WARNING: THIS IS A DARK CHAPTER, WITH MILD BUT EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT.

CHAPTER 10

CHASING RAINBOWS

Rufus Ayres slammed his palm against the reset knob, fear, anger and frustration getting the better of him—but the proximity alarm barely skipped a beat.

"Stay frosty, Chinstrap … and keep your head down."

The young lieutenant caught the slight note of urgency in the other pilot's voice, and it shattered his concentration. He turned away from his instruments, and looked out through the canopy. A Viper was coming in hot at one o'clock high, its guns blazing away at a target somewhere to his rear.

A shock wave suddenly buffeted the Raptor, and Chinstrap found himself fighting desperately to prevent his ship from sliding into an uncontrolled lateral spin. He sensed rather than saw one of the mothballed freighters, which should have been off somewhere to his left, now looming directly in front of him.

Rufus Ayres would later swear that his entire life flashed before his eyes, but the quick reflexes that had already saved him twice in less than a minute kicked in a third time. He pulled back hard on the yoke, and the Raptor jumped skyward. Shrieking metal screamed in protest, and he knew that he had grazed the other ship's hull. Whether he still had his landing gear was a question that he would have to save for later.

"Well done, Chinstrap; you're clear, and we've got your six. Now, get back to the barn; we'll take it from here."

"Roger that, Freaker … and thanks for the assist. Kat, requesting emergency clearance; I need DC and a med team on hot standby." Rufus began rapidly cycling through the emergency checklist …

"Frak! Kat, be advised that the landing gear won't engage. I'll have to do a belly flop."

"Understood, Chinstrap; can you shut down and let us tow you in?"

Rufus swiveled around, and for the first time got a good look at the carnage in his rear. Jared Dalton was sprawled on the floor, and even from a distance it was obvious that he had been severely injured. The skin covering his left cheek had been ripped away, exposing the jawbone underneath. His left eye had been lacerated, and the smell of scorched flesh now filled the tiny compartment.

"Negative, CAG; my ECO is in bad shape. He needs medical attention stat!"

In the landing bay, one of the Eights swore at the wireless, and pounded her fist into the table that served as Louanne Katraine's makeshift office.

"Then you're cleared straight into the bay; good luck, and God's speed."

"All right, people! You know the drill!" Jammer clapped his hands to get everyone's attention. "We've got a wounded bird inbound, and a pilot who needs every second we can buy him. So, let's roll! We need to coat the deck with fire retardant, and we've got maybe four minutes to get it done!"

"Let's move, people!" The blond haired Six grabbed a fire extinguisher, and without looking back she ran toward the entrance to the hangar. She had been programmed for maintenance, and she had worked alongside Galen Tyrol and James Lyman since their first day on Natalie's baseship.

Neither the knuckle-draggers nor the Eights needed any more urging. They scrambled to lay down the foam that might prevent a wayward spark from igniting the Raptor's remaining fuel load. One spark … they all knew that one spark could trigger an explosion that would turn the deck into a raging inferno.

. . .

Falcon studied the cliff face, and he made no effort to check the sense of rage that was coursing through his systems. The human who groomed his wings after each hunt had been hurt, and Falcon lusted for revenge.

Relying upon his electronic senses to ferret out the foe's hiding places, the Raider switched to infrared. He isolated his prey, and rushed in for the kill.

. . .

"Are you sure that we should be doing this," Lee worriedly asked. "I mean … uh … what if … you know … I'm hurting Cyrene? What if … well … what if … uh, um … you go into labor or something?"

"Or something, Lee? Why, whatever do you mean?"

Creusa's voice was teasing, but her heart overflowed with love. In the dark, she reached out and gently traced the frown that etched her husband's forehead. She wanted Lee inside her, and she wanted just as badly to be on top, but she had to settle for lying on her side because her very serious and deeply concerned husband was convinced that she was a balloon that was ready to burst. The position would leave her physically unsatisfied, but she was surprised at how good Lee's devotion to his new family made her feel emotionally. The Sixes had always been tactile, had always craved sensation, but the complexities of love had changed the young Cylon to the very core of her being. At every turn, Creusa sensed depths and textures hitherto unknown. For the briefest of moments, she wondered whether her pregnancy had triggered some long dormant program of Ellen's devising, but in the final analysis it didn't matter, and so she dismissed the thought.

