Chapter Text
Fitzgerald looked up as the door to his Counselor’s office opened, unsurprised to see Aaron arriving ahead of schedule.
“How did it go?” Cavit said, once he’d glanced around, likely checking they were alone.
“As good as could be hoped,” Fitzgerald said, and since they were alone, he got up from behind his desk and planted a quick kiss on his husband’s lips before moving to the couch set-up that took up most of the space in the office.
The room itself had taken Fitzgerald time to decorate. The space had been set to Starfleet neutral—set beige to stun—and he’d asked Daggin to test his first “green wall” technology with the wall behind the sitting area, to great effect. Now vines grew up thin clear cylinders, and added a sense of life to the room, and also aided with the environmentals in a small way that, multiplied over many more of the green walls throughout the ship, was a useful edge out here in the Delta Quadrant. Soft cushions in earthy green tones, gentle abstracts, a beautiful teapot and cups he’d “acquired” from the Amundsen’s Mess Hall after they’d disassembled the alternate-timeline Venture’s Captain’s Yacht, and a beautiful green stone Crann Bethadh on one wall, a gift from a former-Maquis crew member who’d died over a year ago now.
“Which means?” Cavit sat on the other single seat chair, and Fitzgerald tried not to analyze the position.
The door opened again, and Fitzgerald smiled as Crewman Kes Aren and Crewman Abol Tay arrived together. The two Ocampa joined them, and as they sat on the couch beside each other, Fitzgerald pointed at the teapot. “I made Ocampa black, if you’d like some?”
“Please,” Kes said, in that soft voice of hers that had come with her adulthood. She pushed some of her blond curls back behind one of her tapered, folded ears, the one she wore the Bajoran earring Li-Paz had given her, then accepted the cup he poured.
“I’m fine,” Abol said, when Fitzgerald turned to him.
“Aaron?” Fitzgerald offered, but Cavit shook his head. Fitzgerald poured himself a cup, added a healthy splash of milk, and then sat back in his seat. “So, Setok is currently working with Aravik, but the rest of you all had an opportunity to mind-meld with one of the three volunteers, correct?”
Kes nodded. “That’s right,” Kes said. “It was a fascinating experience, and I feel more in control than before. Alongside the treatment, I believe we’ve halted the cascade—or will have, once we finish a few more injections.”
“That’s wonderful news,” Cavit said, smiling and clearly relieved.
“Unfortunately,” Abol said, wincing at the reaction the word caused in Cavit’s expression. “It hasn’t alleviated the build-up of neurogenic energy already in place.”
Fitzgerald picked up his PADD. “I was just reading that.” He glanced at Aaron, and knew the Captain’s thoughts were in the same place as his own. That “build-up” had blown a hole in the side of Kes’s quarters, nearly exposing them all to vacuum.
“The others are meditating,” Abol said, exchanging a glance with Kes. “And it’s helping. It’s not as… pronounced in us, and it’s hard to explain, but…” He shook his head, and Fitzgerald thought Abol didn’t mean so much hard to explain as impossible to explain.
“Can you try?” he said.
Kes took a breath. “I am full of potential,” she said. “All the things Tanis showed me how to do, all the things Setok was forced to do when Tieran was in control of his body?” She faced the Captain, then Fitzgerald. “All possible. If I put my mind to it, I mean.”
“But we won’t,” Abol said. His dark eyes had turned to Fitzgerald. “I can sense how worried you are about Setok, Doctor, but he’s the least affected of all of us, and the most… cautious of using his abilities. Even now.”
“I feel like you’re trying to tell me we’ve disarmed the timer on an explosive, but the payload is still active,” Cavit said, leaning forward, his pale blue eyes moving from Kes to Abol and back again.
“That’s not a terrible analogy,” Abol said, lifting one shoulder. “Our control has to be perfect. A single slip-up, and we could use that energy.”
“So how do we… I want to say disarm you, but that feels like the wrong word?”
“We’re moving past medicine and into particle physics, Captain,” Abol said, smiling now. “But ideally, we find a way to release the energy without the, uh…”
“Boom?” Fitzgerald said, unable to help himself.
Abol smiled, which had been what he’d been hoping for.
“Yes,” Abol said. “No boom. I’ve asked Lieutenant Hargrove and Sublieutenant Velar to aid me—I believe their grasp of physics and unified field theories might be useful.”
