Friday

July 5th, 2148

Resistance Base Hospital

Montana

Moments.

Seconds.

Minutes.

Hours.

Time ticked off more slowly than Jon had ever known it to. The proverbial watched pot might never boil, but the focus of his watch was the door that led to the examination room. The more he watched, the longer it seemed that no one came out. People went in, but no one left. Something big was happening behind those doors. He didn't know what. Two surgeons had met them when they landed and whisked the stretcher and Jennifer away from him and behind those doors. A couple of med techs followed, closing the doors behind them. Then an anesthesiologist followed them. Supplies, bandages, blood and even a portable regenerator were rushed into the hospital room but they were hidden behind those doors. No one came out. No one told them anything.

He was beginning to hate the look of those doors.

He kept wondering when one of the doctors would tell him the woman was just someone who looked like Jennifer.

Then he hoped that they would come out and tell him it was Jennifer.

During the entire flight to Montana, Jon sat beside the stretcher and couldn't stop looking at her. It was Jennifer. She looked like her. Unconscious, still breathing, warming up under the blankets as they flew at top speed toward Montana, it was Jennifer. It had to be.

Why wouldn't somebody come out of those blasted doors and tell him it was her?

The waiting was intolerable. He checked his chronometer. It was past midnight. Fourth of July was over with. It was now July 5th. How many hours had they been there? How many more hours were going to pass before someone told them something?

He wasn't alone in his impatience. Hawk was pacing. He had been pacing since the first hour they arrived. No stopping, no resting, almost no change of pace. Tank was standing against the wall waiting, his gaze never leaving the examination room doors. Jon had seen him stare down biomechs, but this was a degree of concentration Jon had never seen Tank exhibit before. He was every bit on edge as the rest of them. Scout was trying to keep his mind on anything else by re-checking data, mumbling to himself about tachyons and punctual storms. He was transmitting directly with Mentor, organizing the data into some sort of coherent form. He was keeping himself busy, trying to keep his mind off worrying. Jon had never seen him that focused before.

They were all in the same condition - worried, scared and hopeful.

He noticed the occasional friend or acquaintance pass by the area. They would pause, look their way, motion to Jon that they were there to help if they were needed and then they would move on. Another friend met them when they landed. Elzer Pulaski, Freedom Two himself, was at the Montana base scrounging for some radio parts when the call came in that the Power Team was arriving with a medical emergency. He even helped carry the stretcher to the hospital area. He had walked by the medical area more than once. Cypher, the head of the Angel City resistance and Dennis T, the leader of the Idaho resistance had both made an appearance as soon as they heard. They had come to the base to scrounge for supplies and stayed after they found them to wait for news. Cypher had walked by several times already, but Dennis T only once. That didn't surprise Jon. Dennis T was always a bit of a loner, someone not comfortable in social settings and who associated little with other resistance groups outside of a battle, but he gave Jon a salute when he looked in at the medical center to let Jon know that his old friend was there and wishing them luck.

"How long's it been since we've seen Dennis T?" Hawk asked him as he paced by.

"A few years," Jon muttered. "He doesn't leave Idaho much. You know how he prefers to work alone with his team. I can respect that. They've got a great track record of keeping Dread out of Idaho, and they don't have to ask for help very often." When was the last time they had helped out Dennis T? Seven years earlier? No, ten? Regardless, whenever Jon had worked with him or talked with him, they always got along well, so the support was appreciated.

"That's odd," Scout suddenly said. "Captain, I'm looking over the data that's been collected over the last..." he checked his chronometer, "however many hours or so it's been. The storm that was raging when we found her, it only lasted an hour. There was an hour break and then another storm started."

Jon didn't see anything odd about that. "That's how the storms have been behaving for the last week, right?"

"Yeah, only it's not a massive one anymore. It's a series of storms again. Temps are bouncing back up to July normal between storms. The tachyons are gone, but the storms are still between the San Gabriel Valley and Los Alamos. Again. They're not moving in any direction. According to the data I've collected since we've been watching, the storms are happening on the same schedule. One hour on, one hour off, wind, rain, ranging temperatures. Before the big storm, they were increasing in strength. Now, they're decreasing in strength."

Jon nodded, but he didn't care about the storms. Why would he - wait. Scout was talking to keep busy. It helped him deal with his concern. If his friend needed to do that, Jon could play along. Maybe it would help him deal with the tension. "Okay, the storms are weaker? And that's ... forget it." His brain wasn't working on a scientific level, but Scout's was and he'd found something he obviously thought was important. Time to act like a team leader collating information from his team. "Go over this again for me, will you, Scout? From the beginning?" His mind was definitely not on the storms they were investigating. He had other thoughts and concerns running through his mind.

