Chapter 3 Homecoming

The New Borg are slowly revealed

Started in "Chapter 1: Bitter Pill" 
Continued from "Chapter 2: All's fare" 

Feles offered her hand. "Now. While I'm vulnerable."

"What?" I pulled away, stood up. Invade her mind while she was hurt? "No. You're injured."

"But your safety is assured," Feles said, wincing as she climbed into the chair. "The abusive ways—I am not trained. They require full focus."

I couldn't proceed, not like that. "And your safety?"

"My collective stands behind me." She smoothed her clothes and offered her hand. "Join me and see them work. What you can expect."

I slipped back in the pilot's chair. Roger's chemical weapons had started to counteract my medicine—he sprayed the antidote into the air wherever he went. I had pulled a muscle and the shakes were sending pain up my lower back. I grabbed my pill bottle with hands losing their grip far too soon. Would another dose be safe? I put my hand over her knuckles. "Just rest. I'll get you home."

"My home is everywhere."

Her eyes glittered, reflecting the colors of the room. I couldn't read her depths. "I don't understand."

She shrugged. "Our faces are less expressive than yours. If you want to know me, touch my mind."

To mind meld with a Borg. To assimilate? Even without nanites, that seemed—a bit much. I shivered and focused on my piloting.

"I understand your trepidation." She stepped over me and put her hand over my shoulder.

My shoulders craved her touch. I looked up at her.

"I want to offer comfort in that way. But, without invitation, to recklessly invade."

"Don't you control it?"

She sat back down and nodded. "Not completely. You could pull me in, against my will."

"I would never—"

"Not consciously, no. But—even now. Can't you feel yourself trying?"

I couldn't feel that, per se, as I looked into her eyes. It felt more like calling, pining, inviting. Instead of brutally demanding, 'What are you on about?" I fished a flask out of hiding—whiskey, Aldebaran style, brewed and bottled by Jellek: Denobul-aldebaran. "You look like you could use a bit of this yourself."

She chuckled, sadly. "My people prefer spirits to alcohol—pun intended. Even before the—" She pointed at her Borg prosthetic.

"Rather human, you don't mind my saying." Why did everybody know so much about human things? I downed a sip and shrugged. "Who are your people?"

Feles squirmed. "That is a very probing question."

"I didn't mean to—"

"But you said it, and with good reason." She looked down at the floor, eyes glistening a bit. "Always, we are met with this."

I touched her shoulder, and felt a yearning for greater closeness. "That bad?"

"Not always were we the good people." She shivered.

The cold I felt–the chill–was not environmental; Feles felt unnerved about something. "You're not your history."

"There is nothing worse than coercion. Nothing worse than civilizing without permission."

"Humans have had their moments. We could have been the Borg."

Her eyes flashed.

I felt a surge of adrenaline. I settled back into my seat, and faced the controls. "We don't have to talk, if you're not comfortable." Was it the madness?

"Could we touch minds? I could better lend you strength." She leaned forward. "Humans are like us, not meant to be so isolated."

"I can't lie." I raised my hand in the air, like a Vulcan salute. "I wanna say I wouldn't welcome that."

She mimicked my gesture, then pressed her palm in to mine.

I could hear the voices. Not lockstep, like a Borg chant, nor either cacophonous, but synchronous. Symphonic, like an aviary, or a mass of jazz musicians.

The babbling of a brook, each molecule acting freely, not the march of an army.

I began to doubt that the madness had any substance. Perhaps the entire disease the Founders had put upon us were simple gaslighting. Or perhaps, I took courage from the song of the aviary.

"Not in fascist coordination," Feles whispered, "But in seeing, and being seen. That is the great power of the link."

I thought of the changeling bond; natural assimilation. I pulled away.

"I misspoke."

I didn't even know whether to think of her as a Borg or a Founder. Either way, this potential villain was a woman. "No, Feles—you're right. For all that, you are absolutely right."

She offered her hand again.

I looked away.

***
Feles had been gracefully disappointed as we parted ways. I did keep her contact information–her touch had bolstered me against the Founder disease. In all, I felt I had had a good day until I saw the doorway to my house.

I ran up and opened the door.

Unlocked.

Molly lay behind the door shivering, a phaser burn on her shirt.

I dropped my lunch and fell upon her.

She still breathed.

I activated my communicator— "Contact Feles."

The ship's computer responded, "Unable to comply."

Her life was slipping from me. I reached in my pocket and took out the wafer. It would save her, but at what cost? "Wake up, Molly."

I considered slipping her the wafer. We could remove assimilation, but we couldn't reverse death. But it was her life, not mine.

"I can sell you my soul. My soul for Molly's life." I took the wafer.

In seconds I heard the aviary song. My body surged with strength.

I took Molly's hand, but could not find her spirit the way Feles had done with me. "Damn you. Sold you my soul, you help her."

Feles appeared behind me, and another. "This doctor can help her."

"But he's not here." I started to cry.

