This is a first season story. It's a sequel to my earlier story, "Away from Monsters" (hence the title, "Monsters Return").
Rating: PG-13 for adult language and some adult content/themes. This deals with raw issues (such as child abuse); if you are in anyway uncomfortable with these themes, I would suggest looking elsewhere.
Copyright 1999 by SheriAnn
Monsters Return
Part Two
- SCENE I. The wardroom of the seaQuest DSV. In it, surrounding a round table laden with coffee cups, are eight people dressed in regulation UEO outfits. Seven of the eight are scowling at one dark-haired and dark-eyed, middle-aged man . . . who is obviously frustrated as he scowls right back at them. The scene shifts as the room abruptly bursts into a jumble of sound.
SECURITY CHIEF CROCKER: (pacing, face cherry red) What were those idiots thinking—no, were they thinking?
DOCTOR WESTPHALEN: (arms crossing chest, with a definite "someone-will-pay-for-this" scowl on her face) Captain, you can't be serious.
COMMANDER FORD: (frowning, brows lowered over turbulent dark eyes) Captain, why didn't you tell me about this earlier?
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER HITCHCOCK: (glaring at Ben Krieg as if it were the poor lieutenant's fault in the first place) Poor Lucas! What are we going to do about this?
LIEUTENANT O'NEILL: (staring in disbelief, lips in a thin frown) How could the UEO do this? How could they act like this?
The voices—all raised angrily at the same time and in the same high-pitched, blaring volume—pounded into Bridger's ears as one stream of pure, undiluted noise. He leaned back in his chair, watching silently as the group continued to cry out its protests . . . then rose his eyebrows pointedly as they suddenly remembered his presence and turned towards him. His gaze slid from one red-hot face to the next, pausing at last on Jonathon's drawn brows and clear frown.
Bridger tapped his fingers on the table, then sighed. "Look, folks, I'm no happier on this than you. I have a few choice angry words for Admiral Noyce's hearing, but that's beside the point. The point is that we have a problem needing resolution—not that we're angry over the problem in the first place. Does everyone agree on that, at least?"
A moment's silence. Finally, the general temperature in the room slid a few degrees. Several heads nodded; after a moment, the last bastions of anger in the room—Ortiz and Crocker—nodded their heads, too.
Nathan took a deep breath. "Good." He looked over at Kristin. "Doctor Westphalen, I'll need you to increase your regular contact hours with Lucas. Of all of us, I think you spend the most time with him. See if you can just . . . stretch that time a bit."
She nodded quickly, arms crossed across her chest. "It shouldn't be a problem. Lucas has been reworking his vocorder; we just received some extra-sensitive audio equipment for it. Pulling him away from it will be more of a problem than keeping him there."
"And I can keep him company during most of his meals. That's normal, anyway," Ben piped in.
"Lucas likes to walk around the ship at night," Tim began, thoughtfully staring at the table. "I'll make sure to walk around the ship about the same time he does."
Katie suddenly cleared her throat; as the men looked her way, she carefully said, "The plans we're making . . . don't get me wrong. They're good. But . . ."
She paused a moment. Bridger encouraged her on, "Yes?"
"Well . . . what are we going to tell Lucas?" As this question settled over her listener's ears, Katie shrugged. "He's a smart boy. He'll see through this right away."
Damn. It was a good question. Bridger had hoped Lucas wouldn't even notice. It'd be hard enough on the teen to face his father, but knowing that some of the crew understood enough about his problems with his father to try to protect him . . . Bridger suspected this wouldn't settle well with him. Lucas very well might feel threatened, somehow vulnerable.
Helplessly, Bridger shrugged, shaking his head. "I guess I tell him. I don't know any other way around it."
Silence. As his crew filed out the wardroom door, wrapped in their own thoughts of the matter, Nathan shook his head. He wished he knew a better way around this. He wished he knew a way to force Doctor Wolenczak into another dimension, another planet—anything. He wished he could tell the UEO to go to hell. But he also knew that his wishes were just that: wishes.
With a sigh, Bridger rose from his chair and tread tiredly towards the door.
He had one more job to do . . . and that would be the hardest of all.
*****
The door was wide open. Dim light filtered out into the hall, barely bright enough to beat back the dark shadows of the seaQuest's halls.
Light wasn't the only thing filtering into the halls: music could be heard, too. And the music . . .
