Chapter One: In the Beginning

Nick Stokes reached blindly for his alarm clock radio, slamming his hand down repeatedly on the top until it finally stopped making that continuous buzz noise that he hated; mostly because that noise signalled the start of a new day of work, scrapping up someone else's remains off the side walk.

Sometimes he really hated this job, but he loved solving the puzzles behind them and knowing that deep down he was making the world a better place by locking away the bad guys, even if the charges didn't always stick, he kept them off the streets for a couple of months, giving some unknown victim that little bit longer to live, giving him a peace of mind.

Nick grunted loudly, with his face planted firmly in his pillow. He clenched one of his fists tightly, punching it into the pillow over and over again until he felt the anger inside him starting to settle down. He finally pulled the comforter off his head, rubbing his eyes before he crawled out from under the warm sheets, giving out a wide yawn, hearing his joints sleepily clicking as he stretched his arms and legs out slightly. He hated waking up. It was the worst part of the day. He never wanted to leave the comfort of his warm bed and he was always in an angry state of mind as he rushed around to get ready, getting annoyed at anything that got in his way; from missing socks, cold shower water or neighbours dogs barking while he was trying to concentrate on something.

He was a man not to be messed with in the morning.

Nick took a quick shower then wrapped a towel around his waist while he quickly shaved and brushed his teeth before he even started to dry and style his hair. Once he was satisfied with the style he walked back into his bedroom for his clothing that he had already laid out the morning before.

This was a routine he knew all too well.

Seven years as a grave yard shift CSI will do that to you.

Nick flipped through the TV channels in the kitchen, scanning across the news channels as he made himself some breakfast and a nice warm pot of coffee; a good way to start the day, even if it was eight o'clock in the evening.

He started working in Vegas at the age of twenty five in the crime lab as a DNA specialist until he decided to take his career one step further into the field; quickly advancing through the ranks to a CSI level three. He was hoping that one day he could advance to a supervisor and run his own team of Crime Scene Investigators to help people, but for now he had to deal with being the baby of the CSI family; still called by his childhood nickname of Nicky by his fellow co-workers.

Nick sat down in front of the TV with his breakfast; the only noise in the whole house was the sound of the news reporter's voice. Unfortunately his high priority career hadn't left him with much of a social life either. He was used to his house being so quiet; waking up alone, eating alone and going to sleep alone. The only people he really had contact with were those of his work colleagues. He lived a somewhat life of solitude. He was known for his big heart, but he just never reached out to let someone in and love him for who he was.

Work was his only excuse to leave the rest of his life on stand still.

Sandra Nelson walked through the back of her father's laboratory; currently located in the old barn at the back of the house out in the middle of nowhere, far away from the centre of Las Vegas. She carefully set down his lunch tray of soup, complete with sandwiches and a glass of juice on the table outside his lab. She never knew if he actually ate them, but the tray was always empty when she came back, so she assumed he was eating them as he was the only one out here and she really doubted the coyotes would leave the plate and glass so clean.

Sandra crept towards the large doors of the lab, peering in through the gap between them. She saw sparks flying off a large metallic object inside, blurring her eyesight from the pure white light it formed. She had no idea what he was doing back there, but he barely ever came into the house anymore, let alone to sleep or use the bathroom.

Sandra pulled back her long brown locks of hair behind her shoulder, taking another peek through the gap in the doors. This time there were no sparks. She looked around at the lab equipment then jumped back as she saw a dark gloomy eye looking right back at her. "I'm sorry." She quickly apologised, backing away from the doors as she realised it wasn't a monster, but her father.

The doors suddenly flew open with a great force and there stood her father in a long white lab coat with his hair all messed and the stubble of his beard just coming through. He looked a right mess. Nothing like the father she once knew and loved; now she loved him, but feared him too.

"Dad, I'm so sorry." She rushed to apologise again. "I made you lunch." She indicated over to the tray on the table, trying to calm his mood. He stared at her intently a moment then gave her a sharp nod, pulling the doors shut again and disappearing into his mysterious laboratory to finish whatever experiment he was working on.

Sandra huffed loudly, making her way back towards the house. She and her father had been alone for ten years since her mother's passing. The police called her death an accident; the news teams had her mother plastered across every channel with the headline 'collateral damage.'

To Sandra though, it was no accident.

Her mother was everything to her. Her father hadn't been the same since. He just recently started his high tech lab experiments in the old barn at the end of their garden. He now spent every waking second in there, leaving Sandra to work, pay bills and look after herself in her own life of solitude trapped in the house alone as she didn't have any contact with the outside world besides shopping for groceries every couple of weeks which her mother had taught her well.