“Take however you need, Abol,” Cavit said. He turned to Kes. “Alex says they’ve finished restoring your quarters.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Kes said, with her usual winsome smile.
“As soon as we get warp engines restored,” Cavit said. “We’ll throw everyone onto this. In the meanwhile…” He reached out with both hands, taking Abol’s left hand and Kes’s right. “Stay with us, okay?”
“Aye, Captain,” they said, in a confident unison Fitzgerald found reassuring.
*
It felt odd to be on deck five and not heading to Stellar Cartography, but Abol passed the doors where he spent most of his on-duty time and instead stopped at the physical sciences lab, opening the door and finding Lieutenant Junior Grade Brian Hargrove and Sublieutenant Velar both already waiting for him at one end of the room. At the other, he saw Ensign Lauren Blain and Crewman Evander Dimitris working together at the chemistry station, with what appeared to be a sample of deuterium.
“Thank you for coming,” Abol said to Velar and Hargrove.
“No problem,” Hargrove said, clapping his large hands together and smiling. He was an athletically built man, prone to moving around, and made Velar, beside him, seem all the more still and composed when all the former-T’Vran officer offered in response was a tip of her chin.
“These are the latest scans,” Abol said, deciding just to dive right in and pulling up the displays from his PADD to the science lab screens. “As you can see, neurogenic saturation in my cellular structure is… profound.”
Hargrove whistled, his dark brown eyes flicking back and forth at the display.
Velar pointed one finger. “The theory is the disparity between your readings and the others is either Vulcan, Nacene, or Trill symbiont influence, correct?”
“That’s right,” Abol arranged the scans by intensity. “Eru, Gara, and Cir, then Daggin, then myself and Kes, then Setok.”
“Assuming that was what built up the energy at different rates,” Hargrove said, crossing his arms and starting to pace back and forth behind them. “Is there a way to… flip that script? Can we find the biologicals that are affecting the particle physics? And if we can, can we create some sort of—let’s call it a pressure valve—to bleed off the energy in a controlled way?”
Abol closed his eyes. The mere mention of bleeding off the energy seemed to tease his entire being. I could do that, his mind suggested. I could do that, easily. We could go elsewhere, we could go elsewhen. Slip between the layers of reality, shape them to our whim…
“Abol?” Velar’s voice brought him back.
He took a breath. “Sorry,” he said. “Remaining focused is taking effort.”
Velar regarded him. “I understand.”
Hargrove tapped a few commands into the screen. “Let’s start by breaking down the neurogenic energy into its constituents. Maybe we can knock the legs out from under this thing another way.”
Abol managed a nod, and by the time they were looking at the energy patterns a moment later, he had his balance back.
But for how long?
*
“I’m sorry about your PADDs,” Kes said.
Li-Paz’s amusement brushed her like a feather, and she caught herself smiling even as he faced her. “Everything on every one of my projects backs up to the main computer,” he said, tapping his now-bare desk, restored to its usual place beside hers, then crossing the room to pick up the first of the two new desk monitors he’d brought for them from storage.
Their originals were floating off in space somewhere.
“I’m sadder for you losing your plants,” Li-Paz said, placing the first monitor on her desk. “Those you’ll have to start over.”
“I have seedlings,” Kes said, and then hesitated, because making those seedlings grow into fully mature plants would be child’s play with the amount of energy inside her right now. Tanis had shown her how.
Of course, doing so would likely release more energy than she intended, and what would happen with all the rest of it?
She turned to the window, crossing her arms and holding her own shoulders tightly.
“Hey,” Li-Paz said, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”
“Captain Cavit compared me to an unexploded bomb,” Kes said. “And he’s not wrong.”
Li-Paz squeezed her. “Wouldn’t be the first time the Prophets led me to the perfect bomb.”
“Paz,” she laughed.
“No, I mean it,” Li-Paz said, rocking her back and forth. “There’s a whole history there.”
She leaned back against him, and though she couldn’t allow herself to revel in the moment—right now, her attention had to remain focused, her mind keenly aware of where she was, what she was doing—there was comfort to be had, and she took it.
On her desk, the monitor Li-Paz had connected pinged twice.
“You have a message,” Li-Paz said.