"I'm not a balloon, Lee. A beach ball, maybe—but you won't prick me!" Softly laughing, she leaned in to kiss Apollo gently on the lips.

Lee hungrily returned her kiss. He was well schooled in conventional wisdom, well acquainted with all the broad generalizations. Pregnancy, it was claimed, systematically robbed most women of their vitality, leaving in its wake brittle bones and a waxen complexion. But Creusa wasn't most women, and she glowed with good health. She had become steadily more voluptuous, the erotic mother goddess incarnate.

"I know, I know … but …"

Creusa kissed him much more aggressively, her hands now wandering insistently up and down his wiry frame. Lee's passions quickly responded to her skilled and knowing touch, and he gasped with pleasure.

"But I read that there's something in my fluids … I think it's called prostaglandins … that can induce labor … oh, gods!"

Creusa guided Lee's mouth to her waiting breast, the nipple stiff with need. The slightest touch sufficed. Her back arched, and she began to pant as wave after wave of liquid fire coursed through her belly. She yearned to explode … but not in the way that Lee imagined.

"We still have a few more weeks to go," she finally managed to murmur. "So, don't worry."

"I can't help worrying," Lee confessed as he moved his head from one side to the other. "It's just my nature."

"I know," Creusa said as she affectionately ran her fingers through his hair. "You have this check list in your mind, and you keep running through it over and over again. Everything has to be just so. In some ways, Lee, you're more cylon than I am. It's why you're so good at everything you do."

"Is that a compliment," he whispered. "Do I … measure up?"

"Oh, yes, my love; you most definitely rise to the task!" Creusa started to giggle, and she clamped down hard. Her emotions were still running wild, but even if it was all raging hormones, there were certain things that simply did not become a number Six.

"Besides," she added in a husky voice—the one that always made it so difficult for Lee to breathe …

Creusa shifted her weight, seeking a more comfortable position, and Lee moved with her …

"Besides," she continued, "Cyrene can come out to play any time now. She'll be fine … I guarantee it."

"Ummm … and what about me? Will I be fine? Can you guarantee that?"

"That's good," Creusa sighed; "whatever you do, don't stop!" She knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn't burst, but she had reached the point where she was not at all sure that she wouldn't melt.

"Your wish," Lee mumbled as he groped between her legs. He found the spot, and started to knead it with his forefinger. His wife instantly began to purr in ecstasy.

"I predict …"

Creusa closed her eyes, and stared into the future. She did not have Leoben's gift of sight … nor did she need it.

"I predict that there will come a night …"

She buried her nose in Lee's hair and inhaled deeply, her mind automatically parsing the many layers of his scent. When they made love, his body chemistry charged the air around them.

"… when you will start coming to bed with your clothes on, so that you won't have to lose precious time getting dressed when we're leaving for the hospital. It would not surprise me if you even refuse to take your shoes off!"

Lee started to protest, but Creusa had developed an uncanny ability to read his mind. He decided to say nothing … because there really was nothing for him to say.

"You've paced it off, haven't you? You know exactly how far it is from here to the hospital … how long it will take."

"It's 1,529 steps," he sheepishly confessed; "it took me eleven minutes and forty seconds."

Creusa grasped Lee's head in her hands, and then she kissed him for all that she was worth. "I don't think that I can walk that fast," she admitted when they finally came up for air.

"Not a problem," the younger Adama slyly retorted; "the centurion's going to carry you."

"Oh, Lee," she laughed; "do you have any idea how much I love you?"

. . .

Chinstrap cycled the hatch, and leaned out just far enough to scream for medics. One of the Eights brushed past him, and fell to the deck at Jared Dalton's side. She grasped his hand, which by some miracle had not been touched by the explosion. She wanted to weep, she wanted to lash out at the universe, but she consciously choked back the tears. She was an Eight. She could do this.

"Jared, can you hear me? You're safe now; it's going to be all right. You'll see … you're safe …"

"Sharon … is that you? I can't see nuthin'. Why can't I see?"

"Sharon, you need to move … give us room to work."

