CH11 (92)

It was now one month later:

Rick still hadn't gone croc hunting for two reasons really. First the thought of going brought back Kate getting injured, and he was having trouble getting past that. Would he get who went with him killed this time?

The second reason was he was afraid he would kill every croc he saw. More than he needed to (can you say Anakin Skywalker?). Still he knew he needed to someday.

Emily and Kali were sneaking out of their dome and into medical to check in on Kate almost constantly. At first Rick and Alexis tried to put a stop to it, but the tears they got in return caused them to relent and let them go.

Kate for her part was enjoying having them show up since the second they did they would climb up into bed with her, one on each side.

Finally one day the nurse came in to give Kate her muscle shot. The nurse had used an ice bag to help deaden the area so it didn't hurt as much, and the girls had watched what they thought was a huge needle go into each of Kate's legs.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Emily asks. Because it sure looked like it should.

"Not much no. The ice helps a lot though. After she is done my leg feels funny for a couple of days." Kate tells them.

"Your leg laughs." Kali is curious now. How could her mom's leg laugh?

"Not that kind of funny sweetie, it's more I can feel something inside my leg moving kind of funny." Kate tries to explain, giggling.

Kali didn't get it but she remained silent, just happy to be hugging her mother.

Then a nurse and Madison came into Kate's room. "You ready girls?" Madison asks them. So Emily and Kali climb down off the bed and take their positions in case they need to catch their mom.

Madison knew they couldn't keep Kate from falling, but she wasn't going to tell them that. Besides they had a job to do, so it made them feel a part of the process.

Madison soon had Kate standing on her one good leg. "Any pain?"

"Only a little, but it feels good." Kate was happy to tell Madison.

"Ok, let her have a little of her weight on her other leg." And the nurse relaxed a little. Kate's pain increased instantly, but it wasn't as bad as she remembered it being.

"How's the pain?" Madison asks, ready to take the weight away from her again.

"It hurts, but not as bad as it used to." Kate answers truthfully, and the beep, beep of the monitor seems to confirm that.

"Ok, I'm going to let you have your full weight for a few seconds, and then we're going to take it all away from you again. …. Ready?" And Madison nods to the nurse as Madison moves back in ready to take Kate's weight away from her.

Kate's pain increased instantly and the beep, beep of the monitor increased and kept on increasing. "Enough!" Madison tells the nurse and soon Kate is sitting again.

The nurse leaves to go get pain medication. "That was good Kate. There was a time when that almost caused you to black out from the pain. I'd say a month from now and we'll have you standing on your own for a few minutes.

There will still be pain, but we're getting there." Madison liked it. It was slow work as far as Kate was concerned and she wanted it to go faster.

Once Kate was back in bed and had gotten her pain medication. "Ok girls." And Madison patted the bed, watching Emily and Kali waste no time in climbing back into bed.

Kate was trying to soak them into her body. Kate knew Rick and Alexis loved her, but these two were doing the only thing they knew to do and every day she got an "I love you mom." And Kate knew it was straight from the heart.

The first Kali was dead, her mother was dead, her father had disappeared into a bottle and she was ever so lost. Now here she was. A husband she loved with all her heart and three girls that she loved just as much. Plus she had Madison and her parents and her father back.

How did she get this lucky?

Kate wanted out of this bed and back to her life. She couldn't help but wonder when someone was going to give up on her. She was really broken now, so why would Rick want her now?

"You know where the girls are?" Rick was asking Alexis while fixing another colony meal.

"They have been spending most of their time in medical with mom. Should I go get them?" Alexis answers his question. Loving that her sisters were not letting go of their mom.

"No I'll go, you just watch this. I'll be back with them in a few minutes." And Rick heads for Medical to see Kate and get his daughters so they can eat.

He finds them deep in conversation with Kate when he enters. "It's time to eat you two, so hop down and go eat. When you are done you can bring your mother her meal." Rick helps Kali down since she was on his side.

"How are you doing babe?" Rick asks her since he had to go hunting again to fill the freezer in a few days, so he would have something to cook with. While Alexis was looking over when the greenhouses would start producing something.

"Better I guess." The girls were great, but Kate was starting to feel bad. Her mind was dreaming up all kinds of reasons why Rick would leave her.

"Lucy told us you were standing for a short time today." Rick informs her he was still keeping tabs on her progress.

"Barely." Kate was still feeling low. Almost convinced this injury was going to cause her to lose her husband.

"You'll get there Kate, and since the freezer is full again, Alexis and I will be back later." Rick leans down so he can whisper into her ear. "I love you little miss sexy, and your little injury isn't getting rid of me that easily. You're my wife and I'm keeping you. And if I find you kissing someone other than me, I'll break your other leg.

