CHAPTER 1
As the foreign hum of an unfamiliar energy made itself abundantly present in an unguarded sector of the Borg ship, a Borg drone was summoned to awaken from his regenerating alcove and sent out to scan the area in search of the source. The seemingly soulless, techno-clad biped made its way through some corridors but it wasn't until a few seconds after the fact that the hive mind reevaluated its situation and decided it would be safer and more efficient for the drone to be accompanied by others in his unimatrix - for reinforcement's sake, should a hostile scenario arise. Four followed to join him, locked and loaded. The four were then one and so they ensued.
As the lead drone got unknowingly closer to his target, he was met with a twitch in his left eye, followed by a sudden spaz of his right arm that wasn't replaced by a cyber-infused plasma rifle. Your average humanoid would have drawn suspicion to such an event, recognizing it as a gut feeling that something not quite right was afoot, maybe even describing it as eerie. The drone, however, void of all human instincts and intuition, simply recognized the glitch of his faculties as just that - a glitch. And so, it treaded on.
A tiny, yet powerful, box-like artifact playing stowaway aboard a massive Borg cube starship. The irony was lost on the drone, unsuspecting of the thing's power and the consequences of unlocking such savage and unholy malevolence, for all that mattered to the drone was the mission.
Upon having completed a twenty minute trek through the titanium labyrinth of struts, piping, and vented flooring and corridors, the drones arrived in an empty hangar utilized for harboring docked Borg spheres. The flickering green lights revealed a grand chasm-like void of metal and circuitry inside, decked with offline alcoves and abandoned command consoles. There was no sphere in sight and nothing of interest to the unimatrix, except there was that gut feeling again. The sensation can only be brought upon by something not otherworldly, but by something from another realm entirely.
He decided to probe his surroundings using his ocular implant in his right eye. The implant was an enhanced prototype surgically altered by the Borg collective in recent days which provided the ability to sense energy fluctuations as well as x-ray vision. It was all the more convenient for the mechanical man. As his head scanned the hangar from left to right, his sensors detected a minute irregularity in radiation levels which only registered in his cerebral database as UNCATALOGUED. The collected data was read immediately upon retrieval by the hive mind and the drone was summoned to report any physical findings of the radiation to the Borg Queen once it was obtained.
Before the drones headed to the Queen, readings lead the head drone to a remote corner of the wide open space to the bottom righthand side of a sphere exit way. As he walked toward the source and neared himself to it, his brain was met with a quiet flurry of familiar sensations similar to what his former Kelpien self would have recognized as anxiety and apprehension, arousing ganglia that once covered the back of his head from ear to ear. If it wasn't for his Borg state, his humanoid perspective might have at least felt a slight inclination to protest against the orders he was given. He might not have wanted to get anywhere near such a menacing vibe. But alas, he was Borg. Fear did not compute.
And there it was waiting on the floor. It was LeMarchand's puzzle box. He approached it and bent down slowly to pick it up with his free hand. He looked at his compatriots and without saying a word, he walked past through them towards the way from whence they came with the box in hand before his fellow drones followed. They headed to report to the Queen, who was waiting with bated breath for their discovery.