio-bed.
Buffy shrugged. "Well, that answers one question," she muttered. "Sickbay? That some kind of hospital?"
Beverly smiled warmly and nodded. "Something like that." She picked up a nearby medical Tricorder and began running a new set of scans on the blonde, now that she was awake.
"And what's a starship? And Star Fleet? Enterprise sounds familiar though. Wasn't it some kind of space shuttle?" Buffy started asking question after question.
Beverly didn't really answer the girl's questions, but she certainly answered some of hers. Apparently the strangers were from the past, not knowing about starships, or Star Fleet, and confusing the Enterprise with the early NASA space shuttle that had the same name. But the Doctor's scans were all coming back negative. No chronoton particles anywhere in her body, and the only neutrinos present were all still in Engineering. As far as any scans could tell, this girl and her friends had always been in this universe, in this time, and human too. But if they were from Earth's past, how the hell did they get all the way out here?
"What's your name?" the girl suddenly asked.
Beverly drew her attention away from her work for the moment and smiled, answering, "Beverly. Beverly Crusher. I'm the Chief Medical Officer on board. Can you remember your name?"
Buffy shook her head. "Total blank. I mean, I obviously remember and know general 'world' stuff…but I can't remember anything about…about me."
Beverly nodded, understanding the frustration some herself. "Don't worry. I'm sure it'll come back to you." She assured. She finished with her scans and put the Tricorder away. Just as she was turning back to her guest to continue their conversation however, the Bio-bed next to them began to beep that the young red haired woman was about to wake up as well.
The young woman groaned a little as she came out of unconsciousness. This elided an immediate reaction out of Buffy that was more instinctual than anything else. Jumping off the bed she was sitting on, she was beside the girl in an instant shouting, "Wills!"
Groaning a little more as she came around, Willow slowly opened her eyes and said the first thing on her mind, which also happened to be the first thing that she saw. "Buffy?"
Buffy stood up, surprised. Looking over her shoulder at Beverly, "I guess that's my name."
Beverly smiled. She put her hand on Buffy's shoulder, pulling her back some gently, "It's going to be all right. Just give her some room to breathe." Buffy nodded and backed up.
Slowly Willow sat up and tried looking around. She was confused by just about everything else, but when she focused on the short blonde, she immediately perked up and repeated her first thought, "Buffy! What happened? Where are we?"
Buffy just shrugged and turned to Beverly. Taking this as cue, Beverly repeated her answer to Buffy, "You're all on the Enterprise, it's a starship traveling through space. You're in our Sickbay, sort of our onboard hospital as it is. My name is Beverly Crusher, I'm the Chief Medical Officer. Do you remember your name?"
Willow glazed over for a couple of seconds and then jerked her head in shock. Blinking, "I-I, I can't…remember. But I know your name. We're friends. I know it!" Willow insisted looking at Buffy. Buffy, at hearing her admission was surprised to find that she felt the same way, and even knew the girls name, now that she had shouted it out loud.
"Your name is Willow. I don't know how I know that, but I get the sense that we're friends too. What happened to us?" she asked Beverly.
"That's what we'd like to know," Beverly muttered, taking the Tricorder to scan Willow. "Willow, are you feeling all right? No discomfort or pains or anything wrong?"
"What's wrong with Willow now?" a male voice called out.
Everybody turned and saw that it was the white dark haired young man, but Willow answered before she turned around, or even before she realized she was speaking. "I'm fine Xander," she answered. When she realized what she'd done, again, she turned around with just as much shock as the others shared.
Groaning as he sat up, he glanced around the room, and when he didn't recognize neither the place nor the people there, he just froze for several seconds. When he had processed it all, he finally turned to the two people he felt in his heart he did know and asked them, "OK, I get the feeling were not in Kansas anymore Dorothy, so…what's going on?"
Buffy looked confused for a second, while Willow just rolled her eyes. "I thought my name was Buffy, not Dorothy?" she asked for clarification.
When he heard that, Xander turned around so he was sitting on the bed, with his legs hanging off, and not lying on it and rolled his own eyes. "It's just an expression Buff. Now, what's wrong with Will? Because I distinctly remember hearing just now that something was wrong with Will." His voice conveyed an amount of concern that said he was also considered a friend.
Willow repeated herself, "I'm fine Xander. And I guess my name really is Willow."
Feigning shock, Xander sarcastically remarked, "No, your name is Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. Ofcourse your name is Willow. Just like mine is Xander, and Buff is Buff."
"Fy," Buffy added.
"Huh?"
Willow answered for her. "Buf-fy. Her name is Buffy, not just Buff. And we've all kind of woken up with a sort of Amnesia. So far, you're the only one to remember the most about who we all are. I don't suppose you recognize the other people lying around, do you?"
Looking at the other bodies present on the other Bio-beds, Xander was both surprised and not so surprised to find that he could click a name with each face. But when he tried to add in the memories of how they all met, or what they were doing before they got here…total blank.
"Um, yeah. Bleach boy there is Spike. I don't think I like him. The other girl, her name is…Cordelia. Cordelia Chase I think. And the other guy is Dead boy."
