Chapter 3:
"Captain," the doctor greeted the CEO neutrally. That one word caught the attention of half the "guests" currently awake. Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, and Xander all cast a single glance at the redhead doctor, the girls staring a little longer. Then they all shared a grin along with the thought, 'The doc likes him.'
"Doctor," the Captain greeted back in the same tone, though his eye held a spark along with it. 'And he knows it,' they all realized, their grins growing some.
The bald white man, with a red collar in his uniform, and more little pieces of metal than anybody else in the room had on theirs, turned to the strangers, noting Spike's position on the floor and how Cordelia was hovering about Angel. After giving them the glance over, he turned back to the doctor and asked in a quieter tone, though they all could still hear him, "How are our 'guests' doing?"
Turning around, and noticing Spike, the doctor helped him to his feet, which he accepted, too stunned to put up an argument, and replied in a conversational tone, "See for yourself. Every one of them is fit. The only problem is that they all have varying cases of amnesia. However, Xander here seems to remember the most, particularly everybody's names."
Xander, who was still standing beside the bed Willow was sitting on once again, grinned and waved casually at the commanding officer. In response the Captain merely nodded with a grin. "And? Have you discovered where they might have come from?"
The Doctor let out a rather long exasperated sigh, as though used to this man asking for the impossible, which he usually did. "No. By every means that I can think of, everything says that these people are from this time, this universe, and might have even been born on this ship! Whatever it was that deposited them in Engineering affected them so that there was no leftover radiation of any sort left in their bodies and that their vibrational sequences are identical to ours. For all I know they could be from the past or the future, but there's no trace of chronometric radiation. I'm sorry Captain."
"That's all right Doctor," the Captain consoled as he turned to the patients.
"I am Captain Jean Luc Picard, commanding officer of the Enterprise. Normally I'd say this before you'd have found your way to Sickbay, but welcome aboard," the Captain introduced himself kindly. Buffy then stepped forward and extended her hand, introducing their group. "Hi Jean, uh, like the Doc said, we kind of don't remember much about anything, but I'm Buffy, Xander," she pointed at each as she introduced them, "and next to him sitting on the bed is Willow. Bleach head here is Spike, and over there is Angel, the guy on the bed, and next to him is Cordelia."
"Hey! I take offense at that remark, Slayer" Spike interrupted.
Buffy lost her smile and turned back to the unaware vampire. The Security officers, and Beverly unconsciously all tensed and Spike just stared back at her. She took three steps to put herself directly in front of, though he was taller, Spike and glared hard at him. With a sincere voice she apologized, "I'm sorry Spike. I apologize for calling you a Bleach head." He smiled thinking himself a victory. Buffy added, "Why don't you spank me, I've been bad. Oops, I forgot, you can't hurt humans, can you?"
Spike scowled and audibly growled, sounding like some wild beast. Buffy just giggled and stepped back grinning.
"Wait a second," Angel suddenly shouted, jumping up on the bed. "Just wait a second here, what is going on here? What's happened and where the hell are we? We aren't in hell are we?"
"Oh, right, Angel and Cordelia haven't heard the story yet," Buffy mumbled, turning to Beverly.
The Medical Officer grinned at the young blonde and turned to the pair on the far bio-bed. "My apologies. My name is Doctor Beverly Crusher. I'm the chief medical officer, and this rather intimidating gentleman," several of the nurses and the Counselor chuckled slightly, "Is the Commanding Officer, as he introduced Captain Jean Luc Picard. You are currently in our Sickbay; it's sort of out onboard hospital. You're on a starship, in a rather remote region of space."
The three that had awoken since the information had last been spoken all shared a look with the others of their group. "Great, that's real great, who are the rest of you people?" Angel spoke confused.
Stares and glares were passed back and forth between just about everybody in the room, but Cordelia put a stop to it by slamming the flat of her hand against the back of the man's skull. "Owww!" Angel yelled as Cordelia's hand connected with the back of his head.
"Angel, I swear, sometimes you can be so stupid," Cordelia put down as she stood next to him.
Angel turned and glared at her. "And I suppose that you know Cordy?"
"Ofcourse I do," Cordelia answered automatically, trying not to look anybody in the eye.
Everybody in the room, guests, the Doctor, the Captain, the Counselor, and even the nurses and security officers glared at her, not for a second believing that she was anything but lying. "Yuh hunh," Buffy grunted.
Buffy came over to Angel, making sure the Doctor was with her, planning to explain what little they had figured out so far. What nobody could have expected was for Angel's eyes to go glassy the moment they rested on Buffy and for him to get a sort of semi-sappy look on his face as he breathed out, "Buffy"
"Yeah, and you're Angel. Xander fortunately remembered everyone's names. How about you, do you remember much, besides names that is?" Buffy asked.