Kes glanced at it, frowning when she saw the sender. “From myself?”
“Did you set a reminder for something?” Li-Paz said. She recalled him doing so on any number of occasions. He called it “writing his future self” and would send messages to be held back in the computer buffer, only to be delivered at a certain time or…
She reached out with one hand and tapped the activation button, bringing the monitor interface up, then tapped the message to play it.
“Hello Kes,” came a voice. Her voice, but softer, gentler, and, she realized with a cold wash of realization, older. “If you’re hearing this, it means you’ve accessed the files I left behind in Emmett’s database. When we first decided to come back here, we hadn’t planned on leaving you right away, but since our arrival, we’ve been accidentally harming your Lieutenant Stadi, Nurse T’Prena, and Lieu—Ensign Vorik. I’d hoped we’d have time to speak, at least a little, but it seems that isn’t going to be the way this works out. Perhaps that’s for the best, given how hard it would be for me not to offer you advice, now that you have paths ahead of you I never had the option to follow.”
Kes glanced at Li-Paz, who looked back at her in wonder. He’d realized who was speaking on the message, too, she saw.
“I hope you can see our visit, and what we’ve done here, as the gift it was intended to be,” Kes’s older voice continued. “A chance for a brighter future. Be gentle with yourself, Kes, but always know I’m with you, as are all the people on Voyager. Whenever you feel lost, they’ll guide you home.”
The recording ended.
“The timestamp on that,” Li-Paz said. “That was right before they left on the shuttle and…” He lifted one hand, waving it. “Did whatever they did to vanish all the way back to Ocampa.”
Kes blinked. Did whatever they did to vanish all the way back to Ocampa. She turned to face him, eyes widening, then leaned in and kissed him. “I love you,” she said.
“Great,” Li-Paz said, smiling once she’d pulled back. “Why?”
But Kes was already half-way to the door, reaching up and tapping her combadge.
“Kes to Stadi,” she said. “Do you have a moment?”
*
Stadi watched Kes pace back and forth in her quarters, trying to keep up with the rapid-fire words the medic was saying—and trying not to be alarmed at how her sense of Kes Aren was growing blurred around the edges, as though Kes even discussing what she was considering doing was somehow making the reality of Kes change right before her eyes.
“Kes, we have partial sensor readings of a neurogenic field, that’s it.” Stadi held up the PADD. She’d downloaded the file from the ship’s database once Kes had begun explaining, but there were multiple unknown variables at play. “And they were on a shuttle, and had years worth of experience more than you do right now.”
“But if they did it, we can do it,” Kes said. “And it drained them—when Abol saw his older self, when I visited the older Kes, they weren’t struggling like this...” She tapped the centre of her chest.
“Kes,” Stadi said, trying to think of a way to calm Kes down, but their conversation was interrupted when Voyager jolted beneath their feet. It wasn’t much, it didn’t even send her vase rocking, but it shouldn’t have happened.
Stadi glanced at Kes, worried, but Kes shook her head, her gaze going distant. “It wasn’t me…” Her eyes drifted closed. “It’s Cir. He’s losing his grip, even with Aravik’s help from before.”
Stadi tapped her combadge. “Stadi to Bridge. Crewman Cir is—”
The ship jolted again, and this time it was rougher. Stadi reached out with her own mind, and felt Gara’s anxiety and worry before she’d so much as taken a breath. Gara was barely holding on, and Eru was losing her control as well, and…
“There’s no time,” Kes said.
Stadi looked at her, and watched as a veil of light rose around her.
*
“Report!” Ro said, after the third jolt nearly threw her from her seat.
“Spikes in neurogenic energy,” Lan said, at Ops. “It’s the Ocampa.” She lifted her gaze. “The neurogenic fields are destabilizing matter. It’s affecting the structural integrity fields. I’m adjusting to compensate, but Commander…”
Cavit came out of his Ready Room, unsteady on his feet as Voyager rocked again.
“Those bombs might be going off,” Ro said.
“I’m re-routing impulse engine power to structural integrity,” Ensign Trumari said from the helm.
“Thanks,” Lan said from Ops.
“Commander,” Stadi’s voice, over the comm, made Cavit raise one eyebrow to Ro.
