Atonement (17 page)

To her left, behind the house, the moon lit a large, freshly planted vegetable garden. Beyond that, rows of fruit trees in bloom stood in straight lines for several hundred meters. Seven sought out a well-worn path east of the orchard. Admiral Janeway had brought her this way the first time Seven had visited Gretchen's home. Carved through tall grass, the path led to an ancient willow tree that figured prominently in the admiral's childhood.

Seven had no difficulty locating the tree, its limbs overflowing with pale pink flowers. Seating herself at its base, rather than attempting to balance on a large low limb the admiral had favored, she rested her back against its solid, reassuring trunk.
She could easily have closed her eyes and allowed sleep to overtake her within minutes.

But there was simply too much to be done.

In some ways, the land reminded her of her aunt Irene's farm. Here, as there, it was relatively easy to forget that anyone else inhabited the planet. The low moaning of the wind stirring the fragrant grass was not intrusive. It added to the necessary sense of isolation.

Breathing deeply, Seven turned her attention to the mental defenses she had erected as soon as she had left Starfleet Medical. In the moments immediately following her release from stasis, Axum had been able to enter her mind and speak at will. She knew this would come in handy eventually, but had needed to put some distance between them as she arranged for the transport of Riley's people. The feeling of being constantly observed was unnerving.

Now she needed the walls to come down. In the past, this visualization might have been challenging. Meditation was an art form that required patient practice to master, and she had not devoted herself to it with appropriate rigor. But her new awareness of her catoms seemed to make up for her lack of diligence. Almost as soon as she decided she wished to speak with Axum and Riley, they appeared vividly in her mind's eye.

For the last several weeks, she and Axum had shared a conjoined thought space made manifest by Axum's catoms. If she returned to stasis, Seven did not doubt she would find herself there again in the living quarters she had mistaken for a Starfleet facility. As the only conscious one of the three of them, however, she found she had more control over their shared environment. She placed them near her, standing in the tall grass.

“Where are we?”
Riley Frazier asked immediately.

“The home of one of Annika's friends,”
Axum replied, clearly uninhibited by Seven's request that he refrain from pulling information she had not directly shared with him from her mind. It was no longer necessary, but would still have been a polite gesture on his part. As Axum's need to master his catoms grew,
however, so did his disregard for any barriers both Seven and Riley would have preferred remain between them.

“Are you well?” Seven asked aloud.

“The Commander has continued to test our catoms,”
Riley said.
“But the pain is better. Axum has shown me how to separate from it. It is still there. But I no longer seem to mind that it is there.”

“That is good,” Seven said. “The Commander agreed to refrain from testing the catoms of the rest of your people for the time being.”

“They are safe now,”
Riley said, not a question.

“They are,” Seven confirmed. “But we must make the Commander's need to use their catoms irrelevant.”

“How?”
Riley asked.

“If the others will not open themselves to us, we can still use our catoms to access theirs. The sensation would be briefly disorienting, but soon enough they would come to accept its necessity,”
Axum suggested.

“We do not require them to aid us at this time,” Seven said firmly. “We will not violate their minds or bodies. They have suffered enough.”

Both Seven and Riley felt a wave of disapproval wash over them, but Axum did not verbalize his disagreement for the time being.

“It is, however, essential that the three of us continue the work Axum has begun by testing the limits of our catomic abilities,” Seven continued.

“To what end?”
Riley demanded.
“While I do not share the distaste of my companions for catomic contact, I worry that the more we interact in this manner, the harder it will become to sever our present connection. Our catoms appear to be acting in accordance with our wishes, but—”

“Catoms are meant to bridge the divide between thought and matter
,” Axum interrupted.
“That they exist in discrete organic containers is irrelevant to them. We are not forcing our individual catoms to do anything. They are leading us toward their most efficient and powerful state. Our only task is to open ourselves up to this reality and accept it
.”

Neither Riley nor Seven responded immediately. Finally, Riley said,
“You see the problem?”

Seven did. Axum was convinced that all individuals who had been left with functioning catoms by the Caeliar were intended to exist in some sort of new, small gestalt. That this would so horrify Riley, who had forced her own people back into a linked state using Borg technology long before the Caeliar transformation, was as ironic as it was understandable. She knew this monster's name and precise dimensions.

Both Riley and Seven understood the value of individuality. Those who remained with Riley after the transformation to care for their young children who had been born free of Borg technology had come to cherish theirs as well. Axum's experiences for several years prior to the gift of the Caeliar and in the months that followed had been more difficult. He had lived for too long as a Borg who retained the memories of his life prior to assimilation. His daily existence had been torture. That had been compounded by the personal attention of the Borg Queen, who had attempted to drive Axum to suicide once he had destroyed his scout vessel and set course for a Federation facility. She had all but succeeded.

Axum had few memories of individuality that were not accompanied by intense psychological torment. That he was seeking to use his catoms to re-create a joined state, one which unconsciously gave him a perverse sense of comfort, was hardly surprising.

It was also unacceptable. But this was not the time for that conversation.

“If you do not wish to assist me, Doctor Frazier, I will understand,” Seven said. “It may make the work ahead more challenging, but you should not participate against your will.”

Seven felt the conflicting emotions with which Riley was struggling. She was relieved when Riley said,
“Explain your intentions.”

“While I have no desire to seek interaction with the catoms of the rest of your people,” Seven began, “we must learn if it is
possible for us to contact and affect the catoms that have been removed from our bodies.”

“They are ours
,” Axum said.
“Their location beyond our physical bodies is irrelevant.”

“Commander Briggs is modifying them and injecting them into test subjects under the auspices of using them to cure the catomic plague. If we can neutralize them without his knowledge, we can end the threat they pose to those who are receiving them.”

