The Doctor finished logging his experiments as Chakotay and Tom materialized in sickbay. He rose and walked out of his office and watched as the two men quickly drew their phasers and whipped around in his direction. He threw himself down on the floor and crawled behind a bio bed.
"Kathryn!" Chakotay called out.
The Doctor jumped up and out of the aim of the two men as they whirled about. After a moment of dancing, he stopped and said, "Well, I see you both have some remaining presence of mind to beam yourselves to sick bay without security hauling you in. Obviously, a psychiatric issue of some sort?" The Doctor watched as Tom followed Chakotay's lead also calling out for Kathryn. "Who is this Kathryn and why do we want to fire upon her?"
Belanna burst through the door behind him causing him to jump aside again. She came to a dead stop next to him and fell over the side of the bed, propping herself up as she tried to catch her breath. "Captain, her pattern…we couldn't keep a lock on her. She just disappeared."
"Q?" Chakotay asked.
Belanna shook her head. "I don't…think so."
A flicker of light appeared and Kathryn's body appeared on the sickbay floor. "Tom! Help me!" Chakotay yelled as they both scooped her up and placed her on a bio bed.
The Doctor grabbed his medical tricorder and immediately went to his patient. As he waved the device over her head, he recognized the face he was looking at. It was a face he shouldn't be looking at. He hesitated a moment and glanced at Chakotay before completing his scan.
"Is she okay?" Chakotay demanded. "Why is she unconscious?"
The Doctor picked up a hypo and then looked at his readings and shook his head. "I'm not sure."
"What?" Tom and Belanna said together.
"She looks like Kathryn Janeway. Her cell structure mostly matches the DNA structure of Kathryn Janeway but there are small random errors in the patterns that shouldn't be there. They are so random that I wouldn't say she is a mimetic copy or clone. It's as if someone tried to put her together piece by piece in a manner so minute as to do it to the very fiber of the organic material." The Doctor looked down at her still form. "I'm not sure what she is or if this will even help her."
"Try," Chakotay said.
"I'm not sure I should. Injecting her with a compound made for a positive human cell structure might exacerbate the cell damage that's already there. It's puzzling why she was put together this way. Her cell structure is off and some of it not in a good way."
"She put herself together, Doc," Tom said. "After she died."
"Excuse me, Mr. Paris?"
"It's Kathryn Janeway, Doctor," Chakotay said. "When she died…when she lost her physical body, she transformed into some sort of energy. With the help of the Q, she learned how to restructure and rematerialize that energy back into her physical state."
The Doctor evaluated her again. "Really? Well that explains why the cell structure is not right. Non-medical personnel should never attempt to heal anyone, least of all themselves." With a nod to Tom, he added, "As this one has demonstrated to us so often."
"Hey, I was the best medic you ever had," Tom said. "You were lucky I helped."
"You were forced into service," the Doctor replied. "Still, under my tutelage, you did eventually become a competent medic."
"Is she…is she gone now?" Belanna asked quietly.
"No." The Doctor adjusted the hypo and placed it against Kathryn's neck. "Now that I have an idea of what she did I'll just have to be more artist than physician. Luckily for you, my artistic pursuits have not suffered since we've been pushed back out into the bowels of space. I've kept up with all the recent trends in the art world. So much so, I dare say the Vidians would refer to me as Michelangelo's greatest protégé should we encounter them again."
"Then you can wake her up?" Chakotay said.
"Probably but I'd rather not." The Doctor took another scan of Kathryn's body and then called up a containment field. "If what you say is true, she has manifested a great deal of her energy into holding her physical form in place. Since it's no longer her natural state, it would take her a great deal of power or energy to sustain it."
"You mean she's tired and she's losing her pattern cohesion," Belanna said. "That explains why the transporter couldn't lock onto her."
The Doctor smirked at Tom and said, "And you thought you were the great one in the family."
"Is there a way to help her get back her strength?" Chakotay said.
"Yes and no." The Doctor made a few calculations into the computer and a soft light encased Kathryn's body. "My best estimate is that she'll sleep for several hours. As to how long she can keep this form, and I'm not advising she even should, I can't say."
"She needs to regenerate like Seven did to stay in a physical state," Tom said.
"Ah, Mr. Paris, you have redeemed yourself. That was a crude but accurate assessment of Admiral Janeway's current condition. But, bear in mind, Seven's regeneration was mechanical more than biological and it was based on known scientific and medical principles." The Doctor looked at Chakotay. "I cannot replicate the 'human soul' if that's what she is. I can't resurrect the dead, Captain. Yet. Right now, I can only make my best guess as to what may help her sustain the organic state that she has created. Without more information, that's the best I can do."
Chakotay nodded. "Understood. We'll try and get you more information."
The Doctor nodded and checked on Kathryn one more time before returning to his office talking to no one in particular. "My paper on this one will be legendary. The reverence, the esteem I will be lauded with at the conferences…"
Tom watched him disappear into the room. "I think the Continuum picked the wrong one to invite for membership."
Walking over to the containment field, Belanna raised a hand just outside it. "Admiral Janeway is really back. She's really here."
Tom walked over to his wife and put his arm around her shoulder as Chakotay grinned and walked up on the other side. "You said you can track the Q. That will be important if we want to keep her here."
"Yes," Belanna said, tossing her head as she looked at him. "I'm not sure how but our sensors can definitely trace them. They are not definite patterns like we would be to the sensors, just echoes. But it's good enough to tell us where and when they appear."
"Tie it into the weapons array. We may need it."
"But we have no weapons to use against them," Tom said.
"Not yet." Chakotay looked at Kathryn sleeping on the bed. "But I'm willing to bet that she'll be able to think of something very creative to keep them in line."