Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [71]
Seven scowled. “Some of my internal mechanisms are dark. They may be shut down by damage or lack of input. I have numerous warning flags from my subprocessors calling for an immediate return to my regeneration alcove.” She looked away. “I dislike this sensation. I feel… useless.”
“You’re far from that,” Neelix insisted, “you’re the very model of Borg efficiency!”
She arched an eyebrow. “You may desist in your cheerfulness, Mister Neelix. I do not require it.”
“Everyone needs cheering up sometimes,” he replied, but the confidence in his voice faltered. Do I mean her, or me?
“That is an overly irrational statement.”
“Huh,” Neelix said with a nod, “Kes said you’d say something like that.”
Seven’s eyes narrowed. “Kes?”
“She wanted to look over some of the ruins, a temple I think, I didn’t see any harm in it- “
The Borg halted him with a raised hand. “You spoke to Kes? Recently?” Suddenly she was looking at Neelix with a level, measuring stare.
“Well, of course!” A chuckle escaped from his throat. “I told her to come back with me, but she’s just so hard to say no to.”
“Neelix,” said Seven, and her tone was deadly serious, “Kes… the Ocampa female… she is not here.”
“No, she’s in the cavern,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “I just said that.” From out of nowhere, Neelix felt a cold, creeping sensation crawling up his spine. Seven’s expression told him something was very, very wrong.
The Borg shook her head. “You misunderstand me. Kes left Voyager over a year ago, shortly after I joined the crew. Her psychokinetic powers became unstable…. She became a noncorporeal life-form.”
“What are you saying?” The words seemed flat and dead in his mouth. “I saw her! I spoke to her!” Neelix flashed a look back down the tunnel, “She’s in there!”
“Perhaps you suffered a head injury in the rockfall- ” began Seven.
“No! I know what I saw! You must be mistaken….” He staggered and sat down heavily. “I…” The mind of the Talaxian reeled with the shock of Seven’s bald statement. Kes, gone? It’s not possible!
And yet, it was. When he concentrated, Neelix could clearly recall the moment; the sudden flash of golden light, the strange wash of turbulent emotions that flowed through him as Kes had… well, as she had ascended into something impossibly distant from a physical form. He could taste the brisk sweetness of the moon-ripened champagne he had shared with her on the day she had changed, that flower scent of her hair returning all over again. She was gone. She’s been gone for months! It came back to him in a sudden torrent of memories, the last smile from her before she merged into the stars. The moment slipped back into his mind with potent, damning force and his stomach turned over with sick dread.
“How could that happen?” he said aloud, “I accepted her as if it were perfectly normal. I didn’t forget about her leaving the ship, I just… I just didn’t remember it.”
“You must listen to me carefully,” said Seven, her ice-blue eyes never wavering from him, “What you think you saw in the cavern is not Kes. You may have encountered some sort of shape changer, or an illusory projection. In large quantities, the minerals in these caverns have been known to produce hazardous psychoactive effects in some humanoid species- “
“What are you saying to me?” Neelix snapped back at her, his face coloring. “That I’ve gone mad?”
“Who or whatever you spoke to is not what it appears to be. It may only seem to be your former companion.”
He rose angrily to his feet. “You weren’t there, you don’t know what I saw!”
“Neelix, you must be rational.”
“I am rational!” It was practically a shout, the harsh words rebounding off the walls of the tunnel. “I’ll prove it!” He turned and strode away. “I’ll bring her back here!”
“Neelix, no!” Seven called after him. “You are endangering yourself!” Her words died as a faint sound reached Neelix’s ears, the most minute of twitches in the rock corridors-there one moment, gone the next.
Far off in the caverns, stone moved on stone. Another tremor was building.
It was like a storm raging inside