Three Years Later

Four of Ten opened her eyes. Her regeneration cycle was complete. Orders flooded her mind. First on today's list was to help assimilate a starship. Their shields were collapsing as the order came in, and only seconds later she was standing on the other ship with thirty other drones.

Phaser shots came down the hallway, hitting and disabling two of them. "Modulation pattern detected. Adapting," came the voice in her head.

More shots came their way, and one simply bounced off her shield. It seemed that once again the power of the collective had proven its superiority over other races.

As one, they marched forward, and the security team fled. Four of Ten walked towards her assigned task: Taking engineering. This ship, a Federation vessel was in possession of a highly experimental warp drive, capable of sustaining warp 9.99 for long periods. The collective wanted it for themselves.

More phaser fire came her way as she walked into engineering. They had remodulated their frequencies, but she was not the first in. By the time they had brought down the two in front of her, the collective had adapted again.

There was a flaw in the design of the ship: there was only one way out of engineering. The engineers had nowhere to run. Four of Ten cornered the man she took to be the chief engineer. He would make a fine addition to the...

The collective, it was fading. "Why?"


5 Seconds Earlier, Delta Quadrant

Torres' assimilation tubules downloaded the virus into the collective. In seconds, the inhabitants of Unimatrix Zero would be free from the collective, and hopefully be able to do something to bring the Borg to their knees.


Chief engineer Stephen Ramsay knew he was going to die. The female drone, and her three surviving companions, had him cornered. The female reached out to hold him in place, other fist clenched where he knew the tubes would spring from. He waited for his inevitable fate. There was no pleading or bargaining with a Borg; if they got you, that was it.

The drone had stopped. Both of its hands flew to its head, as though it had a headache. It spoke, electronic noises in its female voice, mangled by a sub-vocal processor. "Our... design– NOOOOOO!" It suddenly yelled.

It turned around, grabbed one of the other drones, about to assimilate one of his assistants, and threw it at a third.

The fight was swift. One Borg, with the element of surprise, against three, who didn't know how to react to this sudden betrayal. Two of them died quickly. The third one was still moving limply, and the one which had turned picked him up off the ground. Looking it directly in the face, she spoke again, "I know you're listening, Queen of the Borg, consider this a declaration of war." Then she snapped its neck.

The only thing going through Ramsay's mind the whole time was, "What?"

The rest of the engineering team were staring at her. "I need to lock them out of the computer," she said. "Hurry, before they take the bridge."

Ramsay ran over to one of the consoles and started pressing buttons, to lock down the computer core, but this did not seem to please the rogue drone. "No time for that!" She practically barged him out of her way, and sent her assimilation tubules into the console. The console quickly started tuning black and green, before a clock appeared on it: 15:00, 14:59, 14:58...

"What's that counting down to?" he asked.

"Self-destruct. Hopefully it'll take a few of them out as well, they'll send backup to deal with me and the fact that they can't access the computer. My advice? Run. Are there any working shuttlecraft on board?"

"Two," he replied, and the drone quickly followed her own advice. It was very weird to watch a drone running, but he was in no doubt that he would be following her. He didn't want to be caught in a self-destructing starship, especially one filled with Borg. The other engineers were hot on his heels.

They didn't run into any other drones on their way to the shuttle bay. The collective was obviously so confident in their ability to catch everyone that they hadn't even left a guard.

The four engineers and one drone climbed into the nearest shuttle, and prepared to launch.


Amanda (she never wanted to hear the words Four of Ten again) immediately shoved her assimilation tubes into the main console of the shuttlecraft, despite several protests from the engineers. She quickly silenced them, by saying, "Do I need to remind you there's a Borg cube out there under the command of one seriously annoyed Queen. This thing can do, what, Warp 4? That won't cut it. We need better shields and transwarp, and that means I need to do this."

The nanoprobes would quickly construct a basic transwarp coil and upgrade the shields, but to stand any chance they would still have to go to transwarp the moment they left the shuttle bay.

The bay doors opened and they shot out at the highest speed safely possible, and immediately went into transwarp. The photon torpedo that had been fired towards them was too slow. They were away. She just hoped the Queen wouldn't decide they were important enough to follow.

It took a couple of minutes before one of the engineers plucked up the courage to ask what happened.

"Unimatrix Zero broke free from the collective, the Queen never saw it coming." At the puzzled looks, she added, "I'll explain later."

"Why are we dropping out of transwarp?" Ramsay asked.

"Let's see, we're in Federation space, running from the Borg," she replied, with a smirk. "What stands out more? A shuttlecraft running at Warp 4, with a mostly Federation signature, or a shuttle, moving at transwarp, clearly using Borg technology?"

"OK, I get your point, but can you at least do something to increase the speed? I don't fancy spending months out here."

