He wished he knew where the lights for the special brig had come from, because it was always so brightly lit, it just felt better. What he really wanted was to lie in the sun and just, for a few minutes, forget that there was such things as Cylons. He missed sunlight. He missed it a lot. More than sleep, or decent food to eat, or even feeling safe. He missed seeing a horizon, feeling something other than stale, dirty, cold air on his skin. Every time he stepped into the special brig, he seemed to remember something about life planet side. It was rarely spoken about on the ship, missing life planet side, but he did. There were times, before he had started on the project and lost every moment of free time he had to do anything, let alone have fun, that he had been sad. Sad about how everything he had ever known had been destroyed. Sad about how all the people he had known before being assigned to the Galactica had died. Sometimes he was just sad about all the missed opportunities he had been given to be planet side instead of on board a cold dirty ship.
Lately, especially during the last few hours, he missed being able to feel sad. It seemed like he went from happy to angry with no feelings in between except impatience and more anger. He felt oddly angry even as he took his customary seat in front of the visitor window. He didn't like feeling angry, he didn't even know why he felt angry, except that Sharon had… Sharon had done something. Something that was bad, and that was why she was in the brig. And that was why he was angry with her, but the exact reason totally escaped him.
He also missed being able to hang onto his thoughts. Ever since Dr. Cottle had insisted on giving him a shot, it was like he couldn't really think any more. He had great ideas, and he knew, knew that he had been on the verge of discovering something important, but he couldn't grasp what it was. That made him angry. It was like his own mind was betraying him.
And yet he couldn't stop himself from smiling as Sharon Valerii slowly rose to her feet and dragged herself over to her chair. She had made him so miserable over the last few weeks. It was hard to remember that there had been a time when he had liked Sharon, that he had been envious of Galen Tyrol's ability to attract her. Sometimes, especially in the last few days, he saw the commander's blood pooling on the console when he looked at her. Thinking about blood made him angry. And oddly euphoric.
Sharon glared at him as she took her customary seat. It was obvious that she had been crying, her eyes red and puffy. " I'm tired of talking to you," she said curtly, " You just want to upset me. I'm not a fool. You come here and say rude hateful things about my baby just so I will talk to you. I'm not doing it anymore. You can go make your stupid virus program on your own. I don't care if it works or not."
"You should. You'll be dead just like the rest of us on the Galactica if it doesn't work." Of course, if Cylons really did transfer their memories, he doubted that she cared. His head was starting to hurt, to throb with pain, and he wanted to be done with the whole business. She meant what she said, he knew that just by looking at her. The crawling sensation returned, and he knew, with absolute clarity, how to pry the information out of her. He held up the paper test results.
" I have something you want. Something you need." He waited for her to take the bait.
Her eyes flickered to the papers in his hand. " What?"
" Your test results. I have your original test results. Whether you're really a machine or a cloned human. Let's face it, the real reason you worry and doubt yourself is because Dr. Baltar tested the other Sharon and said that she was human. He's been right before, so why wasn't he right about you? Even though you personally were never intended to be a sleeper agent, that knowledge gives you doubt. But… maybe Dr. Baltar didn't tell the other Sharon the truth. Maybe he did. The truth is here." He waved the paper in front of her.
" Give that to me!" she shouted. She leapt up and dove at the glass partition, her mouth screwed up into a snarl. In that moment, he lost any doubt that Sharon wasn't human. His theory was wrong. The … creature before him, snarling and pounding on the glass, wasn't human.
" No," he said easily. " There's a price for your peace of mind." He waited for her to calm down. " I've completed the anti-Cylon virus. I need my peace of mind. Am I a Cylon?" The question itself seemed to turn him cold with its power.
Sharon calmed down almost instantly. Her eyes took on an intelligent gleam. " Let me see it first."
He expected that. Even though he was suddenly almost shaking with rage, he calmly slid the test results through the glass partition. Sharon grabbed the paper almost instantly. Her eyes slid down the paper, devouring the words.
" Thank God," she said quietly, tears brimming in her eyes. " He lied… you were wrong…. Thank God…." She hugged her slightly bulging stomach.
" Now… I'd like an answer." It was the life and death of humanity after all. He didn't think he was being unreasonable.
She looked at him and smiled. It was an evil look. " I'm not telling you anything, Lt. Gaeta."
" I knew you would say that." Gaeta pulled out the gun. " Let me explain something. I know something about Cylons. They don't tell the truth unless they are threatened. I'm going to shoot you if necessary. In fact, I will shoot you in the stomach. And before you start thinking that I am bluffing, remember that I have absolutely nothing to lose here. I might be punished for killing you…. With a few weeks in the brig and frankly that wouldn't make me sad at all. I could use the sleep. Most likely though, everyone will just excuse it. They'll blame you. They'll say that you got in my head, that I wasn't responsible." He paused. It was important to make her understand that she really had no choice. " This gun is loaded. I will shoot you if you don't answer me in the next ten seconds and I will aim for your baby. So you better give me an answer."
Sharon blanched. In that moment he knew it would work. In seconds he would have a definitive answer.
