Chapter 25

The transporter beam sounded in sickbay's main room right as Riker notified the doctor that Data would be arriving. Beverly Picard had already been rushing from her office at the first sound of the transport, an instinct honed by years serving as a Starfleet physician. Data had already materialized and stood in the room, looking incredibly lost. If Beverly hadn't known better, she would have thought the android to be a lost little boy.

"Data, what's going on?" she asked.

"Doctor, something is wrong with my emotion chip. I cannot...control any of the emotions."

Resisting making a comment about no one having the ability to control their emotions, the doctor motioned her friend over to a seat next to the cybernetics panel they had installed especially for Data. She popped open the access panel on Data's head and frowned when she saw the circuitry of the neural net. She was capable of evaluating Data's status, but fixing it required the knowledge of the chief engineer, or her eldest son, but Wesley was entirely unavailable as he was on Caldos. "Where's Geordi?" she asked.

"He was..." Data trailed off, the words difficult for him to say aloud.

"Data?" She stopped mid-reach for a tricorder and peered at him closely. "What happened?"

"Geordi was taken captive by Dr. Soran. He beamed away in what appeared to be a transporter beam of Klingon origin."

"Klingon?" The last report she'd read had stated that Romulans were responsible for the attack on the observatory. Though, Soran could have been making deals with Klingons and not involved in the Romulan attack at all. Unless it was a setup. She continued to frown, bypassing the tricorder and picking up a more specific type of scanner.

Sickbay's doors opened to admit the captain and the first officer as Beverly had asked about the Klingons.

"Yes, Klingons," Riker said, answering for Data. "A Klingon Bird of Prey uncloaked outside the ship and Dr. Soran transported over with Geordi."

"Were they responsible for the attack on the observatory and not the Romulans?" Beverly asked, keeping her eyes trained on her scanner.

Will nodded. "Further analysis of the residue left from the disruptors has revealed that they were of Klingon, and not Romulan, origin. The Romulan's body must have been a plant to throw us off track."

"Which it certainly did," said Picard.

Riker turned to the captain. "I've spoken to the Klingon High Council, sir. They identified the Bird of Prey as belonging to the Duras sisters."

Picard's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Lursa and B'Etor? This doesn't make any sense." His brow then furrowed, signaling a shift into solving the curious and seemingly inexplicable situation at hand. When he spoke, it was him repeating his thoughts aloud, not asking for any specific answer from those present. "A renowned stellar physicist somehow uses a trilithium probe to destroy a star, kidnaps Geordi, and escapes with a pair of Klingon renegades. Why? What could make him do this?"

They looked at him with identical blank expressions—no one knew or could even fathom why. Changing the subject somewhat, Will looked back at Beverly and Data. "How is he?" he asked

Her frown hadn't left her face and she closed up Data's head, more than a little frustration apparent in her actions. "It looks like a power surge fused the emotional chip into his neural net," she said, dropping the scanner on the counter with a satisfying clatter.

The captain's look turned to concern and to Data. "Will that be a danger to him?" he asked the doctor, but still looking at the second officer.

Beverly maintained her cool professional composure as she addressed her husband as the captain and nothing else. "I don't think so. The chip still seems to be working. I'd feel better if I could take a closer look, but I can't remove it without completely dismantling his cerebral conduit, and that's something I would rather have Geordi do, or at least have an engineer's input if I do it."

Will gave Data a slight grin. "Looks like you're stuck with emotions for a while. How do you feel?"

Data cocked his head to the side "I am quite..." he trailed off as he searched for the right description of his emotion. "...preoccupied with concern about Geordi."

Riker glanced away for a moment, Data's words a confirmation of his own feelings. "We all are, Data. We're going to get him back."

Data didn't reply, shifting uncomfortably, actions the others in the room were familiar with in themselves, but had never before attributed to Data. Finally, he spoke again. "Also...I believe I am overwhelmed with feelings of," he paused again, having continued difficulty with describing his emotions. "Remorse and regret concerning my actions on the observatory."

Will frowned. "What do you mean?"

Data looked from Riker to the doctor, to the captain, and back. "I wanted to save Geordi. I tried. But...I experienced something I did not expect."

