Seven felt a cold chill travel up her back as they walked down Starfleet Medical's darkened and deathly still corridors. She couldn't help moving slightly closer to Chakotay as he pushed the stroller, its smooth wheels the only sound other than their nervously clicking shoes as they hurried to the Doctor's office. The twins' faces peeked drowsily out from under their hoods as they shifted restlessly, unused to being taken from their beds at such a time and in such a rushed, anxious fashion. Finally at the end of what suddenly seemed a desolate trek, though they had not noticed the distance during happier visits, the Doctor's office came into view, he was expectantly waiting in the doorway. "Good, you're here." He muttered as he stepped aside to let them in to join Tom, B'Elanna, Harry and a disturbingly harrowed looking Tuvok. The Doctor frowned uneasily as Chakotay parked the stroller and Seven sank into the nearest chair, setting an oblivious and sleeping Max down beside her in his carry cot. "Did you have to bring them?" he asked.
"I'm sorry Doctor; we couldn't get a babysitter at midnight." Chakotay responded with unusual sharpness as he joined Seven.
Danielle, the Doctor's long term girlfriend, appeared out of the shadows, smiling softly at the little ones. "I'll take them next door and watch them while you all talk." She suggested. Seven nodded gratefully and carefully handed Max over to her before following her into the neighbouring room with the stroller.
As she quietly turned to leave Aylen began to whimper fretfully, reaching out for her in desperation. "Mama! Mama…" Michael was even less consolable, his face crumpling with tears.
Seven knelt on the floor, aching to pick them up and take them home but restraining herself to soothing kisses. "Everything's fine babies, don't worry. Danielle's here with you and Papa and I are in next door okay?"
"Go home…" mumbled Michael, unsettled by the strange demeanour of the adults around him.
"We'll go home soon sweetheart, I promise." Seven said as confidently and as calmly as she could, thankfully they quietened with her reassurances and with another quick grateful glance to Danielle she returned to the others.
On seeing Seven re-enter the last of Tom's patience drained away and he turned to the Doctor, fists clenched. "So Doctor, now that everyone's here are you finally going to enlighten us? What the hell happened to the Admiral? What makes you think it's mind control for God's sake?"
The Doctor ran a stressed hand over his balding scalp and leaned heavily against the wall, his eyes quickly taking in all their apprehensive faces before turning to Tuvok. "I think you'd better say how she was found Lieutenant."
All eyes turned to Tuvok wearing, to strangers perhaps, a perfectly Vulcan expression of logical composure but to his friends and colleagues in the room he looked more worried and tense, more emotional, than any one of them had ever seen him. As he began to speak, in a controlled but distinctly pessimistic tone, mental warning bells began to ring in the heads of the uninformed. "I was contacted at 2138 this evening Earth time, by Starfleet Security. An intruder had been found in the most classified section of their building, transmitting then destroying everything from ship logs and personnel reports to security plans, war scenarios and diplomatic communiqués from every corner of the quadrant and beyond. When they raided the building they found the Admiral…"
"Wait, doesn't the Admiral have the highest clearance possible? Maybe it was someone else!" B'Elanna exclaimed hotly.
"Yes she has every right to be there under certain circumstances, they could not believe it was her at first but her behaviour was so erratic, so violent upon discovery that there was no other explanation. After a thirty minute fire fight she just collapsed…" Tuvok's voice wavered for a second before continuing normally. "…that's when I called the Doctor."
"What could have caused her to attack her own people?" Harry whispered in disbelief.
"I think I have a partial answer to that." The Doctor said quietly as he pressed a button on the screen on the wall and a clear image appeared, not many of them could identify but both Tom and Seven inhaled sharply.
"That's her brain?" asked Tom tersely, recognising a brain scan but not the horrible white patches of destruction which covered a disturbingly large amount of the image. He looked closer, his eyes picking out something metallic. "What's that?"
"Unknown alien technology, from the little I can tell it contains a virus engineered to destroy the synapses controlling judgement, especially the fear of death, emotion, morals…"
"Everything that makes a person who they are." Chakotay said in a low tone.
The Doctor didn't deny it. "When the process reaches a certain stage, the device seems to go from destruction to outright control, giving subliminal commands and the like."
"So that's why she raided Starfleet Security, to spy and why she's been acting strange these last couple of months." Harry murmured.
The Doctor swallowed hard. "Not a couple of months, a couple of years at least. It's been a very slow process."
"Starfleet's working theory is that she was infiltrated soon after her arrival in the Gamma Quadrant during her maiden mission on the U.S.S Da Vinci." Tuvok stated stoically.
B'Elanna choked in shock. "Are you saying no one's spoken to the real Admiral Janeway in two years?"
