Chapter 14-

Leoben-

Leoben woke up alone in the downloading tank, not that he minded waking up alone, he'd certainly done it often enough to get used to it. It was the middle of the night and everyone was supposed to be asleep right now. Or just waking up he realized, his brain noting what time it actually was on the clock across the room, red letters showing the time and date. Six in the morning. Thank God today was the cylon day of rest or he would barely be able to function which would have a whole host of other unpleasant side-effects. Downloading was a tiring process, and it made him feel like a stranger in his own skin for ages after a download. He would be clumsy, unsteady as a new born colt after a while. The bodies were identical, but it still felt odd, like a stranger in someone else's skin.

But despite the download, Leoben was currently sitting mentally on cloud nine. Figuratively on cloud nine, not the exploded luxury liner of the rag-tag human fleet, the Cloud Nine expression humans had used to express a mental place of great happiness. Because the woman in his dreams had kissed him, and even though it was only to surprise him enough to kill him, Leoben didn't much care. She had kissed him and he would take what he could get, it may be pathetic, but he didn't care about that. He had thought of little else but what had occurred shortly before the knife entered his neck, since waking up.

The more he analyzed it, the more he realized it might do more harm than good if she assumed this tactic, as enjoyable as he found it. Kara had always used sex as a defensive mechanism, using it to hide herself away and to fight back. If he fell into the role of frack-buddy, or allowed himself to get caught up with it, it might be impossible to get out. Sex and love were different things to her, or so he had come to learn from studying her and visions of her past. If he fell into that role, if he let himself fall into that role, she would be able to keep herself closed off and there would be nothing he could do about it. He wanted her love, not just her body. He wanted nothing more than her everything, and gave himself in return.

He pulled on some clothes haphazardly, not much caring about what clothes they were, except that he was adequately covered enough to go outside. Sixes had tried to put together clothes to wear so you could just grab the thing on a hanger but very few cylons had actually taken them seriously about it. He didn't know what it was with them, but they felt everything had to, match or something. Something about color schemes, undertones and colors that brought out his eyes. Or some ridiculous thing like that, Leoben had never paid much attention to the clothes on his back except to give thanks to God they were there. He had listened to Caprica ramble on about it but never given it much mind.

Some part of his mind wondered if Kara would care if they matched and dismissed the idea as frivolous. Kara didn't care about such things, and he wouldn't have to go about asking Sixes for fashion advice. Besides, he rather liked this green shirt, although if Caprica had her way she would throw it out for it being too 'loud'. Or burn it, along with most of his wardrobe.

Exiting the resurrection rooms and heading down towards the landing bay to grab a heavy raider and head back down to the surface, resurrection would stay on the ships until a secret hub was created on the planet. It would be a tempting target for the humans and as Kara's raid had proved, they were not above blowing up grounded basestars. If they lost their resurrection they would be crippled, and it would be an opportune time for a human strike, farther taking the idea of living in peace away.

Not watching where he was going, in his clamminess, Leoben ran right into the One's Line Representative, the older cylon glaring at him. This One was a rather cunning cylon, and had been the main planner in the destruction of humanity. This One seemed older than the rest, smarter too, there was just something about him Leoben could sense was lurking behind the dark, nearly black eyes. They were cold, expressionless, un-flinching and cruel. This One had boxed many of his own due to 'programming difficulties' which Leoben had found abhorrent. Cylons like Jared, which deserved to be boxed and put away from others, human or cylon, yes the deserved the cold storage. But some seemingly normal Ones with no bad marks against them, did not deserve to be forever stuck on a computer hard drive.

Jared, however, had found favor with this One and as such the cylon man in front of him was the only reason the brother cylon had not been put in cold storage that than got erased. Leoben would love to do nothing more to Jared. Jared posed a threat to him, to Kara, and to countless others. His behavior towards the people down on New Caprica was enough of a crime alone already. Going through lines and lines of defenseless people, attacking, stealing, Leoben's only comfort about his inablity to get the monster boxed was that the day would come when God judged Jared for his crimes.

