Miranda Whitlock was startled awake in a hospital room. She was alone, several IV's were pumping fluids into her, and she was handcuffed to a bed. A faint beeping sounded faster. This turned her IV machine into high gear to pump more fluids into her.

She pulled the IV out of her and started working on her monitors when an nurse came rushing in with a face of worry. Usually nurses had stone cold faces. They'd seen everything, nothing should faze them. But this one was scared of something, and hesitant to approach the bed to redo the IV's.

"Um, how are you feeling?" The nurse lingered by the door.

"Like I'm waking up from an induced coma."

"I..."

"Just bring me whoever's in charge."

The nurse nodded, and left the room. While she was alone again, she reached over and pulled up her hospital chart.

Concussion, bruised ribs, stressed lungs (from inhaling water), and a few minor symptoms from oxygen deprivation. Not bad considering she was hit by a tidal wave and pushed through a portal. The rest of that experience was a blur, she pretty much blacked out at impact.

The door opened and a tan man in a business suit walked into the room. A little on the short side, wide eyes, and walked with long strides.

"The nurse told me you woke up." The man said.

"Do you believe her? The evidence seems suspect."

The man clicked his tongue. "I'm agent Wilkins, FBI. I'm going to ask you a few questions."

Miranda considered putting the IV back in her body, and let the agent sit in silence.

Finally, he started. "What's your name?"

"Miranda Whitlock."

The agent paused for a moment, surprised at the quick response. "Where are you from?"

"No where you've heard of."

"I've been to a lot of places."

"Not this place."

"Fine. What are you doing in the United States?"

"So I am in the United States." Miranda concentrated and tried to talk to Scott and Dixon with their mental link. But it wasn't working.

"I asked what you are doing here."

"An accident, I assure you."

"People don't just accidently come to America."

Miranda opened her eyes and stared at the agent. "Read to me the file on how I got here."

The agent pulled out a phone and opened the file. "It says several witnesses at an equipment rental company were working when a closet opened and a 'ton' of water spilled out, carrying two women."

"See there? Fell. Well, more pushed really. Water has a lot of force to it. Point is, I accidently came here."

"How did you get all of that water in that closet?"

"I didn't," Miranda said.

Agent Wilkins clenched his jaw slightly. "I have to admit, it is a fascinating story. Two women riding a tidal wave through a store, there was enough water to keep a pod of sharks happy for a while. Local authorities try to ID you, you're not on any database they have. It gets pushed up the chain and more and more people come back with the same result. You don't exist."

"Like I said, not from around here."

"Ok, if you don't want to talk about you, let's talk about your friend. The one with shards of bone sticking out of her hand."

Skylar. In the last moments she had in the Underlabs, she had rescued Peter Dixon's sister Skylar. Sort of. Using a few stolen memories, she worked out where Donovan kept Skylar's consciousness and uploaded it into the only body available. A cured tetrapath. The monster was gone from her, but her mind had shut down. It was open to receive a new mind. The body was ravaged. Elongated spine, stretched jaw to form a huge under bite, and her right hand was replaced with a giant bone spear.

"Where is she?" Miranda asked.

"What is she?"

"She's a friend."

"Is that what you do to your friends?"

"You think I did that? Her body was riddled with disease you and your planet aren't prepared to even consider is real. I saved her and brought her over here."

"My planet? Are you saying you're some sort of alien?"

Miranda looked down at her wrist. The archive stone, her bracelet that held thousands of memories, was still there. If she could only touch the agent with it.

Wilkins saw her looking at it. "And then there is your bracelet. It should be locked up in evidence, but no one was able to get it off your wrist. You started a viral story similar to King Arthur and his sword. People were wondering if it could be taken off. So, unless you have some convincing evidence to prove otherwise, I'd have to say alien, or mutant, or something. And I'm ready to send you to a secret facility where they can test all those theories."

"I'm sure the tests will reveal human."

"But you've already admitted to being an alien."

"If that's what you want your report to say."