The Eight didn't need to look up. She knew that Simon and Larissa had boarded the Raptor right behind her. They were the most experienced medical team in the fleet, and they shuttled from one ship to the next as the rotation schedule required. Natalie had been careful never to allow enemy forces to gauge her true numbers.

Larissa efficiently checked the injured pilot for broken bones, and then nodded to her colleague. She got up and stood aside so that a pair of waiting marines could transfer Hog's Breath to a stretcher. They had to be careful: Jared's chest and shoulders were a mass of second and third degree burns.

But this was a drill that they had all been through many times before: get the wounded pilot onto a stretcher … get him out of his bird … get him onto a gurney … get him to surgery. Try and save his life, and rebuild him in body and spirit.

Sharon strode rapidly beside the gurney. She refused to let go of Jared Dalton's hand, and she never ceased to encourage him, reminding him constantly that everything would be all right. Other Eights trailed behind, and Sharon knew that many more would congregate around the infirmary. They were all adopted daughters of Aerilon, and Hog's Breath was a true son. No matter the cost in time and tears, they would all close ranks. They would always look after their own.

. . .

Sam Anders idly bounced the pyramid ball off the deck, each time snatching it out of the air with the easy grace of the professional athlete. His hand never paused, never delayed for even the tiniest fraction of a second while waiting for the ball to catch up. His motions were fluid, the mechanics of geometry transformed into art. Suddenly, he crouched, and his arm came up. The ball sailed across the lounge and passed through the Pyramid goal without grazing its sides. Another perfect shot … another demonstration of the artistry of mathematics.

Melania Peripolides leaned back on her bar stool, and clapped her hands in genuine admiration. Then, she stood up and walked over with Sam's drink. She nuzzled him in the ear when she handed it to him.

"You make it look so easy," she murmured as she took a sip of her own whiskey. "You do everything so effortlessly."

Sam downed his drink in one violent gulp, and then strolled off to retrieve his ball. When he returned, he dropped it into her hand. "Give it a try," he encouraged.

Melania tossed it into the air, pretending to think about it, knowing exactly what she was going to do.

"I prefer other … recreational activities," she suggestively replied. Her tone … her body language … the way that she was looking at him—Melania was sending all the necessary signals. Sam could not possibly mistake her meaning.

Sam stood his ground, and when Melania inched closer still, he did not back away. He was content to let her make the first move. This was another sport, and it too was one at which he excelled.

. . .

The Raptor slid smoothly into the docking bay of the Aesculapius class medical frigate, but John Bierns was so engrossed in the report he was currently reading that he did not even notice until Margaret Edmondson announced hard seal.

Seated opposite him in the confined space, Sharon Bierns was watching her husband closely. She had already seen him go into deep shock once, and she feared that what the centurions had discovered on the Delos would trigger another episode. Sharon glanced meaningfully at Larissa Karanis, who was also keeping a close eye on the First Born. His mind was littered with toxic memories, and she keenly appreciated just how easily he could communicate them to the baseship hybrids. She was prepared forcefully to intervene in order to prevent a recurrence of the psychic chaos that Bierns had inflicted on the entire fleet five months earlier.

Casualties notwithstanding, the Six in charge of Pelea's baseship had persevered in the attack on the cylon outpost. Once the Raiders had taken out the last of the missile batteries that had caused such havoc, sixty Heavy Raiders had taken a full battalion of centurions down to the surface. They had systematically combed the mothballed hulls, inventorying potential resources for transport up to the fleet. They had located the Diana, which had turned out to be just one more of the nondescript hulks that the Cavils had parked inside the crater. But the real prize was the Delos. The hospital ship was state-of-the-art, and the initial reports of intact equipment and medical supplies had set off a wave of jubilation across the fleet. And then the follow-up report had come in, summarizing the discoveries in the chambers so innocuously styled L-7 and L-8. Bierns had instinctively sensed the import of the find; once his suspicions had been confirmed, this pilgrimage had been the inevitable result.

The hulks had been stripped, and the Diana and the Delos rendered space worthy. Skeleton crews had flown them off the surface and guided them to the rendezvous point, while a lone Raider stayed behind. It had completed the operation by launching a lone nuke into the crater, which consumed everything caught up in the blast. The Acheron system would no longer be of any value to the Cavils.

