Part 1 - Fires of Revolution

Chapter 20 - Assimilation

The TARDIS materialised inside a dark corridor, lit only by green, and occasionally white, lights. The door opened and four spider people scurried out. Peni led them from inside her robot, scanning every direction for Borg drones.

"This place creeps me out." Whispered Peter.

They rounded a corner and spotted their target: a cube encased in a room. They looked around for drones: there were none.

"This is far too quiet." Peter muttered.

They crept inside the room and Peni got to work. She pulled the metal casing off the cube and plugged her robot in.

In the meantime, the TARDIS had moved to another dimension: the Borg unimatrix was hovering over New York, 2095. Many of the buildings were green and black. Borg patrolled the streets like wolves. Exactly like wolves, Miles thought. He remembered how Conall had compared himself to a wolf. Now he saw why: usually he would leave you alone, but the moment he felt threatened at all he was relentless. He also hunted with a group from somewhere in the multiverse. Currently it was the Borg.

"The shields are down. Now's our chance." Announced the Doctor.

Miles jumped back inside and the Doctor pulled the levers. The grating sound rang out for a few seconds before a thump.

"You know your assignments, get to it." Said Cap.

Miles and Gwen left the blue box first. They had to travel the furthest to reclaim the Plate at the front of the ship.

"Four kilometres of walking through a Borg command ship. What could go wrong?" Muttered Miles.

"Far too much. I suggest we stay quiet. The less noticeable we are...the less noticeable we are." Gwen whispered back.

"Did you pack any food by any chance?"

"When the Borg assimilate you, you won't need any."

"You have such confidence in us."

"I'm being realistic. A couple million drones versus a teenage couple are not good odds."

The pair reached their destination an hour later. They breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the green glow of the plate in some type of containment.

"Now we just have to...Gwen? What's wrong?"

The pair had just entered the room. Gwen was clutching the side of her head.

"I can...hear them."

"What? The Borg? I thought they got rid of all the nanoprobes."

Gwen looked up at Miles. Miles wasn't sure what to do. He took a step over to her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Suddenly, there was a whirring sound behind him. He looked around to see a headless suit of armour appear from inside a wall. Looking up, a head and shoulders with a strange metal tube was being lowered by dark arms. The head and shoulders attached to the armour creating a Borg that was very different to the rest.

"Gwen Stacy. How nice to meet you at last."

Gwen stood up straight, bracing herself against the pain in her head.

"Who are you?"

"Do you not recognise your queen?"

"I'm not Borg. And I'm an American; I don't have a queen."

"Such simplicity. Just a girl who can jump extremely high and stick to things. Dragged into a war far beyond her understanding."

"Conall murdered my father."

"Leave her alone." Snapped Miles, stepping between the Borg queen and Gwen.

"I can hear all your thoughts, Gwen. You think I don't know about your friends taking the shields down? I know about the teams fetching the other Plates as well."

Gwen's eyes widened in horror.

"I knew you were coming. I know every thought and action you have performed since the drone injected you."

Miles almost blushed at the thought of their enemy watching him and Gwen kissing only a few hours earlier. The queen approached him. He took a step out of the way, but realised he had just opened the way for the queen to get to Gwen. Gwen drew one of her katanas.

"Stay away from me."

"As you wish."

The queen stopped walking.

"What do you want?"

"For you to come home to the Collective. It is where you belong. It is perfection, the thing that all spider people strive for."

"No we don't. We strive to save people."

"A pity. You would have made a good ambassador to the resistance."

Suddenly, Gwen grasped the side of her head in agony. In the same second, the queen took one more step forward, raised her arm and stabbed two long tubes into her neck. Her eye's widened as she stared at the queen in terror.

"Gwen!"

Miles hurled himself at the queen. However, she stepped out of the way and disappeared from the room. He crawled over to Gwen who was lying on the ground, clutching her neck. Her mask and hood had disappeared. He pulled his off.

"Gwen. Fight it. Fight it. I'll get the Doctor. He'll stop it again."