“And once we have mastered our own catoms, we can seek out the others that have mutated,”
Axum realized.

“One step at a time,” Seven cautioned him.

A blinding light struck Seven's face with the force of a physical blow as a feminine voice tinged with familiar steel said, “I don't know who you are or what the hell you think you're doing out here, but you'd better get up and . . . Seven?”

“Mrs. Janeway,” Seven replied, clambering to her feet. Despite the sudden interruption, her link with Axum and Riley remained present and strong. Raising a hand to assure Janeway's mother that she meant no harm, Seven said, “I will speak with you again as soon as possible.”

“Do not fear, Annika. We will comply,”
Axum said. The intensity of his pleasure at Seven's request chilled her as much as it comforted her.

Gretchen had stepped closer and was almost upon her when she felt Axum and Riley slip from her conscious mind. “Why don't you speak with me right now?” Gretchen asked. Sweeping her hand beacon across the grass beyond the tree, she added, “Are you alone out here?”

“I apologize for appearing here without prior contact or your permission,” Seven said. “I have come alone.”

Gretchen nodded. “All right, then.” Seven noticed for the first time that in one hand, the octogenarian held a phaser. Gretchen deposited it in the pocket of the long, suede jacket she wore over her nightclothes. She then extended her free hand to Seven, who took it and shook it lightly.

“Did you
just come to visit the old willow tree?” Grechen asked, bemused. “Kathryn said you might be stopping by, but I figured you had come and gone from Earth by now.”

Seven steeled herself internally. She believed she could trust Gretchen Janeway implicitly, and she was about to learn if she was right. “It is a rather long story,” she began. “I need to disappear for a few days. Starfleet is currently unaware of my location, although a trusted fellow officer knows where I am. Your daughter suggested I come, but I arrived so late I did not wish to wake you.”

“Well, I'm up now,” Gretchen said with a smirk. “I can offer leftovers and a warm bed for the rest of the night. You can tell me now or never what's brought you here. Kathryn trusts you, so I trust you. And anything you need from me that I can provide is yours.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Janeway.”

“If I've told you once, I've told you ten times, Seven. It's Gretchen.”

“Gretchen.”

“Let's get inside.”

Seven fell into step beside her as they made their way back to the house.

“It was your voice that woke me,” Gretchen said. “I know all of the sounds of this place at night by heart. And I guess I don't sleep as deeply as I used to.”

“Again, I apologize for waking you.”

“Don't,” Gretchen said. “I'm happy you're here.” Smiling openly, she added, “It's nice to be needed.”

STARFLEET MEDICAL

“Hello, Jefferson.”

“Good afternoon, Naria,” the Commander greeted his patient.

More than his patient
.

Naria was his most stunning scientific accomplishment. That no one else could ever know of her existence did not disturb him.
Glory had never been a consideration. His duty to science ranked well above the esteem of his peers, and Naria's existence had long ago transitioned from an end result to a necessary tool in rising to that duty.

His ultimate goal was to use his gifts for research and esoteric scientific applications, cultivated over years of industrious labor to safeguard both Starfleet and the Federation.

Naria was a critical component in his work. That he felt pride in her existence was understandable. She was physically stunning to behold. Long jet-black hair framed a well-proportioned face. Her skin was a light lavender hue at the moment, but was most beautiful in its natural state of tranquil pink. She was draped in a patient's gown, but beneath that gown was a well-toned frame any human woman would have envied and many men would have coveted.

To the Commander, she was his child, his creation.
Never an object of desire
. She was also characteristically tense, as was customary during these sessions.

The bio-suit he wore made communication through subtle visual clues difficult, but as always, he did his best to calm her as he removed a hypospray from his case.

“Will it hurt?” she asked for the thousandth time.

“Only a little,” he assured her.

This time, he had cause to believe those words. Seven had not intended to leave him with enough information to make much progress until she returned eight days from now. But even the few clues she had dropped about the nature of the catoms—whose potential he was striving to unlock—had been enough to suggest dozens of new approaches in his work.

Naria lay down, awaiting the administration of the hypo.

The Commander took a deep breath, rechecked her vitals one last time on the display panel to his left, and lifted the hypo to her neck.

Her initial reaction was instantaneous. The flesh of her face began to ripple—usually a bad sign—and soon the effect spread down her limbs. Confusion registered on her face, followed by fear.

“Jefferson?” she gurgled.

Faint alarms began to sound as one vital system after another
was stressed beyond its normal capacity. Fifteen seconds after the injection had been given, Briggs stepped back, readying himself to step through the airlock to the lab's exterior controls, where he could quickly and efficiently eliminate all evidence of his latest failure.

At the nineteen second mark, the alarms ceased. Perplexed, the Commander stepped closer to Naria and realized that her skin had stabilized. In fact, it had shifted from lavender to a light shade of rose.

“How do you feel, Naria?” he asked.

A lazy smile spread across her lips.

“Fine,” she replied.

Before the Commander could commence the necessary diagnostics, a beep sounded through the comm system of his suit.

“Observation to the Commander,”
a confident male voice said.

“Go ahead.”

“The
Coleman
has departed the Sol system. We will continue to track her progress as requested.”

“Life signs?” the Commander asked.

“All present and accounted for.”

“The shadow?”

“In position and ready to transport
Coleman
's cargo aboard on your order.”

“Very good,” the Commander said, closing his comm link.

Should Seven keep her word, there would be no reason to modify their agreement. It pleased him that thus far, she seemed to be doing just that. It elated him to think that if Naria remained stable, and he was able to duplicate these results, Seven's promised assistance might no longer be required.