Huddled together in the underground burrow, Ensigns Dolan and Addae had grown quiet.  Shortly after the mushroom creature had stopped speaking to them through Addae’s combadge, they had run out of anything else to say.  Addae had sighed fitfully and closed his eyes while Dolan struggled to boost the range of his tricorder.  The remnants of the Borg’s signal-scattering field across the planet continued to disperse, but the tricorder hadn’t regained its full capacity.  

Case in point: Dolan could scan the amorphous mushroom creature that had enrobed Addae up to the shoulders, but the tricorder couldn’t determine the mushroom’s full size.  Sensor readings told Dolan the mushroom stretched for dozens of decimetres beneath their burrow, but its full dimensions exceeded the tricorder’s current scanner range.  Dolan swiped a thumb through the tricorder’s calibration settings but became distracted by an unexpected noise.

It was Addae who broke the silence abruptly.  He spoke plainly with no preamble.

“Why do you keep chiding Kellin as if he were a child?” Addae asked.  

Illuminated by the tricorder’s dim light, Addae’s facial expression remained impassive, his eyes closed.  His hair was still mussed from their treacherous journey, dragged through tunnels by the mushroom beast.

Dolan appreciated the bluntness.  Addae didn’t typically pantomime the social graces that disgusted Dolan.  Perhaps it was because he spent his days talking to the ship’s engines rather than people.  Addae had also shared stories over synthale about growing up in an educational system that valued outcomes and results over process.  In either event, even though Dolan welcomed Addae’s speaking his mind, it didn’t mean Dolan agreed with him.

“I’ve done no such thing,” Dolan replied.

“You do.  You come across as critical in most everything you say,” Addae affirmed.  Although he was reiterating his point, there remained little more than passive resignation in his voice.  “Nothing he does– nothing we do is ever good enough for you.”

Dolan scoffed softly and said, “Your insecurity is showing.  I don’t think less of you.  Or him.  Maybe you’re projecting that on me?  Don’t presume to know my thoughts anymore.  Our Constellation collective is gone.  That Borg DNA has been safely removed from our bodies.”

“How can you say that with such certainty?” Addae asked.  “We didn’t notice it when the Kellin-imposter Changeling changed our DNA in the first place.  I still feel something.  Almost… a kind of intuition I never experienced before?  Don’t you feel it?”

“Then apply your intuition to your duty, ensign,” Dolan insisted.  “You’re just laying there.  Your duty is to survive and– and– I’m sorry.  I don’t know how to get you out of this.”

In futile frustration, Dolan slapped the tricorder into his other palm.

“I don’t know what this fungus wants with me, but let’s not pretend,” Addae said far more firmly.  “You don’t have Rals’s bedside manner, and I don’t expect that from you.”

Addae took a deep breath.

“I’m never getting out of here,” Addae said, resolute.  “That’s why it’s so important you resolve your tension with Kellin.  I see it every day, but I can’t work out if you resent Kellin for being a lesser man than the Changeling or if you resent Kellin for choosing not to show you the same affection you received from a deranged, hateful Changeling.”

“And what?” Dolan asked rhetorically.  “As if I know what I feel?  I don’t know.  If anything, I’m em–“

Dolan saw movement in his peripheral vision and unthinkingly shouted out in shock.  The mushroom creature began to undulate again, its spongy, fungal flesh rippling over Addae’s form.  Dolan jerked back from it but couldn’t move far in the tightly enclosed burrow.

In whatever ways the mushroom communicated, the universal translator in Addae’s combadge presented it through the voice of a Starfleet computer.

“Borg,” they said.  “You said Borg.  What is Borg.“

Defensive, Dolan asked, “Who am I speaking to?  What do you call yourself?”

The mushroom creature said again, “What is Borg.“

Huffing, Dolan answered, “The Borg are beings of unified thoughts and words.  They live among the stars in your night sky.”

“You fell from the sky,” they accused.  “You sound aloud many words.“

“No, but the Borg speak through corpses,” Dolan said in frustration.  “They armour the dead in ore and use them to conquer.”

“You do not smell of life,” they said.  “You smell of them.  You smell of other.  You smell of water and ore and rot.  You came before.  Many of many seasons before.  You warned against resistance.  Some fell and forgot.  We still resist.“

Dolan swallowed his response.  He heard a high-pitched whining sound in the distance.  As the sound grew louder, he threw his body over Addae’s head, risking contact with the mushroom creature if it meant protecting his crewmate.  From above, Dolan saw a shimmer of red light that expanded until it vaporised a massive hole through the overhead.  Sunlight shone in.  Dolan blinked up through the hole.

Kellin shouted down, “I found my phaser.”