Lucas was sitting on the ground, hiding behind bushes near the Pilgrim's Tree. Mira would have to come any second. He had been waiting there for… he didn't really know how long he had been there, but it must have been very long. Hours, maybe? Probably not. It felt like hours, though.

Finally, he heard footsteps approaching. He looked up and found Mira walking up to the designated spot with Carter right on her heels. Why did she always have to bring that guy along? Did she not know Lucas didn't like him? True, he did not like Mira much, either, but she was slightly more bearable.

Getting up on his feet, Lucas walked out from his hiding and towards the two. Mira smiled. "Right on time, just like always," she said with a grin. She seemed strange, almost… cheerful? That was unusual, or so Lucas assumed. He rarely saw her when she was happy. Then again, he rarely saw her regardless of her mood.

"What do you want?" the young man inquired. He was not willing to be bothered with small‑talk. She had called him earlier, saying there was something important she needed to tell him. If it was as urgent as she had claimed, why waste time with such pointless pleasantries he was sure none of them actually appreciated?

Instead of answering his question, Mira turned to look at Carter, still grinning. "Oh, go ahead," Carter told her. "You should be the one to say it."

"Really?" Mira asked, prompting the Sixer to nod.

Lucas shifted his weight on his feet, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Okay, what is going on?"

Mira looked back at the physicist. Her smile was beginning to scare him. "Lucas, we have good news for you," she started, then paused as if for dramatic effect. He raised his brows, waiting for her to explain the thing she could not have told him over the comm. "Your father is dead!" she said finally, raising her voice in excitement.

Lucas blinked. He must have misheard her. "What?"

"He's dead," she said. "Gone. Never to return. Out of our lives. Six feet under. Food for worms."

Lucas stared at her for a while, taking in what she had just told him. Then he gave a chuckle. "Is this a joke? Is it April Fools' today or something?"

"It's August, you fool," Carter replied. Lucas glared at him.

"It's not a joke, Lucas. He really is dead," Mira insisted. "We found out this morning. His funeral was held yesterday." Lucas's jaw dropped. "Isn't it great? Now that he's no longer in command, we can take over the colony! We'll gather our men and—"

Lucas raised his hand to stop her. His brain needed a moment to process the information. He glanced at the ground, eyes flicking between random spots. Dead… His father… That did not sound right. After a few seconds, he looked up at Mira once more. "How?" he asked softly. "How did it happen?"

"He got eaten by a carno."

"A carno?" The woman nodded. He opened his mouth as if to say something, yet not a single word came out. A carno. A carno! Not he, not his work, a carno. Lucas shook his head, eyes watering. "No, no, no," he whispered to himself. Then he shouted all of a sudden, "You're lying!"

The young man was baring his teeth at the two Sixers like an angry animal. Mira fought off the urge to take a step back. "I'm not lying," she argued. "Go to Terra Nova's memorial field, you'll find his grave there."

A carno. A freaking carno! Lucas kept on shaking his head, his breathing becoming erratic. "No, no, no, no … That can't be… No, that can't be true! No, no, he must be alive. He must be…" He stepped fast towards Mira. He grasped her arms, clutched them as though they were his only lifelines. His eyes were wide open, staring right into hers. "Tell me he's alive!" he yelled.

"He is not alive, Lucas. He's dead," she said, watching him warily. The woman could not help but squirm. "Aren't you happy to hear that?"

"Happy?" He tittered. "Am I supposed to be happy?" Biting down on his lip, he struggled to hold back the prickling in his eyes. Happy… How could he be happy? He couldn't… No, no, his father… Gone, never to return… Never to see…

Soon enough, tears started to roll down the young man's cheeks. Mira furrowed her brows upon the sight. "Why are you crying?" she questioned. She did not sound concerned, just confused. "Your father is dead!" Oh, she just had to rub it in, didn't she? "Didn't you want that to happen?"

"Not like this!" he responded, sniffling. "And not now! I am so close to finishing, so close to finishing my work! Now he will never… He will never…" Lucas covered his mouth with his hand, fisting it and digging his nails into his palm. He could not handle it anymore. He could not. His brain was getting dizzy, and his body was starting to tremble. His father was dead.

Letting out a loud cry, Lucas allowed himself to drop on his knees. He hunched over, pressing his forehead against the ground. He did not care that Mira and Carter would see him in such a sorry state. He lacked the strength to care. His father was dead. His life had lost its meaning. What else did he have left? He could not see anything. There was nothing else for him to do but cry.

He let his tears fall freely, let them wet the grass beneath him. He would not have been able to stop them even if he had wanted to. He had to let his grief out, he had to. He could not hold it back anymore. Lucas sobbed and blubbered like a broken child, while the world around him went silent.

