As Janeway made her way to the bridge from sickbay her thoughts drifted to the previous times she and her crew had dealt with Borg children. One had been created and born right on Voyager. He'd been an accidently created during transport, a cross between Seven's Borg nanoprobes, the Doctor's mobile emitter, and a human DNA sample. He had been Seven's son and his death, he'd sacrificed himself for the safety of Voyager and her crew, was still painful for Seven. Then there had been the children from the Borg cube who had taken Seven and Harry Kim hostage. The Collective had abandoned them when their cube was nearly destroyed. Janeway had welcomed them aboard Voyager and Seven acted as segregate mother until all but Icheb had been returned to their home worlds and families. Which situation would this be? Would the Collective come for this child the way they had for One? Or had this child too been tossed aside like a burnt out gel pack?

"Anything of interest over there, Captain?" Chakotay asked as Janeway stepped onto the bridge from the turbolift. "Tuvok's being tight lipped."

Tuvok raise an eyebrow as he looked up from his console, but said nothing.

Janeway smiled as she made her way to the center seat. "We have their computer core." She began as she lowered herself into her chair. "And a new addition to Voyager's population." Chakotay, Harry and Tom all looked at her questioningly. She smiled at them, making them wait as a crewman brought her a mug of coffee. She took a long sipped and then as she lowed the steel mug to her lap she said, "It would appear Mister Paris that your little one will have a play mate."

"Captain?" The sandy blonde haired young man at helm asked with a curious expression.

There were times, such as now, when Janeway took pleasure out of teasing her officers. She loved having the kind of bond with them that allowed her to do so. "The signal that Seven picked up lead us to an unborn but very much alive human baby girl." Janeway explained after taking another sip from her coffee. "The baby's in sickbay with the Doctor as we speak."

"We have another Borg child on board?" Tom asked, his curious expression turning into an amused smirk.

Janeway shook her head. "She's more human then Borg, but yes we have another child onboard."

Tom smiled brightly. Ever since he and B'Elanna found out they where expecting their first child, everything baby put the dopiest grin on Tom's face. His grin was infectious since Harry was smiling as well now. "Now you don't have to worry about your baby only having holographic friends, Tom." Harry chuckled.

"Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves?" Chakotay asked. "We don't know much about this child yet, do we?"

"The Doctor is running all the medical tests while B'Elanna and Seven are looking through the data we brought back with us." Janeway answered as she turned her head to look at her first officer. "What we know right now is that she is human, she has a few standard issues implants, and that according to Seven because we took her from the Bord equivalent of a womb she has never been assimilated and there for not fully Borg."

"Is not being fully Borg a good or a bad thing?" Chakotay asked.

"I'll let you know as soon I do, Commander." Janeway replied and then turned to look at Harry. "Anything from the other ship?"

"No life signs, but the bio signatures match those from the scans the away team took of the bodies on the sphere." The young ensign answered. "I'm going to try to establish a link with their computer, but their back up power is on its last cell."

"Do what you can Harry." Janeway replied, before turning to Tuvok.

They had worked together for so long that Tuvok answered her question before she even asked it. "There is no Borg activity in the sector."

"Yet." Tom added. "Lets hope the kid's call home only made it as far as Seven."

Janeway silently agreed, but nothing was ever that easy. Something in her gut was telling her this was just the start of something more, but she couldn't figure out what that could possibly be. Once Seven reported that she and B'Elanna were set up and underway in the cargo bay, she decided to spend the rest of her shift in her ready room. She needed time to sort everything out, to plan ahead, but there was still just to much they didn't know, didn't understand for her to get a grip on it all. Several hours later Janeway decided she'd had more then enough of being behind a desk. She was far from being a hands-off kind of captain. In fact she jumped in head first to get just as down and dirty as her officers at every opportunity she could find. After a brief check in with her bridge officers Janeway headed down to cargo bay two.

Seven stood at her control station working on decrypting the Borg encoding that was keeping her and B'Elanna out of the files they'd downloaded. None of this was making sense, and Seven really disliked it when the Borg didn't make sense to her. It was really hard for her to explain because she didn't really understand it herself. She would never want to go back to the Collective, she was an individual with a life; a life she would fight to keep. And yet it bothered her to know that the Collective went on with out her that they continued beyond her knowledge of them.