Racetrack and Sharon had volunteered for this assignment. With Natalie Faust and Louis Hoshi on board the Raptor, as well as John and Sharon Bierns, they weren't about to delegate it to anyone else. A pair of Heavy Raiders had already ferried the other two cylon commanders and their human XO's to the ghost ship, as well as the most senior copies of the four cylon models. They had all come to see what the centurions had discovered with their own eyes. They had all come to bear witness.

"We're down," Racetrack announced in a subdued voice. She hadn't cried in years, but when she looked back at her passengers, tears sprang unwillingly to her eyes. No one, she thought, should ever be forced to suffer this … no one. Natalie's face was a frozen mask. She would get through the next hour by sheer force of will. The first born of the hybrid children had withdrawn completely from those gathered round him, hiding behind a wall of self-imposed discipline and determination.

Sharon eased past her passengers and lowered the ramp, dreading what she would see in the eyes of her brothers and sisters. Racetrack came up behind her, to clutch her tight. Sharon leaned her head on the human's shoulder, seeking the comfort of another's touch.

John Bierns walked down the ramp and straight up to the blood-spattered centurion who had stood faithfully by his side for the last ten months. They were brothers in the truest sense of the word, and the First Born was immensely grateful that his sibling had no memory of what awaited them on this ship.

"I want to see L-8 first," he said in a clipped monotone.

The centurion regarded him for a very long moment, and then it turned and led them into the heart of the ship.

. . .

Jared Dalton opened his eyes, but he had to fight hard to keep them open. He was groggy, and the walls refused to stay in focus. The whole room seemed to be in motion.

He glanced to his right, and for the first time noticed the luxuriant mop of black hair on the bed at his side. Sharon appeared to be sleeping. She was sitting in a chair, but she had cradled her head in her arms. Deeply moved by her presence, Jared wanted to smile, but his mouth refused to cooperate. Something seemed to be holding his jaw firmly in place. So, he opted instead lightly to stroke the top of her head with his fingers.

Sharon awakened instantly, and her eyes brightened when she saw that Hog's Breath had regained consciousness. She stood up, and leaned over to kiss him lightly on the forehead.

"Welcome back," she said. "Everything's going to be okay … just like I promised."

"Hey, sweetie … what happened? I don't remember a darned thing."

"One of the Viper pilots … I think it was Songbird … shot down a missile that was tracking you. The shrapnel impacted the fuselage, and your console exploded. You needed a lot of surgery, but it went well. Now, you just need time to heal."

"And Rufus … is Rufus okay?"

"He's fine, Jared ... not a scratch on him."

"Thank the gods … but Rufus … I swear, that boy always did have the luck of the Geminese. Say, Sharon, what do you think? Do I sound sorta funny to you?"

"You mean more so than usual," she laughed.

"Well, it's kinda funny. I can't seem to open my mouth, and when I close my right eye, you're not there anymore."

"I know," the Eight replied, her demeanor suddenly serious. "Jared, they had to do a lot of skin grafts, including high up on your left cheek. Your jaw … is wired shut to keep you from tearing the stitches. It was delicate surgery."

"And my eye," he whispered; "what about my eye?"

"We couldn't save it," she sobbed. "And we tried … we really, really tried. One of the Twos even allowed us to harvest his eyes, but the graft wouldn't take. Simon and Larissa … they tried so hard …"

"It's all right, sweetie; I've still got one good eye to see you with. But do you think old Falcon's gonna recognize me?"

"He hasn't been the same since you were hurt. He misses you."

"Well, when I get out of here, do you wanna go visit him? He just needs a good rubdown."

"Jared, I love you. But so does every Eight on this ship. You can have any of us you want."

"And here I kinda thought I was spoken for …"

"You are," she sniffled; "you are." She leaned down to brush his lips with her own, sealing the bond between them.

. . .

"This is much the smaller of the two chambers," Gaeta nervously explained while the marine cycled the hatch. "It houses four of the … uh … four of the larger containers, and two of the smaller." His voice trailed off. Now the XO on Pelea's baseship, Felix was desperate to fill the awful silence in this obscene crypt, but his words only seemed to draw still more attention to the oppressive silence.

