A’ha’mari felt the satisfying ache of a deep stretch as her secondary arms, delicate sinewy limbs that met her spine just beneath the ribs, unfurled into the warm sunlight. Across elongated fingers she felt the comforting balm of a gently beating sun as they reached out of the cave mouth and into a fresh and verdant beyond. Her dark eyes squinted against the yellow light that pressed against the edges her vision, she blinked vigorously through double eyelids as she reached up with her long blue fingers to wipe away the tears that formed in the corners of her deep sockets. As the discomfort abated and the tears dried she saw the shelter of the cave gave way to a dried creek, its winding river-bed leading further onwards into the forest. She expected fear. She expected panic. She felt only calm and like a rope tied around her wrists she let the siren sun tug her from the midnight shadow. Tentatively taking a step from the dark shelter where she had awoken, she picked her way through the grubby white rocks. Dotted with obsidian gems, they hummed with a warmth that seeped into her bare tridactyl feet calling her further down this arcadian path; no pebble caught her uncovered heel, no root snagged her talon-like nails as she picked up speed. Before a second thought had crossed her mind she found herself racing through the low hanging branches, swinging expertly from the leaning trunks as she used the momentum to vault a candy striped boulder. With an nimbleness she hadn’t possessed since childhood she leapt up the trunk of a fallen tree and sped towards the elongated beams of sunlight, almost tangible enough to grasp in her vice grasp. Her talons punctured the pale bark of the tree as the trunk arched backwards, giving way to a sheer grey cliff face. A’ha’mari stopped, her breath deep shaking her body, her blue cheeks flush with exertion whilst her long arms hung at her side. With the unbridled confidence of a small child she turned her head upwards to the peak of the rocks, she would not be deterred. 

With a burst of speed she leapt from the fallen trunk towards the cliff face, her upper arms reaching for the hand holds as the three fingers of her lower arms clutched to the pot-marked rocks. Digging her talons into the soft rock she began to climb. Cautious at first, examining crannies for safety and balancing her body close to the cliff face. She quickly found her wariness gave way to a surge of adrenaline and began swinging from outcropping to outcropping till; almost missing the cranny where her hand might find anchor, she fell a few feet, fingers scrabbling till she ceased her descent. Heart beating like a taiko drum she threw back her head in a laugh that echoed through the endless green tree tops, stirring a nearby flock of birds into flight across the small valley. 

“If you seek me today collector, you must catch me first.” she whispered. Placing her hands flat against the rock face she pushed through her long muscular arms and dove backwards from the rocky wall.

Suspended in the empty air, she swam in the golden waters of sunbeams. Her dark skin soaking up the warmth of the distant orange sun. For an eternity she hovered on the edge, her momentum battling against the gravity that sought to wreck her on the shoals of spotted white rocks below. From this height she thought they seemed like eyes staring back, innumerable eyes watching her, a thousand minds monitoring her, a million voices speaking as one. A panic set into her chest as she remembered the chill touch of metal plating against her skin, the taste of fear in the air, the hollow silence of rooms where drones stole the voices of millions. 

For a moment she remembered the truth of the Borg.

As gravity began to win the battle with her body, pulling it from her weightless heaven towards the field of cruel unblinking eyes, she reached out with one long arm to grasp a vine she had spotted a moment earlier. Instead she found an arm, thicker and more robust than her delicate lemur-like frame. As it caught her forearm, she looked up into the soft smile of the man leaning over the edge of the large tree branch, who with one pull, lifted her to the naturally occurring platform. 

“I thought we talked about leaping off things ‘A’ha’mari.” he said, a smile spreading across his tan face. 

“I’ve regenerated since then Brrun.” she replied between heaving breaths, struggling to catch the air as the chill of her memories clung to her chest. 

“They’ve called for a meeting.” He offered a small flask from his pocket. 

“To discuss what?” She took a long swig, the honey tones of the drink failing to dispel the cold stone that weighed down her twin stomachs. “Is Aramook arguing that we should declare some sort of liberation war?”

