OK, so maybe everybody else is excitedly waiting for Santa to come down the chimney, but here I am, finally getting round to updating this story. Sad, really. A huge apology to everyone for taking so bloody long about it, I have no excuse other than that I am Slack. Consider this my Christmas present to you all.

As always, mighty cheers and piles of turkey'n'trimmings for the lovely folks who reviewed: Yury, Darkness Amber, Karel, dolphinology, pari106, sara, KatKnits00, Diena, hepatica and Mariel3.

Yury: Thanks for your message! Merry Christmas to you too! Also, if you check out what Lucas and co were up to in the car, and what they ingested, you might be able to work out who poisoned them. That's all I'm sayin'

Karel: Um... blushes deeply and hangs head

Well, Merry Christmas one and all, and with any luck the next part will be out before we're all old and grey. crosses fingers

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Cabin Fever

Chapter 10

Med-bay was quiet when Bridger entered; too quiet. The bustle he'd expected, that he associated with the saving of lives from too many late-night reruns of 90s medical shows, was nowhere to be seen. That's a good thing, he told himself, stepping further into the room, but then he stopped in horror at the sight of a shrouded bed in the corner. He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him, and didn't see Westphalen until she grabbed his arm, squeezing hard, the pain bringing him back to reality. He stared at her and then at the bed, unable to voice the question. But she followed his line of sight and looked back, her face filled with sorrow.

"The boy," she said quietly, and then when she saw his face grow even paler, she added hastily, "Nick."

Bridger felt an incredible surge of relief for the third time in less than two days, and then hated himself for feeling it. "Nick," he whispered, trying to remember if he'd ever met the boy's parents, trying to imagine them at home now, waiting for their son to come back from his night out. And then trying not to imagine it any more. He rubbed his hands over his face, steeling himself. "What about the others?"

"They're here," Westphalen said, leading him to the other side of the room. "O'Neill will be fine," she continued, as they passed the bed where the lieutenant lay. "It seems he didn't ingest as much of the poison as the boys, and that, coupled with his greater body mass, meant we reached him in time. As for Lucas, he should be fine..." She stopped by a bed, the same bed, Bridger realised, that the boy had been sleeping in just the night before last. Well, trying to sleep in, anyway. The recollection made Bridger draw his breath in sharply – he could see those pleading eyes in front of him, and yet here there was only a frail-looking child, his skin grey and almost translucent, breathing through a tube. Had he already had the virus that night, when he had been so withdrawn and grouchy, so... Lucas? And the next day, when he had thrown up after Hoyle killed himself? Of course he had it by then, Bridger reminded himself. Levin was already dead by then. A sudden thought struck him, making him feel nauseous. What if Hoyle didn't kill himself?

He was aware that Westphalen was speaking, but he interrupted. "How much of this will he remember when he wakes up?"

Westphalen stared at him in surprise, then shook her head. "Nathan, I'm not even sure if he will wake up."

Bridger blinked. "But you just said he would be fine," he said, shocked.

Westphalen's expression was troubled. "No, I said he should be fine. We reached him in time, we administered antidote and flushed the poison out of his system, he doesn't seem to have suffered any permanent damage, but..." She trailed off.

"But what?" Bridger could feel the bottom dropping out of his stomach again.

Westphalen lifted her gaze to meet his. "But he's slipping away from us," she said, her eyes glittering in the harsh light. "And I don't understand why," she added, almost in a whisper.

Bridger stared at her, suddenly noticing once again the deep lines around her eyes, the paleness of her skin and the dull shade of her hair. Do I look that wrung out too? he wondered. They were exhausted, everyone on the boat was exhausted, and they were missing something. Something vital. And he was damned if he would just let Lucas "slip away" without working out what that something was.

"What does he need to recover?" he asked, and his voice sounded to him like it was coming from a long way away.

Westphalen shrugged disconsolately. "Nothing. Just willpower."

Bridger thought for a moment, feeling oddly calm. "The virus," he said, "it causes the infected person to commit suicide, right?"

Westphalen nodded, frowning. "That's right, but what..." Suddenly her face cleared. "The virus!"

