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Ensign Samantha Wildman sat in her quarters by the window one morning looking out to the vast backdrop of space. The reflection of stars streaking past the window mirrored in her sadly looking eyes. It had been six long years since Voyager had been thrust into the distant Delta Quadrant. Samantha missed her beloved Greskrendtregk. Not a day went by when she didn’t think of her husband. He had stayed behind at Deep Space Nine while she had gone with Voyager. Samantha remembered vividly the last time they had spoken. They had stood on Deep Space Nine’s upper docking pylon, and had said their good-byes for what was to have been a three week mission. Sadly, three weeks had turned into nearly seven years. Samantha wondered if he still thought of her. A day hadn’t passed that Samantha had not longed for his gentle touch, and to hear his soothing voice again. Even more so, Samantha was heartbroken that she had no way to tell her husband the news that he was finally a father. She remembered how for months they had tried and tried to conceive a child, but with no success. Now how could she tell him that he was finally a father? All she had left of her husband were her letters. She had begun her letters to him shortly after Voyager’s detour to the Delta Quadrant. Somehow writing to him as if he were here helped her to feel not so alone, and yet she knew she was not alone here. She had her child.

Hearing her daughter's soft footsteps pad into the room, Samantha put her letter aside and looked up.

"Naomi?" she asked, puzzled that the new outfit her daughter was wearing looked smaller already.

"Is that the outfit I just replicated last week? It looks a bit small for you," Samantha observed.

Naomi looked down at the purple shirt and orange overall dress she was wearing, and sure enough, the sleeves were way too short and it felt a little tighter than it had been last week.

"It’s the only thing that would fit," Naomi said, shrugging her shoulders. "Everything else is too small."

Samantha laughed, shook her head, and wondered if her daughter would ever stop growing! It seemed that Naomi was outgrowing her outfits faster than the replicator could make new ones.

"I’ll replicate you some new outfits this afternoon," Samantha said as she continued getting ready for her duty shift.

Naomi headed over to the replicator and programmed in her breakfast selection. Moments later, a glass with fizzing layers of red, orange and yellow liquid appeared in the replicator. From the other room, Samantha noticed her daughter’s strange breakfast choice, a Talaxian dessert to be precise. She raised a slightly disapproving eyebrow.

"For breakfast!" Samantha exclaimed looking at the dessert. Naomi giggled.

Samantha just rolled her eyes and laughed as she studied herself in the mirror, but noticed something was amiss. Her ensign pip was missing from her collar.

"My pip!" Samantha exclaimed, and started to frantically search the room for the little pin.

From the other room, Naomi giggled as she sheepishly explained to her mother that she had taken the pip to replace one of her Flotter doll’s missing eyes. Samantha suppressed a laugh behind a smile as she went into Naomi’s room and sure enough there was her pip on the Flotter doll! She came back out, and attached the pip to her uniform collar, but met the sad look of her daughter who was now upset that her mother had just usurped her doll’s eye replacement.

"Mom, now he's blind in one eye!" Naomi exclaimed.

"I’ll fix him when I get off of work," she reassured Naomi. "Speaking of which, I had better go or I’ll be late. You’d better run along too. You don't want to keep Seven waiting."

Samantha kissed the top of her daughter's head and left for work.

Minutes later, Naomi excitedly entered the Astrometrics Lab, and greeted Seven of Nine with her usual childlike exuberance.

"Hi, Seven!" the child crowed happily, momentarily forgetting about her now one-eyed Flotter doll.

Seven of Nine looked up at her from the work she had been doing.

"Naomi Wildman," she observed, as was her customary Borgish greeting she had become so accustomed to using.

"So, what’s our mission for today?" Naomi asked in anticipation.

"We must re-calibrate the forward sensor array to..."

Seven suddenly stopped in mid-sentence as she looked at Naomi rather peculiarly. Naomi noticed Seven gawking at her.

"Seven, what’s wrong?" the child asked.

"Naomi Wildman, are you malfunctioning?" the half-Borg asked. Naomi seemed confused.

"Malfunctioning? What do you mean?" she asked, perplexed.

Seven of Nine retrieved a tricorder from a nearby console and scanned the child.

"Your height has increased by three point eight inches since you entered the room, and according to this tricorder you have aged approximately three years," Seven told her.

Naomi looked confused. "I have? But...how?" the child asked.

"I am uncertain. However, I believe it would be a wise precaution for you to report to sickbay," Seven advised. "I will accompany you."

They started to leave, but Naomi tugged on Seven’s arm. "I think I should call for my mom. She’s in Engineering," Naomi said. Seven saw the worried look on Naomi’s face. "You can summon your mother from sickbay," Seven told her and they left.

Minutes later, Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman entered sickbay, but by this time it was obvious that something was indeed wrong with Naomi, as she was now well over four feet tall.