Wilkins scrunched his lips and walked up to her bed. "Just tell me you want to speak to a lawyer."

She swung her free hand at his face. She meant to hit him with her archive stone, but he caught her by the forearm.

"Assaulting an officer isn't going to get you anywhere," Wilkins said through gritted teeth.

Miranda pulled a memory from the stone, down her arm, where it shot up through Wilkins' hand. He fell on top of her, and she started searching him for keys. While her free arm did that, the handcuffed hand grabbed his head and pulled in some of his recent memories.

Hospital security had stepped away, giving him a ten minute window to interrogate her with force if he chose. Skylar was one floor up on the west side.

The keys fumbled in her hands and she managed to sneak them out and unlock the cuffs. Welkins' fell right off of her and onto the floor. She found a change of clothes (the clothes she was wearing when she fell through the portal) and her belongings. The Shield of ascendance, the Ancestral Branch and the Dominion Rod.

She holstered each of them and stepped into the hallway. A nurse turned to look at her with a wide eyed expression. Miranda shot her and a few other bystanders with the branch. Orbs of green shot out of the tips and her targets fell into memory trances.

She did this through the hallway and up the stairs. The security in the hospital was very minimal. Some places needed key cards to get through, but she already collected five along her way.

Skylar's room was behind such a door. The third card she tried opened it and she made it through to the cell. This was a quarantine area. She had to be in and out before somebody put the area in lock down. All it took was a button and she would be trapped as long as they wanted her trapped.

Miranda walked to the back and opened the last door. Inside, the room was lit only by sunlight through small windows. There was a toilet and a shower built into the room, and it resembled more jail cell than a hospital room.

Skylar was sitting cross legged in the corner, dragging the bone spear arm along the linoleum floor. Her eyes were red from crying, and there were several dents in the wall where she may have been trying to stab her way out.

"Skylar?" Miranda called out tentatively.

"Oh, you." Skylar looked up, but didn't make any other acknowledgment.

"Hey, I can get us out of here. Let's go."

"What's the point? Look, no offense, but I don't know you lady." Her speech was slurred behind the overbite. "Just that you put me in this body somehow."

"And I can explain all of that to you, but we've got to go."

"The last thing I remember was running through that portal, hoping for rescue, trying to be strong for all of the younger kids in there."

"And you were. I was one of those kids. You got us through. Now let me be strong for you."

Skylar stood up, but moved to her bed and laid down.

"Fine." Miranda shot her with the branch, putting her in a long trance. The memory was the collective memory from her mind, Scott's mind, Dixon's mind and Talia's mind. It would catch her up on everything that had happened in the last 20 years, and hopefully put her in a more cooperative mood.

The only problem was, she didn't have time to sit here and wait for Skylar to go through those memories. She had to get out now. So Miranda walked back a few doors and got a gurney.

Back in the room, she pushed the edge of the gurney into Skylar's bed, and it attached to the gurney. Miranda rolled it around and then put several sheets to cover Skylar.

The quarantine alarm didn't sound until Miranda was well clear of the area, and getting into the elevator to get to the main floor.

When the elevator doors opened again, there was no task force to trap her. There were a few confused looks, and a pair of elderly officers. The Branch made quick work of them.

Once outside of the hospital, Miranda tried her mental link with Scott and Dixon again.

[Guys, I was captured for a while by local authorities. I think I'm in the clear. Where are you?]

There was no answer. She had lost the connection. She tried to run through her memories about the last time she remembered communicating with them. Something about portals, and America, and then there was a sudden stop in the conversation.

Miranda played it out on her archive stone, the memory itself forming a sort of hologram above her archive stone. At that point in history she went unconscious, but she was still receiving the messages. The memory confirmed her fear.

Scott and particularly Dixon were shouting at Talia. Talia was refusing help and saying that she wasn't savable. That her portals no longer worked on her. Talia's words grew quiet and stopped. Miranda stopped the recording and looked around for a place to hide a gurney carrying a deformed child.