Author's Introductory Note:

All reviews are VERY MUCH appreciated. Thanks, in advance, to anyone who reviews this story.

Disclaimer: This story is of the "episode extension/missing scenes" variety. Paramount and the producers of Star Trek: Voyager own all aspects of the episodes themselves. I make no claim of ownership, other than to have imagined events which were either implied or "could have happened" off screen. In order to make the story coherent, I have also also described or quoted extensively from scenes in the episodes portrayed to help the readers recall what happened. As a result, in some sections, many events and much of the dialogue come directly from the scripts. I must give credit to those who created them, since this story would not exist without their work as presented on the series. The episodes from which I've most extensively quoted directly or paraphrased in some way include the following:

"Collective": Teleplay by Michael Taylor, from a story by Andrew Shepard Price and Mark Gaberman.

"Child's Play": Teleplay by Raf Green, from a story by Paul Brown.

"The Haunting of Deck Twelve": Teleplay by Mike Sussman and Kenneth Biller & Brian Fuller, from a story by Mike Sussman.

"Unimatrix Zero, Part I": Teleplay by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky, from a story by Mike Sussman.

"Unimatrix Zero, Part II": Teleplay by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky, from a story by Mike Sussman and Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky.

"Drive": Written by Michael Taylor.

"Imperfection": Teleplay by Carleton Eastlake and Robert Doherty, from a story by Andre Bormanis.

I am grateful to the entire creative team, including the actors, directors, and production crews, not only for the way these particular episodes appeared on screen, but for all of the ones presented during the series' run. Thank you all so much!

I must also give credit to all the work Jim Wright did on his "Delta Blues Reviews" website. The details he included from the episodes, particularly the dialogue sections, are invaluable when completing a story like this. Thanks, Jim!

Finally, last but certainly not least, I must credit Six of Twelve, who wrote "Mezoti's Collective" (which is available on her page on FF . net). In that story, Mezoti remained on Voyager when Azan and Rebi left. In my opinion, that's what she would have chosen to do rather than leave the ship in "Imperfection," but that's not what the series' producers decided. In order to help me understand how she came to the decision to leave, I wrote "I, Mezoti," a log entry tale. Icheb's story is so entwined with hers, I amplified much of what I put into "I, Mezoti" into "Icheb." Thank you, Six of Twelve, for providing the "plot bunny" that prompted me to write both stories.

jamelia116 - 9/19/2017

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Icheb

by jamelia116

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A piercing shriek of sound. The clanking of a door opening. Buzzing. Moaning. The smell of burning flesh.

He lay on a hard surface. A gush of liquid had expelled him from his enclosure. He did not know where he was. He had no idea who he was. Metal pieces pierced his flesh in many places, but some were loose and clinking onto the metallic flooring. Lights flickered all around him, barely visible through the smoke billowing out of the metallic constructs surrounding him.

He sat up. Another object that had been on his face fell to the floor, making it easier to see. He looked at his hands, then his body. His torso was encased in some sort of black covering, but a lighter substance covered other places. Skin. Yes, that's what it was called. Skin covers the body of a person. He must be a person. But what exactly is that? What is a person?

Nothing made any sense. Totally confused, he put his head back down on the floor and closed his eyes while he tried to make sense of what was happening to him. To make sense of whatever he was. Instead, he slipped away into unconsciousness.

When he came back to awareness, the moaning sounds had stopped. The awful smells were still there. So was the smokiness, although it didn't seem as bad as before. He was supposed to do something. He sat up. Looking down, he saw those things on the end of his legs. Feet. That's what they were called. He puts his hands down on the hard surface and then he . . . stood up. Yes, that was what he was supposed to do.

Now he was tall enough to examine his surroundings. Images came to him. He was seeing through his eyes. Hearing through his ears. Smelling foul odors through his nose. He'd felt the touch of hardness when he pushed himself off the metal floor. Things were starting to make a little more sense.

He looked down and saw his torso, enclosed within a black substance that was not attached to his skin. Pieces of metal were stuck to him all over. He had a vague sense that this was something new for him, that the surface of his body, in the past, was only covered in skin or in - clothes. Yes, that was what they were called. But now he was not that way anymore. He was a person, true, but now he was also something else.

He was Borg.

He did not know how he knew this. He didn't know how he knew he was anything, really. He had no recollection of what a Borg was. He just knew that's was what he was. The buzzing in his head was from a connection to the Collective, but it was missing. He had been programmed to respond to the commands of the Queen of the Hive, but there were no commands. He could not sense any connections at all, to anyone; and that was wrong.

As he began to walk down the passageways in the cube and looked around, more concepts flooded into his brain. He realized the foul odors were coming from the objects lying in his path. Borg drones were scattered all through the cube. They were just lying there. Something had happened to them. The bad smell was of decaying flesh. The things which were supposed to heal them apparently had failed to work. Their nanoprobes had failed.

He discovered an open place with many consoles. His hand moved out and touched one at a certain place. A screen flickered and then glowed. He had no conscious knowledge of what he needed to do, but his hand seemed to know how to operate the device. A stream of symbols crawled across the screen. They were hauntingly familiar, but he could not understand what they were trying to tell him. He touched another place, and a succession of scenes displayed other metallic corridors. The only thing moving, other than himself, was the greenish mist floating through the corridors. The only sounds he could hear, other than his own breathing, were the hissing of the mist escaping from wherever it was coming from, and the occasional scrape of two metal surfaces rubbing against each other.

Finally, the screen showed something very different. He recognized a black construction with an irregular surface. A myriad of tiny lights hung in the blackness beyond. "Stars, shining in space," he murmured. He realized he was in space, on a space going vessel, a Borg cube.

He was on a space-going Borg vessel, but it seemed to be going nowhere. As the screen returned to views of the interior, he saw drones scattered all over the floors, in every corridor. None of them moved. Another concept came to his mind. The drones were all dead.

Slowly, the new Borg paced down the corridors, back to where he first became aware. He could sense he was supposed to be doing something more, but he had no idea what it was. The images and concepts flooding his brain still made little sense, but he knew they should. They must. If he did not determine what it was he was supposed to do, he knew, intrinsically, that he would join the other drones on the floor. He would stop moving; he would stop taking breaths; and he would stop thinking.

He, too, would be dead.