At last identifying the sounds, Nathan grimaced, rubbing a hand across his tired eyes. Lord. Only a teenager could produce that. Only a teenager could possibly consider mixing the vivid, vibrant strains of Beethoven with the jarring, nonsensical sounds of . . . who was it? Juyo Loyo? Hudo Juyo? No, that wasn't right . . . ah, of course: Judo Hudo. Only a teenager named Lucas Wolenczak would even think of such an idea.
Nathan suddenly frowned as he remembered the reason for his visit had nothing to do with music. He entered Lucas's room, stooping at the door to keep from banging his head against the absurdly low ceiling. He stared at what he saw.
Lucas was sprawled widthwise across his bed, his legs bent at the knee and tapping lightly against the wall in time to the "music." His position alone gave Bridger a headache: laying on his stomach, Lucas was hanging—literally hanging—upside down over the edge of his bed, hair flopping crazily into his face and eyes. Arranged chaotically before him were three huge computer science books, one enormous linguistics tome, four loosely bound notebooks and slips of paper, and three or four discarded pencils. The books were all spread haphazardly across the floor, right next to two computers running at full speed . . . searching for God alone knew what. In the midst of this clutter, Lucas looked perfectly at home as he muttered to himself: "If the word for 'love' is iconic, then it must be represented by . . ." He flipped through several pages of the linguistics text, then continued his monologue, ". . . a heart? No, too traditional. Besides, that's a human symbol, not dolphin-speak. Hmm . . . dolphins love fish. Maybe fish are the iconic equivalents of emotional love."
Nathan's brows rose as he leaned against the wall, intrigued. He continued his eavesdropping—err, his "accidental listening."
"Yeah, fish equals love, light equals life . . ." Lucas suddenly groaned, snapping a pencil in half and then angrily tossing it into a pile of pencil shards to his left. "Not likely, unless every time he says 'I fish want' he really means he wants love instead of fish. Considering the size of that dolphin's appetite, I don't think so."
He thought for a moment, then muttered, "Maybe when he says 'fish,' he really means . . . well, fish." Lucas mulled this over, then rolled his eyes in disgust. "Yeah, right. Impossible. Too simple. My linguistics prof would die."
Nathan hid his smile, then cleared his throat. Instead of looking up, though, Lucas sighed in annoyance. "Krieg, I told you . . . not today. And the captain would kill me . . ."
"Oh?" Bridger asked mildly.
The teen's head whipped up. His eyes widened. "Oh, sir . . . I thought you were . . ."
"Krieg? I kind of caught that." He paused, stepping into the room and looking down at Lucas's pile of books and papers. He then looked at the teenager. "So . . . what were you and Krieg up to?"
An audible gulp. Lucas cleared his throat. "Oh, nothing too much, sir." Just a bit of poker. Of course, this was the type of poker where you also played a somewhat perverse version of "truth or dare." Poker had never been this exciting before; he got to ask his buddies all kinds of personal questions—ones that left Ben in fits of speechlessness and sent Miguel laughing right out the door. "Just—ah, poker, sir."
Nathan heard the telling pause between "ah" and "poker," but decided to ignore it, considering the nature of his visit. He simply commented on the issue with a knowing, "Uh-huh."
A short pause passed as the two looked at one another. Lucas gradually realized that there was something unusually serious in Captain Bridger's demeanor. Perhaps "somber" described it even better. This wasn't merely a social call. What was it, though?
He felt his stomach clench in nerve-ridden anxiety.
Nathan sat beside him, then waved Lucas into a sitting position. Lucas quickly complied, watching the captain with wary eyes.
A silent moment passed. Then another. Finally, as the moments of silence were threatening to stretch into infinity, Lucas asked, "Sir? What is it? What's wrong?"
Again, that silence. Then Bridger slowly said, the words seeming to wrench from his mouth, "Lucas . . . I have some very bad news."
Bridger paused. His gaze abruptly swung towards the aquatubes. Darwin floated in front of them, seeming to know—however dolphins knew these things—that something was wrong. Bridger looked back at Lucas. "Kiddo, this isn't easy for me to tell you . . . Well, I guess I'll just come out and say it." He sighed, then forced Lucas to meet his eyes. "Lucas, your father is coming on board: on the seaQuest."
Lucas's blue eyes stared back at him, horror clearly striking from them. The moment seemed to freeze, to solidify one instant into eternity. Nothing moved, nothing drew his attention—nothing but the pain lashing out from Lucas's eyes.