"Doctor, I think something’s wrong with me," said an obviously aged Naomi Wildman.

The Doctor concurred by just what he had seen in the few seconds since the child had arrived in sickbay. He looked questioningly at Seven. "Seven?" She appeared to be as baffled as he was by this.

"She appeared to have aged by approximately three years in a matter of minutes. I am uncertain as to the cause," Seven explained.

"Doctor," Naomi asked in a slightly scared voice. "What’s wrong with me?"

The Doctor gently guided Naomi to one of the beds. "I’m not sure, but I'm going to run a few scans on you. Nothing to worry about," he reassured her, as he briefly went into his office.

Seven noticed Naomi's sad face looking up at her. The child's arms were outstretched upwards. Seven raised a questioning eyebrow, but picked the child up and placed her on the bed without question. The Doctor soon returned with a tricorder. Naomi fended off the scanning device, looking frightened when he tried to scan her.

"Can you call for my mom?" Naomi asked. "She’s in Engineering."

The Doctor nodded. "Of course." He tapped his commbadge.

Samantha Wildman was working at a console in Engineering when she got The Doctor’s call over the comm system.

"Doctor to Ensign Wildman."

Samantha stopped working and tapped her commbadge. "Go ahead, Doctor," she responded.

"I have Naomi in sickbay," he said.

Samantha was immediately concerned when she heard his first words. "Is something wrong?" she asked, nearly interrupting him.

"I’m not sure, but she is requesting your presence," he said.

Ensign Wildman looked pleadingly at Lieutenant Torres for permission to leave. From her own station, Torres nodded her permission. "I’m on my way," Wildman responded, and hurried out of Engineering towards the turbolift.

"Sickbay!" she ordered once she was inside the lift.

A few seconds later, the turbolift deposited her near sickbay, and she rushed inside. Wildman was nearly shocked by what she saw. Her daughter, who had been no more that six inches over four feet an hour earlier was now at least five feet tall, and looked much older than she had been that morning. Samantha tried hard not to let her child see the worried and concerned look on her face as she went to her.

"Mom," Naomi called to her. Samantha comforted her daughter. "What’s happening to me?" the child asked.

The Doctor was scanning the child with his tricorder, but the readings it gave baffled him. Naomi Wildman looked up at The Doctor with a concerned look. Naomi’s mother stood at her side with a look of equal concern.

"Doctor," Samantha pleaded. "What’s wrong with her?"

The hologram shook his head. "I’m not sure yet," he said. "We’ll have to run some more tests."

The elder Wildman shook her head confused. "She was fine this morning. There was nothing…"

Just then, Janeway entered. "Doctor, report?" she asked concerned.

Feeling a bit awkward with everyone now standing around her, Naomi drew closer to her mother for solace.

"I’m afraid that I don’t have an explanation for what’s causing this yet, Captain," The Doctor answered. "But Seven and I are…"

From the medical lab, Seven suddenly summoned him, and he and Janeway exited to The Doctor’s office. Naomi looked up at her mother with a frightened look.

"Mom," Naomi asked. "What’s happening to me? Why am I growing so fast?"

Samantha looked down at her very frightened and confused daughter, and couldn’t help but feel the same. She stroked her daughter's hair gently.

"We don’t know yet, sweetheart, but The Doctor is going to help you. There’s nothing to be afraid of," she tried her best to reassure her daughter, but Samantha had an uneasy feeling that something was very wrong here.

The Doctor returned holding a padd. Janeway followed behind.

"I think we may have something here," he told them both.

"What?" Samantha immediately asked.

"It appears that Naomi’s DNA has somehow been manipulated at the sub-molecular level to induce rapid aging," The Doctor explained as best he could. Both Ensign Wildman and Captain Janeway looked confused.

"Manipulated? By whom?" Wildman asked.

There was a pause. "The Vidiians," The Doctor said.

Sam was shocked. "Vidiians? But how?" she asked.

"I’m not sure, but these readings indicate that this mutation occurred just shortly after her birth," The Doctor explained.

Janeway’s stomach clenched with an uneasy feeling. The mere mention of the Vidiians brought back memories of four years ago, but there was something else that disturbed her even more, and only she and The Doctor knew what that was.

"Keep me informed of Naomi's condition, Doctor," Janeway ordered as she left, but The Doctor followed after her.

"Mom, who are the Vidiians?" Naomi asked.

"An alien race that we encountered a long time ago before you were born," her mother explained the best she could, but for some reason she couldn’t quite remember everything vividly.

"Did they do this to me?" Naomi asked.

"We don’t know, honey…Try and get some rest okay? Everything is going to be fine. I’ll be right here," Wildman assured her daughter. Naomi nodded and drifted off to sleep.

Out in the corridor, The Doctor and Captain Janeway were talking in hushed tones.

