Ensign Saka looked around. He was on the Bridge of the Euphedes. The crew and nearly a thousand others were crowded here and elsewhere on the ship, the internal sensors told him. He stepped down from behind the Security console, everyone was dazed from their ordeal. He knew why: they had witnessed a miracle, they had been running on a bridge that materialized in front of them as they went and disappeared behind them, breathing in the black void of space, and suddenly they were back here.
Everyone was in a state of shock, most staring at nothing or marveling at the sight of their own hands; no one had noticed Miral lying on the floor.
"Medic! Medic!" Saka called as he saw her.
This brought some people around them back into the present. Three men stepped forward, one had a tri-corder. It was not a medical tri-corder but it gave him enough readings to know that she was in synaptic shock. They rushed her to Sick Bay.
Miral was beamed into the medical surgery bed where the Doctor was waiting for her. He had trouble moving around, since his Bay was crowded with nearly forty people of varying species, most humbled by their recent experience but wounded one way or another from their ordeal. The only other unconscious person on a bed was Q2.
Miral was immediately integrated into the life support system. The Doctor didn't want to operate but he might have to, if he didn't work quickly. He tried to ask a few people for help, but they weren't responding. He didn't know what had happened, the last thing he knew before being forced into cybernetic oblivion, was the ship was being hurdled into a subspace rift and the ships resources were being drained.
He needed someone, there was a Klingon. The Doctor grabbed him by the arms and shock once, forcefully, and called help her in his best Klingon.
The Klingon turned his head very slowly and, seeing Miral, nodded his head. He mumbled something, "She saved us."
The Doctor was moving quickly, he had a cordical stimulator. "Twenty millijoules." he called to the Klingon. One zap shook through her body but the Doctor couldn't detect any change. He didn't want to increase the voltage, he knew how sensitive her physiology was. "Again." he called. Another zap and then ... a beep, symbolizing the return of normal brain activity. The Doctor, although not being human, let out a sigh of relief.
The beeping increased in frequency, to the point where it was a constant ringing. Miral's eyes shot open as she sat bolt upright. The Doctor had never encountered anything like this in all of his database. In a kind of panic, he shot a hypospray of sedative into her neck and laid her back down. Her synaptic function slowed. The Doctor went back to his other patients.
B'Elanna and Tom stood quietly over the Sick Bay bed where their daughter lay sedated. They were worried, remembering all the times her inexpicable ability to understand and control energy had scared them before, but the Doctor had said she would be all right. They waited while he performed a few last scans and finally gave her the hypospray to wake up.
She slowly began to move and blink her eyes open, once, then twice, then they stayed open. She squinted, trying to focus on something.
"Who are you?" she said, after a moment.
"What?" said Tom, more out of shock and indignation than the wheezing tone she used.
"Dad?" she said.
She was very different. He nodded in response.
"I can't see." she explained, "Or rather, I can, I think."
"I don't understand." said B'Elanna tenatively.
"It looks like everyone described it." she said, sitting up and pausing a moment to look around, "It's still, nothing's moving. One thing is one colour. It's boring."
"I guess it must be." Tom forced out a laugh. "How are you feeling, Miral?"
"My body aches and it feels like my head is on fire."
"A lot of people are talking."
"Oh, yeah?"
"What you did was amazing, I just want you to be prepared for some of the reactions."
"It was amazing."
"Really?" Tom smiled at his little girl, "How so?"
"Those particles, they're so much more than anything in this space. They have a kind of consciousness of their own. It was like a realm made of Q."
"The Q's realm, to be precise." said a loud sarcastic voice from behind. "You see," continued the basso voice of the elder Q they were familiar with, "you had the unfortunate luck to drop into the sacred quadrant, home of the Q and the Gobi. Oh, you were lucky, I managed to pull you out, all of you and there were quite a few, as this lovely young lady," he pinched Miral's cheek, "nearly collapsed and killed you all." He let out a boistrous authoritative laugh. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must look in on someone you can't save. But then again, we just don't know anymore what you can and what you can't do." He walked over to Q lying on the bed and, after a moment's contemplation, turned back to Miral and said "We'll be seeing you soon." and snapped his fingers. The two Q were gone.