Chapter 1

Lucas Taylor awoke to the sound of incessant rain thundering down upon the roof of his small house. No surprise, really. It had been raining for almost a week with no signs of stopping. The weather 'experts' were predicting even more rain to come, and the colony had been instructed to prepare for the worst. Lucas wasn't worried, though. Why should he be? In all its past years, he had never known Terra Nova to flood. Why start panicking now? Malcolm and the rest of the scientific nerds were worried, but then, they had always been apt to lose their heads over the slightest possibility of disaster. Lucas stared up at the noisy roof, happily unaware that the group of 'scientific nerds' he had just mentally insulted was a category that also included himself. He stretched his arms behind his head and leaned on them, watching the white sheets above him billowing and rippling with the faint breeze as the rain's ceaseless drum beat persisted.

It was as if these people hadn't seen a bit of rain before. It was water! What was it gonna do? They'd be miserable and soggy for a while, but they'd get over it. Well, perhaps a small cold as well for the lucky ones. There was a few people he could think of that might benefit from a small cold. Just a small one. He sighed loudly, but there was no one to hear his wordless complaining. He returned to his thoughts. Today was the day they'd planned to start filling up sandbags. The market people had been instructed to begin work on the actual bags only a few days into the rain. The colony's ever-conscientious Commander was accounting for all possibilities. Jim Shannon had a tendency to go above and beyond. Ah well, the colony had had worse leaders in the past.

Sandbagging.

Lucas snorted as his mind flicked back to his previous train of thought. It was an ancient form of disaster prevention, but still somewhat effective, he supposed, even if it was unnecessary.

He rolled his head sideways and looked over at the little clock on his bedside table. 3:16. He knew the familiar soft ticking so well by now, his mind almost convinced him he could make it out through the pounding above him. Most of the colonists didn't bother with clocks. They all had tags - small transparent blue rectangles of technology that held their entire identities encased inside the plexiglass, as well as other small necessities such as the time of day. Being a reformed criminal, he wasn't permitted to have a tag. Usually, he didn't need one - he'd learned to estimate the time fairly effectively during his stint in the wilderness, but he often woke during the night and lay thinking for hours on end. He'd always been a light sleeper, prone to nightmares and insomnia. Now that he was living in a house and could no longer see the sky the moment he opened his eyes, the time stretched on indefinitely. Many nights passed where he would lie awake and watch the linen flutter above him for several years before morning finally came. Somehow knowing the time helped him to calm his wandering mind and fall asleep. His eyes trailed over the strange-looking combination of carved wood and translucent plexiglass. The clock was one of a kind. It had been given to him on Christmas Day a few months ago. Lucas smiled to himself as the memory resurfaced. He had woken that morning with the vague knowledge that it was Christmas - How could he have avoided the reality? It had been all the market people could talk about for weeks. He could basically recite their spiel off by heart.

"Come and have a look at the new items we've put out. Been workin' real hard on these beauties. How'd you like to bring this home as a gift to a special someone?"

When the actual day had dawned, he had gotten up and wandered aimlessly around the house for a few minutes before deciding it was just like any other morning and proceeding to automatically work through his morning routine. It had been years since he had celebrated Christmas anyway. On the way to the sink after finishing his customary cup of orange juice, he had heard a knock at the door. Upon opening it, he had found his two favourite people, Deborah and Skye Tate, standing on his doorstep with large smiles on their faces. Odd, but .. sure. He had let them in unceremoniously and placed a cup of juice in each of their hands. He still remembered the laughing look they had exchanged as they sat down, but they had said nothing at the time, instead starting up another ordinary conversation and sipping their juice happily. He had sat down on the couch opposite them and listened for a moment until the conversation died and their focus turned back to him. After a few awkward seconds of silence in which they had all examined each other blankly, he had found a small box being thrust into his empty hands. Carelessly waving away his protests about not having gotten them anything, Deborah and Skye sat waiting and watching expectantly. In the end, there was no help for it but to open the box. Shoving down the uncalled-for lurch in his stomach, Lucas had carefully opened the lid and drawn out this little clock.

He reached for it now and held it in front of his face with both hands. Such a small thing, but if anything ever happened to it, he probably would've killed everyone around him and then himself. He placed it back carefully onto his bedside table and rolled over so that he was facing it. Smiling at it, he continued his mental tale.