"What did you feel, Data?" Beverly asked.

He turned to her. "I believe it was fear."

The doctor wasn't sure of what to say. She realized Data was exactly right, that fear had stopped him on that observatory. But there were so many different types of fear, and she was being stalked by one type as they all spoke, by the one that threatened her children's well being, and another fear of losing Jean-Luc. If she did, she knew it would be her own fault, she was driving him away incredibly well so far. Yet as much as she feared losing him, she couldn't make herself stop.

Will reached out and placed a large hand on Data's shoulder. "Fear is a very difficult emotion to overcome. It's something we all have to learn to deal with. And we've all had much more time than you have." Neither the captain nor the doctor missed the significant looks Riker cast at both of them before he continued. "And some of us, no matter how long we've had dealing with our emotions, ever really learn to deal with fear in a productive way."

Data frowned in the vague direction of the wall opposite of him. "But I did not deal with it. I let it prevent me from helping my friend." He turned back to Will. "Does that make me a coward?"

"No," Riker answered immediately. "Sometimes, being a coward is refusing to admit you've got any fear at all, even if you've seen evidence of it. And I think you're beginning to experience another emotion—guilt. And you have to try and avoid that feeling. Guilt, more so than any other emotion in my opinion, is what can cripple you. It consumes you, takes over who you are, keeps you from moving on." Again, Will's look moved from Data and back to the captain, then the doctor.

Beverly refused to make eye contact, picking up a padd instead, entering a search for more information about Tolian Soran, ignoring the gaze she knew that Jean-Luc had fixed on her. Reading over the information that appeared on her padd, she was almost able to entirely brush off her husband's meaningful study of her, then Data's response to Will caught her off guard.

"Guilt," he said. "It is a most unpleasant feeling."

Her head snapped up and she decided to bring an end to the conversation. She didn't want to hear anything more about guilt and its brother fear. So she hit the transmit tab on her padd and sent the information to the nearest display, for what she found would make them all forget what they'd been talking about. "Gentlemen," she said, walking over to the wall display. "I've checked into Dr. Soran's background." As she triggered on the panel, the men gathered more closely to see the contents of the display. She started speaking again when Soran's photograph came up. "He's an El Aurian...over three hundred years old. He lost his entire family when the Borg destroyed his world." She barely caught herself from tripping over the words, referring to a person losing his family, it was too fresh on her own mind to allow any listening time on her own ears. But did a person every get over it? Was it even possible for that wound not to be fresh? Or had Soran heard his wife and children calling to him, day and night, for the past century?

Suppressing a shiver, Beverly continued. "Soran escaped with a handful of other refugees and six months after the attack the refugees were finally picked up by the Federation rescue transport Lakul. The Lakul was then destroyed by some kind of energy ribbon, but Soran and forty-six others were rescued by the Enterprise-B." The doctor allowed the others a moment to absorb the information, then tapped the panel to switch the displayed photograph. "I also checked the passenger manifest of the Lakul, and this is who else I found aboard."

The photograph on the display was now one of Guinan.

The captain raised an eyebrow. "I believe it's time we spoke to our hostess." Then he turned to Will. "Number One, I want you to—"

"Captain." It was Data who interrupted.

"Yes, Commander?" Picard asked, looking at Data.

As Beverly watched her friend, she could have sworn she saw him squirm.

"On the observatory, Dr. Soran revealed some information to me that I am...reluctant to share, but at the same time, I know that I am obligated to do so." He took a breath, an action unnecessary for an android, but very necessary for anyone attempting to deal with hefty emotions, then continued. "Soran revealed to me that he was in part responsible for the fire." Data didn't have to indicate which fire he was speaking about—for all of them, there was only one fire on their minds.

Picard managed to answer first. "Data, are you certain you heard him correctly? I realize that Dr. Soran did know about the fire, but—"

Beverly looked directly at the captain and interrupted him. "Soran knew about the fire?"

Instead of letting the captain answer the question, Data said, "Not only did Dr. Soran know about the fire, he was responsible for it."