To top it off, this One, or John Cavil as everyone referred to him, hated Leoben. Oh politically he could do nothing about it as Leoben could see things in the future and four models besides his own respected that, leaving him with a majority. He would quickly be outvoted on any measures he chose to take against Leoben, leaving the One with nothing more than snide comments and acting like a young teenage girl, back-stabbing, drama creating, snooty young teen-age girl. Something many cylons seemed to find hilarious, mush to his confusion. He'd had to endure being the butt and punch line of so many jokes. Leoben just wished he could glue the man's mouth shut sometimes. However, unlike with Jared, he couldn't do cylon against cylon violence especially for something as small as 'a joke'. Jared he could do as much as he could, except box him, being he was a part of his own model. But not John Cavil, the One was another kettle of fish altogether.

"So Leoben, you and what's-her-face get a little too rough?" The One was baiting him, seeing how he would respond, a smirk pulling up the edge of his mouth and eye glinting with the promise of a chalengee. Leoben pushed his temper down. No one was allowed to comment about Kara, he could be the brunt of many jokes, and he would bear it, but they had to leave Kara alone. She didn't deserve it, and besides, he hated hearing it about her. None of them had the right to judge, even more so when they had never met her.

"No we did not." Leoben replied icily, a cue if any to back off. It only seemed to encourage John, the man's smirk turning into a smile as though Leoben was just not going to admit the truth. One took another step closer while he was walking determinedly toward the landing bay to take a heavy raider down to the surface. And than go back to bed and take a nap for a few hours. He wasn't going to get his temper up, he was not going to let now be the time he finally lost his control. Nope, he was just going to ignore him and walk straight ahead, and the day when Kara finally rested in his arms sit back and laugh at him.

Cavil looked like he was going to say something else but they passed a Simon's lab, the same Simon who had insisted on the farms to study reproduction in hopes of getting a hybrid. It was the same idiot who had gotten Kara Thrace in his grasp and gotten her to run away by getting her suspicions up. The very same one who had also neglected to tell him they had her in their custody until after they had removed one of her ovaries, at that point making it too late, something Leoben was still angry about. They could be closer now, if only the moron had not made a stupid elementary mistake.

"This is my stop." Cavil said without warning and flung open the door and entered without even knocking.

Leoben watched with slight interest as the older cylon shut the door quickly behind him. He hadn't known Cavil was visiting with one of the Fours, let alone enough to enter without knocking into that certain four's lab. Each Four had their own personal lab and it was taboo to go in their space without asking as it was with any model. Most of the copies each had a place that was special to them, and Leoben and just about everyone else knew not to break the rule of entering without asking unless it was an emergency. It was rude.

The Two pushed the oddity out of his mind; it was none of his business really. He shouldn't pry anyways, it was not his place to judge or condemn what they were doing, unless it was ethically wrong and would anger God, in which case he felt the need to intervene. They could just be having a chat or something, he needed to stop jumping to conclusions. Returning his thoughts back to what he was doing, Leoben returned to his quest to get a heavy Raider down to the surface.

He kept going over the events of the past few hours in his mind, euphoria she had kissed him was dulled by the fact she was using his attraction to her against him. It was clever and again something he had not expected from her. But what could he expect from her really? She was so unpredictable, defying logic simply by existing. She had managed to survive her mother, Zak's death, a nuclear holocaust, and so many things after. Logic pointed to her not being there right now, but she was. God was watching out for her, more proof that their destines were entertained.

Climbing into the Heavy Raider with another Eight as a pilot he ran through some of the facts about his current home situation in his head. Kara had a knife and was clearly not afraid to use it, and she had somehow gotten it in the apartment despite the initial searches they had done of her. Because a knife wielding angry Kara Thrace was just what they needed. His mind remarked at him sarcastically, sounding remarkably like a certain annoying two who loved to tease him, he'd have to get it away from her, somehow.

The Eight seemed distraught, distracted, and Leoben felt himself wondering why, he had exited the datastream an hour ago and nothing had seemed amiss to him. Leoben hesitantly, knowing how easily an Eight could change their emotions, asked her if she was okay. She just shrugged her shoulders. Leoben knew better than to push, Eights would talk when they were ready, a fact he had learned from Boomer, and pushing them to do something they didn't want to do was a recipe for disaster.

"Another Eight, Sandra, didn't check into her post half an hour ago. She's missing." She finally remarked. Leoben was forcefully reminded that they were occupying the human settlement and humans were not too thrilled about the change in status quo. There had been riots, gun fire, actual fires, and vandalism. Whoever it was, they were busy busy people. Despite keeping the people being questioned and imprisoned about the acts of violence, keeping people busy and imposing curfew, the attacks continued and it forced him to realize things existed outside of his comfy little bubble with Kara.

