Beverly drew in a breath, then pushed another control and enlarged the image still further.

"Royal jelly," she said in a tone of wonder. It was the compound secreted by the pharyngeal glands of worker bees, fed to all bee larvae. But one special larva received only royal jelly-and this exclusive diet produced a queen for the colony.

Could this nutrient trigger the development of the hormone? Or might the nutrient itself be broken down into the hormone in the bloodstream?

Beverly could not help glancing up at the blinking green light-showing that Jean-Luc's neutralizer chip was still working-before putting the computer to work on the answer.

As he sat in the captain's chair with T'Lana beside him, Worf studied the image of the Borg cube on the main viewscreen. Like all the others on the bridge, he was unable to tear his gaze from it for very long-as if by staring at it hard enough he might be able to see where Captain Picard was and what he was doing.

Geordi La Forge, of course, knew better than all of them. He stood at the engineering console behind Worf, monitoring the readout that tracked the captain's position aboard the Borg vessel. The Klingon had instructed him to alert them if the captain veered off course or stalled in his progress to the queen's chamber. In the Enterprise transporter chamber, an operator was ready to beam the captain aboard at the first sign of trouble.

At that moment, Worf was also thinking of the past: of the moment he and Captain Picard had stood, in magnetized boots, on the gleaming white outer hull of the Enterprise. It had been like standing on the curving surface of a small, dead moon against the dark backdrop of s.p.a.ce. He and Picard had gone in order to stop the Borg from finishing work on a transmitter. More specifically, Worf was remembering the instant he had wrested himself free from an attacking Borg, only to glance up and find one about to kill the captain.

Worf had reacted smoothly, without hesitation or thought. He had blasted the drone into eternity with the epithet, a.s.similate this. And he had watched with pleasure as the impact of the blast had caused the drone to lose its footing and go sailing backward into s.p.a.ce, receding swiftly in the frictionless vacuum until it could no longer be seen.

He did not regret killing the Borg that day. If he had not, it would certainly have killed the captain, an act that might eventually have brought the Borg victory. But Worf regretted the att.i.tude that had seized him, the sense of satisfaction and smug triumph at destroying an enemy.

Now he looked at Lieutenant Nave, stone faced and grief stricken, at the conn. She sat, rigid and stiff, in her chair, one hand clutching the console as if it were the only thing supporting her. Her eyes were wide and vacant, reminding Worf uncomfortably of how he had functioned after losing Jadzia. Clearly Nave had cared more for Lieutenant Battaglia than the Klingon had realized.

He stared at the Borg cube and thought of the four crew members who had recently been lost to the Borg. He thought, too, of the captain and the enormous sacrifice he was making-embracing the specter of Locutus again, going alone onto the Borg vessel. He had seen the bitterness in the captain's eyes. It was one thing for one's body to be vanquished by a foe, but to allow one's mind and spirit to be degraded was unthinkable. Yet such extreme situations called for personal sacrifice.

Worf knew that if he had to face the enemy again, he would kill without question, so long as it was necessary. But this time, he would take no pleasure in killing, find no sense of victory or pleasure. This time, he would remember that behind each Borg was an a.s.similated-and tormented-individual who yearned to be freed, one like Captain Picard or Lieutenant Battaglia. And he indulged in a most un-Klingon-like thought: Would it not be better to be cautious, to avoid killing, to save as many Borg as possible with the thought of rehabilitating them?

Worf released a sigh. His life with humans, especially his marriage to Jadzia, had softened him greatly. And perhaps-just perhaps-the presence of the Vulcan counselor was influencing him, too.

He shot her a sidewise look. Poised and impa.s.sive, she sat beside him, her blue-black hair and brows contrasting starkly with her pale skin, her dark blue eyes fixed steadily on the image of the Borg cube. Unlike the others on the bridge, however, she showed no hint of turmoil or revulsion. Admirable, Worf thought, to be so cool and efficient under such pressure. Were they not averse to fighting, Vulcans would make greatly effective warriors.

