The Great Escape

By Cade29

Starts after episode 10 in S2, 'Friendly Fire'. Very much AU after that.

Rated M becuase of foul language I can't contain and sex scenes (that will happen! Just not for a while.)

Hello everyone! So after the fuckery of last nights episode this idea popped in my head and just would not let me go. What would happen now that Rachel is effectivly a prisoner after she killed Sorenson? And did no one else think the Doc was a freaking badass during that episode? I have a girl crush! So anyway, the premise of this is that with the cure now contagious and the research in the hands of the very capable docs on board the ship, what's to stop Rachel from running? After all, Tom promised she would pay for her crimes. (Evil laugher). You will need some suspension of charactor development as we all know Dr Rachel Scott is not a quitter. But never fear! This is very much a Scotch story though it may take them a while to get there. And there will be no Tex/Rachel'ness in my story!

Also, I'm on the lookout for a beta reader. And none of this belongs to me, it belongs to TNT and Michael Bay. Though I may hand them back in slightly used condition.

Prologue

"Hey Doc, what do you miss most?"

Rachel tilted her head sideways to look at Tex laying beside her on the ground. "Miss most? What do you mean by that?" She asked in confusion.

He kept his eyes on the stars that shone brightly in the night sky. With his hands crossed behind his head and one boot on top of the other, he looked the epitome of relaxed even though she knew it was the exact opposite.

"Oh you know, what do you miss most about what life was like before? Surely a pretty girl like you had plenty to do and experience."

She gave him a baleful look and he grinned unrepentantly.

"Come on, you know you can tell 'ol Tex. I promise not to tell anyone else!" He tried to coax her after a long period of silence.

She turned her head back to the stars and laughed softly but remained silent. Truth was she had always been a workaholic, even when the fate of humanity wasn't on the line. She had had Michael, but Quincy had been right when he'd said a screw once or twice a month wasn't a relationship. The closet she had come to close friends since she was 15 were currently floating in the Gulf. A glimpse of sea blue eyes and silver hair flashed through her mind, along with the last look she saw on his face. Anger. Disappointment. Betrayal.

A tear crept down her face and she quickly swept it away before Tex could see but she wasn't quite quick enough.

"Oh hey come on now, I'm sorry please don't cry!" He begged. He had never been good around a crying woman. Considering he was usually the one who made them so angry they started throwing things he didn't have much experience on fixing the problem.

She laughed again though another tear slid down her face. She knew he had misunderstood why she was crying but she wasn't tempted in the slightest to correct it.

"A coffee shop."

He finally turned his head to cast her a quizzical look. He had been watching her out of the corner of his eye but she had given him an answer he hadn't really been expecting. He had thought something along the lines of the theater would be more up her alley. He sighed internally. 'Think you need to give this one up for good Tex.' He mused quietly to himself. Of course he had been thinking that since Baltimore. It had hit him when he had watched her play with that damn toaster in the lab before it had all gone to shit. There was a synergy, a chemical reaction between her and the Commodore that he just couldn't match. And that made the situation she was in so much worse.

"It wasn't for the coffee, I can tell you that much. And the tea was even more horrid, which is almost hard to believe considering America started off as a British colony. You Yankees lost your touch after we left." She teased gently.

"Now wait just a damn minute, who are you calling a Yankee?!" He asked, affronted.

She muffled her laugh in her arm as she brought them up behind her head. "I miss the people. I used to sit outside at Joe's Coffee Bonza on my breaks from the lab and watch them go about their day. Most of the time they would be hurrying to and fro, talking on their phones or juggling shopping bags as they went about their lives. I would make up small stories in my head about them as they walked passed. It helped me to feel connected to the rest of the world. It kept me grounded in the real world...and reminded me of why I chose the field that I did. " She paused as she considered that.

"How will I make that connection now?" She wondered softly out loud.

Tex snorted as he turned his head back up. "In my not so inconsiderable opinion, you don't need help with that."

"Why? Because we will never see our world returned in our lifetime?"

"Doc, you never needed that in the first place. You convinced the U.S. Navy to let you borrow an Ashleigh Burke class destroyer on what was considered a wild goose chase by the rest of the scientific community. And in doing so, you saved what was left of the world." He paused as he considered the strength of the woman beside him.

The stars blurred together as she sniffed back more tears. "Tex?"

"Yeah Doc?"

"Thank you. So very much." She cast a glance at the road beside them, and craned her head back to look in the direction they had come from. An apprehensive look crossed her face.

"Do you think they're looking for us?"

"You mean the Nathan James?" He tightened his grip on the assault rifle laying next to him. She nodded and he caught the motion out of the corner of his eye.

"No Doc, I don't think they are. We made it far enough inland quickly enough and they had their hands full with the civilians on the beach."

Extreme guilt swept through her as she thought of the chaos they had left behind. She knew they had left behind injured people from the ships that had sunk but she hadn't expected the shots that had hammered at them from the survivors.

She had begged Tom to let her off the ship to help the injured. He had refused at first, of course, but had relented when the injured tally became overwhelming and Doc Rios and the others had been overcome. He let her off the ship but only in the company of the Master Chief, Tex and a few men from Danny's crew. She had been helping a child with a broken arm when the first shots came whizzing over their heads. She had dove on top of the child to shield him. When the fighting had moved off further down the beach Tex had grabbed her arm and yelled to the Master Chief he was taking her to cover. And he had been, but they had used that opportunity to enact the plan they had hatched in the last two days.

Tex had snuck into her stateroom after he had heard rumors in the scuttlebutt around ship about what had happened between her and the Captain. Apparently even though the walls were thick, they hadn't been thick enough to muffle the yelling. Wanting to know the real answers he had stowed away, which was easy since now she was escorted back to the stateroom she had hardly ever used before every night. He had been flabbergasted to know that for once, scuttlebutt had been telling the truth. After he had gotten over his shock, he had offered her two options. Stay and be a prisoner, or to escape the ship. The answer had been surprising considering the woman involved but then he had a bad habit of underestimating her.

"So where do we go from here?" She asked softly. They had just decided what the course of action was going to be, but had not actually gotten to the logistics of escaping a ship with over 200 sailors on it. Their impromptu run had been just that, and unexpectedly lucky they had found a truck not far from the beach. Even more fortuitous had been the full gas tank. The only thing she had not been caught off guard by had been the fact Tex knew how to hotwire a vehicle. They had stopped in at a small truck stop in Jackson, Mississippi when the adrenaline from the mad dash up Highway 55 had worn off.

"Well Doc, how do you feel about Memphis, Tennessee?"