"Captain," The Doctor said. "It may be time to tell Ensign Wildman the truth about Naomi. She obviously knows that something is wrong," he said.

Janeway shook her head. "I don’t know if that would be the best thing to do until we figure out why Naomi is aging so fast. There may be a connection to what happened four years ago. Keep working on it, Doctor," she told him.

He nodded and she left. As she sat beside her sleeping daughter, Samantha Wildman was trying to understand what the Vidiians had to do with any of this, and why everyone seemed to know something more about this than she did. She just wanted answers, but no one seemed forthcoming to give her any, and she didn't know why.

Back in her ready room, the captain sat down at her desk, sighed heavily and rubbed her forehead with her hand. The time she had hoped would never come was here, and this time there could be no deceptions. She knew it was time to tell Samantha the truth about her daughter...The truth she had been forced to keep from her for four years. Janeway tapped her commbadge.

"Janeway to Chakotay. Commander, would you join me in my ready room please?"

A split moment later he responded. "On my way."

Seconds later, Chakotay entered and saw the captain staring down at her computer monitor with the most intense look he had ever seen.

"Captain?" he asked.

Looking up at him, she got up from her desk and headed towards her couch...her thinking couch she had dubbed it, and rightly so, for this was the place she often went when it came to wrestling with the tough issues of captaincy. She offered him a seat. He sat down.

"I’ve just come from sickbay," she told him.

Chakotay looked concerned. "How is Naomi?" he asked.

"Fine for the moment, but understandably scared," Janeway responded. "The Doctor believes that her rapid aging is the result of a DNA mutation caused by the Vidiians."

Chakotay looked at her puzzled. "Vidiians? But we’re hundreds of light years away from their space. I don’t understand how they can be involved," he said.

Janeway sighed heavily. "This apparently occurred four years ago," she said.

Her voice trailed off as she struggled to find the next words to say.

"Around the time we encountered the duplicate Voyager," Chakotay noted. Janeway nodded.

"The Vidiians must have done something to her DNA before she was brought over here," she surmised.

"That would explain her rapid aging, and why she has aged so quickly since her birth," Chakotay replied.

The captain sighed. "The question now is, how do I explain to Wildman where her child came from? Four years ago, I thought I was doing the right thing by blocking her memories of her original baby’s death, but..." Janeway’s voice drifted off.

"Her baby’s death was hard on her. You did what you had to do, Kathryn," Chakotay reassured her.

The captain shook her head. "Now I’m not so sure that it was the right thing to do, Commander. Maybe what I did to try and ease her suffering only prolonged it. What if I did the wrong thing, Chakotay?" she asked wearily.

He put a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is time to tell her the truth about what really happened," he said. Janeway nodded in agreement. Despite the past, she knew that it was time to tell Ensign Wildman the truth about Naomi.

A few minutes later, Janeway summoned Ensign Wildman. "Ensign, would you report to my ready room, please?"

In sickbay, Neelix had come to be with Naomi and was standing by her bedside.

"Neelix, will you stay here with her?" Wildman asked.

Neelix nodded emphatically. Samantha nodded her gratitude to him, and left sickbay. Moments later, she entered the ready room. Janeway offered Samantha a seat. There was a long, uncomfortable pause before Janeway could find the courage to speak.

"I’ve made some discoveries which I think will explain what exactly happened to Naomi," Janeway told her.

Samantha sat down. "The Doctor said something about Vidiians? I don’t understand how they can be involved. I don't remember anything about Vidiians," the ensign said confused. "There are just so many things that I have never been able to remember about Naomi’s birth. I’ve been trying to remember something...anything, but I can’t even seem to recall the smallest detail, and I don’t understand why...How could I not remember something as significant as my own baby being born?"

The desperate and helpless look on Samantha's face nearly overwhelmed Janeway. The captain took in a deep breath, hoping for some kind of strength to say what she knew she needed to say.

"Samantha, a long time ago I made a decision that at the time I thought was the right one, but now I see that it obviously was not. As your captain, I owe you the truth about what really happened four years ago," Janeway said.

Wildman looked bewildered. "The truth? About what?" the ensign asked.

"Four years ago, we encountered a duplicate Voyager created by a spatial scission," Janeway explained. "Around that time, you gave birth to a baby girl…who died from complications. There was nothing The Doctor could do. Shortly after that, you became so despondent and depressed that we…had to wipe your memory of those events. The baby from the duplicate Voyager was brought here before the other ship was destroyed to prevent a takeover by Vidiian forces. I’m sorry that I never told you. I thought at the time it was the right thing to do considering the circumstances, but now under these circumstances…I’m not so sure that keeping the truth from you was the right thing for me to have done, and I am sorry for not having told you," Janeway explained.