Jadzia, he decided, would have liked her.

T'Lana's lashes flickered. She had detected his gaze; her expression hardened very faintly as she looked back at the viewscreen. He could not know the truth at that moment: that she was looking at the Borg ship and remembering what she had told Captain Wozniak about the Jem'Hadar.

In their case, diplomacy fails. They are mindless creatures whose sole focus is killing. They cannot be reasoned with.

Worf forced his gaze and his thoughts away from her, and stared back at the Borg cube. He hoped that he would not have to test his newfound resolution not to kill the Borg unnecessarily; he hoped for the captain's swift success.

But he had learned, when Jadzia had died, that hope was sometimes thwarted and that the very worst was indeed capable of happening.

At the helm, Sara Nave was holding on.

She was staring out at the Borg ship trying to focus on her duty, on her ability to react swiftly the instant she was needed, just as she had forced herself, after her parents died, to focus on her finals at the academy. The problem was that this time there was nothing to study, nothing to learn, nothing to distract her. She had nothing to do other than sit and wait...which made it extremely difficult not to imagine what was occurring there, on the ship in front of her eyes.

Holding on, her father had called it. When things were so impossible that all you could do was keep breathing, keep taking that next step, keep going until finally you were somewhere else, where things weren't so terrible.

Her dad's mother had died long ago, in a skimmer accident, when Sara was still a girl. He had just gotten the news and was still dazed when she had hugged him, crying, and asked him how he was.

Holding on, he had said dully, no doubt feeling the same emptiness, the same disbelief, the same helpless anger Nave felt now.

Duty was her only link to sanity at the moment. Without it, she would have to think about Lio and what was happening to him aboard the Borg vessel this very instant.

a.s.similate. Such an innocuous-sounding word for such an unspeakably monstrous act. If he had simply been killed, it would have been awful enough. She had a.s.sumed that his broken body was transported to sickbay. When she found out that Lio was still out there, she was temporarily awash with joy and hope, until she realized that he was being forced to suffer a far worse violation.

Despite her efforts to suppress it, Lio's voice spoke unbidden in her mind. But it wasn't really Joel. They'd taken him, changed him, defiled his body with these, these weapons and cybernetic attachments to his head, his eyes, his arms. He was no longer human...And the worst part was...I couldn't destroy the monster they'd made of him...

When her parents had been killed, Nave had not remembered the names of the two warring planets; she had not wanted to know which side was responsible for the destruction of the Lowe. In her mind, her parents' deaths were a faultless tragedy. She had been too stunned to think about blame.

Now it took near-impossible effort not to think of the Borg, not to be filled with venom at the sight of their ship, at the utterance of their name.

When Commander Worf had told her that there would be no second away team-that Captain Picard would be going alone onto the Borg vessel-Nave had been frustrated beyond tears.

There were only two things she desperately wanted. The first was to go onto the Borg ship and rescue Lio. Even though he had not been there to hear, she had promised him, standing in his quarters, that she would go to the Borg vessel and find him and bring him home. And she did not intend to break that promise.

The second thing she wanted was to go onto the enemy ship and kill as many of the Borg as she could find. She did not want rehabilitation for them, or even justice. She wanted vengeance and blood.

The queen was beautiful and grotesque.

"You," Picard breathed, so quietly he could scarcely hear the word himself. He knew the face all too well: distinctly feminine, high cheeked, ageless, elegant.

It was the face of the queen who had desired and pursued Locutus; it was the face of the queen Picard had fought, in Earth's past, and killed with his own hands. Here she was reborn, her features in easy repose, her eyelids shut as though she were sleeping, trapped in a deep and vaguely pleasant dream.

We were very close, you and I. You can still hear our song.

But her voice was silent now. She was no more than a bust: a lifeless head and shoulders. They sat atop an exposed snakelike spine fashioned of bone and steel and blood. The whole of it, from the queen's neck down, was enveloped by a translucent, glistening coc.o.o.n...nutrients, Locutus knew. The nectar allowed only the queen.