"Surely you must be mistaken," Beverly said, dropping her gaze from the captain and to Data. "One, it doesn't seem possible that he could have started that fire, he's been on the observatory for months. Two, what could possibly motivate him to do such a thing?" She went back to the counter and picked up the scanner again. "Are you certain that the emotion chip fusing to your neural net at the time wouldn't have interfered with the auditory pathways?"

Data looked at her and then down at the scanner in her hand. "You are implying that I misheard."

She crossed her arms. "I'm only raising the possibility that you may have, Data. You did take some damage to your neural net."

"There is a slight possibility of damage to my auditory systems. However, that information can be easily verified by playback of my auditory recording through the ship's computer." Data stood, walked back over to the cybernetics panel, opened the access panel on his arm, and plugged into the system. He then tapped on the control panel of the ship's computer in a blurring speed. "I am now ready for playback," he said, looking at the others.

The captain gave him a slight nod, indicating for the android to proceed.

Data hit once more on the panel and the playback began. Soran's gravel-like voice sounded in sickbay's main room, drawing the attention of each person present, including the medical personnel who had previously kept to the background. All movement halted, unable to do anything except listen.

"Yet people are so much more pliable when they're subject to the reign of emotions. Your captain, for example, he became a chess piece to me, a mighty king easily controlled by my hand when I made his emotions blind him, as unable to see as your friend there."

The recording was painfully clear, both in its sound and in confirming that Data's supposition was already correct. Beverly couldn't help the glance she gave the captain, noticing that his gaze had already lost its focus, lost somewhere in the images that the sound of Soran's voice brought. Already, the guilt had overwhelmed him, she saw it, clouding his gray eyes.

Data's reply to Soran came, of his inability to understand exactly at what the scientist was hinting.

And Soran gave his answer, not knowing anything of the android's past. "You've not had children. If you had, you would understand."

Beverly closed her eyes and she did not see the captain as he did the same. If Soran had indeed caused the fire, had indeed caused Allie's death, he had done it with the understanding of exactly what he was doing to her parents. Data's voice came back in reply, the pain evident as he spoke of the daughter he'd had for such a brief time, Lal. Data's description of what he'd gone through, especially now, looking back at the experience, for the first time with the ability to experience emotions. "Yet now I feel...hurt. A sense of loss. I can almost see her, hear her...to the point of not seeing or hearing anything else."

And the doctor heard her daughter speaking to her then, words of a little girl protecting her twin brother, then the words spoken with a wisdom far beyond her teenage years, then she heard the laugh of a toddler, all of them buffeting her with memories and images of the daughter she had now lost. She bit her lip as tears formed up behind her closed eyelids, threatening to overrun her resolve. Guilt's maw loomed over her, another threat, this one a threat of consuming her whole. Will's words about guilt were true, as guilt could insinuate itself into a person so thoroughly that it would become all that they were. The blame Jean-Luc had thrown in her direction about Allie, didn't he realize that she already blamed herself enough? Not only had she taken those actions that robbed him of experiencing all those moments of Allie's life, but in doing so, she'd also robbed herself of the same. Most of all, she had robbed Allie of having her parents there to witness them.

The playback of the conversation between Data and Soran had gone on as she fought within herself.

"You caused the death of Natalie Picard."

"Did I?"

"In order to blind Captain Picard, as you said you did. And you referred to children, so you must have caused her death in order to control him."

"Why?" the captain's faint question caused Data to pause the playback. "Why would he need to control me?"

At the lack of strength in her husband's eyes, Beverly opened her own to see the expression on his face. And the face that she saw was slack with loss, disbelief, and a complete inability to understand another man's actions.

"I don't understand why," he said.

"Sir, I don't think any of us are capable of ans—"

Picard stopped Will's attempt at an answer by holding up his hand. "The only man capable of answering that question is Tolian Soran," he said, his timbre still uncharacteristically faint. "Mr. Data, continue playback."

Data nodded. "Here is the rest of what Dr. Soran said."

"I am rather fond of fire. And fire is rather fond of me, as time continues to caress me with her flames."

