This work, along with all other rights available under the law, belongs to the author and may not be reproduced in any fashion without the author's express written permission. SeaQuestDSV and SeaQuest 2032 belong to Amblin Entertainment and MCA/Universal. No copyright infringement is intended. January 2000.

Lucas moaned softly as he stumbled sleepily back to his quarters, and prepared for bed as quickly as possible. Hudson had put him on a series of triple shifts, as "punishment detail" for having done some extracurricular searching through the Internex and various UEO and assorted government files. He'd found valuable information that proved very helpful in settling the situation, which could have quickly become a nasty international incident. That was something -- particularly now, with Bourne involved -- that no one wanted. It was ridiculous that Hudson took it all so seriously; Bridger would have used the information, true, but he wouldn't have been punished for doing his job.

Well, maybe Bridger would have given him a talking-to about accessing other people's private files. On the other hand, Bridger might not have asked where the files came from, either. He would have known better than to ask such a foolish question.

Hudson hadn't known him long enough.

If there was a God, he would never get the chance. Lucas knew full well that the only reasons why he had agreed to this farce of enlistment had names like Darwin and Dagwood. Honestly, 'Science Officer'? How was anyone supposed to take him seriously with a hand-crafted position right out of Star Trek? It seemed fairly clear that Hudson was perfectly willing to play any game to keep his own little boy genius on board, and he didn't like playing by the rules.

That was fine, Lucas had never been one to play by rules either. Settling into sleep, he decided then and there that he would take the next opportunity off this crate. Funny -- not funny ha-ha, but funny-strange -- and sad, too, because this boat had been his home for years. He'd grown up here.

But that was the core of the problem, wasn't it?

He'd grown up.

"Fire on my mark!"

Hudson's voice yanked Lucas out of his faintly-feverish daydreaming-daze, lost in the worlds of his own creation. They were all nice, neat, ordered worlds, nothing at all like the one in which he found himself.

seaQuest had been trying to hold the line between the UEO and the Macronesian Territories, both pursuer and pursued, trying to prevent the end of the world as they knew it. Weeks upon weeks upon seeming nearly years of waiting interspersed with moments of extreme terror, but lately the latter had become more and more frequent. Refugees from the Chaodai nations and from Macronesia poured across the firing line, so Hudson and the other UEO ships were loathe to shoot at them. Their opponents, however, had no such qualms, using the battered refugee ships and its people as cover from which to shoot, using innocents as purveyors of bombs and other weapons of destruction.

Everyone was tired to the point of breaking. Some had already broken from the stress; several crewmembers had succumbed to exhaustion and shell-shock, leaving the boat on a near-skeleton crew. This, sadly, forced those who remained to work double shifts, triple shifts in some cases, for there were neither replacements nor reinforcements to be had.

Other crewmembers had simply broken. Dagwood had been killed two days ago. Henderson had succumbed to a virus released by the Chaodai, and died three days ago. Commander Ford had grieved in private, but not for long; he fell victim to its deceiving fever and chills two days later. Most of the boats on the line had lost crew to the illness, so all of them had since been quarantined.

The virus was loose on seaQuest, that was certain. There was no reason to think any of them would survive it. For that matter, there was no reason to think any of them would survive this war, period. How had they gotten to this point? No one knew, or remembered, or cared. The dead certainly no longer cared.

Brody had died senselessly even before this point. Miguel and Wendy, dead on a world ten years away through space and time, during a war just as meaningless to them, as this war was now for the survivors of that civil war. It was good that none of them had lived to see what was to happen, the world wrong in all manners of ways, for all manners of reasons.

"Now!"

Lucas fumbled slightly, his hand shaking, and punched the button loosing the torpedoes on their enemies. How easily he killed now, how outraged Bridger would have been if he had lived to see it. He took note of his readouts, watching how the little blips on his screen lessened by one or two, and reveling in the realization that none of it mattered to him.

Numbness filled his soul, easing the pain of his burned heart and stilling his tired fingers. "Three more coming at us, from port side," Lucas recited, uncaring, "they're smart weapons, must have circled around, out of our range." His memory had served him well, for the last time.

"Fire on --"

"It's too late, Captain."

"But --"

"Impact in ten." The bridge fell instantly quiet at the teenager's pronouncement. Lucas sighed, nodding sadly at where Darwin hung in his watery structure, nearest them. Not even the dolphin had time to escape, not this time. None of them did.

