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“Neither do I, not yet. Let’s see if the skin tells us anything. Computer, apply the epidermal layers.”

And this was when it always started to get to her. Once you had skin, you had a face, and once you had a face, you suddenly had a person. This face was a sweet one.

“It is a shame she died so young,” said Emmett softly. Lense shared his regret. The girl on the table, eyes closed softly as if in sleep, was only an adolescent. In human years, Lense put her age at about fifteen. Just a girl, a child. She must have been attractive in life. Large eyes, with greenish freckles on skin that was almost human-colored, but a bit chalkier. Long brown hair with green highlights pooled around her head.

But there was something not right. Something was missing.

“Wait just a minute,” said Lense. She glanced back from the actual body to the holographic replication. “Look at the temples.”

Emmett followed her gaze. “They’re not sunken on the actual body,” he said.

“Exactly. Why do you suppose that is?” Without waiting for an answer, she went to the body and gently touched the temples. Her questing fingers found something hard and spherical.

Lense’s heart began to race. Firmly, she told herself not to jump to conclusions. “Something has been embedded here,” she said. “The computer didn’t replicate it because we didn’t ask it to. The good old sense of touch comes through again. Computer, scan the body. What is the source of the spherical nodes on the cranium?”

“Cybernetic implants,” replied the computer, utterly unperturbed by the direness of the words.

Lense swallowed. “Purpose?”

“Unknown.”

“Display on holographic replica. Remove skin layer.”

She caught her breath as the computer complied. The pilot lay before them, devoid of the skin that softened the emotional impact. Two silver spheres were nestled in the carefully cultivated nodules in its skull. The eyes, while organic, had also been augmented with implants. A thin silver wire ran like a shiny nerve along the pilot’s body. This, then, was the reason the muscles had atrophied. Artificial constructs had assisted them in doing their job. The missing corpus callosum was present and accounted for. It—and other parts of the brain—was utterly artificial.

She could see now the three cones that had been inserted between the bones of the lower arms. That was why the radius and ulna had separated so much; these metal cones had been implanted, and had forced them to grow apart.

Lense recalled the chair upon which the away team had found the pilot sitting. When the pilot sat in an erect position with her hands on the arms, these holes lined up perfectly. It was almost as if she were plugged directly into the ship. . . . .

Sweat broke out beneath her arms, and she started to tremble as the realization struck her. It all fell into place now, and made terrible sense. Even the atrophied digestive system now seemed logical.

“Oh, my God, Emmett,” Lense said softly, lifting her blue eyes to meet Em’s puzzled gaze. “I think we’ve found a Borg.”

CHAPTER

4

Beneath closed lids, 110 saw. Dreamed. Downloaded information.

111010000100100100100000111101101110 . . .

“Coffee?” asked La Forge, standing next to the replicator in engineering.

“Thanks. Half-and-half and sugar,” replied Faulwell. La Forge returned, carrying two mugs. Bart reached up to accept the one Geordi extended to him. “We’re not supposed to have these here, you know.”

Geordi smiled. “Last person I let have a beverage in engineering was Sonya. Picard, as you may have heard—”

“—ended up wearing it,” Bart finished, sipping the hot beverage. “Wish I could have been a fly on the wall that day.”

Geordi winced. “No, you don’t. I’d rather have faced a phaser blast than Captain Picard’s glare. Poor Sonya just about died.”

“But look how far she’s come. She’s soared through the ranks.”

“Hmm,” said Geordi with mock seriousness. “Perhaps the secret to advancing in rank is to spill hot chocolate on one’s commanding officer.”

“If that’s the case, I’ll stay