Beverly's gaze focused again, straight onto Data. Soran had caused the fire. Soran had killed Allie, and not only Allie, he had also killed Robert and Rene, if only for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and Data's words had confirmed it without any room for questioning.

"I have spent longer trying to get back to my child and my family, Data, than you have spent trying to become human. My advice to you is to take out that chip and continue to live free of the damning yoke of emotions."

The was a brief period of silence, followed by the sound of transporter beams, then phaser fire. "That is where Commander Riker and Lieutenant Worf arrived on the observatory," said Data.

Riker nodded his confirmation.

"He's trying to get back to his family," said the captain, pursing his lips in thought, making himself think of only the puzzle before him and not of his own emotions.

Beverly didn't know about him, but she was absolutely reeling from what she'd heard, and it was taking every ounce of control she was able to exert to keep herself from tipping her hand. So she chose to focus her attention on someone else, distracting herself in much the same way the captain had done. As she looked over at Data, she saw panic rush to his face, his yellow eyes widening as a human's would do in the case of the same emotion.

"Guilt also causes blindness," Data said, turning to Riker.

Will looked him from where he'd been staring at the deck under his feet. "What?"

Data stood up, detaching himself from the cybernetics interface. "Captain, you must relieve me of duty until Dr. Picard can remove my emotion chip." He ignored Will's question, only able to think of his own guilt, of his fear and panic.

"Data—" the captain started, an objection to the request automatically forming.

But the second officer interrupted him. "I cannot allow you to risk having me attempt to perform my duties while in such a state, sir," he said.

"What state is that?" asked Picard.

"Cannot guilt be blinding as well? If I am experiencing a great amount of guilt over my actions on the observatory, would I not be blinded by that emotion, and therefore unable to perform my duties?"

The captain shook his head. "If I were to relieve you of duty due to feeling guilty, I would have to relieve most of the crew, myself included. Everyone, at some point in their life, has to deal with feeling guilty for something they have or have not done. You will just have to learn to deal with your troubles and figure out a way to carry on in spite of them. It's part of being human."

"But Captain, I—"

This time, it was Picard who did the interrupting. "Mr. Data, you will not be relieved," he said. "You must carry on like the rest of us."

For a moment, it looked as if Data might continue his objections, then he caught Will's slight shake of the head, indicating for him to drop it for his own good. "Of course, sir," Data said. "I will continue with my duties."

"Good," said Picard. "Now I'd like you to do some investigating into this energy ribbon and upload any information you find to the ship's stellar cartography computers. Dismissed."

Bewilderment replaced Data's panic and with one last uneasy look to the captain, he said, "Aye, sir," and departed.

Beverly saw Will studying her as Data walked out and recognized the determination in her friend's eyes, that he'd decided he would get everything out in the open. To do that, he'd have to say it directly, what he thought he was seeing—that both the ship's captain and the ship's chief medical officer were entirely consumed by guilt in its oft-used disguise of grief. Not only did he see that, but he also saw two of his friends now entirely at odds, pretending not to see the other, and in doing so, doubling the amount of guilt they felt.

She managed to catch him with her eyes and gave a small shake of her head. He raised his eyebrows, surprised that she would head him off, as they did share a bond similar to that of siblings. Then he frowned and his eyes gave her another message, that he'd be speaking to her later, whether she liked it or not. And if she didn't, he'd tattle on her to Deanna. She knew that from only seeing the expression in his eyes, as he'd done that to her often enough. He never bluffed about that.

"Will, take the bridge. I need to go speak with our friend Guinan," said Picard.

Riker nodded, gave Beverly another glance, then left sickbay.

Left standing with Jean-Luc in the main room, Beverly suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable. Her staff had made themselves so scarce that she hadn't the first clue as to where they'd gone. The captain made eye contact with her, looked as if he had something to say, then didn't say anything. Instead, he headed for the exit.

"Jean-Luc," Beverly said, walking towards him and the door.

He turned and faced her.

"I'm going with you," she said, preparing for an argument as to why she should accompany him, even if he thought it wasn't ship's business in which she needed to be involved.

