Cass: Tada!

The room swam hazily as Cass cracked open her eyes
She felt utterly wretched, nauseous, and fever hot; her body itched as if there
were insects crawling under her skin
Blearily glancing around, she registered all the blood in a disinterested,
distant kind of way; it seemed to be everywhere, smeared in blackening patches
over the bedding, the walls and, she realised as she raised her blistered,
oozing hands to stare at them: her
Her stomach spasmed violently and with a shuddering gasp she rolled over, black
spots dancing wildly across her vision as she noisily vomited, coughing
unidentifiable red lumps over the side of the bunk into a thick bloody mass onto
the floor.
Thin strings of blood flecked drool trailing from her lips, she groggily watched
the vomit begin moving around on the floor, starting to inch its way back up
towards her before she lapsed back into welcome unconsciousness.
...
"... matrix is back online again"
"Hurrg!?" Cass managed
"Ah, she's conscious"
She swam into view giving her a weirdly dissociative out of body feeling before
consciousness faded once more
...
Pain.
"...got that one locked down"
She was drowning in her own blood
...
"Aw, smegging crap! I don't..."
...
"Hurgh... "
...
"Get that!"
"Which ..."
...
"Thought we had put a stop to that?"
...
"Ok"
...
Bright
Alive?
"Urgh... shit!"
"Smegging hell, finally! We were wondering if you'd ever come around"
"Wha?" Cass managed; her voice sounded weird
"Welcome back"
Blinking furiously trying to focus, Cass turned her head towards the woman's
voice
"We lost you nine times; took some serious smegging genius to stop you being
dissembled"
Cassandra strode into view
"I... You..." Cass began
"Yeah" the other woman smirked "I'm you. Butler figured things were going
horribly wrong and fished me out of cold storage. Thanks again for sticking me
in there, by the way. You've got me to thank for your continued existence and
him for thinking quickly enough to go get me"
Cass groaned and sat up to swing her legs over the side of the bed, dislodging a
whole host of trailing cables and tubes festooning the bunk, triggering several
emergency alarms
"How did it go?" she asked, holding her hands up to look at them; they were
different
Cassandra sighed
"Good and bad"
"What!?" Cass snapped, immediately worried
"Oh, not bad for you" the other woman retorted "The procedure succeeded, only it
took a while longer than we expected owing to a few unforeseen issues"
"How long?" Cass asked, starting to pull infusion tubes and monitor cables away
from her skin
"Umm... a month?"
"No shit?!"
"Yeah. I've had you in a chemical coma for ages while the process completed"
"Other than that, ok?"
"Yep. Sound as a pound"
The door opened and Butler strode in clutching a couple of grocery bags
"Finally up and about" he acknowledged, depositing he bags on the table "Looking
good"
"Cheers" Cass smiled, "Let's see how good, shall we?"
She stood a little unsteadily and tried a few tentative steps across the room to
the mirror; her new body was almost exactly the same height and build as her old
one, but even then, there were still a host of subtle differences that reminded
her that she wasn't at home any more
The person that greeted her in the mirror was exactly who she wanted to see;
tall, skinny and blonde with a good bone structure, there was no mistaking who
she was, even (after what she had just done to herself) down to the DNA level
"Brilliant..." she breathed
"Yeah, aren't you just?" Cassandra smiled from the other side of the room "You
owe me, by the way. Big ti..."
A massive explosion rocked the ship
"What the smeg was that?" Cassandra screeched struggling up from the floor
"Explosion?" Cass dryly suggested
Butler was up immediately, pulling a couple of hyper kinetic flechette pistols
out, and flicking the safety catches off
"Bugger me" Cass raised her eyebrows "Where did you get those bloody things
from, and do you fancy a job as a bodyguard?"
"C'mon" he rumbled as the room started slowly filling with a pall of blue smoke
"Get dressed. Time to go"
The three of them, by common agreement, made their way from the stateroom up
through countless levels of emergency stairs and onto the main promenade, only
passing a single technician on their way; he gawped as they rushed past
"Hey. Hey!" he gabbled "It's you! It's..."
"Yeah" Butler snarled before they were gone
The promenade itself was a scene of chaos, screams of pain mingling with the
smoke filling the air from the numerous small fires burning here and there.
Civilians and crewmembers alike were busying themselves helping the injured and
dousing the flames, while others just milled around seemingly dazed and confused
From the look of it, way down the promenade, the emergency pressure doors had
deployed, closing off what Cass estimated was the aft third of the ship, red
lights flashing balefully in the far distance signalling only bad things for the
red light district.
"Shit" Cass and Cassandra both murmured in unison
"No time to gawp" Butler growled "Move"
Reluctantly they turned and swept down the promenade
Some few people recognised Cass as they rushed past and stopped to point or just
to stare at her
Cass smiled politely but kept her attention focused on keeping her new body
moving forward without falling over
Finally, they burst into the drive room interrupting a grim, grey faced Captain
Chrysler snapping order's at his underlings.
"Bad time for a state visit, I know Captain" Cass smiled warmly "What's the
situation and how can I help?"
Even in spite of the anguish he was feeling, Jay's mouth fell open
"Hi Jay" Cassandra smiled, blowing him a kiss
The drive room was silent for a moment before someone with the gift for the
blindingly obvious shouted what everyone else was thinking:
"Smegging hell! It's Queen Brittany!"
<tag>Jay</tag>