"I still don't get why you're helping us," Mason whispered as the trio made their way down yet another deserted corridor. "You seem resourceful enough to have gotten off Caprica on your own years ago."

"They would have followed me," Isabel explained as she pulled out her gun and ducked around the corner to check for toasters in the next hall. When she saw it was all clear, she lowered her weapon but kept it out. "We're getting close. How you doing, Brody?"

"As long as I don't pass out, we'll be good," he answered through gritted teeth.

"Baby," Mason whispered, giving him a unimpressed look.

Isabel stopped in front of a door in the corridor and nodded. "This feels right."

"Feels right?" Brody asked. "We've been walking through this complex for the past half hour guided only by your feelings?"

"I'm supposed to be some phenomenon of centuries-old destiny. Going by my gut sounds good right about now," Isabel pointed out as she fired her gun into the lock, and the door slid open. "I've always known there was something different about me. Something special that made the Cylons want to study me instead of kill me. I know things, stuff I shouldn't know. And they want it. I've been on the run from them for as long as I can remember."

Mason helped Brody sit down on one of the tables in the room before turning to Isabel. "So now that we're here, what's your gut telling you to do?"

"It's telling me that Brody needs to stay here while you and I keep going." Isabel waved off the protest about to come from Mason's mouth. "He knows I'm right."

Mason looked over at her best friend who was staring intently as her, a smile on his face. "Go. I'll be fine here, Mas."

She turned back to Isabel and watched as she hopped up on a desk pushed against the wall and kicked out the grate to the vent. Slipping her gun into the waist of her pants, Isabel slid into the open hole without another word.

"She's insane," Mason said, even though she had already begun to follow Isabel.

"You have that in common," Brody called out behind her.

Mason had time to give him one last glare before disappearing completely down the air vent. After a few minutes, the silence got to be too much for her. "So can you tell me what we're doing that's so important?" she asked.

"I want to get access to their mainframe. From there, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. I'm kind of hoping that the Cylon half of me will just take over."

"Me? I'm kind of hoping it doesn't."

They returned to crawling through the vent in silence, and Mason began to think about how strange her current situation was. She was letting a Cylon hybrid lead her through a heavily armed military base in order to find computer access to do something that neither one of them had any idea how to do. Not to mention that she had abandoned her injured best friend without more than a few seconds protest and was currently following a girl whose crazy, mechanical doppelganger just tried to kill them. She was no longer sure if they had transportation off the planet for their return voyage to her friends, and she wasn't all too sure they would even get to that stage of the plan.

"Life is wonderful," Mason muttered.

"We're here," Isabel whispered over her shoulder, breaking up Mason's little pity party.

After kicking out another vent cover, the two women dropped to the floor. Mason stared in awe at the electronic circuitry covering every single inch of the room they had just entered. It reminded her of a Viper engine with its complicated twists and bends. "Where are we?"

"Inside a mainframe."

"And what are we doing here?"

"I'm not sure. Give me a minute." Isabel turned in place a few times, studying every point of interest in the room before taking a step forward. "I think this is it. Pull that piece of wire out of the wall and hand it to me."

Mason did as she was asked. "Be careful. It's sharp on the end."

"That's the point. It's contact wire. Anytime there's a break in it, the thing becomes sharper than a knife." Isabel put the wire to the palm of her left hand and sliced.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mason yelled as she saw the blood start to trickle from the wound.

"I need to plug myself in," Isabel said through her gritted teeth. "Oh gods. This is going to hurt."

Mason could only stare in complete shock as Isabel picked up a wire from the ground and, taking a deep breath, began to slide it into her open wound. The sight of the metal entering flesh made Mason cringe.

"Frak," Isabel muttered, closing her fist around the wire. "Gods but that burns!"

"Care to explain what the frak you're doing?" Mason asked, tearing her eyes away from the obviously suicidal girl and scanning the room again. She was getting funny vibes from this place, like they had made a huge mistake in entering this inner sanctum.

"Right now, I'm trying to concentrate," Isabel choked out through the pain.

Mason wanted to demand that she gut-check the pain for a second to explain how shoving a wire into her hand was anything but bad, but an explanation would just slow them down. This girl had a destiny, and Mason didn't want to keep her from it.

The light in the room dimmed slightly, and Mason braced herself as the floor beneath her began to vibrate. She watched Isabel fall to her knees, her knuckles whitening as she increased the pressure on her wound.

"Too fraking bizarre," Mason whispered. Sighing, she stepped forward to stand next to Isabel. If the Cylons showed up, someone had to be ready to protect them both.

As quickly as the pseudo-earthquake started, it ended. Mason flinched as Isabel rose and pulled the connection out. She didn't even waver as she ripped the hem of her shirt off and tightly wrapped it around her hand. With the same hand, she drew out her gun and grinned at Mason mischievously.

"What?" Mason asked with suspicion.

"I know the way to Earth," Isabel chuckled before pulling herself back up into the vent.

