Disclaimer: Not mine, theirs.

A/N: This has now been betaed, thanks to Kathy. :) Enjoy.

Lucas sat in his room, staring blankly at his computer screen. He had been sitting in the same position for over an hour, Lucas barely even recognized the slight ache that was beginning in the small of his back. In his peripheral vision he could see Darwin swimming in the aqua tubes. He consciously chose to ignore the prompts from Darwin to turn the vocorder on.

Lucas continued to sit, silently contemplating his thoughts, on what had happened and what was held for him in the future. He had always thought that he knew what was in store. He had topped all his classes at college and knew exactly where life was leading him. Even when life threw him a slightly unexpected turn, the seaQuest, he still managed to decide his own path and know exactly where it was going. Now for some reason he didn't feel so sure.

Darwin barged against the window into Lucas' room, shaking him from his reverie. Although he knew Darwin was there all along, he hadn't expected his friend to try to gain his attention in such an abrupt manner. Lucas stood slowly; every muscle in his body now seemed to ache. He supposed it served him right, he knew better than to sit in one position for too long. He could hear Kristen's lecture about correct posture already. Lucas walked over to the vocorder controls on his wall and switched it on.
"You banged?"
"Lucas talk to Darwin"
"What about?"
"Why sad"
"I'm not sad Darwin"
"No?"
"No, not at all"
"Darwin not understand"
Lucas turned the talking device off and made signals for Darwin to follow him. He knew that the Moon pool would be empty at this time everyone was too busy eating and changing shifts to worry about checking what Darwin was up to. When Lucas arrived Darwin was waiting, impatiently splashing water over him.
"Darwin make Lucas happy, Lucas play with Darwin"
"Okay, I'll play with you, but like I said I'm not sad"
"What is Lucas?"
"Confused, Dar. I think I'm confused."

Nathan stood in the wardroom with the majority of the senior crew.
"So does everyone have that clear, Lucas is not to know anything about what is going on. I want to make sure that absolutely nothing goes wrong." Nathan paused and watched as he received nods from his crew, "Thank you, you're dismissed."
As everyone filed out of the room Nathan took Ben aside, "If Lucas finds out or if anything goes wrong with this plan I might have to hold you responsible, understood."
"Loud and clear Captain," with a wink Ben left the Captain to the all to quiet wardroom. Nathan, not talking to anyone in particular, turned off the lights "I hope we pull this off."
It had been two days since the meeting. Nathan was checking details with Crocker and Ford to make sure that everything was going as he had planned. So far, he thought, so good. Kristen was in charge of keeping Lucas distracted, which, in his present mood was not very difficult at all. Kristen was almost disappointed that Lucas hadn't tried to argue his way out of the tasks she set him. She was glad that she had someone to help her around her part of the lab, it had already cut months worth of reports down to only a week's worth.

Lucas sat at his part of the bench recording observations made when he added different solutions to the specimen that Kristen had given him. He was fairly sure that she was up to something, he just didn't know what. Bridger had come to the lab earlier that morning to tell them both that they would be making an unexpected trip to the mainland to gather more supplies. It seemed that Krieg had underestimated the length of their current voyage by a couple of months.

On the Bridge Nathan had Tim page Lucas. He wanted to keep Lucas as close to him as possible to avoid any slipups in the next couple of hours. He had noticed that he was slowly becoming suspicious of Kristen's actions. Nathan had Tim go with Ben to prepare one of the shuttles while he waited for Lucas to arrive. Lucas approached Nathan to see what he had been paged for.
"Lucas, I want you to go with Krieg and Tim on the first shuttle. Make sure you take some good clothes with you as I think we're going to need to stay overnight and I want us all to go to dinner"
"Are you kidding me, can't I just wear my normal clothes"
"Nope, not this time kiddo, I want this to be something out of the ordinary, something special."
"What ever, are we done now? I've got things to do."
Slightly frustrated Nathan let Lucas leave to finish his projects with Kristen before getting ready to leave the seaQuest.