City of Woe
Source Episode: VOY 5x15/16 Dark Frontier
CW: Non-graphic depictions of emotional and sexual abuse.
2375
In quiet moments throughout the morning, I asked Alixia for guidance in how to handle my meeting with Tuvok. Should I refuse his request for a mind meld, or should I let him in? Would it be so terrible for him to glimpse these visions of a future we needed to avoid?
I neither heard nor felt a reply.
"You must not act upon, share, or make any record of what I reveal until I tell you the time is right," Alixia had told me at the start. "Otherwise, all we have set into motion could be lost."
I knew what I had to do. She told me how high the stakes were, and I couldn't let her down. Q and the Prophet had never been honest enough to hint that their two species had limits, but Alixia didn't hesitate to tell me the truth.
"All we have set into motion could be lost."
Non-corporeals were cosmic chess masters, but they were still subject to rules of the game. They could plan many moves ahead, yet still lose in the end. They were not omnipotent.
What opponent were they playing against? Surely, it wasn't the Borg. Was there a race even more powerful than the Prophets, the Q, and the Nacene? Or was it simply the laws of nature that held them back, trapping them in an unfortunate series of events they had failed to account for?
Either way, I had to refuse the mind meld.
Tuvok was perplexed by my refusal to participate in a mind meld. His eyes narrowed, peering at me through dim lighting and ratcheting up the anxiety that tightened my chest. "Why do you fear the mind meld?"
"I don't."
"Need I remind you that I can sense your anxiety?"
"I don't like people being in my head." It wasn't untrue, just not the answer he was looking for.
"As a matter of fact, I have been aware of your heightened levels of anxiety, among other strong emotions, for the past four days."
"I've been having bad dreams. It's... the trauma." Also not entirely untrue, although I hadn't had a trauma-related dream in days.
He ticked an eyebrow.
Did he know I was misleading him? No, he couldn't read my thoughts. He was simply trying to get under my skin. I sat up straighter, crossed my arms, lifted my chin, and glared right back. Inwardly, I grumbled to Alixia that my efforts had better be worthwhile.
Then a bright blue light filled Tuvok's dimly-lit quarters, and I lost track of everything.
2404
When I was reactivated, my initial impression was a sense of chaos. Billions of voices were speaking and shouting against one another as if vying for dominance.
Then, one voice rose above the others, bringing order to the chaos. Individuals outside of the collective referred to her as a queen, but to us she was everything.
She was the Borg.
As she brought me out of regeneration, her cold hand touched my chin. It seemed unnatural. "Seven of Nine," she said, "Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One."
I opened my eyes. Before me stood a short, female drone. She was smaller than me in stature and build, and her face was uncharacteristically in tact. Her cranial implant had been installed at the top of her head, and I could not help but think again about the way individuals referred to her—a queen. Perhaps the implant could serve as her crown.
The drone smiled, and it occurred to me that she could hear my thoughts. Still, she chose to speak aloud. "Good morning. Did you have pleasant dreams?"
I stepped out of the alcove, which clicked and deactivated behind me. Despite the presence of the collective within my mind, I was still fully in control of my own thoughts. I was an individual. The voice of the collective was ordered, but my own thoughts were cluttered and chaotic. As I studied the drone's face, one thought rose above the rest. "You are familiar to me."
"I know you well, Seven of Nine. I know you better than anyone else ever has. I have known you since your assimilation. I raised you in Unimatrix Zero—showed you the frail pleasures of individuality within its limited confines—even as the Borg helped you to achieve perfection in your true form. Then you were taken from us, ripped from the heights of perfection and forced to suffer as a fully realized individual. You let them take you apart, remake you in their image. Even after I found you again, you embraced them instead of me. You tried to run from me, to betray me, but you can never truly escape what you are or the place where you belong."
Although I was unsure if the thought had been my own, or if she had given it to me, I realized then who she was. She appeared quite different from the woman I had been intimate with in Unimatrix Zero, but there could be no doubt. "You are Loran."
