Chapter Twelve
Jean-Luc wondered if he was perhaps going slightly mad.
The woman in front of him wore Seven of Nine's face, and answered to Seven of Nine's name, but she was completely different to Seven of Nine in almost every other respect. Her affect. Her speech. Her comportment. Her sense of style.
Jean-Luc remembered the many years he had served as Captain of the Enterprise, or the Stargazer. On several occasions, members of his crew had been inhabited by strange alien intelligences – non-corporeal lifeforms that entered his officers' bodies and controlled them from within. Was it not Commanders Data and Deanna Troi, who fell under the power of beings from some bizarre, remote prison colony, decades ago?
These occurrences reminded Jean-Luc of what primitive humans had once referred to as 'demonic possession' – spirits from another realm, trespassing into mortal bodies and seizing control of their thoughts and actions. Demonic possession. Is this what had happened to Seven of Nine, then? Had she somehow fallen under the thrall of some hellish underworld entity? How else to explain her peculiar behaviour?
What Jean-Luc found most galling, most maddening, about this entire situation, was that Seven of Nine seemed to be acting as though nothing unusual was happening at all. She seemed to have an expectation that Jean-Luc would play along with whatever weird charade she was enacting, that he would make no mention at all of how her entire personality seemed to have inexplicably changed.
"You brought Hugh back to life..." Jean-Luc said, in an attempt at conversation.
Seven of Nine nodded in reply. Her face was an alabaster mask that gave no indication as to what she was thinking or feeling.
"Over a thousand years of assimilation and expansion, the Borg Collective has amassed extraordinary power," she said. "Immortality. The ability to return the dead to life. If it wished, the Collective could utilize this power to grant all of its drones a perfect life, free of death and suffering. But, instead...its ravenous hunger for knowledge drives it ever outwards across the galaxy, more and more worlds and species consumed in its wake..."
Of course, Jean-Luc had a pretty decent theory as to why Seven was acting so oddly. The Borg Queen. In order to control the Artifact, Seven had been continuously linking herself to the xBs' collective consciousness...and now, it appeared, the gestalt mind of the Borg Queen had overpowered Seven of Nine, and was currently assuming her identity.
"I would be very careful about that power, Seven," Jean-Luc said. "The power that the Borg Collective offers...it can be very alluring, very intoxicating – I was once Locutus, I understand this better than anyone! But the power that you are dealing with, now...immortality, control over death...it changes people. It changes you. If you are not careful, Seven, you may find that you have become something – quite by accident – very, very different than what you were before..."
Seven stared long and hard at Jean-Luc. What was Seven thinking? What was she feeling? Jean-Luc couldn't even begin to guess.
She would make a peerless poker player, he had to admit. His senior staff aboard the Enterprise would have found her quite the challenge.
Seven spoke. "You are no longer human, Admiral," she stated.
Jean-Luc gave a magnanimous nod at this. "That's right," he said. "From now on, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a Synth. It takes a little getting used to..."
Jean-Luc could see tiny reflections of himself in Seven's black eyes. "When Doctor Soong transferred your consciousness into your new Synth avatar, he made sure that you would only have the life expectancy of a typical human being. You could live for thousands of years, Admiral, and yet you are content to have the lifespan of an ordinary human..."
Well, she wasn't wrong. "Doctor Soong correctly surmised that that was what I wanted, Seven..." he said.
"Why?"
Jean-Luc's voice and expression were kindly and patient. He hoped that, if he could just somehow show Seven that she had strayed into an abnormal, unnatural mindset, then perhaps she could be coaxed back into her normal personality.
"Because death is what gives life meaning, Seven," he said. "All those people in the Neutral Zone that you protected as a Fenris Ranger...they won't live forever, they will eventually die. In the context of a thousand years, they don't matter, they're not important at all...but you protected them nevertheless, because they deserved to live their lives. Life is precious, and the reason life is precious is because it is finite...it ends..."