Scout turned his scanner toward Jon. "One week ago, they started without any warning or any indications in the atmosphere. Gray skies one moment with absolutely no hint that a storm was coming, stormy skies the next. They grew in intensity for the last week, but that was a series of storms that stretched from San Gabriel to Los Alamos. And they didn't move. They stayed in that line all week. Today, uh, make that yesterday, all the storms became one giant storm stretching about 700 miles in length."

"From San Gabriel to Los Alamos?" Jon asked.

"Yes," Scout showed him a current reading of the atmosphere of the area. "Now, they've gone back to being a series of storms in the same area but they're finally weakening. Each session is slightly less powerful than the one before. Projections indicate they'll last for a week which is the same amount of time they were building. But here's the strange part. The tachyons we detected were only present when the storms were united - when we found her. They weren't there before, and they weren't there after."

Jon thought for a moment. "And something like tachyons not being present before or after that particular storm would be a significant bit of data."

"It could be, Captain," Scout agreed. "I don't know."

Jon glanced at the doors again. Still, no movement from the other side.

Jon clasped his hands together. Talking about anything would get his mind off the waiting. "I know you're trying to figure all this out, Scout, but if it is Jennifer, do you honestly think it could be time travel? It doesn't exist."

Scout stared at the computer. "The idea sounds like science fiction to me, but even Mentor can't rule it out even though it doesn't exist. I don't know how she could have been there in the same condition we knew her to be in when we saw her on the vid-screen. She had the same scar on her mouth, the scratches... but -"

"But?"

Scout considered his words. "Right now, we don't know if it is her. I mean, we have her DNA and sensor readings confirming it's her..."

Jon could tell that Scout was scared to think that it might not be Jennifer or worse, that it was her. Either way, he was worried. "We'll find out soon enough. Keep on going."

Scout took a deep breath. "If it is her, then I've got no idea how she got there, and I can't toss out any theory just because I think it's unbelievable and have no way to prove it. I've considered matter transference - perhaps Blastarr digitized her but the pattern was electronically transmitted to another site or server the moment the explosion happened and Soaron or Overmind reintegrated her. The thing is that I've had to rule out digitization because there's no physical evidence on the medical scans we took that indicates she was digitized. Plus, as far as we know, biodreads aren't using a system that lets them access each other's storage files without a physical download to a shared server. I can't make that theory hold water."

No, not as far as they knew, but they couldn't rule out that possibility, could they? Scout thought they could.

Jon began running through the obvious questions in his mind. He asked, "Some new type of technology Dread has that we don't know about?"

"Maybe, but I've got some doubts. Smart as he is, all the resources he's got, Dread doesn't have the scientific background or technology for some of this," Scout answered. "I mean, one hundred years ago, the idea that people could be digitized into files and stored on a hard drive was just fantasy. Artificial intelligence like Soaron and Blastarr? A world run by machines? A computer like Overmind? None of it existed in the form we know then, but it's here now. And then there are the tachyons. I can't ignore them. What if at some time in the future, time travel is possible? What if we're seeing the results of their experiments? Maybe the storms are a by-product of trying to break a time barrier? They started a week ago and grew in intensity until now when we find someone who shouldn't be there - actually be there - and now they're starting to decrease in strength, but they're in the same place. Why? Storms don't work like that. They move at some point or they dissipate. They're not this punctual or this geographically fixed."

Jon would not get his hopes up, but he had to do something. He talked. "An artificial storm maybe? A new weapon from Dread?" Jon had to consider all possibilities, right? Dread would be the obvious source of the storms, but even Jon had trouble believing that Dread had developed that type of technology.

Scout looked up at Jon, his forehead set in a confused frown. "That'd be scary if Dread could do something like that, but if he could, he'd have had to perform tests that we'd have picked up on by now. Captain, to us, time travel's not possible. But there were tachyons and as far as our theories go, tachyons are involved with time travel. Theoretically. Years from now? Who knows. They may have figured it all out. I do know what we saw and what we heard in December when Jennifer took down Blastarr. She didn't make it out. She couldn't have. She had to use the control panel to blow the power source, and it was instantaneous. So how can she be over 800 miles away from the old base months later in an area being pounded with tachyon particles?" He shut down his reader, then walked around the room to stretch his legs.

Jon blew out a breath. Scout couldn't connect the dots yet, but he wouldn't stop trying. Talking it out would be one way to help Scout deal with the tension. "All right, for the sake of conversation, let's assume that the tachyon particles indicate time travel. Someone snatched Jennifer from the blast before it killed her back at the base. Why? Wouldn't there have been tachyon particles present at the base? We went back there after the explosion to see what was left. There's nothing in the scans that showed anything like that, was there?"