It felt like a lifetime before he managed to gather enough willpower to look up again. When he did, he found out he was no longer near the Pilgrim's Tree. No, he was at the Snakehead Falls. Mira and Carter were gone. He was alone. Not that he found anything strange about the change.

He got up on his feet. He walked towards one of the streams and crossed it. His calculations were on the rocky wall behind. He stepped closer and extended his arm, running his hand over the carvings in a gentle, loving manner. "Look at you," he said. "You are new. I put you here a few days ago." He paused to sob in a way that bordered on gasping for air. "He will never get to see you now!" he whined, then hid his face behind his palms as he wept.

"He's gone, gone!" he cried. "He can't be gone. I haven't finished my job yet. Almost, but not yet! He can't be gone. He can't be! He needs to see that I can succeed. I need him to see that I can succeed. I need him to know what I can do. I need him! He's the reason I am doing this! He's the reason I've been willing to stay in the jungle this whole time. He's the… I need… Dad, please!"

He kept on crying for a while longer, then wiped the tears from his eyes. He looked around. His calculations. They were everywhere, covering the rocks from top to bottom. And what were they good for now? Now that the commander was dead. Now that he would never get to see their power. Now that he would never know how wrong he had been about his son. He had thought his son was a weak, worthless loser, but that was not the case. It was not. His son could and would do great things. One day, the father would see. …would have seen if he had been alive.

To make his father see, that was all that mattered to him. It was all he wanted, all he needed. It was killing him inside to know that his greatest wish would never come true, that he would never fulfill the only purpose his life still had.

Killing him…

He heard a roar. He turned around, finding himself in the middle of a dense jungle all of a sudden. A carnotaurus was walking nearby, probably trying to find its next prey.

Well, he figured it would be symbolic to be murdered by the same animal that had destroyed his spirit.

Lucas whistled, and the carnotaurus looked at him. "You son of a bitch," the young man all but growled. "You already took my life from me, why don't you take this empty shell, too? It'll be easier for me if you end this right here and now." The carnotaurus tilted its head, giving a snort while observing the person in front of him. "Come on! Spare me the pain!"

The dinosaur started to run towards Lucas. The man did not try to escape. He stood there, glued on the spot, waiting for his inevitable demise. Demise in the form of giant, sharp teeth that were coming for him. A part of him was scared, yet, somehow, he knew he would be better off.

The carnotaurus roared again.

Lucas sat up on his makeshift bed, alert, eyes scanning his surroundings. He could have sworn he had heard a roar, maybe even two. After blinking a few times to clear his vision, he found a carnotaurus passing in the distance.

Lucas scowled. Having just woken up, he was really not in the mood to run. "Oh, come on, go away," he said quietly to himself as if talking to the dinosaur. "Leave. I'm tired, don't make get up." The carnotaurus stopped, possibly to sniff something, but Lucas was not sure. The jungle was too dark for him to see properly. "Don't just stand there, go. Shoo. Get out." The dinosaur started walking again in the same direction as before, and soon it was out of the human's sight. "There you go. Good boy."

Lucas took in a breath. 'I did hear it roar before, didn't I?' he thought. 'It must have appeared in the dream I was having. What was that about, again? There was a carno at the end, and it was running towards me, and… Did it eat me? No, I don't think it got that far. Why didn't I try to run away, though? I wanted it to eat me, didn't I? Why the hell would I want that? Wait… Wasn't there something about my father? No, it was about my calculations; I remember being at the Snakehead Falls. I was looking at the equations, and… I don't remember what I was doing there. Oh, well.' Mentally shrugging it off, the man lay back down.

Lucas turned to lie on his other side and curled up into a ball. He pulled his blanket up. With a little, content smile stemming from feeling his own warmth under the cover, Lucas drifted off back to sleep.

The end

Author's note

This is the first story I have decided to post on this site that was not beta-read by another person. I'm an overly confident bitch, ain't I? :-D I figured that since I can post stories to other sites without having them beta-read, I can do it here as well, so there. If you find any mistakes, let me know, I'll appreciate the help.

Anyway, I hope you guys liked the story. It's quite different from the last one I posted on this site, isn't it, haha? Thank you for reading, and maybe we'll see each other again when I decide to post something else here. Bye for now!

P.S.: May I please complain about the fact that this site keeps changing my pretty, curly quotation marks into the ugly, straight ones? Also, the quotation marks at the beginnings of paragraphs were suddenly not in italics when I uploaded it. "Layout styles will be preserved" my ass! Tumblr never does that to me when I post stories there. Ugh… Sorry, guys, I'm just a bit annoyed.