"If I do much more, we'll look like a Borg vessel, and have both groups trying to blow us out of the sky. We have easily enough power, we have a replicator, and I can turn one of the seats into a makeshift regeneration alcove for myself. We can survive. If I boost our speed, we probably won't."

Her tone made it clear the argument was over.


Eight months Later

The journey had been long. A few days at high warp equated to eight months at the leisurely pace of Warp 4. They had made it to Earth's solar system without being stopped, but now Amanda was feeling nervous.

Unlike Seven of Nine, who had been externally disconnected, Amanda had been separated from the collective from within. That meant that her body hadn't rejected the implants, and she wouldn't be able to live without them. Of course, that meant that she would be trying to approach Earth while looking like a Borg. And that was before they landed. Most people wouldn't take her appearance kindly.

It had taken a while for the engineering crew of the Cochrane, who she now knew were called Stephen Ramsay, Jonathan Caine, Victoria Johnson and Michael Jamieson, to trust her, but after eight months together, they had become quite close.

They would have to alert Starfleet Command to their arrival, and her... condition, soon, and they could only hope that the high ups would be prepared to listen.


Admiral Walker was in charge of Earth's space-dock, and was having a very boring day. Everything had been going smoothly, and while that was a good thing, he sometimes missed the thrill of commanding a starship.

Then he received a call from the head of security. "Mr Santos, what seems to be the problem?"

"A small shuttlecraft has requested admission, sir."

"That's nothing unusual, what's the problem?"

"They claim to be carrying four survivors from the Cochrane and one from the Hamilton. The Cochrane was attacked and destroyed by the Borg eight months ago; we found the wreckage. We had no reason to believe anyone escaped. The Hamilton disappeared nearly four years ago, no wreckage. We believed the entire crew was assimilated."

Now that was interesting. He needed something to distract himself, this would be perfect. "Would you hail them for me, please?"

"Certainly, sir."

He waited for the channel (voice only he noticed) to open. "Space-dock to unknown shuttle. This is Admiral Walker. Respond."

A female voice, with an electronic sounding edge to it replied. "All the way to the top, huh? This is Ensign Amanda Lewis of the Hamilton."

The Admiral checked to make sure the signal was clear. If the connection was as bad as it sounded, then it could easily drop out, despite this being very short range. It was perfect, so why did she sound so bad?

"So, Ensign, would you mind telling me where you've been for the past few years?"

"Um... Where should I start? Wait, I know. You're an Admiral, so you must have seen the reports Voyager has been sending back." Now he was confused, Voyager was still officially lost when the Hamilton disappeared. And the Ensign's voice was still off. She continued, "What do you know about the Unimatrix Zero incident?"

"Er... They helped free a group of..." he trailed off. That explained her voice only too well. He was speaking to a former Borg drone, with all of her implants still in place.

"Now you see why I went for voice only; I didn't want to scare your people into knocking me out of the sky."

"Well, I know now. I'd like to see who I'm dealing with, please."

The screen flickered to life, and he couldn't help but gasp. Borg had always been a threat in the past, now he was struggling to see past that. This woman had been through hell, and had come out irreparably damaged, and for all his knowledge of that, his initial reaction was still 'threat'."

She gave him a shy smile, "Yes, I know I look a mess, but I can't help it."

He laughed a little at that. At least she had a sense of humour about it.

He could see a few other people there, all human. He assumed this was the group of survivors from the Cochrane. "How did you end up with them?"

She suddenly looked very embarrassed. "I... might have been..." She paused and took a breath. "When the virus was uploaded I was helping assimilate their ship."

"So you then decided to save them."

"They were the only ones I could save. Without the element of surprise it would have been twenty against one, plus whatever backup the Queen sent after me. I set the ship to blow and we lit the hell out of there."

"I get the picture... Ensign. I'll call down and have them let you in, but I'm pretty sure my security chief will want to be waiting for you. Walker out."

He called back his head of security. "Commander Santos, I've followed up on it. Let them in."

"Are you sure? You know something's off about this."

"I've spoken to them. As my head of security, you read a lot of reports concerning the safety of this station. Ensign Lewis was involved in the Unimatrix Zero incident."

Santos' eyes widened. "She's Borg?"

"Was, Commander, was. However she may look."

"Still, I want a team standing by."

"I expected nothing less, Commander. Walker out."


Commander Santos and his team were understandably nervous about being asked to play nice with a Borg, even a former one. They had all fought them at least once, and most had lost friends to them.

The shuttlecraft had just docked, and the door would be opening any second. They tensed as it began to open.

Three men, one woman, and one female drone stepped out. It was not lost on any of the security team that the four humans had protectively surrounded the drone, in case someone tried to take a shot at her.

The message was clear.