A brief thought of disagreement passed on his face, but it left as quickly as it arrived. With a slight nod of his head, he headed out the door again, the nod and his silence on the matter indicating his agreement with her declaration.

She followed, feeling as if she were walking with a stranger. No, there were two strangers, the both of them. Somehow they had become rival factions in some sort of emotional cold war. The ride they shared on the turbolift held the silence of no man's land, as was the walk they took together to Ten-Forward. Guinan noticed them as soon as they entered and gave them a slight nod, then tilted her head towards her office door.

Guinan was already studying them with her brown eyes that held the wisdom of centuries of life lived when they entered her office. "Tolian Soran," she said, gesturing with her hand for them to sit in the spare chairs she had in the room.

The captain sat, but just barely, already on the edge of the chair, leaning forward. "Do you remember him?" he asked, heading right to the matter at hand, not giving Guinan any room to dispense her observations on any other situation. Namely, theirs.

"Oh yes," she said, nodding, eyes half-closing. "I remember everyone who was on the escape ship and then on the Lakul. Every face, every name, even the ones who didn't make it. And even the ones who didn't want to make it."

Beverly felt herself mimicking her husband's actions, the intensity of the situation demanding that she not sit in the chair as she normally would, that she should find even the thought of sitting to be entirely uncomfortable and want to be on her feet, doing something, anything. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Soran thought of nothing but rejoining his family. When they found him—the other refugees—his family was already dead and only he was left alive. They forced him to go with them. Once we were all on that ship and through the Borg net, I was given the task of watching Soran so that he didn't commit suicide. It took us six months to come across any other ships, and in those six months I spent listening to his silence, he told me what happened in those few minutes when he chose to speak. He wanted someone to know, so they could understand why he wanted to die, and I was the person he told." Guinan's eyes had grown distant, again seeing the events that had unfolded a century before.

"Why did he want to die?" asked the captain.

Slowly, the El Aurian's eyes returned to the two humans who sat opposite of her. "He had the misfortune, or fortune, depending on how you see it, of living on one of last the continents to be assimilated. They knew what was coming and his wife made him promise that he wouldn't allow that to happen."

Suddenly, Beverly knew. She knew exactly what had happened, what Soran's wife had asked him to do. "She asked him to kill them," she said aloud, a statement, no question at all. She knew because it's exactly she would have done were she in the same situation. Watching the Borg steal everything away from Jean-Luc that made him who he was, to sock it all away inside a tiny trap, unable to escape while they made his body and mind theirs to do what they willed, she knew she could never allow that to happen to another person if she had the ability to stop it.

The captain snapped his head around to look at Beverly, his eyes clearly showing his shock at her even fathoming such a thing.

Then his look was torn away from his wife when Guinan confirmed Beverly's supposition. "All of them."

Picard looked from one woman to the other. "I don't understand," he said.

The doctor almost felt bad for him, that he didn't figure it out as soon as she had. But it was an instinctual thing, as it must have been for Guinan, something only mothers would think of so quickly, in order to save their children from such a mockery of what had been life. Images of Locutus on the viewscreen floated in front of her, accompanied by those cold statements uttered in a voice that had once belonged to Jean-Luc Picard.

"Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service...us."

The emotions returned as well, piggybacked on the memories, how those emotions had wrestled with one another—wanting stop Will from firing on the Borg vessel and destroying what little was left of Jean-Luc while at the same time, wanting to fire on that vessel herself in order to keep her children safe. In the end, had it come down to it, her choice would have been the one that would allow for her children's survival. Thankfully, the choice was never hers to make, others made it for her. Images appeared before her again, these ones of what could have been, of Andrew's face drained of color, cybernetic attachments already forming along his limbs...or Gabriel, would they even assimilate him? An infant? Then there was Gracie...and she wondered if they had women Borg, or if the Borg used assimilation as their reproductive technique.

Guinan explained to the captain what he and Beverly already knew, her words shaking Beverly out of her cascading waking nightmare in her imagination. "So that they wouldn't be assimilated," she said.

Beverly saw the understanding driving away the haze of confusion in Jean-Luc's eyes, and he nearly squinted at the brightness of it—a realization that no person wanted to make.