This startling revelation hit Samantha like a ton of bricks. It all just seemed like too much to take in all at once. Slowly the ensign got up and wandered about the ready room aimlessly. She tried to speak, but could not force any words from her lips. The intense pain in her chest felt like her heart was exploding into millions of pieces. She blinked hard and hot tears seared down her cheeks.

"How…Why…How?" Wildman didn’t know what to say or how to say it, but the devastated look on her face was all that one needed to see.

"I’m sorry," Janeway said quietly, but she knew that it was a pitiful apology for what she had done.

Another drawn out silence ensued.

"Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth about my baby?" Wildman finally asked, her voice trembling with a mess of emotions.

"At the time, I thought that it was best not to…I didn't want to make it harder for you," Janeway said.

Samantha shook her head in disbelief. "You thought it was best to keep the truth from me, to wipe my memory of my baby’s death, give me someone else’s baby as if nothing had ever happened, and then never bother to tell me the truth!" she responded angrily. "How could you never tell me about this!" Samantha sobbed.

The captain swallowed hard to keep her own tears from surfacing. Someone had to be strong in this, and she was trying.

"Ensign," Janeway said softly. "That child in sickbay is yours…Albeit it isn’t the one that you brought into this world four years ago, but she is yours, and you are her mother. We only kept the truth from you, because at the time you were terribly upset. We never meant to purposely mislead you or lie to you. That was never our intent," the captain promised her.

Still overwhelmed by this shocking revelation, all Samantha could do was just stand there. She just didn’t know what to say. She felt betrayed. The captain she had trusted and respected for six and a half years had lied to her all this time about the one thing Samantha had held so dear to her heart…her only child.

"I need to be with Naomi right now," Samantha finally said in a soft, shaky voice, and left.

Janeway watched her go with a sad heart and a guilty conscience. She knew that she had just betrayed Samantha’s trust in her.

A few minutes later, Wildman was again in sickbay by her child’s side. She tried to fight back her tears as she looked down at her frightened child.

"Mom?" Naomi asked as she opened her sleepy eyes and looked up at her mother.

It was then that she saw tears rolling down her mother's cheeks. Naomi gently reached up and brushed a tear from her mother's face.

"Mom, why are you crying? Am I going to die?" Naomi asked, frightened.

Samantha tried with all her might to swallow the lump that was defiantly hanging in her throat. Try as she might, she could not speak.

"Does The Doctor know how to fix me yet?" Naomi asked.

Samantha finally was able to summon up the strength to speak again, and struggled hard not to let Naomi hear the hurt and anger and fear in her voice. "The Doctor is working on it, honey. Just rest. I’ll be right here if you need me," she reassured her only child.

"You promise you won't leave?" Naomi asked worriedly.

Samantha tenderly stroked her daughter's cheek. "I promise," she reassured her child, and Naomi drifted off to sleep again.

Neelix entered from The Doctor’s office, and could see that something was obviously bothering the ensign.

"Samantha, are you all right?" he asked, looking concerned.

She didn’t say a word as she got up, put her hand on his arm and went to go see The Doctor. The look on her face broke Neelix’s heart.

"Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?" she asked The Doctor.

"Ensign?" he asked as he looked up from his work.

"Did you know?" she asked angrily.

"I…beg your pardon?" he asked.

"The captain just told me where Naomi came from, and how my baby died and how she made me forget!" she said as harshly as she could while still keeping her voice low enough for Naomi not to hear what was being said. "Were you in on her little conspiracy too!" Wildman demanded to know.

The Doctor shook his head, confused. "Conspiracy?" he asked. "No…Samantha, we only did what we thought would be best for..."

She cut him off. "What you thought would be best for me!" she said angrily. "Wiping my memory of my baby’s death, and then replacing her with someone else’s baby was best for me! Being lied to for four years was best for me!" she shouted.

"Samantha, we…" but he didn't know what to say to her. He knew she was right.

The Doctor looked at her sadly.

"How could you do that to me! Naomi and I trusted you!" she screamed.

The Doctor cowered in the corner, looking absolutely ashamed of himself as he bore the emotional onslaught of Naomi’s distressed mother. Neelix came into the medical lab when he heard Samantha yelling.

"Sam," Neelix implored her as he restrained her. "Maybe we should go back to your quarters."

Samantha fended Neelix off. "No! I won’t leave Naomi here in the hands of someone I don’t trust anymore! I’m taking her home!"

Wildman went into the other room, picked Naomi up off of the bed and headed for the door. The Doctor blocked her way.

"Samantha, please…I wouldn’t advise that you…"

Wildman clung to her daughter tighter.

"Get out of my way!" she yelled at him.

"Mom, why are you yelling at The Doctor?" Naomi asked groggily.

"Samantha, please let The Doctor help Naomi," Neelix pleaded.

"Why should I trust any of you anymore?" she asked them. "You all lied to me!" Wildman said, on the verge of tears again. Neelix and The Doctor couldn’t deny that they had.