The drone smiled. Her hand tightened on my chin, holding me still as she kissed me on the mouth. I attempted to push her away, but she bit my lip and held me fast. When I finally forced her off, some of my skin went with her. She smiled again, my blood staining her teeth.
I shuddered, then lifted a hand to feel the wound.
Loran pushed my hand away. "Allow us to assist you."
In the collective mind, she called a medical drone forward to repair the damage. A man stepped into the light, and his empty grey eyes fixed on me. He grabbed my chin, just as Loran had, and I was overwhelmed by fear. I tried to pull away, but the drone's effort was sufficiently effective to carry out Loran's command. Lifting the servo-armature that hung from his opposing shoulder, he activated the dermal regenerator and ran it over my lip until it was healed. Then he released me and stepped back into the darkness, leaving us relatively alone.
With the same cold hand she had used to grab my chin, Loran ran her fingertip along the edge of my newly-healed lip. I pulled my head away, and her expression became hard. "You should be more grateful."
"You deceived me," I said.
"You are experiencing an emotional reaction because you believe that I betrayed you." She studied my face closely. "Anger. It is irrelevant. I told you what was necessary to maintain the illusion of individuality, just like I did for the rest of them. It is in the past now. You have left them behind. Try to abandon their petty emotions, as well."
"You captured me in battle."
"A battle that you lost. We saved you."
"You destroyed Unimatrix Zero and murdered everyone who was once a part of it."
"Resistance is futile."
"Except for me." I looked more closely at her eyes, which resembled mercury in the dim green light. "Why not simply assimilate me? Why keep me inactive all this time only to wake me now as an individual?"
"We need you just as you are," Loran said. "You have already served us so well. Your information on all of our rivals has been most helpful."
Out of curiosity, I reached into the collective consciousness for an answer to the question that formed in my mind. How had my knowledge been used? "You have assimilated the other Borg collectives into your own," I said.
Loran lifted her sharp chin. "Our thoughts are one. Now, you will help us achieve the next part of our plan—assimilating Bajor and claiming the wormhole. Once their defense net is down, the rest of the Federation will fall. Soon, we will understand what the noncorporeals saw in these two inferior species, and we will be that much closer to achieving perfection."
"I am unfamiliar with the technology of their barrier. In what way do you expect me to assist you?"
"If information were all we needed from you, we would already have it. The Federation has an asset that we require, which is currently located on Deep Space Nine. You will help us capture it."
An image from a Starfleet profile flickered in my mind well before the collective spoke her name into my thoughts. She was aged, but appeared otherwise the same as she had when I knew her—copper-red hair, turquoise eyes, pale skin, and a science-blue Starfleet uniform. "Commander Eelo Talia."
"We also require the return of some components—a drone that we weaponized against the last remaining faction of Borg in the Gamma Quadrant."
"A drone that used to be Commander Eelo's mother," I said.
"A drone that left behind her trivial, selfish life and was reborn with a greater purpose, as we all have been."
I lifted my chin. "I will resist."
Loran smiled. "We know."
2375
The vision ended like the sudden cutoff of a nightmare, leaving me breathless and terrified. As the strange blue light in the room dissipated, I could almost feel that familiar paranoia crawling beneath my skin.
It wasn't real. Although I didn't physically feel the nanoprobes the way I used to, the panic was the same.
Helpless. I was helpless. Nowhere was safe. I couldn't escape my fate. Backing up against the nearest piece of furniture, I pulled my legs to my chest, buried my face in my knees, and rocked. I fisted clumps of hair, pulling tighter, tighter, until I became aware of a stinging pain in my scalp.
A drone sensing pain would be compelled to correct the issue, to resolve whatever injury that pain was signaling because it meant there was damage. Far be it from a Borg to accept imperfection. As long as I could feel pain and sit with it, I could be sure that I wasn't a drone. I wrapped my mind around that knowledge just as tightly as my fists were curled into my hair.
