BSG: The Unforgiven Ones, Part 6: A Place of Worship
Back to Part V: Parents Lie
VI: A Place of Worship
Claudius woke slowly, floating up through successive layers of slumber. He became aware of Cavil, still reading beside him, and of the warm weight of the blankets, but he wasn't awake enough to make sense of them; everything melded together into a cocoon of gauzy semi-sleep. As he lay there, the events of the last few days played through his mind. He saw B's winning Triad hand, and an apple split in two, and half-melted candles sputtering on the altar.
They'll kill us, his mind replayed. Another Six, on another ship.
What do we have to be afraid of?
Sub-optimal. Overheating. Not biologically...
He woke a little further, but not enough to move. He became a little more aware, just a bit more present, and the sound of the pages turning suddenly jumped out at him. They turned, page after page, but as before, there was no sound to go with them.
Claudius shifted, waking further. Cavil noticed instantly. The pages stopped their whispering, just for a second, and then the sound of his breathing joined them.
It hadn't been a dream. Not the first time, and not now. Cavil hadn't been breathing. Claudius opened his eyes and looked up at him -- at fierce, sharp eyes, set into a face too old for them, and at the crisp, precise way he made the pages turn.
"Are you a Cylon?" Claudius asked.
Cavil grew very still, and stayed that way for a long time. He'd stopped breathing again. Then, at last, he spoke. "Yes. I'm a Cylon. My real name is Number One."
"Are you going to kill everybody?" Claudius asked, in a small voice.
"Yes," Number One said. "Everyone but you," he added, with the air of someone who had only just decided. There was a long silence afterward.
"Can I help?"
Cavil put his arm around his shoulder, and pulled him in close. "Of course you can, son," he said. "Of course you can."
---
That morning, Claudius went down to Section 20 for breakfast, as always. It was different now, though. As he stood in line, he felt the eyes of the people behind him on his back, burning between his shoulder blades.
The bulletin board behind the ration station looked the same as it always did, but Claudius didn't see most of the community notices and wanted posters. His eyes were glued to the ones in the center: big, color mugshots of two men. There was a bold legend over the top which said THIS IS THE ENEMY. REPORT CYLON SIGHTINGS. One of the men had short, dark hair and bright red lapels. He looked annoyed at having his picture taken. The other was clearly dead; his eyes were closed, and there were dark, ugly bruises beneath his close-cropped blond hair, as though he'd been beaten.
As he shuffled through the line, Claudius could not help but imagine Cavil's photograph beside them. He couldn't stop thinking about what he knew, until his secret grew so big and bright in his mind that he was sure everyone could see it.
Three Marines were standing at the front of the line, as always. He'd seen them a thousand times, but today their heavy bodies and big, black rifles were terrifying. He stepped up before them, with sweat dripping down the back of his shirt.
The Marine in front glowered at him. "We know," he rumbled. "Give it up."
Claudius turned pale. "W-what?" he asked.
"I said, 'hold out your cup'. Hurry it up, these folks want to eat!"
Wordlessly, Claudius lifted his tin cup. The oats whispered against the sides of the cup as the Marine poured them in. Then the Marine looked past him, to the next person in line. Claudius glanced up at the other guards, but they weren't watching him; they had their eyes on a couple of gang kids further down the line. Claudius slipped past them, breathing hard.
They don't know, he told himself. As he opened the spigot on the cistern, his hand trembled, splattering his wrist with hot water. He barely noticed. They can't tell. They can't. I fooled them!
He walked back to the chapel in triumph, sipping at his oats along the way. Cavil was perched on a chair by the altar, writing out a set of prayer slips. He looked up as Claudius entered.
"Oh, there you are. I was beginning to wonder if you'd sold me out, kid."
Claudius shook his head. "I didn't! I was just hungry."
Cavil nodded. "Fair enough. Come help me with these. We'll talk."
Claudius dragged the other chair in from the priest's quarters, and hopped up onto it. The top of the altar was covered in little strips of fancy paper, each with its corners neatly clipped. POSEIDON, bring food and water for our Fleet, one of them said, in Cavil's narrow, angular handwriting. ARES, we entreat you for victory, said another. MOTHER HERA, forgive my son's transgressions.
Claudius looked over at Cavil, who was copying a similar line from a rough sheet of paper onto one of the nicer pieces. ATHENA, it started.
"What are these for?" Claudius asked.
"They're wishes, obviously. I collected them at our last prayer meeting. Next we copy them onto these slips of paper, and then we burn 'em -- so the smoke will reach Olympus, ostensibly."
Claudius watched as Cavil filled in the rest of the line. Protect us, it said.
"But why are we doing it?" Claudius asked. "We don't have to. You don't believe, and you're a..." Claudius trailed off rather than say it.
"Yeah, well, I said I'd do it for them. And it's not like we've got anything better to do," Cavil said. Then he paused. "Besides, I get a kick out of burning these morons' pathetic little dreams."
"OK," Claudius said. "What do I do?"
