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Defective. Wasn’t that what her fellow classmates had called her? Not a word one would generally use to describe a human being. Likened to a broken piece of machinery, a fault in some code. Socially defunct. Perhaps they were right. Most days she didn’t feel that pull towards other people; genuine affability refused to come easy. Most days she just didn’t feel.
“Kids can be cruel,” she hears her mother’s genuine attempts at comfort, concern palpable in the softness of her voice. ‘You’re different from them, they don’t understand.” She doesn’t answer. She wants the words to fall flat, to mean nothing. But with substantial intellect comes the burden of logical understanding; the bliss of ignorance is an uninvited guest in her mind. Today, she feels alone.
It was a steep learning curve, to mingle with the ‘less academically gifted’, as her tutors at the institute would say, mistaking this as an instance purely concerning intelligence. Top of all her classes, but with the social life of a vampire. Teenage years to be spent in labs in mechanistic company. Complacent with the unerring. But perhaps her communal endeavour wouldn’t be so difficult when looked at judiciously. Was this really all that different from any other scholastic curriculum? Behaviours could be studied; mannerisms could be mimicked. Social science, so to speak. A feigned charisma drawn from a self-made syllabus. Tomorrow, she feels like pretending.
And pretend is what she did. To friends, to family, to everyone around her. And even to herself.
That is, until now.
Agnes turns over on the uncomfortably rigid bunk, shifting her weight onto her left side. Her body was refusing to allow even a fraction of relaxation. The dull, unfamiliar green hue of her room’s ambient lighting occupies the space where her unruly thoughts also linger. Of all the times to dwell on the past.
A monster inhabits the room not twenty feet away, barely a bulkhead between them. A dark angel caught in the veins of La Sirena; essential to the success of her crew, yet a detriment to their stability. Mutual cooperation was the only option for now, despite the precarious nature of it.
New thoughts begin to circulate. She was obviously aware of the worst outcome. The odds of everyone winding up as drones in the next few days were steadily increasing, but there’s one particularly invasive thought which almost sickens her. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. To have a purpose.
She shifts again on the mattress that may as well be a piece of cardboard, feeling her arm beginning to numb more quickly than usual. There’s an eerie silence across the entire ship, even the gentle hum of the engines sounds further away than usual. Everyone else was gone. Off to look for some supposed integral person or thing that would magically fix this extraordinarily messed up situation. Agnes was left ‘in charge’ of the ship. Ever the afterthought.
By the admiral’s standards, it had been a particularly unwise decision. Right now, this was the most dangerous place in the universe for Agnes Jurati.
An unnatural chill reminds her body of the reprehensible task she performed only hours earlier. Assimilation. Well, partial. It was suddenly freezing again. She silently scolds her own morbid curiosity, sighing inwards. Nothing good will come of this. The voice of reason and rationale, of warning. Do you want to lose yourself? The only certain thing to be gained here is a fate worse than death. She shivers and draws the meagre, grey sheet closer around her small frame. It barely passes as a blanket.
Another, smaller voice this time. You’re already halfway there. Uttered with vehemence and inquisition. Temptation.
She hastily sits up straight on the bunk, nearly bumping her forehead into the steel frame of the one stacked above. This mixture of frigidity and psychological conflict was – to nobody’s surprise - making it quite difficult to get some sleep. There had to be some kind of personal heater on this ship, right? Anything to combat this bitter cold.
She stands up, ready to complete the task she has given herself and relieved for something else to focus on. She grabs the last blanket from a provisions closet across the room, throwing it around her shoulders and over her white tank top. She's grateful for the snug, grey bottoms she also found tucked at the back earlier; they were somewhat comfortable at least. The ship’s lone pilot didn’t exactly have any need to stockpile ladies' loungewear for his reclusive journey towards self-annihilation. A journey he was determined to undertake alone. Another unsuccessful pursuit. Futile.
She is almost to the door of her quarters when she stops abruptly, admonition taking centre stage in her head. Vigilance, Agnes. She wants your everything.
She sucks in a deep breath, briefly shakes off a layer of sleeplessness, and takes a step forward.
