1. Unimatrix Zero

A little blonde girl in a pink dress. Running headlong through the dark forests of Unimatrix Zero. Branches whipping at her face, tangling her hair, catching her dress. Owls hooting. Twigs cracking under her shoes. Cold. Shivering. Arms wrapped around herself, she runs.

A clearing. Moonlight on her face. She reels to a stop. A tall shadowy figure stands by the edge of a pond, his back to her. She knows this man; she runs up to him, tugs on his jacket and holds out her arms to him. Pick me up. Take me home.

He turns around and smiles down at her. He is Human just like her, blond and blue-eyed and handsome, and he is just about to touch her when an unknown force wakes up behind him and begins pulling him away.

He reaches out, his face distorted, shouting something she cannot hear. She runs after him. The ground shifts beneath her feet – a brown forest path littered with leaves; a gray-carpeted starship corridor; the black floor of a Borg sphere. His shape shifts too – the tall blond man in a blue shirt and slacks; a smaller middle-aged man in a green-and-black Starfleet uniform; another blond with alien forehead markings and a tan-colored camouflage outfit. Fading away.

With a tremendous burst of effort, she throws herself forward and into his arms. She is not a little girl anymore; they are the same height, and it's the green-and-black man this time, with the beautiful ugly face and the wide mouth and the hazel eyes. He holds her close, so close, and his lips on hers are impossibly warm and sweet, and her hands are at his jacket collar ready to slip it off …

Her hands … her hands are not made of flesh. They are cold steel, and before her eyes a sharp set of assimilation tubules shoots out of her knuckles and into the skin of his throat. He backs away, his face a grimace of pain, his hand clapped to his collar – as if that could help. It can't. His beautiful ugly face turns grey, a sickly shining bluish-gray, all the veins visible. A Borg implant erupts on his right cheek. Another one on his left eyebrow. His uniform morphs into Borg body armor. He lurches toward her, one arm held out, his own tubules weaving from side to side like snakes.

Resistance is futile …

"Oh-six hundred hours. Regeneration cycle incomplete."

Seven of Nine's eyes flew open. She stumbled out of her alcove as if someone had kicked her, so limp with fear and relief that she had to brace herself against the nearest cargo shelf. The metal was solid and real beneath her hands. She breathed deeply, in and out, staring at the green containers. Only a nightmare.

She drew herself up and looked back at her foster-children, who were stepping away from their alcoves in a more decorous fashion. The twins and Mezoti did not appear to have noticed her behavior, but Icheb's eyes were wide with concern. He walked up to her and placed a hand on her arm. "Seven? Are you damaged?"

His question caught the attention of the other three, who turned to cluster around her like ducklings. Since Unimatrix Zero, they had all been rather cautious with her, as if she were a fragile object liable to break. Seven found it all rather embarrassing … but, truth be told, she was glad.

"It was only a dream," she told the children. "A random sequence of mental images resulting from REM sleep patterns. A standard phenomenon of the human brain."

"It looked very disagreeable," said Icheb. "Perhaps you should go to Sickbay."

"That will not be necessary." Seven's tone brooked no objection. The Borg had assimilated plenty of Starfleet counselors in the past; Seven could make a rough estimate of what her dream would look like to the Doctor's psychology subroutines, and there was no way she would let him analyze it.

"Proceed to the refreshers," said Seven, leading the children out the cargo bay doors as per their daily routine.

Her children. Every day, she was grateful that they hadn't posessed the mutation; if the Unimatrix Zero resistance movement had put them in any danger, she doubted if she could ever forgive herself. A starship, especially one under Captain Janeway's command, was really no place to raise a child.

Still, selfishly, Seven wished that they never would find the children's families. Who, besides them, would ever love her the way she was?