Broken Pieces Shine

Muffled plops announced Loran's chains following me into the water. I put all my strength into swimming as fast and deep as I could to avoid them. Soon, the water went from blue to black.

"Ja'lat," Harry pleaded in my mind, "don't."

"Trust me," I replied, orienting myself upward. "And don't let go."

Mentally, I seized every mind connected to my own—Harry, Tuvok, Kes. I even reached as far as the orb fragment pressed tightly into Harry's hand as he fought the chains trying to drag him into the water. These were my anchors to individuality.

I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and breathed in. Part of my mind panicked, seizing my muscles and screaming at me to swim for the surface before I drowned, but I forced the fear down. In my gut I knew this was what I had to do.

"They deserve to make their own choices," Kes had said.

I was going to give them a choice.

As I opened myself to the collective, my awareness expanded to a galactic scale. Across nearly every sector of Borg space, battles were taking place between them and Unity forces. In our own sector, Voyager-A and a small fleet of allies were using guerrilla tactics and stealth maneuvers to occupy the massive number of Borg ships in the system.

Everyone was suffering casualties.

Within the compound, drones searched for Captain Janeway and her away team, intent on disconnecting and then assimilating them. In the queen's chamber, drones kept watch over my and Harry's unconscious bodies while Annika stood stiffly, her tubules connecting her to Loran's alcove.

I didn't hear any of the pain-filled voices from before. This was a unified collective buzzing for more efficiency, more productivity, more people and technologies.

More perfection.

Maybe I had to be the one to break the ice.

I reached down, digging into the most vulnerable and painful parts of me. I brought to mind Marnah's expectations and her disappointment in my failure to reach them. The horrible things I endured and the evil I committed in the Maquis. Everything I could remember from the gravity well and the breakdowns that followed. The awful betrayal I felt when I learned the truth about Marnah. Our massive loss at Sinoso.

"And now I can't even be the one thing to my people that they need me to be," I admitted to the trillions of people in my head. "A therapist. When they needed me most, I broke. I failed them."

Tremors rolled through my body, nearly cracking me in half.

"I failed everyone."

The voice of the collective swirled around me, trapping me in a watery cyclone with their tempting, toxic promise.

"We will make you better. You will add to our perfection."

"At what cost?" I asked. "I'll lose the bad, yes, but I'll also lose the good."

As I said this, I brought to mind all the good things I could think of. Marnah's face lighting up with a rare smile as we sang her "Happy Birthday." Tom and I winning our first sub-light race together. Valjean's crew delivering food and supplies to people on a border world who had been starving for months until the Maquis forced the Cardassians off their planet. Lyndsay and I insulting each other in Klingonese in front of Voyager's entire mess hall. Harry kissing me for the first time as if he'd been holding himself back for months and couldn't stand to wait any longer. Janeway removing my provisional rank bar and pinning actual pips to my collar instead. Kes showing Harry and me a holographic projection of Rojel in sickbay. Waking up at sunrise on Pasha to see the whole apartment complex blanketed in snow.

On and on the memories came, flowing in like water. Bad memories had always seemed to come more easily, waiting to ambush me at a moment's notice. Now, with the threat of losing everything so near and with Sisko's words lingering in my mind, I found that the good things were with me, too. I simply had to look for them.

"Irrelevant," the collective said.

"No, it isn't. This is what makes life worth living—not productivity and acquisition. It's the bitter and the sweet. Loneliness and love. Brokenness and repair. It's ugly and beautiful, but we can't have one without the other. We get both or we get nothing."

"What small minds you individuals have," Loran said with the collective. "Small goals and small lives. You don't deserve our greatness, but we will give it to you anyway, just as we did for your people at Sinoso."

The pressure of the water seemed to double, threatening to crush my bones. My eyes flew open, mouth gaping with a scream that refused to come. The roar of the collective reached a fever pitch. I couldn't hold on. The river was going to sink its claws in me and carry me away.

Yet Loran's words lingered in my mind.

Your people at Sinoso.

Sam and Naomi.

Grischa, Tony, and Asher.

Icheb.

Mike.

Chakotay.

I tugged on Harry's mind. "I need to connect to Janeway."

"How?"

"The tagh."

Through his eyes, I could see his white knuckles still curled around the hilt. He called for the captain to come close and wrap her hand around his.

I begged the Prophets to bring her to me. Agonizing moments passed in suffocating silence.

Please.

The collective pressed closer.

"Commander," came Janeway's steady voice in my mind.

My chest lightened, hope leaking in. "We need to find Chakotay. I heard him before when I connected to the collective, but it's not the same this time. I need help. We need to remind him of the good—of what he's lost in the hive. Help me bring him back."

Together, we searched for Chakotay amongst the river of others. I recalled what he'd said before—the story of him standing in the ruins of his tribe—and sought the source.

But it was Janeway that he finally answered too.

"Kathryn."

"Chakotay."

Then came a different kind of flood—a flood of memories and emotions, reluctant partnership that became friendship and blossomed into love. Mentally, I turned away as Janeway's offerings became more personal, but I could sense the loosening grip of the collective on Chakotay's mind as she reminded him of who he had been to her and to the rest of the crew.

"Talia," Chakotay finally said, bringing my attention back to his presence.

A lump formed in my throat. I thought back to that awful day on Sinoso—the day I lost him. "Why?" I choked out. "I was your second in the Maquis. I thought we had an understanding. We were supposed to go down together. Didn't you trust me to have your back until the end?"

"Of course I did," he said. "But that wasn't like what we faced in the Maquis. I wasn't sure how, but I knew that you were going to be the one to free the Borg. You needed to be saved so you could save us. That's why I stunned you and sent you away."

He'd seen the bigger picture.

It felt like I'd been hit by a sledgehammer. I wanted to stop, get out of the river, and find some peaceful place to recollect myself, but there wasn't time. I had a job to do, and I couldn't do it alone.

"Where is Mike?" I asked. "We need to find him. We need to find all of them."

One by one, we reached into the collective and drew out as many individuals as we could—Mike, Sam, Grischa, Korok—until we formed a force strong enough to resist the current and rise to the surface, buoyed by the broken pieces of suffering and joy we all carried in our souls. Like kintsugi pottery, we formed those broken pieces back into a shape resembling humanity and fused them into something even stronger and more brilliant than the collective with all its supposed perfection could contain.

"Cut the chains," I told Harry.

I could feel Harry's frown. "How? Knives can't cut chains."

"The tagh will do whatever you command," I assured him. "Cut the chains—all of them."

As we broke through the surface of the water, Harry ripped the knife from the deck and sliced the chains around his ankles clean through. He leapt to his feet and raced to Alixia's side, breaking her free from her makeshift prison. Before she had even picked herself up, Harry lunged for Loran, grabbing the chain that connected all three queens to the river's edge.

Together, I and the rest of my group placed our hands on the chain behind Harry's and poured our mental energy into making it as weak as we could.

Loran reached for Harry's hand, but she was too late. He drove the tagh into one of the links and twisted hard.

The link stretched and snapped.

Alixia lifted her arms, skin glowing brighter and brighter as she floated towards the queens. She wrapped around Loran, Bennin, and Gott, encasing them in blinding light just as her mother had once done to Annika.

Then everything exploded into white.