Isabel woke with a start and practically fell off the couch. She looked around the room as a loud metallic clanging bounced off the walls. The guy… Brody… was still sleeping in the bed he and Mason seemed to share, but Mason was nowhere to be found. Isabel pulled herself to her feet and tried to figure out where the noise was coming from.

Isabel looked around and decided that the apartment had seen better days. It was bordering on filthy, with decades-old paint smears on the walls and the forest outside creeping in through the broken windows. The front door to the apartment was missing, obviously kicked in years earlier, and the fence around the apartment complex had a gate which creaked when it opened.

Still, it held a warmth that Isabel had never found in the cold marble of the Delphi Museum.

Sighing, she enjoyed the feel of the rising sun beating down on her face as the noise that woke her slowly grew louder. Caprica always felt like a ghost planet on mornings like this.

Isabel smiled at the feeling of calm that washed over her as she stepped into the garage. When she saw what was inside, it took all her control to keep from laughing. There was a rather sad looking remnant of a Cylon Raider in the middle of the floor and a woman behind a welder's mask straddling on top.

There was another two ships sitting in the garage. The first one was easily recognizable as a Viper Mark VII. They had been standard Colonial issue about twenty years ago, and Isabel had seen plenty in her lifetime. The toasters had never taken the time to clean up the leftover wreckage from Caprica's last stand.

The other ship, though, was completely new. It looked like a hodge podge of several ships, but unlike the Raider Brody and Mason were working on, this one looked like something from the gods. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

When she noticed Isabel standing and staring at her beloved Galactica's Child, Mason pushed the mask back and wiped the sweat off her brow. "Perfect, isn't she?"

"Yeah," Isabel said with a smile.

"You're up early, kid."

"You woke me up."

"You mean you could hear this over Brody's snoring?"

Isabel laughed at Mason's joke and walked over to the destroyed ship. "What is this thing?"

"Cylon Raider. Thought you'd recognize it."

"I know it's a Raider. I guess I should have asked why you're fixing it."

"I'm not fixing it," Mason said, grinning as she slid the mask completely off her head. She hopped down off the top of the Raider and dropped the welding torch into a toolbox. "I'm improving it."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"You do a lot of strange things," Isabel countered.

Mason rolled her eyes before pulling her tank up to wipe some of the dirt and sweat off her face. "I'm building a hybrid ship from the scrap of a Viper and the body of this Raider. It takes the best parts of both ships and melds them together. Makes a fast ship that can out maneuver anything in the Fl--" Mason's voice cut off as she realized she would have to stop talking about the Fleet. There was no Fleet. The thought made her uncomfortable, and she turned to start work on the fuel line.

"Where did you come from?" Isabel said after a moment.

Mason's eyes held Isabel's for a second before she sighed and responded to the question. "Not from anywhere you've ever known. I was born on a ship called Galactica. It was the only Battlestar to make it through the Cylon attacks. My mother raised me. She was the best pilot they had."

"And your father?" Isabel said, taking a step forward.

"I never knew him."

"Oh."

Mason shrugged and moved to lie underneath the ship. "It's not that big a deal."

"I don't know," Isabel said as she sat down on the ground. "Seems to me it would be kind of lonely."

"There were plenty of people around to help raise me. I had Brody's father. He was the one that taught me how to play pyramid when I was seven, and he was there when I took my first baby steps and when I said my first words."

"It sounds like he was your father," Isabel said.

"Lee was there for me in a lot of ways. He was my mother's best friend."

"Was?"

"He died a little over a year ago doing what he did best."

"What was that?"

"Flying with my mom." Mason let out a grunt as she tried to tighten a screw in the fuel line. "Why are you so interested in my past, Isabel?"

"I don't know," Isabel replied. "It's nice to know that there were people surviving while I was down here on Caprica doing the same. Just chalk it up to curiosity."

"People who are too curious about me usually end up getting decked when their questions get too personal," Mason warned her. "Just ask, Brody. I've hit him too many times to count."

"Yeah. About Brody… you two seem pretty close."

Mason paused in her tinkering but didn't look at Isabel. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you're really comfortable around each other, you sleep in the same bed, and you practically finish each other's sentences. I've seen the way you look at each other. I guess it just makes me wonder."

