Slightly late with this chapter.. but work has kept me busy.

Hope you enjoy it! :)

Chapter 22

x

Rachel

She stood inside the isolation tent, in the middle of her working area with six monkeys behind her, holding a clipboard with a piece of paper on it. She glanced nervously around her, through the mask of the hazmat suit she was wearing. There was one thing that was different right now, light. For the first time in months, there was natural light pouring into the lab. As she glanced around her, she could feel her palms getting sweaty under her gloves as she held on to the clipboard. She was being watched. The entire crew was assembled in front of her. Wanting to know answers. She took a breath as she thought about the last 24 hours.

According to Kara the crew had been talking about their mission, wondering how things were outside of the ship and what went on in the lab. Apparently after the land team got back from Nicaragua, everyone has been cautious and on top of that someone had seen her throw hazardous waste overboard which had stirred up rumors that her vaccine was failing. Everything seemed to the crumbling down like a gingerbread house. This time around it wasn't the ship at least, she thought.

"I've always done it at night. During the watch shift. They are more occupied of exchanging pleasantries than focusing on something else." She had tried to reason with Tom, but in the end she just had to shook her head slightly as Tom was questioning her waste management schedule.

But it all escalated after Tom chose to lock down the entire ship against her better judgement. He had also questioned her knowledge directly in front of the officers in the Crew Lounge. She still felt angry at the thought of him not believing in her methods.

"Medical emergency. Medical emergency in compartment 12545 L, Lounge." The womanly voice on the comm was alerting the entire ship about a possible threat inside the ship. The very place that Tom had stated was the safest place on Earth. Mentally she scoffed, this wouldn't be good.

She stepped inside the Crew Lounge, noticing the worried reactions of the crewmen, telling their good Captain to go away. She walked passed Tom and knelt down to take a look at Danny. He has warm - fever. One of the signs of the virus, but since she had done a test on him, she knew he was not infected. It had to be something else.

She heard Lieutenant Burk worry over the ship and crew.

"He's not infected." She stated firmly her opinion on the matter.

"What happened?" She asked.

"He came in looking for water and passed out. He's burning up." Tex said from beside Danny and Rachel focused her attention on Danny. Luckily Kara wasn't here right now, but she sighed as she went through the possible scenarios in her head. What was wrong with him?

Even more so, she thought that Doc Rios' act of walking through the entire P-Way dressed in a hazmat suit had probably been the last straw amongst the frightened crew.

"You have to understand, if this is airborne or blood-borne, we will all be infected. The most likely scenario is that he was bitten by an insect." She must've sounded like a broken record. No one was hearing what she had to say and she saw that Lieutenant Burk was getting to Tom too with his talk about spreading germs all over the ship.

"Sir, you need to lock down the ship."

"No he does not. I tested everyone before we boarded." She got up to defend her case.

"That was two days ago. I mean maybe the virus hadn't taken hold yet." Burk tried to reason and she sensed he was scared about the thought.

"It doesn't work like that. If he'd been exposed it would present itself in his blood within a few hours, if not few minutes." She held her head briefly as she tried to explain the science to everyone. Hoping they would just calm down.

"All right, everybody. Let's put our panties back on and see how we can help our friend." Tex came into the mix and she just scoffed slightly. Stuck in a room with him, Tom and bunch of worried sailors. Just perfect, she thought.

"You said the virus mutates.." She noted Tom's voice and heard that he was thinking it all. Actually wondering whether she had made a mistake.

"How do you know the strain in Nicaragua wasn't different from the other ones you've seen?" He looked straight at her and she sighed.

"Even if it was, its essential core would be the same and that is what I test for." She fired back.

"Well, what if you're wrong?" Tom asked the obvious question hanging in the air and she felt like the carpet had been pulled right under her. This was an argument she couldn't win. He had already chosen his side and it wasn't with her.

"This isn't the same as with the vaccine." She lowered her voice slightly but what did it matter. Their conversation was public already.

"That was an experiment. This test, I am certain of 100 percent." She added.

It had been all she could say to defend her case. Her side of the matter. A woman of science and she didn't have any concrete proof right there and then. Just because she had injected a vaccine prototype to two of the monkeys to see if it was enough, had made him jumpy all of a sudden. Or was it his speech to the crew that had Tom under so much stress? His promise that before they would reach homeland, she would have a vaccine on her hands?

Dengue fever! As she had said, bitten by an insect. After the lockdown protocol had been lifted, she felt that she had to confront Tom.

"I know I have kept things from you." She said.

"But I thought that we were in this together now, and I will always be straight with you." She met his gaze and wondered why he had jumped sides all of a sudden.

"When I don't know, I will say it." She added searching for some kind of recognition in his eyes. But he seemed to have his guard up.

"I've risked everything for you, killed for you, lost men for you, asked these people to turn their back on their families." His voice was clearly upset.

"For you." He pointed a finger at her.

"Not for me. For the human race." She stated, feeling a slight twitch in her lower lip.

"I just happen to be who you're stuck with." She said with a sad voice. Feeling like she was about to cry. It was all too much all of a sudden and she tried to hold back the tears.

