=/\=

Axum rushed over to her as soon as she appeared in Unimatrix Zero." Annika, finally! I was worried. You're late. The invasion may be failing. Another whole unit of the largest tactical cubes was destroyed by the bioships. I was . . . I was afraid you were on one of them."

"I'm here, so I wasn't, but my Unimatrix has been given a new assignment. The Queen sent our cube to intersect with the human ship Laura told us about. Starfleet's Voyager. It's trying to get back home to the Federation, but the Queen wants them to help us fight Species 8472."

"Be careful, Annika."

"You don't need to be frightened for me."

"I would be frightened if the Queen sent you anywhere with only your Unimatrix to protect you."

"Don't worry. We may not be as strong against Species 8472 as the Queen expected, but I'm sure we're a match for Species 5618. I'm one of them!"

Axum wrapped her in his arms. He didn't like this. Why would the Queen single Annika out like this? She was human, true. Perhaps that was the reason.

But he didn't trust the Queen. How could anyone, when she cared so little for her drones?

=/\=

The next time they were in Unimatrix Zero together, Annika told Axum, "Janeway is trouble. She refuses to be linked to the Collective. The Queen has designated me to be a spokesperson for the Borg, like she tried to do with Locutus. Captain Janeway insists upon communicating verbally. It was difficult to recall the speech I used with my parents, but I have done so. Maybe it's better she isn't linked with the Collective. We haven't told her everything. The Queen ordered me to tell her Species 8472 invaded Dry Space."

"That secret will not hold forever," Axum told her. "What will Janeway do when she finds out the Borg invaded Fluidic Space? That we tried to assimilate them, and they're only defending themselves?"

She couldn't answer. Even though Annika had just arrived in Unimatrix Zero, she abruptly disappeared again to return to the "real," to her cubicle in Cargo Bay Two - inside Voyager.

=/\=

Axum waited for her to come back, to let him know all was well. He waited. And he waited, and waited. He looked for her in all the settlements around Unimatrix Zero, but Annika was nowhere to be found. Just like her mother Erin, who had disappeared years before, Annika was gone.

Eventually, word filtered back to Unimatrix Zero that Annika had not perished. She was alive, on the ship called Voyager. Laura couldn't recall this particular spacecraft. She presumed it was a new one, built after her assimilation. She learned its captain's name from data retained in the Collective. When she returned to Unimatrix Zero, Laura could remember meeting and being very impressed by the woman who commanded the ship. Lieutenant Kathryn Janeway was the daughter of a Starfleet admiral. Laura told Axum, "The young officer I met was talented, ambitious, and very competent. If anyone can preserve Annika's life fighting Species 8472 - or the Queen - Kathryn Janeway can do it."

Axum was relieved his love wasn't dead in the 'real' - for all the good that did him. She was as good as dead to Axum.

He continued to visit Unimatrix Zero. He conversed with Laura, Kuruun, Korok, and the others who came there. He did his best to pretend he was the same Axum he'd always been. To those who had known him when he was with Annika, however, it was perfectly clear that he wasn't the same Axum. Instead of a sanctuary, Unimatrix Zero had become the cruel reminder of a love he'd lost. Unless the Borg assimilated her again - something he had no wish to have happen, in spite of how miserable he felt without her - he had no hope of ever seeing his Annika again.

=/\=

Seven of Nine, who had been disconnected from the Collective by Captain Kathryn Janeway, lost all recollection of the sanctuary of the Borg which she once possessed the ability to visit, one of only one in a million drones that could. She had no memory of Unimatrix Zero, or what she loved about it. The insights she'd gained about humanity from Laura Spengler, who had been a lieutenant commander on the USS Kyushu, were washed away.

Perhaps Seven of Nine was fortunate she didn't remember what had been the most precious aspect of her life as a Borg: Annika's love for Axum. It had been erased from her mind. Once her link with the Collective was broken, her mind could no longer visit the Borg's sanctuary whenever she regenerated. Since she had never known about Axum when she woke up as a Borg drone, she couldn't remember him when she was awake on Voyager, either. Her initial compulsion to return to the Borg might have been fueled by a subliminal wish to retrieve an unknown something that she'd lost. On Voyager, Seven of Nine would regenerate without any refreshing sojourns to Unimatrix Zero.

She would have to relearn what it was to be human all over again, with the initial emotional age of a child, since she had been only six during her last moments as an individual. She would have to struggle to understand the ramifications of adjusting to life as a person who lived only in her own mind, and within a body that had been changed radically by time, and even further, through surgery. She was no longer completely Borg, but she wasn't totally human, either. Somehow, she must discover how to act and how to relate to the other individuals on Voyager, whether openly hostile or seemingly accepting.

Most importantly, she must learn who this new being, Seven of Nine, really was.

=/\=