Then the moment seemed to crash as tears filled Lucas's eyes, as the teen shook beside him. Quickly, Nathan hugged Lucas to him. "It's okay. Lucas . . . he isn't going to hurt you. I promise you. He won't lay a hand on you."
As he spoke, Nathan hoped his comforting words were more than just that: words. He hoped he could somehow protect Lucas from his father, the monster so suddenly returning to his life. But how could he protect Lucas from a monster when that monster was his father, a man who had ruled his deepest fears for the majority of his life?
Sadly, at this time, Nathan knew he had no answers. He also knew he might never have the answers, not for this question.
*****
After spending an hour or so with Lucas, simply trying to ease the teen's fears, Nathan Bridger was back at his quarters. He was trying to sleep—vainly, perhaps. For the past twenty minutes, he had done nothing but toss and turn, like a washer stuck in an endless agitation cycle. Nathan sighed at the idea. Agitation cycle was right on target. He wanted to throw something at someone, punch his fist into anything, crack a few heads with . . . he didn't precisely know with what, but something. He wasn't a man given to violence: anything but that, actually. But right now, anger sizzled in his blood. It burned within, hungering for some outlet.
Lucas's father . . . Lucas's father . . .
Abruptly, Nathan slammed his fist into his pillow—once, twice, thrice. Four times.
He inhaled sharply, holding his fist, massaging the skin that so ached to hit anyone wearing a UEO Admiral's uniform. After a moment, his eyes looked at the pillow, now dented in the middle, then he sighed. He needed a good, stiff drink, but he didn't drink anymore. He wouldn't drink anymore. So . . . drinking was out of the question.
Frustrated, Nathan climbed out of bed and plopped down in his favorite chair. A pile of engineering specs met his eyes, and he gratefully yielded to their call. At least with these, he wouldn't be inclined to angrily break his fist against the nearest wall. He colorfully cursed Lucas's father, then went straight to work on the specs.
*****
Back in his quarters in Mammal Engineering, Lucas stared blankly at the aquatubes. Darwin floated in front of his eyes; the dolphin would periodically offer a timid chirp, but Lucas wasn't much in the mood for conversation, friendly or otherwise. He turned his focus to the computers flashing information across their screens, still downloading information on linguistics and icons. He even studied the data scrolling across one, then shook his head as the words ran meaninglessly before him.
He stared at a book on the floor, then, suddenly, slammed his toe into its spine and kicked it across his floor. It thudded against the far wall, then landed in a messy heap on the floor.
He smiled slightly, tremulously, then felt tears suddenly burn his skin. His body was shaking helplessly as he wrapped his arms around his chest, pulled his knees up to his chin, and rocked back-and-forth, back-and-forth, soundlessly.
Oh, God, not his dad, not his dad . . . the thought repeated, cycled through his mind.
He saw his father, drunk, ice cubes chinking against the crystal of his glass, body swaying as he lumbered towards him . . .
A ghost of his past, one that never should have awakened, arose from its slumber. It haunted him, whispering that he was at fault: that he should have been better, should have been more intelligent, should have been less an eyesore to his father. The memories streamed before his eyes. No! his mind shrieked as the nightmare began once more, as the monsters were unleashed. No . . . The nightmare refused to listen to him; it played in vivid colors right before his frightened mind.
On that blasted night, Lucas had accidentally blown up a new vocorder prototype. He'd been tinkering with a few controls, a few buttons, and had crossed the wrong connectors. It was an easy mistake. The connectors were difficult to see, he was tired, and the wires had absolutely no markings or colors to distinguish them. He'd made a mistake: simple as that.
Unfortunately, though, his father hadn't seen it as a "simple mistake." He never did.
That night found Lucas staring into his father's black, angry eyes. Lucas's nerves were chaotically jumping to and fro. He felt certain he was about to vomit. Things weren't looking well. In fact, they hadn't looked this bad for a long time. He'd been hoping, praying he could avoid this—but it seemed his prayers weren't heard. Hell, it seemed his prayers were never heard; when had God intervened between his body and his father's fists?
He'd been hoping dad was asleep by now. No luck, though. Another hope crushed. His father was there, all right. His father was waiting for him, too.
Dad had physically blocked his passage. And, unfortunately, his father had smelled the smoke on Lucas's clothes the moment he walked in the door. And Lucas smelled the alcohol emanating from his father's breath.
Oh, God.
Almost convulsively, Lucas swallowed—hard. He heard the soft, steady tread of his father's footsteps approaching him. Though he couldn't say exactly why, the sound was ominous. Frightening. Slowly, his father drew near him, eyes never leaving his face, freezing him in one spot as if his arms had been holding him still.