"Am I clear?" And Rick kisses her stroking her lips with his tongue asking for entrance. After getting it he deepens the kiss and places a hand on one of her breasts, and since she is not wearing a bra he has easy access to her nipple. That he starts working on getting it as hard as he can.

Breaking from the kiss, Kate is left breathless with her head spinning. She can even feel her lips still tingling.

Kate lifts a hand to feel her lips. "I love you Kate and don't you forget it. … Clear!?" Rick looks into Kate's eyes.

Kate can still see the love he has for her. His blue eyes allow her to drown in them yet again. "Clear." Kate barely whispers out as her eyes start to water.

"GOOD! The girls will be back with your food in a little bit, and then we'll all be over here till you get tired of us." Rick tells her and then quickly kisses her again.

Kate watches Rick leave as her tears fall faster. "He loves me still." Her heart knew it.

Lucy's avatar was also crying while smiling down on Kate. Reconfirming to Lucy that Kate had given her heart to the right people.

True to Rick's word Emily and Kali came back carrying her food for the evening meal. The two of them sat on the bed next to Kate watching their mother eat. They weren't leaving her if they could help it.

A short time later Rick and Alexis showed up carrying something and placed it on her table after Kate was done eating. "What's this?" Then Alexis places Kate's old cell phone on the table.

Kate's eyes light up. "It's not?" Kate was grinning.

Rick opens the board and pulls the pieces out of a bag. "It took us a little time to reconstruct the board, and we need Lucy to duplicate the electronics and she promises not to cheat." Rick is grinning, as he turns his head to look at the monitor.

"Monopoly Zapped." Kate is grinning. She hadn't played this game in years it seemed.

"That's mine, you owe me $22. Hand it over dead beat." Kate tells Rick who landed on her property.

Rick mumbled something about cheating while transferring his money from his phone to hers.

"What was that babe? I missed it?" Kate teases.

"I said you're lucky as always." Rick smiles at her. Getting Kate to grin at him knowing he is lying.

Rick was eventually gone from the game leaving Kate, Alexis and Lucy left.

"That's mine with one house. Hand it over, …. HAL." Alexis teases.

"I'm going to find out who this Hal is one of these days. … Munchkin." Lucy counters and transfers money to Alexis's phone.

"Good luck with that, SAL." Alexis grins, getting Lucy to growl.

Kate had no idea who or apparently what this HAL or SAL was, but the interaction between them was fun to watch. Maybe one day she could get Alexis to explain, when Lucy wasn't listening of course.

Scene break to Earth:

James had just finished interviewing, or to be more accurate interrogating one Ms. Gina Cowell and one Ms. Meredith Lee. And he meant interrogate since both of them were the most full of themselves, egotistical, self absorbed, insulate, entitled bitches he had ever come in contact with.

No wonder this Rick Castle was divorced. MY GOD!

Ms. Cowell seemed to know the least about his new wife. Never having met her before. She assumed that Mr. Castle had met his new wife while he was on summer vacation in upper New York State.

However neither of them knew where this place was actually located and had never been there.

Ms. Lee however had met his new wife and by the sounds of it, got herself into trouble. Broken bones, damaged knee and shoulder, along with a missing police report about the incident. The log that an ambulance being dispatched to the scene was still there however.

He was still chuckling about Ms. Lee demanding that he open the house in New York that Mr. Castle owns so she could live there, since it was hers.

She was getting someplace to stay alright. They both were. Even as he was dictating his report to be typed later, both Ms. Lee and Ms. Cowell were being transported to a secret place under New York City.

Ghost stations and abandoned subways are often considered the holy grail of urban exploration. Despite the grandeur and eerie mystery of many abandoned railway stations, it's the hidden, lost places beneath that really capture the imagination of urban explorers. Some subway stations have been closed for so long that talk of them has become urban legend.

One of them however was anything but abandoned. The FBI had taken it over and was using it to hold people that couldn't be placed in the general population of a prison. And it allowed them immediate access to them in case they had questions.

He already had agents working on tracking down where this house in upper New York was located.

After he was done dictating his report he started reading the interview reports of this Mrs. Castle that her ex-employees had provided. Including the one from Pamela of the CIA. It had taken a little work to get to interview her. There was still a little bit of rivalry between the CIA and FBI.

From what they could learn Mrs. Castle was serious about her job, she paid he employees well and the companies that hired her had paid a pretty penny to have her work for them. She had already found a mole and a complex virus meant to do damage to the company that hired her.

They had even tracked down the architect she had hired to design her a building for her company.

It was clear her employees knew nothing other than she was a nice boss to work for, and the pay was good. And they liked her office plans that she had shared with them. The money was apparently earned legally so they let her employees keep it all.