Sitting down and furrowing his brow in concentration, Angel sat still for several moments before looking up and into the blond's hazel eyes. "I'm sorry. I…I don't really remember anything. I thought…I thought that I was remembering something…or maybe someone when I saw you…but now…nothing. I'm sorry."
"It's all right," the Doctor comforted. "As I've told Buffy and the others, I expect your memories to come back on their own. Don't force anything, just let it come on its own."
Angel turned to the latest arrivals, Captain Picard and Counselor Troi. "Do I know you?" he asked the three officers, genuinely curious. Deanna, sensing that this was her area of expertise, stepped forward with a gentle smile on her face. "No. But these other people arrived with you out of the…portal in Engineering, and a few of them even know your name. Don't worry though, we'll do everything we can to help you." The Counselor promised.
Angel just nodded, while they all, except Spike, felt a measure of relief and trust in them.
Jean-Luc finally, after an hour or so more of question and answer, managed to drag the Doctor away from her latest charges long enough to actually ask about them. "Well Doctor? Aside from the obvious, what can you tell me?"
Beverly resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her superior officer. "I'm sorry to say Captain, that the obvious is all I know at this point in time. An hour ago I was ready to ship Angel and Spike off to the morgue, except I kept detecting brain activity. We spent I don't know how long trying to revive them, and all that did was the same as if I were doing it to a real corpse. Finally, since their brain functions weren't anywhere near the danger zone, I just let them wait in here with their "friends" planning that at the very least they could identify them when they woke up, or could at least tell me how to properly resuscitate their vitals. And instead, they wake up just like the rest of them."
"What I find strange is the level of amnesia they all have. Xander and Cordelia's seem to be the least, while Buffy and Angels' the worst. And then there was what Buffy did…"
"What exactly did happen Doctor?" he asked, seeing that whatever the blond girl had done, it confused the hell out of Beverly.
The auburn haired doctor shrugged her shoulders. She told him of when Buffy just woke up and then the fight with Spike just before he had come in. "When she first woke up, she was scared, as anybody would be if they woke up in a completely unfamiliar place with nobody you knew around you. She started to panic; I tried to calm her down. Then, while she was still lying on the bio-bed, she threw me completely across the room! I managed to calm the guards after that, enough for Buffy herself to calm down as well. Then there was a tiny incident with Spike just before you came in."
"What kind of…incident?" Jean-Luc couldn't stop himself from asking.
Looking rather sheepish, Beverly sighed as she explained, "Spike had just woken up, not too comfortably I might add. He ended up rolling off the bed. Then he kept calling Buffy… "Slayer" and she was very adamant that she wanted to be called nothing but Buffy. When he persisted, she literally leaped over the four bio-beds separating them, knocks him into the next bed, and lifts him up off the ground by a chokehold around his neck! Amazingly enough, Spike wasn't hurt, except his pride ofcourse."
"Doctor, are you positive?" the Captain asked skeptically. "What you're saying that…girl was doing is completely impossible. No human could jump that far with such little maneuvering space, and she's smaller than even Deanna. She couldn't be strong enough to throw anybody, let alone a taller and physically larger woman across a room."
"That's what I mean!" Beverly insisted. Curious, Jean-Luc asked her to continue with his expression. "Jean-Luc, this girl has obviously been the result of some major genetic manipulation. But I never heard of the Daystrom Institute being able to enhance anybody the way this girl has been. Which leaves me with very few other options. Maybe if I can find out exactly what was done to her, and what keeps Angel and Spike, relatively, alive, then maybe I can find out where they come from. Get some answers for this latest mystery."
Jean-Luc was the model of tense making a tough decision before he finally nodded. "Find out what you can, Doctor. I heard that Buffy isn't too fond of hospitals or surgery though, so keep that in mind when you're doing your scans. And ofcourse, don't force them if they don't want to. I won't violate anyone's personal rights just to get an answer to a mystery that hopefully does not involve danger to my ship."
"Ofcourse Captain," Beverly added automatically, just as appalled as he was of the thought of violating anyone's personal rights just to run a simple scan. Buffy's fears she also kept in mind.
Meanwhile, over by the patients, Deanna was introducing herself to the new arrivals. "How are you all feeling? Besides annoyed," Deanna asked, looking pointedly at Spike, who was grouching in a corner.
"I feel fine, confused, curious, but fine," Willow answered the exotic dark-haired woman.
"I'm much better now that you're here," Xander answered, a goofy grin on his face.