The bridge crew watched silently as the point of their death loomed larger and larger, heading straight for them. Strategically, such an attack made excellent sense; kill the snake at its head and dispatch it quickly. Using his screen, Lucas also watched it, without emotion. "Five."

Reactions differed, but most of the crew watched sadly, or closed their eyes and softly cried. No hysterics, not on this boat. Not at this point in the game. Confusion shone on most faces. Lucas watched as Tim bowed his head and prayed. Strange how, after all this, after all he'd been through, the comtech still believed in a higher power. Lucas no longer believed in anything anymore, except the general stupidity of mankind and that no one could be trusted to do anything out of the goodness of their hearts.

He mused on where he would stand in Purgatory, and whether God would hold hacking for the greater good against him. Did he even believe in Purgatory? It wasn't like he'd been to Temple in years; he hadn't been to his mother's Protestant services in even longer, listening to stories about what happened long ago and what oaths had been taken. "One."

Lucas closed his eyes, and waited for Eternity. It seemed the world would really end in water, again. So much for God's promises.

"No!" Lucas jerked awake, sitting bolt upright in his bunk. Pain filled the back of his head and fluttered like birds' wings down his spine. Moving didn't seem like such a good idea right now, but hadn't he just been about to die in fire and water just then?

Footsteps sounded from his left, and a cool something caressed his forehead. He opened his eyes, wondering when he had closed them, and why was it so dark in MedBay?

"I'm glad you're feeling better. You took a rather hard knock, young man." Doctor Westphalen's voice sounded tired and worried and a little sad.

Lucas wasn't quite sure what exactly had happened, how this 'hard knock' had occurred. It had something to do with speed, he thought. "What happened?" His own voice seemed to echo in the dark pale room. That frightened him, more than the odd quality of fear in the doctor's voice.

"You had an accident in that underwater-speed-demon-machine of yours and Katie's. I plan to speak with her about that; teenagers do not belong in such dangerous places."

Her voice dimmed and rose without a change in tone, an effect that fed the boy's fear. He knew she was angry with him, but clearly he hadn't done this to himself on purpose. There had been a torpedo, or something, hadn't there? This had been done to him by someone else, hadn't it? Lucas couldn't think of anything to say, nothing that wouldn't get him in further trouble, and right now he wanted to sleep more than he wanted to defend himself from people who thought they were his parents.

Even his parents didn't think they were parents.

Soft footfalls indicated that the doctor was leaving his side. That was good, even though her presence was comforting. He wanted to sleep, he needed to sleep, he was ordered to sleep.

"How is he?" Bridger was here, how nice. But...what had he been dreaming? He must have been dreaming.

"Concussion, and slightly feverish." That didn't sound good, but certainly it wasn't worthy of the amount of heaviness in Doctor Westphalen's voice. "But that's to be expected, of course, after such an injury." A pause entered the conversation, spouting warnings in silence. "He's been dreaming." There see, Lucas thought, vindicated; he had been dreaming, strange things too, about being enlisted and Commander Ford being dead and everything changed....

"What did the tests say?" Hold on, what tests?

"Does it matter?" Her voice sliced through the air like a frozen knifeblade. "Does it really matter?"

"Of course it matters, Kristin. How can you think it doesn't matter to me?"

"You have Lucas?" Whoa, what about me? What the hell's going on?

"Kristin," his voice softened, "as much as I love Lucas, he isn't mine, even though I love him like he was mine. It's not the same when it's your child in your arms."

What! I hope I'm not hearing what I think I'm hearing.

Lucas heard her sigh, a soft squishy sound that was probably them kissing, and a rustling sound that was probably them hugging. God, he hoped they weren't going to make out right in front of him. That would be too strange for words. But then, this whole conversation was kind of strange. What kind of family would they make, he wondered. He was fairly sure that she had a daughter, older than him; at least, that was what her file had said when he had hacked into it a couple months before. The captain was a widower with no surviving children, but Lucas had since come to consider himself a sort of honorary child. Doctor Westphalen seemed rather maternal towards him, but that could just be because she didn't think he belonged on seaQuest.

Where else did he belong? He belonged nowhere but here. Nowhere else would have him.

Life would be nice with Captain Bridger and Doctor Westphalen and a little brother or sister. Lucas knew he wasn't a perfect child, had been told so many times, but he had tried so many times. The captain seemed to appreciate him more than his own father did, and protected him from bad things. His blood-father faded like mist when bad things did their evil deeds.