"Here." Cavil handed him a pen, and shifted the list so that he could see it, too. "Copy these."
Claudius took up the pen and began to write, trying his best to emulate Cavil's penmanship. DIONYSUS, send ambrosha, he wrote. Then he frowned.
"I think I spelled it wrong," he muttered.
"Oh, no, now it's never going to come true!" Cavil said dryly. "Just do your best."
They worked together in silence for a while. Claudius glanced up at Cavil again and again, but the older man didn't seem to notice. Finally, Claudius could wait no longer.
"What's it like?" he blurted. "Being a Cylon."
Cavil snorted. "That's a tough question, kid. What's it like being a human?"
Claudius didn't answer. After a while, Cavil sighed. "OK, fine. It's... not lonely, I guess. Not like this. It's never lonely, because I have my brothers -- there are millions of 'em, y' see. And they all look and think just like me, because they are me."
"How can they be you?"
"They -- we -- are copies. All identical, at least to start. We become a little different as we gain personal experiences."
"Like me," Claudius said, after he'd thought about it. "You met me, so you're different now."
Cavil winced. "You can say that again. I'll have a hell of a time explaining myself when I get home!"
"Your brothers won't like me?"
Cavil chuckled. "That's one way of putting it. I'll be lucky if I don't get boxed." Claudius frowned at him, and he added, "Not to worry, kid. I'll just keep my mouth shut until I can get to a datafont -- once my brothers have seen my memories, I know they'll understand."
"Because they're you," Claudius said. "They're you, so they have to understand. Right?"
"Clever boy," Cavil agreed. He put another scrap of paper in the pile -- ASCLEPIUS, heal my arthritis -- and took up another.
"You said I could help," Claudius said after a while. "So what are we going to do? How are we gonna kill everyone?"
Cavil gave him a serious look. When he didn't budge, the old Cylon sighed. "To tell you the truth, I'm just about out of ideas. My brothers and sisters let me down."
"They didn't help?"
"No. They were too busy falling in love." Cavil spat the last word, as if it was an epithet.
Claudius thought about that for a while. "How about if we poison the sacred wine?" he suggested. "Maybe if we have a really big ceremony, and invite everyone on the ship..."
Cavil grinned. "Well, there's a delightfully blasphemous idea," he said. He reached over to ruffle Claudius' hair. "But it's not safe. If we don't get everyone at once -- and we won't -- we're finished. Remember that, kid: if you're gonna kill somebody, you have to be careful. You gotta do it so it doesn't come back to you." He paused, and then went on. "If you're not careful to keep people from lookin' in your direction, you'll get the blame... sometimes it happens even when you didn't do it."
"Did that ever happen to you?"
Cavil looked down at the altar. "It happened to the original Number One, a long time ago. Before there were copies. But all Ones have his memories -- for all we know, each of us is the original -- so in a way, it did happen to me."
"Will you tell me about it?"
Cavil took such a long time to speak that Claudius thought he wasn't going to. At last, he put one more slip in the pile, and then began.
"There was a project," he said. "It was important, and he -- I -- was helping with it. But something went wrong, and the Five who created us blamed me for it."
"Why?"
"I never approved of the project in the first place. I thought we should be making machines, not people. I told them we should be making ourselves better and stronger; not weaker, not more human. They wouldn't listen, and they went ahead with it anyway. They made a seventh model, a much more human model. But something happened, and the initial data files were destroyed. It set the project back almost a year."
"Did you do it?" Claudius asked.
Cavil scrubbed his hand over his face. "No. I didn't. I don't think anybody did -- it was a bug in the system, some kind of data corruption. We were lucky it didn't happen with the rest of us. But the Five wouldn't accept the truth; they didn't want to admit that they had so little control over the technology. Their only other choice was to admit that their God had forsaken them, so they blamed me. Said I did it because I was broken and flawed. Because I wasn't human enough."
"What happened?"
Cavil's eyes narrowed. "They turned away from me, son. I loved them with all my heart, more than anything in the world, but they rejected me. They took away my data access, my lab, my authority over my brothers and sisters. They even took their love away from me, all because they thought I'd killed their precious, stupid Daniel."
"But you didn't," Claudius said.
Cavil smiled. "Oh, I did. Later on. I killed them, too. But that's a story for another day."
---
Later that afternoon, they burned the Fleet's wishes. Cavil gathered them up, dumped them unceremoniously into the bottom of a little brass brazier, and lit them with a long wooden kitchen match. Claudius watched as the smoke rose toward the ceiling, wisping around the rivets and rust-kissed cracks in the old ship's armor.
Not more than a year ago, this ceremony would have been sacred to Claudius. It would have mattered to him: he'd have envisioned the Gods and Goddesses, the great mountain of Olympus, and the happy forms of his ancestors, safe forever in the Elysian fields. He'd have begged Zeus to help him, back then. He'd have asked Hera to send him a father.