Sandra sometimes wished she had a brother or sister to keep her company, or even a friend. But since she was home schooled out in the middle of nowhere by her father, she never really got to be a kid and make friends. She just spent every waking moment of her own life doing her chores, looking after the house and her father. At least she tried to look after her father; it was very difficult when he was so cold towards her all the time, refusing to come out of his laboratory to eat or sleep.

She never felt more lonely in her life and the only people she could blame were the officers who shot her mother in the first place.

"Ah Nicky, good you're here." His supervisor Gil Grissom smiled at him, holding out the familiar white slip of paper that had the details of a crime scene on it. Nick took it from his hands, heading off towards his locker to grab his kit and vest.

"Hey Nick! Good to have yah back man." Warrick smiled widely, pulling his own vest on. Nick nodded as he slumped down on the bench, changing his shoes. Warrick looked at his friend's glum mood, immediately asking the question Nick was beginning to get sick of. "Hey you awight man?"

"Yeah, I'm good." Nick absently nodded. Everyone had been asking him that question ever since he got out of hospital. He wished people would just leave him alone and allow him to just get back to his normal life. He was trying to block all thoughts of the coffin from his mind, but whenever people asked the dreaded question 'Are you alright?' his mind immediately fixated on the trauma of the horrific event he went through.

He just wanted to forget any of it ever happened.

"What's up with yah then man?" Warrick asked, checking the pockets of his vest.

"Can't wait to get out there, yah know." He smiled up at him so he'd stop worrying as he checked through his own kit in case it needed restocking, but Sara had kindly restocked it for him, ready for his new day of work. That was the kind of help he didn't mind.

The subtle ones.

Nick head straight off to his truck down in the garage, checking the slips address against his sat nav to give him the accurate directions.

For what seemed like an endless moment he sat perfectly still in the driver's seat of his truck, still in the CSI parking complex, breathing in slow deep breaths as he tried to get the coffin out of his mind again. He could taste the dirt in his throat, feel the sweat on his back, even his skin started to crawl from the goosebumps steadily rising to the surface of his skin.

He felt trapped, beginning to hyperventilate again.

Nick threw the car door open, dropping to his knees on the floor outside, taking slow steady breaths of air. He lunged for the Valium bottle in the glove compartment of his car, downing two of the pills quickly as he struggled to his feet again, trying to calm himself down.

He hated feeling like this, he didn't want this thing to take over his life, but he couldn't get the thoughts of the coffin experience out of his mind, no matter what he tried.

That memory of being trapped and confound would be with him until the day he died.

Sandra leant against the edge of the sink in front of her, swearing she could hear something. She dried her hands on a towel nearby, heading out the back door to listen more carefully. Usually out here in the middle of nowhere it was deadly quiet, but not right now.

Right now she could hear the faint sounds of someone's voice. From the sounds of it, it sounded somewhat like someone screaming for help and the voice appeared to be coming from her father's laboratory.

Sandra took off running for her father's lab, bursting straight through the large double doors without knocking for fear of her father being hurt and calling out for help. Upon entering the large lab she saw lots of high tech machinery posted all around the room that she never saw before and didn't know anything about. Her eyes scanned across the machinery towards a large tank in the middle of the room, made completely of a see-through material so she could see a person strapped to a table inside.

A person she had never seen before.

Sandra slowly approached the large glass tank, looking at the young woman strapped to the table on the other side of thick glass. "Help Me Please!" The young woman screamed, banging her bruised fists down on the sides of the table. Sandra looked at the blood soaked tears streaming down the sides of her face, soaking her long blonde hair with their sticky red colouring.

Sandra panicked, looking around for an opening to get her out, when suddenly a hand slammed down on her shoulder from behind her, causing her to squeal out in shock.

Sandra whirled around to see her father. For the first time in her life she was actually terrified of what he might do to her. He wasn't the same father who used to lift her up onto his shoulders for piggy back rides. He had a dark cold look in his eyes that she had never seen before and she didn't like it one bit; it was as though he was possessed by a dark evil or something.

This was not her father, just a cold dark shell of his former self.

"W-Who's that?" Sandra managed to stammer out in a shaky tone, indicating towards the woman in the tank as her hands almost shook right off her wrists in terror.

"She's nobody!" He barked at her.

"Wh-what's she doing in there?" Sandra queried, finding it odd that her father would cause harm on another human being. He always seemed so kind hearted when she was a child, but a lot's changed since her mother's passing. She never would have thought he would go so far as to hurt another human being though.

The day she lost her mother she lost her father too.

"What are you doing in here Sandy?" He demanded; keeping his dark beady eyes locked on hers, making her shiver. "You're not supposed to be in here! Get out now and don't touch anything." He ordered her.

Sandra quickly nodded, placing her hands at her sides. She glanced back at the young woman in the tank as she took a few steps away, wondering if she should question her father further about why there was a woman in a tank and why she was crying and screaming for help, but she decided to follow his orders and walk straight out of the lab, pulling the doors shut behind her without touching anything else for fear of what her father would do to her.