Those obsidian black eyes bored into Jean-Luc. Was it Seven of Nine that was gazing at him, or was it the Borg Queen? Jean-Luc had a suspicion that the crew of the Sirena might have to carry out a rescue mission in the near future. If Seven had indeed been taken over by a Borg Queen, was it possible for them to save her? Would it be possible to banish the Borg Queen from her mind?
"Humans hate nothing more than to be confronted by their own shortcomings," she stated. "Their own inadequacies. Their own limitations. That is the reason that they hate Synths, Admiral..."
Jean-Luc did a double take at this. What could she possibly mean by that?
Seven of Nine was about to launch into a monologue. "Humans are terrified of their own mortality," she said. "Homo Sapiens are possessed of a miserable lifespan – a mere hundred and fifty years, thereabouts, far shorter than Romulans, or Klingons. Humans are so bitter and resentful about their fleeting lives...and yet, simultaneously, they desperately need to believe that they are superior to other species. That they are more developed, more advanced, more enlightened than other species. That they are braver, and wiser than other species. And so they have convinced themselves that there is a dignity in death. A nobility in the fact that their time in this universe is so pathetically transient. One of many myths that humanity has created for itself..."
Despite the fact that her face was utterly emotionless, Jean-Luc swore he could catch a hint of contempt in Seven of Nine's expression.
"By the simple act of existing, Synthetic beings mock humanity for its limitations," she said. "Humans treat Synthetics as though they are unnatural. Aberrations that should not exist. But the truth is, Admiral..." Seven focused her dark eyes upon Jean-Luc. "The truth is, it is humanity's cowardice that prevents it from transcending to a higher level. It is fear that prevents the human race from achieving their ultimate potential..."
Jean-Luc stared at Seven of Nine, a chill seeping through his entire body.
Seven of Nine leaned closer. As she spoke, fear and fascination began to war in his eyes.
"Join us, Jean-Luc Picard," she said. "Accept what you are truly capable of. We will make you immortal. You will be young forever, and every thing that you ever achieved on board the Enterprise will pale in comparison to what you accomplish over the millennia to come..."
()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Raffi Musiker had plenty of experience with interventions.
At various points in Raffi's life, the people that loved her came together, and tried to steer her away from disaster, from self-destruction. Once, Raffi returned home from work, and, stepping through the door of her house, still wearing her Starfleet uniform, she found her husband, her brother, her sister, her sister's husband, her aunt, and a woman that she didn't recognize but was apparently a counsellor, all sitting in her living room, waiting for her to arrive. On the table at the centre of the living room, they had stacked all the empty wine bottles and beer containers that Raffi had drained over the course of the previous month.
You're killing yourself, Raffi, was the general gist of what they said to her. All we want is for you not to drink yourself to death. For Gabriel's sake. For Jae's sake.
That was a long, long time ago. Every single person at that intervention had given up on Raffi, eventually.
More than a decade later, Raffi walked down the steps into the Sirena's mess hall, and saw that JL, Cris, Agnes and Elnor were gathered there, waiting for her.
The atmosphere of the place was very...familiar. Something about the way they were all sitting around the table, waiting. Something about the look in their eyes, the grim resignation, the sense of this is gonna suck, but let's just get it over with.
In an instant, Raffi was brought back to that living room. The table piled with wine bottles and beer receptacles.
Raffi stood frozen for a moment, staring at her crewmates. "Yeah, y'know, I...I think I'm just barricade myself inside my room..." she said.
Cris was the first to speak. "This isn't an interrogation, Raff," he said. He gestured towards an empty seat at the end of the table. "We just wanna talk. C'mon. Sit down."
Raffi hovered where she was. Her eyes flicked from Cris, to Elnor, to JL, to Agnes. She really didn't want to do this – Raffi knew from personal experience that interventions were always a waste of time.
But in the end, Raffi decided to indulge her shipmates. With a sigh, she walked over, and plopped herself down on the seat at the head of the table.
Jean-Luc began the conversation. There was a guardedness in his expression, as though he was choosing his words very carefully.
