Resistance - J.M. Dillard [47]
She directed her attention back to the monitor and did not look up at the sound of the doors closing.
After waiting an unendurable hour for the summons from Beverly, Picard at last made his way toward sickbay and transformation. These were the same Enterprise corridors he knew so well, yet today they were filled with ghosts: black-and-white killing machines, both the slayer and the slain, who had roamed here. Efficient, fatal, and silent. The screams that echoed in Picard’s memory were human, those of his perished crew.
His stride was brisk, yet the walk seemed uncommonly long. When he finally arrived at sickbay, Beverly, wearing her blue surgeon’s coat, was waiting, not busy at her monitors and scans as usual, but standing facing the door, arms folded, posture conveying determination. Yet Picard saw the tension in the muscles of her jaw, her neck, saw the narrowing of her eyes.
The doors closed behind him with a whisper of finality.
They nodded at each other in grave silence. There were no words appropriate to the situation, capable of expressing the horror of the duty each was now going to perform. There was no point in discussing the harrowing memories the imminent act was about to evoke.
With barely a glance to the two security guards pointedly stationed inside the doorway, she turned and led him to surgery. Next to the waiting bed stood a table bearing ominous apparatus: black tubing, a black carapace designed to fit above and beneath his eye, then curve around his skull; nearby sat a Borg optoscope and several neatly placed hyposprays, holding the nanites that would change the essence of what he was.
One object on the table made him recoil: a black prosthetic arm composed of thick serpentine coils rather than muscle, terminating in pincers and a many-petaled rotating blade. He recognized it with gut and instinct more than mind; it was the exact arm worn by Locutus more than a decade ago.
Beverly saw his reaction and said, with taut professionalism, “I saved as much as possible for research purposes.” She paused, then spoke again, her tone abruptly softened. “It was a part of you, once.”
And so it would be again. Picard did not respond to her statement. Instead he drew a deep breath, settled onto the bed, and said, “Let’s get on with it.”
Complete sedation had been unnecessary; Beverly could easily have used a local while injecting the neutralizer chip, then fitting the arm, the carapace, the optoscope, the tubing that ran from his cheek and jaw to the crown of his skull. It was, Picard later decided, an act of mercy on her part.
Beverly woke him when it was time for the injection of the nanites; this required him to be conscious so that she could better monitor the results.
He sat up on the bed, half blind from the facial carapace and optoscope, feeling heavy and awkward from the weight of the tubing on his head and the long, protruding mechanical arm. He could see the two guards stiffen, standing at the ready should anything go wrong.
The doctor was blessedly swift in her work, devoid of any emotion. She injected the hypos into Picard’s shoulder one after the other, then stood back to observe her patient.
Picard fought to still the rapid beating of his fleetingly human heart. The first sign was strength: the sense of heaviness vanished, as if someone had gently lifted the weight of all the prostheses from him. He found himself sitting stiffly, perfectly erect. The second was sight. He blinked as his own eyes ceased their functioning, as the optoscope took over and the colors surrounding him faded to dull monochrome. The blue of Beverly’s coat, the copper of her hair, were rendered now in shades of gray. Her image was distorted, abruptly looming one instant, receding the next.
He drew a breath; the air seemed suddenly chill, drier than any desert. In the midst of his discomfort, he realized that Beverly was leaning forward, speaking to him, the horror in her