As the universe settled back around Jonah from the black abyss that had previously enshrouded him he was assailed with the sense of alien. An alien surface under his body, an alien fabric for clothes, alien sounds in his ears, alien smells in his nose. He hovered in the oblivion between darkness and consciousness. He fought up from the dark peace just to fight again.

He remembered Thera and the baby, he remembered intruders.

Jonah heard a high-pitched beep and his eyes flew open. Bright white lights overhead blinded him and he turned his head to the side and focused his gaze on something else. He was isolated, alone, cordoned off with a white sheet falling all around his flimsy bed.

Thera. The baby.

Jonah surged from the narrow bed to land barefoot on a smooth, cold floor. He staggered once on his feet, steadied himself on the alien bed, then moved toward the curtain to search for his lover and his child.

"He's awake," he heard an unfamiliar voice say, and he rallied his senses, his reflexes, to fight. He'd kill them if they so much as touched Thera.

Jonah strode to the sheet blocking his view of his prison and he flung it aside angrily.

Jonah blinked at the room within which they'd trapped him. Cavernous and shades of gray with white and glass and equipment more sophisticated than Jonah had ever seen. It was a monotone affront to his senses, so many details and so many machines. It looked like a science laboratory for experimenting on subjects.

There were people present, humans, and they were staring at him. They were in white but not dreadfully thin white pants and shirt as his were. Theirs were sturdy white robes or coats, cloaks for their experimenting cult.

A woman moved toward him.

Jonah, eyes blazing, advanced a step and she wisely stopped. Large, hulking men in green near the back corners stepped forward, no doubt to beat him into submission, but Jonah didn't care.

Jonah's eyes scanned the room for signs of Thera and the others, the baby, but they weren't in sight. There were more curtained cubicles but he couldn't know who lay beyond.

"You're awake..." the woman said in a non-threatening voice but Jonah would not be tricked.

"Where's Thera?" he demanded. "What did you do with her?"

The woman seemed baffled and Jonah's temper frayed and sparked out of control.

"Where's Thera ! Where is she? If you've hurt her I'll kill you!"

Jonah started to move against the small-stature woman, the goons in the green be damned, when another curtained area rustled with abrupt movement. The sheet slid urgently aside and Carlin jumped out.

"Jonah!" Carlin called out and Jonah stopped his advance and looked over at his friend. The man was dressed as he was, white shirt and pants, obviously a fellow prisoner of the same captors. Carlin didn't look like he'd been hurt, so that was a good sign.

"Where's Thera?" Jonah growled.

Carlin hurried out to intercede in the confrontation and he turned to indicate one of the curtained areas. "She's in there."

Jonah pushed past everyone, shook off questing hands, unstoppable, and flung aside the sheet...

... and he breathed at last. It was Thera.

She was lying quietly, almost frighteningly still, on one of the alien beds. Test equipment was attached to her, feeding into machines, and Jonah felt angry bile rise in his throat.

"Jonah..." Carlin's voice at his shoulder but Jonah didn't listen. He moved over to Thera's bed and his furiously spurred energy stilled as he at first merely watched Thera. He felt a tremendous relief to see her chest moving up and down as she breathed, reassuring him that she really was alive.

Jonah reached out his hand and touched her cheek. It was blissfully warm. Every new detail calmed the rage in him to much more manageable levels.

Jonah bent down over his prone lover and brushed back her hair with one hand. "Thera?" he said softly to her, hoping to see her open her eyes.

Instead she stayed unmoving, sleeping like the dead, so unnaturally still it made Jonah afraid.

Jonah's eyes moved of their own accord to Thera's midsection. Where last he'd seen a taut, rounded, pregnant belly there was now a deflated mass of a stomach, like a baked loaf of bread that had failed to rise. The skin was still stretched to hold the baby, but the baby was gone.

Jonah's hand gently touched her empty womb then he looked down at her arms. The alien scientists' wires were in her, violating her soft skin with their alien obscenities.

Jonah began to pull them out and the machines at the bedside screeched.

"Sir," the small woman's voice protested but Jonah shook her off and with a warning glare to melt the glaciers of the surface directed at her he turned back to his work and tugged and pulled until Thera was free of all their alien audacities. There were pinpricks of blood where he'd taken out the sharp needles and red patches where he'd pulled off sticky pads but she was Thera, all Thera, and not some lab experiment.

The small woman was trying to elbow her way in again. "Sir, you can't do that, we need to monitor her..." she was saying rather explicitly, heedless of Jonah's right to say what happened to Thera while she was unable to decide for herself. The woman moved to reattach one of the devices and Jonah exploded. He whirled on her, grabbed her by the arms, and in no uncertain terms shoved her away from Thera. "Stay away from her!"

The woman stumbled backward and blinked in open surprise at Jonah.

Jonah glanced back at Thera and then skewered the small woman, obviously the leader, with a glare. "Where's the baby?"

This time the woman did not pretend ignorance but she did hesitate in telling him.

