arachnekallisti | Fic: Amaurot (3/?, PG-13)

Title: Amaurot
Author: Arachne Kallisti
Fandom: Star Trek TNG
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, Horror, Crack.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Really. Not even slightly.
Warnings: Body-horror, mind-screw, death and despair.
Summary: The first civilisation to arise in the galaxy left behind an ancient and powerful device. The Borg want it. How far is the crew of the Enterprise prepared to go to stop them?
Author's Notes:

chaosdeathfish requested "some exposition and plot and less cryptic bits". I aim to please. Beta-read by

ignisophis. Contains spoilers for "Q Who", "The Best of Both Worlds", "I, Borg", "Descent", "All Good Things..." and "First Contact".

Chapter 1: A Fragment

Chapter 2: The Wire In The Blood

"And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land I: The Burial of the Dead

The Delta Quadrant, 2373

There was no light here, and the silence was near-perfect, broken only by the soft whine and hum of bionics. He stumbled a little further, damaged servomechanisms tearing at his flesh with each step, blood streaming from a savage gash in his exposed, vulnerable face. He should have succumbed to stasis lock long ago, like the others, the mechanisms controlling his limbs shutting down to preserve essential biosystem functions. He'd overridden the hardwired imperative, forcing himself to keep moving. Rather die than be assimilated.

Another step, and he staggered against the cave wall as sensation left his right arm, ending some of the pain, marking one more step towards death. He kept moving, dragging the useless deadweight of metal and meat that had once been part of him, vision darkening. The further into the caves he could go, the less likely it would be that they'd find him still alive, still salvageable. He should never have hoped that the Collective would ignore them - they were a threat, after all. Contaminated.

A few more steps, and then his legs failed him, the joints of his exoskeleton locking rigid as the muscle beneath turned weak as water. He fell forwards, toppled by his own momentum, to the sandy floor, succeeding in catching his weight on his left arm, rolling himself onto his side with the last of his strength. Vision in his prosthetic eye faded into darkness, and he became aware that his breathing was becoming increasingly laboured. Not long now. His pale lips twitched into a faint, almost triumphant smile. And so the first and last of the individualised Borg lay still and alone in the dark, and waited for death.

Heavy footsteps impinged on his failing hearing, and a scarlet laser beam played over his fallen body. They'd found him. They'd salvage him, deprive him of his singular death. He struggled to move, to do something, to make himself die faster. His weakening lungs sucked in enough air for a cry of despairing, futile rage as the Collective drones reached down for him.

A flash of light tore through the darkness of the cavern, and the drones froze in place. The light faded, leaving a soft glow by which he could see another figure standing over him - a human, clad in a Federation uniform.

"Oh, how touching. The noble warrior, choosing death rather than surrender. There must be something about Jean-Luc that rubs off on people."

Hugh struggled to speak, to make his lungs take in enough air to form the sounds. "What... Who are you?"

"Do you mean your mighty Collective doesn't remember us? After everything we did for them? I'm hurt."

"I... I'm not part of the Collective. I don't have access to their databanks."

"No, you're not, are you?" The human dropped to one knee, ignoring the motionless drones, and leant over to study Hugh's face. "You haven't been for a while now. You must have worked out how to manage without the hivemind in all that time. Come on. You've seen what I'm capable of. Put the pieces together."

Organic memory was slow and awkward, the messy process of chasing a string of vague associations instead of the clean efficiency of looking up files in the data stacks. The Collective hadn't trusted it. Neural storage had a tendency to become cluttered with irrelevancies, with half-memes and fragments of fact. As an individual, nothing was irrelevant, and information took on its own fascination. Delve long enough in the detritus of organic memory, and the chain of associations would lead you somewhere, to some glinting shard of data picked up out of curiosity and cast aside as useless. "Q. You're Q."

"It's not much, but it's a start. Much like you. A pity this is how your little attempt at building a civilisation ends. I was starting to find you interesting."

"So I am... the last. I had hoped..."

"Some of the others would make it? Are you trying to play the caring leader now? You'd lost nearly sixty thousand of the drones from your Cube even before the Collective got around to hunting you down. Starving to death waiting for orders that never came, being killed by their own former comrades, being vivisected or used as cannon fodder by that jumped-up psychopathic scrapheap Lore. You were doomed from the start. I wonder what Johnny was thinking when he decided to send you back? I suppose turnabout is fair play, your species assimilated him, so he gets to assimilate one of you."

