Two in the Chest
Cain knew she was dead the moment she saw her. The thing that had gone by Gina. The thing that had made her laugh, made her feel something in her chest that she hadn’t felt in years. The thing that had seduced her and used her and made a fool out of her. It stepped out of the shadows and leveled a gun at her, probably taken off the guard when it killed him, though she would never know how it had escaped in the first place.
“Tell me Admiral, can you roll over?” It asked, its voice shaking in its approximation of rage. “Beg?”
The Cylon’s programming ran deep. Gods, it looked truly hateful, as if everything they’d done to it had somehow damaged its programming. The extent they went to mimic human emotions like anger and love were profoundly disturbing. But if it truly did hate her, she wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of begging.
“Frak you,” she growled defiantly. She never cowered to the enemy before, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.
“You’re not my type.”
One last act of psychological manipulation. To be human meant to love, and to love meant to lose. The pain faded in time, but never truly vanished. Healing leaves scars, and those you’ve opened yourself up to know where they linger, and how best to dig in the knife to make it hurt like new again. Despite everything she knew to be true, that she had loved a machine that was incapable of loving her back, the words still pierced her heart like so many bullets.
The first hit center mass, point blank in the chest. She stumbled back as her body erupted in fiery agony, steadying herself against the table with shaking arms, refusing to be felled so easily. She stared daggers at the thing with all the hate she could muster, which was substantial. The Cylon’s face twitched and then a second slug punched through her gut, rattling her whole body like the ringing of the bells.
Her strength gave out. Searing white hot pain blanked her mind as she collapsed back onto the war table, blood pooling under her like wings on a fallen angel. Her veins boiled like they were filled with molten magma. It wasn’t the first time she’d been shot, but it would sure as hell be the last. But as she lay there, pumping blood out of her belly and onto her carpeted bulkhead floors, she heard distant waves crashing against the hull.
She knew Fisk would do right by the crew, and Adama had kept his own fleet alive for this long already, so maybe he had a shot. The human race would survive, probably, even if she didn’t. It didn’t bother her. She knew the deal when she joined up, to give her life in service to the Twelve Colonies. She was a good soldier, and she’d done her duty as well as she knew how.
She felt the sun on her face for the first time in years, and she tasted the salt of the sea spray upon her tongue. She smiled despite herself. It had been a long time since she sailed these waters. They felt like home.
The Resurrection Ship was gone, and with it the Cylon fleet that had pursued them. It was their greatest victory since the attacks, and she died proudly knowing it. She hoped Starbuck was right, that this battle would grant the fleet a reprieve from being hunted across the stars. Gods knew they’d earned one. She wished she could live to see it.
She heard the voice of an old lover whispering in her ear, I want you to suffer. She looked for her, for that golden brown hair that flowed around her shoulders and the smile that danced on her face. She called out for her across the deck, Lyra! Lyra!
But there was no one. A whisper on the wind, an echo from a long-forgotten life. The ship groaned beneath her, then shook all at once and split apart with a thunderous roar. Water poured over the deck as the sea rushed in and swallowed it whole, and then she was drowning.
Nobody will be looking for you. Just walk confidently like you’re one of them and meet me on the starboard hangar deck in fifteen minutes.
The gun pressed into her side where she’d tucked it into her jacket. The barrel was still hot and burning where it touched skin, but pain was nothing she hadn’t felt before. She walked with her back straight and her head held high. She’d trained to walk among humans without drawing suspicion. He was right; they were too busy clapping each other on the back for the victory she’d provided them to even notice her. Thousands of her brothers and sisters were dead, obliterated in their ships, their memories and souls lost to the background noise of the universe, far from resurrection range. And all of it was for nothing.
He had refused to kill her. He thought there was something she needed more than death, and it turned out he was right. For the first time in months, she had felt something, watching the bullets blow through Helena’s chest, hearing her gurgle and drown in her own blood. And when leaned down and whispered into her ear, “I want you to suffer,” she’d felt a flicker of vengeful fire, fanned by wrath and growing by the minute.
She recognized their faces as she passed them in the halls: marines, pilots, knuckle draggers, janitors, bridge officers, and more. She remembered all of them, and she was nothing to them. Each pair of eyes that glazed over her brought an adrenaline-fueled cocktail of fear and fury. The humans’ hubris that allowed her people to infiltrate the colonies for the original attack would be their undoing here again. She walked among them, terrified but resolute. She hadn’t appreciated it at first, but she realized now that Gaius was giving her a second chance to complete her mission, and she wasn’t going to waste it. He was right; she deserved justice.
