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“Does it pose any danger to the captain?” Chakotay asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Clayton replied. “But it is effectively jamming the captain’s signal. I can’t keep a stable lock.”

Chakotay considered his few options.

Much as every cell in his body demanded that he find a way to return to the array, he knew that Kathryn would never forgive him if he did so.

“One minute remaining,” came the computer’s maddeningly calm voice.

Closing his eyes, Chakotay forced himself to take a deep, measured breath. Kathryn’s face and last words rose unbidden to his mind.

Voyager needs you more than I do right now.

He knew what he had to do.

Acceptance and peace with this choice would have to come later.

“Lieutenant Torres,” he said softly, “release the docking clamps and go to stationkeeping.”

“Aye, sir,” B’Elanna replied.

A heavy metallic clank assured him that they were one step closer to putting this debacle behind them.

But at what cost?

“We are clear of the docking clamps and have terminated our interface with the array’s systems,” B’Elanna announced. “The bay forcefield is down and we are ready to depart on your order, sir.”

The ship rattled, and bucked. At first Chakotay assumed that they were having difficulty maintaining their position within the bay.

That changed when the bridge was plunged into sudden darkness.

What the…? Janeway thought as the horrific creature unfurled its arms and shot toward her.

She sensed the confused flutter of activity among the others, but none came immediately to her aid.

This isn’t good.

Phoebe spent an entire half-second debating within herself as to whether or not she should intercept the creature and temporarily save Janeway’s life. Phoebe knew that the presence of the Monorhans had irreparably damaged the fragile peace she had made with the captain. Janeway hadn’t come to the array with the intention of honoring her agreement with Phoebe.

No. The captain had made her choice.

It was so predictable as to be nauseating.

She was going to try and help the abominations. She either did not know or did not care that that course would certainly lead to her own death when she became the conduit. Nor did she weigh this more heavily than the reaction of the Others in Exosia, who would only be able to see Janeway’s actions as a declaration of war.

Which meant that Phoebe also had a choice to make. The unknowing one was acting on instinct. It sensed the unclean blood of the lesser being in its path and yearned to purify it with the gift of the newly generated spore resting in its belly. It was acting on a primal Nacene drive which tied it more closely to the Others than to Phoebe or the exiles, an ignorance rooted in their unwillingness to interact with the life-forms beyond Exosia. Had its transformed body been tempered by a consciousness, it would have understood, as the rest of the transformed Monorhans did, that the spore wriggling within it and yearning for release was not meant for a lesser being. It would have sensed the Key and the promise it held as it poured its light into the chamber, waiting for Janeway to press it into its lock. But the unknowing one could act only on its most basic drives. It would infect the captain and she would begin the transformation. Within hours, if such time existed, another abomination would be born.

But once the spore was implanted in the captain’s body, the Key would sense her oneness, her newly born Nacene-ness, and would disconnect itself from her will.

No Nacene could actually “own” the Key, because no Nacene could become the conduit and use the conduit at the same time. The fatal flaw in the Light’s grand plan had been to tie the Key’s activation to a lesser being, a flaw Phoebe and the other exiles had attempted to compensate for by gently suggesting a mythological origin to the ancient Monorhans which included godlike beings that had created and cared for them. It was not exactly a lie. And as the Monorhan belief system had evolved to include a rudimentary understanding of the Key and Gremadia, Phoebe had rested content