“She was with Kes, reported something about Cir before the second jolt,” Ro said quietly, then lifted her chin. “Go ahead, Stadi.”
“Kes has… well, calling it a plan might be overstating.”
Cavit exhaled. “Do tell,” he said.
*
“Careful,” Hargrove’s voice, and the grip on Abol’s elbow, was enough to keep him upright, but not enough to stop what felt like further motion deeper inside Abol as he spun and fell and…
Oh no.
Light shifted all around him, and Abol Tay was a hair’s breadth from freedom. He had the power to go elsewhere, something Tay had granted him since their joining, and he wanted to use it.
And wanting was enough to be half-way to doing.
Abol. The voice was Kes’s, and she wasn’t alone. She was reaching out to him, but so was Setok.
They were trying to form a Chorus.
It took more willpower than ever before, but Abol reached back, connecting with the others.
The light around him grew so bright he had to close his eyes.
*
“Lieutenant Stadi’s quarters, the Physical Sciences Lab, the Garden, the Mess Hall, and Setok’s quarters…” Lan rattled off the list of areas affected. “Reinforced SIF fields aren’t going to hold out forever.”
“I’m evacuating all adjacent areas of the ship,” Rollins said.
“Do we have anywhere we can beam them?” Cavit said. “Any class M worlds near enough?”
From the Science Station, Taitt’s shake of the head was followed by the calm, even voice she used to deliver the worst news. “No Captain. And I don’t think we could lock on to them right now, their molecular patterns are too unstable.”
“Can we get them to shuttles?” Ro said.
“Scott?” Cavit said, and Rollins started tapping on his console.
“Captain?” Trumari said. The blond pilot rarely cracked her professional comportment, but her voice had risen. “We’re in motion. Helm isn’t responding.”
“What?” Cavit said.
*
I see! Abol’s joy spread throughout the Chorus, and Kes allowed it to spread to the others, doing her best to take the central position most often held by Daggin when they joined like this.
Cir and Eru and Gara’s minds whirled around her, more power than thought, and Daggin, too, normally such a font of precision and control, barely constrained with the effort of all the rest of them.
And Setok, gentle and careful Setok, anchoring Kes and Abol in a way she’d never felt him do before.
I’ll stay, Setok’s thoughts were clearer than anyone else’s. Abol goes ahead. You bridge the distance.
Yes! Abol’s joy exploded into light, and then simply became elsewhere.
They weren’t thinking. Weren’t doing. Kes recalled Tanis’s words, and despite the man’s nature and who he’d turned out to be, he’d not lied to them about how they could affect the world around them. They didn’t direct intention.
The Chorus simply imagined they’d already succeeded, then let the world follow.
*
Honigsberg handed a PADD to Nicoletti. “Get the SIF up as high as you—”
Beside him, the warp core lit up. He turned and stared. Blue light flared up and down the length of it, the cloudy glow of warp energy interaction speeding up by the second.
“What the hell?” He tapped his combadge. “Honigsberg to Bridge. The warp core is online.”
*
“Great timing, Alex,” Cavit said, exchanging a relieved glance with Ro. “Can we re-route warp power to the SIF?”
“Wasn’t me, Captain, but—” Honigsberg’s reply paused over the comm channel. “Matter-antimatter reaction is climbing. One hundred and two percent. One-ten. One-twenty!”
Cavit turned to Ops, and Lan gave him a quick nod. “He’s right, but so far containment is stable and…”
Voyager lurched beneath their feet, and Cavit was shoved back into his chair.
“Captain,” Trumari said, and there was no mistaking the awe in her voice now. Cavit looked forward and saw whitish blurs rather than the rainbow streaks of stars at warp, and an odd series of ringed light. The ship groaned beneath them. “Our speed is…” Trumari turned to face him, eyebrows rising. “The computer can’t give me anything that makes sense.”
*
Honigsberg stared at the matter-antimatter ratio and shook his head. “Where is the power going?” It made no sense. The MSD couldn’t keep up with the power flow.
“Intertial dampers,” Nicoletti said, at a side-station. “Almost every bit of the warp power is going to inertial dampers, and it’s not enough.”
Another groan underlined her assessment, and a shower of sparks from the rear end of Main Engineering signalled an overload.
Honigsberg lifted his chin. “Captain, we can’t maintain this!”
