The light from the red alert panels was already flickering when Kazjra bolted through the doors into Main Engineering, and the enormity of the situation weighed on her like a rock in her stomach. Whatever the Changelings and the Borg had planned, Fleet Formation had primed them for it. Overriding it was a top priority.

As she ran towards the main systems display, she saw Lieutenant Jeto already standing there, her brow furrowed above her creased nose.

Kazjra knelt next to her, ignoring the display’s large screen and console entirely and focusing on a covered access panel below. After fumbling with the release tabs for a second, she ripped the panel cover off.

“Jeto!” she said, trying to project her voice over the commotion around her. “We need to disable our comms system if we’re going to regain control of the ship. I’m taking a run at it manually, but if this doesn’t work I’ll need a sonic driver and a second set of hands.”

There was no response from Jeto, though Kazjra was sure she had heard her: the chatter and motion in the room had just quieted down significantly. It was deeply unnerving, but she forced herself to stay focused on the task of disconnecting the necessary relays.

“Jeto! Did you hear me?”

She stilled her hands and tilted her head to listen for a response, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. There was a soft, choking sound coming from behind her.

Kazjra tore herself away from the panel and pulled herself up, only to recoil in shock at the sight of Jeto. The lieutenant’s eyes were turning black as the veins in her face and neck bulged and darkened.

She slapped her commbadge. “Zel to sickbay! Something’s wrong with Jeto!”

It was only then she realized it was more than just Jeto. No response came from sickbay, and Kazjra quickly understood why.

“We are the Borg.” Dozens of voices around her spoke in unison, hundreds more echoing on an unknown frequency.

“Eliminate all unassimilated.”

She flinched as she heard phaser fire elsewhere in the room. Jeto was unarmed but lunged for a nearby hyperspanner, grabbed it, and threw herself full force at Kazjra.

Kazjra jumped out of the way a split second before the hyperspanner came down on the display console and shattered it, and her mind began to race.

She had to get out of the chaos and figure out what was happening. A map of the Jefferies tubes appeared crystal clear in her head, and she darted off to the right, ducking low beneath phaser fire. Ahead was a hatch that would open up to Nacelle Access.

Jeto was on her heels. The second that Kazjra reached the hatch, she spun around and reached for Jeto, feeling their combined momentum travel through her arm to Jeto’s head to the wall, as Jeto’s head connected with a loud thunk. Jeto fell, conscious but stunned just enough that Kazjra had time to key in her access code. The hatch opened.

At the same moment, on the other side of the room, the doors to the corridor slid open. Dozens of black-veined security guards appeared at the threshold and began firing.

Kazjra dove through the hatch. There was a blinding flash of light and heat as it sealed shut.

With a grunt and a loud click, she manually locked the hatch on her side in case they tried to get through with security overrides.

Then she noticed the smell of burning fabric and flesh.

BANG

BANG

BANG

The thunderous pounding on the other side of the hatch rang out only three times. Once it stopped, Kazjra could hear the screams of other officers outside the Jefferies tube in main engineering, sharp and agonized. She’d never been in a war zone in any of her five lifetimes, but in her gut she knew that this must be what they sounded like and that her crewmates weren’t being subdued: they were being slaughtered.

She suddenly and vividly recalled her first death.

She was Janrix Zel, pushing through the underbrush of a deep blue forest on an alien planet. 

He waded through the plants, eyes locked on a specimen just meters away, until three sharp pinpricks stopped him in his tracks.

The immediate emotion had been curiosity, but now the memory was accompanied by dread and the knowledge that it was the beginning of the end.

After locating and containing the insectoid creature that was the likely attacker, Janrix began retracing his steps back toward the shuttle and his crew, but each step felt increasingly heavier until he started feeling pins and needles in his legs.

He pulled out his communicator and reported his condition back to base, sweating and trembling and wondering if he’d make it back on his own. Suddenly his foot caught on a tree root. He pitched forward into the dirt. When he tried to pick himself up again, he found he didn’t have the strength.

The memories are blurry and disconnected after that: lying on a gurney in the shuttle, hypospray after hypospray being administered as he’s fading in and out of consciousness. His heart feeling like a bird fluttering in his chest. Blinding flashes of pain in his head and his abdomen as Janrix Zel separates, becoming Janrix and Zel. Tingling, confusion, and finally the cold, barren feeling that Zel would come to associate with the loss of a host.

Another scream broke her from the horrible reverie, and she felt bile rise in her throat. She desperately wanted to turn around, open the hatch, and… do what?

What could she do? Going back out would mean certain death.

What about forward? The Jefferies tube she was in led directly to the nacelle access junction and to the nacelle control room. If she could make it to the control room, maybe she could do… something.

Her thoughts whirled, and she recalled her second death. Her worst death. Slow, debilitating, and full of unknowns. Unsure if even the symbiont would survive it.

Yolozha Zel hadn’t known she was doomed when she pierced her faulty protective glove in the lab. The sudden depression and mood swings had been puzzling but were not enough to clue her in. It wasn’t until the shooting pain in her hands every time she gripped something too hard that she realized something was deeply wrong. Only then did she consciously consider the terrible possibility, only then did she ask for the tests to be run.

By the time the muscle spasms started, they’d confirmed prion disease. Then she began to fade more quickly, and Zel’s recollection becomes a tumble of disjointed memories. Trips, falls. Forgetfulness, confusion. The bizarre feeling of disconnect, of being two beings in one body instead of one whole as Yolozha’s mind succumbed to dementia.

Kazjra realized with a jolt that she’d just been lying there for who knows how long. Her brain felt fuzzy. She tried to move, tried to pull herself forward, but there was a jolt of blinding pain.

Pain.

Kayten Zel felt the pain only briefly. His death was sudden and senseless, but quick. Thank goodness, so quick. The crash, the sudden, horrible cacophony of twisting metal, and then seconds later the shock. It overrode all the pain and fear and then everything was over, just like that. Zel’s grief as another host slipped away felt like more than it could contain alone in its tiny form, but the mantra echoed on: it was quick.

Kazjra remembered being Kayten, being in shock. Being Kazjra, being in shock. “I’m in shock right now, aren’t I? That pain–”

She reached for her thigh but didn’t have to touch it to realize that she’d been shot in the leg, that despite the cauterizing heat she was still bleeding profusely.

That she might be dying.

Taner was the first host to die of old age. His death had been a good death. Taner Zel did have some inkling that night as he prepared to go to sleep that he would be doing so for the last time, but there was no fear. There was contentment, there was pride that he’d figured out exactly what he wanted to do in life and done it well. He settled into bed, tired out from a good day. He closed his eyes and dreamed until the dreams scattered and dissolved into a mist that Zel still remembers with awe and wonder.

“What about Kazjra’s death?” she mumbled to herself. “This can’t be it. I don’t want this to be it.”

If the Borg won the day, it would be the Zel symbiont’s death, too. No memory of Kazjra, Taner, Kayten, Yolozha, or Janrix. No memory of Oliver, Mara, or her captain.

She made one more attempt to pull herself forward through the Jefferies tube, and her last thought before fading out was, “Gotta make it to that control room.”