CHAPTER 13 PART 1
"THE FALL"
Ressurection Hub
Sam heard the noise of the approaching centurion before he opened his eye's, the light painful to his eye's.
The blurred shape of a centurion looked down at him.
Inside Sam prayed he was looking up at an ally, unlike the movie's though, it was probably just one more sick joke by cavil then a rescue operation to salvage a dying hero.
The machine remained where it was, standing over him. Did it understand what it was doing? Could it see betrayal that John had orchestrated. Of course not.
'Their frakking corpses, walking, muted corpses, only following the simplest orders without a thought as to why or how.'
The machine's head jerked as some noise was heard in the distance. Sam thought it was the sound of glass breaking.
'I wonder if John left these labs as they were the day he killed us. Probably didn't want to see the rest of the family be born' Sam thought, the wooziness from blood loss clouding his mind.
Reaching down at his shirt, he made to tear it off, to see the open wounds, perhaps form a crude bandage from the tattered rags he now wore.
The centurion's head turned to him now. Whatever had startled it, Sam alone now occupied its attention.
'I'm not being killed by centurion. Not really.' Sam took comfort in that thought. His vision was returning, he'd have to squint to see the machine's gun unfold from its arm. He was glad he did.
The smooth lines, the thing was labor of love created by Galen, his friend and fellow earth refugee.
'If I'm about to die, I wanna be reminded of them, of those moments we spent together.'
The centurion raised its weapon at Sam.
'Its going to shoot me in the head. Least Cavil isn't controlling it this time. Smug bastard would probably shoot me in the legs and let me bleed out here on this floor.'
BANG!
A wall blew open nearby, the secondary explosions that came through loud and clear were the grenades that had come through the breach.
The centurion really wasn't controlled by Cavil, if it was it would have just shot Sam and ignored the new threats. Instead It unlocked its second fire-arm and let the bullets fly.
Sam rolled over, his clothing becoming drenched in the pool of blood he'd been laying in. The red smear followed Sam right up to the nearby counter. His right hand struggled to heave his frame around the accursed workstation.
"Covering fire!" Someone shouted.
A loud answer was heard, Sam could hear two, maybe three large caliber guns going off.
The centurion's own weapon could be heard, if only for a moment.
'Who is that? She's still back on the ship so it can't be her. Who the frak is that?' Sam wondered.
Then silence.
"clear. All target eliminated. Tend to parent Sam!"
"Alright, I'm going as fast as I can. We need to find him first."
"He's over here!" Came a voice, a few feet away.
'An eight? I saw her die, the rest are frak know's where...unless the centurion's found them.'
The sound of running, centurion and humanoid alike registered in Sam's ears, low to the ground, his vision threatening to fog up once more.
Suddenly Sam registered the sensation of being lifted off the ground, propped up by two individuals, an eight aided on his left by a centurion.
'There are many copies.' Sam thought glumly. The eight from before was probably dead, though for the life of him he couldn't remember what had caused her death.
One moment they'd been talking, the next a round had come screaming through the air and exited the eights skull, the shot having caved in the poor cylon's nose. That Sam remembered, that look she had as she fell, eye's open in shock.
Flashback:
They sat on either end of the hall staring each other down, looking for signs of deception, a tell that one was a liar, the other about to lung forward and attempt an act of patricide.
"So...your a cylon." The eights voice reached Sam's ears, it wasn't a question. She was repeating his words, but the statement didn't come across as fact.
'She doesn't believe me. What have you done to them Cavil?'
No switch was thrown, no song or melody it seemed could lift what Cavil had put in place.
'In this place Cavil's reality is the only one that exists.'
The child's manipulations had come to fruition in this moment, in every moment Sam experienced on this accursed superstructure. The biological humanoid cylons didn't know who he was, they probably didn't even know about Ellen, Tigh, Galen or Tory.
'Ha! Saul if you could see me now, you always said you'd end up a grumpy old man forgotten by the kids when the holidays came around and they'd matured.' Sam thought. The smile that played upon his face piqued the Eight's curiosity.
"Why the frak are you smiling?" She was angry, she was scared and confused.
"hmm. Oh just thinking about a friend, another cylon."
"Is he like you? A cylon we don't know about?"
Sam's response was crisp and matter a fact.
"Yes."
Another moment of silence before the Eight once again questioned Sam.
"Is he here with you? With the centurions somewhere else... fighting the rest of us?" The eight asked with a hint of venom.
'She thinks I'm the bad guy here? Frak me, this is worse then that snow job Scorpia pulled in my second season.' Sam thought, recalling the championship match he'd played in during his second year with the Caprica Buccaneers.
"No...I don't know where he is exactly but I have reason to believe he doesn't know the truth. You can thank Cavil for that." Sam replied downheartedly.
Eight looked down at her hands, eye's shifting this way and that as if trying to come to a decision, silently weighing the odds this was all an elaborate human hoax.
Finally the biological cylon, the prodigy of Sam's friend Galen, let out a sigh before her head once more came up to stare into Sam's eye's.
"Show me."
"What?"
"Show me everything you've said, show me your truth. Cavil, this other cylon who doesn't know he's one of us, if he even exists."
"How do you..." Sam began when the Eight stretched out her hand to him, reaching the center of the hallway, begging Sam to reach across and close the chasm as well.
The centurion's motions hadn't been concealed, there had been no point. The praetorian brought its rifle to bear on the Eight once more. Waiting for the Eight to try something while Sam let down his guard.
"Lower your weapon!" Sam all but shouted at the centurion, extending his own hand in the process to touch the Eight's.
