The Borg cube had used a dispersal field to fool the shuttle sensors. It promptly attacks, forcing the shuttle crew to return fire.

The shuttle's shields weaken significantly under the onslaught, but the cube seems to have its own problems. Its power output is fluctuating. The shuttle targets the cube's propulsion matrix, successfully taking it out and crippling the Borg vehicle.

There is another exchange of fire, but the cube's strategy appears erratic, allowing Voyager to disable its weapons.

But both sides reach a tentative agreement nonetheless -- the crew members will be returned in exchange for Voyager's navigational deflector. Even though the deflector would leave the starship rudderless, the gift will enable the cube to contact the Borg collective, from which it has been cut off.

Janeway demands to see the hostages. The cube agrees to let one person be transported aboard. Janeway sends Seven.

Aboard the cube, Seven finds a dilapidated mess, with numerous dead drones lying around.

She looks into a maturation chamber. Inside floats a fetus, apparently alive.

Seven turns and sees several Borg kids, ranging in age from maybe five to fifteen. They were released from the maturation chambers early as a result of whatever crisis afflicted the cube.

She's shocked to find they're home alone. "You are neonatal drones," she says, her voice tinged with disdain.

She demands an immediate hostage release. They refuse, and demand the deflector. "Comply! Comply!" shouts a teenage Borg punk.

There is tension. But it's agreed she'll see the hostages. "If she tries to resist, assimilate her," says the youth, who appears to be in charge of the others.

Another teenage drone walks with her. They talk.

He says he's named Second, even though he was first out of the maturation chamber. He became Second because he was unable to keep order among the kids -- unlike his peer, who's now named First.

They reach the hostages. Seven gives the men a cursory examination, while noting that the kids haven't yet perfected assimilation technology, as evidenced by the nearby corpse.

But the kids are not without capabilities, which they demonstrate by giving Tom a good zap as punishment for trying to break through the room's force field.

As Seven leaves, Chakotay says "Give my regards to Harry" -- establishing that no one seems to know where Harry is.

Seven takes a dead drone back to Voyager for inspection, having convinced the suspicious kids that whatever afflicted the cube might still be dangerous and, as such, needs further examination..

"The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Behold the David that slew our Goliath."

He's found a spaceborne virus that attacks cybernetic organisms and adapted to Borg physiology, killing the drones. For the moment, it's inert.

Despite the Doctor's objections, Janeway orders the virus prepared as a possible bioweapon against the kids.

Harry awakens in a concealed area of the shuttle, inside the cube. He works on establishing a communications link to Voyager.

Janeway and Seven go to the cube. Janeway makes a new proposal. Rather than rejoin the hive, the kids can have their implants removed on Voyager.

She notes the species of several of the kids -- some are hitherto unknown. A little girl, her memory stirred, recites a few facts about her homeworld.

First grabs Janeway by the throat. They negotiate. She says she can't give up Voyager's deflector, but maybe her crew can fix the cube. First gives her two hours, or the hostages die.

Janeway returns to the bridge, where there's some discussion of the vicissitudes of adolescence.

Harry makes contact with Voyager and, with Tuvok's help, starts making his way to the cube's shield generators -- if the shields come down, he reasons, Voyager can transport the hostages out.

Ever a wily scout, Harry leaves playing cards, mementos of the now-abandoned poker game, along the gloomy hallways so he can find his way back if needed.

"Borg vessels may be forbidding, but they are not haunted," Tuvok says, apparently trying to reassure.

Meanwhile, First accuses Seven of intentional delays in cube repair.

She says, plausibly, that his understanding of quadratic field theory is flawed. Moreover, she scorns him his lack of the skills needed to ensure the survival of his followers.

He says she has 38 minutes left to get results.

An alarm buzzes. Another maturation chamber has malfunctioned. The fetus' nervous system is activated. Seven takes the crying baby in her arms. Its respiratory system is damaged.

It must be transported to Voyager, says Seven. First doesn't want this, but the other kids seem to be with Seven. Is First losing control of his gang?

Harry places a little explosive near the shield generator. One of the younger Borg kids shows up, holding one of the playing cards.

"I like her," says the boy, looking at a picture of a queen. "She looks like Seven of Nine."

"Is Seven your friend?" says Harry. "She's my friend. Maybe someday --"

The boy interrupts this babble. "Your weapon won’t work here," he says nonchalantly. "Dampening field."

Sick bay. The Doctor has received an unexpected transport -- a bouncing Borg baby. He and Janeway gaze at the infant -- it's well now, and stops crying; it just wants to be held.

The Doctor portentously says he's prepared the weaponized virus. He's appalled to find that Janeway still plans to use it if necessary.

Back on the cube, Harry's been injected with nanoprobes. He needs medical attention. First demands the deflector. There is more tense negotiation.

The cube tries to lock a tractor beam onto the deflector, to rip it right out of the ship. Voyager increases shield strength and randomizes harmonics, but the cube kids adapt.

In the cube, Seven tells the crestfallen kids that the collective Borg mind had received their distress call -- and ignored it, seeing the children as too incompetent to be bothered with.

Over First's objections, Second looks at the archived data and verifies what Seven has said. First is defiant, saying that the kids can assimilate new species and prove their worthiness to the collective.

Tuvok, on the bridge, notices fluctuations in the cube's shields -- too intermittent to beam out the hostages, but good enough for beaming in the pathogen. He's eager to get started.

"Not yet," Janeway says, telling the Vulcan there's an alternative, more humane, approach. It involves sending a feedback pulse to damage the cube shield.

Aboard the cube, Seven is speechifying to the children about individuality when the feedback pulse hits and sends everyone reeling. The hostages are beamed out.

Seven and Harry are still on the increasingly chaotic cube. The kids demand that First give an order, but he is embarrassingly quiet. Seven orders the shields be lowered, and the kids start to comply.

First makes one last grab at authority, telling Second not to lower shields. "Do what I say!" snarls First. But Second replies with disdain: "What you say? I thought we were a collective."

The feedback pulse is overwhelming the cube's system. Soon everything will explode. First refuses to evacuate. But as he tries to operate a console, the spreading energy zaps him hard.

"His cortical implants are depolarizing," says Seven with only a touch of somberness. "I can’t help him."

A girl says they kids will surely find a new home somewhere. First says "But we are Borg." He hears Seven say, perhaps comfortingly: "Yes. We are Borg." It's the last thing he hears, before dying.

After everyone's on Voyager, the Doctor removes the kids' implants. But they are still "troubled children," as Janeway notes.

It's not even clear what species some of them came from. Messages are put out to Narkadian and other ships that might take the kids back to their original homes -- but no one responds.

It looks like the kids are staying aboard Voyager.

Seven is reluctant to take responsibility for the kids, suggesting Neelix instead, but then agrees. She says "perhaps I could help them avoid some of the obstacles I've encountered" in the post-Borg life.

It's bedtime. "Do we have to regenerate now?" says a girl. "Yes" says Seven, but first she shows them their data files. Now, at least they know their original names and some basic information.

"Good night," says Seven, as the kids climb into their pods. "Sweet dreams." As she leaves the room, she turns and gives a serious look.