Taking the flask from her hand Brrun lifted it to his lips. With a tilt and then a frustrated shake he found it empty. 

“That Hirogen is a fool.” A’ha’mari lent against the great trees trunk, twirling a nearby vine absent mindedly in her lower arms. “What are a few defective drones meant to do?”

“The community values your opinion.”

With a snort she sidled up to the man. A’ha’mari could see why all the girls were flustered by Brrun, for a moment she considered laying a kiss on his lips to seduce him or just silence him. 

“The ‘community’ values my telepathic abilities.” The thought of her kissing a two arm would’ve caused scandel back home. If her home still existed. She felt the cold stare of a million eyes on her back.  “It’s difficult to lie to a telepath, in or out of a mental paradise.” 

“There are many benefits to your attendance at the meetings.” Brrun smiled widely. There was a rumour that before his assimilation he had been a politician with empty promises and crocodile smiles, others whispered that he had been an actor, a master manipulator of emotions.  A’ha’mari had seen enough rotations to know that neither was true. Like herself Brrun had been a simple worker when they had been stolen away and forced closer to ‘perfection’. 

A whisper licked at the edge of hearing, ruffling the leaves. 

“Sorry Brrun. Time to go.” She found herself walking backwards, edging closer to the abyss beneath the tree cover, she could feel the riverbed, its stones waiting, watching. “Find me next time I go under. Let me know how the meeting goes?”

The Brunali reached out his strong arm as A’ha’mari toppled over the edge. A vein attempt, they both knew it, though she appreciated the young man’s attempt. She hoped for a moment of weightlessness, an endless second of pleasure in the golden sunbeams again but the warm current was no match for the frozen undertow that grasped at her leaden limbs. Chains of shadow clawed from the assembled eyes that covered the dried riverbed below, cruel and hungry they drew her in, opaque waves swelling, engulfing her. As she fell, the ground racing to meet her tear filled eyes, a whisper escaped her lips, “We are not the Borg.”

Deep within the windowless confines of a sphere, the body of A’ha’mari let loose its final breath; her long, muscular blue limbs, turned indigo in the ambient green light, slumped coldly at her side. The small crowd quietly observed as the whirring of her implants slowed and then ceased entirely, allowing silence to swallow the room. 

Reaching from his make-shift seat at her side Brrun wiped away a tear from her slender cheek. For a long moment no one did anything, motionless the mourners seemed to await her next breath. When it did not arrive, Brrun stood and placed her sinewy fingers across her body solemnly. 

“Increase the strength of the beacon. We must hope the Federation is everything we were promised.”

Rana Sisrex awoke with a chill, cold sweat running across her brow. Bathed in the pale green light wafting over the grey hull of Daedalus from a nearby nebula, she stared into the swampy shadows cast by the bulkheads; between her heaving breaths, they stared back.

Her dark blue nightshirt stuck to her body as she threw the light covers aside and crossed to the small bathroom, a large sweat mark remaining on the bed. A familiar gentle glow of the mirror light brushed against her face as she reached up with her lower arms to wipe the tears from her eyes, only to find she didn’t have lower arms. 

‘Of course I don’t.’ she thought to herself. ‘Why would I?’ 

She turned her head in the mirror, shocked to find familiar white eyes, filled with the large black pupils characteristic of Betazoids.

Quickly she turned her back to the mirror, expecting to feel the burning stares of a million eyes creep across her pink skin. Instead a chill rippled down her spine and along non-existant arms. Darting across the room to an ornate divan pushed up to the small window afforded her by her rank, she reached out her legs and in the stygian green light began counting her toes. All ten were present, which unsettled her. 

From her seat on the low seat, she pulled a worn blanket around her shoulders, one of the few momentos of her childhood on Betazed. She pulled the loosely woven fabric close, seeking safety in the psychic imprint of home. 

“Computer, collate all information on subject Unimatrix Zero.” She could still taste honey on her lips.