Bridger leaned forward, gripping her arm. "Have you finished working on the cure?"

Westphalen shook her head. "I've been so busy..." She looked anguished.

"How much time do we have?" Bridger asked, feeling his grip tighten to the point where it must have been causing the doctor some pain, but somehow unable to stop it.

She glanced nervously at the bed. "I don't know... but I'll get right on it." Disengaging her arm from his grasp, she spun and left the room almost at a run, leaving him alone with the two unconscious figures.

Bridger stared after he for a moment, afraid to let the spark of hope inside him grow, afraid of being let down again. Why did I come back here, to this life? He wondered, turning to look at Lucas but not really seeing him. It took everything I loved once before, and now I've just given it the opportunity to repeat the trick. He reached out to touch his young friend's cheek, and there was a loud crash behind him.

He spun sharply, to see that a stool had fallen, knocking over an IV stand. There was no-one in the room but him – at least, no-one who was alive and conscious. He felt his heart thumping hard against his ribcage, his stomach fluttering, but beneath all that he felt something inside him snap. This has gone on long enough.

"What are you?" he said loudly, forcing his voice to be confident and commanding. There was no answer, of course. The whole of med-bay seemed caught in a waiting silence; Bridger realised that even the humming of the engines seemed quieter than usual. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle, and resisted the urge to turn again, knowing there would be nothing there but the sleeping patients. He strode to the centre of the room, planting his feet a little apart on the floor and ignoring the strange shapes that were blurring the corners of his vision. "What do you want?" He demanded.

The only answer was his own ragged breathing. He concentrated on making it smooth and even, forcing down the irrational panic that was threatening to engulf him. He turned slowly in a full circle, as if seeking anything out of the ordinary, but in fact just letting his face be seen. Then he drew a deep breath.

"I'm damned if I'm going to let you kill any more of my crew, whatever you are," he said, very clearly. "I am the captain of this boat, not some naive child you can frighten by knocking over a few chairs. This is going to stop. Now." He waited for a moment, and when there was no answer, he began to stride towards the exit.

Suddenly there was a resounding crash, so loud that Bridger jumped in spite of himself. He turned to see that the gurney in the corner was lying on its side, and the body of Lucas' young friend lay tangled up in its shroud, face uncovered, sightless eyes staring straight at Bridger as if in silent rebuke. Bridger stared back – but his eyes had been closed, hadn't they? For a moment, he wavered. Then, he closed his own eyes against the sight, turned resolutely, and left the room.

The journey to the bridge was longer than it had ever been before. The MagLev doors refused to open, and so Bridger was left to walk through what felt like miles of oddly deserted corridors. The humming of the engines had faded completely now, to be replaced with whispering sounds at the very edge of his hearing, like people trying to speak to him. But when he tried to concentrate on them, they faded too, and the silence pressed in on his eardrums like a physical force. Every hair on his body was standing on end, and fighting the urge to turn and face whatever it was that was following him took almost all his energy. Every now and then he would hear a crash from an empty room he was passing, or see something skitter behind him out of the corner of his eye. He found himself wondering, in a detached sort of way, where on Earth the 200 crew members who should have been inhabiting this ship were hiding. And then he turned a corner and stepped through the door to the bridge.

And found himself back in med-bay.

Nick's body still lay sprawled on the floor where he had left it, the limbs twisted grotesquely, the eyes still open and blank. Bridger closed his eyes, feeling his stomach lurch sickeningly, and prayed that he was mistaken. But when he opened them again, he was still in the deserted med-bay, inhabited only by an unconscious adult and two children, one dying, one already dead. The bright light was no comfort; in fact, the very harshness of its bleached glare seemed somehow menacing and claustrophobic. Bridger reached for his PAL, feeling as if he was moving in slow-motion, but when he flipped it on there was a burst of static and then silence. He was beginning to feel as if someone had turned down the volume on the whole world. It was disorientating, losing one of his senses; it made him feel as if he was underwater. Which, of course, he was.

Forcing himself to breathe normally, he turned sharply and left med-bay once more. A few steps away from the door he stopped again; someone – something – was standing behind him. He stood stock still for a long moment, feeling as if somehow time had been suspended. Then he spoke, although he could barely hear his own voice.