"Mommy, please don’t yell at Neelix!" Naomi begged weakly, near the brink of tears herself.

The next few moments were a blur, but several minutes later, Samantha found herself back in her quarters with Neelix. She was crying. "I don’t understand why everyone lied to me!" she sobbed.

Neelix did his best to comfort her, but he felt like such a hypocrite for doing so. He knew he had been just as guilty as everyone else had for concealing the truth from Samantha, but he was determined to do everything he could to make things right by her again.

"You have my word that I won’t ever let anyone be untruthful to you or Naomi ever again, and neither will I. I hope that you can find some way to forgive us, and…to forgive me. I never wanted to be untruthful to you. I love Naomi as if she were my own. I never wanted to hurt either of you. I swear it," Neelix said.

Wildman gave in to the plaintive look on Neelix’s face, and put a gentle hand on his.

"Neelix, I’m not upset with you. I don’t think that Naomi would ever let me be. You’re such an important part of her life…and mine. You’ve helped us both so much."

Neelix put a comforting arm around her. "We’ll find a treatment for this," he assured her, hoping that his assurances would not be in vain. Samantha tried to pull herself together, knowing that whatever feelings of betrayal she felt, she had to put aside to be with her child.

"I just don’t know what I would do…if I ever lost her again," Samantha said tearfully. Neelix took her protectively in his arms.

A few hours later, a much calmer Samantha was back in sickbay by her child’s side. Naomi looked up at her mother, who was noticeably younger than she was by now.

"Am I going to die?" she asked.

"No," Samantha promised her. "I won’t let that happen."

Several hours later, the captain entered sickbay only to find Wildman asleep by her child’s bedside again. Janeway gently tried to rouse Samantha, and the young ensign shot awake, startled a bit.

"Captain!"

Janeway looked concerned. "Sam," she said gently. "Why don’t you go to your quarters and get some rest. I’m sure The Doctor has everything under control here."

Wildman shook her head. "No, I want to stay. I promised her that I would stay with her."

Reluctantly, Janeway gave in.

The Doctor came into the room. "I’ve finished my analysis of Naomi’s DNA. My initial diagnosis was correct. The Vidiians somehow were able to affect her aging process in a way that it accelerates at nearly ten times the normal rate. By my estimation, in five days, she will be nearly eighty years of age," he said.

"Is there some way of reversing this?" Janeway asked.

"Nothing I have tried thus far works," The Doctor said apologetically.

Hearing those words, Samantha Wildman looked down at her daughter woefully.

"This was a precisely engineered mutation of her DNA right down to the subatomic level. In all honesty, it would be practically impossible even for me to correct the mutation," The Doctor informed them regretfully.

Wildman shook her head, and barely could get her words past her throat. "Are you telling me that she is just going to keep getting older until she..." Samantha couldn’t even finish.

"Ensign, I promise you that I will not deactivate myself until I have come up with some way to treat her," he promised.

Samantha seemed a bit more hopeful with The Doctor’s reassurance. The captain tapped her commbadge. "Janeway to all senior officers. Please report to the briefing room in five minutes...Ensign, I’d like you to join us."

Samantha looked at The Doctor. "I’ll let you know immediately if her condition changes," he told her. With this reassurance, Wildman nodded and left with the captain.

Ten minutes later, the entire senior staff was assembled in the briefing room, including Ensign Wildman.

"Whatever it takes to find a treatment for this is our top priority," Janeway told them. "We need options and we need them now!"

There was a brief silence.

"What about an anti-chroniton chamber?" Torres suggested. "Anti-chronitons could reverse the aging process of her cells right down the subatomic level," the chief engineer told them.

Wildman shook her head. "We can’t do that," she said.

"Why not?" Janeway asked.

"Because anti-chronitons would kill her," Wildman responded. "Ktarian DNA breaks down when it's exposed to anti-chronitons."

Seven of Nine suddenly spoke up. "Captain, it may be possible for us to reverse the child’s aging process by using modified Borg technology," she suggested.

"How would you do that?" Wildman asked.

"The procedure would involve the construction of a modified Borg maturation chamber. With the proper reconfigurations, it can reverse the aging process," Seven explained.

"But wouldn’t that only be a temporary solution to the problem? I mean what if this Vidiian DNA mutation were to kick in again?" Paris asked.

"An infusion of modified nanoprobes may be able to locate and terminate the virus," Seven responded.

"Would there be any risk to Naomi?" Janeway asked.

"I don’t believe so," Seven answered.

Wildman nodded in agreement to Seven's proposal. "I’d like to try that," she said.

"All right," Janeway said. "Seven, B’Elanna, Harry, get on it! This is our top priority! Everything else can wait!"

Seven, Torres and Kim nodded as they hurried off to Engineering.