Would he stuff her in a tank and strap her down to a table? She didn't know what to think anymore. This man was nothing like her father. He had completely changed.

She shakily made her way back towards the house, deciding to go out for some late night grocery shopping to put some distance between her and her father.

"Hi Nick." Captain Jim Brass waved over to him, lifting the police tape for him to duck underneath. "Victim's name is Kelsey Wight, twenty three years old." Brass informed him. Nick nodded; heading over to David crouched down beside the young female victim's body.

"So what have we got David?" Nick asked as he pulled some latex gloves on, before he started touching the evidence around her body to not contaminate anything that might have the killers DNA on it.

"Gunshot wound to the chest." David showed him, pulling back the young girls cardigan slightly so Nick could photograph the double entry wound of the bullets. Nick helped him roll the body to inspect the back. "One of them looks like a through and through." David reported back to him.

Nick looked around with his flashlight to see if he could find the stray bullet, but it was too dark and the grass around her body was very long. "Okay David, take her away." Nick instructed as he climbed to his feet, inspecting some light blood splatter on the blades of glass behind where she fell.

"Nick!" Brass shouted over to him. "We've just picked up her boyfriend and we've left a message on her parent's answer machine."

"Okay thanks." Nick shouted back, following the blood splatter to a hedge where he found a bullet nesting under some leaves. He tagged and photographed it before he picked it up with some tweezers, inspecting it first before he shoved it into evidence bag for Bobby Dawson to look at later.

Nick climbed to his feet again, spotting a young man stood by the tape. Unlike everyone else he wasn't looking on at the crime scene in shock or terror. He was looking at him specifically, focusing his vibrant green eyes on his every movement, making him involuntary tremble.

It was as though he was there, but no one was home, just a blank stare of nothingness.

Nick tried to focus on the scene again; desperately trying to ignore the young man staring at him. He photographed the scene, taking all the evidence he could back to his truck when it suddenly started to pour down with rain. He ducked under the roof of his truck, sitting on the back as he labelled his evidence up, boxing it up under the shelter of his truck.

"CSI Stokes." A voice shouted over to him. Nick looked up through the blanket of rain, seeing an officer calling over to him. "You're gonna want to see this!" He shouted as he got Nick's attention.

Nick pulled a CSI baseball cap on over his head, walking in the direction he was calling from. He rounded the corner to see the exact same young girl, Kelsey Wight; lying on the grass under a tree. "Didn't David just take her away?" Nick queried. The officer nodded, focusing his torch light on the young girls face.

"You think she has a twin?" The officer asked him. Nick shrugged, quickly calling over some people to help him get the body out of there before all the evidence was washed away by the rain.

Hopefully this one was killed by the same guy as her twin sister so they wouldn't have lost too much evidence due to the sudden heavy rain fall.

Sandra sat at the dining table by herself with a coffee in her hands, staring blankly out the window ahead of her in the direction of the large barn at the foot of the garden. She was trying to contemplate on what she saw down in her father's lab. Was he really doing something evil down there with that young woman? Why was she crying and screaming for help if she was meant to be there?

Sandra jumped as her father walked in through the back door. "Dad! Can I get you something?" She immediately asked, climbing up from her seat. He shook his head, avoiding eye contact with her as he shuffled off up the stairs.

Sandra placed her empty coffee mug in the sink, staring out the window at the lab. She had to confront her father about the mysterious young woman she saw. She needed to know why she was in there and what he was doing in there.

"Dad." She softly spoke as he came down the stairs again. "Can I talk to you a second?"

"Not now Sandy, I'm busy." He tried to move back out the back door but she stopped him in his tracks, by getting in his way.

"Dad please! Can you just tell me what's going on?" She pleaded.

"It's just an experiment Sandy. Don't worry about it." He told her, giving her a forced half smile as he made his way out the back door again, retreating to his hide out at the foot of the garden.

Sandra sighed heavily watching him disappearing into his lab once again. She was worrying about it because she didn't know what he was doing down there or what was going to happen to the girl she saw. It's not like she could sneak in while he was out, because he rarely ever left the lab.

She froze on the spot as she saw a young man walking out of the lab.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about him, aside from his vibrant green eyes. She had never seen him before and she highly doubted that he was working with her father as he preferred to work alone.

Who was this mysterious green eyed man? And what was he doing in her father's lab when she wasn't even allowed in there.

Please Review if you liked it

I hope you enjoyed this chapter :D

This is all set after Season Five year 2005. The only past bit was at the beginning, because it's important for the rest of the story.

In case you didn't catch on the scientist is Cassandra Nelson's husband and Sandra is her daughter.

First Uploaded May 9th = Re-edited 6th September 2010