The crew filled the room as Walker-Halsey led the group through the door. Each officer now saw the scene for what it was.

“Bloody hell,” Dougal said under his breath. Every time he thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

O’Shea stepped in and froze mid stride. He had seen thinga that had given him nightmares and gave him pause, but this took the cake. “Fecking’ell,” he muttered under his breath.

Crawford shook her head and couldn’t find the words to express her feelings. It felt as if the world had gone truly upside down. She glanced at Sorek. “Sir… this is a nightmare.”

After hearing everyone’s reactions, Sorek glanced at Crawford, a plan forming in his mind.

“YOU WILL BECOME US. YOU WILL DEATH WITH US.”

Suddenly a door near the connected bank of computers slid open with a groan. A moment passed until something stepped out into the light.

A lone Borg shuffled forward, the red light searching the room.

Crawford screamed.

Walker-Halsey had felt the cold terror at the sight of the Borg, but it was oddly slow and lacked the intensity of what she had studied and seen. What had happened to bring a lone Borg drone here, and why was it not aggressively trying to assimilate all of them?

Sorek knew something had to be done now, as it was clear what the entity had planned and that the Borg drone would be the one to execute it. He ran towards the collection of bodies and wiring and began smashing and tearing anything he could reach. After a very short time, he was struck by a phaser blast and fell to the floor.

Walker-Halsey watched as he fell, her tricorder already out and scanning the lumbering beast from a distance. She quickly slid to the ground at Sorek’s side.

“IT IS TIME TO DIE. IT IS TIME TO JOIN. IT IS TIME TO LIVE. IT IS TIME.”

Walker-Halsey continued to examine the XO as she studied the tricorder. “There is a lack of the Collective communication network present.”  She glanced at O’Shea. “You’re ranking officer now, Lieutenant.”

“O’Shea… We have to deal with that,” Sesias pointed at the lone drone, “before we can do anything else. Guess we know how all of this happened.” Gestured around the room.

“Doc, let’s get him out of the room.” Sesias reached down and grabbed the commander’s collar and started to pull him out of the room into the hallway. “Keep that drone busy till we get him out of here.”

Before Sesias could do that, the door lumbered and then slammed shut.  The sound of the various doors in the room closing echoed off the walls.  They were locked inside engineering.

“Damn.” Sesias looked around. “Okay then. Opposite corner from the door that drone came out of. Good spot, blocked on two sides and farthest away from the drone.”

Walker-Halsey shifted just out of reach of the Borg, “I do not think this is the cause of….” she pointed at the computer bank, “that. I suspect it is the other way around. If there were more of these, then yes. But there is just one… and an old one at that.”

“THIS IS MY CHILD. IT IS DEAD. IT DOES DEATH. YOU WILL DEATH AND LIVE.”

The Vulcan kept her distance as the drone haltingly moved around. “When Commander Sorek attacked, the resulting power drop suggested something.” She turned to O’Shea and Crawford. “There is now a pronounced pattern of uneven power readings.”  She shifted around the room again as the lone Borg tried to reach each of them.

Sesias placed the XO in the corner along one of the walls. “O’Shea, three of us, one drone. Have an idea. Going to need to time this just right. One person attack drone while another attacks, this…” He gestured at the monstrosity of computer and biologic parts. “Stick and move. Don’t stay in one place. Grab whatever you can to use as a weapon. Those cases the doc had, the brain jars. The odd one of us out can attack either one.”

“Sir,” Dougal said to O’Shea. “The wee blighter seems slow and bam heided.  We charge the bastard and rip an pull anything we can get ahold of.”

O’Shea nodded. Assess the situation. He had trained to fight the Borg and hand to hand was never a situation you wanted to find yourselfs in.

“MacDonald, you’re with me. As you say, rip it apart. They can be disabled that way and aren’t the fastest. Crawford, Sesias. and Walker-Halsey, you three hit the machine. Any and all connectors wires anything. Do as much damage as you can.” He paused for a moment before continuing, “Once we hit the drone move fast.”

Sesias nodded as a reply towards Lieutenant O’Shea as he kept his eyes on the jars holding the brains. “Ain’t no way you’re adding me to your collection, not if I have anything to say or do about it,” he muttered under his breath.

Dougal nodded to O’Shea. “On three?”

“Forgive me, mo chridhe,” Dougal said to himself thinking of Aimee. He then charged the Borg. As instructed, he went low while O’Shea would go high. His right shoulder slammed into the Borg’s legs and he wrapped his arms around the cybernetic nightmare in his best rugby tackle. As the three fell to the floor in an ungainly pile, Dougal grasped for anything he could get ahold of and pulled with all his might. Wires, tubes, and even bits of the protective exoskeleton came free in his hands. In the middle of the melee, something bit him in the back, but he ignored it. He was running on adrenaline now.