"In the meantime," Janeway said. "Lets..."

Wildman suddenly interrupted her. "Captain, permission to help Lieutenant Torres in Engineering?"

Janeway paused for a moment, and finally gave her permission. "Permission granted, Ensign."

No sooner had Janeway said the words, Wildman was out the door.

Three days later, after virtually the entire engineering staff had pulled double shifts, the modified chamber was finally ready.

"Progress report, Lieutenant?" Janeway asked as she entered Engineering.

"We’ve just completed the last diagnostic. So far, everything has gone according to plan. I think we’re as ready as we’ll ever be," Torres told her.

Janeway nodded and tapped her commbadge. "Janeway to transporter room two. Energize."

Seconds later, a sleeping Naomi materialized in the Borg chamber. The Doctor scanned her.

"Her vital signs are stable. I think we're ready to begin," he said.

Janeway nodded to B’Elanna. The engineer worked a panel.

"I’m activating the field," Torres said. "Harry, keep an eye on the particle flow. Don’t let it get above 750," she warned.

Harry nodded. "Right."

Wildman stole a glance at Naomi from her console, but tried to keep her mind on her work.

"Sam, how does the field integrity look?" Torres asked.

Wildman studied her console. "Field integrity is holding," she answered, but her mind was hardly on her work as her only child’s life was hanging in the balance right before her eyes.

"Particle flow at 250...350...550," Kim said.

"Keep it steady," Torres warned.

At another console, Seven was preparing the modified nanoprobes. At The Doctor’s signal, Seven began the infusion. Suddenly, an alarm blared. The tension in the room quickly thickened like dense smoke in a pitch dark room.

"Wait a minute! The containment field is fluctuating!" Wildman told them.

"We're up to 742!" Kim warned.

"Harry, we have to abort!" B’Elanna said, as she was desperately working her console.

"Naomi!" Samantha screamed in desperation as she abandoned her console and tried to get to her child, but Janeway held her back. A few harrowing moments passed as Torres, Kim, and Seven hastily worked their consoles. Finally, after what seemed to be an interminable number of seconds, the crisis passed.

"Particle bombardment has stopped. Minimal leakage," Kim said breathlessly.

Torres sighed in relief.

"What happened?" the captain asked.

"I don’t know," Torres said shaking her head. "This should have worked. I don’t know what went wrong."

Wildman rushed protectively to her daughter’s side and cradled the elderly woman in her arms.

"Can we make a second attempt?" Janeway asked The Doctor.

"I wouldn’t recommend that, Captain," he said, scanning Naomi. "I don’t think she would survive a second attempt...I should get her back to sickbay." The captain nodded sadly.

An hour later in sickbay, The Doctor was no closer to finding a treatment for Naomi. The child, now an old woman, looked up at her mother.

"Mom," she said weakly.

Samantha took a hold of her daughter’s frail, wrinkled hand. "I’m here, Naomi...I’m right here."

"I’m dying. I know I am," Naomi said weakly.

Samantha shook her head. "No...No. Naomi, we are going to find a way to stop this. You have to try and hang on okay? Please..." Samantha begged.

"I'll try, Mom," Naomi nodded weakly and drifted back to sleep.

Wildman looked down sadly at her daughter, but it was then that she finally knew what needed to be done, and she herself was the one who had to do it. Wildman burst into the captain’s ready room, not even bothering to ring the door chime, interrupting a meeting between the captain and Chakotay.

"Captain," she said. "I have to do something. I can’t just let her die! She’s my child!" she pleaded.

Janeway put down the padd she had been reading. "Ensign, I assure you that we have not given up hope yet," the captain said gently. "B’Elanna and Harry are at this very moment..."

Wildman shook her head. "No, Captain. I have to do something!" the ensign insisted.

Janeway looked at Chakotay confused. "What are you proposing, Ensign?" Janeway asked her.

Samantha didn’t hesitate. "Send me back to the past. Let me save my baby from the Vidiians!"

There was an almost interminable silence.

"Ensign..." Janeway began, but Samantha cut her off.

"The chamber can be modified to send me back in time. I can save her," Samantha told them.

Janeway and Chakotay exchanged cautious looks.

"Even if there were a way, we can’t ignore the Temporal Prime Directive," Chakotay told them.

"Captain, with all due respect," Wildman said. "Let the Prime Directive be damned! I don’t understand any Prime Directive that allows a child to die when the ability exists to save her! Please, Captain. I lost her once four years ago! Don’t let me lose her again...Please! I beg you!" Samantha pleaded.

Janeway and Chakotay looked at each other for some answers, but the desperate look on Wildman’s face told them enough.

Minutes later, Engineering was bustling with activity as nearly half of the senior staff and a handful of crewmen were working on the chamber. Finally, an exhausting fourteen hours later, it was done. Samantha Wildman returned to sickbay to see her daughter, for what she hoped would not be the last time.

