Prologue

Age Twenty-one

She graduates at the top of her class, and she has learned more from the Academy than anyone could have suspected.

She has learned how to feign, to imitate the behavior of others, to blend in. She has been elected head of her class, and students and teachers alike often express their admiration for her intelligence, her leadership. She has learned when to laugh and when to express sympathy, who to cultivate and who to avoid, and what exactly to do to get ahead with every person who crosses her path. She is a master at finding and exploiting weakness, at uncovering secrets, at telling people what they want to hear and getting them to do what she wants them to do.

Her father is killed a few years later, by a Borg [2] attack at Wolf 359. She and her mother appear stoic at the funeral, but she knows that inside, her mother burns with the same fierce, hot joy that the girl does. At one point, she turns to her mother, and recognizes the glee, swiftly hidden, in her mother’s blue eyes.

She understands that the massacre is a tragedy, that many are suffering from the loss of people they loved. But she cannot feel anything but relief and savage pleasure. That, and rage and hatred, are her limited palette of emotions, and the pictures she can paint with them are dark and clear.

At this moment, celebrating her father’s death while wearing a mask of sorrow, she experiences another emotion: gratitude toward the cybernetic monsters who have finally done what she has longed to do all her life.