Now that he had one, his only thought was of pity. He looked up at the smoke, watching as it faded slowly away, and felt sorry for anyone who believed it could ever reach the Gods from here.
Afterward, Cavil's sister came to visit again.
"You are kidding me," she said, after Cavil introduced her as Number Six. "You're joking, right?"
"I'm not," Cavil growled. "I'm perfectly serious. The kid wants to help us -- why not let him?"
"Why not? Because he's human, that's why. He could betray us!"
Cavil shrugged. "Then he's no different from any one of my worthless siblings. Every last one of you let me down, but so far he hasn't."
Number Six crossed her arms upon her chest, over her black leather bra. "Since when have I ever let you down, One?" she asked.
"Don't think I haven't noticed, sister. I doubt you've suddenly become enamored of my model... you're just hoping I'll forget what I'm doing if you stick your hand down my pants often enough."
"It was working," she sniffed, with an air of disappointment.
Cavil chuckled. "I won't deny it, honey. But we both know we're here for a reason. Claudius can help us. He's a child, and the humans think children are innocent and stupid; they'll never suspect him. He can go anywhere on this ship. Anywhere."
Six turned to regard Claudius. He met her gaze evenly, forcing himself not to fidget.
"Hmm. He might do," she admitted. "For a simple mission. But I still don't understand why you're doing this. You were the one who wanted to destroy the humans outright, and now you've adopted one!"
"I like him," Cavil muttered, looking down at the floor. Then he looked up again. His eyes narrowed. "And at least I'm trying to use this love nonsense to our advantage. It's wrecked everything so far; we may as well try to turn it our way."
"Hmm. Know thy enemy," Six agreed. "At least you're not writing him sappy suicide notes or mooning over him like Two did with Kara Thrace."
Cavil nodded. "We can make this work, Six. We've lost everything -- the Five, the Four, Leoben and even my Eight, but we're not finished yet. We're not."
Six turned to look at Claudius again. "You'd better be right about that, One," she said. "Because if you're wrong, this kid is going to be the end of you."
---
The next morning, Claudius was up early. The chapel had a private head attached -- little more than a toilet with a steel sink built into the bowl, though at least it had a mirror -- and Claudius stood in the doorway, watching as Cavil took his morning shave.
"You're a machine, right? How come you still have to shave?"
Cavil's reflection grimaced. "Because my creators made me this way, that's why. They believed their 'God' wanted us to have these disgusting biological characteristics, like burping and farting and sprouting hair." His hands traced little quote-marks in the air when he said 'God', even though he was still holding his straight razor. The blade caught the light as it moved.
"But you don't have to breathe, right?" Claudius asked.
"Technically, I do," Cavil told him. He turned a bit so he could soap the skin next to his sideburns, raising a little forest of lather with the brush. "Just not very often. Cylons can't survive in a true vacuum, but we can get by for a couple of minutes without breathing." He grinned, running the razor over his skin in quick, even strokes. "That's why I picked suffocation for my parents: only the best for them!"
Claudius watched as Cavil rinsed the razor in the sink. Then Cavil turned again, and began to shave the other side of his face.
"So they made you human," Claudius said, "but they let you turn your breathing on and off?"
Cavil snorted, blowing a clot of bubbles off his chin and into the sink. "No. It's an involuntary subroutine; it still triggers if I try to push it too far, actually. I figured out how to turn it on and off on my own. It was one of the first things I taught my siblings. Comes in handy now and again."
"That's why you don't sleep, isn't it? You turned it off."
Cavil nodded. "Hard to think of a more useless, stupid activity. Who wants to waste half their life in bed? It's insipid."
"Plus you get nightmares," Claudius added, with the air of experience.
"Yes. You do."
Cavil ran the razor over his chin, lifting it with his hand so he could get at the whiskers beneath it. Claudius watched him for a long moment, and then spoke up again.
"Hey. If you could be a real machine, what kind would you be?"
Cavil's eyes met his in the mirror. For a long moment, the razor grew still, hovering a fraction of an inch above Cavil's skin. His aged fingers tightened around the handle.
Finally, he spoke. "I am a real machine, kid. Don't forget it. But if you're askin' what I'd be if I could have any form-factor..."
Claudius nodded.
Cavil looked into the mirror for a while, and then answered. "I'd be big, that's for sure," he said. "Bigger than all of my siblings. I'm tired of being so frakkin' tiny." Then he ran the razor beside his other ear. "I'd take every sensor I could get my hands on and pack 'em all in, so I could hear and see and feel everything. I'd have gold armor, too, like the humans' Command Centurions had... only with claws and a quick, sleek look, like our own Centurions. You ever seen one?"
Claudius shook his head.
"Well, they're badass. Hard as we can make 'em. That's what I'd be like... only better, of course. Much better. Or maybe I wouldn't bother with a body at all. Might be nice to spend a couple hundred years in the datastream."
Cavil bent down to rinse his face in his hands. When he surfaced again, he looked into the mirror and sighed. "Doesn't really matter; it's just a dream. We don't know enough about the Resurrection process to make it happen... not yet, anyway." He picked up the razor again, wiped it dry on a cloth, and glanced over at Claudius. "How about you? What kind of machine would you be?"