"She was real, the affect must have been slow, but her altered judgement would have affected her behaviour with us all…"
"Who did this? It can't be the Dominion; they would've used this during the war…what about those Notsinians she kept mentioning recently?" Harry asked urgently.
Seven rose abruptly from her chair and approached the scan, tracing her fingers over it, her expression lost in deep thought. "Seven?" Chakotay asked uneasily. "I thought you hadn't heard of the Notsinians."
"I haven't. Not under that designation anyway." She answered before her voice began strange, a stilted, distant whisper, her eyes trance like. "People of Ashes…Destroyers of Infinity…."
"Seven?" Chakotay asked, more forcefully this time, laying his hands on her shoulders. "Collective memories?" he asked quietly as she came out of it and focused on him.
Seven nodded slowly. "Those are the names Species 4789 of Gamma Sector 658.9 had for them, the enemies that defeated them two centuries ago, left them so weak as to fall to the Borg. Everything burned…" Her eyes followed the damaged sections of the Admiral's brain. "…even the minds of their soldiers."
These words made everyone fall still but then they focused again on the Admiral. "Can you heal her?" asked Harry, almost inaudibly.
"Heal?" echoed the Doctor bitterly. "More like rebuild, rehabilitate. Amnesia on some level is a certainty, we'll be lucky if it's only the last two years she forgets."
B'Elanna seemed to snap then. "These beings have stolen who knows what and wrecked the Admiral for who knows how long! We have to find a way to fight them!"
"Starfleet and the Federation Council are meeting in the morning to discuss the next step…" Tuvok said quietly, almost resigned in tone.
"So they should be! We have to do something now, they can heal the Admiral!" Tom exclaimed angrily.
"What do you suggest we do? Go look for them? Didn't you hear Seven? That would be suicide! We don't know who we're up against!" Harry retorted.
"Quiet!" Chakotay suddenly said sharply. "Our first priority is to support the Admiral, everything else can wait." He said in a low commanding tone. Seven felt grateful for his presence of mind but was deeply relieved when Max's hungry cries gave her a viable excuse to leave the room, suddenly a hotbed of anger, anxiety and fear.
In the quiet near solitude of the other room Seven fed Max and sat cuddling him for her own comfort long after he'd settled back to sleep as memories of drones from Species 4789 of their torture at the hands of these unknowns made her shiver in fear. Raised voices seeped through the wall, echoed arguments she knew would be repeated again and again over the coming days. The noise roused both twins from their light sleep so Seven put Max comfortably back in his carry cot and lifted both her elder children into her lap. "Can Mama hold you for a little while babies?" she asked quietly as they cuddled in, nodding tired assent, not even jostling for dominance in her arms. Distractedly Seven played with a lock of Aylen's black hair, two years, the twins hadn't even been born yet when the Admiral left, would that conversation they'd had then be the last? All that disruption last year, had the aliens been controlling that offensive conversation or had their interference only revealed her true feelings towards Chakotay and herself? It was irrelevant now. They'd both have to put such things aside if they had any hope of recovering her. Footsteps jerked her from her thoughts but she relaxed as she saw Chakotay approached her. "They want to be proactive don't they?" she asked quietly as he took her hand and squeezed it.
"Can you blame them after what's happened?" he questioned seriously, his eyes fixed on hers.
"No…but the chance of winning such a confrontation is negligible Chakotay."
"If the Borg assimilated them then we have a good chance…"
"That's what I'm trying to tell you. The Borg didn't succeed in assimilating them, never traced them in fact, only fed from the carcases of civilisations in their wake. Species 4789 was one of the most advanced civilisations the Collective ever assimilated, if they can fall…"
Chakotay mentally finished the sentence she left hanging, if they can fall we can. At one point in his life he would have found a species never giving in to the Borg reassuring but after his experiences with Species 8472 he had never again followed the mantra of my enemy's enemy is my friend. "Listen, the Federation is far from infallible but we've faced up to things before and prevailed. Unfortunately it's a case of wait and see at the moment…" His eyes moved to their three sleepy young children. "Either way our priorities are never going to change okay?"
Seven smiled softly down at her immediate family. "Perspective is a great asset."
"A gift from the Sprits scarcely given, my father used to say." Chakotay murmured as he leaned forward into the twins' faces. "Hey, you two ready to go home to bed now?" he asked gently.
Aylen nodded silently but her brother more chirpily responded, "Yes Papa, home now."
A/n: Not a very Christmassy chapter was it? Please review and tell me what you think, don't worry this story will always be focused on C/7 family fluff but that doesn't mean I can't write complex subplots. Merry Christmas and hopefully I'll be back with "The Hansen Identity" on either the 26th or 27th.