Star Trek: Starbase 777 - regeneration-alcoves

His gait was careful, as Saren recognized that the walkway they were navigating... slowly turned into something else entirely.

Senang had followed after Saren, only glancing at T'She as they left the two of them behind. They swept the room with visually, their rifle following their gaze, as they noted the entrances and exits.

Five moved to catch up. Oops — if she knew what was ahead she wouldn't have lagged behind. Senang and Saren looked to be fine, though, so yayy..

Might as well scan around... while occasionally looking up.

T'She kept scanning the area as well as they made their way to the rest of the group, slowly compiling a little map of where they had been in case they needed to get out quick.

Five kept her gaze on the alcoves. Was anything inside? She wanted to be ready if anything were to jump out at them.

Nothing in the alcoves. A lot of them were in similar states of disrepair as the propulsion node had been. There were only a few that seemed to be fully functional at the moment.

Right... "Where did all of the drones go?" she wondered aloud. "Surely there couldn't have been ONE sole survivor after an attack? And if that was the case, they would see more damage, surely?* "Some of these are still working, but I don't see a soul that isn't us."

Saren decided to check out the seemingly functioning ones. Anything particular about them?

It didn't seem like it. They looked to be in almost the same state as the other ones, except that there were lights on and they weren't turned off. There was also no evidence of them being used super recently, a very thin layer of dust on the floor and all horizontal surfaces. They'd been upkept, though, seemingly for the purpose of being used. Or, rather, there was simply no other reason to do upkeep on alcoves except to use them.

None of them, huh.. Five peered around Saren (again, they were doing that a lot today). "I suppose this one is lonely...?" Or just trying to keep enough options open, in case one of them breaks down and they can't regenerate anymore.

"Maybe these belonged to other drones but something happened... or it's preparing them for new ones," both options were... equally sad and terrifying. "I will send this information out for the other teams."

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22:18

Also, actually... let him count the "somewhat working" ones, real quick.

Like, four. It's not entirely clear why that many.

"I feel as if we would have seen a corpse by now." Five frowned, tucking their mask in their little supply backpack situation. "Has anyone else seen any sign of other drones, besides the empty consoles?"

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"Nothing, really. The implications of them being here are, well... here, but the drones themselves are missing from the scene. Instead we have the one superdrone just... doing upkeep and terrorizing the unwanted guests," he pulled up the drone specs, just letting himself look over them again, familiarizing with what they were dealing with. Fascinating stuff, but he decided not to state that comment out loud. Not the place, not the time. "At least, that's what we've seen so far. Who knows, maybe we're just being shown what this place wants us to think. I'm not too keen on just how adaptive and, for the lack of a better word, manipulative, such place can be."

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"Superdroneee..." Fives sighed out the word, brows furrowing. "It is almost like they themself are the collective. You know? Like..." She made a gesture of smashing her hands together, fingers interlocking. "Only able to do so much on their own, but still far exceeding the capabilities of a normal drone."

Ato nodded, thinking curiously about how the superdrone even came to exist. Maybe there were clues in the scans that he could decipher as a doctor with knowledge of the body? He pulled out his PADD while Saren and Five processed this information verbally and looked over the scans, trying to figure out or reason the origin of the drone. Especially with regard to what Five said, about the single drone being a collective. A chimerical being, maybe? "I'll check the scans on my PADD, see if there's any...medical reason I can come up with to why that drone is... so super."

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It's 'cause it's a Roid Rage Borg Drone, obviously.

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Oh god, what has he done. The "superdrone" is now part of the vocabulary.

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So if there was no discernable reason the biosign readings were just more / Roid Rage Borg Drone, and there were multiple alcoves being maintained, generally, was there anything off about the alcovces? Anything that looked out of place or like it would have been changed to enhance said Roid Rage Borg Drone into what it was? Ato went over to the alcoves to inspect them, looking for a console or a button to push to turn it on.

Alcoves looked standard, all things considered. There wasn't really a way to turn it on manually unless you were looking to mess with the wires, given that it would just turn on whenever a drone stepped into it. But it looked fairly standard. Again, more run-down than one would expect of a Borg vessel. But y'know.

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"If I stepped inside..." the thought was there, but trailed off almost immediately. She wasn't considered Borg enough anymore, probably. Some of her colleagues still used something like alcoves, but she slept normally.