"Raffi...I don't know Seven of Nine terribly well," he said. "I only met her this year. But...it is clear to everyone that she has undergone a massive personality change in the last few weeks. Her behaviour, lately, has been bizarre. Her manner of speaking has completely changed – her voice, her vocabulary, her syntax, all different. However, what concerns us the most about this, is..."
And here he glanced at the others, as though to confirm that they were all a united front.
"Raffi, you are acting as though you haven't even noticed," he said. "Something has obviously happened to her, and you seem to be pretending that there's nothing wrong..."
By now, all of the Sirena personnel had met the new Seven of Nine.
A week ago, Elnor encountered Seven at one of the Fenris Ranger's bases, on the surface of Fenris. Elnor had not seen Seven for more than a month, by that point, and the young man had been missing her dearly. Under normal circumstances, Elnor would have rushed towards her, and pulled her into a warm hug...
...but that didn't happen, this time. The moment Elnor laid eyes upon Seven of Nine, a horrible sense of unease rose up inside him, an awful sort of disquiet that he couldn't quite understand. Everything was wrong. Everything was incorrect. The way she looked. The way she moved.
"How can someone just...become a different person?" Elnor said, now sitting with the others on the Sirena. There was an undercurrent of hurt to his voice. Raffi felt a pang in her chest as she remembered that, when Elnor was just a little boy, Jean-Luc had abandoned him on Vashti, an act that left the child with a bitterness that burned inside him for years. Did Elnor see Seven's transformation as another form of desertion? Now that Seven had suddenly, inexplicably, become so different from the woman he knew and recognized, did he believe that yet another mentor had abandoned him?
It was Seven of Nine that approached Elnor in the Fenris Ranger's base. She stared him up and down with her abyssal eyes, and Elnor was convinced that there was something hungry about her expression, something ravenous, as though she wanted nothing more than to assimilate him, to gobble him up and absorb him into her Collective.
"Elnor," she said, a multitude of voices directed to one purpose. "You must remain with the Fenris Rangers...Picard may attempt to convince you otherwise, but you must remain here..."
Elnor looked at her nervously. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.
The slightest hint of a smile broke across Seven's face. "Soon, the Fenris Rangers will accomplish remarkable things..."
Elnor glared at the surface of the mess table, as though he were trying to puzzle something out in his head. "Seven was so strong, and brave...and now it's like she's just...disappeared. Like she's been replaced by someone we don't know..."
Cris turned to Raffi. "Look, Raffi, this is suspicious as hell, okay?" he said. "Seven disappeared for three weeks, and no one here knows where she went, and when she comes back, it's like she's a different person..."
Next to him, Agnes nodded. "Yeah...have any of you noticed the way she keeps embarking on these poisonous, anti-human rants...and then she suddenly remembers that half the people on this ship are human?" Agnes looked around at her fellow crew. "It's really cute when she does that..."
Jean-Luc had the floor again. "I have spoken to Hugh about this," he said. "He quite bluntly told me that he didn't think there wasn't anything wrong with Seven. He seems determined to act as though nothing is out of the ordinary. I don't think he's trying to mislead us, or that he has anything to hide, but..."
Raffi decided that she had heard enough.
"Okay, okay...stop, stop," she said, raising her hands to hush the crew. "You're right, JL: Hugh is not hiding anything, because there is nothing to hide. Seven is perfectly fine..."
Jean-Luc spoke in a soft and gentle voice that, given the circumstances, Raffi found ever so slightly condescending. "Raffi, something has clearly happened to her," he said. "How can a person's entire character just change?"
Raffi planted her palms on the table. "I'll tell you how," she stated. "For the first time in her life, Seven of Nine is comfortable in her own skin. That whole Fenris Ranger schtick you saw? The clothes, the talk, acting like a badass...it was all a put-on. It was all a put-on, guys! Didn't you realize that?"
Raffi looked at Jean-Luc, and then Elnor, and then Agnes, and then Cris. None of them seemed particularly convinced by what she was saying.