Since this Mr. Castle wasn't technically dead, his house in New York would sit empty, likely for years to come.

He added a note to the end of his file to make sure Ms. Lee and Ms. Cowell were interrogated at least monthly. They both knew something he was convinced, just not sure what.

On his trip into work this morning he could still see the massive amount of glass all over the place. "Couldn't they have found some other way to deliver their message?" His own office was missing glass and it was going to take months to replace all that glass.

Sitting back he reflected on what the message had said. It confirmed Bracken's statement that humans from the past had been taken to this planet called Tellus. It also confirmed their political system.

They had been gone about a year so the time it took to get from there to here seemed correct, maybe.

"A storm is coming." A war was coming this way, an interstellar war, and they could barely get robots off their own planet let alone go to another.

One thing was clear however, they hate us. Or maybe disappointed in us was more accurate. That "Don't trust you" comment had hurt. But if you were on the outside looking in, ….?

There was an obscure Sci-fi 'B' movie, Wavelength. Someone mentioned in the movie that there should be a sign at the edge of their system.

"Beware, Head Hunters!"

Maybe that comment was just a little too close to home. "Note to self. Check if the movie Wavelength was one of the movies our alien friends downloaded."

James huffed to himself. "I wonder if our friends actually did have some automated buoys out there sending out just such a message." We deserve it.

Then his desk phone rang. "Yes."

"Excellent!" James listened for a couple of minutes. It sounded like the place was very isolated. "Get a team in a helicopter and get them out there. I want the place strip searched top to bottom. And take dogs with you to search the grounds. Use your best judgment how far out to search." James hangs up his phone.

James started re-reading the notes from the interviews. "Mrs. Castle wasn't really Mrs. Castle yet." The NYPD people that worked for her mentioned this Kate was his fiancé. Interesting!

And she appeared to enter his life either during summer or immediately after. Maybe this isolated house would have some answers.

James was going over his notes when an aid knocked and burst into his office. "Sir we have a Climbing Spark incident." That got his attention.

Admiral Quast had just launched two of his three seal teams to get his WHO and CDC personnel back. The transponders told him where they were and his global hawk showed the surrounding area. For the moment it looked like only the police had them. If the army showed up, they could be moved to someplace he could never get them out of.

The Pegasus had been ordered in closer and he had doubled the cap above him with all three carriers having Super Hornets sitting in the catapults, waiting. Search and rescue was already airborne. Waiting to be brought up from below were the refueling aircraft.

He had also launched additional E2C Hawkeyes to keep an eye on things. His Los Angeles class was searching the waters and had so far come up with nothing. He had the sub search helicopters ready to go. He also had two more of the modified Blackhawks ready to go inland just in case.

Admiral Quast hoped he had thought of everything when a radio seaman showed up and handed him a pad. "Sir this just came in as your eyes only." Then leaves.

Quast ran his finger over the pad and input his code and started reading. "Climbing Spark incident." He whispers to himself.

"Officer of the deck. Sound General Quarters." Quast yells out. "I'm so very sorry baby, so very, very sorry." Quast whispers to himself.

Then he picks up the phone. "Order everyone back to the carriers. Scrub the mission. Get the Pegasus to form up with us, flank speed. I want all personnel onboard ship in 15 minutes. Get the cap on the deck. And get the 18's off the catapults.

I want the flight decks clear of all aircraft in 15 minutes. Push them overboard if you have to. You have 15 minutes to clear the deck and get the ships buttoned up tight." And he hangs up the phone.

Picking up another phone. "As soon as the last of the cap is on the deck set a course for the middle of the pacific, all ships, flank speed. Overload if you have to. Get us moving." And he hangs up the phone.

General Campbell had almost reached his car to go home and get some sleep. One of their attack squadrons was due back soon and he was sure his staff could handle it without him. The next attack wasn't scheduled for 6 hours. In the dark a few hours before sunrise.

One of his staff had caught up with him. "Sir, we have a situation." And walked him back to the command and control room.

"What have we got?" He asks and is handed a tablet just like the one Admiral Quast had used.

Running his finger over it and inputting his code, he started reading. "Climbing Spark Incident." He whispers out to himself.

"How far out is the attack squadron?" He didn't have much time.

"About an hour still sir." Is his answer.

Too long! "Have them land immediately, anywhere they can. Freeways, roads, airports of any size. They have 15 minutes to be on the ground. Send out a general alarm. I want everyone in any basement or underground they can find.

All right people close up your laptops and get downstairs and take your suits with you." Campbell tells them.

And watches them scramble to comply and soon hears an alarm sounding.

"5 Minutes. Everyone downstairs, NOW!" and Campbell follows them down.

Outside he was calm and doing his job. Inside was a different story, but his training and experience was making it easy to keep control.