"It wasn't... like that. I chose... to go back."

"Of course you did. Jean-Luc was very careful to make sure you knew you had a choice, and one of your choices was to get his entire crew killed. They brainwashed you well. They knew you'd act like a good little pawn and go and get yourself taken."

"I thought... the Collective... would erase my memory... and nothing would change. I didn't... realise I could... force my individuality... on the whole Cube."

"But you wanted to."

"I wanted... to remember. I altered... the memetic... decontamination program... before they could use it on me."

"And you brought the Collective the experience of selfishness, even though you had no idea how they'd cope with it, and inflicted an exciting new plague on them, even though you knew perfectly well how they deal with memetic infections. Well done. You've caused the Collective nearly as much damage as Jean-Luc has."

"I know. The others... my people... the Collective killed them... because of me. I killed them." A sudden surge of anger, and the spike of adrenaline brought back a little muscle control. Fighting the prison his own exoskeleton had become, Hugh almost managed to push himself up to a sitting position. "What do you want? Why won't you just let me die?"

He collapsed back onto the cave floor, as Q watched him with cold amusement. "What do I want? I think perhaps it's time Johnny and Bev took some responsibility for their creation. I think an object lesson in the Law of Unintended Consequences as applied to the truly alien might be very salutary for them. Then again..."

Breathing was nearly impossible now. Only a few seconds left. "Please..."

"... I think the miners may well need their canary." That awful smile again. "Nine of Twelve, Primary Processor of Trimatrix 753. Does that mean anything to you?"

Another flash of light.

******

The Alpha Quadrant, 2373

"Should I get some more tea?"

He was staring past her at the starfield flowing by, without seeming to see it. It took a couple of seconds before he could drag his gaze away and respond.

"Sorry, what was that, Beverly?"

She sighed and leant forward, deliberately making eye contact.

"Do you want some more tea, Jean-Luc?"

Another too-long pause, and a faint, puzzled frown.

"No, I still haven't finished the last cup."

He took a sip from the cup in front of him, blinking in mild surprise and distaste. She'd suspected it had gone cold over the past few minutes whilst he'd been staring into space, as a comfortable silence had stretched out into a worrying one. He'd seemed vaguely distant all morning, beyond his usual reserve. Now she looked closer, the physician in her searching for signs of distress; she noted his dark-circled and slightly unfocused eyes, his skin a touch paler than normal, his constant slight frown. Sleep deprivation, definitely. High stress levels, anxiety, exhaustion.

"Jean-Luc, what is it? You look worried sick."

She hadn't seen him look this bad since before the Starfleet inquiry into the Borg invasion six months ago, before he'd been cleared of the charges of mutiny levelled against him. He'd seemed to recover relatively quickly after returning to active duty, strengthened by a clear, cathartic and unambiguous victory over the Borg. She'd been sure it was over, that the struggle for both the Federation and for Jean-Luc's sanity had been won, and nothing had given her any reason to suspect otherwise. Until now.

He avoided her gaze. "I... didn't sleep well last night."

"The dreams again?" They both knew what dreams she meant.

"Not quite. There was... I was on a ledge, over the sea. There were voices, calling to me. I fell. Then I woke." A casual shrug, another sip of cold tea. He was trying to make light of it.

"It sounds like a perfectly normal anxiety dream to me, Jean-Luc." There had to be more. She couldn't see how something that simple could have disturbed him so much.

"It probably was."

Damn him and his stiff upper lip. "But if it was just a normal anxiety dream, why are you still worrying?"

"I'm not sure. We defeated the Borg six months ago, and there have been no signs of them since. It's just..."

"You can't believe they're gone?" Another voice, a horribly familiar voice, joined the conversation. A third chair had appeared at the table, in which a dark-haired man in a Starfleet captain's uniform was lounging with a cup of tea.

"Q." Picard rose to his feet, diffuse anxiety suddenly focused. “What were you trying tell me this time?”

"Now, now, mon capitane, what makes you think I'm behind this dream of yours? And what makes you think I’d give the answer away so easily if I was?” Q sighed theatrically. “No, Jean-Luc, the dream wasn’t one of mine. I have much easier and more direct ways to communicate with you, as my appearance here goes to show. Interrupting your tryst with the good doctor is merely a bonus."

Crusher tried not to flinch as the entity's gaze swung round to focus on her.