Scout stopped walking and leaned against the wall. "Sensors didn't read anything like that back then, but there was so much for the sensors to pick up... I don't know. This isn't a scientific field I know anything about - other than a little history of it and what few bits of data we have from the documentary. As far as being a scientist, what I know, I've had to learn the hard way just like the rest of us. I can't test any of this, and this whole thing may be a red herring."

"Red herring?" Jon might have been amused by the archaic phrase if he wasn't as tense and scared as everyone else.

"I don't know, Captain. But we all saw her lying there hours ago. Scans said it was her. She was breathing, her heart was beating, and Dread doesn't have cloning technology. As far as we know, she didn't have a twin sister, but the one thing we know for certain is that she was wearing her power suit, the one you had to refit for her from a larger one since your father didn't make any that would have fit her. That wrist communicator is also DNA coded so it wouldn't work on anyone else. I don't have an answer. I'm just… hoping that what we think is impossible is true."

Hoping. That was the one thing Jon could do, but he wasn't sure what he was really hoping for.

"Jon," Hawk motioned toward the examination room door. Doctor Kirkland, a doctor who had helped them out on several occasions, one they knew they could trust, walked out and approached the group. The four men met her halfway.

"Well?" Hawk asked her.

The doctor frowned in confusion. "Every test I have proves it's Jennifer. DNA, cellular positioning, scars, retinal scans – it all matches. The surgical scar on her shoulder where I had to patch that knife wound she got a couple of years ago, the laser wound on her leg from the time all of you were ambushed on that mission to New York, even the belly wound from three years ago when she took on Soaron in hand-to-hand. Absolutely every physical marker I can test proves that it's her. There is one problem however."

"What?" Jon asked, his voice flat and low.

"I've only seen this in experiments we've run down in cryogenics. There's evidence that her cellular growth and regeneration was stalled or slowed down, perhaps stopped for a time. I can't be sure because the research is so new, but there's evidence that the timing of her cellular growth and cellular regeneration was altered in some way." Doctor Kirkland sounded absolutely surprised and not quite sure of herself. That didn't bode well for the team's concern.

Scout cleared his throat. "Do your tests show she wasn't digitized?"

"She wasn't," Kirkland answered. "There's no indication of that whatsoever."

"Could the evidence you're seeing indicate a time period?"

Doctor Kirkland nodded. "The cell structures are indicating a seven month lag from what it should be."

"You can be that accurate?" Scout asked her.

"In this case, I can." Doctor Kirkland handed Scout the printout of her results. "Normal cells grow at a particular rate. There are growth indicators within the cell itself. I've been one of your doctors for years, and I have test results for every single one of you. I know how fast you heal, your normal vital signs, the cellular rate of change, you name it. Jennifer was here after the meeting with Freedom One in November because she had a building fall on her, remember? I have the results of her cell tests I took then." She pointed out the particular data to Scout. "These are the cell tests now. There's only slight change, consistent with one month's growth. Her cells are not showing that they grew for the last seven months. They didn't change. They didn't alter. In fact, her cell structures look like they would have looked last December. We've only seen this cessation of cell change in our cryogenics lab when we freeze subjects for a time."

Jon glanced over at the data, seeing what Scout was reading. "But she wasn't cryogenically frozen," he mumbled.

"No," the doctor agreed. "There's absolutely no sign of her being frozen. Even that small amount of time she was outside before you found her can only be classified as a light case of exposure. It's almost as if the last seven months didn't exist for her. Like she… jumped ahead to July. And there's one more thing," she added.

All four men waited and listened.

"I compared the obvious injuries she exhibited on the recording of that conversation she had with you in December with her current injuries. The wounds match, and there's absolutely no sign of healing, and December was seven months ago."

Scout looked through more of the pages. "Could I have a copy of all this?"

Kirkland nodded as she handed Scout a data disk. "I thought you might need one. I'm guessing that something very strange is going on since she was to have died last December."

Jon was more than willing to let Scout sift through the science of whatever was going on. He had other plans. "Can we see her?"

"She's not conscious. We did emergency surgery. It wasn't pretty, I can tell you. I'll spare you the details for now. I'm sure your imaginations have been running rampant out here, but suffice it to say she had broken and bruised ribs, a punctured lung - look, guys, we'll go over all that later. She came through the surgery and spent the last five hours in the regenerator. I'm leaving her in the regenerator for a while longer. Her wounds are healing up nicely. Don't try to wake her up yet. I want her to sleep as long as she can, but it'll be all right if one of you goes in for just a few minutes."

Hawk slapped Jon on the shoulder. There was no need to say who was going through those doors.