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"Anything else we can do here? If not... perhaps it's better for us to start heading back again. I am not particularly keen on meeting our dear host h-- excuse me?" he turned towards Fives, ever so slightly bewildered, perhaps worried for a moment. "For what?"

"I, uh..." Fives shrugged, chuckling sheepishly. "I don't know. Sorry. Just trying to be useful... Even so, it wouldn't do anything besides... well. Regenerate. And not to mention, I'm not too fond of the idea. Not sure if there is anything left besides. "

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Ato's jaw dropped. Usually he was very good at keeping his face neutral but the thought of an xB coworker stepping into an Alcove... "No, I don't think that's a good idea." He shook his head. "I'm not willing to risk that, Lieutenant."

"I said I didn't want to," Five repeated, waving it off. "I was just thinking out loud, that's all..."

"Let's, ah... not take any risks when there's no need for that," he was really not into the idea of Fives sticking metaphorical forks into metaphorical toasters, thank you very much. "Also, don't even try to imply that you are somehow useless to this team, Lieutenant."

"Okay," Ato said, nodding, not wanting to make Five needlessly uncomfortable. "So plan two," he said, meeting Saren's eyes. "Leave? There are probably endless paths out of here. Where should our destination be?"

"Backtracking sounds good? We might use some time to recuperate and just... regather our thoughts and findings," he offered. Please don't make him the final decision maker, Saren will die. Or, rather, his puppeteer will.

"That sounds like a sensible idea. We should get in touch with the others as well. Strength in numbers... and all that..." They said, nodding to the others in their group.

Ato's little antennae bounced in affirmation, his jaw set and his expression determined. "Alright, heading back sounds good. We know, at least when we came through, there wasn't any danger so presently there isn't likely to be. So I guess, we just go back." He shrugged and turned, starting to amble back the way they came, trusting T'She was still scanning for lifesigns like they said before and that they wouldn't run into any issues. At least, any more than being stuck on a Borg cube with no way out...!

"Then let's head back..." might as well begin leading the five of them out, meanwhile scanning - and looking - for any potential dangers lurking about...

Yep. Going. Five kept her head down, a little embarrassed by how she'd reacted to Just about everything today.

T'she tried to shoot Five a reassuring look before going back to their scanning and mapping.

The mapping, for the record, had been extremely consistent with what the consoles had shown. The cube wasn't trying to lie to them, it was just. Hiding things, occasionally.

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3

Essen hadn't been in this part of the cube before. Not that she would ever really want to be near regeneration alcoves. But she was here now -- her phaser drawn, she looked around for any unwanted company yet again; left, right, up, down, through any secret entrances, before she nodded to Ato and T'She that the coast was (hopefully) clear.

Ato appeared in the doorway behind Essen, rushing past to the closest chamber as soon as he was in the open room. He leaned forward, carefully placing her limp body into one of the alcoves and praying the nanoprobes could knit her wounds up. His hypos weren’t going to do much, and this was their only hope to save her. (edited)

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T'She was there too, directing everyone to the Alcoves this whole time. They were wary, they were cautious, and they were something close to paranoid.

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As Maggie's limp body was put into the alcove, it did indeed come online, urging the nanoprobes to start regenerating their drone. It was an inelegant sight, and the process was rather slow, but at least it seemed to be working.

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In guarding the doctors, Essen kept her phaser drawn, and at times glanced to and from the regeneration alcove -- silently mouthing the word 'please' over and over again, as she took deep breaths in and out. Please, Maggie... please... this whole mission was already sending Essen to the breaking point. This had to work. Please... as she realized she was getting carried away in her head again Essen snapped back to it and kept her eyes peeled. Especially towards the doctors, they just had to get back safely.

"We need to leave. The sooner we get back the sooner we can regroup with the others. We do not want to be around when she finishes regeneration." They commented as they looked back the way they came, the way that led to the hangar bay.

“Yeah, we gotta get out of here. Do you need support getting back to the hangar, Commander?” He asked as he moved away from the alcove where Maggie was regenerating and toward Essen and T’She.

Before T'She mentioned that they needed to leave, Essen looked the alcove up and down, and peered into Maggie's face -- or at least where she assumed it would be inside the alcove. "I'm so sorry," Essen whispered, as if she were speaking to Maggie. "I'll make things right when we get back to the station. I swear it." Then when T'She mentioned it was time to leave, Essen headed to the entrance. "Agreed. I'll keep an eye out, we gotta be quick about this," Essen commented.

