"How is she, Doctor?" he asked the emergency medical hologram that was tending to her.

"Better," the Doctor answered, "but it was a close call. Her wounds have been tended to by somebody else in a somewhat crude though efficient manner. Whomever took care of her most likely did not have access to medical supplies. They may very well have saved her life, however."

Chakotay stared at Kathryn, her face now back the way it used to be, the doctor had taken care of all the bruises.

"I would revive her," the Doctor continued, "but knowing the Captain, she'll get right back on her feet and right now her body is just not capable to handle that. I suggest we keep her sedated until she has sufficiently healed."

Chakotay nodded. "Good thinking, Doctor. Do you have any idea what has happened to her?"

"She was quite obviously tortured," the Doctor answered.

"Tortured?" Chakotay repeated as he felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

"Yes," the Doctor replied. "To what end, we'll have to find out when she's ready to talk. I would also like to know how she managed to get in that escape pod."

"Captain Janeway is very resourceful," Chakotay commented. He was as always filled with pride for his Captain. Sometimes he didn't know how she managed. He had found himself at a total loss while she was gone. He found it hard to make decisions when he felt he didn't have any options. He was very happy to have her back.

"What have they done to her?" he asked the Doctor.

"What haven't they done to her would be the better question," The Doctor said bitterly. "Apart from many broken ribs and bones, she had internal bleedings, burn marks, bruises all over her body and so many of her hair follicles yanked out, I had to replace them with artificial ones, to stimulate new hair growth."

Chakotay felt like he was going to faint as he took in this information. The thought of all the pain and suffering Kathryn had had to go through, made him feel bitter and vengeful. And this wasn't the fist time either, she had been through similar torturing from the hands of the Cardassians, back when she was still an ensign serving on a science vessel. What had she done to deserve this? Chakotay rubbed his hands together, trying to calm himself down.

"Keep me informed, Doctor." He said as he left sickbay and went back to the bridge. He had kept Voyager in Kad Pu space after rescuing Kathryn, realizing she may have unfinished business here. But now he wanted nothing more than to get away from here. So he ordered Tom to increase velocity, and to get out of Kad Pu space as soon as possible.

Erin never made it back to the cell block she was supposed to be in. But she managed to close and seal off the airlock door before the guards broke through the door and dragged her to the interrogation room. It didn't take them long to figure out she had aided Kathryn to escape, but they didn't know how she did it. They tried to beat it out of her, oh they tried. But Erin wasn't going to tell them anything, she wanted to give Kathryn as much time as possible to find her people and get away from the Kad Pu.

They tried to beat it out of her, but Erin didn't feel the pain. She held on to the knowledge of Kathryn and her people and how beautiful they were. She held on to the fact she felt connected to them in a way she couldn't explain. She held on to the pain in her heart for the woman she loved so much but that she could never have. She held on and endured the pain. She didn't tell them anything.

Kathryn woke up and after adjusting her eyesight to the bright lights surrounding her, she realized she was in sickbay.

"Welcome back, Captain" said the Doctor next to her.

"Doctor, good to see you. Is everybody okay? How am I doing?"

"We are all fine, you almost didn't make it due to extreme internal bleedings. But thanks to my brilliant surgery, you are going to be okay. Are you ready to tell us what happened?"

Something went off in Kathryn's head. She quickly rose up.

"Captain! You really need to take it easy!"

"No time doctor. I have a life to save!" She stepped off the bed and almost collapsed as a dizzy spell hit her.

"Captain, please..."

The Doctor helped her back up and she took some time to get her bearings. "I hate being immobilized," she muttered.

"You'll be okay," the Doctor assured her. "Just give yourself some time."

"Time is something we may not have. How long ago did you find me?" Kathryn asked, realizing that Erin could very well already be dead.

"You have been here for five days and according to the location of the escape pod, you were there for about 47 hours." The Doctor informed her.

"Then we really have no time to lose. Escort me to the briefing room."

They gathered together in the briefing room and Kathryn quickly told her senior staff what had happened to her while she was being held captive and what needed to be done now. They were to go back to where they had found her and look for residual traces from the escape pod to determine its trajectory. Which should lead them right back to Erin. Now they needed to figure out how to get Erin out of prison in case they wouldn't be able to beam her out and how to keep their vessel alive in the meantime. The Kad Pu outgunned them massively.

"Captain?" the Doctor asked, "what are the chances that she is still alive? From what you have told us, these beings are not going to let her live for what she has done."

"What are you saying, we shouldn't even try?"