Jonah felt fury building. How dare this woman presume to keep him from his child?

"Jonah, just wait," Carlin tried to placate him and the young man was suddenly there at Jonah's side. He touched Jonah's shoulder, braved more than he could imagine by daring to try and intercede when Jonah's child could be in danger, and he said to Jonah, "It's all right, the baby's safe. She's okay."

Jonah's death-glare on the woman in white faltered slightly and he looked over at Carlin. "She?"

Carlin nodded and offered a small smile. "It's a girl."

Jonah, aggression tempered, looked back at the woman. She was standing her ground, watching him, but healthy caution was in her eyes and stance. Now that he really studied her outside the fog of hatred she seemed, actually, rather unimposing. Short, light brown hair, soft face and brown eyes. There was nothing inherently sinister about her bearing or appearance. She hardly looked like an evil alien scientist.

"Where's the baby?" he asked, this time more calmly.

The woman responded positively to his control and she nodded her chin toward the other side of the room. "I set up a basket in my office so the noises out here wouldn't wake her."

"Kaegan's with her," Carlin added hastily, and Jonah felt a little knot of tension start to unwind.

Jonah wanted to go see his child, his daughter, but he glanced back at Thera so motionless and vulnerable on the bed. He couldn't leave her to the scientists.

"I'll stay with her," Carlin said, as though reading Jonah's mind.

Jonah nodded his thanks and with a last glance in the woman's direction said unequivocally, "Don't let her near Thera."

The small woman seemed put upon by the order but Carlin promised to keep her at bay and Jonah moved over to the closed door that had to be the woman's office. The nameplate read 'J. Fraiser' and there was nothing decidedly evil in the name, either.

Jonah opened the office door and instant movement inside caught his attention. Kaegan, who'd been sitting in a chair at a paper-strewn desk, had jumped to her feet when the door opened. She, too, had been dressed in the whites of this strange place and it made her skin look that much darker in contrast. When Kaegan saw it was Jonah entering the office she relaxed and quickly thereafter looked pleased to see him.

Jonah's eyes went at once to the plastic tub on the back desk and held there.

Kaegan saw Jonah's intent and stepped aside with a knowing little smile.

Jonah moved across the room to the bin and looked inside. His breath caught and he stared. A tiny baby swaddled in blankets rested inside. A small perfect face burrowed into white blankets and atop its own balled little fists that propped under its cherubic jaw like she was thinking (and being Thera's daughter, she might be, Jonah conceded). Puffy newborn eyes, resolutely closed, and round cheeks punctuated by a tiny little nose and puckered mouth. Her skin, what little was exposed, a hearty pink. There was some manner of cap on her head but it looked safe, like it was cocooning his daughter, keeping her warm. She was making little wet, rasping baby sounds as she breathed, a pint-size symphony all by herself.

Jonah was mesmerized by the tiny little girl, completely spellbound by her presence. There were no ominous wires and tubes attached to the infant and for that Jonah was grateful. He could not have allowed such an abuse to his lover and his baby. To his lover alone was enough to make him see red.

Jonah brought up a hand and lowered it into the basket. His touch lightly caressed the baby's curled little fingers and in response to the touch her tiny hand splayed open. Jonah felt his heart swell and tug and he slipped his fingertip underneath her extended fingers and the baby's hand curled around his and held on weakly. Jonah's thumb gently touched the fingers limply grasping his index finger and he counted. Five perfect miniature digits.

The baby stirred and gave a high-pitched mewl and kicked deep within the folded coverings.

Jonah reached in with both hands, gathered the infant up tenderly, and lifted her out of the bin in which they'd put her. The baby's arms waved and she struggled to open her brand new eyes to seek out the person holding her. She seemed so frail and yet at the same time remarkable. She was part of him and part of Thera.

Jonah drew her near and tucked his daughter close to him. He cradled her and stared down at her as she opened her mouth wide and a tiny pink tongue poked out.

He was completely in love with her at that very moment.

The baby waved one arm and gave a small unenthusiastic kick but quickly settled against her father. She cuddled up to his warmth and began to doze.

Jonah's free hand cupped her head and he looked up at Kaegan. She was standing back watching, smiling.

"Thank you for staying with her," Jonah said and Kaegan gave him a smile Jonah had come to know. 'Don't mention it, no big deal'. But it was and he had to mention it but he got the message all the same.

Jonah rocked gently to and fro with the child in the crook of his arm, and he frowned. The baby belonged with Thera, not stuffed in some dark alien office.

Jonah turned and carried his daughter out of the oppressive cubicle without a second thought. The small woman, J. Fraiser, was the only white-coat left; apparently in his absence she had dismissed her lackeys. The green goons were still present but they were back to their posts by the walls. Carlin was where he'd promised he would be, standing guard over Thera's bed and watching Jonah emerge with the baby.

Jonah went straight to Thera's bedside and Carlin backed off so Jonah could gently perch on the edge and look between her sleeping face and the baby's.