"Mom," the elderly woman looked up at Samantha. "I...don't think I can hang on anymore."

The sad look on her child’s face tore at Samantha’s heart.

"Naomi...We think we’ve found a way help you, but I have to leave for a little while. Only for a little while, then I’ll be back and you’ll be just fine," Wildman promised, trying to offer the old woman some encouragement, despite the fact that she needed some encouraging herself right now. "Neelix will stay with you until I get back."

Naomi grasped her mother’s arm tighter. "Where are you going?" the old woman asked.

"It’s very hard to explain, Naomi, but I’ll be back soon, I promise," the ensign reassured her.

Samantha bent down and embraced the frail, old woman carefully.

"I love you, Naomi...No matter what happens, I'll always love you," she whispered.

Samantha turned to Neelix. "Take care of her."

Neelix nodded emphatically. "I will. You have my word...Be careful," he said. Samantha nodded and left.

Moments later Samantha arrived in Engineering. "Naomi doesn’t have much time left. We have to do this now!"

"Samantha, there’s no way that I can tell you what you’ll be up against when you get there. I really wish that you would reconsider and let someone else go. It could be dangerous," the captain said.

Wildman cut her off. "Captain, I have to do this. Please let me do this!"

The look of sheer determination in Wildman’s eyes broke Janeway’s heart. "Be careful," the captain told her, knowing full well that by allowing this to happen she was blatantly violating more than one Star Fleet regulation.

Torres handed Wildman a commbadge. "This commbadge is reconfigured to send communication on a subspace carrier wave. You’ll need it in order to communicate with us," the chief engineer explained.

Wildman nodded, and got into the chamber. "I’m ready," she said.

"Good luck, Samantha," Janeway told her, and she sealed the chamber.

"Prepare to activate the temporal chamber," Janeway ordered Torres, Kim, and Seven. Without hesitation, they took their positions.

"Activating chamber now," Torres announced as she worked a panel. Samantha closed her eyes. Seconds later, she dematerialized out of the chamber and was gone...

When she re-materialized, Wildman found herself in one of Voyager’s corridors. Suddenly, the red alert sounded.

"Computer, report!" Wildman ordered as she immediately tried to make herself inconspicuous, remembering that in this timeline she was supposed to be in sick bay giving birth, not romping through corridors.

"A Vidiian militia has boarded Voyager," the voice responded.

She crept down the corridor to the weapons locker, grabbed a phaser and continued down the hallway to sickbay. She was nearly there when she suddenly heard a loud voice behind her. "Hey, you there!" the gruff voice shouted.

Ensign Wildman whirled around just in time to see a Vidiian pointing a weapon straight at her. It discharged and she dove into a tight crevasse in the wall, narrowly escaping certain death. She charged her phaser to the maximum setting and fired blindly around the corner. There was a painful gasp and then silence. She emerged and saw that the Vidiian was nowhere in sight. Suddenly, a pair of rough hands grabbed her from behind. Startled, she dropped her phaser. She was being restrained now, and one of them was trying to inject her with an awful looking apparatus. A struggle ensued and finally, Wildman was able to gain the upper hand with a few well aimed blows to the Vidiians’ guts. Breathing heavily she sighed in relief.

With both of her attackers now subdued, Wildman set off for sick bay. She was not prepared however, for what awaited her. The place was dark and smelled of acrid smoke and burned flesh. The only sources of light that permeated the room were the emergency lights, and even those flickered like dying candlelight. By the looks of the ransacked room, she feared that she had arrived too late.

"Computer, activate EMH," she ordered.

The computer chirped and then responded. "Unable to comply. The EMH has been disabled."

Samantha's heart nearly stopped. She'd been told that the EMH on this Voyager had tried to save her baby from the Vidiians. If he was gone…where was her baby? She stumbled over to the incubator, but it was empty! Her baby was gone!

"No!" she pleaded softly. She had not come all this way only to come too late!

Frantically she began searching the ruins of sickbay until she heard a faint crying in one corner. She limped over to the sound, flung a few pieces of debris aside, and then heard the crying clearer. She followed the sounds of the crying to an access port nearby, and found her baby wrapped in a blanket inside. Samantha let out a cry of relief, and grabbed a nearby tricorder and scanned the infant. There was no sign that the child’s DNA had been tampered with. She had gotten there in time. Throwing the tricorder aside, she gathered the baby in her arms and turned to leave, but suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. She was so taken aback by what she saw before her that she slumped backwards into the wall, nearly dropping her child.