"Has she downloaded?" Leoben asked before he could stop himself. He was concerned, cylons did not just go poof, and than they were gone.

The eight perused her lips and glared at him for asking the question. "No." She answered back curtly and full attitude, letting him know in no uncertain terms he was an idiot for asking such a stupid question. "She's the second one to disappear." It was worrying news, cylons were starting to disappear and not be found or download. They had to be somewhere, but wherever they were was well hidden. No one was able to track them or had any idea of where they had gone, it was as though they had stopped existing all of a sudden. It scared him.

The rest of the ride was spent in silence, Leoben's mind a jumble of ideas and too little time to think of them. And he still needed to talk to Caprica later today. That was a meeting he did not look forward to, a part of him was still hurt the sister thought his love for Kara was wrong, and that his visions of them together were wrong, and that Kara would never love him. But he needed to mend the fences, she was a good sister after all, and she was only trying to watch out for him. It didn't hurt any less though.

He tiredly stumbled his way from the landing strip and back inside the apartment building. As his shoes made a clacking sort of noise against the concrete, he silently cursed himself for putting himself on the upper floors but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was a measure of safety to ensure she would be unharmed should humans manage to get in the lower sections of the buildings. He sishghed to himself, it didn't make the walk up any less tiring.

Finally arriving at the front door he pulled himself inside and down the stairs, careful not to trip over his own feet. It was just starting to get light outside but the apartment was still mainly dark. Kara was on the couch under her blanket and he assumed sleeping peacefully, Leoben resisted the urge to go check on her, he didn't want to download again. After his previous experience he had learned the lesson of he was not to bother her while sleeping, even though he wouldn't do anything to her. She had to know that somewhere, he'd never hurt her. He loved her.

The bathroom still had her two sets of clothes on the floor, some just worn for a long time and some with blood on them. The towel was covering up some of the articles of clothing. Another thing to clean, he mused to himself. He opened the bedroom door and shut it behind him. He'd do it later. Right now he needed some sleep, badly.

Laura-

Today was a day of rest, not that the people in the camp would be getting any. Really how could you rest easy when those, those things, were walking around among the people? How anyone could be at ease, or even be expected to be at ease, around those cylons was really beyond her. They were most likely looking for weapons, or insurgents. Or maybe their missing cylons as Laura had discovered this morning.

She sat in her tent, mulling over the most recent development. Some of the insurgency had gone after cylons, and had already kidnapped two and held them far out from the city in a cave. The cave was relatively unguarded should any shiny metal show up, no one would be able to put a face on any of the insurgents, when the cylons were fed they kept bags over their heads and communicated through the computer reading out their questions. AS fool-proof as it was ever going to get she supposed. The two Eights, one named Meghan and another who called herself Sandra, the new one, were kept tied up, in different cells, and seemingly unaware of the other's presence. Laura had not even known it existed until a few minutes ago, when Tyrol had come by and felt the need to inform her about it.

Laura Roslin had to admit it was a good tactic, the Admiral would think so, it was definitely bothering the cylons. She already started to notice most of them walking in pairs whenever they went out among the human population. The only question was, if they escaped from their prison, what the insurgency do then? Humans would be in trouble, but if they measures to protect identity were as fool-proof as the former deck chief assured her than the only problem would be finding a new place to keep them.

On some level Laura wondered if what they were doing was wrong. They were taking prisoners, subjecting them to harsh conditions, interrogating, not torturing, them for information on cylon's plans. The only other argument she could think of was once they ran out of information and still had to be cared for as to not download, it would take lots of resources to be kept alive, and surely they would be found eventually. Or they would just be harder to kidnap.

But the former President of the Twelve Colonies could do nothing against it. Despite being a part, she was not in charge of it; something she had discovered bothered her during her time on the surface of New Caprica. She had grown so accustomed to being the one to call the shots when she suddenly did not, she was bothered. Laura Roslin had gotten accustomed to the Presidency, and now, she felt like she didn't fit in anywhere.