But her sculpted body, of dully gleaming black metal, awaited her nearby, tended by two dead-eyed, ghostly drones. The body stood in a gruesomely alert fashion, legs and arms animate and slightly twitching, almost as if impatient for the absent head to come and rest upon its shoulders.

Picard moved over the threshold into the chamber and was relieved that neither drone glanced up from its task.

He had allowed himself an instant's reaction to the queen's familiar face, but now he was determined to waste no more time. He stepped cautiously toward the bed where she rested. So great was Picard's loathing that Locutus's impa.s.sive features began to contort from the emotion.

He kept his prosthetic arm-the arm the Borg had, ironically, given him so long ago-lowered by his side. He did not intend to strike until the last instant, when he stood directly beside her. He did not want to give the drones enough time to understand what was happening, to move in to protect her.

He stared down at her throat, its delicate veins throbbing with the first signs of life beneath a layer of glistening gel. One quick stroke, and that life would be snuffed out and the universe safe. He moved in, so close to her that his thigh brushed against the edge of the bed on which she lay. With a single thought, he activated the neural circuits that controlled the prosthetic arm and lifted it. The deadly blade at its tip, where a human hand had once been, began to whir.

He bent down.

As he did, her eyes opened, stark and wide, quicksilver, with no iris, no pupil. Yet she saw. In less than an instant, she saw-as if she had always known he was coming, as if she had been biding her time in order to startle him-and she shrieked, beauty transformed into a gorgon's rictus.

The cry roared through the Collective, so powerful and shrill and outraged that it blotted out every other sound, every thought. Picard closed his eyes at a mental pain so intense he feared his skull would shatter. It was so much worse than the sound that had come over the Enterprise's comlink earlier. He staggered, only an agonized burst of will keeping him on his feet. Miraculously, he opened his eyes again, steadied his arm, tried to bring the whirring blade down to meet the tender skin of that feminine throat.

It was too late. The galvanized drones were on him now. One stood behind him and gripped the prosthetic arm as Picard tried to raise it. Picard cried out as the upper part of the arm was wrenched up, then back at an unnatural angle, snapping the human base of bone.

The second drone approached from the side, his limb terminating in a double-edged rotating blade. He aimed it menacingly at the center of Picard's chest.

Instinctively, the captain flinched at first. And then he set his jaw and straightened.

"Yes," he croaked. "Kill me. Go ahead." Better to die than to give them access to his mind, and the location of the Enterprise, and critical data about Starfleet. Better to die than to become one of them again; he would not be the cause of another Wolf 359, would not be used against the Enterprise. Worf would see the ship safely home; humankind would rally and defeat the enemy yet a third time.

He bared his chest and moved forward, embracing the blade, wondering whether it was capable of penetrating Locutus's molded black carapace.

It was. Its bite was stunningly painful, even to his transformed Borg body. His muscles, his internal organs spasmed intensely; his eyes widened at the accompanying fleeting flash of light. He fought to draw in air and found it tainted with his blood. Even so, he found the will and strength to press forward, to force the blade in deeper, to his heart.

Before his vision dimmed entirely, he sensed the drones moving around him, catching him as he fell. He lifted his face and saw that of the Borg queen, frowning.

He surrendered to darkness, praying the blow had been fatal.

9.

PICARD WOKE LYING ON A BED. THE BORG CARAPACE covering his chest had been removed, and the chalky skin beneath it was pristine, unscarred, as if it had never been pierced and torn. There was no pain at all, not even from the broken arm.

The worst possible thing had happened. He had failed, this just as Janeway and T'Lana had predicted. Had he let his desire for revenge blind him to the inevitability of this outcome?

The fact that he had not died filled him with unspeakable frustration, unspeakable fury. He tried to rise and found himself bound by heavy restraints. Vainly, he thrashed against them, near weeping with rage and self-loathing. The one promise he had made to himself-that he would never allow himself to be used again to hurt his own kind-was about to be broken.