Quirking an eyebrow, Buffy asked, "Dead Boy?"
Shrugging and looking chastened, Xander amended his observation and restated, "OK, sorry, his name is Angel. But for some reason, I like calling him Dead Boy."
Looking around at everybody and the room, Willow finally commented after a moments silence, "Wow, we got really weird names, huh?"
"What do you mean?" Xander asked.
"Oh come on," Buffy answered for the redhead. "Buffy, Willow, Xander, Spike, Angel, and Cordelia? Not exactly common everyday names, like Betty, Jane, Joe, Will, Bill, etc. Get what I, uh we mean?" Willow smiled at the addition.
Scrunching his face in thought, Xander finally nodded, conceding the point. "Yeah, I see what ya mean. But…where are we?" he asked in a whisper. The three women smiled at him and Beverly repeated her answer, and then asked him if he was feeling any pains or discomforts. He replied to the negative.
Xander then moved over to where the other conscious strangers were standing, if only to be close to other people. "So, uhm what do we do now?" he asked. At Buffy and Willow's confused stares, he continued. "I mean, obviously we came through that phenomenon for some reason. And if we can't remember what it was, then…" The two girls nodded, understanding.
Fortunately, Beverly came to the rescue. "Don't worry too much. I'm sure that your memories will come back on their own. And this isn't the first case of amnesia that I've cured I'll have you know. If you'd be willing to take the risk, there's a procedure where I can sort of jumpstart your neural interface. It's not something I'd suggest trying immediately, but if your memories don't return within a month, then I guess we could try it."
"Are…are you suggesting surgery?" Buffy asked, suddenly sounding and feeling very afraid.
Beverly, noting the change, nodded and answered, "In a way. It's completely non-invasive and I'm very good at my work. But like I said, it's not something to consider just yet. Your memories will more than likely return on their own."
Buffy nodded, slightly comforted by the sentiment, but still she felt very apprehensive about the subject. Enough that she felt the need to voice her fear. "I-I don't know why, but-but the thought of…surgery. I don't know. It just gives me…a very bad feeling."
Feeling sympathy for her patient, Beverly placed her hand gently on the blonde's shoulder and tried to convey as much of that sympathy for her as was possible. Buffy nodded in thanks.
"Well, like I said, it's only if you feel the procedure would be absolutely necessary, and I just thought you would want to be aware of all the options. And it's even more likely, that as you go on you'll regain your memories naturally." Beverly explained.
All of them took a deep sigh of relief when they understood what the doctor was suggesting. At that moment, another of the strangers decided to wake up. The girl with neck-length brown hair with blond highlights. Moaning as she sat up, slowly, Cordelia took one look around the room before focusing on the dark haired gentleman still laying on one of the beds.
"Angel!" she shouted and ran over to him. She started to check for a pulse and what not before she stood straight and slapped her forehead. "Oh, duh, you don't have a pulse and you don't breath," she muttered to herself. "Angel! Angel!" she tried shouting in his ear. It did the trick as the next moment Angel too was moaning and muttering, "All right, all right! I'm awake Cordy!"
"Oh thank god," the young woman said in relief as she helped the vampire to a sitting position.
"Hey Cordy," Xander then greeted. "Hey Deadboy."
Looking up in surprise, the two turned to stare at the quartet or Buffy, Willow, Xander, and the doctor. "Xander," they both responded quietly.
"What's with the 'Deadboy' stuff Xander? I thought you said his name was Angel, and from the way that…uh, Cordelia?, woke up I'd say that it is Angel, not Deadboy. So what's with the Deadboy stuff?" Buffy asked.
"Like I said, I just like calling him that," Xander responded after some thought.
Angel, now upright and standing, came over with Cordelia to stand by the congregating group. So it would only be natural for Spike to wake up then. But his wake up call came a bit different than for the others.
Rolling over, and yawning a bit, (however unnecessarily) Spike found himself in the next instant on the floor with pain running over his body. These beds weren't made for a lot of toss and turn. Pushing himself to his knees, Spike cursed, "Bloody Hell!"
"Here we go," Xander muttered to himself, before realizing that he was probably the only one that remembered what Spike was like.
Slowly getting to his knees, and then his feet, Spike was cursing every second that he could as he worked his body, finding it fully, more or less, functional. Then he took a look around. As soon as his eyes laid on Buffy, his mouth started spewing words before he even realized he was talking.
"Hey Slayer. Nice jammies" he snickered. "What is this, some kind of white hat slumber party?" Then he kept turning and saw Angel and Cordelia. "Oh bloody hell! That's all I need, the great Poof to ruin my day, and life, once again!"
"Um…dude? Uh, Spike? Right?" Buffy started, turning to Xander for confirmation. He nodded. "We've all kind of lost most of our memories. And I don't think the nice guards with their gun-thingies appreciate your swearing. And my name is Buffy. Or so I'm told."
"Right Slayer and I'm…" Spike didn't finish talking as he turned and saw the security team eyeing him like a lion sizing up a gazelle. Gulping, Spike nodded and put his hands up in the universal sign of peace and "I give up!" Then he backed up and sat down on the bio-bed he had just fallen off of.