Guinan went on. "So that they would die instead of continuing to live in a version of hell worse than anything eternal that anyone could think of. Soran and his wife, they had each promised to administer the drug to the other. Then when Soran's back was turned while he had given the drug to their daughter, his wife administered it to herself. When he turned back around, she was seconds away from dying. The refugees found him before he could finish and join them in death." The El Aurian paused and focused solely on the captain. "It's why he hates you, Picard. You lived through assimilation. You didn't lose your family to the Borg."

"We think Soran's developed a weapon," said Picard, driving the conversation forward so he wouldn't have to confront his own emotions again, the personal ones. "A terrible weapon. It might give him enough power to—"

"Soran doesn't care about power or weapons. All he cares about is getting back to the Nexus," Guinan said, throwing the captain off the course he thought he should be on and directing him towards the correct one.

"The Nexus?" he asked.

"It's a place I've tried very hard to forget. That ribbon isn't just some random energy phenomenon traveling through space. It's a doorway. It leads to another place, it leads to the Nexus. It doesn't exist in our universe, and it doesn't play by the same rules either."

Beverly could see both the longing and the loathing for the Nexus fighting for the same place in Guinan's eyes. "What happened to you?" she asked.

Guinan's attention turned toward the doctor. "I can't remember very much. Not what it looked like or how long I was there, but I do remember how it felt," she paused, trying to come up with the right description, much as Data had earlier. Except Guinan had lived with emotions for hundreds of years, and yet, this place defied description for her as fear had defied description for the newly emotional android. "It was like being inside...joy. As if joy was a real thing that I could wrap around myself. I've never been so content..." she trailed off, almost as if she were being carried away by just the memory alone.

"And then you were beamed away," said the captain.

Instantly, Guinan was back to reality and now looking straight at Picard. "I was pulled away," she said, correcting him. "I didn't want to leave. None of us did. I felt like I'd left a part of myself behind. All I could think about was getting back. I didn't care what I had to do. It took a long time, but eventually, I learned to live with it."

"What about Soran?" Beverly asked the question, but she already knew the answer. Soran wanted back in, he wanted back into the Nexus, and he'd stop at nothing to get there, just as death wouldn't have stopped him in getting to his family before.

"Soran is obsessed with getting back and he'll do anything to find that doorway again," Guinan said, confirming what Beverly had already concluded. "He has to be, because he isn't dead yet. He found something else he wanted to do rather than kill himself to be with his family."

The captain rose from his chair. "But why destroy a star?" he asked, the question mostly rhetorical, only said aloud in the slight chance that someone present may have an answer.

Guinan stood as well and answered him at the same time. "You can't go to the Nexus," she said. "It has to come to you."

An idea, the slight beginnings of a solution to the puzzle of what Soran was up to, became apparent in the captain's eyes. "Thank you," he said to Guinan, then headed for the door.

Guinan stopped him with a forceful command. "Let someone else do it, Picard."

He halted and turned to face her.

She continued. "Let them send another starship. Don't get near the ribbon. If you go into that Nexus, you're not going to care about Soran or the Enterprise, or Beverly or your children, or me. All you're going to care about is how it feels to be there." She paused again, giving them all enough time to absorb the impact of her words. "And you're never going to come back."

Weighing her words, yet saying nothing in reply, the captain slowly backed out of Guinan's office and exited. Beverly looked after him, wondering why he would bother coming back if there would be nothing to come back to.

"You think that if you had never said anything about your children, that things would be different, don't you?" Guinan asked her, before she had a chance to decide to walk out the door.

Beverly faced her. "Yes," she replied, feeling like she'd had this conversation before. Except last time, she'd been the one asking the questions.

"It would have been different, but you wouldn't have liked it that way, either. It's a funny thing, how the universe works. Things are meant to happen, people are meant to be here and not be here at certain times. There isn't much we can do to change it. To change the future."

The doctor frowned. "It's already been changed."

"Yes, it has," said Guinan. "And none of you like that future, either. So now things are different...and my question is, do you like it any better?"

Beverly didn't have to answer aloud. They both already knew what her answer would be.

No, I don't.