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Black eyes watch from the rear of the transporter pad, following Agnes with a certain disposition only a being who believes itself to the be the absolute pinnacle of evolution could have. The Queen hangs gracefully amidst the hardware and cables like some industrial puppet master, poised to pluck at the strings of her next victim. How long would it be before Agnes danced?
“There you are. I was wondering when you would come out of that pokey little room and keep me company.”
Her words have that teasing edge to them, but Agnes is determined to slight her. She stays on track, crossing the width of the ship to the cargo area, making sure to take the longer way around the transporter pad lest she should be met with a plated cord around her neck. A wicked thought leaves as quickly as it came.
“Are you attempting to avoid me?”
Ignoreherignoreherignoreherignoreherignor--
“Agnes.”
Agnes halts, flinching at the sound of her own name. It shatters her newfound focus for a moment, and she temporarily forgets why she is now standing in front of the cargo bay doors. For a species that claims to have no use for emotion, the Borg Queen’s voice was altogether saturated with it. A lofty and salacious taunt.
It wasn’t all that hard to see she was clearly a wreck. All fatigue and lethargy, tendrils of exhaustion creeping closer in her wake. And the faint echo of something else subtly knocking on the fragile doors of ego. But somehow, she finds the concentration to quickly snap back to the moment. A small, red light on the door blinks back at her. It would accept a passcode only from the captain. Fucking brilliant. Thanks so much, Cris. I can always count on you.
“What are you looking for? You won’t find anything in there that can help you. There’s only one thing for you, my dear, and we both know what it is.” Another delicious provocation. “Forget that antiquated admiral and the others. You’re different from them. They don’t understand you.”
Discarding critical thought, Agnes turns and surprises them both by meeting the Queen’s steely gaze directly. It was a careless action, she knows, taking the bait earlier than she expected. They are placed at opposite ends of the board. Agnes tries her hardest not to sound like the losing player.
“Yes, yes, you’re very beguiling; the answer to all my problems and the eternal source of all my happiness. Assimilation will provide me everything I could ever desire, yeah, I think I've heard it once or twice before.” It's a laughable attempt to dismiss true sentiment. You can't lie to her.
The Queen’s face betrays a faint trace of a smile. “And what is it you desire?”
Agnes feels a slight flush in her cheeks, hoping the dim emerald of the ship would cloak it.
“Not what you think,” she grits vainly. Stupid stupid stupid.
A low chuckle, faint mechanical reverberations are felt across the room.
“Mmm, I’m not hearing that same conviction from earlier. Want to try again?”
“Actually, I’d rather not. You’re kind of obstinate. Bit of a turn-off, really.” Attempting to deflect with humor, check.
The Queen only smirks.
“Oh, Agnes. Why do you resist?”
“Why don’t you relent?”
Idle hands nonchalantly tap at thick wires.
“Did you forget? I mapped your entire existence while you so fruitlessly grasped at mine. Your attempts at obfuscation will prove to be futile. It’s simple really. You desire complete unanimity.”
Those last words are spoken with decided confidence.
Agnes takes a brash step forward towards the Queen, dropping the grey fabric from around her shoulders to the cold floor, the issue of temperature seemingly abandoned. She half points an accusatory finger at the Queen, but what could she indict? The Queen had been completely open, completely honest about her intentions, while it was Agnes who still hid behind a cracked façade. How many times had she simplified herself, trying to fit in with others? Years of societal erudition, desperate appeals to the crowd. But it was never sufficient. It wasn’t enough. Hopeless falsities. Disappointment after disappointment, every single time ending with a retreat back into her work. There was always a dependable comfort in the undoubtable and the definite. And right now, the undoubtable and the definite were dangling in front of her like forbidden fruit, suspended so fervently amidst the onyxian branches of terminal enlightenment.
She opens her mouth to speak, but no words form. She finally exhales a breath she didn’t realise she was holding, and allows her arms fall to her sides. The silence speaks for her.
“I have a duty,” she finally says, barely more than a whisper. “To my friends. To our future.”
"Friends?” the Queen nearly laughs. “Has little Agnes P. Jurati ever truly had a real friend?” Her inflection is now staggeringly derisive.
It stung Agnes more than she would like to admit, even to herself.