*
Stadi held up one hand against the flare of light that was Kes, and closed her eyes, hearing the cross-chatter of the open channel to the Bridge and reaching to Kes with as much strength as she could conjure from her own mind.
Kes! Kes you have to stop now! The ship is going to come apart!
Beneath her feet, another protracted groan ran through Voyager.
*
Cavit considered the escape pods, but escape pods were rated for a warp ejection in an emergency situation, and this, whatever it was, was far beyond their stress levels. The ship shook beneath his feet. Rollins cursed as his station panels all went dark, shorting out around him. Cavit looked at Ro, who returned his grim expression, and then—
It stopped.
The barest rocking motion forward heralded the silence of the strain and groaning and overloads.
“Report,” Cavit said, rising from his chair on shaky legs.
“Whatever that field around the ship was,” Trumari said, tapping at her console. “It… ended?” She sounded like she was using a weak word to describe something inexplicable. Which was fair.
“Systems are coming back online,” Lan said. “Sensors are up.”
“On screen,” Cavit said, turning to face the front of the Bridge.
A blue and purple nebula appeared on the viewscreen in the distance, covering perhaps a third of the view.
“Where are we?” Ro said, standing and aiming the question at Taitt, who was already at work at the Science Station.
“I—” Taitt shook her head, then turned in her chair to face them. “Nine point five thousand light years from where we just were.”
“Stadi,” Cavit said. “Was that Kes?”
“It was all of them, Captain,” Stadi’s voice came over the comm. “Kes is with me, and she seems all right now, but I’m taking her to Sickbay.”
“There are no large neurogenic energy readings on internal sensors,” Lan said.
“Did we just get ten years closer to home?” Rollins said, his voice soft with awe. “In, what, two minutes?” In front of him, his panels snapped back on, and he stared down at them, blinking.
“We did,” Cavit said.
“Sahreen,” Ro said, turning her head. “Scan for Borg signatures.”
Lan’s eyes widened, and she set to work. After a moment, she shook her head. “Nothing obvious on short-range or long-range scans.”
Cavit exhaled.
They’d just jumped right past Borg space. Ten years worth of space. Not to mention a third of the distance Equinox was ahead of them.
“Okay,” he said, collecting the attention of everyone on the Bridge. “By the numbers. Let’s start with diagnostics. We have no idea what that just did to the ship. Let’s find out.”
*
Fitzgerald paused by the biobeds, pleased to see all the Ocampa were on their feet. Rebecca Sullivan was scanning Daggin, who sat on the third biobed with Setok and Nurse T’Prena standing beside him, and she gave Fitzgerald a quick nod.
“He’s fine. They’re all fine,” Sullivan said, closing the tricorder. “No sign of elevated neurogenic particles in their cellular structure, and—drumroll please—their glymphatic system is shifting back to normal.” She raised one eyebrow, smiling. “Looks like you might all be capable of being tired again, rejoining us mere mortals in requiring sleep.”
Fitzgerald chuckled. “And you all feel… normal?” he said, settling for the best word he had at hand.
“We do, Doctor,” Kes said, answering for the group.
“Then I’m going to suggest you all do exactly what Rebecca suggests and go to bed. Or get some rest. Or maybe take in some fluids and a meal.” He lifted his good hand. “You are all off duty for the next three days. No arguing.”
None of them did, and Fitzgerald decided that was the best surprise of all. One by one—or two together, in the case of Daggin and Setok—the Ocampa left Sickbay. Nurse T’Prena watcher her mate and son leave, but Fitzgerald imagined she was remaining behind for the same reason he’d been summoned.
“Shall we see what he wants?” Fitzgerald said, gesturing to the surgical bay.
“Can’t wait,” Sullivan said, with a sly little smirk. She and Emmett had something of a butting-heads relationship sometimes, but it seemed to have evolved into a friction they both enjoyed, Fitzgerald noted.
They came around the corner to find Emmett standing and holding a mirror up for Seven of Nine, who stood in front of Emmett, looking at herself, and—
Fitzgerald stared.
Seven of Nine no longer retained any exo-plating, and it looked like Emmett had taken the time to stimulate hair growth, which had turned out to be blond, and now held up in a pleat, but the singular most striking thing about Seven of Nine now was her clothing.