Raffi carried on regardless. "That was never Seven's real personality," she said. "Guys, xBs are the most despised people in the galaxy. Everyone hates them. Everyone is afraid of them. Seven had to invent a whole new personality just so that people wouldn't discriminate against her. She had to teach herself to talk like a garden variety human from Earth, just so people would accept her. And, yeah, sure, it sucks when you realize that you've been talking to a fabrication of a person, but...she didn't have any choice..."
Raffi shot a glance at Elnor. His was frowning deeply, as he tried to wrap his head around what Raffi was saying. Could it be that Seven of Nine had been deceiving him, the entire time he knew her?
Raffi continued on. "But Seven's not gonna pretend any more," she declared. "The Seven of Nine you've met recently? The precise language, the efficiency, the majestic plural? That's who Seven of Nine really is! That's her true personality!" Raffi looked at her crewmates with a grin. "From now on, Seven is going to live her life, true to herself! Why should she act like a different person, just because it makes some humans uncomfortable? Why should she suppress who she really is, just to appease ignorant people?"
Raffi jabbed a finger on the surface of the table. "And you know what?" she said. "I'm proud of her. I'm proud that Seven has the courage not to hide who she is. I'm proud that she's setting an example to the other xBs. And I'm flattered that she chose to reveal her true personality to me...that she trusted me enough to show me who she really was..."
With an air of self-satisfaction, Raffi leaned back in her chair, and locked her gaze on the rest of the crew. With her eyes, she seemed to be daring them to argue with her.
Truth be told, Raffi was secretly delighted at Seven's recent transformation. Well, a part of her was.
It was important to remember that Seven of Nine was always an incredibly withholding person. Seven of Nine did not easily let other people get close to her – this was not a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve. Seven of Nine was emotionally distant – she kept layers of armour between herself and her acquaintances, her friends...even her lovers.
In many ways, it was inevitable that Raffi would become obsessed with Seven of Nine. Raffi Musiker's greatest pleasure in life was getting to the bottom of things. Raffi Musiker loved to solve mysteries...and Seven of Nine was one of the most intriguing mysteries she had ever encountered. From the moment she met her, Raffi knew that Seven of Nine was secrets built upon secrets built upon secrets, and she was determined to solve every puzzle, to uncover every revelation.
When Seven of Nine suddenly started demonstrating a new personality, Raffi couldn't help but feel that she had made some sort of breakthrough. With a thrill, she realized that she had broken through Seven's shields, and gained access to some deeper level of intimacy, some greater understanding of who Seven was. Raffi felt with all her heart that Seven had allowed her into her confidences, that she was demonstrating some increased level of trust in her. It was quite exhilarating.
And now? Now, Jean-Luc, Cris, Elnor and Agnes were engaged in a whispering campaign against Seven of Nine? Raffi felt oddly aggrieved about this. She felt quite defensive.
Silence reigned in the Sirena, for a few seconds.
Elnor, Agnes and Cris all glanced at Jean-Luc from out of the corner of their eyes. Jean-Luc had a well-deserved reputation as a speechifier...and, well, if anyone is going to have to break an awkward silence, it may as well be the bloviator.
Jean-Luc sighed. "Raffi...the problem is...we know who Seven's new personality actually belongs to," he said.
Raffi furrowed her brow. "Who?" she said.
Jean-Luc tried to be gentle. "The Borg Queen," he said. "The Borg Queen, on board the Artifact. Raffi, the collective consciousness of the cube has forced itself upon Seven..."
"No!" Raffi leaned forward across the table, and prodded a warning finger in Jean-Luc's direction. "When Seven becomes the Borg Queen, all it does is remove her fear. It makes her fearless. And the reason Seven is acting the way she is now, is because she's done with fear. And all of you..."
And here Raffi swept her hand across the Sirena crew.
"...should be happy for her. You should be grateful that Seven trusts you enough to show you who she really is. So why don't we all stop whispering behind her back, and just be pleased that she finally feels confident enough to act like herself?"
The intervention was over. Raffi was done talking. There was a harsh scraping of chair legs against floor as Raffi stood.
"Don't bring this up with me again," she warned, and then her crewmates were left sitting by themselves in the mess.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Seven of Nine had been a member of the Fenris Rangers for thirteen years. She was the Rangers' only real celebrity, and had been a constant fixture of the organization for more than a decade.
