Fragile Pieces Chapter 20
Sam-
Strung up by his arms with Centurions taking turns to whip him, never tiring, the machines infallible. It wasn't fair, not really. They had nothing in them, nothing to understand that this was wrong. They were tools, nothing more, nothing less. His vision is only centered on what he can see, which isn't much. Life has been reduced to nothing more than the pain in his back, hurting far more than the older boy's towel stripes on his back in the high school locker room. He was fairly sure somewhere he was yelling, but he couldn't much hear. There were other screams he thought mingled with his own, female screams. Kara? his mind asked but there wasn't much he could do to defend the woman he loved. The thought was yanked away as he was hit again, all thoughts of what else was happening driven away. everything but the pain gone.
Managing to look over he could see the cylon personally taking out frustrations on her, her milky pale skin coloring with hit after hit. His body spins again with the force another blow and she was yanked from his view. This felt like forever, even though he knew it couldn't have been that long. It had no beginning and no end, only this, the never ending now.
When it stopped, he knew his back was flayed, every part of it aching and he could feel blood running down, and if that wasn't enough he could see it on the floor. He forces himself to search for Kara, make sure she isn't too bad. The cylon had said death was coming, and he knew it would be a long ways off. He just hoped he could make it easier for her, let him die first, maybe it would give her a chance of being rescued. He was desperate at this point, just get her out. That was what mattered. He would die for her, or risk everything to get her out. She had certainly risked enough for him. It was his turn to do the helping, the rescuing. And even if he didn't make it this time he'd go to the Gods knowing he had tried.
The cylon stopped what he was doing to regard Samuel with a practiced eye, black and glittering with a machine coldness. A human couldn't do that, machines could. That was why they needed to be gotten rid of, they had no compassion, no sense of right or wrong, they just killed, they were evil. "Make him watch." the words take a while to sink in and the cylon has already knelt to the floor next to Kara before he can fully understood.
"No." he chokes out, but the metal bullet heads' grip is tight, forcing him to watch from his place on the floor now. And he can't do anything to help his wife, can't do anything but watch. Which is the same as doing nothing in his opinion. "No, let her go." he pushes against the restraints in the form of metal fingers to no avail, causing every nerve to protest in pain. He can't help her, he is leaving her there, suffering and alone. He is failing her. He has to do something, anything to get her away from this, to save her, protect her. Because she doesn't need this, she doesn't deserve it.
Caprica-
The resurrection hub was empty when she arrived, or at least her section empty. She remembered her terrifying first time, the second had not been so bad but this time, this time hurt a little bit. She pulled on her clothing, not bothering to dry herself off, each outfit available having already been designed by a sister Six, and leaned against the console, trying to stop the headache from blooming. She could only wonder what Raiders felt, going out each time again and again. Did Centurions feel this when they downloaded? Did Centurions and Raiders even feel? Leoben would know, he spent time talking to them, convinced it would be the best for a day should they choose rebel. His absence from her life had only been a week or so, but she still missed him. It ached, he was one of the closest things she had to a friend instead of an admirer when she returned aboard the Basestar. He didn't praise her, or coddle her. He made Caprica feel a bit like Gaius, not in a romantic love way, more like family.
Wanting to know if they had caught the humans responsible she searched through the stream, going through the logs to check and see if anyone besides Simon and herself has been downloaded. Nothing, she checked a little farther back to just make sure, and nearly fell away from the console. The last entry had been Leoben. He hadn't completed the journey back, or at least downloaded into a new body, he was still here, but not in the download stream. He was somewhere else entirely.
He'd been boxed.
Kara-
She'd given up fighting a while ago, if she was to die than there was no point making it hurt more than it had to right? She was currently toning it out, trying to make it all go away for another while. Pity there wasn't something alcoholic around. She was somewhere else in her mind entirely. Memories, smells, bare hints of things that just escape her vision, a favorite tactic she used to tune out her mother and the pain she brought. Just think of something else, be somewhere else, be someone else. In her childhood it had been her brief memories of sitting next to her Father, someone finding her and taking her home with them and not being mean to her. Now she was trying something else,
A shy young blue-eyed Cadet asking her on a date...
Lee Adama standing at the door with flowers...
Zak asking her to marry him...