He took only a small degree of comfort to find that the neutralizer chip was still functioning-for the moment.

He was no longer in the birthing chamber but in an open area, next to a single white, solitary wall. Macabre surgical instruments-drills, saws, scalpels, useful for fashioning flesh as well as metal-hung ready for use. Their chilling significance was not lost on him.

And he had exchanged positions with the queen. He was now supine while she stood looking down at him. He was all too aware that the bed was in fact a diagnostic table; he glanced up and saw the monitors tracking his life functions.

The queen had a.s.sumed her body and wore it gracefully, naturally, with a dancer's bearing. Her face and eyes-so unlike those of others of her race-were utterly alive, shining with humor, confidence, pride, rippling with subtler nuances of emotion. High-spirited, he might have called her, in another century, under different circ.u.mstances.

Her features wore a thick layer of shimmering gel, remnants of the chrysalis.

He yearned to reach out, as he had only a few years before, and with his own hands snap her lovely neck, watch as her shining eyes flickered and dimmed. He had the strength of a Borg now. He could do it so easily, if only he could lift his arms...

"So," she said, the corners of her lips curving upward with dark amus.e.m.e.nt. Her tone was playful, her voice feminine, alluring, the whisper of thousands speaking as one. "There's a human expression, isn't there? The third time is the charm...?"

She reached down and laid a glistening hand upon his shoulder. Her touch was cold and moist, a toad's; he recoiled from it. She gave a small, easy laugh.

"You've come back, as you were always meant to. I sensed you, you know. Even before I was born. I came to life before I was quite ready, just for you.

"Have you come willingly to me, now? It's how I've always wanted you: willing, eager."

His expression hardened, and he turned his gaze away.

"It doesn't matter. Come to me as the individual Jean-Luc Picard...or as a drone." Her amus.e.m.e.nt returned. "You've already done most of the work for us this time, very thoughtful. Is this the work of your talented Doctor Crusher?" She stroked his arm. "You see, I learned many things from you when you were last Locutus. I knew you loved her, even then, though you would not admit it even to yourself. But in the end, you will come to me."

"Never willingly," he snarled. "As you saw, I would rather die."

Her tone cooled abruptly; she lifted her chin, regal, haughty. "It doesn't matter. Either way, the destruction of your ship and your world is a.s.sured."

"It is your ship," he said with venom, "your world, that will be destroyed."

She gave a short, harsh laugh at his bravado, but the liquid metal eyes flashed with anger. "Did you not learn from Wolf 359? Do you want to see it repeated to understand?"

"We are wiser," he countered. "My people know you are here. Even if you were to kill me, they know what to do. They won't stop until you are destroyed."

"Ah, yes." She tilted her head, her tone mocking. "The brave crew of the Enterprise. We expect them to follow you, of course. And you will help us to be ready for them. I have created a special directive just for you. You will be my guardian, my protector."

Her voice softened, grew soothing. "Come willingly, Jean-Luc. Make your people lay down their weapons. All this thrashing, all this fighting, all this resistance is so...futile." She leaned down and ran her finger along the line of his jaw; he shuddered at the act. "We could make this pleasant, you know." She paused and brought her lips close to his ear; her breath was cool and soft. "It is pleasant for you, isn't it, Locutus? To be home, with no cares, no decisions. To truly belong..."

His lips twisted with disgust. "Locutus is not here."

Unruffled, she tilted her face and studied him with gleaming eyes. "Oh, but he will be." She straightened. "Make your decision, Jean-Luc Picard. You could be with me willingly and retain a degree of autonomy. Once I am sure of your loyalty, you could even rule beside me. You humans speak of pleasure, of ecstasy, but you cannot imagine the thrill of such power, the utter joy that would be yours..." Her tone flattened. "Or you can be another drone. You can have your will stripped from you and suffer, as you did before, with your poor little mind 'violated' by mine."

"Go to h.e.l.l," Picard said.

Her chin lifted sharply at his words, her eyes narrowing as she took a step back from the table.