Mason shook her head. If this girl was faking it, she didn't even want to know what the real thing was capable of. She slid her gun back into its holster, and grabbing hold of the walls, hoisted herself up to follow Isabel. "So what exactly were you doing back there?"

"It was something my mother told me about."

"I thought you said you never really knew your mother."

"In a lot of ways, I didn't. My mother died giving birth to me, but there are lots of copies of her and until I was eleven, the Cylons raised me. I didn't really understand at the time but the Boomer model made sure to tell me that I was special. She taught me that I could do things most others couldn't. One of those things was hacking into the Cylon information source."

"What for?"

"To take out their communications. There's not a lot we could do to stop the Cylons, but this is going to give us, and any other survivors out there, a chance to keep on living. The Cylons won't be able to communicate with one another. Their 'souls' will not be able to transfer from model to model. It's going to give us a shot at making it to Earth."

"That was one risky-ass plan," Mason said with a chuckle.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning if you can come up with shit like that, we really are sisters."

Isabel turned to look over her shoulder at Mason and smiled before beginning to crawl again. "I swear a lot less than you."

"That's because you never knew my mother."

"What was your mother's name?"

Mason tried not to let the memories and emotions choke her up. "Kara Thrace. Her call sign was Starbuck."

"I think I would have liked her."

"I think she would have liked you, kid."

They lapsed into silence after that, both lost in their own thoughts.

Isabel found herself wondering what her life would have been like if she had grown up alongside Brody and Mason. Things could have been so much different. She often wondered what had happened to make Helo leave her behind.

Mason's thoughts followed a similar vein but she was certain of how things would have played out if Isabel had been a part of her life. Kara and Lee would have raised Isabel alongside Brody, Mason, and Kara's other daughter, Amy. They would have protected her like they protected their own children. And maybe things would have been easier. One thing was sure, Leila wouldn't have died to make this day come. The same applied to Cally, Lee, Kara, Crashdown, and all of the children who hadn't made it on the first planet they inhabited. They would all still be alive.

"Back to the starting gate," Isabel said as she hopped out of the vent.

"What the frak was all that?" Brody yelled, stepping over to meet them the second they were in the room.

"She gave the Cylons a cold," Mason explained. "How are you doing?"

"The pain's fading so there's that," he said wryly.

"Good. You need to be in top form because we're going to Earth, my friend."

Brody's face lit up in surprise as the words sunk in. "There's no way."

"Turns out the prophecies were right about that one," Mason said, jerking her thumb toward Isabel. "She's chock full of destiny."

"All right. I think that's enough banter, you two," Isabel said. "We need to move."

"Time to get us some ships then," Mason said. "My ship and Isabel's are still good to fly. I'm sure we can pick up a Raider, Raptor, Viper or some other crazy hybrid somewhere for you, Brody. We're on a military base after all."

"I'm glad we're not being picky about ships," Brody laughed as the three of them stepped into the hallway. "Does it bother anyone else that no one's stumbled upon us?" he whispered.

"No," Isabel and Mason said at the same time.

"Just checking."

It seemed like the severity of what was ahead of them finally sunk in because all three lapsed into silence. They walked through corridor upon corridor, making their way to the outside based on whatever Isabel intuitively knew about this complex. They hadn't seen one Cylon since they left their cell two hours earlier. If that didn't scream something was wrong, Mason had no idea what did. She wasn't about to complain, though. Things could be a lot worse.

"Here we are," Isabel said, stopping in front of a solid cement wall.

"Yes. Amazing wall, isn't it?" Brody said, shaking his head. Isabel turned to glare at him. "Uh huh, that glare is definitely genetic."

Isabel and Mason ignored him. "Why are we stopping here, Isabel?" Mason asked.

"This is the way out." Isabel pressed the wall with her wounded hand until something clicked. "Hatchway," she said, stepping into the dark opening. She didn't even turn around to make sure they were following.

The hatch descended down for about a mile, leading them outside of the complex. Isabel took a moment to enjoy the feeling of sun beating down on her face. She had missed that in the short time she had been inside the building.

"What now?" Mason said, already drawing her gun. Being outside might be nice, but it also meant they were in the open.

"Now you two go about two miles north by northeast to where your ships are."

"Our ships?" Brody asked.

"Where the frak are you going to be?" Mason exclaimed.

"I have to go this part alone. I just need you two to trust me. Go find your ships, and I'll meet you in the skies above Caprica in two hours. Don't worry, I'll find you."

Brody glanced at his best friend and shrugged. "She's taken us this far, Mas." He looked over Mason's shoulder at Isabel. "You've earned a little trust."

Isabel nodded and took off in a run back down through the tunnel.

"Your sister's weird," Brody muttered. Sighing, he started to trudge through the forest, trying to ignore the pain radiating from his shoulder. Things could have been a lot worse. It could have been Mason who had been shot and was in pain. He had no idea what he would have done if it had been her. He couldn't stand to see her in any kind of pain. It's what made being with her all the harder. She always seemed to find a way to hurt herself.