The light was unnervingly blinding, filling his entire vision. He closed his eyes again, the orange afterglow tattooing the inside of his eyelids. He tried to lift his arm to shield his eyes, but it continued to lay limply at his side. His whole body felt weak. He turned his head to the side and opened his eyes again, blinking rapidly. The sterile white room slowly came into focus. A hospital? Why the hell was he in a hospital? He scanned his brain, trying to recall his last memories. Nothing.

He heard a door slide open and footsteps approaching his bed. He warily turned his head in the direction of the sound, and was greeted by a bright smile and pale blue eyes. He couldn't help but smile back at Dorian. Damn, was that smile infectious.

"It's great to see you're awake." Dorian sat at a chair beside his bed. "I brought you a treat."

John noticed that Dorian had brought a white paper bag with him. Dorian opened it with a soft crinkle and pulled out a raspberry donut covered in powdered sugar. John neither loved nor hated raspberry donuts, but they were Dorian's favorite. Dorian couldn't taste, of course, but he had admitted to John that the color and texture was beautiful, and that he bet they tasted the way a viola sounded. To John, they were just overly sweet indigestion waiting to happen. John weakly shook his head when Dorian held it out to him.

"I'm not really hungry."

Dorian put the pastry back in the bag and sat it on the small table beside him. He folded his hands in his lap and looked at John happily. John scowled at him. Dorian was usually in a good mood, but today he was extra chipper.

"What's your problem?"

"I don't have a problem. The opposite, in fact."

John rolled his eyes. He didn't understand how anyone, even an android, could always be so happy. He fumbled around for the button to bring his bed into an upright position, and was mildly relieved when Dorian brushed his hand away and pressed the button for him. He felt really tired, and every movement seemed sluggish and draining. John tried again to remember what exactly had put him in the hospital, this time with more fruitful results.

He recalled going to the house of the infamous crime lord Sven Verbinski with a search warrant that had taken them months to finally get. Hearing gunshots from inside, Dorian had kicked the door in. They had searched the silent house, muscles tense, adrenaline pumping, eventually coming across the body of Verbinski's wife in the hallway. All of it was coming back now. Busting down the door of Verbinski's study, guns at the ready. Verbinski had fired shots at them as they came through the door. One hit Dorian squarely in the chest with a dull chink. John had quickly taken refuge behind the giant oak desk in the room. Verbinski was under the influence of something, his eyes bloodshot and his clothing rumpled and askew. He stood boldly by the window, not attempting to take cover. It was obvious that he wasn't planning on coming out of this ordeal alive. John had brought his head over the desk to take aim and wound Verbinski when a bullet smacked him in the shoulder. He remembered how odd it was, waiting for the accompanying blast of pain, but instead only feeling a numb coldness spreading down his arm and side.

Poison. That bastard Verbinski had a thing for poison. Each of the people that had been found dead by Verbinski's people had been poisoned with something that none of the police force had been able to identify.

"The bullet." John said. "The bullet was coated in poison, wasn't it?"

Dorian nodded. "Verbinski's very own concoction. Kills a man in ten minutes."

John thought back to all of the searching forensics had done on Verbinski's poison. A concoction of Verbinski's sick mind, it had no cure and condemned the recipient to a quick yet agonizing end. Forensics, for whatever reason, had code named the damnable poison Xena, the hell if John knew why.

"So then why am I still here? I thought there wasn't a cure."

Dorian's eyes shined merrily as he recounted the events after John went down. "Backup arrived three minutes after you went down. I shot Verbinski's knee and cuffed him. I'm not gonna lie, he was scaring me. Laughing and smiling like he was insane, which I guess he probably was. He had taken some Xena before all the shooting. Died a coward's death, if you ask me."

John motioned weakly with his hand for Dorian to get to the part with what the hell happened to him. Dorian got to the point.

"Everyone was panicking. We all knew what was happening, and what was bound to happen in the next seven minutes or so." Dorian seemed calm as he retold the events, but his eyes showed how scared he had been. "I knew I had to do something. So I stopped your heart."

John blinked. "I'm sorry, what now?"

Dorian shrugged. "I stopped your heart. I knew that the poison couldn't move through you if your blood wasn't pumping. It bought me a little bit of time."

Dorian looked defiantly at John, as if daring him to say he had made a wrong decision. John obviously couldn't say much, considering he was alive against all odds. He nodded his head, urging Dorian to continue. Dorian smiled.

"Well, the rest can be summed up in one word. Cryonics."

John laughed. "You made me into a popsicle?"

Dorian shrugged again. "I guess so."

"That's brilliant."

They both grinned at each other.

"So, you froze me until you could find a cure?"

Dorian nodded.

John looked around. "So how long was I out? A few months?"

"Two hundred and seventeen."

"Months?"

"Years."

It took John well over a minute to process what Dorian had said. Dorian watched him silently, gauging John's reaction.

John didn't know how to react. Everything he had known had just vanished in that one word. He looked to Dorian to see if it was some sort of joke, but Dorian never was good at telling jokes. Everyone he had known would be long dead. The world would have went through thousands of gradual changes that would make it something completely unfamiliar to him. A knot of fear coiled around him. The world he had known was gone, and he would have to face it alone.

Not alone. He had Dorian. Dorian, who still had his same goofy grin and love of sugary raspberry donuts. Even though he could hardly move, he reached over and grabbed Dorian's hand, squeezing it with all the strength he had. Dorian looked at him with understanding eyes.

John released Dorian's hand and closed his eyes. "So... what do we do now?"

"Well, it's actually kind of great that you asked me that."

John opened his eyes and gave Dorian a hard look. "Why?"

Dorian beamed at him. "I've got a job working undercover. And The Federation Council said that when you woke up, they'd look into giving you a job too!"

John felt sleepy. All the excitement had really drained him.

Dorian stood up. "You've got to rest. But I'll be back as soon as my classes are over."

John was eager to go to sleep, but the conversation was just too interesting. "What classes? Are you in some sort of school?"

Dorian smiled brightly and adjusted his shirt, which John hadn't noticed before. Black, long sleeved, matching pants. A silver emblem was on the breast, triangular, a bit like an "A".

"I'm a teacher. Quantum Mechanics." Dorian was obviously pleased.

John gave him a smile. "I'm not gonna lie, that's pretty awesome."

Dorian smiled impossibly wider. "I know. And if things work out, you'll be part of Starfleet too!"

Dorian left with those words, leaving John to wonder what the hell Starfleet was. And why was Dorian working undercover? He would have to fill John in on the details. But as for now, all he wanted to do was sleep.

And that's just what he did.