"I... should be fine. But... I would like to get my shoulder looked at when we get back, and you already offered to do that." They finished as they walked to the entrance as well.

Ato nodded and moved to leave the alcoves with the others. He couldn’t help but steal one last glance at Maggie, her crumpled body healing with the aid of the probes, if it could be called that. It was unnerving, but it sealed his determination to get his team safely back to base, and to help come up with a plan to save the scientist.

As Ato finally moved away, lagging behind the others, a claw grabbed him by the neck to lift him into the air, before snatching him away. Over the sound of Maggie's alcove, the footsteps of the drone had not been heard. Its creaking had been left, too, not audible, if it had been there at all. It was only now that the drone held Ato in its clutches that the thought occurred: this was also where the first drone had to go to regenerate. (edited)

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"Oh no you don't!" Essen jumped back into action as she fired at the drone, careful to aim away from Ato enough not to hit him. After two shots she remodulated and fired again. "Let him go!"

Ato had been caught too fast to even let out a scream, his neck being actively crushed by the force of the drone’s grip and the jerking away. His hands came up reflexively to grab the claw wrapped around his neck.

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There wasn't much that T'She could feasibly do in this situation, and that fact weighed heavily on their mind.

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Shooting at the only visible part of the drone right now, its metal appendage, did little damage, at least in terms of effectivity; another appendage simply came to grab at Ato too, wrapping around him. The same deep, monotone voice from before spoke: "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." It pulled Ato back, stepping into the light ever so slightly to reach out an actual arm, tubules already reaching out to assimilate Ato. It was having a highly productive day today, even despite the damage it had sustained.

A very short moment of clarity before the inevitable, and Ato dropped one hand from grasping the claw wrapped around his neck and threw it forward, attempting to signal to his fellow officers to run.

"NO! I'm NOT leaving anyone behind! NOT this time!" Essen remodulated her phaser again. She aimed for any arms and especially tubules that could potentially assimilate Ato. She kept her cool while firing, and made sure of it so that her aim was decent. "LET HIM GO!" (edited)

T'She reached for Essen's hand, thinking that it would be best to follow Ato's last warning. "We need to leave" They said, voice actually panicked.

Well, the drone's one arm was hit... but it had a second one, and now Ato was close enough to simply infect him with nanoprobes in one swift movement. The drone didn't speak again. It looked worse for wear, sure, after two altercations in a very short period, but also. It currently had Ato in its clutches, and it didn't seem willing to let go, appendages curled around him like a boa constrictor protecting its caught prey.

Essen felt the tug from T'She... and knew that T'She was right... that they had to leave... and at the same time... the pressure from seeing Ato get assimilated... and Essen didn't manage to shoot the drone to let him go... it was getting to be too much... one thing after another, after another, after another... The CTO ordered them to leave. "I'm so sorry, Ato..." Essen choked out, and helped T'She up to be able to make a dash for the #hangar-bay!

CW: Description of Asphyxiation Ato was levitating there by the alcove, wrapped in the clutches of One of All, bound, suffocating. His lungs were on fire, huge flaming balloons in his chest. It felt like he was being eaten alive, pain spidering from his chest to his back and neck. Nerves shot. He couldn't help but to try to inhale, his mouth hung open and his throat trying to get precious air but his windpipe was being crushed and not even air could get through. The drone's grip tightened around him, his torso, his neck. He felt his ribs sear, hot, bending almost to the point of breaking with the drone's strength. His vision had started to blur, the last image he saw of T'She's and Essen's backs as they escaped the alcove. Brief emotional relief, followed immediately by a sharp, stabbing pain in his neck as the tubules pierced his skin, infecting him with nanoprobes. Pain rocked through his neck, the tubules carving a river up to his brain. Down and out through the rest of his body, using the body's systems as a map, efficiently depositing nanoprobes in every tissue, every layer of his biology. His vision faded out slowly all the while. First lights twinkled in his periphery, then in front of him, and then darkness began to frame around his sight. The pulse in his tempo slowed, a rallentando beat, waning as his body shut down. The sound of a voice in his mind was the last thing he heard before losing consciousness... "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." (edited)

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