"He can be. He can commandeer your hands."

I pulled the doctor into me as I had Feles. He raised her head, tapped at several nerves.

Molly squirmed and turned still paler, but—I knew—she had started to recover.

Feles whispered in the doctor's ear, "Keep her strong. I'll be there."

We hovered over Molly for half an hour, pestering her before Feles arrived.

In seconds she had Moly restored.

The doctor stepped out of me, and the song of the Aviary fell distant.

I looked with anger at Feles.

"I'm so sorry that this had to happen."

I waved her away with a fierce, backhanding motion. "You're telling me that you didn't want me assimilated."

"Of course I did. In your own time."

I ran my hand through my hair. "Thank you for not making me assimilate her."

"We come to the collective in our own time. There should be no need for force."

I grabbed her in a hug, embracing the music of the collective. "It's just a lot."

"You are so Federation—ready to separate the crime from the bystander."

"That is a good way to describe forgiveness." I shrugged out of the hug. "I'm not sure that's all that is going on."

Behind her wooden, alien smile I saw a hint of knowing warmth.

***

"Where is my Borg friend?"

I hadn't been that distant had I? "I'm trying to get us into a haven."

"You're my Borg Dad. Talking about the hot girl."

"Feles is looking for people to help."

"You're not worried about your girlfriend?"

I was, actually. We had to move due to knowing her. "She is not my girlfriend."

"You don't become a Borg for just friends, Dad."

"I seem to remember that I became a Borg for my daughter." I reached down to tickle her.

She dodged my ambush with a wicked grin. "Oh, am I getting a sister?"

The idea didn't seem half bad. If I could find a safe place for Feles. "Who says I'm gonna need you?"

"Too bad you're stuck with me." She laughed and stole some of my popcorn.

Just as she did I saw it—the telltale sign of a haven entrance. "Found it."

Moly's face fell. "We can't leave Feles."

"They're not like that. They'll take us."

Molly put her hand over my knuckles, like I was the foolish child. She didn't know the Federation, even in hiding. "You'll see."

***

"It doesn't look like anything."

"it's not a starbase," I said, setting the ship to drift into position.

"It could be a trap. The radiation would make it impossible for us to restart."

I took Feles' knuckles in my palm. "They have to be very careful."

"Papa here knows what he's doing." She smiled. "Plus if we get into trouble you can use Borg radio."

I snorted a laugh.

"She's got us there."

Feles gave the countersign. Tresk's face appeared for a moment on screen warning us we would owe him big time if we destroyed the ship.

Then that too faded, and the lights with it.

For the better part of an hour we drifted. The air grew stale.

"I'm rebooting this ship." Feles went to the panel.

I held her off.

Just then the tingling of a transporter lock hit my forearms and we reappeared.

Molly appeared behind three officers in red shirts with phasers drawn.

Feles and I breathed a sigh of relief and raised our hands.

A woman in yellow reached for the phasers we had brought.

"We don't actually need Borg," the woman in yellow hissed.

"We're not here to assimilate."


Feles elbowed me. "We do provide access to the collective."

Her stance softened.

"We're not the Borg of olden times," I said, massaging my shoulder where the woman had bumped me aside.

She nodded. "You can understand our care. This woman here—you know her people invented the Borg Collective."

No denial in her eyes. "I did not know that."

"Apparently they grew tired of their neighbors' individualistic ways, so they upgraded their wetware."

Feles gritted her teeth.

I took it as an admission. It didn't matter anyway.

"There's no harm you can do here. Enjoy the fountain while we decide what to do with you." The soldiers left, taking Molly with them.

Molly grabbed a tree.

"It's okay, Molly. They won't harm us."

"You are free to roam, including visiting your–friends–as you see fit."

It looked like the 'fountain' was a water source for the complex. One could likely infect the entire populace with it.

Feles smiled. "We're in. Once they realize we aren't here to forcibly—" she looked at me in horror.

I stood over the water, my hands idly crumbling something.

She grabbed me and tried to pull me from the water.

"What are you doing?" I threw her off and continued to crumble the crackers in my hands.

"This isn't some game you're playing," she said, running back at me and pulling at my arms.

Some of the crumbs–was it the Assimilation wafers?---fell into the water. "I don't understand."

"You're making a terrible mistake," she said. "Help! You've got to stop him."

The security officer arrived and shot me in the hand.

I dropped the rest of the wafers in where they dissolved.

The security head hit her communicator. "The water is compromised. Repeat, the water is compromised."

Several other security officers arrived to take us away, though they quickly released Feles. "No forcible assimilation?"

"That's right," I said, staring at my turncoat hands. "At least that's what I believe."

"How convenient for you," she said, and turned to Feles as her men escorted me away. "You understand, we'll have to put you in the brig as well, until we sort this out."

Feles blushed hard. "I don't have any answers for you. They told us we were above this."

The security officer touched her shoulder. "Thank you for the report. This could have been so much worse."