The Old Man getting her a present for her birthday...
A night with Lee...
Sam bouncing up and down with enthusiasm with her idea...
A game of pick-up Pyramid ending with her and Sam going home early...
But it doesn't work, not really, she keeps getting pulled back to this, her mind never clearly able to focus on one her life's few happy scenes. it feels the cylon is the only thing she can remember. This one, cold black eyes, laughing at her weakness, her attempts to distance herself from it. "I'll have you present for every second" he tells her coolly and that is the part she can't stand. Every hurt, every bruise, every grimace of pain on display, for anyone to see. Specifically Sam. What he must think of her, now that the cylon had done things to her, what she was doing to him. The cylon had explained to her he was only trying to destroy Admiral Adama's family in revenge, and breaking Sam meant breaking her. She dragged him into this, she'd killed him with her love. That made two now.
Once a long time ago as a young Academy Cadet reeling from an incident with a higher up, a Major, having taken too much of a liking to her physique, she had promised herself that she would never be helpless again. No one gave her orders, she followed her own advice, no one hurt her, if they did she got even, no one did anything to Kara Thrace that she didn't consent to. It wasn't allowed to happen again, because than she felt like five years old, her father having just left and her mother on warpath. She had promised herself no one would have that control over her again.
But with all her weakness on display, laid out for anyone to see. It wasn't what she wanted, she felt stabbing pains all over, her wrists felt bruised, badly, and she didn't have a part of her that didn't want to die. Maybe Zak would be there, maybe she would get to go somewhere not so bad.
She was jerked down to the present when the cylon showed her a knife. Not just any knife, Admiral Cain's pocketknife, the one Kendra'd had and Kara'd gotten from Lee's first Ex-O. He'd gotten it somehow, and the eyes bubbled with mirth at her. "Seems to me you last longer than your Pyramid boy does." Sam blinks across the room, not understanding and she sees the damage done to him, it's far worse than her own. His skin likes flayed and his breathing is ragged. "Maybe we ought to put him out of his misery."
"No." she begs, but the longer they hold on the more of a chance they have, and she doesn't wait to be alone. That is the only reason she has said no, she doesn't think she can take dying alone, forgotten in this cell. She has known, known for a long time, that she would die one day, but she just didn't want to be forgotten. So many times she had been forgotten, maybe there would be the chance Sam would make it out, after all, he wasn't who the cylon wanted.
Caprica-
The blonde cylon paced back and forth, anxious as the downloading process neared its completion. Actually downloading took about an hour or so, it was the getting back to the actual data stream over a distance that was the time taker. The closer you were to the facilitates, the faster the download and the less it hurt. It held true the other way, the farther away the longer it took, and the less likely chance you would make it back in one piece. After all, a ship had died that way. When the humans destroyed the resurrection ship and some other the base stars, another ship had been put just in range for it to work. Much to many's' horror, only some of the cylons came back, and then except for about ten cylons they were only in parts. Not all their higher functions worked or they had gaps, those who came in before the ship was in full range for the full process, were right again and after a short discussion, mercy was shown and their souls were given to God. It was the first time the cylons had ever conducted what the hum,ans might call funeral service.
Now was the hard part. Caprica knelt to her brothers side as his body began to shake and tremble as he was downloaded into it. Some were silent, others cried. Leoben was often silent, but now he cried. Her name, over and over, a sense of urgency that only led more of her suspicions to go up. Something had happened to the viper pilot, she knew it now. She gently took his hand, careful not to let him thrash too much, least he hurt himself, and gently smoothed back his hair. She had no idea what had transpired, though she would soon, and could only wait.
The wait was the agonizing hard part.
Soft gentle words didn't seem to comfort him, nor did the reassurances that Kara would be table to take care of herself. So she stopped speaking altogether, only stroking his damp forehead and wincing a bit when his death grip on her hand got too tight or cut off her circulation.
Finally he gasped to the surface, taking stock of where he was, blue eyes that looked like her own, flickered around the room. "Leoben I'm so sorry for what I said and did." she confesses, but he doesn't seem to be paying her much attention, by which she is hurt. He had always been passive aggressive, but she preferred open conflict to go up against. "Leoben, I really mean it, I'm sorry."
