After working on "shades of blue" for a while, I realized that some decisions I had taken kept me from using some very nice ideas as things would have contradicted each other badly. This is just another try to use all these left behind ideas finally :-)
Things start (again) close to the end of the final battle between the RDA and the Na´vi, introducing Cassidy McConahay as an additional, not original character. Just to keep you in line - several doomed alive
Cassidy sat at the edge of her chair, staring at the readings in front of her. Her fingers clutched the edge of the console in front of her, so hard that her nails had started splintering.
The lab had fallen silent around her. Assistants and technicians, colleagues as well as merely familiar faces, barely dared to breath.
The audio line had finally failed some minutes ago. So they had to watch the horrible pictures sent back to the base by Quaritch´s aircrafts in an even more awkward silence. Their qualitiy got worse every minute, caused by Pandora´s many natural sources of interference as well as by the shrinking number of still functional cameras and com devices. One of the computer freaks around had hacked himself right into Quaritch´s usually quite carefully protected surveillance system and at first, Cassidy had been both grateful and desperate to be at least able to watch what was going on instead of having to wait until Quaritch might have deigned to tell them about it.
The pictures still continued to flicker over the large screen above their heads, but Cassidy didn´t notice them anymore.
Seconds ago, one of the scientific surveillance systems the scientists had hidden from Quaritch for days by now on their own part, had went down.
Cassidy stared down at the display, at the energy levels that had went down to zero by now. Red lights, blinking constantly, kept repeating their message.
System failure.
There was no sign of any energy back up starting up, no way to access the surveillance system of the link pod, not even a way to find out if the mobile lab´s com or life support system probably still worked. No sign that any system out there was still at least existing.
"Cassidy", Max whispered right next to her, touching her shoulder carefully.
She didn´t react.
"We don´t know what´s happening out there", her colleague told her. "There is no way of knowing what´s going on."
She mused that she and Max had so far been the only ones who had realized what this most probably meant. She looked up to over the faces of the gathered people quickly.
"I think we know quite good what just happened", she whispered, getting up to her feet.
Max became more agitated.
"Where the hell you´re going ?" he asked. "We should stay out of these military guys´ way!"
Cassidy McConahay didn´t listen. She passed everybody else present like in trance, heading for the exit. The doors opened automatically for her and closed behind her with a low buzz.
"Cassidy!" Max shouted behind her.
She had realized quickly that Jake had been nothing like his brother. She had realized it the moment she had met him for the first time, and had realized it painfully every time she had encountered him during the last months again. They might have looked similarly, but there personalities couldn´t have been more different.
She had used to think like that at least.
Right now, she realized that there had undeniable been things the twins had had in common besides their looks.
The stubbornness, for example. The straightforwardness.
Cassidy went down the empty hallway. She stumbled and had to reach out for the wall to regain her balance.
Pictures of them mixed up behind her forehead, pictures of a doctor and a marine, a lover and a friend, a colleague and the one who had come to Pandora as a substitute. The small differences which had stood out to her so clearly the day Jake had finally arrived on Pandora suddenly started to blur within her memory. Two only slightly different faces melted into one in her mind´s eye.
She only needed some seconds to pull herself together again.
She had lost the man she had loved years ago, due to the credit of some greedy bastards. Now, with the mobile lab destroyed, she had lost another man so similar to the one she had loved and though she had always been painfully aware of the differences, she somehow felt like she had not only lost Jake right now, but Tom again as well.
And losing Jake meant facing the end of their small revolution as well in addtion.
She reached the door to her cramped quarters and went inside.
She couldn't accept that Jake should have died for nothing as well.