"Thera..." Jonah said softly and with his free hand reached out and touched the back of hers. "Thera."

She was utterly unresponsive.

Jonah looked down at their daughter and in a flash of loneliness cradled her closer to him.

"What did you do to her?" Jonah asked without turning, his tone deliberate.

To her credit, J. Fraiser knew Jonah was addressing her. She approached the bed, this time with due caution, and said, "She's been sedated."

Jonah looked up sharply at J. Fraiser. "Why?"

Fraiser looked to Carlin and then back at Jonah and said, "It's a long story but before I tell you I need your assurance you won't attack me or my staff again."

"If I find out you've hurt Thera or this baby nothing will stop me from it."

Fraiser didn't so much as blink. "I can assure you we only want to help Sa–Thera and her baby."

Carlin stepped forward and said, "Why don't I tell you what happened on the planet? Maybe that will start to clear things up a little."

Jonah gave a recalcitrant nod.

Carlin began to tell his account. "The baby had just been born when you tried to shoot the men coming into the bedroom. They shot you with some kind of energy weapon; it knocked you out cold. Thera saw you go down and she took the gun off the nightstand and was going to shoot them, too.

"I didn't know what else to do but try and keep the baby safe so I took my knife, cut the cord, and got clear of the bed."

Jonah looked down at the sleeping infant then at Thera. "What happened to her?"

"She was hit with the same energy weapon you were and it had the same effect on her as it did on you."

Fraiser added at that point, "They had no choice, you were both ready and willing to use deadly force. At least our weapons would only stun you but you could have killed someone."

Jonah looked at Carlin and asked, "You were hit with the same weapon?"

Carlin looked embarrassed. "No, actually, I surrendered."

Jonah's eyebrows rose.

Carlin shrugged and said, "I was standing there holding the baby and I'd seen the intruders take you both out and I knew I couldn't try anything while I had the baby in my arms so I gave up."

Jonah nodded solemnly and brushed his thumb against the baby's incredibly soft cheek. "You did the right thing."

Fraiser pipped in, "He certainly did. I couldn't begin to guess what a zat hit to a newborn would do. If it can render full-grown adults unconscious it could have done serious permanent damage to an infant."

"Is she okay?" Jonah looked pointedly at Thera's still form.

Carlin nodded then, realizing Jonah had eyes only for Thera and didn't see his head bob, said, "She's going to be fine."

Fraiser was talking again. "When she was brought in she was still out from the zat but I went ahead and sedated her so I could do a postpartum exam. Considering the, ahh... altered state 'Carlin' was in I thought it would be less stressful for her if she wasn't awake while there was some... stranger examining her."

Jonah looked sharply and suspiciously at Fraiser. "You 'examined' her?"

Fraiser looked confused then she remembered something and said in clarification, "It's all right, I'm a doctor."

Jonah felt a little better and his hackles went down a small degree.

"You'll be glad to know," Fraiser continued, "that she seems to have had an easy birth."

Jonah smirked. "Not if you'd heard her screaming."

Fraiser smiled wanly. "I mean in the sense there were no complications. No bleeding, no afterbirth retention, normal blood pressure and glucose levels. There was a little tearing but that's normal and I've already put in a couple of stitches. She should recover quickly.

"I also understand her labor was short?"

Carlin said to that, "Ah... yeah, the doctor asked me about that but I could only say for certain that she was in labor a couple of hours."

Jonah looked down at the face of his daughter, tucked between the blankets and his body. "Thera started contracting in the middle of the night."

Carlin's eyes widened but Fraiser was thinking to herself. "That's a little more normal but still she got off easy. Some women, especially first-time mothers, can be in labor for days before they deliver.

"Though I'm sure she wouldn't think so, she got lucky."

Jonah snorted faintly. "No, she'd say you were night sick." Jonah frowned at Thera's too-still form and asked, "When will she wake up?"

"An hour, maybe less. If for some reason she doesn't start to come around about that time I'll give her something to wake her up. I've already given the baby a bottle of formula but it's important she nurse from her mother within the first twenty-four hours to absorb the antibodies her cholostrum contains."

"Is she healthy? I mean the baby?" Jonah asked and finally looked up with a non-hostile expression at the small woman doctor.

Fraiser smiled gently and nodded. "She's a perfect little baby girl."

Jonah sighed in relief. Thera was okay. The baby was okay. As far as he was concerned it was all that mattered.

It didn't mean he wasn't a little curious, though, and he looked directly at the doctor again and asked, "Why were we brought here? For that matter, where is 'here'?"

Fraiser froze and she looked pallid. Jonah frowned at her for such a strange reaction to a valid question.

Fraiser cleared her throat. "Umm... we'll get around to that explanation a little later. For now I want all of you to rest, eat a hot meal, and get cleaned up, not necessarily in that order. I don't want to go into any more details until S–uh, Thera's awake."

Jonah nodded and looked down at Thera's face. He wouldn't be completely at ease until she opened her eyes and looked at him.