Bierns was the first to enter the storage compartment; with feelings that ranged from curiosity to dread, the rest of the landing party entered behind him. Sharon Bierns moaned involuntarily, and her hands flew protectively to her stomach. Someone else cursed angrily.

"The bodies appear to be perfectly … uh …"

"Pickled," Bierns said harshly. "Is that the word you're searching for, Felix?"

"Preserved," Gaeta lamely finished.

"The solution is totally transparent," Larissa pointed out. "It's probably formalin. In medical school, we all used it to preserve lab specimens."

"Lab specimens," Natalie echoed angrily. "Is that what we're looking at? Lab specimens?"

John walked off to his left, and ran his hand up and down the glass exterior of one of the barrel-shaped containers. It was cool to his touch. Somehow, he knew that everything on this ship would be cool to the touch. He stared at the bald but glassy eyed Eight warehoused within, noting almost absently the crude sutures that ran vertically across her womb. He closed his eyes, and summoned the memories. They came easily … as they had thousands of times before.

"Her name was Sharon," he whispered to everyone and no one. "In the second generation, all of the Eights were named Sharon. Cavil dissected the fetus. He was thorough … that's why there are no remains."

John walked around the container, pausing only long enough to gesture towards another line of crude stitching at the back of the Eight's head. "He removed her brain; he dissected it just as thoroughly. I don't think he was very happy with the results."

The First Born moved on, his body going rigid when he stopped in front of the next display. This time, there were two jars, one large and one small. D'Anna's corpse mirrored Sharon's; her brain had also been removed. D'Anna's unborn child floated in the smaller container. Cut out midway through the third trimester, the boy was perfection in miniature …

Or he would be, John thought, if Cavil hadn't dismembered him.

The four limbs were suspended in the viscous solution, hanging directly in front of Ghostrider's eyes. For one crazed moment, Bierns wondered what Cavil had used to stuff the brain cavity before he sewed it shut. He wondered why he had even bothered.

"My little brother," John laconically announced.

"For the love of the gods," Racetrack protested.

"Captain, there is no god on this ship," Leoben calmly countered; "not yours … and most assuredly not ours."

"Sharon, and Samuel … he was about six hours old when Cavil came for him."

Boomer could feel the bile rising inside her, building just as remorselessly as the towering sense of rage that threatened to consume her soul. There was a bullet hole in the center of her sister's forehead, but without the brain, her nephew's head had imploded. From the neck up, Samuel reminded her of a dried out prune.

John lingered in front of the last display, which was set slightly apart from the others. In his imagination he watched Cavil come, a visitor repeatedly intent on gloating over his chosen victim.

"Aspasia," John explained, in the strangely neutral voice that he always adopted when he was retreating from the world. "Look, you can still see the bruising that the straps left on her wrists and ankles. Cavil had them on too tight."

The Six appeared to be sleeping; a stray lock of hair had fallen over the entry wound in her forehead. But everyone present knew better.

"I am going to kill that son of a bitch," Cynthia raged. "I swear to God … I am going to make him pay for this … pay a thousand times over!"

"Aspasia was Kara's mother," Bierns added unnecessarily.

. . .

"Ah," Six sighed, "this is so nice." She walked her fingers up Eric Lackey's chest. The young Sagittaron was well muscled, and incredibly good looking. It was clearly God's will that they should be together.

Eric looked at her, the question written all over his face.

"Not having the marines staring at me," Six explained; "having some privacy."

"Don't get your hopes up, Six." A broad grin washed across Eric's dark features. "If you were to step outside this tent, I suspect that you'd run into them soon enough!"

"You're right, of course," she conceded as she leaned over to kiss his breast. "But in here, once every two weeks, I can at least pretend that I'm not this horrible mass murderer that everyone shuns in the street."

"This is your weekend pass," Eric laughed; "your time off for good behavior." He continued to run his fingernails lightly up and down her back, and Six rewarded him by moaning with pleasure.

She crept higher, so that she could kiss him full on the lips. Always the aggressor, she forced his lips to part, and then used her tongue to explore the inside of his mouth. It delighted her that Eric was submissive in bed, and content to follow her lead in all things. Overseer Sixes dominated; they did not submit.