"You thought to kill me, fool. Do you think I am so stupid as to let it happen again? That was your first, greatest mistake, and your decision now will be your second. I must finish my genesis, but when I and my ship are ready, I will rise. And when I do, you will be waiting for me-as Locutus. Together, we will tear apart your beloved Enterprise, killing your crew-except your precious Beverly. She, I will have you turn into a drone. Then, together, we will tear through the Alpha Quadrant. We will not bother pausing to a.s.similate a single being. We will head straight for Earth and annihilate your planet. And when your Federation manages to regroup and comes to render aid-too late to do any good-that is when the fun will really begin."

She did not need to gesture or call to the drones. She drew them to her side with a thought. Even Picard felt the pull-and with it, a spasm of pure horror in the pit of his stomach. He looked up to see a pair of drones, one on either side, above him; he could not have said whether they were the same ones that had attacked him in the birthing chamber. One reached for the wall and retrieved a metal instrument: a long, needle-fine drill. The other held a pair of delicate pincers.

Picard closed his eyes as the tip of the drill found his right temple and for a fleeting instant rested there, cold, unrelentingly sharp.

Not again, not again.

He did not let himself scream. The sensation was that of a pinch, then a sting as the drill found its way through the skin; when pierced, the bone reacted with an intense, dazzling burst of pain that faded quickly.

The brain, of course, felt nothing at all. The pincers followed, cold and swift; he knew the instant that they found and locked onto the neutralizer chip and slowly began to draw it out.

His mind was like a blaze. It raged at first, angry and wild, determinedly ascendant. And then his will was slowly bled from him, escaping like oxygen from a breached hull. He struggled to hold on to it, to fight, but he was a single flame struggling in a relentless vacuum. In the end, he could not hold out; his resistance was extinguished. Only a feeble blue glow remained, flickering, bitter. Watching. Waiting.

In sickbay, Beverly was finally lost in thought.

It had not been easy. With each pa.s.sing minute that Jean-Luc was gone, her anxiety increased, but she was determined to find a solution to the mystery of a Borg drone's metamorphosis into a queen. Her doubts and concerns were in the past. There was nothing she could do now but prepare for the future.

Her research indicated a fairly simple solution to the introduction of the feminizing hormone: a complex form was no doubt present in the gelatinous nutrient, which could easily be absorbed through the skin or administered intravenously, then broken down in the future queen's equivalent of a humanoid bloodstream.

The question was whether the Borg produced the feminizing hormone artificially, or whether, like human bees, the drones naturally created the nutrient gel and somehow collected it for the queen.

If it was the latter- Beverly frowned slightly as she directed the lab's computer to produce a tissue sample taken from the Borg Locutus. The frown deepened to a scowl as a shrill beep interrupted her train of thought. She glanced up, distracted, and stared for a half second at the blinking red light on the monitor screen before she realized what it was. Perhaps her mind had not let her understand what she saw because it was the one thing she had never wanted to see.

"No!" she said, at the exact instant she instinctively struck her combadge. "Crusher to bridge! Worf! The neutralizer chip has malfunctioned!"

Doctor Crusher's anguished cry galvanized Worf; he did not waste an instant in reflection or remorse. He rose and leaned over Sara Nave at the helm. "Evasive maneuvers," he ordered. "Set a random course, as far distant as possible while keeping us within transporter range." Her fingers moved swiftly over the controls-but not quite swiftly enough.

Worf glanced up just in time to see the bright ball of light emerge from the Borg cube's under-belly and streak toward the Enterprise. It was followed by another...and another...

The deck beneath his feet heaved; thunder roared in his ears. Nave was slammed back against her chair, then forward against the helm. Worf was forced to his knees; the side of his cheek struck the edge of Nave's chair.

He pulled himself up as the ship shuddered. Pressing his combadge, he shouted over the background chatter of incoming damage reports. "Transporter room. Keep your lock on the captain's signal and prepare to beam him to the holding cell."