She watched as a group of Centurions stomped by, metal clanking together as their red eyes watched the humans scuttle by, no one wanting to attract their glowing gaze. The former President clenched her fists, wishing nothing more than being able to rip them apart piece by piece. The sudden blood-lust surprised her, she always considered herself to be a calm rational person, preferring to solve things with diplomacy instead of force like Richard Adar, her predecessor as president, had.

The cylons though, were just like the man had been. People were to work and work hard, with little to no benefits, they fact they weren't shot was to be enough, and that all the people weren't dead was supposed to make them grateful. She had gotten her lesson plans recently, and they included lessons on how nice and peaceful the cylons were, and all about their cylon God.

Laura wouldn't do it, not only because it went against everything she believed in, but in her lessons she tried to be as unbiased as possible, this wasn't a lesson, all of it was propaganda favoring the cylons and their machines. The humans were the monsters, the cylons were peace loving people who didn't want to hurt anyone but the humans forced them. Right, because humans had pointed a gun at the cylons and forced them to launch nuke after nuke after nuke onto their home world, leaving the children homeless in a rag-tag fleet of ships then proceed to hunt them down and try to kill them whenever they got the chance. So peaceful indeed she fumed.

Stepping out of her tent, she decided to take a walk around the camp-site. It was early morning, the light not quite out yet but streaks were across the cloudy dismal sky. You wouldn't be able to see sunlight much today, far too cloudy for that. There were spots that got it here and there but not always. Sometimes it was nice out, and it really felt like she was under the Caprican sun again.

Laura moved through the city, marveling at how the air felt against her skin. The very air felt different. It had only been just over a week since the cylons had come and yet this place had lost any hope it had ever held for the people. Before the occupation New Caprica had represented a new start, a new world and for those who dared dream it a new place to forever call home. Now it was all washed away with a greater sense of hopelessness covering the air, an abundant amount of it filled the air like electricity; it felt like the attacks all over again.

She passed a few of her friends on their way to the market place, just briefly waving before continuing on their way. She took comfort in these little bits of contact, you may see them disappear or hear they were dragged away the night before. Nothing made her want to go and destroy centurions more than a little boy who had come to school yesterday crying because the cylons took his mommy away from him, leaving him to the care of their neighbors. How did she soothe the child, when his mommy may indeed never come back?

Rounding a corner she ran into a D'Anna model, looking at her and smiling. It was unsettling just how human they were, how well they impersonated the very people they were trying to destroy. She remembered sitting on Colonial One and meeting another copy, or it could be this copy for all she knew, to do a story on the people of Galactica. Her last thought had not been whether the woman was a cylon or not, it was whether this story idea of her's to get the people to calm down would come back to bite her where it hurt. How stupid she felt.

"Ahh Laura Roslin. Just the person I was looking for." Her Aerielon accent drawled and Laura forced herself to stand still and not give her satisfaction. Laura had wondered when they would come for her, being the former President it would have been unavoidable unless she had been on one of the ships that jumped away. She looked up at the sky, taking in the clouds and the patches of sunlight shining through. "I'm going to need to come with me." the cylon's manicured hands wave at a couple Centurions who stand on both sides of the former school teacher turned president turned school teacher again. Their metal hands reach out and grab her upper arms, leaving scratches and causing her to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

"Well come on Madame President, haven't got all day have we?" The cylon mocks and turns and struts towards the New Caprican dentition center, and the metal cylons force her to follow. She walks by and sees people freeze in their places, silently communicating to her with their eyes. Pity, and the promise to spread the word. It's the only thing they can do as she is forced to walk or let her arms get ripped to shreds by the metla fingers they have fashioned for themselves.

She had told Maya to flee should she ever become captured, to hide out with the resistance, she needed to make sure Maya got the message. Because Maya and Isis, could not, under any circumstances at all, be captured by the cylons. Isis was far too important to be let into enemy hands. Laura thought to herself, looking at as many people as she could, trying to make sure they might know who she was and tell the in case it was the last anyone saw of her.

Note: The disappearing cylons was put in this story after I heard Ron D Moore's pod-cast of the season opener of Season 3, I forget which episode it was for but one of the first two which mentioned they were going to have the cylons disappearing instead of the suicide bombers that had the cylons freaking out. I liked the idea of the cylons disappearing and being picked off and decided to include it in this story as well. and my extreme apologies for the late chapter, my beta and I've been so busy with school I never got this edited.