He didn't care about her apologies, she thought crest-fallen. He just grabbed clothes from their slot next to the tank, cursing when he couldn't find his pants, and ignored her completely, the sense of urgency filling his every movement. "Leoben, what's wrong?" she queries, giving up on getting him to forgive her. Maybe it would happen in time, like it had with Gaius.
"Stay here. When Jared comes through to download restrain him, no ins or outs, complete isolation. He boxed me, and he has Kara." she can hardly recognize her brother, the quiet peaceful man giving orders like, like a soldier, but she nods without question, knowing the implications of what he had just said. It had never happened before in their history, ever. What it means is unknown, it has simply never happened before.
Kara-
Her plea is unheard, and the cylon stalks closer to the other side of the room, knife in hand, black eyes firmly fixed on Sam's body, which is completely still except for a slight rising and falling of his chest. Kara desperately tries to force her aching body to move, and her progress is slower, much too slow. She is moving but not at the rate the cylon is. He seems to be slowing down too, pausing next to Sam's form, enjoying watching her struggle to make it to the former pyramid player's side.
She can't let him down, she won't let herself. She may have screwed up big time before, hell she had screwed up big time before, but she wouldn't let herself do it again. Sam needed to make this, he needed to be okay, they needed to make it out, they couldn't die here, alone and forgotten, with no one knowing what happened to them. One of her biggest fears was being forgotten. He deserved to die an old man with family around him, just another thing she wouldn't been able to give him.
Finally arriving at Sam's side, and the cylons feet, her breath is labored, gasping and her body is on fire. Everything hurts, and she can't help but wish it would stop. Stopping is for weak people Kara Her mother's voice rings around her head You just going to sit there and cry about it? Maybe that was the entire reason Socrata and her hurtful punches and words had been put in her life for so long, to prepare her for this moment, so when the time came she'd be ready to do what she needed to do for survival, at least for a bit longer.
She reached out and grabbed the cylon's legs, swiping them out from under him. With a yelled curse, the cylon fell backwards and Kara was on top of him, hitting and punching even though she was not inflicting anything permanent considering how weak she was from the injuries her body had. that was not to say she gave it everything she had, and managed to break the cylon's nose, causing even more blood to hit the floor before the cylon got back to being in charge again.
Slamming her roughly into the ground, Sam forgotten, the cylon held her in place by her neck. Blood dripped into her face from where the cylon leaned above her, "You'll pay for that bitch."
Leoben-
Faster Faster Faster. Her mind urges him on, his lungs crying for oxygen but himself not stopping to give them any. Yes he just downloaded back but he only has one concern right now, and it's not himself. Moving through the prisons, the prisons he designed, he continues onwards, frustrated, slamming his hands into any data port hoping to find something. He doesn't expect Jared to be that stupid though, and he is right. Furious, he runs smack into a few Centurions, and what they have to tell him is his the answers he is looking for and his fears confirmed.
Making them come along, being Jared's senior they answer to him over Jared after all, and picking up any other cylon, humanoid or metal. He sends Boomer off to get medical involved and bring a Simon and something to transport her in down, having a feeling they'll need it with a nasty feeling in his gut. He followed the Centurions down the high security hall-ways, moving through them as fast as he could force himself to go. Arriving at the door he keyed it open, the door taking forever to hiss open, the smell of blood hitting his nostrils almost instantly. "Secure the Two" he barked, almost feeling like a soldier, while his eyes take in the horrible scene before him.
Samuel Anders, doesn't look good. Kara doesn't look much better, Jared poised above her, the cold black eyes turning to face Leoben. A smile lights up his face as the cylon moves to an upright, standing, position, bringing Kara with him, hands still wrapped firmly around her neck. Kara's blinking into sleep, her body shutting down trying to conserve the precious little oxygen it is receiving. She's dropped to the floor where she doesn't wake and Leoben begins to fear the worst. "Now here's your predicament Lover-boy." Jared taunts, words scraping across her brain. "Either Kara dies or Sammy does, but either way I'm not going out without a death." The black eyes are crazy, and Leoben knows he's lost it. "Don't think about shooting me." Jared said, seeming to read his mind. "I have time to snap your pretty little girlfriend's neck before I go."