Jed stood petrified in the hallway where he stood face to face with a man, or what looked like one.
He'd shot it right in the face, but it just stood there, staring at him.
"W-what the hell are you?" Jed's rhetorical prowess became increasingly intelligent when he was panicked. He pumped another two blasts into the creature's chest, but it just stood blinking at him. Jed finally noticed the red laser like beam coming from its eye. As Jed's brain processed the only logical explanation to the scene he'd just witnessed, he almost lost all control of his bodily functions, simultaneously feeling the urge to throw up and pee his Star Fleet regulated pants.
"Oh m-oh…I just engaged a Borg!" Jed's voice, somewhere between a squeak and a whisper was the only thing that could be heard in the hallway besides the unnatural whirring noise you often get from machines, even with the lack of outdated cogs and gears. Jed was afraid of what might come of him now that he'd just attacked the scariest creature in all of existence. His immediate thoughts were to run but then he remembered Mana slumped on the floor by his legs. He couldn't leave her but he thought that it might've been his only chance for survival. His eyes flickered towards her and he took one cautious step back.
"B-booooorg…" A voice that sounded close to creaking steel came from the creature. Jed's head snapped back to the thing and noticed that it seemed to take considerable effort on the part of the creature standing there just to say this. Its mouth hadn't moved when it spoke, and its head twitched to the left.
Jed felt like his heart was about to beat right out of his chest, as he leaned down slowly to grasp Mana's uniform. The Borg's arm was completely gone, and its circuits were exposed, sparking like lightning bugs that Jed had fond memories of playing with back on Earth. A main circuit coming out of the metal casing of the body was snaking around in mid-air, as if trying to escape. The scariest feature of this machine was its unmistakable human features. The fact that it was once human and then its body was completely defiled and abused to create the abomination that was part of the Borg collective. It couldn't be considered human anymore, and there was no help for whoever this poor soul had been in a previous life.
Even in the throes of panic and mind-numbing fear, the rational part of Jed's brain was thinking that this was the most unusual Borg he had ever seen. It didn't seem like the others, a human host that had been overcome with machinery and wires, but it seemed almost as if it had been constructed entirely of machinery, with a human façade. Could this have been some Borg attempt to create a being to infiltrate and assimilate human societies? At the moment it seemed like the only logical explanation, but in the back of Jed's mind he knew that the Borg saw value in human tissue, and that's why they bothered modifying them into their Frankenstein hybrid race. But these things didn't matter, and there certainly wasn't time to mull them over, right now all that mattered was Jed's life.
Jed couldn't understand why it hadn't attacked him yet. It must have considered him a threat by now, especially after he'd shot it in the face and chest. Maybe it was malfunctioning? Jed clung to any shred of hope that it wouldn't attack him.
The Borg creation just stood staring at him with its one remaining eye. Jed was surprised that this eye even functioned. It was leaking some sort of fluid, almost like black grease. The gooey liquid oozed down its eye socket all the way down to its chin.
Just as Jed worked up enough courage to start dragging Mana away, the creature stepped forward in what looked like another extremely calculated move. Jed was startled so badly that he fell on his butt and yelled, "STOP! What…no stop it, stay there!"
The Borg's mouth lolled open and hung there while its voice came out, this time, without the tinny old-time radio tone. "You have wounded in your p-p-party." Each stuttering syllable was accompanied by an eye and head twitch. "H-h-help." This time its mouth moved perfectly around the word. The red eye beam, so synonymous with the Borg started to flicker, then the beam widened to function as an area light and it scanned the corridor.
"W-what are you, man…there's no way you're actually a Borg…." Jed still sat on his butt as the creature kneeled and examined Mana.
"My name is D-d-data. Yo soy androide." The being made a face like he was slightly confused then touched his still existing hand to Mana's forehead.
Jed stared at him, "What? Are you even…was that English?" Jed was becoming increasingly apprehensive as the thing touched Mana's face, and Jed had to fight the urge not to bean it in the eye with his gloved fist.
"Yo creo que si," said that thing, as it looked back at Jed. "I am not a Borg." His eye twitched in an unnatural way. Jed's nerves weren't about to take much more of this creature's ambiguity.
"B-but you're a machine…but you look human…."
The thing nodded, "Yes, as I said, I am an android, and my name is Data."
"You never said that," Jed half yelled accusingly, "…an android?" Data's eye twitched again, "WOULD YOU STOP THAT!?"
Data looked a little taken aback, "Stop doing what?"
"That weird eye thing…what are you doing!?" Jed's frazzled nerves made this come out a few octaves higher than he meant, as he imitated the facial attribute.
"Me parecía haber desarrollado una interesante contracción facial, muy similar a la de mi hermano, Lore." Data's eye twitched again while Jed just stared in disbelief.
"What…what is that, man!? Are you…is that Spanish!? WHY ARE YOU SPEAKING SPANISH?" He was clearly close to ripping his own hair out. "AND WHAT IS WRONG YOU'RE YOUR EYE?"
"I said," he started, voice full of patience, "I seem to have developed an interesting facial twitch much like that of my brother, Lore."
"Ok…whatever, but you said it in Spanish." Jed was close to a heart attack and was starting to jump at any small noise.
"Spanish? Forgive me, any language circuits must be malfunctioning." Data flicked his head to the right and started speaking in an assortment of both Earth and alien languages. Jed was not entirely willing to trust this self-proclaimed android because of his current predicament but as it didn't seem entirely threatening at the moment Jed decided it was better to worry about Mana than the thing. By the time the android had finished insulting Jed in a very obscure dialect of Klingon, Jed had calmed down enough to come to the conclusion that they needed to move.