Cordelia and Buffy both snorted and rolled their eyes at his obvious line. Deanna just smiled and winked at him. Xander sat down with a thud, his brain short-circuiting. Buffy noticed this, but Cordelia was still preoccupied with annoying Angel.
"Are you sure you're fine Angel, I mean if you need me to warm up some pig's blood for you…" she was saying.
Angel kept trying to shrug off the girl's affections, but her recent statement froze him on his spot, as well as shocked a couple of the others within range of her voice. "Wh-what? Why would I want pig's blood?" Angel stuttered, a frightened look in his eyes. He was afraid the girl that attached herself to his arm was quite legally insane.
"Well duh!" Cordelia exclaimed rather loudly. "You're a vampire! What else would you eat? Other than human's blood, but that would mean that you would have to attack somebody to get their blood, and you aren't like that anymore since you got your soul and all and…"
"What's a vampire?" both Buffy and Angel asked, interrupting the brunette.
Cordelia and Xander looked up and glared at their respective counterparts, (Cordy's on 'Angel' and Xander's on 'BtVS'), and mirrored one another's face of confusion. Fortunately, they were saved from any embarrassing stuttering or confusing statements, by Spike who did it for them.
"Oh come on!" he exclaimed.
Deanna decided to interrupt before anybody lost his or her temper again. "Now I'm sure that…"
It was not to be as Spike interrupted her, "You, you bloody poof, are a vampire. And so am I! I'm the Big Bad, I'm EVIL! And like the git said, you've got your bleedin' soul so you've been on the "good guys" side for over a hundred years now. We drink blood mate, we're allergic to sunlight in the sense that we burst into flame, and as an added bonus we can go all 'Grrrrr'!" And with that, his facial features shifted to something that might at some point be described as "demonic".
His forehead had stooped forward some, the eyebrows disappearing, and ridges all along it to increase in the ugliness factor. His teeth became noticeably sharper, and his lips withdrawn to easily display them. His eyes shifted to an inhuman yellow that glowed with malcontent, and the entire package made him look like some primitive version of a human evolution that was more animal than human. Most of the people looking at him as he changed his face jumped back in fear.
Buffy's eyes widened as she felt a tremble of familiarity in the back of her mind with the face she was staring at. It was a face that both scared, and deeply annoyed her. It was the source of many nightmares and far many more scream filled nights.
Deanna's attention suddenly shifted fully to Buffy. She felt an unparalleled fear beginning to take shape in the girl's mind. If she wasn't frozen with shock staring at Spike's new face, Deanna imagined that she might actually be on the floor screaming in terror.
"Buffy?" she tentatively approached the blond and placed her hand on the youth's shoulder.
The moment that tactile contact was achieved, both Slayer and Empath felt something. The Counselor knew almost instinctually what it was, being half-betazoid, a telepathic species. Buffy couldn't even begin to fathom what was happening, but still… A memory of something similar once. But it was connected to great pain. A great deal of pain.
A psychic link had formed between the two strangers. Buffy didn't know what to do, she was so scared and emotionally tense. Deanna tried to reach the other woman's mind, but Buffy wasn't listening to her, or didn't know how to listen.
'Buffy! Buffy! You have to calm down!' Deanna kept urging through the new link that was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. It was primal, instinctual, and a force of such power that Deanna, had it not been for her experience in these types of situations before, would have been overwhelmed that she'd have gone insane.
Buffy was silent. She kept hearing things and seeing stranger things, none of it with her eyes or ears though. Yet one voice kept breaking through. 'Buffy! Buffy!' it sounded like three different voices fused into one. Two female, one male. The male aspect sounded more…proper. English, she realized. He had an English accent, not too unlike Captain Picard. The two female voices were nothing like each other. One…one was panicked, but unaccented and possibly deeper than the other. That other sounded remarkably like Counselor Troi.
'What's happening to me?' Buffy asked the voice. She got three different answers from the voices.
'You're the Slayer, the Chosen One,' the male voice answered.
'Buffy, you've got to take care of your sister,' the first female voice answered.
'Buffy! It's a psychic link, you have to calm down. I can help you!' the Counselor's voice answered.
'What? I-I don't understand…' Buffy responded. Again the three voices gave her different answers.
'You are the Slayer, it is your destiny,'
'Buffy, I love you, but…sometimes I don't understand you,'
'I don't understand it either Buffy, but right now it is vital that you calm down,'
Buffy was confused. But something the first voice said to her struck a deep chord of memory in her heart. 'Destiny…?' she asked it. They all answered again.
'I'm very proud of you Buffy,'
'Promise me, if anything happens to me, you'll take care of your sister!'
'Destiny? Buffy, what are you talking about, what's happening?'