"I told you, my name is Buffy!" the self-acclaimed shouted.
"Right Slayer," Spike said absently, still staring fearfully at the guards. Buffy's face then contorted in a mask of rage that the Doctor couldn't imagine ever being on the small young woman's face ever.
Surprising everyone, by how quickly she did it just as much as what she did, Buffy jumped over the three bio-beds separating her and Spike, kicked him in the back while mid-flight, which forced him off his and into the next bio-bed, possibly causing internal damage, before landing where he had been standing less than a second ago. Not letting up on him for a second, Buffy grabbed him by the back of his neck, slammed him with all her might head first onto the bed three times before twisting him around and slamming him back, hard, against the wall. She then took him by the neck and lifted until his feet were no longer on the ground.
"I said," her voice deathly quiet, "My name is Buffy!" she ended in a shout.
Fear evident in his eyes, Spike hesitantly moved his restrained head up and down a couple times. Then in a voice that was normal, which should have been choked, he apologized, "I-I-I'm sorry…Buffy. It-it was a reflex. I swear! It'll never happen again, I promise!"
Buffy squinted her eyes in mistrust, but slowly let him down and released him.
"Lucky thing we're in a hospital," she commented, backing up. Only when she turned around did she realize that the two had been surrounded by the security guards the second that she had him up against the wall.
Gulping, Buffy immediately copied Spike's earlier motion of raising her hands.
Beverly, seeing the situation needed to be diffused now, quickly walked over with her medical Tricorder, planning on helping Spike with whatever possible injuries he had developed from the provoked attack. "Stand down!" the doctor ordered. The officers obeyed, holstering their phasers, but they stayed nearby rather than returning to their posts.
The doctor stepped closer, looking Buffy in the eye as she asked, "Buffy, are you in control now?" Buffy nodded, looking more embarrassed than anything else. "Yeah. Look, I'm sorry. I lost my temper. He just pissed me off so much…!" She paused, then grinned and turned to Xander. "I guess I don't like him much either, huh?" He returned the gentle grin.
When Buffy saw that the redhead, Willow, was not standing next to him, she almost panicked, until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning, Buffy saw it was Willow with concern in her eyes. "Are you OK Buffy?" she asked in a timid voice. Buffy nodded.
"Well you're very lucky Mr. Spike," Beverly was saying, "Nothing broken, and as near as I can tell your trachea and vocal cords aren't damaged in any way either. There's just one problem that I can see as far as this scan shows."
"Hey, I didn't kill him!" Buffy protested. "And I wasn't going to. I just didn't like it when he called me that name."
"What? Slayer?" Willow supplied.
Buffy nodded. "I don't know why, but I just didn't like it."
"Oh, as near as I can tell Buffy, you didn't cause this…glitch I'm reading." Beverly allayed once again. She turned back to Spike and blatantly accused, "You aren't breathing!"
Spike snorted and sat back down on the closest bed. "Ofcourse I'm not breathing. I don't breathe! I don't have a pulse either! Wanna check?" Beverly, totally confused by this, just shook her head and stepped back and joined the other strangers. "Bloody git, and the name is Spike, no mister, just Spike!" Spike cursed.
"Be nice Spike," Buffy ordered. "The doctor was just trying to help. You don't have to be all grouchy about it you know!"
"Yeah right Slay-" he cut off as he caught the threatening look she glared his way, as well as the subtle tensing of the surrounding guards. "Buffy." He finished, smiling friendly. He looked at the doctor and repeated, "I'm sorry doctor. I hope you'll accept my sincerest apologies." She nodded in kind.
"See, told you I wasn't gonna kill him. Can't choke someone who can't breathe," Buffy added.
Spike rolled his eyes. "Like you knew!" he accused. "I did so know! I also know that I really don't like you!" "Yeah, well, the feeling is entirely mutual!" "Good!" Buffy stuck her tongue out at him.
A mask of rage, similar to the one Buffy had gotten before she had attacked him, crossed Spike's features. Before anyone could react, let alone warn Buffy, Spike was up and shoved, hard, the blonde woman to the floor. And again, before anybody could do or say a thing, Spike screamed out in unknowing agony, grasping his head and fell to the floor himself.
Beverly was beside him in an instant, wondering if the whole non-breathing thing had become a serious issue. Brain hemorrhaging, seizure, heart attack, cerebral synaptic failure, a dozen scenarios ran through the Chief Medical Officer's mind as she scanned her patient. Yet before she could determine anything, Spike sat up again, not in any pain whatsoever.
"What the bloody hell was that?" he asked, in shock.
Buffy, standing up, looked at him in confusion and mild sympathy. As much as she didn't like the man before her, she had seen what pushing her had done to him, and she didn't want to be the cause to it anymore. "I-I didn't do anything. I swear."
It just so happened that at that moment, the Captain and the Counselor of the Enterprise stepped into Sickbay. Seeing the security guards, he ordered them, "Stand down, and return to your posts." They returned to their various positions around the Sickbay, but none left.
Comfortable with that, Picard then turned to his latest…"guests" would be the proper term he assumed.