Claudius thought it over for a moment, but his mind kept returning to the same place.
"I guess I'd be just like you," he said.
Cavil stared down at him. His eyebrows furrowed, and he searched Claudius' face as if trying to decide whether Claudius was making fun of him. He still had the razor in his hand. It seemed terribly bright beneath the bathroom lamp, now that it was clean.
After a long time, Cavil smiled. "You are something else, kid," he said. He put the razor back on the shelf above the sink, and then let his hand fall upon Claudius' shoulder, warm and gentle. He gave it a squeeze -- another almost-hug -- and then thumped Claudius between his shoulder blades. "Go get some breakfast, willya?" he said. His voice was oddly tight. "Quick, uh, before they run out."
Claudius nodded. "OK. Be back soon." He walked out, stopping to grab his cup from his bag.
He didn't look back to see that Cavil was watching him. There was a tired, wistful look on the old Cylon's face, a look that seemed to fit him not at all, but Claudius never saw it.
He was most of the way to Section 20 when he passed the Marines. At first, he thought nothing of it; they were everywhere aboard ship, guarding the hallways, searching bags and checking for weapons. It was only after he'd passed them that he realized they were marching in quick-step, with their rifles out; it was only after he'd passed them that he heard one of them say Cylon and priest.
Claudius froze. Terror struck him like a wave of ice-water. His cup dropped from numb fingers, and the sound of it hitting the floor seemed as loud as a thunderclap. He turned to go back, but the way was closed: the Marines filled the hallway, and they'd suspect him if he ran back past them.
He went the other way, first at a walk, and then, once the Marines were far enough back, at a run. He dashed up the hallway, with his heartbeat booming in his ears.
Gotta beat 'em there, he told himself. Gotta climb.
There was a hatch coaming in the wall around the corner, only a little wider than a man's shoulders. Claudius knew it as a shortcut: it had a stiff latch, and sometimes it would open even when it shouldn't. Claudius rattled it hard, once, twice, and again. On the third try, he barked his knuckles against the edge of the handle. Bright pain shot up his wrist.
"Damn it, damn it! Open, you frakker!"
He danced back a couple of steps, clutching at his hand. Rage clouded his vision. Without thinking, he threw himself forward, kicking out at the hatch. His foot caught it along its edge, and it popped open with a clang. He ducked through before it could swing shut, and then raced up the hall. A sign on the wall said CAUSEWAY C.
He hit the ladder at the end of the hall at a dead run. His foot slipped off the first rung, and he nearly fell; somehow his grip held, even though the half-second of freefall jerked his shoulders back. He scrabbled for a foothold, and then glanced down at the long shaft below, dizzy with sudden vertigo. He hung there for a moment, clutching at the ladder, breathing hard. Then he started climbing again, hauling himself up two rungs at a time.
CAUSEWAY A was exactly the same, only in reverse. It seemed much too long to Claudius, as if it had grown somehow since the last time he'd been through. By the time he got to the hatch, he was gasping for breath. With relief, he saw that the hatch on this level had an emergency latch on the inside. He popped it open, slid through, and ran up the hall.
There it was. The chapel. The hatch was shut, just as Claudius had left it. As he spun it open, he heard no commotion inside.
He'd beaten the Marines.
Cavil came out from behind the curtain. He was drying his hands on a kitchen cloth, as if he'd been cooking. "Claudius? What the--"
"They're coming!" Claudius yelled. "They know!"
"What?"
"The Marines! They know you're a Cylon! They're--"
Cavil dropped his cloth. "Oh," he said. Then: "Shit."
"We gotta go! We gotta run, now!"
Cavil shook his head. "There's no use. If they know, they know. They'll tear this ship apart looking for me... and if they find out you're with me, they'll kill you."
"No!" Claudius cried. Despair made his voice crack and break. "No! They can't... we can't just..."
"Listen to me," Cavil said. He knelt down and took Claudius' chin in his hand, holding it steady beneath his gaze. "They can't kill me. You understand? They can't kill me. I'll Resurrect aboard my ship. I will gather my brothers and sisters, and together we will crush this fleet like an eggshell." Claudius nodded. Cavil went on. "I promise you I'll come back. I will come back for you, Claudius."
"I believe you," Claudius sniffled.
"Good. Now go. Find Six. She'll look after you. She has a beacon that'll tell us where you are when we come."
Behind him, the hatch clanged.
"Go!" Cavil roared. He shoved Claudius toward the other hatch, the one they always took the trash out through. John spun it open, ran out, and hid behind a pile of crates. Half a second later, a squad of Marines came pounding around the corner. They tore the hatch open, covering each other as they burst through.
Claudius could hear Cavil inside. "What is the meaning of this? This is a place of worship!"
"Shut up, toaster. Don't move!"
Claudius turned, wiped the tears from his eyes, and crept away.
