"Wake up, Kes."

Kes sat up sharply. That voice – where had it come from? Who was it? It sounded so familiar. She looked around, and saw that she was alone in her cabin.

With a sigh, she lay down on her bed again. Ever since the battle with Species 8472, things – terrible and frightening things – had been happening to her. The long-dormant mental abilities of the Ocampa were awakened and growing exponentially with each passing hour. The effort to understand them and control them was exhausting but even here, in her own cabin and her own bed, she was unable to find peace. Persistent dread haunted her dreams and troubled her sleep.

"Come on, Kes. You heard me."

She sat up again, and gasped. A woman sat on the edge of the bed, an elderly Ocampa. Her short hair was white and thin, her wrinkled skin so pale it was translucent; fine blue veins were visible. But the face, old as it was, was unmistakable. "You – you can't be," Kes whispered.

"But I am," the other said. "I’m you."

Instinctively, Kes slid back, drawing her knees up to her chest. "You can't be. You're just another vision my mind is conjuring up."

"Not this time," the other said gently. "I'm you, four years from now. Not a pretty picture, is it?"

Compassion overcame fear. "What happened?"

The other smiled. "Good for you. Still curious." Then the smile faded. "There's a nexus in time coming up. Do you understand what I mean?"

"I think so."

"A pivotal moment is imminent. If a certain choice is made, then Voyager will continue on its original timeline and everything will happen the way it's supposed to. If a different choice is made, the ship will head down a different course of time and nothing will be right."

Kes nodded. "I understand that. But why aren't both timelines equally valid? Who's to say which is the right one?"

The other's face darkened. "I am."

"You frighten me," Kes said quietly. "You talk as if you were omnipotent."

"And what if I tell you that I am? That you will be, or at least so close to omnipotence that the difference won't matter to anyone except a few Q."

As the words were spoken, Kes felt the dark power rise within her in acknowledgement. Then she looked at the prematurely aged face that studied her so intently. She remembered what it felt like when Tieran had control of her body and remembered how seductively good it had felt to exercise absolute power until its acid aftereffect began to corrode her soul.

"I hope you're wrong," she said at last.

The elderly doppelganger smiled. "I can be. We can make sure things happen the way they should this time."

"Wait. Are you saying that the timeline was wrong just because this" – she gestured at the other – "happened to us? What about the others? I won't agree to change time if they're better off."

"Better off?" She laughed. "They're closer to home than they expected to be, but otherwise – here. Let me show you."

Kes was suddenly flooded with images of the ship and crew. They went on without her. She saw Captain Janeway become cold, depressed and distant. Her relationships with Chakotay, Tuvok and B'Elanna virtually ignored as she tried to bring the liberated Borg, Seven of Nine, back to humanity. She saw Seven intervene in the ship's fate so often that Chakotay and B'Elanna lost purpose. The Captain lost her focus on exploration and became obsessed with returning home. The complexities and nuances of their characters seemed to flatten out as they did little more than react to Seven.

Then she saw the sub-atomic hell that was waiting for her.

"Oh," she gasped. "No, that's not right."

The other nodded soberly. "It's completely out of balance."

Then Kes caught a glimpse of something else, and frowned. "This isn't the first time you've tried this."

"No, it's not. This first time was a mistake. I was just free of the Firestorm – that's the place you saw, where we're going to end up if we don't do this – and I was frightened and confused. I've had time to think it through now." She smiled again. "The best part is, if we do this right, that mistake will be erased. It will never happen."

Kes took a slow breath, then nodded. "All right. Tell me what we have to do."

*****

The ship was running in gray mode, trying to be as unnoticeable as possible until it was safely beyond Borg space. No one knew exactly how long that would be, but rumors said it could be months, even a year, before they could return to normal.

In the meantime, repairs from the confrontation with the Borg and Species 8472 were underway. Given the limitations of gray mode, it was a painstaking process. Minimal use of the comm system, long range sensors and certain tools with distinctive energy signatures hampered the progress. Anyone with any Engineering ability had been commandeered by Torres and put to work, including Harry Kim and the newest addition to Voyager's crew, the former Borg who insisted on calling herself "Seven of Nine."