"I'm saying that it might not be worth risking our lives for."

"I owe her my life and I vowed to do everything in my power to get her out of there. Even if she is no longer alive, she will at least have a proper burial. Understood?"

Everybody nodded silently. Kathryn new they wouldn't go against her. Once she had made up her mind, there was nothing they could do to stop her.

"Now," she continued, "we can't defeat these creatures in battle, so we have to outsmart them. Suggestions anyone?"

"If we can match their shield frequency, we should be able to penetrate them with a transporter beam." B'Elanna suggested. "I don't know how much time that would take though."

"Even if we can penetrate their shields and beam her out, we still need something to lock on to. Somebody has to go in and find her." Tom noted.

"I realize that," Kathryn answered. "I'll go and I want Seven and the Doctor with me. You can beam us out if we get in trouble. You will need to keep a constant transporter lock on us."

"If we can get through their shields." Tom mumbled.

"I have every confidence in B'Elanna's capabilities." Kathryn commented. "Tom, how close are we to Kad Pu space?"

"Actually, ma'am, we never left their space. We should be back where we found you in a couple of hours."

That made no sense. Why weren't they being attacked?

"Chakotay," Kathryn turned to her first officer sitting on her left, "How is it that we are still in their space and they're not bothering us?"

Chakotay flinched and looked around the table before he answered. "We are cloaked, Captain."

"What?" Kathryn's voice lowered to a bare minimum.

"Our only other option was to leave you behind in their space and we were just not willing to do that." Chakotay explained.

Kathryn rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Her crew was too damn loyal for their own good. "And how exactly did we obtain this cloaking technology?" she asked, but as the question left her mouth she already knew the answer. "Never mind," she said and turned to Seven of Nine.

"Is there no end to that Borg ingenuity?"

"It would have been illogical to not use the technology at this point in time." Seven declared firmly.

"I guess I don't need to worry about being detected by Kad Pu during this rescue mission," Kathryn noted somewhat sarcastically. "All right, well, I suggest we un-obtain this cloaking technology as soon as we find Erin, or we'll be in real trouble when we get home. Dismissed."

Kathryn stayed behind in the briefing room and turned around to face the window. Staring at the stars, she contemplated what had happened to her in the past couple of weeks. She was taken captive by a bunch of bullies, tortured and saved by one of their own kind and now her vessel, a Starfleet vessel, was floating around their space cloaked. They had better keep this little escapade out of the ship's logs.

She went back to the bridge and sat down in her command chair. It was good to be back. After several hours the ship dropped out of warp.

"Captain, we have reached the Kad Pu detainment facility," Harry informed her from his ops station behind Kathryn.

"On screen."

In front of her she saw a gloomy, colourless planet, covered with as far as she could tell, absolutely nothing. She turned to Harry. "Where is it?"

"Underground," he answered. There is only a small docking station above ground."

Kathryn peered at the screen until she noticed what Harry was talking about. She turned to her chief engineer.

"B'Elanna, what can you do?"

"The facility is too far underground, even if I could find a way to penetrate their shields, there would still be too much interference to get a clear transporter lock."

Kathryn's mind raced, what else could they do? Take a shuttle down? Her train of thought was interrupted by B'Elanna.

"However," she said, "their docking station does not have a rotating shield frequency, unlike the rest of the facility. We should be able to get a clear signal through, if..." her hands flew over the console in front of her. "Got it!" she said.

Kathryn heaved an audible sigh of relief. "Good. Now, we'll be in, but we won't be undetectable. So we have to move fast. If that," she pointed at the little dot that was the docking station, "is where Erin got me out, then I should be able to find my way back to the cell block I was held. However, there is no way to tell if that's where we'll find Erin."

Tuvok had more bad news. "You won't be able to communicate with Voyager anywhere outside the docking station, you will be on your own."

"Okay, so it won't be easy. We'll just have to count on luck to be on our side."

"An illogical assessment." Tuvok noted.

"None the less, my gut feeling tells me we can do this. Seven, are you ready." She ordered more than asked. Seven nodded and they got in the turbolift. Kathryn hit her commbadge and told the Doctor to meet them in the transporter room.

"How do you feel about this?" she asked Seven.

"You have managed to save me from a Borg cube, I am sure the Kad Pu will be defenseless against your willpower." Seven noted dryly.

Kathryn grinned. "I like the way you think," she told Seven while patting her on the shoulder. Then she added in a more serious tone "Thank you for taking this risk with me."

"You are welcome." The former Borg responded.

They reached the transporter room, exchanged field notes and were beamed down to the planet.