Isabel's words rang through her head, and because Mason rather liked this new girl, she actually entertained some the subject. Brody had been with her for as long as she could remember. He was her rock, just as her mother and Brody's father had been to each other. It made sense that she would be comfortable around him. He was the one person she trusted unconditionally.

But were they too close? Mason admitted that their relationship had taken a definite shift when they reached Caprica. However, they had both witnessed the death of a friend and they were stuck on a war-torn planet with no real leads. Of course, they would rely on each other more.

Why was she freaking out over the idea that maybe the love she felt for Brody was starting to change? Relationships changed all the time. Mason's mind immediately flew to her mother and Lee as a perfect example of that. They had been many different things to one another throughout their lives so it made sense that she and Brody would go through the same shift sort of shifts.

Isabel's tone was bordering on disapproving, and Mason felt her blood begin to boil as she went back to the repairs. Who did this kid think she was to start judging her? And why was she even taking the time to let this brat upset her?

After another minute of silent repairs, Mason finally calmed herself enough to answer the question she had been asked. "Brody and I are just friends, Isabel. We're comfortable with one another because we're all we have for now."

"For now?"

Mason frowned a little as Isabel returned to her pestering and she began to think that the girl was deliberately fishing for information. Mason chided herself for being so suspicious and decided that maybe she was just lonely and wanted to talk.

Mason weighed her options carefully before deciding there was no harm in giving Isabel a little history lesson. Besides which if she kept feeding Isabel information maybe the kid would slip up and give Mason a clue as to her real reasons for being so damn inquisitive. "There are others out there, children from the crew of Galactica saved by my mother. That's why Brody and I are on Caprica. The others are stranded out there waiting for us to bring them the directions to the thirteenth colony of Kobol, but they're all so young that we really couldn't put up much of a fight if the Cylons found us. We left them behind for their own safety."

"But what's on Caprica that could help you? This planet has been picked clean of everything of any importance."

Mason rolled out from underneath the Viper, having fixed the fuel line, and picked up a rag to wipe the grease off her hands. "We aren't looking for a something. We're looking for a someone."

"You came to a planet devastated by a nuclear holocaust looking for someone? That's just stupid. Everyone's dead!"

"You're not," Mason pointed out with a glare. "And the person we're looking for isn't either. The Cylons would never kill her."

"She sounds like someone awfully special."

"She's the lost child of Galactica, and she's pretty much the only fraking hope we have left."

"Tell me about her?"

Mason turned to look at Isabel who was still sitting on the ground next to the Raider. "Why do I get the feeling that you're pumping me for information this morning?"

"I told you. I just want to know."

"Not good enough," Mason said, shaking her head.

"I could probably help you find her," Isabel said. "I've lived on Caprica my whole life just like you've always lived in space."

"I never said I always lived in space. I just said I was born there," Mason corrected her.

"Whatever. I'm just pointing out that giving me a little information might end your quest a lot quicker."

Mason studied Isabel's face for a moment before sighing and leaning against a nearby crate. "All right. This girl we're looking for is the child of one of Galactica's pilots and a Cylon."

"No way. A Cylon-Human hybrid is an urban legend," Isabel exclaimed.

"Nope. Brody and I have seen the farms first hand. In the beginning, following the first attack, the Cylons were desperate to create a hybrid. They experimented with every human female they could get their hands on but had no luck. It didn't take them long to realize that they were missing something important in their process."

"Don't tell me. They needed something sappy like love?"

"It's what they said. Helo, that's the ECO that I was talking about, fell in love with a Cylon right here on this planet. A copy of that model had been his partner and pilot on Galactica. She told him that she had been sent to bring him back to the Fleet. No one really knows what happened after that, but I do know that he told my mother about the daughter he had left behind on Caprica."

"He just abandoned his kid?"

"He didn't want to," Mason said. "In fact, he spent every moment after her birth protecting her. I think he might have stayed on this planet forever to keep her safe, but the Cylons took her. It's a long story, and one my mother never really got around to telling me." She shrugged. "All I know are the bits and pieces hat I picked up in passing."

"Do you have any reason to believe that this hybrid is the key to your salvation?"

