Chapter 10

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A dim orange light glared down into Jamaal's pale face. Instinctively, she reached up to cover her eyes. The sounds of muffled conversation gently prodded her consciousness and she sat up abruptly, pressing a hand to the back of her head as she fought the urge to vomit. Around her, she found that many of her comrades were scattered on cots, wrapped in gauze and being treated with primitive medical supplies.

Where am I?She asked herself. The last memory she had was aboard the warship, the chaos of the Gheyya.

She noticed Commander Eames sitting on a cot next to her, his face pressed deep into his palms.

"Darren?" She asked hesitantly.

He raised his head. "Jim?" Darren Eames was the only man she had ever loved besides Lore. They had grown apart many years before she had even met Lore, but they were still friends. His presence next to her was comforting.

She paused to let her head settle, feeling utterly displaced. "Where are we? ...I have a headache." she added as an afterthought.

She was kept in one of many prison camps along with thousands of others whom had served alongside her. Many had approached her with questions she could not answer. How far away from home were they? Would they return? She didn't even know what planet they were on. Jamaal thought of the first weeks spent in these holding camps and as her thoughts grew in their strangeness, she slipped into dreams.

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Jamaal was roused from her sleep as several shouts erupted near her cot. Of few of the teenagers had gotten into a disagreement. Jamaal spotted the silver flash of a knife and swiftly rose from her cot.

Eames had noticed the disturbance as well and grabbed the scrawny attacker from behind as Jamaal calmly wrestled the knife from the struggling child's hand.

Jamaal held the blade out in the light. Upon closer inspection, Jamaal's eyes narrowed slightly. "Where did you find this?" She hissed.

"What is it to you?" The boy spat back.

"Insolent child. Where did you find this?" She held it menacingly against the boy's chest.

"My father… he was stationed aboard one of the war vessels. Took it from a fallen commanding officer." The boy was obviously struggling for breath. Eames lessened his grip on him.

"Which officer?"

"I don't remember. I swear." He added quickly at the look she gave him. Eames loosened his hold on the boy and he slipped through his arms and disappeared into the crowded cavern.

Eames turned to her as she stared at the elegant symbols etched into the metal. "What is it?"

"It is Commander Ilyn's ceremonial blade. It was given to her when she was indoctrinated into the priesthood. I gave it to her," Jamaal swallowed "I guess it is only fitting that it was returned to me."

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Lore dressed himself slowly, fingering the thick fibers of the plain, black tactical suit. His head felt slightly off balance, spinning. His circulatory system pumped faster than what could be considered comfortable and he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched.

His emotions had felt unsynchronized and discordant for the past several weeks. Fall had transformed into winter and snow frosted the ground where the trees were barren and black. In the back of his mind, he heard his brother's name whispered over and over. Data…

But it was not Data. He was not Data… though the feelings were still there. The sense of betrayal and guilt, love and hatred, blame and fault.

When he slept, he dreamt that he was not himself, but that he was his brother. In these dreams, he felt a horrifying lack of control as he stood holding a knife, a purple tinted blade, to his own throat and watched as watery pitch dribbled down his neck. He would always wake again, trying to shake a sense of lost identity. But he needed that portion of Data within him. Without it, he had come to fear the isolation inside his own mind.

Lore gently placed a hand against the titanium plated walls. His long-empty stomach churned. He felt sick. He never felt sick. He wondered how it was that he could convince himself to crawl out of his cot in the mornings and endure the Borg whom he had grown to hate.

The Borg, being so far out of their element, were unruly, hazardous beings. Fights often broke out for the strangest reasons. Plots against his own head were common, but easily stifled. He was confident that if he could develop the Borg into fully artificial beings, then he could organize a fully functional civilization. The idea sang to him. If Data could see that progress here, then he may integrate the faction into the Federation.

He attempted to continue his father's work. The entirety of research from 's lab was stored in his mind. However, the implants Lore designed were unstable, and usually killed the surrounding areas of the brain. The results were inconclusive. Initially, the Borg blamed him for the deaths of their comrades. And then began the suicides.

The connections implemented between the Borg at birth had held them together for as long as they had ever known; without that sense of continuity, chaos would consume them. Since the destruction of their ship, the Borg had not had access to this link and one at a time, several Borg had fallen victim to stress and depression and had died from lack of energy sustenance. When these began, Lore had reconstructed the network, and required every Borg to remain connected at all times. The events remained isolated, and the Borg allowed Lore to continue his experiments on the grounds that they could prevent further loss among the continuum.

He tasked Crosis with monitoring their progress as well as psychological welfare and the faction had remained under control for a while. Hugh had disappeared after the first Borg deaths, and was not found again. Lore had regretted his absence; he was one of the few Borg who seemed to be able to keep a steady head in a stressful environment, but still it mattered little to him.

Shouts echoed down the hall and Lore swiftly exited his quarters, trying to find the source of the disruption. He found two Borg locked in a furious wrestling match, viciously slashing at one another as a crowd grew surrounding them, jeering at the scene. Lore recognized Crosis as one of the attackers and shoved his way through to pull the two apart. The crowd seized the second offender.

"What's happened here?" Lore asked angrily.

"Two Borg have disconnected their link from the others. I questioned them and was attacked." Crosis hissed, indicating to the Borg struggling against his captors.

Lore turned an icy stare on him.

"You're evil!" spat the younger drone, still fighting.

"You don't know the meaning of the word."

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"The stressed reaction when confronted with unknown life has not been sufficiently documented and cannot be predicted in advance. Within these people, the most likely result of contact would be… absolute terror."The recording of a professor at the Daystrom Institute played through his mind as the sedated Borg lying beneath him on a stark metal table breathed gentle, shallow breaths. Lore operated with vulcan-like detachment, inserting modified cybernetic filaments into the Borg's cerebral cortex. The lecture he analyzed had been on the mildly xenophobic nature of the human species before proper conditioning and how echoes of these tendencies still existed in their race.

The Borg's condition had not improved since the last operation. The life-support monitors indicated a significant drop in brain activity. Lore felt something inside of himself slip a little bit lower, filling his body with an insatiable emptiness. He had sincerely hoped that this operation would be successful. The damage was irreversible. He closed the open lacerations, and washed his hands for what would be the fifth time in the past hour. He then had the vegetative body removed to stasis for use in further testing.

He left his laboratory, pacing down the darkened hall, eager to find his way outside. The rumble of the power conditioner deep underneath the complex reached his sensitive ears and his black polished booted clapped under the marble floor. He froze as a clatter erupted behind him for a fraction of a second. Eyes wide, he turned and found himself alone, the hallway empty. A shiver ran up his spine and he was left feeling vulnerable in his skin. The sensation looming over his shoulder would not leave him, and no matter how many times Lore reminded himself that he was in control of his own mind, he was still there.

"Data…"

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