Mattie tightened her grip on his hand. "We don't have to decide anything tonight."
"I know."
"We need more information. A lot more. And we need to think about it carefully, not just because Dave is our only realistic chance of getting off this island."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we also need to think about what happens if you say no." She met his eyes. "Dave might not take it well."
"He said that if I refuse, they stay on the island because they would have no reason to leave, and if they stay, we all stay."
"That's what he said. But what he meant might be different. Dave has compulsion abilities, Dimitri. If he decides that the merge is happening, whether you agree or not?—"
"I'm resistant to his compulsion, and he would need my cooperation. A forced merge wouldn't give him what he wants. You can't experience love through someone who's been coerced. The emotion would be contaminated by fear and resentment."
"Unless Dave doesn't understand that distinction. He's never felt love. He might not know the difference between genuine emotion and what fear produces."
"That's possible." Dimitri let go of her hand and stood up. "I desperately need a shower. We can talk more when I get out."
"Okay."
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "Do you want to get in with me?"
Normally, she would have said yes, but she was too tired to go through the process of wrapping her hand and getting undressed and everything else. Tomorrow morning, she might have the energy for it.
"Not tonight. Tomorrow."
He nodded, walked over to the bathroom, and a moment later, she heard the water running.
Mattie lay back and stared at the ceiling.
Dave's proposal was extraordinary. The escape was everything they'd been desperate for. It was a real chance at freedom, backed by someone who actually had the power to make it happen.
But the price.
Letting Dave into Dimitri's mind, letting a hive consciousness experience their most intimate moments, their most private feelings. And the real, terrifying risk was that Dimitri might not come back from it unchanged.
We are Borg.
She almost smiled, but it died before it reached her lips.
Her thoughts drifted back to what Dimitri had told her about the Dormant enclosure. The women. The breeding. The daughters who grew up to replace their mothers in the same cycle of violation and captivity.
When the fire had destroyed her family's home and killed both her parents, she'd survived because she'd been sleeping on the second floor of the house and had been rescued by a firefighter. For years afterward, the guilt had been crushing. Why had she lived when they hadn't? What was the point of surviving if surviving meant living with the knowledge that she was here and they were gone?
What had saved her, not healed her because that wound would never fully heal, but what kept her from drowning in despair was the conviction that she'd been spared for a reason. That someday, she would save others. It was naive, even grandiose, but it had given her purpose when purpose was the only thing standing between her and despair.
And then life had taken a dark turn, and she'd ended up trafficked to an island run by immortal warriors. She couldn't save herself, let alone anyone else.
But now there was a glimmer of hope, offered by the most unlikely ally, and maybe it was a sign from the universe that it was her turn to pay it forward.
What if she could help those women in the Dormant enclosure?
Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, were living a nightmare, born into it and possibly not even knowing that there was something better out there. They needed to be told that women were not inferior, and that they had agency just as much asmen, or more. Women were scientists and physicians, artists and teachers, and they contributed to the world in thousands of ways. Breeding was not their only purpose. Serving men was not their only purpose. Slavery and misery were not the lot assigned to them by a hateful god.
Could she help them?
The thought was absurd on the face of it. She was just a human with a broken hand and scarred legs, who was trapped on an island controlled by thousands of immortal warriors. She couldn't save herself without Dave's help, let alone hundreds of captive women.