"We have Dr. Fordyce to thank for our good fortune," Six murmured. "She has obviously come to the conclusion that you are a necessary part of my rehabilitation."

"Yeah, you could say that the seminar for mixed couples that she had us attend last weekend was pretty much a dead clue. I gotta say, though, that the numbers involved really took me by surprise. I never would have guessed that so many Cylons and humans were pairing off."

"That's because you haven't been paying attention. And I'm glad, because I would get really, really upset if you started ogling my sisters. We Sixes tend to be both possessive and jealous."

"Careful, sweetheart … my ego's swollen enough already." Eric began gently to nibble on Six's earlobe, which was guaranteed to drive her wild. "Having the most beautiful woman on the planet confess to getting jealous when my eyes start to wander is more than I can handle."

"You can look," Six teased, "but you can't touch. On second thought, I don't want you even to look at an Eight. I don't trust them."

"Whoa," Eric protested with wide-eyed innocence. "Do you mean to tell me that you're worried about competing with the Sharons? I thought that we were talking about somebody like Anthia. She's what we humans call drop dead gorgeous."

"Do you want me to grow my hair out? Wear it long … like Lida?"

"Nah, it would just get in the way when I do stuff … like this." Eric began to explore the inside of Six's right ear, which also drove her wild.

"It's just that the Eights take God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply very much to heart," Six warned. "We Sixes like to frak for the sheer pleasure of frakking, but for the Eights sex is just a means to an end. Mama Ellen says that she programmed them to want children more than anything else in life, and I believe her. The Eights are obsessed with children."

"Hey, don't you want to have a kid someday?"

"I would very much like for us to have a child, Eric … but it's not what's on my mind when we make love. Sixes live in the moment. We accept that we have a role to play in God's plan for us all, but we do not try and anticipate it. We do not allow our faith to dictate our actions … we are not Eights."

"I always wanted to have a little girl," Eric whispered. "And when we do, I hope that she looks just like you. I love you, Six. I really, really love you."

Six leaned away from her lover, and studied him with somber eyes. Her hand came up to caress his cheek. "I'm glad," she finally answered; "because I love you, and I want us to be together … forever."

. . .

Gaeta paused at the entrance to L-7, and assessed the collective mood of the Cylons and humans gathered around him. He was relieved to see that outrage was the dominant emotion, because what lay on the opposite side of the hatch was going to be very hard to take.

"I want to warn you in advance," he cautioned, "that some of the … exhibits … in here are far worse than what you saw in the other chamber. Major, are you sure that you want to do this?"

Bierns looked gratefully at the young officer. "It's decent of you to ask, Felix … but what choice do we have in the matter? My memories are the only reliable guide we have to this house of horrors."

Gaeta nodded silently in agreement, and opened the hatch. He stepped aside to permit the others to pass.

"The arrangement seems to be in chronological order," Felix suggested when he entered behind them. "We should begin on the far left."

"Dear gods on high," Kevin Riley involuntarily exclaimed when he approached the far wall. There were ten jars neatly aligned, five containing the remains of the Cylon mothers, and five their aborted fetuses. "How could anyone do something like this?" He shifted his gaze to the Simon standing at his side. Riley had been promoted to the rank of colonel, and tasked to serve as Cynthia Six's XO on Olivia's baseship. But nothing in his relatively short military career had prepared him for this moment. He was completely at sea.

"I do not know," the Four responded. He was intently studying the fetuses, the last of which especially intrigued him. "Major, do you have an opinion?"

"They're first generation," Bierns solemnly replied. "Mother inferred from the way Cavil bragged about not letting her sisters go to waste that they were all being used in some kind of experiment. Now, we know what it was all about."

The intelligence officer gestured towards the fetus that had so captivated Simon. It had a single eye, which was located above the bridge of the nose, in the exact center of the forehead. The tiny arms and legs appeared to be much thicker than those on a human child, and the feet made him think of hooves.

"At a guess, I'd say that we're looking at a failed attempt to combine human and centurion DNA. It stands to reason that I'm at the end of this chain, not the beginning. I'm the culmination of this program. Frankly, however, I'm surprised that Cavil didn't mass produce this design. It's obviously much closer to the centurion side of the family than I am."