"Q, what exactly are you implying by that remark?" Picard’s tone was building up an edge.

"What, afraid I'll lure away another one of your lady friends?" Those bright, amoral eyes flicked dismissively over her. "She's not my type."

She bit back a sharp retort, reluctant to anger a creature she knew was capable of flinging her onto the Borg homeworld with a thought.

"Have you abandoned your self-appointed mission to test and guide humanity in favour of simply insulting us? I thought we were past all that. I had hoped there was at least a point to all this beyond your own entertainment. "

Q was suddenly on his feet, staring coldly down at Picard. "Actually, I'm here to do your pathetic species a favour. Again."

Picard stepped back, folding his arms warily. "Not that I don’t appreciate your consideration, Q, but what exactly would be the nature of this favour?”

"You think you've destroyed the Borg, killed their Queen, driven them back for good. You're wrong. You can kill as many of them as you want, destroy as many of her bodies as you want, but there will always be more. No matter how often you defeat them, you will never stop them."

She couldn't stay silent any longer. "Then are you saying we're doomed?"

Q smiled sardonically. "All mortal beings are doomed, Bev. The question is how long you can keep beating back the darkness before it takes you."

Picard was watching the creature minutely. "All right, Q. We understand. We won't get complacent. We'll prepare for another attack.” His eyes narrowed. “But that isn’t all, is it?

"Well guessed, Jean-Luc. Do you want to know where your dream came from? I wasn't responsible, but I do know what was." A needlessly significant pause, then Q dropped gracefully back into his chair. "Let me give you a little history lesson about the first civilisation to arise in the galaxy, the one that seeded the other planets with their DNA. They managed some other quite impressive tricks - corporeal immortality, harnessing the Omega particle, that sort of thing. Until finally, they managed to find themselves some competition, and they couldn't deal with it."

The entity's smile was coldly and smugly malicious. "You destroyed them?" Crusher asked incredulously.

"To be fair, they attacked us first. Bad mistake. A species with reality-altering technology is no match for a species which can alter reality at will. And we didn't destroy them - just stripped them of their technology and left them to claw their way back up from scratch, in a galaxy in which their own descendants were in a position to compete with them."

Picard spoke up again. "Much as we appreciate the cautionary tale, how exactly is this lecture relevant?"

"You can’t possibly take any remotely useful action with your current state of knowledge, and unlike your parlous state of understanding of the universe, your lack of basic historical information can be remedied in minutes. There is in fact a point to this diverting little anecdote, and I’m getting to it now. Suffice to say that they clawed their way back up rather too well. Devoted their whole existence to it, as a matter of fact. They managed to rediscover quite a lot of their precursors' better tricks - transwarp travel, artificial telepathy..."

"The Borg," said Crusher, eyes widening. "You're talking about the Borg."

"Clever girl. Now see if you can make the connection here. We didn't destroy all of the first civilisation's toys. We left a few around to see what the new species made of them."

"And now the Borg have found them," Picard said grimly.

"Yes and no. They found one of the more interesting devices, and then lost it again. Careless of them. They're trying to find it again at the moment, by tapping into the memories of one of their drones who got separated from them when they found it the first time."

Picard had turned slightly greyish. "Work it out for yourself, Jean-Luc, if you object so much to being lectured."

"I don't understand," Crusher said, glancing rapidly between her horrorstruck captain and Q's sardonic stare. "I got all the implants out. I checked. There's nothing still Borg in him."

"Borg technology has a nasty tendency to regrow itself. Don't worry, you'll be able to get it out before he turns into that boring creature Locutus again. Speaking of which, I think you ought to have a chance to clear up one of your mistakes from one of the previous times you thought you'd defeated the Borg." Q's smile grew wider and crueller. "Just hope he can bring himself to forgive you for what you did to him."

A flash of light, and Q and the chair were gone. In their place lay the armoured figure of a Borg drone, curled in an oddly human and vulnerable position, struggling to breathe, tubes and cables ripped loose from their housings, implants warped and mangled, the left side of its face split by a savage gash. Crusher recoiled in shock, as Picard slapped his combadge. "Picard to security! Intruder alert!"

The drone raised its head, its dark organic eye tearing and blinking against the light. The physician in her forced Crusher to meet its gaze.

White lips parted in something akin to surprise, and with an awkward, rasping breath, the Borg spoke to her.

"Beverley..."

"Hugh?"