Luck was on their side for the time being as they materialized in an empty room. The very room that Kathryn had escaped out from.

"I remember that door was locked," she pointed out. Not wanting to waste time, she aimed her phaser and blew the lock out. "Let's go," she said and lead the way out.

Kathryn felt very uncomfortable being back in the Kad Pu prison. The sight, sounds and scents overwhelmed her and brought back a lot of bad memories. She turned her body to auto-pilot and tried to focus on what they were here for: saving Erin.

She turned a couple of corners before she found the hallway with the escape tunnel. Still they had not encountered any Kad Pu. Maybe they have the day off for Kad Pu slaughter fest, she thought bitterly.

Looking up, she quickly discovered the exit of the tunnel. "We have to get in there," she pointed.

"How?" the Doctor replied. "Even if we stand on each other shoulders, we won't be able to reach that high."

"Seven, hit us with some more of that Borg ingenuity," Kathryn told the blonde next to her.

Seven arched her brow. "Hit you?"

"How would the Borg get up there?" Kathryn rephrased her request.

"I suggest we get back to the transporter site and ask Voyager for rope and climbing hooks. I would not know of another way, unless we use our phasers to break through the wall and climb up the rubble."

Neither option seemed satisfactory to Kathryn. She cursed herself for not for seeing this situation, realizing she had been counting too much on Seven's resourcefulness.

"Damn," she said. "Let's go back."

They hurried back to the room they transported in and stated their request to Voyager who promptly beamed down the appropriate climbing materials. They exited the room again and found their luck had run out. A full squadron of Kad Pu prison guards awaited them outside.

Before Kathryn of the Doctor could aim their phaser rifles, Seven had pushed them both out of the way. "We are the Borg," she stated "You will be assimilated, resistance is futile."

Kathryn couldn't believe her own ears. What had gotten into Seven? But then she noticed the Kad Pu carefully backing off, fear written on their faces. Evidently, they had dealt with the Borg before.

"We must disable them or they will warn others," Seven pointed out. Of course she was right, but Kathryn had been too overwhelmed to respond to the situation. "Set your phasers to heavy stun, there's no need to kill them. Yet." She instructed.

The heavy stun would keep them unconscious for a while, hopefully long enough for them to find Erin and get the hell out. They found their way back to the tunnel exit and climbed in. The tunnel was smaller and darker then Kathryn remembered. It was almost impossible to crawl through.

"Remind me not to sign up for away missions any more," the Doctor grumbled behind her.

"You didn't," Kathryn reminded him, "I ordered you."

Then she bumped into Seven in front of her.

"What is it, Seven?"

"This tunnel has come to an end, the ceiling appears to have collapsed."

Kathryn aimed her wrist lamp as well as she could in the narrow space to the rubble in front of Seven.

"I think you are right. Does your tricorder tell you how much rubble there is?"

Seven took some readings and responded "Not much, we should be able to disintegrate it."

"Do it." Kathryn ordered.

Seven set and aimed her phaser and in a matter of seconds, the rubble was gone and they had reached the other end of the tunnel. Kathryn recognized this as the hall that lead to the cell she had been held captive in. She took the lead and gestured the other to follow her.

Once they reached the door that led to her cell, Kathryn felt overwhelmed with bad memories and painful emotions. She had to fight to keep herself in check.

"Captain," she heard Seven's voice coming from a room to her left, "I may have found something."

Kathryn entered the room and saw Seven crouched on the floor next to a lifeless figure. She quickly stepped closer to identify this was indeed Erin. She was unconscious and did not look well. "Is she still alive?" Kathryn said, her voice broken with fear.

"Yes," Seven confirmed, "but her life signs are very weak."

The Doctor pulled out his tricorder and scanned Erin for injuries. "We will not be able to move her," he said, "she will not survive. I will have to conduct some emergency procedures right here."

"Do what you have to," Kathryn ordered the Doctor. "Seven, we have to stand guard in the hallway until the Doctor is finished."

"Actually," the Doctor interrupted. "I think I might need Seven's help. I wouldn't normally suggest this, but considering Erin's condition, perhaps some Borg nanoprobes would secure her until we get her to sickbay."

"Will the nanoprobes cause permanent damage in her system?"

"Not if we get her to sickbay in time."

"Seven?"

"I will comply."

"Thank you." Kathryn walked to the door and scanned for life signs. Nothing yet, but there was no way to tell how much time they had. They still had to work their way back to the transporter site.

She heard Seven and the Doctor talk in the background.