There she was...staring directly at herself. Her alternate self from this past laid dead on the bed. The woman’s eyes were open and fixed, and her head hung at an awkward angle off of the bed. The woman’s stomach caved in grotesquely. She had obviously been robbed of several internal organs. Samantha grasped the child tighter, and bolted from the room. Her unease was only comforted by the fact that she had managed to save her baby. The infant cooed softly in her arms, but she tried to quiet its sounds. Samantha knew that she still had to make it past the Vidiians to the transporter room. Quietly she crept down the corridor, being careful not to make any sudden movements. Suddenly, she heard footsteps approaching and muffled voices. She found a nearby crawl space in a bulkhead, and squeezed herself into it as tightly as she could while still holding her baby.

The baby began to cry.

"Shh...Shh," she said quietly trying to cease her baby’s cries, but she could not. The footsteps returned.

"In there," a voice said. Samantha held her breath. She was going to be discovered again, and killed this time for sure. The bulkhead that had concealed her and her baby came tearing away, and she was face to face with two Vidiians.

One of them raised his weapon and aimed it straight at her.

"No!" Wildman screamed as she instinctively turned away and put her back in the line of fire to protect her baby.

Hot, searing pain tore through her and she cried out. It felt as though something had been sucked right from her body! She began to feel weak and could hardly breathe. Sinking to her knees helplessly, she struggled to hold the baby. Suddenly, she heard Ensign Kim's distinct voice shouting, and she saw him running towards them with his phaser firing. Wildman did the best she could to shield her baby, and moments later she felt Kim's protective arms helping her up.

"Are you allright?" he asked her.

"I think so…Harry, you have to take her to the other Voyager!" Samantha told him.

"I know," Kim nodded.

She handed over her baby to him, praying that Kim would make it safely to the other Voyager again.

"I have to get to the transporter room," Wildman told him.

Kim looked perplexed. "The what? But, why?" he asked.

Samantha knew they were both running out of time. "Harry, you need to go! Go now!" she urged him.

She literally pushed him out the door and they went in opposite directions. She made to the transporter room a few minutes later and somehow managed to program in the beam out coordinates and drag herself onto the transporter pad, and was whisked away in the beam.

Four years away in Voyager’s sickbay, the tense minutes ticked away.

"Samantha's vital signs are weakening," The Doctor warned as he looked at the console. "We have to get her back!"

Janeway shook her head. "If we try to pull her from the other timeline by force we might kill her!"

Suddenly, a panel bleeped. "Wait a minute, Captain! I’m getting something!" Torres exclaimed.

Just then, Samantha re-materialized in the temporal chamber, and the old woman morphed back into four year old Naomi. The Doctor scanned Naomi with his tricorder.

"How are they, Doctor?" Janeway asked.

"Naomi’s DNA has reverted back to normal. There’s no sign of any DNA mutation. Samantha is going to be fine," he said, relieved.

Seconds later, Samantha regained consciousness. "I'm back?" she asked of no one in particular. "Naomi?"

Samantha pushed herself to her feet and rushed to her daughter's side. "Is she alright, Doctor?" He nodded. "She's just fine, Ensign." Wildman breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Naomi awoke to the grateful embrace of her mother. "Mom?" she moaned softly.

Rendered speechless, all Samantha could do was just hold her with tears of relief spilling down her cheeks.

"Mom!" Naomi cried out again, and held her mother tighter than she ever had before.

"I'm here, Naomi. Everything is alright now," Samantha assured her.

Everyone else made a discreet exit to allow mother and child some time alone.

Later that evening, Janeway was in her ready room contemplating on just how to make her log entry. She knew that by allowing Ensign Wildman to go back in time and save her daughter, there had been noticeable alterations to the timeline. A definite violation to Star Fleet’s Temporal Prime Directive. A violation she knew she would most likely catch hell for once they got back home. Just then, the door chime rang.

"Come in," she said. Ensign Wildman entered.

"Samantha, please...come in," Janeway invited her.

Wildman entered meekly.

"How is Naomi?" the captain asked.

"She’s fine. I...I just wanted to thank you. And I wanted to apologize. I had no right to say the things that I said to you," Samantha apologized.

Janeway shook her head. "No, you had every right. I should have told you the truth right from the start, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. For what it’s worth, Samantha, I am sorry, and I want you to know that despite the difficulties as a single parent that you have faced on this ship, Voyager wouldn’t be the same without you or Naomi," Janeway told her.

"Thank you, Captain," Wildman answered and left.

In her quarters, Samantha looked in on Naomi again. The child was sleeping peacefully, cuddling her repaired Flotter doll next to her. Samantha sat down at the table, and on it she was surprised to see the padd with her letter to Greskrendtregk, blank from where she had left off nine days ago still sitting exactly where she had left it. Picking up the padd, she began writing again...

Naomi can’t wait to meet you when we get back. You would be so proud of her, Greskrendtregk. She is such a brave little girl, and she definitely has your sense of adventure...We love you, and miss you, and hope to see you soon...

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