Mason shot Isabel an annoyed look and suppressed the urge to hit her. Instead, she began to explain again. "Laura Roslin, the first President of the Twelve Colonies after the attack, gave us a prophecy on her deathbed. She claimed that there would be a child, created by a human and a machine, born shortly after her death. The child would decide the outcome of the war between the Cylons and humanity. No one believed her." Mason pre-empted Isabel's next question by explaining that the president had suffered hallucinations because of the treatments she had been receiving for her illness.

"What changed?" Isabel asked.

"Helo came back."

"And?"

"And I don't really know. I warned you that a lot of information was missing from the story."

"But there was enough to make you confident that Caprica was the place you needed to be?"

"Helo's daughter is on this planet somewhere," Mason said, her voice sure and confident. "If we can find her, she'll be the key. The prophecy says that she can show us how to defeat the Cylons and that she will show us the way to Earth. And that's all we really have. My whole world was destroyed when I was six by the same Cylon that gave birth to this kid. She killed everyone on Galactica except for the children that were smuggled away and those children are why Brody and I are here. They deserve to live a life without having to fear that there's always something around the corner waiting to kill them."

"All right. I get why you came here, but I still don't get the ship."

Mason looked at the hybrid ship she had slowly been piecing together for over ten months. "There was nothing better to do." Letting out a small sigh, Mason turned to Isabel. "Brody and I still haven't found her. It's been a whole year and we've got nothing."

"You don't even have a theory?"

"We think that the Cylons might be keeping her hostage in the ruins of Caprica City. Every time we've tried to get within ten feet of it, the toasters jump down our throats. To do this right, we're going to need at least three ships to run an offensive assault on them."

"But there's only two of you."

"I know. We had a third pilot once. She died." The weight of the words hung between them for a moment as Mason silently remembered Leila and her sacrifice. There was a small clink as a piece of the Raider fell to the ground, making Mason groan. "I'm building the ship anyway. I figure that someone in the Resistance has to be halfway skilled at flying. Give me a few days in the cockpit with them and I could teach them the rest."

Mason grabbed her welding mask and torch from the floor and walked toward the Raider. She reattached the piece and prayed that, this time, it would hold. She wasn't working under the best conditions at the moment, and she didn't have Cally there to point out her mistakes anymore. This was all Mason and there was a lot riding on her handiwork.

Flipping the mask up to reveal her face, she turned to Isabel. "Right now I just want to finish the ship and find something equally valuable to trade Sue-Shaun for one of her people. The lady drives a hard bargain ."

Isabel reached out tentatively to touch the nose of the Viper-Raider hybrid. "I can fly it."

"What?" Mason said.

"I could fly it," Isabel repeated, still staring at the ship in front of her.

"How could you have possibly found time to learn to fly Colonial ships while being hunted by the toasters?"

"You weren't the only one with a parent from the military," Isabel hissed coldly. "Not everyone made it off the planet when the Cylons attacked."

Mason reached over to gently rest her hand on Isabel's. "Your father?"

Isabel pulled away from the contact and looked at Mason in confusion. She quickly wiped her face of all emotion before she said, "My father was a Raptor pilot. It's why we survived for as long as we did."

The two women lapsed into another silence before Mason nodded . "So you think you can fly this thing?"

"I know I can fly this thing."

"Good. Once it's finished, we'll know for sure." Mason threw the towel clutched in her hand down onto the cold cement. "Now, I'm tired and cold and I'm going back to bed."

"I think I'll stay out here, familiarize myself with the ship."

Mason paused at the open door to the garage. "I'm going to get this out of the way right now before I forget. You don't want to frak with me, Isabel. If I find out that you're lying to me or that you're a Cylon, I will make you wish you had never found us in the museum. I've spent the last fifteen years struggling to stay alive, and I've gotten good at it. You take me on, little girl? You're going to lose."

Mason shot her one last threatening look before leaving the garage. She kept her posture firm until she knew Isabel couldn't see her anymore, and then she sagged. Mason's back was killing her and, as much as she had enjoyed scaring the living hell out of the newcomer, she just wanted to curl up beside Brody and let herself go for a few hours.

Sometimes it scared her to know how much like her mother she was.