"I passed B'Elanna on her way to the mess hall." Janeway said with a gentle smile as she came into the cargo bay. "But I had a feeling you'd still be here working."

"Since I do not require a nutritional supplement at this time I remained to continue working." Seven replied without looking up. She could feel the Captain's approach. The other woman's physical nearness, her natural warmth, seemed to burn away any fatigue and frustration she was feeling. To most her tone would still seem cool and aloof, but she knew Janeway would hear the sudden softness as she added, "I have never encountered encryptions like these before."

Janeway walked over to the taller woman and leaned against the console as she watched Seven's seemingly expressionless face. To anyone else the ex-drone would simply look as if she were once again obsessing over her work, seeking perfection and fearing falling short of it. Janeway knew better. "Want to talk about it?"

"I have nothing to report at this time, Cap…" Seven began but was quickly cut short with a single softly spoken word.

"Annika."

Seven stopped what she was doing. For a moment her hands hovered over the control panel she'd been working at, but then they dropped to her sides. It hadn't been an easy adjustment from mentor and apprentice to where the two women stood now, but she and Kathryn had managed to work things out. It took both of them time to work out the boundaries of their relationship, once they'd finally figured out they'd wanted, needed, and could have a relationship, and there had been mistakes made and near misses that nearly cost them, but in the end they gave in to their emotions, their wants, their desires, and their hearts.

The use of her human name let Seven know that it wasn't her captain inquiring about her status, but her lover asking how she was feeling. She slowly turned her head to look at the older woman, her piercing blue eyes locking with the warm blue-grays of her lover. Seven continued to look into those eyes as she linked her hands behind her back, for Seven this was a relaxed posture.

When she saw Seven's body relax Kathryn reached out and brushed at her lover's pale cheek. She'd struggled for a long time over this. For a long time Kathryn had put herself on the back burner so that Captain Janeway could focus on her ship and her crew. It was a hard realization for her to come to, but she finally figured out that Janeway was a better captain when Kathryn was a happy woman, and Seven made her a happy woman. "Being on that ship had an effect on you, Annika."

"I find being near the Borg disturbing." Seven replied softly. "Especially when it is something that is unknown to me, and I do not understand it."

"They've become alien to you, Annika." Kathryn said softly as she reached out to brush her fingers against Seven's arm. "You've grown past them."

Seven thought about that for a moment and then nodded.

"There's something else." Kathryn noted after watching the play of emotion in Seven's eyes.

Again Seven nodded as she relaxed her arms and allowed them to hang at her sides. The brush of Kathryn's fingers sent warmth flooding through her and it calmed her in a way that nothing else could. "Something about that ship in particular bothers me, but I do not know what."

This time Kathryn was the one nodded. "Me too. Something in my gut says there's more to this then meets the eye." Then she smiled in a teasing way as she said, "It sounds like you're starting to pay more attention to your instincts, Seven."

No one else would have seen it but Seven crinkled her nose. She was not comfortable with the idea of instincts. Kathryn was the one who went with her guts, Seven went with logic. "I should keep working. The answers are in those files somewhere."

Kathryn chuckled softly as she brushed at the other woman's cheek. "In the morning, Annika." She smiled warmly before kissing Seven softly. "I'd love nothing more then to take you with me back to our quarters, but you need to regenerate."

Seven returned the smile as she caught the other woman's hand in her own. "I can put it off for another…."

"Doctor to Captain Janeway."

Kathryn sighed a slow groan. She was fairly sure that the Doctor had written a subroutine that allowed him to pick the most frustrating times to interrupt them. "Go ahead, Doctor."

"We are having difficulty…"

The wailing in the background was all she needed to hear to know what he was going to say next. "I'm on my way."

"I will continue working." Seven said smugly once Kathryn had disconnected from the comm..

Kathryn glared but there was a softness to her eyes. "You will regenerate."

"Is that an order?" Seven asked teasingly as she lifted her eyebrow and smirked ever so slightly.

"Yes." Kathryn replied in her command voice. Then she leaned in and kissed Seven more firmly but quickly because of where they were. "I mean it, Annika, you need to regenerate."

"I will comply." Seven replied with a soft smile. She watched as Kathryn left and then quickly returned to her work. She worked for a couple more hours before she finally stepped into her alcove to regenerate. Kathryn had said she had to regenerate; she didn't say how soon after she'd left she had to comply.