Jon followed Doctor Kirkland into the examination room that was also an emergency hospital room. One room for everything – examination, surgery, recuperation, all of it behind those blasted doors Jon couldn't stand to look at anymore. Just inside the room, Jon stopped as soon as he saw her. Pale, bruised, her eyes slightly squeezed in pain, a nasal canula, multiple machines monitoring her; she almost didn't look like herself.

But it was Jennifer. She had to be, right?

He stepped further into the room. The life-monitoring machines echoed lowly against the walls, but their very presence made everything seem worse than it was. Jon reached the bed and looked at her. It was Jennifer. There was no doubt about that. Right under her chin was the small scar she got that day when she protected Pulaski from the falling wall when Blastarr fired at them. He was the only person besides Jennifer that knew it was there. She had mentioned it in passing…

"Chin hurt?" Jon asked as he held the hull plate in place as Jennifer welded the new piece on the jumpship.

"A little. Why?" she asked as she inspected the weld seam.

"You touch it every now and then like it was bothering you."

Jennifer glanced at him for a moment. "I do? I think it got hit when the wall fell on us," she told him.

She climbed the ladder to weld the upper seam, and Jon could see the underside of her chin. It was bruised, and there was a small cut in the wound.

Nothing of significance. Nothing of note. Just a bruise and a cut that no one would ever notice and wouldn't bother her again once it was all healed up.

But it was more proof.

There were new scars and burns that were now treated, proof that she had survived that inferno – but had she truly been in it? How did she get to California from Colorado seven months after the explosion unless…

No, no more speculations. Not yet. Other things were more important at that moment. "Is she in any pain?" he asked the doctor.

"None of the monitors are showing any indication of severe pain, but I think she's hurting a little. She's unconscious, but she's not in a coma. We're going to keep her sedated until tomorrow and then if her numbers are good enough, we'll take her off sedation to see how she responds. It's okay to talk to her and let her know you're here. I'll be just outside."

Once the doctor left, Jon reached out and carefully touched Jennifer's hand. She wasn't cold anymore. Thin fingers, small wrist. He knew that hand. He'd seen it hold a spanner how many times? Watched her effortlessly switch out circuits, her fingers moving so fast, he couldn't follow them? He would sit in the captain's chair on the jumpship, utterly amazed how her slightest touch brought the ship under her complete control. Then something else grabbed his attention. There, just above the wrist was a small scar she got when that biomech grabbed her on the road to Eden, when she amusingly announced that she didn't like grabby robots.

It was her.

It was truly her.

How?

He sat there, stunned, almost wishing that he was back in those interminably long moments out in the hallway waiting for news. Now, knowing that it was Jennifer, what was the next step? An imposter, he could deal with. A trap, he could deal with. Jennifer? He had absolutely no idea what to do. He had no idea what to say. He felt like his heart was in his throat. Everything he'd felt since December, all the anger, all the loneliness, all the regret came burbling up to the surface. Anger - that was the worst of it. Dread had stolen time from them. He had taken Jennifer away from him. Jon had taken that anger and focused it all on Dread for killing Jennifer, and now...

"Hey there," he finally whispered. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm here. I'll be here. Hawk, Scout and Tank are just outside too." He glanced up at the monitors. There was no change, no indication that she heard him. "We don't know what's happened. You've been gone. We thought you were gone, but now you're here. I just... maybe you can help us figure things out when you wake up." He gently squeezed her fingers. Maybe she could feel him? "You need to wake up. You need to be all right. I don't know if I can handle you not being all right after you being gone." He glanced at his chronometer. Time was moving quickly. "They won't let me stay long. They want you to sleep and get well. Doctor Kirkland said they'll keep you sedated until tomorrow, so we can talk later. And we need to talk. We need to have that talk we didn't get a chance to have at Christmas."

He just didn't know what to say or how to say it. What do you say to someone you thought was dead for seven months only to find them alive?

He heard a noise behind him, and he turned to see Doctor Kirkland walk back in. She glanced at him and then said, "It really is her, Jon."

He looked back at the unconscious woman, absolutely no doubt in his mind. "I know. I just don't know how it could be."

~0~0~0~0~

"She's alive," Hawk muttered. "She's back."

Tank stood there, his arms crossed. "How? We saw her die. How could she be alive and here?"

No one wanted to speculate. No one wanted to guess. No one wanted to question. If they did, then maybe it would stop being real and they would lose her again because it would turn into a dream.

"However she's back, we'll figure it out," Scout vowed, "but I do know one thing for certain."

Hawk frowned at his friend. Was something else wrong? "What's that?"

"Next time we talk about our best Fourth of Julys, we can say it was in 2148."