Where was his mother?
Absently, Lucas looked for her—but, as usual, she was nowhere to be seen. She was probably upstairs, hiding herself in the jacuzzi or drowning any sounds with her earphones. She knew when her husband was in a black mood, and she knew when to get away from him.
His father was now right in front of him; Lucas could feel the man's hot breath rushing against his shoulders. Again, he swallowed hard, looking for an escape route: anything, anything to get away from him. But there was nowhere for him to go. There was nowhere to hide.
"You did it again, didn't you?"
The question hissed out. Lucas flinched.
"Answer me, you little shit. Did you do it again? Did you—you ruin something else?"
The slurred words almost seemed a snarl. Lucas blinked hard. He fought for his voice, opened his mouth to speak several times, but—nothing came out. Nothing but a tiny, helpless squeak.
Out of nowhere, one large, callused fist raced towards him. Reflexively, he ducked, not even thinking about his reaction. He just wanted to escape, to get away from this man. He wanted to . . .
The fist cracked into his cheek, and—for a moment—everything span in front of his eyes. Helplessly, confused, he turned his face back towards his father, hoping for an apology, an explanation, anything that would stop this. This was his father: his father, the man who was supposed to protect him, the man who was supposed to love him no matter what.
Again, the fist sped towards his face. Knuckles grazed across his flesh, striking hard against his temple. Dimly, he felt his head snap back, his body fall. Blood trickled slowly, almost lazily, from his forehead.
And then all became a blur as his father bent over him, fists raised and then plummeting into his body, again and again. Hands seized his neck, fingers pressing into his throat until he could no longer breathe.
Finally, blackness.
The blackness stretched on, then suddenly wavered. Crawling helplessly out of the darkness, Lucas listened to the sounds around him.
Voices passed by, one laughing—who knew what about. Something clinked down the hall, probably someone dropping a PAL. Lucas swallowed hard, reflexively, making sure he could breathe. His fingers trembled helplessly as he touched his throat, making sure there were no hands clasped ruthlessly around it. The fingers continued to tremble as they lingered against the center of his throat, making sure the scar from his tracheotomy was just that: a scar.
With effort, Lucas let out a long, shuddering sigh. It had been a dream, a nightmare. It hadn't been happening again. His father wasn't standing over him even now, trying to kill him.
Wiping tears from his cheeks, Lucas huddled under his covers, pulling the blankets well over his face. After several minutes of trembling, Lucas finally slept an exhausted sleep.
*****
3:36 a.m.
Captain Bridger walked down the halls of the seaQuest, noticing the shadows that played in deeply recessed corners. It was silent, hushed; most people were already well asleep. Only a small crew worked this shift.
He continued on, saying a soft "hello" to anyone who passed him, but nothing more. His mood seemed to communicate well to his crew: brooding, dark, unhappy. For the most part, they let him walk down the corridors alone, isolated within himself.
A muffled clink of metal. A thud.
Silence.
Nathan looked around himself quickly, trying to determine the sound's origin. Hmm. It had sounded like it could be to his left . . .
He moved over to investigate, his steps soft, soundless, as he examined the area around him. It was now silent—deadly silent. A sense of foreboding welled in Nathan's heart. Something was—off. Something simply wasn't right.
He continued his wary search, noting that the shadows seemed to be lengthening, stretching through the corridors and blotting out the dimmed lights of the night shift. The shadows seemed to have a life of their own, breathing, hissing . . .
He stopped suddenly. No, that hissing hadn't been the shadows. He backtracked, looking around himself carefully.
Blood. It dripped out from under a door and trickled into the corridor.
Nathan swallowed hard, a knot in his throat, in his heart.
He ripped the door open.
Blue eyes, lifeless, met his own—a gaze forever crystallized. Blood oozed from a wound in the neck.
Doctor Wolenczak stood beside his son's body, a knife poised in his hand, its gleaming metal wetted with the child's blood. His maniacal eyes met Nathan's. There was no reasoning there, no humanity. Only brutality, the eyes of a monster . . .
With a scream, Nathan jolted from his sleep.
He stared wildly around himself: quarters, his quarters, no blood. No Doctor Wolenczak. No—thank God, thank God, thank God—no dead Lucas. His heart hammered against his ribs. As he tried to control his breathing, Nathan noticed that his hands were trembling violently.
It had been a dream, a nightmare. Nothing more.
Just a dream.