Harry looked at his new shipmate in the silver jump suit and swallowed. Who knew that under all that Borg armor, there was a body like that? He hadn't felt a hormone rush this intense since the seventh grade when Joanna whats-her-name had come to school in a halter top that came untied.

"You can do this," he muttered to himself. "Remember, she's just out of the collective." He had been assigned to work with her on some of the repairs in the Engineering section. B'Elanna wanted all of the Borg technology out of her Engine Room and out of it fast. "Well," he said with a nervous laugh he hadn't heard since that day with Joanna, "I guess the Borg meet a lot of people, don't they?"

Seven of Nine stared at him as if she couldn't quite believe the inanity of the remark and couldn't decide whether to acknowledge it. "Stupid question," he again muttered.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, he tried again. Mustering a friendly smile, he said, "So what's it like out there in Galactic Cluster Three?"

This time she answered. "Beyond your comprehension."

Ah ha! A conversation! "Try me."

Ice-blue eyes fixed on him. "Galactic Cluster Three is a transmaterial energy plane intersecting 22 billion omnicordial life forms."

"Oh. Interesting." Chagrined, he turned away. Omnicordial life forms? What the hell was that?

How was he supposed to converse with someone who not only looked like that but had the collective knowledge of the Borg stored in her implants? The Captain said she was confident that Seven would recover her humanity but how could she, really? How could she ever feel anything but superior to the rest of us mere mortals?

"Ensign Kim," she said imperiously. "I require your assistance."

As he turned, he had a glimpse of her hand raised high in the air as if she intended to strike him, and he pulled back. To his confusion, she froze for perhaps two seconds, then she gasped and gripped her head with both hands. She looked at Harry with complete surprise as her knees buckled, then she pitched face-down to the deck and lay still.

"Kim to Sickbay," he shouted, dropping beside her. He could not find a carotid pulse. "Medical emergency!"

*****

"Kes, wake up."

The familiar voice was soothing, and she opened her eyes. The Doctor was smiling down at her. "There you are. I was getting worried."

"Wha- what happened?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

She thought back. "I was in Tuvok's quarters. We were using the meditation lamp to try to explore my new abilities. I saw Harry and Seven of Nine in Engineering. She had located a communications node – she was going to contact the Borg –"

"That is correct." For the first time, she noticed Tuvok standing on the other side of the bed. The Captain was beside him. "I called Security but you said you could stop her."

"Did I?" She struggled to sit up. "I don't remember."

"Please try," the Captain said. Her expression was oddly blank.

She shook her head. "I- I'm sorry. I remember thinking that I had to stop her, that she'd bring the Borg down on us. But then, nothing. It's like a door has been shut."

The Doctor ran the scanner over her. "The hyperstimulation in her hippocampus seems to have stopped. I can't be certain, but I think you're returning to normal."

"What about Seven? Did she contact the Borg?"

"No," the Captain said shortly.

Something about her expression made Kes apprehensive. "What happened?"

The two officers exchanged looks, but it was Tuvok who spoke, with a gentleness that was surprising. "Seven of Nine is dead. Her cortical node and other Borg implants were changed at the sub-molecular level. Without them, she could not live."

"And I – I did that?" Kes asked, stunned. She honestly didn't remember doing it.

We did it, the familiar voice, firmly entrenched in her mind, told her with satisfaction.

Captain Janeway relaxed for the first time. "I'm sure you didn't do it intentionally. And the truth is, you probably saved the ship. If she'd made contact with the Collective, we'd probably all be drones by now." She sighed. "I have to admit, Chakotay was right. She couldn't be trusted."

"She wasn't a bad person, Captain," Kes said slowly. "She just didn't belong here."

"Perhaps not." Janeway patted her arm again. "Everything will be all right, Kes." She turned and left for the bridge, Tuvok in her wake.

"You rest for a while," the Doctor told her. "I want to check you again later, just to be certain the hyperstimulation has in fact ended."

Kes lay down again, and wondered, Where are you?

The presence in her mind, safely contained behind the metaphorical door, radiated peace. Everything. Everything, the way it was always supposed to.

This time, the voice said joyfully, this time we'll get it right.