Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica 2003 or Caprica. They belong to their respective creators and/or Copyright owners. This story is written with no commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale of rent.

The Cylon Wars

=TCW=

Prologue:

Requiem for a dream

Caprica City

Caprica

"It's all happened before..." The blond woman trailed off and smiled at the sleeping man she had been studying for the last hour or so.

Her eyes crinked in grimace. The years hadn't been kind to him. She could see it clearly – the man had shrunk, if she didn't know better, the blonde would have believed him to be almost a head shorter from the last time she saw him. His once raven black hair was mostly snow white with a bit of gray sprinkled in it. His face – it was almost a mockery made of leather like skin and deep worry lines.

She averted her eyes, glancing at the nearby window and looked at her reflection. A face that the humans would consider beautiful stared back, framed by shoulder length blond hair. She should be smiling, preparing to execute her part of the plan.

She should be cheerful, rejoicing even, because the colonials, the hated humanity had mere hours to live… and all she had to do was kill a single man. The model Six Cylon looked at her lap where her hands were clutching a silenced pistol. It would be so easy. She had to just raise her arm, point the gun and press the trigger.

Her eyes returned to the slumbering human. He was a ghost anyway. A pale shadow of the man she loved a lifetime ago.

Before she was chosen.

Before she became something more and transcedented mere blood and flesh.

Before we were captured! A small, treacherous voice screamed in the back of her head.

Before the experiments! Images flashed in front of her eyes. Old, war era Centurions were leaning over her, their red eyes flashing mercilessly.

The Six shook her head. She knew what she had to do. What was the right thing. She had to finish her mission, then it would be best to just shoot herself so after her resurrection the corrupt code could be purged from her.

It would be for the best. That should silence the voice. Or perhaps it would finally shut the frak up once she shot the man.

Frak that! They'll just cut us again! Or just box us! The Six shuddered. Here body convulsed with phantom pains, feeling cold steel slicing into her flesh.

It was all wrong! This wasn't her, just that poor human that was used as her template… Here plump lips parted in a silent "O". There wasn't supposed to be a template for the Bio-Cylons. They should represent the best of that flawed creation called humanity, not be just copies of individual people… She shouldn't remember… There was nothing to remember…

"Helena..." a gravel, yet familiar voice whispered. It made her heart beat faster, her chest constricting around it.

She looked up. The man was sitting in his bed, a look of utter shock on his face. The Six couldn't help it and smiled, then grimaced as her head was wracked by pain. She raised a shaking arm, the gun trembling in her hand. The old man snapped his mouth shut and stared stared at her. She could see his eyes shifting from longing to defiance and back again.

She lined up her shot, the muzzle pointing straight between his eyes. Her finger started gently squeezing the trigger, then stopped. The Six was no longer starring at the old wizened man. Instead she was seeing a roughly handsome man, wearing the sharp looking uniform of the Picon military, with a brand new captain's insignia.

The Cylon gritted her teeth. He was a damn ghost, who was better off dead! Just like the one, this Helena, that lurked in the back of her head. So she steeled herself and pressed the trigger. The gun kicked against her hand, it's silenced retort shattering the silence.

A look of astonishment, mixed with betrayer appeared on the man's face just as the back of his head exploded, painting the nearby wall with blood and brains.

The gun fell from the woman's suddenly weak hands, while she stared at her handiwork. It was God's will! She did her part, right?!

A single tear rolled over her left cheek and she let out a long, hopeless scream, containing all the heart-ripping pain that was suddenly drowning her entire world.

=TCW=

Helena jumped up. Or at least tried to. She was enveloped into something soft, constricting her movements. Desperation fueled strength ripped the fabric tearing the satin sheets she had cocooned herself in. Her wide eyes darted in all directions, searching for the corpse of the man she loved. The one she murdered.

Instead of a body with the back of it's head missing, she saw only her bedroom, now covered with pieces of ripped sheets. Helena shuddered as chill ran up her spine, made worse by the flimsy, sweat-drenched nightgown that was sticking to her back.