Except that suddenly he was yanked back and his legs were kicked out from under him. He was on the floor, someone was on top of him, throttling his throat. He could feel strong hands stripping the gun from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He felt a sharp prick between his shoulder blades and while he still felt the maddening anger at being interrupted, it was a struggle to fight against the strange cooling sensation that was flowing through him.
" I got him," he heard. The weight came off him and he was hauled to his feet by Lee Adama.
" What are you doing?" he said, his words sounding oddly slurred even to his own ears. " I was so close…."
" Yeah, you were definitely close to losing it, Gaeta" Lee said, his expression both amused and relieved. " Trust me, in about thirty minutes you're going to be a lot easier to reason with."
" I didn't say it was ok to take my gun," and he turned nervously to see Kara Thrace smirking at him. She slapped him on the back, and then carefully encircled her arm around his while Lee kept a firm grip on the other " Come on, Dr. Cottle and the Old Man want to see you."
"I'm not done…" he said weakly as they started to drag him out of the special brig. Dualla came into his vision, vision that was oddly blurry.
"This is for the best, sir," she said simply.
The problem, Lee thought as he dragged a still protesting Gaeta to the CIC, was that he had a very bad feeling that Gaeta had been on to something. Sure, the deck officer was barely making any sense, but that didn't mean he wasn't normally pretty sharp. A few minutes of listening to him babble led Lee to believe that somewhere along the line, Gaeta had discovered something important. Unfortunately he was pretty incoherent. It was getting worse as the injection that Dr. Cottle had prepared for them to sedate Gaeta with took effect.
" It's a good thing you called the CIC," he said to Dualla as they headed to the CIC. " We were going to check out the special brig but you made us hurry." He didn't want to think about what would have happened if Gaeta hadn't been stopped. On the one hand, he didn't much care if the Cylon in the brig lived or died, but on the other, he completely understood what a nightmare it would be to explain to the press that the senior officer of the watch had gunned down the Cylon in a drug induced rage. He knew that Gaeta would thank him when the drugs worked their way out of his system, but that wasn't making it any easier to drag him through the hallway.
" I was getting scared," Dualla said, her concern plain. " I knew Dr. Cottle had given him something, but I didn't expect him to be acting so oddly. He said he finished the virus…"
" I did!" Gaeta insisted weakly. It was obvious that the sedative was taking hold of him. " I just… had to be certain and you ruined it."
" You aren't a Cylon," Kara said easily. "And Sharon the Cylon was never going to tell you the truth. She was messing with your head."
"Kara, remember what Cottle said." Lee warned. Cottle had advised them to not actively engage Gaeta in conversations about his delusion until they were certain that he was docile. Lee had no doubt that if he let go, that Gaeta would bolt, and he didn't feel like spending another few hours finding him again.
Kara snickered as they entered the CIC. " You're not a Cylon, Gaeta. Trust me."
The general quarters alarm sounded as they walked in. Instinctively he stepped back. The alarm meant an attack and an attack meant that he needed to get down to the launch tubes. But a glance from his father told him that it was too late. It better work, he thought darkly as he half dragged half carried Gaeta to the main console, because we're all dead if it doesn't. " What's happening?"
" Massive attack," the commander intoned. " You two won't have time to join the fight. The Cylon fighters dropped out just minutes from the fleet." He glanced at Gaeta, who was slowly sliding down into his customary chair. " Mr. Gaeta, the anti-Cylon virus… We need it to work. Now."
Gaeta blinked. " We might all die, sir."
" We are all going to die, Mr. Gaeta." Adama frowned intently. " The alert fighters won't launch in time. If your weapon doesn't work, we're all dead. However, we're all going to die if you do nothing because we're massively outnumbered. It's a bad deal all the way around but I think you're as human as I am and I know it will work. Now do it."
Gaeta nodded, albeit a bit more slowly than normal. Lee watched the screens nervously while Gaeta typed out the commands. His father was right. If the virus didn't work, the fleet was going to be destroyed in a matter of minutes. Hell, if Gaeta was a Cylon, they were all going to find out. Beside him Kara snickered again, and he realized that she was having the same thought.
" I'm sending the virus," Gaeta said after a moment. He was holding his breath, Lee realized with no small amount of fear. That was a bad sign. Worse, Gaeta then closed his eyes and put his head down on the console. It didn't inspire confidence at all.
The wireless was almost silent as the few pilots that had time to make it out the launch tubes contemplated the giant mass of enemy ships. Then, as Lee watched on the scanners, the geometric patterns of the Cylon formation slowly fell apart. " It's working!"
A cheer went up as the fighters began to plow through the crippled Raiders. Lee hugged Kara and everyone seemed excited and happy, even his father. Gaeta was the exception, and it amused Lee to no end to see the deck officer apparently sleeping through the victory celebration. We'll have to do something nice, he thought happily, once the lieutenant was awake and not acting crazy.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dualla slip out of the room, and he almost called to her but then Tigh slipped a flask into his hand and urged him to drink. I'll ask her later, he thought as the celebration began to roll over him.