Aboard La Sirena, Rios tries to regain control of the transporter, while Picard, Raffi, Seven and Tallinn beam in using her Supervisor transporter. It's no use: Queen Jurati lands a large number of assimilated soldiers. The Starfleet contingent regroup outside the chateau and decide what to do.
Seven and Raffi split off to try and reach La Sirena. Seven immediately takes charge, and Raffi notes she's a natural fit for the role of The Captain. Seven admits that she applied to Starfleet right after Voyager got home, but not even the patronage of Adm. Janeway could get through their skepticism over admitting an ex-B, leading her to give up on a losing fight and join the Fenris Rangers.
Rios takes a round in the arm while protecting Teresa and Ricardo. Picard has Tallinn beam them to her apartment... and then turn off the transporter. Teresa, using Tallinn's technology, extracts the bullet and gets Rios back on his feet, and he manages to hotwire the transporter to take him back. Teresa makes an impassioned plea that he stay — with her — but he knows what he needs to do.
Raffi and Seven make it to the ship, where they find themselves with a couple of unexpected allies. One is Agnes Jurati, fighting from the inside, taking advantage of the same neurotransmitter surges to fight the Queen for control of her body. Another is Elnor: Agnes not only re-incorporated him as an Emergency Combat Hologram, but has given him control of the ship's systems. This isn't enough to stop the Queen and her Combat Tentacles; the Elnor hologram is defeated, and Seven Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. But it is enough to force a stalemate, and she and Jurati have a discussion. Jurati points out that the Queen is, like Jurati herself, an Ineffectual Loner and that her approach of assimilation will always inevitably lead to the Borg's destruction. Jurati proposes that they take La Sirena and start a new Collective that invites those who are lost and need a second chance to join, creating an appealing emotional reality that would combine the strengths of the Borg's collective with other species' individuality. The Queen, intrigued by her proposal, agrees. Queen Jurati, united now in reality as well as name, heals Seven ... though at the cost of restoring her Borg implants.
Picard and Tallinn lead the Borg — led by Dr. Soong — on a merry chase through the tunnels below Chateau Picard, coinciding with continued flashbacks to Jean-Luc's life with a stoic, harried father and a mother he now recognizes as having been mentally unwell. Eventually they make it to the greenhouse, where Soong corners them. Here Rios returns, a Big Damn Heroes moment that sees Soong retreat. One of the Borg mooks drops a key, and Picard, recognizing it, retrieves the memory he has so long repressed: Yvette, despite being locked up for her own good, would beg for little Jean-Luc to set her free. Jean-Luc, not understanding the whole situation, did so... and his mother took the opportunity to hang herself.
Queen Jurati takes control of La Sirena and leaves Earth to form a new, better and kinder Borg Collective. Before she does, she has Seven relay a message to Picard: "For the mission to succeed, there must be two Renee Picards — one that lives, and one that dies." Picard, regrouping his team on the ground below, has no idea what this means, but resolves to get to work regardless in preparation for the final showdown between them and Soong.
Tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: Rios shows up just as Soong is about to have Picard killed.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Borg Queen ceases to be a threat, but only because Dr. Jurati has permanently merged with her and no longer exists as a human individual. Seven is saved but she, too, loses some of her humanity in the process.
- Canon Immigrant: Amongst the toys on the table that Young Picard plays with is an NX-01 Refit, an evolution of Archer's Enterprise with an added engineering hull that has featured in several secondary works (such as the post-ENT novels and Star Trek Online).
- Cerebus Call-Back: Picard mentions that he used to imagine his mother as an old woman offering tea and a chat, which he did in "Where No One Has Gone Before". The earlier scene becomes much darker in light of The Reveal that she actually committed suicide when he was a child.
- Color Motif: The Borg penchant for sickly green shows up with the green laser sights on the guns wielded by the Borgified mooks, and the transporter taking on a Borg-like glow under the Queen's control.
- Discontinuity Nod: Jurati says that the only part of the history of the Borg Collective that matters is how it ends, suggesting a Shout-Out to the Multiple-Choice Past that the Borg have had throughout various incarnations of the Star Trek Expanded Universe.
- Dodge the Bullet: As a hologram based on a Qowat Milat warrior with Super-Reflexes, holo-Elnor successfully runs through a hailstorm of machine-gun fire.
- Emergency Transformation: Jurati and the Queen save Seven after stabbing her, but at the cost of having to partially assimilate her, restoring her implants to the state they were in before the timeline change.
- Evil Costume Switch: The Queen is able to make a copy of her old outfit on her new body by drawing the material from her corpse.
- Evil Feels Good: Soong definitely enjoys being the bad guy once he's given an assimilated group of soldiers and the task of killing Picard and the others.
- Flashback: Picard has flashbacks to his mother hiding in the underground tunnels as the Queen's mooks are trying to kill him and Tallinn.
- Fighting from the Inside: Jurati is able to temporarily restrain the Queen's movement, and hijacks her signal to hack into La Sirena, locking its systems with a fractal encryption key that is encoded in a combat hologram of Elnor. She later manages to stalemate the Queen by using her sadness at the Queen harming her friends in the same way the Queen used an endorphin rush to hijack her in the first place.
- Fusion Dance: Jurati convinces the Queen to join with her as one being, and form a new Collective based on cooperation instead of assimilation.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Raffi and Seven stab a Borgified Mook through the eye, obscured by some foreground scenery.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: Jurati is able to exploit the same method the Queen used to take control to wrest control back; weaponizing sadness and despair at the Queen hurting her friends. She lampshades that had the Queen shown some mercy, they'd already be on their way.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Queen shoots a spiked tentacle through Seven's stomach, leaving her to slowly bleed out before Jurati talks her into providing medical aid.
- Loyal Phlebotinum: Soong tries to use a dropped phaser, but it has a biometric lock that causes it to explode if an unauthorized user picks it up. Lucky for Soong, there's a generous timer and Rios informs him that the weapon is about to blow up in his hand before it goes off.
- Once More, with Clarity: Picard's flashback from "Monsters" is shown with more clarity here. His mother hanged herself after he let her out of her room.
- The Reveal:
- Seven tried to join Starfleet, but was rejected based on her Borg past. She joined the Rangers rather than fight what she viewed as a losing battle, especially since even Janeway threatening to resign failed to move them.
- Picard's mother killed herself after Picard let her out of her room.
- Sherlock Scan: Soong is able to spot the Bookcase Passage based on the scuff marks on the floor and the symbol on the bookcase turned 90 degrees.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Picard shoots out the lock on a door in the tunnels using a World War II-era revolver he finds.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Soong pulls one using a self-destructing weapon as a distraction.
- Take a Third Option: Instead of defeating the Borg Queen, Jurati proposes something else: take the La Sirena, go into space and give people who are lost and need help a second chance by joining them voluntarily.
- Tele-Frag: Seven beams the Queen's mooks into the walls of the chateau.
- Teleport Interdiction: Seven tries to beam away the Queen, but her implants generate a transport inhibitor to block the attempt.
- Toplessness from the Back: Queen Jurati finally gets out of the red dress and walks naked over to her former body which she promptly uses to clothe herself in her Borg suit. Most of this is either shot from her back or above chestline in the front.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Teresa suggests removing the bullet from Rios's arm because he's no good to his friends injured, but she has access to Tallinn's future medical tech and can repair the wound at the same time.
- What You Are in the Dark: As Picard tells Adam Soong, the promise of a legacy has only served to reveal the rot that was within him, to be so willing to work with Q and the Borg Queen to secure his possible future as humanity's savior.