She shook her head slowly as the veins in her face slowly began to turn black. She pulled Miles close. Miles kissed her, trying to give her something to hold on to. It had no effect. She pushed him away weakly.

"Take my suit...and run."

"What?"

"The Plate. You can't...touch it. Take my...suit and run."

Miles shook his head.

"I'm taking you as well."

Gwen shook her head.

"You...can't. Miles, do it as my last wish. I love you."

Miles felt tears welling up in his eyes. Gwen placed the palm of her hand across the hourglass symbol. A few seconds later, her suit morphed into a small ball about the size of a person's hand. The six Infinity Stones glowed on different points of it. She was left lying in clothes designed to be worn with the suit. Her arms were covered in black lines that grew darker by the second. Her body went limp as Miles heard mechanical clanking behind him. His spidey sense told him it was a squad of Borg drones.

"I love you too." He whispered, taking the ball of her suit and running.

Blue energy crackled from his eyes as he lunged at a drone. The drone exploded and flew backwards, overloaded by the energy from his venom strike. He turned himself invisible and didn't look back. Tears rolled down his face providing the only comfort.

Forty-five minutes later, he skidded to a halt in front of the TARDIS. The Doctor let him inside, clicked his fingers and Stark slammed the levers. The grating started and stopped quickly. The four other spider people jumped inside. The Doctor pulled the levers again.

"How did we do? Me and Cap got ours. What about Doc and Nat?" Asked Stark.

"We got ours." Replied Natasha, nodding at a container holding a grey plate.

"What about you...two?"

The Doctor realised Gwen wasn't with Miles, nor did he see a plate anywhere. Miles looked at the Doctor with rage in his eyes, breathing heavily from the run and the anger. He let out a scream and began to kick and punch the consoles and railings of the control room. Peter moved to calm him but Cap raised an arm to stop him. After nearly a minute, Miles collapsed to his knees. His knuckles bled, but they were healing quickly. He placed the ball of Gwen's suit on the ground and curled up next to it. The TARDIS had landed at this point but nobody made to leave. Peter knelt down next to Miles.

"What happened?" He asked quietly.

"The Borg queen. She was in Gwen's head the whole time. She stabbed her with the tube things again. The Borg knew we were coming."

"That would explain why so many drones attacked us." Said Spiderham.

"I know what you're all going to say. You're going to say that you can't always save everyone. But there must have been a way to save her."

Peter examined the ball of Gwen's suit.

"This is her suit? Why did she give it to you?"

"To keep the Plate safe." Replied the Doctor, trying to picture the scene.

Peter sighed.

"Miles, we can get her back."

"No we can't! She was assimilated! Nobody comes back from that."

"There are actually accounts of people doing so. Your friend Picard, for one." Replied the Doctor.

"Picard is dead, along with his ship and crew because of me and Gwen. I need to be alone for a while."

Miles stood up and sprinted out the doors. Peter stood as well and handed Gwen's suit to the Doctor.

"If that has one of those Plate things in it, you should probably work out what to do with it. In the meantime, I have a wife and kid I need to get back to."

Cap raised his eyebrows.

"You would abandon your friend like that?"

"I've seen it before. He needs time, nothing else. He'll get over her."

"Like you got over MJ?" Asked Peni, sitting on top of her robot.

"He's just a kid. Kids don't get feelings that strong at his age."

"He's seventeen, nearly eighteen. Hardly a kid." Replied Cap.

"I'm sorry. Aren't we missing the point here?" Asked Stark.

Everyone turned to him.

"The Doc said there were people brought back from assimilation. Why not find a way to bring her back?"

There were a couple of whispers between the group. Nobody had been expecting him to say something kind.

"It might be worth a try." Agreed Noir.

"Who can we look for since this Picard guy is dead?"

The Doctor turned to his TARDIS screen and punched in some keys.

"Our safest bet would be Seven of Nine." He reported.

"Then let's go."

"We have to inform someone else on the council. We don't know what Miles will do to himself." Said Cap.

"Who?" Asked the Doctor.

"You said he and Admiral Melbourne were quite close?"