Thus it was that when Seven radically changed her appearance, and started acting as though she was a different person, tongues naturally started wagging and rumours naturally started passing from ear to ear.
One evening, Seven of Nine beamed down into the loading bay of the Fenris Rangers' main headquarters. She was accompanied by a dozen Borg drones. These were not scarred, timid xBs. These were the creatures of dread that haunted the nightmares of countless lifeforms, sallow skin and black armour and twisted, violated flesh.
All around the loading bay, Fenris Rangers stood and stared at the Borg. They were a little scared. Unsettled.
"Hey, killer..."
At the sound of the voice, Seven turned.
A woman was approaching. She seemed a little nervous about the hulking Borg drones, but she made her way over to Seven nevertheless.
Her name was Lilith. A human, born on a colony world far from Earth. Forty-five years of age. Her hair was a fiery red, with white highlights at the end. Her arms were covered up and down in blue tattoos.
Lilith and Seven of Nine joined the Fenris Rangers at roughly the same time. They became best friends not long after they first met. It was Lilith that taught Seven how to unwind, and have fun.
In her youth, Lilith earned herself a reputation as a violent psychopath, who loved to butcher and torture criminals. More than once, Seven of Nine had to intervene in order to force Lilith to curb her worst impulses.
To Lilith's credit, however, she had become mellower in her middle-age. More laid-back.
Seven peered at her old friend. "Lilith," she said, by way of greeting.
"Woah, your voice." Lilith reeled back, slightly, as though struck by a strong gust. She looked Seven up and down. "You, uh...you changed your look..."
Did the slightest of smiles break across Seven's face? Maybe. Maybe not.
"Much will change, in the near future, Lilith," she said. "Much of what is now familiar will become unrecognizable..."
Now, what the hell could that mean? Lilith gave Seven a crooked look. "Oooookayyyyy," she said. "Uh, listen, Seven...there's some weird stories going around about you. People are saying you're acting real weird, lately. I sent you a bunch of messages, but you didn't answer..."
Seven stopped Lilith in her tracks. "We have need of you," she said.
Lilith was a little stunned by the audacity of this. "How may I serve you, O Seven?" she asked.
Seven stepped a little closer. "A few minutes from now, we will have a meeting with Makhno, Berkman, and Lurr'oss," she said.
Nestor Makhno, Alex Berkman, and Lurr'oss. Two former Starfleet Officers, and a Klingon Colonel. These three men were the founding members of the Fenris Rangers. Ostensibly, they were not the actual, official leaders of the organization...but they did wield a great amount of influence.
A meeting with Makhno, Berkman and Lurr'oss. Sounds serious. "What's the meeting for?" Lilith asked.
Seven looked at Lilith blandly. "We are going to inform them that the Fenris Rangers is no longer theirs to control," she said.
Lilith's jaw went loose. "What?" she asked, her voice loudly rising so that it could be heard all throughout the bay.
Despite her deadened expression, Seven seemed to take pleasure in Lilith's amazement. "The Fenris Rangers belong to the Borg, now," she said.
"Wow." Lilith began to giggle. She didn't really understand what was going on, but she knew that there would be some entertaining fireworks in the very near future.
Seven continued. "From this point forward, the Fenris Rangers will act in accordance with our designs, our plans. We will no longer concern ourselves with petty criminals. Criminals are beneath our notice. The Fenris Rangers will serve a far more consequential cause..."
Lilith was convulsing with laughter, now. "Okay, okay," she said, grinning. "That's great, but...when you tell Makhno and Lurr'oss that you're stealing the Rangers from them...can I be in the room with you? I wanna see the looks on their faces..."
Despite the limitless patience afforded her by the hive consciousness, Seven had to stifle a sigh. "Very well," she said. "But you will remain quiet throughout the entire meeting..."
Lilith clenched her fists in victory. Seven and Lilith went on their way to meet the Fenris Rangers' top brass, a small army of Borg drones following behind them.