As Sesias saw O’Shea and MacDonald make their move towards the lone drone, he made his towards the nightmare. He kept himself low as he rushed toward his goal. He grabbed jars of brains throwing them against walls, against the amalgamation of flesh and computer parts in front of him. He could feel the burn of electricity course through his hands and arms as he grabbed jars, ripping them from their wiring. His three legs were kicking and stomping on anything they could reach, feeling glass and other various things cut and slice through his boots and feet. He didn’t feel the pain; he knew that they must do anything and everything they could to end this nightmare, even if it meant dying in the process and besides, feeling pain meant you were still alive.

O’Shea pushed himself up to improve the leverage he could exploit and yelled as the drone, twisted, and threw him off slightly, but he kept hold of one of the tubes entering the back of the drone’s head. With a sickly ripping sound, the tube tore free and sparks flew out the back of its head before it spasmed and grew silent.

Dougal lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to get his breathing back to normal. He wasn’t sure why he felt drained. Maybe that burst had  pushed him beyond his limits, or maybe it was just a physical manifestation of the since he’d arrived on the Colorado. Regardless of the reason he, was drained. “Sir,” he said to O’Shea, “Are ye okay, lad?”

Crawford tapped at her tricorder. “I don’t think it’s done with us yet sirs…” Suddenly the entirety of engineering felt as if electricity was flowing through the very decks they stood and lay on. The walls seemed to flicker with arcs of electric bolts. A low rumble cascaded into an inhuman roar.

“YOU CANNOT DEAL DEATH. YOU ARE NOT DEATH.”

The computer banks that had been tethered together began to glow brighter as the remaining containers of organs began to boil. Panels, pieces, and metal debris flew from all corners of Engineering and began to clatter onto the prone body of the Borg Drone. Sparks flew from consoles to computers to Borg and back again. The body began to shake as what looked like lightning began to strike the body at slow intervals, at least at first. Then the strikes began to speed up, moving faster as the humming roar became guttural. The entirety of the computer transferred all its power into the body of the Bord drone. Shakily at first, it stood. Then it looked at each of them. It no longer looked old. It’s body plating was fresh, and it’s arms and legs moved languidly, and the head swiveled smoothly on its neck. The drone spoke with the voice of the computer. “I WILL HAVE MY DEATH. YOU WILL DEATH. YOUR SHIP WILL DEATH. I WILL DEATH BEYOND. THE MERCY WILL DEATH.”

Walker-Halsey snapped at O’Shea. “I don’t think it wants to take over the Mercy or us anymore… I think it just wants to kill us all.” She shook her head. “I would suggest another course of action, sir.”

Crawford stared at the reborn Borg drone that now seemed to speak with the voice of the ship’s computer. “What if we… loaded something else onto it?” They all had to keep moving as the Drone was slowly picking up speed.

O’Shea backed up with an increasing pace as he looked for something, anything he could use to ward off the drone. “Works for me, Crawford. What have you got in mind? I am fresh out of invasive computer viruses…” As he said that though, he paused. “Ruby,” he shouted back at Crawford. “We could transfer her and overwrite this damned deamhan.” The carefully controlled stress in his voice was unable to hide the Irish accent on the final word as he said it.

“Ruby? Who the bloody hell is Ruby?” Dougal asked, not taking his eyes off the drone.

Sesias looked at the damage he had done, then down at his arms as he began to feel the pain of the electrical burns and what ever had been cutting into his feet. “By the gods, how? What?” as he watched the electric surges reanimate the both drone. “Who or what is a Ruby?”

Carolyn snapped her fingers. “Right.  And since Death isn’t in the system anymore…” She dashed around the creature and furiously tapped at the console. “I can open up the wall she put up… and maybe wake her up.  Hopefully.” She searched and searched until she found Ruby’s presence on the computer core. It was blinking lightly, but it was there. “I’m going to supercharge her.” Crawford redirected the power from the station to the place where Ruby had held out for so long. The lightly blinking light began to pick up speed until it no longer blinked. It was constant. And it was moving. Fast.

Carolyn waited as Ruby’s computerized soul arrived into the engineering systems. She waited, the silence worrying her that she had done something wrong. Then…

“You are not welcome here, Death.”  The voice of Ruby was strong this time, and her voice was tight. She directed the rest of them. “I need power to transfer to him. Connect everything you can to the computer banks.  then I can bring justice to him. for us all.”

Sesias looked up as he heard this new voice. “Who? Ruby? Ummmmmm, can you drop the blocks on our communications and transporter links to the Mercy. If so, I think we could get you all the power you need.”