"Rachel.." Tom's voice was more softer this time around and she met his gaze. Seeing the hurt in his eyes.

"You're the one who wanted to end this and I understand that, but we're still going to have to work together. You might wanna figure out a way to do that." She said and wiped away the few tears that she had allowed to escape from her eyes.

"You've all seen Dr. Rachel Scott. But most of you have no idea what it is she's doing here or even who she is." Tom's voice alerted her to the present and she followed him as he told everyone about her.

"She's dedicated her life to research on treatments and vaccines.." She drifted briefly to her own thoughts as she recalled what Tex had told her.

"I think you underestimate people's capacity for forgiveness."

"Captain.." She said out loud and got a puzzled look from Tom but he gave her a sign to continue on.

"I wasn't chosen for this." She started as her gaze went through the crew staring at her.

"I fought to be here. I fought the politicians and the bureaucracy and convinced them to take a chance on me." She told everyone, finally feeling lighter that she was letting this all out. All the secrets would be revealed.

"And I was right, but I made a mistake." At that point she noticed the wondering looks of the crew and whispering going around in the crowd. She looked at Tom who seemed to be even more puzzled about what she was up to.

Tex's words breezed through her mind again as the stood there inside the tent, feeling her hands tremble slightly as she thought about what she had to do. Would they forgive her for this?

"Some of you know about my connection with Lieutenant Foster." She started and didn't even dare to glance at Kara's direction right now. This was a secret they all had carried long enough.

"Her mother and I were close, but what you don't know is.."

"That she is actually my daughter." She stared down on the clipboard in her hands and heard the crowd murmuring around her. She forced herself to take her eyes off the clipboard and looked around her. The next part was even harder, she thought.

"And she's here on this ship because of me." She let out and Tom had to silence the crew for her as it seemed that there was a lot of talking due to what she was telling them now.

"I chose to fight for her life and I understand how wrong of me that was, no matter the reason. Why was she more important than your families?" She could only hope they would forgive her for this, yet another thing to forgive.

"She wasn't." She said and hoped Kara would understand. Of course she was important to her, but she knew she had been selfish, gone over the line to protect her own, to keep a promise she had made, to keep her only child safe.

"But her being here on this ship is important, because she is immune to the virus. Because her blood holds a vital piece of the puzzle to create a vaccine, a cure."

"I know that it doesn't justify my actions, but she gives me a possibility to keep fighting for your families back home, like I did for mine." She didn't want to sound like she was begging for forgiveness but it sounded a little like it.

"I made a mistake and I'm sorry." She added with a heavy heart. She felt like she could use a few minutes to gather herself but she couldn't do that right now. Everyone was still staring at her and she just had to focus on something, but luckily for her the XO dismissed the crew quickly. Even Tom was at loss of words right now.

Tom

"People have no idea what's going on outside the ship other than what they are informed of, which isn't much." OOD Granderson had told him about what the crew was thinking nowadays. Her words went through his mind as he stood in front his crew on the flight deck and saw the torn atmosphere in their faces. It had been interesting 24 hours..

He watched as Rachel walked away after their talk on the P-Way. She was hurt that he wasn't on her side at the moment. He hit his fist on the wall in anger and felt the pain on his knuckles. He rubbed his hand slightly after the incident, luckily he was alone in the P-Way.

He knew he had been unreasonable the past few days. But he was hurting inside more now than ever. And it had everything to with Rachel. He sighed and felt that the stone on top of his heart wasn't giving him any wiggle room. The feeling of guilt. He had told her he had to let go of her, that he couldn't have them both, but deep in his heart, he knew he couldn't let go her. God only knew how he had tried, but no one could ever replace Rachel. His thoughts went to Darien, his wife, the mother of his two children, but as he thought about returning back to his wife and kids, he felt guilt. Guilt because he would be returning to Darien with a half heart. And she deserved more than that.

The hours after Lieutenant Green's illness were crucial. The crew was grumbling even more than before according to his XO and the Master Chief. He thought there had to a be reason for this sudden doubt amongst the crew members, he just wasn't sure what it was yet. And after it was brought to his attention that 16 members of the United States Navy wanted to leave the ship, he was doubting himself. 16 people. Their enlistment were up, so they couldn't hold them against their will either. After all they weren't 'El Toro' as the Master Chief reminded them of the events in Nicaragua. Still feeling shivers go through his spine as he thought about how the people had been living there and how their presence had stirred up the already fragile situation.

"So that's the vaccine." He watched Rachel from outside the isolation tent. Following her every move as she was injecting the monkey's with a prototype.

"These are vaccine prototypes. I'm going to test two of the prototypes first without Kara's receptors and see what happens." He wondered about her experiment. She was willingly killing monkeys when she knew she most likely needed Kara's receptors to make the vaccine prototypes to work.

He took a deep breath as he thought about what to say to the crew.

"I made some mistakes the past few days in the ways I've handled information." He spoke finally.

"I've kept you in the dark about our mission because I'm trying to protect you from the truth, which is painful." He said with a sad tone, sighing deeply as he thought if the crew could handle the truth.

