Resistance - J.M. Dillard [0]
IT BEGAN AS IT HAD BEFORE: CLAUSTROPHOBIC dreams, a sense of impending evil, the shattering of sleep with a desperate, rasping gulp of air.
In darkness, Jean-Luc Picard threw back tangled sheets and rose. It seemed he had done so countless times, had risen in the grip of a vague terror and made his way, blind but knowing, through his unlit bedchamber. He entered the lavatory and paused in front of the mirror.
“Light,” he uttered hoarsely, and there was light.
In the glare he winced at his reflection. He looked the same: clean shaven, with lean, sharply sculpted features, a gleaming bald crown. Yet something was subtly different, something was subtly wrong. He studied his face intently, seeking explanations for his sense that he, that his entire world, had gone awry.
Beneath his left cheekbone, the skin twitched. The movement was barely perceptible. Picard leaned closer, grasping the edges of the cool counter. Had it been his imagination, the product of paranoia triggered by the elusive, disremembered dream?
No. The muscle in his cheek spasmed again, briefly, then rippled. Alarmed, Picard placed a hand to it and felt a hard object beneath the flesh, an object that was neither tooth nor bone, but inhuman.
He withdrew fingers that trembled despite his efforts to steady them. The object pushed hard, now, against the inside of his cheek, like a child-sized fist trying to force its way through his skin.
The sense of pressure mounted until it became nigh unbearable. In horror, Picard watched as his cheek stretched beyond all possible limits, until the hard, steadily lengthening cylinder emerged from within his body and erupted through the flesh.
Astoundingly, there was no blood, only a single bright flash of pain. A slender, gleaming silver arm emerged and extended itself a hand’s breadth, then paused an inch before the mirror. A whir: the servo’s end bloomed and opened, revealing skeletal fingers, razor-keen, deadly fingers meant for grasping, killing, transforming…
“The Borg,” Picard whispered. Flashes of the dream returned: infinite rows of metallic honeycomb cubicles, filled with the assimilated, mindlessly awaiting a directive; the surgical chamber, efficiently modern yet medievally grotesque, its walls lined with prosthetic limbs, eyes, sharp saws, burning lasers; worst of all, the queen herself, no more than a disembodied head with shoulders, her dark lips curved upward in the most wickedly smug of half smiles, her liquid black-bronze eyes full of promise and threat…
We were very close, you and I. You can still hear our song.
Not again. Not again, not again.
Shining metal fingers clicked and flexed inches away from his eyes, blotting out his reflection, his individuality. Picard sank to his knees, still gripping the counter. This time, his shriek was not silent…
The sound—which emerged as no more than a loud groan—jarred him to full consciousness. In the instant of disorientation that followed, he pressed his palm to his cheek and discovered, to his profound relief, only human flesh. His breathing was shallow, rapid; he forced it to deepen and slow, and let reality reclaim its hold on him.
This was his bed, and Enterprise’s night. He was now, truly, awake.
“Jean-Luc?” A voice, soft and drowsy, beside him; the sound of long, slender limbs sliding against sheets. “Jean-Luc, you’re all right. You were dreaming.”
“Beverly.” His voice was hoarse with sleep; he cleared his throat. “Yes, of course, I’m fine. Just a dream.”
She rolled onto her side. He could see her silhouette though not her expression; she had propped her elbow against the pillow, then rested her head upon her palm. Her hair spilled down to brush his shoulder. “What was it about?”
He tensed slightly. He knew the nuances of her tone well; she was the doctor now, not lover or friend. And she was asking a question whose answer she already knew.
“I was talking in my sleep, then,” he said flatly, wryly.
She nodded. He sighed as she persisted: “Feel like talking about it?”
“What’s there to say? I don’t know why I’m dreaming about the