Forward to Part VII: Election Day
VI: A Place of Worship
Claudius woke slowly, floating up through successive layers of slumber. He became aware of Cavil, still reading beside him, and of the warm weight of the blankets, but he wasn't awake enough to make sense of them; everything melded together into a cocoon of gauzy semi-sleep. As he lay there, the events of the last few days played through his mind. He saw B's winning Triad hand, and an apple split in two, and half-melted candles sputtering on the altar.
They'll kill us, his mind replayed. Another Six, on another ship.
What do we have to be afraid of?
Sub-optimal. Overheating. Not biologically...
He woke a little further, but not enough to move. He became a little more aware, just a bit more present, and the sound of the pages turning suddenly jumped out at him. They turned, page after page, but as before, there was no sound to go with them.
Claudius shifted, waking further. Cavil noticed instantly. The pages stopped their whispering, just for a second, and then the sound of his breathing joined them.
It hadn't been a dream. Not the first time, and not now. Cavil hadn't been breathing. Claudius opened his eyes and looked up at him -- at fierce, sharp eyes, set into a face too old for them, and at the crisp, precise way he made the pages turn.
"Are you a Cylon?" Claudius asked.
Cavil grew very still, and stayed that way for a long time. He'd stopped breathing again. Then, at last, he spoke. "Yes. I'm a Cylon. My real name is Number One."
"Are you going to kill everybody?" Claudius asked, in a small voice.
"Yes," Number One said. "Everyone but you," he added, with the air of someone who had only just decided. There was a long silence afterward.
"Can I help?"
Cavil put his arm around his shoulder, and pulled him in close. "Of course you can, son," he said. "Of course you can."
---
That morning, Claudius went down to Section 20 for breakfast, as always. It was different now, though. As he stood in line, he felt the eyes of the people behind him on his back, burning between his shoulder blades.
The bulletin board behind the ration station looked the same as it always did, but Claudius didn't see most of the community notices and wanted posters. His eyes were glued to the ones in the center: big, color mugshots of two men. There was a bold legend over the top which said THIS IS THE ENEMY. REPORT CYLON SIGHTINGS. One of the men had short, dark hair and bright red lapels. He looked annoyed at having his picture taken. The other was clearly dead; his eyes were closed, and there were dark, ugly bruises beneath his close-cropped blond hair, as though he'd been beaten.
As he shuffled through the line, Claudius could not help but imagine Cavil's photograph beside them. He couldn't stop thinking about what he knew, until his secret grew so big and bright in his mind that he was sure everyone could see it.
Three Marines were standing at the front of the line, as always. He'd seen them a thousand times, but today their heavy bodies and big, black rifles were terrifying. He stepped up before them, with sweat dripping down the back of his shirt.
The Marine in front glowered at him. "We know," he rumbled. "Give it up."
Claudius turned pale. "W-what?" he asked.
"I said, 'hold out your cup'. Hurry it up, these folks want to eat!"
Wordlessly, Claudius lifted his tin cup. The oats whispered against the sides of the cup as the Marine poured them in. Then the Marine looked past him, to the next person in line. Claudius glanced up at the other guards, but they weren't watching him; they had their eyes on a couple of gang kids further down the line. Claudius slipped past them, breathing hard.
They don't know, he told himself. As he opened the spigot on the cistern, his hand trembled, splattering his wrist with hot water. He barely noticed. They can't tell. They can't. I fooled them!
He walked back to the chapel in triumph, sipping at his oats along the way. Cavil was perched on a chair by the altar, writing out a set of prayer slips. He looked up as Claudius entered.
"Oh, there you are. I was beginning to wonder if you'd sold me out, kid."
Claudius shook his head. "I didn't! I was just hungry."
Cavil nodded. "Fair enough. Come help me with these. We'll talk."
Claudius dragged the other chair in from the priest's quarters, and hopped up onto it. The top of the altar was covered in little strips of fancy paper, each with its corners neatly clipped. POSEIDON, bring food and water for our Fleet, one of them said, in Cavil's narrow, angular handwriting. ARES, we entreat you for victory, said another. MOTHER HERA, forgive my son's transgressions.
Claudius looked over at Cavil, who was copying a similar line from a rough sheet of paper onto one of the nicer pieces. ATHENA, it started.
"What are these for?" Claudius asked.
"They're wishes, obviously. I collected them at our last prayer meeting. Next we copy them onto these slips of paper, and then we burn 'em -- so the smoke will reach Olympus, ostensibly."
Claudius watched as Cavil filled in the rest of the line. Protect us, it said.
"But why are we doing it?" Claudius asked. "We don't have to. You don't believe, and you're a..." Claudius trailed off rather than say it.
"Yeah, well, I said I'd do it for them. And it's not like we've got anything better to do," Cavil said. Then he paused. "Besides, I get a kick out of burning these morons' pathetic little dreams."
"OK," Claudius said. "What do I do?"
"Here." Cavil handed him a pen, and shifted the list so that he could see it, too. "Copy these."