"Maybe he did turn out more of these monsters," Natalie angrily suggested. "Who knows what the Ones were doing … or why. The only thing we know for sure is that they had decades to prepare for whatever brave new world they have in mind for us."

"My baby," Sharon cried as the full implications of her husband's statement sank in.

"Calm yourself, Eight. The major's genetic markers are far removed from those of this creature." Simon's tone was faintly patronizing.

"He's right, Sharon." John clasped her hand in encouragement. "Eirene will be perfect, though she'll favor you much more strongly than me."

"How do you know?"

"I'm not sure." John frowned in obvious puzzlement. "I just am."

"Major, what do you make of this," Hoshi asked. He pointed at a fetus that was isolated from the others, at the rear of the compartment. The nose and mouth had been reduced to thin slits, and the eyes were missing, although the cavities that should have housed them were clearly visible beneath the skin. But from the waist down, there was nothing even remotely human about the specimen. Instead of legs, Bierns found himself staring at a forest of tentacles, of varying length and thickness. Images of squid and octopi drifted through his mind.

"I don't know," Bierns conceded. He shook his head in resignation. "It could be an attempt to create a purely organic hybrid … perhaps something capable of operating on frequencies beyond the reach of human sight. Or maybe … maybe it's supposed to be half fish and half human … something designed to function for long periods of time under water. I don't know."

"The Cavils are insane," Boomer spat. She had seen enough.

"Insanity is not all that far removed from genius," Leoben quietly observed. "The line separating the two is often tenuous and vague."

"Are you defending the Ones, brother?" Natalie needed to direct her anger at someone, and the Twos had always made for convenient punching bags.

"No … I merely point out that we do not possess sufficient information to judge what we see here."

"This obscenity is not a part of God's plan," the black clad Six who managed Pelea's baseship hissed. She looked at Felix Gaeta for confirmation. Felix had been snatched up by an Eight early on, but she respected her XO's judgment nonetheless.

"I agree," Felix hastily remarked. "And I suggest that we run all of this by our hybrids. They might be able to tell us whether this has something to do with the major's nightmares."

John Bierns had also had enough. He wandered off to the far right side of the chamber, knowing exactly what awaited him there. Sharon and Larissa closed in to flank him. They both feared a recurrence of the psychotic episode that had occurred in colonial space. Felix was right: almost anything in this nightmarish gallery might trigger a relapse.

"Frak," Boomer swore. John had led them to a point opposite two identical jars.

"Rebecca and Sharon," he mildly observed.

Larissa ignored the Eights, and focused the whole of her attention on John Bierns. She knew that he was at his most dangerous when he was this excessively polite. She expected him to snap at any moment.

"Where's my niece? Where's Helena?" Boomer slammed her fist into the glass with such force that she smeared it with her blood.

"There wasn't enough left to …"

John staggered under the weight of the memories. Cavil's autopsy had been … thorough.

"This is … this is …"

Bierns glanced to his right. Cynthia, the Six whom he had once humiliated in hand-to-hand combat, was staring in horror at the contents of the next set of jars.

"This is Phryne." John completed the sentence for the overseer Six. "And her daughter … this is Cassiopeia."

"No," Cynthia screamed. "No! This … this is our first born child?"

The little girl was very much as John remembered her. He could not shake the image of Cavil carving out the baby's brain, and then unceremoniously tossing the carcass onto Phryne's chest. It was the cruelest act that he had ever witnessed. The object floating inside the tank was a mute testament to the One's thirst for revenge.

Like a sleepwalker unable to escape the nightmare landscape of his dreams, John Bierns approached the last occupant of the last jar. There was a jagged bullet hole in the Three's forehead, but he was hypnotized by the puckered skin above her breasts. He had lost count of the number of times the surgical needle had risen and fallen, plunging over and over again into her lungs.

John Bierns leaned his forehead against the cool glass, and closed his eyes.

"Mama," he whispered.

The first born of the hybrid children turned away from the still figure floating in the jar, to address the others.

"This is the first Three," he said in a voice summoned up from the well of his soul.

"This is my mother."