"The admiral is away on a mission of his own, trying to convince some Quintari people from his dimension to join our fight."

"I'll stay behind and keep an eye on him." Volunteered Peter.

"I'll take you to his quarters. Try not to make him even more upset." Replied the Doctor.

A few minutes later, the TARDIS was ready to go once again. The Doctor pulled the levers, a grim look on his face.

"Shouldn't we know what we're going to be dealing with?" Asked Cap.

"The Cooperative. They're a group of ex-Borg that were recovered from the Collective."

The TARDIS landed with a thump. Noir opened the doors. They were inside a Borg cube, except the lights were blue instead of green. An alarm was blaring. A few seconds later, a small group of people sprinted round the corner. Borg implants covered them, but they wore normal clothes instead of the standard Borg drone armour. Noir prepared himself for a fight, but the Doctor stepped between them.

"Hello. We're looking for Seven of Nine."

"What do you want with her?" Asked one of the people, a hint of fear in their voice.

"We have a friend who was assimilated and we need help getting her back."

The people whispered between themselves, then appeared to come to a decision.

"Follow us."

A day later, Conall was walking around a slightly raised platform. The Borg queen stood in a corner watching him. He chuckled to himself.

"The infamous Gwen Stacy...reduced to little more than a clone of a billion others."

The Borg drone on the platform stared straight ahead as if it couldn't hear him. Conall stepped up in front of it.

"I would kill you, but your abilities will make the Borg unstoppable. And if the Borg are unstoppable then your precious resistance will crumble like a wall to a wrecking ball."

Assimilated Gwen turned its head a little, pointing the laser on the side of its head at him. He looked it up and down.

"You're a strange drone, you know that? Most would continue to stare ahead. Did the assimilation not work properly? Queeny, give her another jab."

The Borg queen stepped forwards and raised her hand to assimilated Gwen's neck. Suddenly, assimilated Gwen kicked her away. Conall moved to take a step back, but two metal tubes pierced his neck. He grunted, then slowly looked up at her.

"Rebellious to the bitter end."

He snapped the tubes in half and pulled the ends out of his neck. Black lines started to run across his face, but gold ones came in from the other direction. The darkness was slowly pushed backwards until only a black mark next to the holes showed that a Borg had attempted to assimilate him. He raised his hand and tensed it. A stream of black dots flowed out of the holes which closed up behind them leaving no trace. He turned to the queen.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that she hasn't been assimilated properly. That, or you just tried to assimilate me."

"Her immune system must be strong enough to resist some parts of assimilation."

Conall eyed the queen.

"No. I think not. We will send the entire Borg armada into the world between worlds. There we shall crush the resistance. After that, you and I need to have a little talk."

He grabbed assimilated Gwen by the throat and hurled it to the ground. As he turned to leave, the door to the chamber opened. The Doctor, Cap, Stark, Natasha and the three spider people stood in his way. Conall eyed them all curiously.

"It seems those shields of yours are still offline. Might want to get that fixed." He said to the Borg queen.

He pushed past the group. None of them dared to try and stop him. They knew that even with their combined effort they would most likely lose. The Borg queen turned and left as well leaving the group staring at assimilated Gwen who was getting to its feet. It pointed its laser at them one at a time. A woman stepped between the group, her Borg implants catching the light as she approached assimilated Gwen.

"The assimilation process was not completed successfully. It is unlike the Borg to fail." She said in a monotone voice.

She raised some sort of pistol and fired it at assimilated Gwen; the drone clattered to the floor. The Doctor took a step forward, unsure of what Seven of Nine had just done.

"I stunned her so she would not attempt to assimilate us. She must be taken to a medical facility immediately."

The group carefully navigated the corridors back to the TARDIS, carrying assimilated Gwen with them. As they lay it down on the control room floor, the Doctor found himself worrying about Miles. Would he still be safe when they got back? If not, Edward would kill the Doctor for letting both Miles and Gwen get hurt. He pulled the levers, taking them back to the world between worlds and the resistance headquarters.

Crossovers in this Chapter

- Star Trek
- Doctor Who
- Avengers