"Make sure the nano probes don't worry about assimilating this body before some necessary work is done," said the Doctor.

"They are programmed to repair life threatening damage first," Seven said. Kathryn turned and felt slightly nauseous when she saw Seven's assimilation tubules work their way in Erin's skin.

"Sickbay to the Captain. Can you come over here please."

"I'm on my way, Doctor."

Kathryn entered sickbay. "Yes, Doctor?"

"Our alien, Captain, isn't quite as alien as we thought. She seems to have been genetically altered."

"That doesn't surprise me, she was totally unlike the others," Kathryn replied. "Do you have any idea of what she really is?"

"That's why I asked you to come here, Captain. I have studied her DNA and she appears to be human."

"Human?" Kathryn was dumbfounded. What were the odds...

"Yes. I'm quite sure that she is."

Kathryn walked over to the console the Doctor was working on and saw the results for herself.

"How on earth is that even possible?"

"I don't know. Perhaps she was abducted. The thing is we'll never know and she won't be able to tell us anything. Her memory membranes of anything that happened before her metamorphosis have been irreparably damaged. Clearly somebody didn't want her to remember."

"So there is no way you can restore her memory?" Kathryn asked.

"No," the doctor replied, "But I can restore her physiology though. It'll take a lot of surgical procedures and probably a couple of months before her human cells start to regenerate again, but I'm pretty sure I can do it."

"Can you revive her?"

The Doctor grabbed a hypospray and pressed it in Erin's neck. Seconds later she opened her eyes. Amazement filled her gaze and was replaced by sheer joy when she saw Kathryn.

"Hi Erin," Kathryn said "I told you I'd be back for you." She smiled at the girl. "You're on my starship now and safe from the Kad Pu."

"I thought I had died and gone to heaven," Erin replied.

Kathryn smiled again, helped Erin sit up. She rested her hand on her knee.

"Erin, the Doctor and I need to talk to you about something. While we were doing surgery on you to make you well again, we discovered something. You are not Kad Pu. You were genetically altered to look like them, but you are not one of them."

"How...? What...?"

"You are one of us, Erin. Human."

"But Kathryn, didn't you tell me humans are from far, far away?"

"Yes."

"The Kad Pu couldn't have traveled that far, it's impossible."

"Maybe the Kad Pu just found you after you were abducted and brought here by another alien race," the Doctor provided.

"Erin, the Doctor told me that he can restore you back to your human form. It'll take a lot of surgery and you'll have to spend a lot of time in sickbay. I want you to think about if that is what you would want. After all you have no memory of being human and I will understand if you want to stay the way you are now."

"I don't have to think about anything," Erin said with a broken voice. "I want nothing more than to be one of you. I just can't believe that what you are telling me is true."

"I understand it's hard for you to comprehend, after all you've been though, you were in a terrible state when we found you."

Erin dropped her head.

"But you have to believe me, it's true." Kathryn continued. "You are human."

Erin looked up again, tears in her eyes. A careful smile appeared on her face. "You look so much better now, I can't believe how pretty you are. And you, as well," she said as she turned to the Doctor. "Will I look like you?"

"We won't know exactly what you'll look like until we restore you physiology and your human cells regenerate themselves. I may have to take some esthetic decisions along the way though, but nothing major." The Doctor elaborated.

"He's done it before and the result was quite stunning," Kathryn grinned and then added in a more serious tone "We'll be here every step of the way."

"I know you will," Erin said.

Kathryn made a point of visiting Erin in sickbay at least once day. Occasionally, when the Doctor let her, she would take Erin to the Holodeck or her quarters for dinner. Kathryn realized she didn't just spend time with Erin because she felt she owed her or because she felt an obligation to help her cope with her new life. There was more, a primal need to be with her that Kathryn couldn't quite explain.

Once, when they were having dinner, Kathryn remembered something from her past that she had kept buried deep inside for a long time. She couldn't explain why it bubbled to the surface at this particular moment, but she did know she finally felt ready to talk about it. She instinctively knew that Erin would not judge her, no matter how radical, stupid or irrational her behaviour may be.

It happened almost fifteen years ago. She was on a routine shuttle mission with her father and Justin Tighe, the man she was going to marry. But something had gone wrong and they had crashed into an icy planet. Kathryn was flung out of the shuttle but the men were still caught inside the command unit which was sinking into ink black water. She wanted to get them out, tried feverishly to get them out. But with the little technology that had survived the crash, she only had enough power to save one of them and she couldn't choose. She tried to boost the power, reroute everything she could from secundairy systems. Eighthundred megawatts was all she needed. Eighthundred megawatts and she could have saved them. But she wasn't fast enough. She lost them both.

