The massive door stood tall over them, intricate carvings of figures scratched into the stone. It had taken them time, but they had found a false wall on one end of the pristine laboratory and made quick work of it.  Doctor Henry Longfellow stood behind Ensigns Lita Morrison and Carolyn Crawford, watching the scientist and engineer taking the door’s mechanical operation to task.  Lieutenant Hiro, his charge nurse, stood beside him.

“What did you make of the schematics, sensei?”  He had studied them at length but had remained silent as the false wall was discovered that led them to where they stood now, flummoxed by an ancient stone door.

“You were right to think I wouldn’t like it, Hiro-san.”  He fell silent while the gathered crowd worked further on the door.  He held up the PADD where he had transferred the schematics, “Whoever killed that man, they didn’t escape this place.  The door was closed behind them.  I’m starting to wonder if they intended to remain here.”

Hiro cocked her head to the side, curious.  This place was maddeningly long on questions and short on answers.  “To what end, sensei?  There is no life here, no friends to share time.”

The door rumbled some as the group tinkered further.  All eyes stayed on it, then returned to the wall console to continue working.  Henry thought about her question, his mind unsettled.  “What if the intent was not to live, but to escape?  They meddled in the destruction of the laboratory above us, murdered one of their own, and presumably something remains of them behind that door.”

The rumble returned, and the door slid to the left, cracking and scraping its way into an open position, leaving a gaping wound in the wall.  Longfellow pushed to the front as the security officers stepped first, searching the room as the lights flickered on.  Henry walked in and found everyone staring at the front of the room.  Where a holding tank was alleged to have been, according to the schematics, a bubbling bio tank stood, empty.  At the foot of it was a stasis pod of some kind, and a body of an older humanoid male lay in repose.

Henry was the first to move and began to scan the pod and the surrounding equipment.  “He’s alive, far as the controls here and my tricorder can tell.”

“You are correct. I am alive.”

Phasers filled everyone’s hands as the deep voice thundered around them.  Longfellow turned to the body, continuing to scan and examine.  “There is a bio-nueral component to this equipment.”

“I designed it myself. I am called Doctor Walter Morgan. You are of the federation.”

Longfellow finished his preliminary work and glanced around.  He was the ranking officer.  “I am Doctor Henry Longfellow from the Federation Starship Zephyr.  We discovered your colony after detecting some odd readings.”  He explained the discovery of the ruined Borg ship and the state of the settlement.

“The sentinel program saved us, doctor. We were going to die.”  Walter Morgan’s voice was silent for a moment, as if reflecting on the state of the planet.  “We sacrificed our people to stop them from taking our planet from us. They would have continued to take and take. We did not wish these…creatures to continue in their dark mission.”

Longfellow was making notes on his PADD.  He asked, “What of the three other sites?

“Those are the others. They were here before us. We came here to find them, to learn their ways. To prepare for the battles to come. They shared with us.”  Morgan’s words came to an abrupt halt, and the monotone computer voice had suddenly cracked with emotion.  “We did not ask the right questions. We discovered only too late that they did not intend to let us leave this place with their secrets. All of our people were sacrificed, Doctor Longfellow. All of them. The dust in the streets above you? It is all that remains of the survivors. I refused to die. The man in the room above us…he was going to follow their wishes in destroying it all. I could not abide in that.”

Lita Morrison felt her stomach lurching as she spat out, “Holy shit.  There are no survivors because they killed all of them.”

Henry felt a similar sour note sounding in his gut.  “We detected life signs in the underground settlements. Those are the original settlers of this world?”

“I do not know if they are settlers, rulers, or from whence they originate. We were given incomplete information that also conflicted with itself. They are not gods. They are intelligent beings who saw our hubris and our egos. They used it well.”

Henry asked the obvious, “They don’t know about you, do they?”

“It was not my intent to remain here. I was to use the ship we used to arrive here to depart. It was located in a hangar here in the sub-basement. I discovered too late that the man in the other room had sabotaged it. He told me he did not wish for there to be a way out for any of us. That we deserved to die in our own sick minds. i regret his death.”  Another long pause as the voice had ended its statement with a tinge of sadness, or even regret.  “It has taken me time to realize he was right. I have lain here, in my own silence, for over ten years. We wanted a way to kill our enemies, to stop the wars, to bring peace through the strength of the programs we had long imagined out here in the rimward. And yet…there is no simple way to do these things. There is always balance in the universe.”

Henry motioned to Morrison, “Update the captain – tell him we’ll need him down here.”  He tuned his attention back to Walter Morgan.  “If we release you from stasis, what will happen?”

“I will die. It was not designed to last forever…just long enough to hide away until it was clear for me to leave this wretched place.  I tried to repair the ship.  Spent months attempting the impossible.  I locked myself in here, hoping to find a way.  This body is failing me, doctor.  It is long past my time.  However, I am unable to do this myself.  You will have to release me.”

Longfellow could hear the quiet gasp from Hiro at his side.  He searched for the words and found some of them.  “I cannot promise you anything, Doctor Morgan.  I must speak with my captain.”

A computerized sigh filtered through, “Not much has changed in this universe.”