They hadn't told him where they'd found it (though he suspected Casey Durwin, the wheelchair-bound local trader, may have had something to do with it). Instead, they had watched in silence as he turned it over and over in his hands. After a few moments, he had awkwardly stammered his thanks and looked up, expecting them to seem disappointed by his lack of reaction. He was both confused and relieved to find they did not look disappointed in the least. In fact, they had seemed as pleased as if they had been given the gift themselves. The rest of the morning passed in comfortable spurts of conversation. Once, Skye had looked back from talking with her mother to see him studying the clock thoughtfully. He had glanced up to find her watching him with a raised eyebrow. When questioned, she had threatened to take it off him if he so much as took the casing off it. He had promised not to.

He patted the top of the clock in a friendly fashion and rolled onto his back once more. After a few serious chess matches with Skye (as her mother looked on with interest), they had bidden him farewell and Merry Christmas. They were heading over to the Shannons' house for lunch and didn't want to keep them waiting (especially considering Josh would apparently be "snacking on the table soon"). With an affectionate goodbye, they had taken their departure, leaving him to digest the events of the morning alone.

He rolled his eyes automatically as he thought of the Shannons, though his heart wasn't really in it. The family of goody-two-shoes had been kinder than necessary where he was concerned, and for that, he supposed he had to be grateful. Lucas suddenly felt the urge to mentally slap himself. He was grateful. He was growing to like the weird little group more than he cared to admit. He half sat up to thump his pillow in mild irritation. Why was everything so uncomfortable tonight?! Flopping back down onto his submissive head rest, his mind turned to his day job at the Lab. He had his own little desk in his own little corner, but was also free to wander around the main area as he wished, so long as he didn't interfere with anyone else's work .. or come into contact with anything potentially dangerous in the hands of a deranged lunatic. Evidently Malcolm still didn't trust him completely yet. When the head researcher was busy (as he usually was), Lucas either worked on his own small projects, or side-by-side with Maddy Shannon, Malcolm's other assistant. At first, both parties had resented the arrangement - Lucas being paired up with yet ANOTHER Shannon, and Maddy having to work with .. well, Lucas. In the months that had followed, however, they had grown to accept the situation with an air of resignation and even found they worked surprisingly well together. Maddy was smart and picked up on his scattered trains of thought quickly, and Lucas appreciated having someone around who understood the benefits of intelligent conversation. At least until IT happened. One day Maddy had come bounding into the Lab all giddy and giggly and announced that Mark had finally asked her to marry him. She had startled both Lucas and Malcolm, and the latter had almost tipped over his experiment in the process, which, though amusing, wouldn't have been ideal (especially as his desk had only been replaced a few weeks beforehand). Lucas had stared at her blankly while Malcolm attempted to recover himself enough to offer his congratulations. Lucas clumsily added his own to Malcolm's, and Maddy graciously accepted them. Then they had all returned to work. That, he assumed, would be the end of it. Not so. Not by a long shot. From that moment up to the present, her every thought seemed to be about the upcoming wedding. Every conversation they had would eventually, somehow, end up being related back to the wedding. Every experiment they did might have been turned into a weapon that had the potential to obliterate the wedding .. okay, maybe that was just on his side of the story, but enough was enough. He smiled to himself as he thought of Jim. Rumour had it, poor Jim had been so overwhelmed with the prospect of his eldest daughter's upcoming marriage, he had ended up being escorted to the Infirmary by Sergeant Reilly, his second-in-command. Whether this was entirely true or not wasn't the point. It was half-true, and that was enough for the colony grapevine.

Lucas shook his head. All these colony people did was sit around and talk about things that were none of their business to begin with. For the most part, though, he could ignore them. He could ignore the stares and the whispers and the blatant snubbing. He'd learned to ignore it. He had to! It was either that, or be a nervous wreck all the time. Now he barely noticed. He'd settled into a comfortable state of existence in which he liked certain people and completely ignored the rest. In reality, the only person he could be bothered really despising .. was Josh Shannon. He'd happily sit and watch someone whacking Josh with a giant meat mallet if given half the opportunity. He'd probably pay them to do it! Lucas was unable to hold back a laugh at the mental picture, but he could barely hear his own laughter anyway. The rain, if possible, had grown even louder. He scowled up at the roof. A little rain-patter helped to lull him to sleep, but this was ridiculous. How could he sleep with nature's brass band playing above his bed?!

A sharp knock on the front door up the hall rapidly put an end to his train of thought.

"LUCAS! Get up! Snakehead's broken its banks!"