This time Buffy answered the second voice in her mind, 'Sister? I…I have a sister? But why don't I remember her?'
'We can never tell her she is the Key,'
'I know she's not my flesh Buffy, but I know, I know, that she is my little girl. You have to protect her!'
'Sister! Buffy, you're not making any sense! Is Willow your sister?'
This time, before Buffy could respond, the other two voices answered the third voice.
'Glory must never get the Key,'
'If you walk out of this house, don't you ever come back again, do you hear me?'
'Buffy? Can you hear me? Buffy, please?'
All of a sudden, both Buffy and Deanna were assaulted with images that neither understood. An older gentleman dressed in rather stiff looking clothes made mostly of tweed. The next was of a pale sickly looking woman lying in a hospital bed with her head bandaged, then the same woman lying dead on a couch, her eyes glassy open. The final image was of a youthful teenage girl, approximately fifteen years old, with long dirty blond hair that reached past her shoulders. Her eyes were a strange, almost ethereal green color than neither woman could identify. Then it all ended when Buffy opened her eyes.
'What the hell just happened?' Buffy thought to herself, but Deanna still heard it.
'I'm not sure. When I touched you, somehow a psychic link formed and then you started muttering about different things. Then we…I saw strange images of people. Were those people you knew?' Deanna asked telepathically.
'I…I'm not sure. I think so. I remember hearing voices. Three of them. I think the man in tweed, then the woman, and your voice. All exactly as I'm hearing yours now. What's happening Deanna?' Buffy asked, her fear starting to rise again.
'It's going to be all right Buffy, just stay calm,' the Counselor tried to assuage. 'I think one of your memories just unlocked. I'm a Betazoid Buffy, well a half-betazoid. Betazoids are a telepathic species, that means that we have the power to communicate with our thoughts just as easily, and sometimes easier, than with words. But I'm curious as to how you managed to form this link.'
Buffy decided that she'd had enough of the thought-speak for a time and moved from the gentle hand Troi had on her shoulder. "I don't know," she answered verbally.
"It's all right Buffy," Deanna comforted. "Why don't you sit down, I think you need to rest for a minute or so."
"What, get yourself worked up over seein' me like this, huh Slayer?" Spike asked, his vampire face still on.
Buffy shot a glare of star plasma at the bleached blond before taking a seat on the bed next to Willow. The Counselor, seeing that Buffy was no longer panicking, and in fact was much calmer next to Willow, went over to the Captain and Beverly, who had looked over at Spike's outburst.
"What is it Counselor?" Jean-Luc asked as the raven beauty came over.
"I'm not entirely sure Captain," she began, still a little off-balance from her encounter with Buffy. "And you may not believe this, but Buffy is a telepath. Well, she may not be a full telepath, but when I touched her, a psychic link formed between us, and a memory unlocked while we were connected."
"Are you sure?" both Doctor and Captain asked at the same instant. Deanna just nodded.
"Are you all right Counselor?" the Captain asked.
She nodded and took a deep breath. "Yes I'm fine, it was just a bit overwhelming. Buffy's abilities, whatever they may be or whatever her potential may turn out to be, are extremely untamed. The raw force of her thoughts and her powers reaching out were more instinctual, almost primal, than anything else I've ever experienced. It's not the amount of power she has or uses, just the nature of it. I may be able to help her fully understand it, but only with a great deal of work, and ofcourse with her help. I'll ask her later. Right now I think they're all just really anxious to get their memories back and find out where they came from. Though none of them hold a sense of urgency about anything."
"Well that's good I suppose," Beverly put in, "It means that there's nothing so important for them to be doing that they would unconsciously feel a need to do it."
"There's something else. While Buffy was trying to orient herself, she said that she heard two other thought-voices other than my own. She also said something about a sister. Could…"
"No," Beverly put down right away, "I already checked their DNA when they came in. None of them are related to one another. At least not biologically. But…maybe they were raised as brothers and sisters? Adopted by one parent?"
"I'm not sure. I…I did see images of a man and woman. And a girl. About fifteen. She might have been what Buffy and the voices were talking about. I'll see if I can get the computer to recreate the faces of the people I saw in Buffy's mind. She might be able to fill in any gaps and it might jog some memories," Deanna suggested.
The Captain immediately nodded his head. "Get on it Counselor. As with our guests, I'd like some answers as soon as possible. In the meantime, Doctor, do you thinks it's safe to release them to their quarters?"
"Of course Captain, though I'd like to keep Angel and Spike here a bit longer, see if I can fully determine differences in their bodies to ours." Beverly answered.
The Captain nodded and started to turn towards the door. "Make it so," and he left.
TBC…