"We're family after all." Sam said.
Eight:
This was all wrong, the human reaching out to her, his claims of being one of her kind. But she'd gone along with it, the centurion's deadly proficencie at ending her siblings saw to that. The traitorous fellow cylon had very nearly ended her already.
Their hands touched and for her, for this one lone Eight that had already endured betrayal and anguish several times over today, from the discord in the control room to the sight of her fellow eight's butchered in the halls. Before everything changed and the projection...or something like it fired off images at her, Eight wonder absently weather Diana was sending word to loyalist soldiers to gun down her model, after all, each model while unique was the same from copy to copy.
Each Six could seduce or wrestle a marine to the ground, maybe even take out an unaware battlestar captain under their spell. The One's who'd been absent when this whole clusterfrak got underway, had that same cynicism weather it was the presidents aerobics instructor or the local piconese priest. So one cylon to another they expected the same outcome, the same reaction however varied circumstances might be.
The surroundings did change though, these thoughts did give way to new one's, one's of alarm proceeded by curiousity. They were in a small room, several cylons were seated at what appeared to be a triangular table, a large rotating circular table in the middle allowed her brothers and sisters to choose from what was an amazing variety of food, foods she's certainly never eaten.
'Only a cylon could show me this...but that doesn't mean he isn't lying about other things. Why attack us all? Why not come to us for help?' The Eight thought puzzled.
"See something out of place?"
"Yes, I've never been here what is this place, this projection your showing me?"
"Its a memory of long ago, or at least it feels that way, reality I'd say this was maybe thirty two years ago."
"Why don't I remember this?"
"You'll find out in time. Just stand back and enjoy this memory, if all goes well the others will come to remember moments like this..." Sam said as his gaze settled on Cavil. The one who'd caused all the chaos barely two years after this very meeting. The One was chatting with Leoben about something, and looking on was none other then himself seated at the smallest side of this Isosceles triangle that passed for a table.
For her part, Eight just kept looking at the faces gathered, noting with some confusion the extra chairs but also her own absence. Five entered through a side passageway, of which their seemed to be four, one for every side of the room, lacking doors or any other form of barrier.
"Ellen suggested it. She thought removing the doors and other barriers would make us a more open society then we used to be." Sam said aloud. The memory continued to play out with him sitting on the edge of his own empty section, now lecturing Leoben about something while Diana made a remark. Sam smiled, his memory copying the action.
"Who's Ellen?" Eight said before following his eye's, seeing number Three begin to argue with both Cavil and Leoben, all be it in playful manner.
"She's in the middle, still young and trying to impress me. She's always been stuck in the middle of her two brother arguing for a middle ground, though I think she just want to impress her father at this meeting of ours."
"Her Father?!" Eight asked mouth agape. The idea that the cylon race had parents, could concieve at all was simply ludicris. They'd tried thousands of times, counteless miscarriages between models had brought mental instability, suicides, all of which ended in boxings. Their sole colonial prisoner that showed the cylon race humanities true intentions had even been used, primarily by the six's but also the odd Three or Eight like herself. The longing to create life had been powerful, was still powerful and this brought all manner of questions about why god would curse them so, if they were indeed his chosen.
"Not in the biological sense I suppose but something doesn't just come from nothing. Haven't you ever wondered where you came from Sharon? How you and all your brothers and sisters exist aboard those baseships that look nothing like the one's the colonials built in the war?"
"No. We were created by centurions in the last days of the fighting, those baseships were going to be replaced, we simply stole the plans for the newer models and expanded on them, just like the centurions." She recited confidently, this was common knowledge to her people after all, and a point of pride. The colonials could create ships and machines but only machines could see these devices reached their full potential.
Sam closed his eye's and massaged his face with his hands, the brief action meant to quell the headache, the anger or whatever else may come at this revelation. He'd already been here before. The hybrid had told him of all of this, he'd been shocked then and had filed it away since, needing a clear head to free his people. To hear one of his children say the lie's cavil had instilled, the fake memories and half truths working flawlessly, got to him. But Eight would get the wrong idea if he lashed our or let his emotions rule him, their would be a time for vengence soon enough.
"Here they come. Hopefully this will answer some of your questions."
The clatter of feet, some with sturdy boot heels, other in casual footwear grew louder from the corrider to the seated Sam's immediate right. Sure enough Eight saw a blond lead the assembled group, followed closely by an aged man with greying hair who lack much of any of it on his head. Behind these two came a woman with olive skin and a man wearing what appeared to be lab coat spotted with various fluids.
"Hello Mom and Dad." The assembled cylons said, though Eight could see Diana looked at Sam when she said the words. They made to rise from their seats but the blond woman Eight assumed might be Ellen stopped them.
"Oh its alright, you don't to get up on our account. We have some wonderful news to share with you all, don't we Tigh?". The woman said looking loving at the bald man seated between herself and Sam.
The Eight could only continue to stare at the cylons, at Sam and all the other unfamiliar faces that she felt she should know. As her gaze traveled over the assembly awaiting their next words, she failed to take notice of the woman peering around a nearby corner from which the final five had entered.
That woman was her.
AN: Sorry for the late update. Between work and lots of stress getting ready to go on vacation to Seattle (ironic), its been hard to rouse the muse to write. Originally this was supposed to be about twice as long of an update and be the final one. Given circumstances we'll call this chapter 12.5 or 13 Part 1. In unrelated news, 1963 is still a pain to write, Echo will get another update sooner then later. Have a good week everyone!