"You will not beat me," he said, and he hoped he had said it with quiet assurance, but it was hard to tell. Then, without another word, he set off once more.

This time the whispering was louder; he could almost make out the words. The shapes on the threshold of his vision flickered more frantically; he could almost hear the breathing of whatever it was that followed behind him, and his passage through the corridors was marked by increasingly loud crashes and bangs. He ignored it all, concentrating on following the exact route from the med-bay to the bridge, repeating in his mind, You will not beat me, you will not beat me. A couple of times he found himself taking the wrong fork at a junction, or turning when he should be going straight on. He corrected himself carefully, despite the almost overwhelming urge to continue along the wrong route. And he was rewarded; after almost half an hour, he turned into a new stretch of corridor to see the clam doors of the bridge ahead of him. But there was someone standing in front of them.

Robert.

Bridger felt his legs go weak. Robert's face was blue and mottled, black water dripped from his soaking uniform onto the metal deck, the only sound in the oppressive silence. He was clearly dead; but his eyes were open, filled with fear and pain, and he stretched out his pale, dripping arms towards Bridger in mute appeal.

I'm dead, thought Bridger wildly. There's no other explanation. He stared at Robert, transfixed, half-way between terror and desperate grief; he could read the thoughts in the young man's eyes as clearly as if they were printed on a page. I needed you, dad. I needed you, and you failed me.

But then another set of eyes slipped into his mind, not brown like Robert's, but blue and pleading, and he straightened, facing the apparition that looked so much like his son.

"I'm sorry Robert," he said, and again it was like speaking into a vacuum – his words made no sound, and he couldn't be sure if he had even spoken aloud. "I wasn't there when you needed me. But Lucas needs me now, and I need to be there for him." Robert's expression didn't change; he continued to reach out to Bridger in despair and hope. But Bridger knew now it wasn't really his son; taking a deep breath, he opened the doors and stepped through the apparition. He felt nothing, not even a shiver down his spine, but suddenly noise flooded back into the world and the flickering shadows dissipated with an audible sigh. He closed his eyes for a moment, sending a silent apology to Robert, then strode to the centre of the bridge.

"Mr Ortiz," he rapped out, and Ortiz turned.

"Yes, sir," he said efficiently.

"I want you to target the trench wall above the base." He waited for an acknowledgement, but none came, and when he turned to look in surprise at his sensor chief, he saw the young Cuban was staring at him in total horror, his face pale against his black hair. "Mr Ortiz?" he asked, concerned, but the young man had leapt out of his chair and was backing away, holding out his hands in front of him. Bridger looked around to see that the rest of the bridge crew were staring at Ortiz in surprise. One or two were rubbing their ears or looking slightly nervous, but none of them had had the same reaction as the sensor chief. It can only concentrate on one person at a time, he thought, and headed straight for Ortiz' console.

Someone tackled him around the ankles and he crashed to the ground, feeling his ankle twist painfully under him. He saw Ford heading for him with an astonished look on his face, and saw his opportunity.

"Jonathan," he yelled. "Never mind me, fire torpedoes and bury that damn base! And don't pay any attention to anything you see!"

Ford turned smartly and headed for the console. Bridger saw the other man hesitate, the blood draining from his face, as if he could see something that Bridger could not; then he stepped forward resolutely and began to target the torpedoes. Bridger struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on a very pale-looking crew member who was apologising profusely for attacking him. It's all going to be all right, he thought as he saw Ford reach for the firing controls. I've won.

Then the lights on the bridge seemed to dim, and Bridger suddenly had a confused sensation of being surrounded by a crowd of people he could almost see and almost feel, all screaming at him silently with such force that he dropped to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears. Beside him, his erstwhile attacker had done the same. He tried to look up, to see if Ford had fired the torpedoes in time, but he felt like an invisible hand was pressing down on the back of his head. He closed his eyes. It's not real, none of this is real, he told himself, but the force and the pain in his ears seemed real enough to him. He began to feel as though his eardrums would burst.

And then there was an explosion of white light in his head, and everything went black.