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Over time, her memories of her parents and the epic journey they had taken to investigate stories about the mechanized race of beings called the Borg, which had been considered mere folk tales designed to frighten young children or the gullible, had faded from her conscious memory. When Seven began to experience strange, disturbing dreams of big black birds flying at her, with Borg marching menacingly towards her, the Doctor classified them as nightmares and dismissed them. The captain recognized Seven's confusion and dismay, however, and tried to comfort her. When a resurgence of these images occurred in the mess hall when she was attempting to eat her first true meal, however, new implants began to erupt from her skin. Seven physically attacked Neelix and stole a shuttlecraft. She was certain the Borg wanted her to rejoin them and were calling to her via a homing beacon frequency. Unfortunately, her path led into the region of space claimed by the B'omar, an aggressive species of aliens who were reluctant to allow transit through their territory. They imposed strict rules that were to be followed to the letter - if permission should even be granted. Seven, of course, had no permission and broke all of their rules.

When Tuvok and Tom Paris followed her, she fired on their shuttle and held Tuvok captive on hers (which also broke the rules). Tuvok questioned Seven about why she'd taken the shuttle. When she told him she was being summoned by those she considered her people, he surmised something else might be going on. He convinced her to let him accompany her to the place she thought she would meet the Borg and would be reassimilated.

That place turned out to be the wreckage of her parents' ship, The Raven. It rested on a desolate moon deep inside B'omar space. A beacon had been activated when Seven passed near enough for it to detect her Borg cortical array, causing the dreams of mechanical beings and the big black bird - a raven, which her biological brain conjured up from her childhood memories to serve as a nightmarish representation of the name of the vessel.

Tuvok filled his tricorder with data from The Raven's computer core before the B'omar began to fire on the wreckage. Captain Janeway broke more of the B'omar's stuffy rules by taking out their weaponry in order to save Tuvok , Seven, and Tom Paris (and the two precious shuttles, which necessitated a plethora of materiel whenever the shuttle building crew had to construct a replacement). The hoped-for shortcut through B'omar space was abandoned. When Seven returned to the ship, the Doctor adjusted her cortical array so that she would no longer be subject to responding to a mere homing beacon. A more powerful piece of Borg machinery, however, would still have the ability to disrupt her functioning, which would not be known until the following year.

In the meantime, with Tuvok's help, as well as the captain's, she pieced together what those "bad dreams" really meant. Reflecting upon what her life might have been like if she had been raised by her parents and never assimilated by the Borg lent her perspective on why she hadn't been willing to accept the name her parents had given her. Annika Hansen had been a victim of the Borg. Seven refused to be anyone's victim - especially of the Borg. From this time on, while she still identified closely with the Collective in her outlook and behavior in her daily life, she had no desire to be reassimilated.

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Although Seven of Nine didn't want to be reassimilated, her past as a Borg came back to haunt her from time to time. When Voyager passed near a debris field, the remains of a destroyed Borg vessel she "caught" an illness much like the mental condition known as multiple personality disorder. She exhibited the behaviors of individuals who had been assimilated by the Borg before her separation from the Collective, from neural patterns stored within her cortical implants. A virus introduced by Species 6339 into a viniculum from a destroyed Borg vessel was the cause. Most of the species had been assimilated by the Borg, and they wanted to take their vengeance on any and all Borg by infecting them with this virus. It came close to killing her. She was saved by Tuvok, who instituted a mind meld to retrieve her own neural pattern from the mix, restore it to primacy, and force the others into a dormant state.

While creating serious problems for Seven at the time, one of the personalities was that of a child who was eager to play games with Naomi Wildman. When Seven recovered, she went to Naomi to provide here with materials to help the child achieve her goal of becoming the "captain's assistant." She also asked Naomi if she would teach the game Kadis-kot to her. Naomi lost her fear of the "Borg Lady." Since Naomi knew more about being a friend and behaving appropriately to others than Seven had learned to this point, their friendship blossomed into an important relationship bringing great rewards to them both.

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