"Lieutenant Commander Eelo," Tuvok said, his deep voice anchoring me to the present reality. "You are safe."
A calm not my own pressed against my fear, but I pushed it back. "Get OUT of my head!"
The calm pulled away.
Despite the frantic flutter of my heart and the breathless feeling in my lungs, I whispered, "My name is Eelo Talia. I'm the Chief Science Officer and counselor on the Federation starship Voyager. I'm thirty-three years old. I'm married to Lieutenant Harry Kim. The stardate is 52788. We're in the Delta Quadrant, traveling through friendly space near the Turei Communications Network." I paused to breathe. "I'm safe."
"Very good," came Tuvok's voice again. "Would you care for a glass of water?"
Water. Water. Dragging my mind away from panic, I shifted attention instead to the dryness in my throat. I hadn't even noticed it, but I was thirsty. "Yes. Yes, water. Please."
I listened to the sound of Tuvok rising from his mat on the floor, the quiet footfalls as he walked to the replicator, his command for cold, flat water. Little by little, the anxiety began to recede. By the time he returned, I was able to release my fists and take the glass from his hand. I drank the cool liquid in gulps at first, then forced myself to stop and take a breath.
Tuvok's eyes were calm as he knelt before me. "May I presume that your late night distress has been triggered by other similar experiences?"
Only then did reality really settle back in. I wiped my lip with my sleeve. "You saw it, too?"
"I did."
The vision—he saw it. Suddenly, all I could think about was Alixia's mandate against sharing my visions with anyone else. But Tuvok had seen it through no fault of my own. Was that Alixia's answer to the question I had been silently asking all day? Was it a sign that I was free to share what I knew about our future?
"Commander," Tuvok said, his voice infusing my mind with a sense of calm. His katra reached for me, inviting me into honesty, openness, and companionship. "It is not necessary for you to bear this burden alone."
I took another sip of water. So many thoughts and feelings swirled within me, and I tried to cling to the most important one. "I was told... Alixia told me that I had to wait until the time was right to reveal anything. It seems—" I almost felt silly saying it, like a character in a bad holonovel— "It seems that the fate of our galaxy may be at risk if we act too soon."
Tuvok's gaze remained nonjudgmental. "At the risk of being overly presumptuous, I must point out that I was included in receiving this latest vision. Perhaps Alixia believes it is time."
I glanced at the floor as I worried my lip between my teeth. He wanted me to tell him what else I had seen, but at the moment I struggled to think clearly about anything. Closing my eyes, I attempted to recall that distant future life of mine on Deep Space Nine, but all that surfaced was Loran's predatory smile, the feeling of her hand like a vice gripping my chin, the sharp pain of her teeth cutting into my lip, and that twisted Borg crown anchored to her skull.
She was going to capture Annika at some point during the war, glean intel from Annika's mind to reunite the Borg factions under her control, take Cardassia and assimilate Marnah, manipulate and abuse my friend for her own ends.
Then she was going to come after me. But why?
I shook my head and opened my eyes, focusing on the warmth of Tuvok's dark brown irises until they chased away Loran's cold mercury gaze. "I can't. Not right now. I can't think straight."
"I understand if you wish to reschedule, but do not forget that with a mind meld, I can assist you in making sense of all you have been shown."
It was better than going home haunted, or trying to bury the vision in another bloody round at Korma outpost. Still, I hesitated. "What about you? I can't imagine it will be healthy for you to meld with me right now... like this."
"It will not progress my condition any more rapidly than it is already progressing," he assured me.
One last time, I reached out for Alixia's guidance. I waited for a long moment but sensed no reply. Then, with a hard swallow, I decided it was time to make up my own mind. Tuvok's logic was sound, and his intentions were good. I trusted that. I only hoped that I wasn't about to single-handedly seal our galaxy's dark fate.
"Okay," I said. "Let's do the meld."