"What do you want to do?"

"I'm not sure. We need to talk about this, somewhere private, somewhere that we can discuss this."

"I know."

"And we need to do it soon."

"I know that too."

There would be no evil deeds or bad things with Bridger and Westphalen to protect him. He would not have to remain awake in the cold all night, hiding from the monsters in his mind that sought to batter his heart into submission, frightening his soul until it froze and shattered in the dark of night. Here, there were no monsters, and those few that remained fled in the dark to their own domains. Here, Lucas felt free to sleep in peace, cuddled in the warmth of blood and love and caring. There, peace would be just as happy. Freedom was a baby's cries; that was the sound of joy, of life, of survival.

That was then, this is now, there is the future. Lucas looked forward to it, to the life it would bring. He would have a family again, be wanted again. He would be expected to be responsible, to be an adult, but that was nothing new. Pushed into adulthood at the age of seven, at least with a baby on the way, he would have a good reason to be responsible. Being a big brother was a sacred trust, and Lucas knew he would take that very seriously.

"What about Lucas?"

"What do you mean?"

"He may not react well to all this."

"He'll understand. Babies change things. Everything changes, it's a part of life."

"I know that, Nathan, but this will be a big change for him."

"He'll survive."

"Nathan."

"Kristin, as much as I love him, Lucas is not my responsibility. This baby is, and, I hope, you will be. I hope the three of us can stay together...."

Lucas squeezed his eyes shut, taking all his rampant self-control to remain still and silent. Feigning sleep was a skill at which he had always excelled, but now it seemed he would have to practice a new skill.

Feeling. Caring. Survival.

Funny. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped significantly in the past few minutes. He had been warm a few minutes ago. Isn't it sad what not being wanted does to your core?

The water near Mammal Engineering drifted into shimmery view, and Lucas wondered why the walls in his room seemed to glow. Also, his face was wet, and that was pretty unusual. Why had he been crying in his sleep? Then, he remembered the dream. Or had it been 'dreams', plural? Lucas wasn't exactly sure. What was reality, anyway, and who was qualified to judge?

Was anyone qualified to judge anything that happened anywhere?

Most frightening, why had all his dreams centered around an ending to everything he loved, everything in which he believed? A personal Armageddon -- first, of the heart; second, of the body, and, last, of the soul. Lucas had watched himself be destroyed utterly, and in every way that mattered, in every way that created the deepest cut.

"Lucas?" Bridger's voice. That answered some questions, but raised others, and Lucas wasn't certain he wanted the answers.

The captain stuck his head through the open doorway, and had a peculiar expression on his face. Apparently, he wasn't exactly sure what was going on either. "Are you alright? It sounded like you were crying."

Embarrassed to have been caught, the teenager wiped at his eyes with the heel of one hand, tossing the bedcovers up like a makeshift blind, hoping to hide from the captain's too-perceptive eyes. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course." Captain Bridger sat on the bed, next to Lucas' form, his arms curled protectively around himself. "What is it you want to know?"

"What year is it?"

"Twenty-eighteen." The reply came immediately, but if Bridger was unnerved by the question, he didn't show it. "You crashed the Stinger yesterday after being struck with a torpedo."

"I thought it was a torpedo that hit me, but I wasn't sure." Lucas wasn't sure to whom he was talking, himself or one of the dream-selves. But then, weren't they all him, to some degree? And what did it all mean? And that reminded him.... "Have you and Westphalen talked lately, about needing private time to talk in private?"

Bridger petted his hand as comfortingly as a dog's ear. "It's good for adults who like each other to have private time together. You'll understand when you get older, Lucas, but, to answer your question, no, we haven't had any such discussions lately."

Lucas released a breath and felt some of his tension bleed off into the stratosphere. "Good."

"Bad dreams?"

"Yeah. More disturbing than bad, though, because I don't know what they mean."

Bridger said nothing for a few minutes, seeming to clear his thoughts. "Maybe your dream was a message from the past, a dream of the future. Maybe it's a representation of what you're subconciously hoping for."

Lucas shivered, remembering the coldness of his soul, the dull knife in his heart, and the frozen spirit of a broken mind who no longer cared.

"I hope not. I surely hope not."

Don't forget to feed the Muses!

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