A/N: thanks to everyone who's diligently been following along. School/my RA aren't letting me finish editing as fast as I'd like, but I promise I WILL finish. Keep the reviews coming; they're great inspiration.


As soon as Kacey had heard her father's message, she knew that it was highly likely nothing would ever be the same again. However Hera/Isis didn't share her gift, and had just been thrown into this world.

"They'd kill my mom?" she quietly asked as the two girls sat together in the observation deck.

"Probably. She helped to take me away from my real father. And she kept you away from the other Cylons."

"Why did they want us in the first place?"

"It's complicated…they think that they're following the will of their creator, their God. But…from what my mom's taught me about religion, I don't think a God that would want to wipe out civilizations would be a good God."

Hera looked down at her hands. "I'm scared," she whispered. "I don't understand all of this. What are they going to want with us?"

"I'm not sure…but I can't let anything happen to my Mom."


Hera agreed with her friend that she didn't want anything to happen to her real mother, but that didn't make the prospect of going to the Cylons any less terrifying. Kacey said she had something she needed to do, so that gave Hera a little while alone. She passed her little brother in the hallway as she headed back to Maya's quarters.

"What's going on?" KJ asked her.

"Nothing," she quietly replied. "There's nothing going on."

"Kacey's going to do something, isn't she?" he asked, not believing his sister for a second. "She's good at that. She did something when the Raiders were attacking the fleet before. I want to help!"

"We're not doing anything, KJ, go away."

The younger boy frowned. "No! She's my mom, too, and she's been mine longer." That didn't get a response. "Dad hasn't been back from CIC all day; something's really wrong, isn't it?"

"It's going to be okay. Go home and wait for Dad, okay? He's going to need you." She started to turn away from him, but KJ caught his sister's hand.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

"Go home, KJ," she quietly replied before pulling away and continuing down the hall.


There was one piece of information that was absolutely critical to Kacey's plan, and she unfortunately had only one way to acquire it. She was certain that if Lee was here, he'd just about murder her for intentionally connecting directly to the Cylon data stream, but she couldn't think of another solution. She and Hera had to do this themselves – the risk of trusting someone else, and putting their life in danger as well, was just too great.

Sitting in the back of the pilot's ready room, she cleared her mind as much as she could and reached out to find the information she sought. She was somewhat aware of the presence of other minds near her own, trying to determine who she was and what she wanted, but she ignored them, blocking them to the best of her ability.

When she'd been a very small girl, just after her mother had brought her to Galactica, she'd had her link to the other Cylons disabled. She'd been too little to do it on her own, unable to fully comprehend everything that she was doing even with her advanced mind. Sharon had had to help her, and that had required a procedure that Kacey now needed to duplicate. If two bio-Cylon minds – two organic computers – could be connected together, then surely she could connect herself to a slower, less complicated man-made computer. She just needed to find out how to do it without permanently damaging herself. Or the other computer.

Just as she found what she was looking for, someone else's thoughts drifted too close to her own – someone familiar, and at the same time completely unknown. Kacey closed her connection before they could get something from her that she didn't want to give away, her heart pounding.

Who had almost discovered her? It was almost like they were…but that wasn't possible. Was it?


Maya looked up as she saw Hera/Isis come in the door to her quarters. "Hey, sweetheart. Your friend didn't want to come?"

"I-I can't go to dinner tonight," she quietly said.

"Oh…But I thought – "

"I just can't, Mom. There's something…there's something that came up."

Maya tried to swallow her disappointment. She was losing her daughter one day at a time. "Tomorrow night, then?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe you could spend the night here tonight?"

"No. I want to, I really do, I just…I can't." The fact that her daughter was almost in tears had her mother concerned.

"It's okay, sweetheart, we'll reschedule…You know that I love you, right, Isis?"

She was instantly in her mother's arms, trying and failing to hold back her tears. "I love you, too, Mom. Always have and always will."

Maya pulled back a little, looking in the little girl's eyes. "What's all this about?" she asked as she gently wiped her tears.

"Nothing. Just…there's been a lot going on."

She sighed. "I know it's just as hard on you as it is on everyone else. If not harder…You tell Sharon and Helo to make sure they take care of my girl, okay?"

Hera/Isis swallowed hard. "I-I will…Love you," she added one more time before heading back out the hatch – possibly leaving her old life behind for good.


The fact that Kacey had spent a few days that week working with her mother on deck meant that she was privy to the repair schedule for the different Raptors in Galactica's hanger. Raptor 384 had just finished going through a big overhaul, and was scheduled for a return to duty the following morning. That made it the perfect vehicle for her plan.

Hera/Isis had been extremely nervous about someone on the deck crew catching her wandering around and throwing her off the deck, but that didn't happen. 384 was tucked back in the corner of the hanger, and no one noticed as she climbed up on its wing and into its cockpit.

"Ready?" Kacey asked her 'cousin.'

"No," Hera/Isis replied, but she wasn't backing down. Kacey smiled slightly.

"Push that button to close the hatch," she ordered, "And…don't look if you don't like blood."

"Why?" the other girl asked as she obeyed her friend's first command. She looked back in time to see Kacey taking a knife to her left arm. "What are you doing???"

She winced as blood started to flow. "I told you, I don't know how to fly."

"Then how are we supposed to get off the ship?"

"The Raptor knows how."

Hera/Isis frowned. "Huh?"

"Every button and switch in here is linked to a computer. The computer has software that lets it know that flipping a certain switch means to do a certain thing – like fire up the FTL. If I'm part of the computer system, then I'll know what to do, too."

Hera warily watched, flinching, as Kacey put a data cable in her wound. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"No. That's why I got the instructions from someone who did…You're probably going to want to sit down."

Being part of the Raptor's computer was somewhat like connecting to the Cylon data stream, and somewhat unlike anything Kacey had ever done before. She could turn on systems with a thought and instead of requiring the completion of numerous calculations and the entering of several different values, plotting a jump was almost as simple as visualizing a star chart and picking a location. She understood why networking Galactica's systems was so dangerous, but if someone could fly the whole Battlestar like this…it would be the most amazing experience.

"Jumping in five…four….three…." she told Hera, "Two….one."

A sound like a minor explosion raced through the hangar deck, the strong force from rapidly shifting air molecules sending objects flying from their perches and triggering alarms. Raptor 384 had vanished into thin air, leaving a divot in the floor beneath where she'd sat.

"Frak me," Galen Tyrol muttered as he stared at the empty spot where one of his fighters had been located only moments before.


TBC...