“Emmett…” Fitzgerald started, not sure where to go from there.
Sullivan, however, had no trouble. “I’ll go replicate something,” she said, leaving.
Seven of Nine’s silver bodysuit left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Emmett frowned as Sullivan stepped away, but turned back to face the remaining four of them. “I've extracted eighty two percent of the Borg hardware. The remaining bio-implants are stable, and better than anything we can synthesize right now.”
Seven of Nine, still looking into the mirror, reached up and touched her hair with a hand still supported by a web of cybernetics augmentation. “It is acceptable,” she said, in as calm a voice as Fitzgerald had heard from her yet.
“Emmett, the um…” Fitzgerald gestured to Seven of Nine’s body. Both she and the hologram turned to face him and Fitzgerald had to hide another jaw-drop, because the web of “support” built into the silver fabric made him think of ancient corsets. “Uniform?”
Beside him, Nurse T’Prena’s eyebrow had entered orbit.
“Fashion is hardly my forté,” Emmett said, seemingly without any understanding of what the issue might be. “Nevertheless, I've managed to balance functionality and aesthetics in a pleasing enough manner.”
“No,” Fitzgerald said, shaking his head. “No, Emmett… Just… no.”
“I beg your pardon?” Emmett said.
Sullivan took that moment to return, thankfully. She carried two pieces of freshly replicated material, one dark purple, and one black. “Let’s put these on over the, um…” Sullivan gestured to Seven of Nine’s silver catsuit. “That.”
“I do not understand,” Seven of Nine said, looking down at herself and back up at Sullivan.
“How about you just trust me on this one,” Sullivan said, leading her away to the changing area. “But I promise I’ll explain.”
“Is something wrong?” Emmett said, frowning at T’Prena and Fitzgerald.
T’Prena turned to Fitzgerald. “If you’ll excuse me, Doctor,” she said, then left him there to explain.
“Traitor,” Fitzgerald muttered, then tried to think of exactly how to explain to an emergency medical hologram the appropriateness of skin-tight silver catsuits.
*
Seven of Nine’s arrival in Cargo Bay Two with Doctor Fitzgerald and Doctor Hall took Cavit aback.
She looked so very human now, though the ocular implant around her right eye was striking in its own fashion. The dark purple tunic she wore flattered her soft blue eyes, and her blond hair—she had actual hair, now—was carefully styled up, framing strong cheekbones. A hint of silver was visible above the neckline of the tunic, and revealed at her ankles, too, beneath plain black trousers.
“You'll have to spend a few hours each day regenerating in a Borg alcove,” Fitzgerald was explaining to Seven of Nine as they came through the large doors. “At least until your metabolism can function on it's own.” He gestured to the Cargo Bay as a whole. “We’ll come up with something a bit better than a Cargo Bay as soon as we can, I promise.”
That made Seven of Nine pause and frown at him, but she nodded. “Understood.”
Cavit thought maybe she didn’t, though.
“Alex promises me we can move an alcove down into quarters for you, it’ll just take some time to get the power feeds right,” he offered. Seven of Nine regarded him, the line between her eyebrows vanishing, though now she seemed, what? Amused? “So, if you’ve got any preferences for a homey touch or two, let us know.”
“A homey touch?” Seven of Nine repeated.
Ro’s dark eyes glanced his way, and Cavit realized he’d perhaps opened a more complex can of worms than intended.
“Anything that will make you more comfortable,” Fitzgerald said.
Seven of Nine tipped her chin.
“This is for you,” Ro said, stepping forward and holding out a combadge.
Seven of Nine took it, attaching it to the front of her tunic.
“If you need to contact any of us, that’ll make it easy,” Fitzgerald said, with another warm smile.
“I’ll adjust the alcove now, if you’re ready?” Emmett said.
Seven of Nine followed him toward the operational alcove on the wall, and Cavit took a breath, watching them.
Before she stepped into the alcove, however, Seven of Nine turned, facing them again.
“A… nightlight.”
“Pardon?” Cavit said.
“A homey touch,” Seven of Nine said, then glanced at Doctor Fitzgerald. “The child you spoke of, the girl. She had one. It was red.”
“I’ll make sure we’ve got one waiting for you,” Fitzgerald said.
Seven of Nine stepped into the alcove.