She must have obliviously taken a few more steps towards the Queen, because she felt her foot brush against something smooth and metallic. A cursory glance down and she realised she was standing amidst an ambush; inert cables with the potential to ensnare and choke the life out of her at any moment.
But they didn’t.
“Have you?” Agnes takes advantage of the fact she isn't dead yet, stepping even closer to the Queen, a reflective and unkind timbre now present in her own voice. Only a few feet between them now, and she has to rear her head to hold the Queen’s reserved gaze. “Your Collective was decimated. Your body crippled. All the billions of voices that you used to oversee and regulate, usurped by a deafening silence. You’re lost in some broken timeline with the rest of us, but you’re the one who’s completely and utterly alone. It sure looks to me like it's you who could use a ‘real friend’ right about now.”
The Queen’s expression did not shift. A million unseen, indecipherable calculations running beneath that grey surface in the fraction of a second, processing her own singular thoughts. There is silence for a moment.
“And you offered yourself to me.”
Agnes frowns, remembering that she had in fact promised to serve herself up to a nefarious intergalactic monarch without so much as a second thought. But did it even require a second thought? In that one moment, she had subconsciously perceived her yearning - not only to the Queen, but also to herself. Everything else was just trivial. Irrelevant stuff. She knew the others didn’t really care about her. How could they? They knew nothing about her. They hadn’t stopped once to ask. She was only here because she was useful to them.
She began to distil her desire from her self-deception.
You wanted to offer yourself.
The stark truth of it makes her shudder. The Borg Queen was right about something else too; a heater would definitely not be enough to warm her now. She needed that connection. That entwinement. She wants to infringe morality and violate identity.
The Queen’s intangible half-lidded eyes regard Agnes with something no other being had before; an unbridled voracity. They were both alone in this world, both brimming with desire and fear and want. They both wanted.
This close, she can appreciate how the light rebounds and reflects off every little ridge across that impossibly pale skin. The way the flesh meets the fabricated. A marriage of the synthetic and organic. She admires how that unparalleled Borg synergy is not solely restricted to the bridging of consciousness; it is also present across the physical body.
A hand - surprisingly warmer than she would have expected – lightly skims her exposed forearm, trailing ever so slowly upwards.
Promised rapture drips from her every word like a carcinogenic ambrosia, and Agnes finds that her own legs refuse to obey any longer.
“Give in to this, into me, into yourself. You've resisted it long enough. Cease your futile human struggle and simply indulge.”
The touch ignites wild sparks under her skin, that coldness which had plagued her only moments ago now interchanged with venereal blaze, a willing conflagration of the self. It travels higher, elegant and purposeful fingers tracing her collarbone and settle along her jawline. She melts into it, closes her eyes, revelling in the incandescence. A lifetime of struggle comes to term. The last vestiges of sedition dissolve. She concedes.
A mouth on hers now, entirely despotic and yet somehow gentle, and Agnes relinquishes what little is left of her corporeal sobriety. She wavers near that coveted equilibrium between her body and her mind.
And the Queen’s mind.
Her slender frame goes slack, yet doesn’t collapse, the sensation of something strong and metal and numerous supporting her limbs, keeping her aloft in this binary embrace.
“You’re perfect,” the Queen breathes against seared lips. Words felt by her very being. It feeds a malnourished primal ache somewhere within her innermost core.
A low moan escapes her throat, something that would have under different circumstances startled her, even shamed her had she been with anyone else. But there was no need for disguises anymore. Not here. Here she was seen. Felt. Every attribute, every flaw, every ambition veritably recognised.
More.
She is heard, and the kiss deepens, all tongue in deliberate but attentive motions. Agnes cooperates, and a scorching euphoria quickens throughout her entire body.
She’s only taking what you promised. And you're taking what she promised.
A thumb traces her cheekbone, and she feels as though the other fingers dip beneath the surface of her skin to cultivate some flourishing subcutaneous transformation.
Release, then rejuvenation. Renewal. Bereft of indignity. Exposed and now consumed.
The kiss is slowly broken, an impish shadow cast upon the Queen’s face as she pulls away from her latest depraved work.
Wet eyes, fixed and unblinking; Agnes cannot look away. She won't.
Tears are tenderly wiped, and they both convene without words.
Oh, my Agnes. Beautifully unique. And perfectly defective.