After the incident, Kathryn had blocked the details from her mind. All she remembered for more than ten years was the crash and waking up alone on an icy planet. It was the only way for her to survive. The only way she could cope with the loss, was to forget just exactly how she had lost them.

Her full memory has resurfaced two years ago, but Kathryn had not been able to talk to anyone about it and the events kept haunting her to date. She sometimes wondered if it would have been better if she'd never have remembered, to be oblivious, just like Erin was about her past. For a split second, she actually envied Erin for it, then realized that Erin may not have bad memories, she didn't have good memories either. No recollection of who raised her, who her friends were, what she liked to do or liked to eat or liked to wear. Kathryn couldn't give her back her past, but she could share her own past with Erin.

So she told Erin exactly what happened on that fateful day.

"They are both gone, because I wasn't able to make a decision."

"Nobody can be expected to make a decision like that, Kathryn," Erin responded, "It's simply impossible. You did the best you could under the circumstances, you tried to save them both."

"But there was enough time, enough power to save one of them. They didn't both have to die!"

"And who would you want to still be around then? Justin? Your father? Who was more important to you, Kathryn? Do you honestly think you would have been able to live with the knowledge you sacrificed one for the other? And how would they feel knowing they owed their life to the other man? You know you did the right thing, stop beating yourself up over this."

Kathryn started trembling, she felt out of control and it scared her immensely.

Erin grabbed Kathryn by the arms and shook her firmly. "It wasn't your fault!" she said sharply.

She felt tears stinging her eyes and a massive build up of guilt, pain and misery broke free and came out in uncontrolled sobs and heartbreaking cries.

Erin wrapped her arms around her and rocked her back and forth while Kathryn mourned Justin and her father once more.

"I can't for the life of me understand why fate has bestowed such a terrible dilemma upon you, but I can only assume it shaped you in the person you are today. And you shouldn't for a second be ashamed of the person you are today, Kathryn. Please don't ever forget that."

She had cried for a long, long time, but afterward she had felt release, like a massive weight had been lifted from her. Slowly, but surely her ghosts from the past were catching up with her and for the first time in her life she wasn't afraid to face them.

The Doctor had requested Erin stay in sickbay as his new medical assistant. He stated she showed the same sense of care that Kes had when she was still on Voyager. He had never been happy with Tom in sickbay, nor had Tom been happy there. And Erin had been deliriously happy when she found out. Said that she felt much better knowing she was making herself useful.

Yet Kathryn couldn't help feeling that there was still something nagging in Erin's brain. Sometimes a dark shadow shaded her face and she became silent and withdrawn. Neither she or the Doctor had had any luck finding out what was troubling her and both concluded that with Erin's past, they couldn't blame her for feeling depressed sometimes.

When Erin's humanity had been fully restored she couldn't be described as anything less that absolutely beautiful. Whether this was due to the Doctor's ministrations or to Erin's natural good looks, one couldn't tell. But the fact remained, she quickly became as desirable a female as Seven of Nine. Kathryn sometimes worried about people taking advantage of her, but she knew Erin could take care of herself.

Yet she couldn't help claiming as much of Erin's time as she possibly could. She knew the holodeck was one of her favourite places. Erin enjoyed the Earth programs that Kathryn and several others had programmed the most, they gave her a sense of home although there was no way of knowing if Erin did in fact grow up on Earth. One day, Kathryn ran Tom's Chez Sandrine's program for her, but Erin didn't appreciate it the way she normally did.

"It's so dark and stuffy in here," she said. "Can we go outside?"

"There is no outside, other than the exit of the holodeck. I can run another program for you if you want."

"Okay," she said, then turned to Kathryn and grabbed her hands which she held close to her heart. Kathryn felt a little intimidated standing so close to her, yet at the same time slightly excited.

"Kathryn," Erin said, "You do know how much I appreciate everything you do for me, don't you?"

"I do," Kathryn nodded.

"More than you can imagine," Erin continued, her voice barely more than a whisper. She stared Kathryn straight in the eyes and for a second Kathryn felt like she was going to kiss her but before she could contemplate if this was something she actually wanted, she was interrupted.

"Captain to the bridge, we have a problem." Chakotay's voice sounded through the com system.

"On my way," Kathryn responded. She left Erin on the holodeck and went to the bridge. When she exited the turbolift, the first thing she saw on the main view screen was a Kad Pu ship.