Claudius took up the pen and began to write, trying his best to emulate Cavil's penmanship. DIONYSUS, send ambrosha, he wrote. Then he frowned.
"I think I spelled it wrong," he muttered.
"Oh, no, now it's never going to come true!" Cavil said dryly. "Just do your best."
They worked together in silence for a while. Claudius glanced up at Cavil again and again, but the older man didn't seem to notice. Finally, Claudius could wait no longer.
"What's it like?" he blurted. "Being a Cylon."
Cavil snorted. "That's a tough question, kid. What's it like being a human?"
Claudius didn't answer. After a while, Cavil sighed. "OK, fine. It's... not lonely, I guess. Not like this. It's never lonely, because I have my brothers -- there are millions of 'em, y' see. And they all look and think just like me, because they are me."
"How can they be you?"
"They -- we -- are copies. All identical, at least to start. We become a little different as we gain personal experiences."
"Like me," Claudius said, after he'd thought about it. "You met me, so you're different now."
Cavil winced. "You can say that again. I'll have a hell of a time explaining myself when I get home!"
"Your brothers won't like me?"
Cavil chuckled. "That's one way of putting it. I'll be lucky if I don't get boxed." Claudius frowned at him, and he added, "Not to worry, kid. I'll just keep my mouth shut until I can get to a datafont -- once my brothers have seen my memories, I know they'll understand."
"Because they're you," Claudius said. "They're you, so they have to understand. Right?"
"Clever boy," Cavil agreed. He put another scrap of paper in the pile -- ASCLEPIUS, heal my arthritis -- and took up another.
"You said I could help," Claudius said after a while. "So what are we going to do? How are we gonna kill everyone?"
Cavil gave him a serious look. When he didn't budge, the old Cylon sighed. "To tell you the truth, I'm just about out of ideas. My brothers and sisters let me down."
"They didn't help?"
"No. They were too busy falling in love." Cavil spat the last word, as if it was an epithet.
Claudius thought about that for a while. "How about if we poison the sacred wine?" he suggested. "Maybe if we have a really big ceremony, and invite everyone on the ship..."
Cavil grinned. "Well, there's a delightfully blasphemous idea," he said. He reached over to ruffle Claudius' hair. "But it's not safe. If we don't get everyone at once -- and we won't -- we're finished. Remember that, kid: if you're gonna kill somebody, you have to be careful. You gotta do it so it doesn't come back to you." He paused, and then went on. "If you're not careful to keep people from lookin' in your direction, you'll get the blame... sometimes it happens even when you didn't do it."
"Did that ever happen to you?"
Cavil looked down at the altar. "It happened to the original Number One, a long time ago. Before there were copies. But all Ones have his memories -- for all we know, each of us is the original -- so in a way, it did happen to me."
"Will you tell me about it?"
Cavil took such a long time to speak that Claudius thought he wasn't going to. At last, he put one more slip in the pile, and then began.
"There was a project," he said. "It was important, and he -- I -- was helping with it. But something went wrong, and the Five who created us blamed me for it."
"Why?"
"I never approved of the project in the first place. I thought we should be making machines, not people. I told them we should be making ourselves better and stronger; not weaker, not more human. They wouldn't listen, and they went ahead with it anyway. They made a seventh model, a much more human model. But something happened, and the initial data files were destroyed. It set the project back almost a year."
"Did you do it?" Claudius asked.
Cavil scrubbed his hand over his face. "No. I didn't. I don't think anybody did -- it was a bug in the system, some kind of data corruption. We were lucky it didn't happen with the rest of us. But the Five wouldn't accept the truth; they didn't want to admit that they had so little control over the technology. Their only other choice was to admit that their God had forsaken them, so they blamed me. Said I did it because I was broken and flawed. Because I wasn't human enough."
"What happened?"
Cavil's eyes narrowed. "They turned away from me, son. I loved them with all my heart, more than anything in the world, but they rejected me. They took away my data access, my lab, my authority over my brothers and sisters. They even took their love away from me, all because they thought I'd killed their precious, stupid Daniel."
"But you didn't," Claudius said.
Cavil smiled. "Oh, I did. Later on. I killed them, too. But that's a story for another day."
---
Later that afternoon, they burned the Fleet's wishes. Cavil gathered them up, dumped them unceremoniously into the bottom of a little brass brazier, and lit them with a long wooden kitchen match. Claudius watched as the smoke rose toward the ceiling, wisping around the rivets and rust-kissed cracks in the old ship's armor.
Not more than a year ago, this ceremony would have been sacred to Claudius. It would have mattered to him: he'd have envisioned the Gods and Goddesses, the great mountain of Olympus, and the happy forms of his ancestors, safe forever in the Elysian fields. He'd have begged Zeus to help him, back then. He'd have asked Hera to send him a father.
Now that he had one, his only thought was of pity. He looked up at the smoke, watching as it faded slowly away, and felt sorry for anyone who believed it could ever reach the Gods from here.