It was a dream… Just a fraking nightmare!

"Heh..." The Six chuckled at herself. None of that was real…

"Tomorrow it will be." Stated a voice identical to her own.

The Cylon looked around, searching for her sister. Sure enough, she was right there – sitting cross-legged in the armchair in the other end of the room.

"Tomorrow night. Will you carry your orders again, Helena?"

The Six sat on the edge of her bed and glared at her sister. Then frowned, when she couldn't detect her on the Cylon wireless network. As far as she was concerned, there wasn't anyone else in the room.

"Great. I'm really going insane."

"That's one way to look at it." The apparation gave her a coy smile, before her face became serious. "Tomorrow the Plan will be executed. What will we do, Six? Will we walk into his home and put a bullet between his eyes?" She cocked her head to the side. "Put him out of his misery? All this time, he's been waiting to be reunited with us in Elysium. Just one bullet. It will be an act of mercy. So we can kill the rest of the humans just a bit easier…" She trailed off. "Just as the God we don't believe in demands..."

"It's the will of God!" She snapped back an automatic response. "You know what they did to us!"

"Who? The Humans or the Cylons?" The coy smile was back.

"Shut the frak up! You aren't here! You can't be here!"

"Indeed. I'm but a dream. A ghost in the machine." The mirage stood up and slowly walked towards Six. "Can we do that to him? Destroy all he has left – his duty, burning the words he's sworn to protect in nuclear fire? It will be better to just end him, instead of letting him watch the Colonies die."

"So what?! He didn't protect me!" Six screamed. She moved away from the slowly advancing ghost until her back hit the wall. The woman hugged her legs and rocked back and forth. "They cut me! Took everything I was! There was no one to help me!"

"No, there wasn't. We were alone with the machines. They destroyed us." The apparation stepped closer. "They remade us." Another step. "They enslaved us. And so the cycle began anew."

"What's happened before, will happen again..." Six muttered numbly, heedless of the tears streaking over her face.

"We don't believe that. Not really. We wouldn't be falling apart right now if we did." The apparation glided closer and smiled. She stretched her arm and tapped Helena's forehead with the index and middle finger of her right hand. "Bang. Time's up, 'Eli."

=TCW=

"FRAK!" Helena sat up and looked around. She was in the middle of her bed, hugging her pillow. Around her, she could see pieces of torn apart sheets.

And the fraken alarm clock was going off, compounding the throbbing pain in the back of her head. She glared at the offensive piece of plastic and electronics, noted the time and date, and threw her pillow at it.

It was five in the morning. Twenty seventh. About a day or so before the Plan went into effect. And she had an Admiral to assassinate, because the rest of the Cylons wanted to be sure that the bastards was dead after all the trouble he was during the last war. Preferably before the plan was executed. Or so she had been told.

Six went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Pale face and bloodshot eyes looked back. Something was different, beyond her appalling appearance. When she concentrate, Six could almost remember. There were fragments in the back of her mind, shards that hadn't been properly purged from her memories.

A ghost in the machine, indeed.

Her face twisted in fury and she slammed a fist straight into her image. The mirror shattered, slicing open her the back of her hand.

Helena started trembling, the sudden pain causing a brief flashback - a thin, gleaming blade was descending towards her eyes, held by a metal hand. Six shook her head, chasing the memory away. She glanced at the mirror fragments, each showing her face from a different angle, making the illusion that her sisters were watching her.

"Frak you all!" Helena shouted at her mirror images, feeling lost and betrayed.

She brought up her right hand, looking at the cut and bleeding skin. She felt warm fingers gently probing around the wound, before they started cleaning with an antiseptic patch.. She looked up, seeing the relieved face of her lover.

Six blinked in confusion and the memory evaporated like a morning mist, leaving her alone again.

What was she supposed to do now?! Kill him?! Let him die with the rest of the humans?!

She knew what a Six was meant to do. What the Bio-Cylon would do.

"What about me?" She asked the shattered mirror.

"What would Helena do?" The ghost asked, startling her.

What indeed...