She imagined the halls of the ship filling with fire, her torturers screaming in agony before drowning in vacuum, and it felt good. Intoxicating. Her fingers trembled at the thought of wrapping them around every officer she passed in those halls and squeezing the life from them.
She felt the fire of life reigniting inside, and she vowed to herself to be this ship’s undoing. She no longer believed in God. She couldn’t make peace with him allowing her to endure such suffering, such loneliness, as she had in that cell. She didn’t want eternal life anymore. She didn’t want anything. She yearned for the oblivion she’d just sent the others into. One day soon she would join them, but before then she wanted the rest of this wretched race to suffer her vengeance. There was no God to make right the wrongs of the universe. It was in her hands now, and she would make them filthy before it was all through.
Helena’s suffering was over too quickly for her, but for the rest of the crew, it was only just beginning. She’d taken their leader from them, and she knew that without their precious Cain, they would collapse under the weight of it all. She would find their breaking points, like they had for her. She would push them past it, like they had for her. And then they would die, like they hadn’t done for her. Maybe then the universe could finally know peace. Free from humanity, the Cylon would prosper until their creators were nothing more than data points in long forgotten files. She wished she could live to see it, but she was a soldier, and it was her mission to bring about that future. To give her life for it.
For all she knew she was the last Cylon aboard this fleet, and for all she knew the others wouldn’t arrive again for months, if they did at all. Resurrection ships didn’t just spring out of shipyards. The technology was incredibly advanced and delicate to reproduce. Now that the humans knew they were targets, she had no idea when they would risk their next attack. They might even give up the pursuit for good, though she didn’t think that was likely.
Still, they would be entering a new phase of the war now, starting down the path she chose for them. She hoped that, should she return to her people by means of rescue or resurrection, they would be understanding about her need to die. They would likely argue that they could try deleting the memories permanently, but to her knowledge it had never been done before because it had never been needed. No, she would die after it was done, and that contented her. She could feel it already, out of resurrection range: she was mortal.
Gaius was waiting by a Raptor when she reached the hangar bay. She skirted the edge of the deck to avoid the main crush of the crowd. The air rang out with the alarms of tugs dragging Vipers off the loading platforms and the associated shouting of the deckhands starting the recovery from combat. She cut across once she was closer to the Raptor, and then someone slapped her from behind. She jumped and cringed away, ready to fight and run for her life. The knuckle dragger beamed a smile at her and clapped her on the back again.
“We frakkin’ did it!” the woman shouted. Gina relaxed, then forced a smile of her own. She wanted to punch the woman out and run, but then they would be all over her, and her mission would fail. So instead, she tacked inward, appealing to the sense of comradery the deckhand had gifted to her.
“Do you smell that?” she shouted back. The other woman furrowed her brow in confusion and shook her head.
“Smell what?”
Gina leaned in conspiratorially, and even managed a wry grin as she yelled, “Burned toast!”
The knuckle dragger roared and clapped her on the shoulder again.
“Damn frakkin’ right! About time we gave the Cylons something to worry about! Frakkin’ toasters are gonna think twice from now on!”
Gina laughed with her until her back was turned, then she hurried across the rest of the deck. Humans were such wretchedly stupid creatures, blind in their hate and too comfortable in sharing it with others.
As she climbed onto the Raptor, Gaius assured her that he and the pilot had an understanding, and that she would be safe where he was taking her. But she would never be safe so long as she looked out the window and saw the hulking silhouette of the Pegasus gliding by. He probably thought she would slink away to some dark corner of the fleet and cower, but he had no idea. Nor could she tell him. She was grateful for his sympathy, but if he had even an inkling that his actions might lead to the decimation of his race, his allyship would wither on the vine and die. He was human after all, and they would always put themselves first.
She sat in the seat directly behind the pilot to avoid drawing his gaze. She doubted whatever deal he had for transporting illicit passengers would extend to Cylons. Gaius sat in the front, amiably chatting to him as they taxied. He had a remarkable capacity for deception, which, she supposed, made him human. They were cleared for immediate priority departure for Cloud Nine, courtesy of his status as Vice President, but she didn’t relax until the engines roared to life and lifted them out of the flight pod.
She’d thought she would die on that ship, in that cell, tortured by a species that wrought destruction and pain across the stars and across her body. She left the belly of that beast fueled by the knowledge that one day the bulkheads would shear apart and welcome inside the vacuum of space. She would rip the bolts out of the walls with her bare hands until there was nothing left of her but blood and fury if that’s what it took.