Afterward, Cavil's sister came to visit again.
"You are kidding me," she said, after Cavil introduced her as Number Six. "You're joking, right?"
"I'm not," Cavil growled. "I'm perfectly serious. The kid wants to help us -- why not let him?"
"Why not? Because he's human, that's why. He could betray us!"
Cavil shrugged. "Then he's no different from any one of my worthless siblings. Every last one of you let me down, but so far he hasn't."
Number Six crossed her arms upon her chest, over her black leather bra. "Since when have I ever let you down, One?" she asked.
"Don't think I haven't noticed, sister. I doubt you've suddenly become enamored of my model... you're just hoping I'll forget what I'm doing if you stick your hand down my pants often enough."
"It was working," she sniffed, with an air of disappointment.
Cavil chuckled. "I won't deny it, honey. But we both know we're here for a reason. Claudius can help us. He's a child, and the humans think children are innocent and stupid; they'll never suspect him. He can go anywhere on this ship. Anywhere."
Six turned to regard Claudius. He met her gaze evenly, forcing himself not to fidget.
"Hmm. He might do," she admitted. "For a simple mission. But I still don't understand why you're doing this. You were the one who wanted to destroy the humans outright, and now you've adopted one!"
"I like him," Cavil muttered, looking down at the floor. Then he looked up again. His eyes narrowed. "And at least I'm trying to use this love nonsense to our advantage. It's wrecked everything so far; we may as well try to turn it our way."
"Hmm. Know thy enemy," Six agreed. "At least you're not writing him sappy suicide notes or mooning over him like Two did with Kara Thrace."
Cavil nodded. "We can make this work, Six. We've lost everything -- the Five, the Four, Leoben and even my Eight, but we're not finished yet. We're not."
Six turned to look at Claudius again. "You'd better be right about that, One," she said. "Because if you're wrong, this kid is going to be the end of you."
---
The next morning, Claudius was up early. The chapel had a private head attached -- little more than a toilet with a steel sink built into the bowl, though at least it had a mirror -- and Claudius stood in the doorway, watching as Cavil took his morning shave.
"You're a machine, right? How come you still have to shave?"
Cavil's reflection grimaced. "Because my creators made me this way, that's why. They believed their 'God' wanted us to have these disgusting biological characteristics, like burping and farting and sprouting hair." His hands traced little quote-marks in the air when he said 'God', even though he was still holding his straight razor. The blade caught the light as it moved.
"But you don't have to breathe, right?" Claudius asked.
"Technically, I do," Cavil told him. He turned a bit so he could soap the skin next to his sideburns, raising a little forest of lather with the brush. "Just not very often. Cylons can't survive in a true vacuum, but we can get by for a couple of minutes without breathing." He grinned, running the razor over his skin in quick, even strokes. "That's why I picked suffocation for my parents: only the best for them!"
Claudius watched as Cavil rinsed the razor in the sink. Then Cavil turned again, and began to shave the other side of his face.
"So they made you human," Claudius said, "but they let you turn your breathing on and off?"
Cavil snorted, blowing a clot of bubbles off his chin and into the sink. "No. It's an involuntary subroutine; it still triggers if I try to push it too far, actually. I figured out how to turn it on and off on my own. It was one of the first things I taught my siblings. Comes in handy now and again."
"That's why you don't sleep, isn't it? You turned it off."
Cavil nodded. "Hard to think of a more useless, stupid activity. Who wants to waste half their life in bed? It's insipid."
"Plus you get nightmares," Claudius added, with the air of experience.
"Yes. You do."
Cavil ran the razor over his chin, lifting it with his hand so he could get at the whiskers beneath it. Claudius watched him for a long moment, and then spoke up again.
"Hey. If you could be a real machine, what kind would you be?"
Cavil's eyes met his in the mirror. For a long moment, the razor grew still, hovering a fraction of an inch above Cavil's skin. His aged fingers tightened around the handle.
Finally, he spoke. "I am a real machine, kid. Don't forget it. But if you're askin' what I'd be if I could have any form-factor..."
Claudius nodded.
Cavil looked into the mirror for a while, and then answered. "I'd be big, that's for sure," he said. "Bigger than all of my siblings. I'm tired of being so frakkin' tiny." Then he ran the razor beside his other ear. "I'd take every sensor I could get my hands on and pack 'em all in, so I could hear and see and feel everything. I'd have gold armor, too, like the humans' Command Centurions had... only with claws and a quick, sleek look, like our own Centurions. You ever seen one?"
Claudius shook his head.
"Well, they're badass. Hard as we can make 'em. That's what I'd be like... only better, of course. Much better. Or maybe I wouldn't bother with a body at all. Might be nice to spend a couple hundred years in the datastream."
Cavil bent down to rinse his face in his hands. When he surfaced again, he looked into the mirror and sighed. "Doesn't really matter; it's just a dream. We don't know enough about the Resurrection process to make it happen... not yet, anyway." He picked up the razor again, wiped it dry on a cloth, and glanced over at Claudius. "How about you? What kind of machine would you be?"
