Protocols Unknown: A Decision of The Stars

Three Cubes and a Star

The door hissed open to darkness and low hums. Cargo Bay 2 was quiet, familiar. But tonight, it felt heavier—like memory pressing in from every wall.

Seven crossed to the regeneration alcoves, her boots echoing across the floor. She opened a panel and accessed the internal relay directly, her left hand—still partially fused with Borg technology—moving with sharp, fluid precision. Her movements were exact, but there was a restrained, sharp intensity to them.

She activated the diagnostic relay. The interface flickered green. Seven stared at it, unmoving. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. She paced once. Checked a calibration. Adjusted a node with her left hand, the one still partially fused with her Borg interface port. Static murmured through the console—faint but persistent.

She stepped back, just barely, eyes narrowed in thought.

The doors opened again.

"Seven."

She turned. Icheb stepped in, a padd clutched tight in his hand, his expression serious.

"I ran deeper scans on the signal traces. It's not just residual Borg code. There's structure—but it's incomplete. Like an echo without a source."

Seven took the padd, scanning it quickly. Her brow furrowed.

"There's no origin point. Just trails."

Icheb nodded. "They loop. Pulse outward, then vanish. Something is disrupting the continuity."

Seven moved to the nearest alcove and began adjusting the interface. Her tone shifted—professional, yet almost ritualistic.

"I will attempt to interface directly with the fractured signal using the regenerators as a static grounding point. I'll follow the path through the conduits."

"Seven," Icheb said gently, "this will be different than accessing your memory engrams. You'll be threading through decaying Collective infrastructure."

"I know," she replied. "That is why I must be careful."

She stepped into the alcove. The lights intensified. The hum rose.

Seven closed her eyes.

And then—contact.

Silence first. Then a snap—like air breaking open. A rush of pressure behind her eyes.

She wasn't in her body anymore. She was in data. The Collective's underlayer—endless, vast, cold. Like standing at the edge of space and falling sideways through light.

:: Searching... :: Integrating... ::

Thread 1 located. A visual: a cube—dark, silent, dead in the water.

:: Thread 2... located. :: Another. Half-submerged in a gas cloud. Its surface crackled faintly.

:: Thread 3... stabilizing. :: The last cube—hidden inside a fractured asteroid field. Blinking. Waiting.

Each location pulsed with fragments—data points, corrupted messages, shards of signal like broken glass floating in liquid static.

She reached out—mentally. Followed the threads.

Nothing human. No heartbeat. No child.

No Astrea. No Naomi.

:: Signal pattern incomplete ::

Seven opened her eyes with a sharp breath. The connection severed in a blink.

Icheb was there, watching her.

Seven steadied herself against the edge of the alcove. "There are three. The signal is distributed between them. Three Borg cubes. Disabled. Spread across different sectors."