A Borg ship captures a Voyager shuttle with Chakotay, Kim, Neelix, and Paris on board. Janeway enters hostage negotiations with a gang of dangerously erratic Borg children, who the Borg rejected as unworthy drones.

The long-dead Ensign Lindsay Ballard seeks sanctuary aboard Voyager after being killed during an away mission with Ensign Kim three years ago. She is pursued by an alien race known as the Kobali, whose only reproduction method is reanimating cadavers of other species or "resurrection" of the dead through genetic engineering. They had revived her and taken her as a new member of their race. When the full extent of her new Kobali genes is activated, they reach a point where she must choose between her old home on the ship or her new home with her adoptive Kobali family.