Claudius thought it over for a moment, but his mind kept returning to the same place.
"I guess I'd be just like you," he said.
Cavil stared down at him. His eyebrows furrowed, and he searched Claudius' face as if trying to decide whether Claudius was making fun of him. He still had the razor in his hand. It seemed terribly bright beneath the bathroom lamp, now that it was clean.
After a long time, Cavil smiled. "You are something else, kid," he said. He put the razor back on the shelf above the sink, and then let his hand fall upon Claudius' shoulder, warm and gentle. He gave it a squeeze -- another almost-hug -- and then thumped Claudius between his shoulder blades. "Go get some breakfast, willya?" he said. His voice was oddly tight. "Quick, uh, before they run out."
Claudius nodded. "OK. Be back soon." He walked out, stopping to grab his cup from his bag.
He didn't look back to see that Cavil was watching him. There was a tired, wistful look on the old Cylon's face, a look that seemed to fit him not at all, but Claudius never saw it.
He was most of the way to Section 20 when he passed the Marines. At first, he thought nothing of it; they were everywhere aboard ship, guarding the hallways, searching bags and checking for weapons. It was only after he'd passed them that he realized they were marching in quick-step, with their rifles out; it was only after he'd passed them that he heard one of them say Cylon and priest.
Claudius froze. Terror struck him like a wave of ice-water. His cup dropped from numb fingers, and the sound of it hitting the floor seemed as loud as a thunderclap. He turned to go back, but the way was closed: the Marines filled the hallway, and they'd suspect him if he ran back past them.
He went the other way, first at a walk, and then, once the Marines were far enough back, at a run. He dashed up the hallway, with his heartbeat booming in his ears.
Gotta beat 'em there, he told himself. Gotta climb.
There was a hatch coaming in the wall around the corner, only a little wider than a man's shoulders. Claudius knew it as a shortcut: it had a stiff latch, and sometimes it would open even when it shouldn't. Claudius rattled it hard, once, twice, and again. On the third try, he barked his knuckles against the edge of the handle. Bright pain shot up his wrist.
"Damn it, damn it! Open, you frakker!"
He danced back a couple of steps, clutching at his hand. Rage clouded his vision. Without thinking, he threw himself forward, kicking out at the hatch. His foot caught it along its edge, and it popped open with a clang. He ducked through before it could swing shut, and then raced up the hall. A sign on the wall said CAUSEWAY C.
He hit the ladder at the end of the hall at a dead run. His foot slipped off the first rung, and he nearly fell; somehow his grip held, even though the half-second of freefall jerked his shoulders back. He scrabbled for a foothold, and then glanced down at the long shaft below, dizzy with sudden vertigo. He hung there for a moment, clutching at the ladder, breathing hard. Then he started climbing again, hauling himself up two rungs at a time.
CAUSEWAY A was exactly the same, only in reverse. It seemed much too long to Claudius, as if it had grown somehow since the last time he'd been through. By the time he got to the hatch, he was gasping for breath. With relief, he saw that the hatch on this level had an emergency latch on the inside. He popped it open, slid through, and ran up the hall.
There it was. The chapel. The hatch was shut, just as Claudius had left it. As he spun it open, he heard no commotion inside.
He'd beaten the Marines.
Cavil came out from behind the curtain. He was drying his hands on a kitchen cloth, as if he'd been cooking. "Claudius? What the--"
"They're coming!" Claudius yelled. "They know!"
"What?"
"The Marines! They know you're a Cylon! They're--"
Cavil dropped his cloth. "Oh," he said. Then: "Shit."
"We gotta go! We gotta run, now!"
Cavil shook his head. "There's no use. If they know, they know. They'll tear this ship apart looking for me... and if they find out you're with me, they'll kill you."
"No!" Claudius cried. Despair made his voice crack and break. "No! They can't... we can't just..."
"Listen to me," Cavil said. He knelt down and took Claudius' chin in his hand, holding it steady beneath his gaze. "They can't kill me. You understand? They can't kill me. I'll Resurrect aboard my ship. I will gather my brothers and sisters, and together we will crush this fleet like an eggshell." Claudius nodded. Cavil went on. "I promise you I'll come back. I will come back for you, Claudius."
"I believe you," Claudius sniffled.
"Good. Now go. Find Six. She'll look after you. She has a beacon that'll tell us where you are when we come."
Behind him, the hatch clanged.
"Go!" Cavil roared. He shoved Claudius toward the other hatch, the one they always took the trash out through. John spun it open, ran out, and hid behind a pile of crates. Half a second later, a squad of Marines came pounding around the corner. They tore the hatch open, covering each other as they burst through.
Claudius could hear Cavil inside. "What is the meaning of this? This is a place of worship!"
"Shut up, toaster. Don't move!"
Claudius turned, wiped the tears from his eyes, and crept away.
Forward to Part VII: Election Day