"That was a poor decision on my part." He admitted openly.

"I am your captain, I am your leader."

"And you have every right to be disappointed in me."

"It's our job to carry the weight of this, not those kids out there. It's need-to-know. It's how we've always functioned." Mike's words came back to haunt him in his mind. It might have been need-to-know, but now it had to be know-it-all, after all wasn't it all the secrecy that had gotten them to this position?

"But that does not mean that you should give up hope. Because this mission's not about me, and it's not about you, it's about them." He explained and gave a sign to his XO.

Voices from the outside world were filling the air as there were survivors telling everyone they were still alive, surviving. Taking a day at a time. And then there was the most important question of them all:

"Does anyone have the cure?"

x

"You didn't think to tell me that you were going to tell them what you did?" Tom followed Rachel as she came out of the tent and went by her desk to take a sip of her water. Noticing her hands shake slightly, like the tension in her body was escaping.

"I wasn't sure I could do it." Rachel let out a sigh and met his gaze.

"Everything is out in the open now." Rachel said and took another sip of her water.

"Not everything." Tom crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against her desk.

She put her water bottle down on her desk and placed herself beside Tom and gave him a brief look.

"Are you going to tell the crew?" Rachel asked with a low voice. Tom nodded silently as he stared down at the floor, clearly thinking about it all.

But their moment alone was interrupted when an Ensign came to fetch the Captain to the CIC. Even her presence was required.

Mason

For Mason it started out like a regular day, he got up, got dressed and hit the gym for a quick workout session before he was up for a shift in the CIC.

During breakfast he was talking in the mess with OOD Granderson.

"Do you think she's close to a vaccine?" Mason asked with his boyish voice.

But before Alisha could give him her answer, Cossetti and O'Connor came to sit with them.

"We saw her throw biohazardous waste overboard last night." O'Connor told them.

"Who?" He asked, slightly puzzled over why the two seemed to be so hysterical.

"Dr. Scott!" O'Connor almost shouted out.

"Lower your voice." Alisha said firmly and glanced around them. The mess was pretty popular at the time.

"And Bernie said this entire ship is a death trap!" Cossetti's voice shook a little.

"Just calm down a bit. There's probably an explanation for all of this." Alisha tried to reason with the two but she saw that they were scared.

"Are you sure of what you saw?" Mason asked and got a look out of the two that was pretty much 'Dude, are you seriously doubting us?'

Mason checked his clock on his left wrist and made his exit as he saw he was suppose to be starting his shift in 10 minutes. He stepped to the P-Way and started walking towards the CIC.

He didn't get far before the alert about a medical emergency echoed through the ship. He swallowed nervously and glanced around him, hoping it was a minor health problem. Perhaps someone got a nut stuck in their airway and needed a Heimlich maneuver.

He got to his station in the CIC and began working as usual, although a slight doubt infesting inside of his brain as he thought about the conversation he had during breakfast.

But surely their Captain would be straight with them?

It wasn't before the XO's voice carried through the comm, and ordered Circle WILLIAM throughout the entire ship that got him jump out of his skin a little. Was it the virus? Had it escaped the lab or was someone infected?

He remembered that Cossetti had shared with them, that the land team had blood over their uniforms when they had returned from Nicaragua, although the Captain had explained what had happened in Nicaragua just the day before. He still felt horrified about the thought of people living like that. But his thoughts went on to think that the land team had been close to infected people..

He stood beside Lieutenant Foster in the crowd as they were listening to Dr. Scott. He noticed her posture stiffen as Dr. Scott spoke about her connection with her. And as he double checked his hearing when he noted the word 'daughter', he was in shock. His thoughts went to his own parents in Norfolk, he didn't know if they had survived. If his little sister was alive. She was going to be at a summer camp during his deployment. Thought of a summer camp made him smile for a brief moment. Would there ever be summer camps now? But what got to him even more, was when Dr. Scott told them that it was because of her that Foster was aboard the ship. At that moment he saw Lieutenant Foster move past him, he watched as she disappeared to the flight deck. Clearly upset.

He was thinking of going after her but a part of him told him to stay still and follow orders. So he did so. He stayed until the XO dismissed the crew.

x

He got to the comms room after the gathering and it didn't take long before everything seemed to be moving along like clockwork.

"We have a good signal today." He leaned over Grandersons's shoulder as they were in the comms room. Listening to the broadcasts. They were discussing over the familiar show of the afternoon, that was being broadcasted right now.

"Please! Is anyone out.." He registered the familiar voice he had heard before. But the broadcast got cut off before the young girl got her word out.

"Boring.." Alisha's voice was about to move back to the afternoon entertainment.

"Wait!" Mason got the log book out and as he did so he heard her voice again.

"Please.. My name is Bertrise."

He listened to the voice, but it wasn't the same voice anymore. There was a new level of fear in the tone of her voice. He wasn't expert on listening to people but he had been listening to that mesmerizing voice long enough to recognize that something was wrong.

"Get Dr. Scott and the CO! Now!"