Chapter 5: Life, Ed, But Not As We Know It

Edric crossed the med bay and waved a plate of steaming food under Colton's nose.

"You should eat."

"Mm-hmm." She took the plate from him blindly, eyes never leaving the computer screen in front of her and clumsily set it down beside her. Next to the previous two plates of untouched food.

"You know we've got to eat more regularly than most."

"Mm-hmm." Again, she mostly ignored him. "Bring more coffee." She lifted her mug, empty for the fourth time that morning, and waggled it at him.

"Not until you eat."

"Not hungry." Her stomach yowled in protest and she looked down with an expression of mild disgust at her body's treachery.

"Uh-huh. You're not getting more coffee until you eat something." She dragged her eyes away from the screen long enough to shoot him a glare over her glasses. She didn't need the heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, her eyesight was as good as his was, but she said they helped her to think better. She picked up a slice of something off the plate, it was impossible to tell what with the recycled food, and swallowed it pretty much whole. Then she shoved the mug at him again.

"More coffee. Now."

"No." He shoved the mug back at her. "You're going to eat the whole plate, chew it before swallowing, and then you're going to sleep. For a whole three hours."

"Don't need sleep." She countered. He just stared at her. "You could compromise a little."

"You've been up for three days straight, haven't swallowed anything but caffeine gravy and compromise isn't a military matter."

"Then maybe that's what's the matter with the military." She snarked back and caught the smile on his face. "What?" She demanded testily.

"You haven't cracked a joke in three days. I was beginning to think I'd have to be the funny one."

"Gods preserve us." She muttered and sipped from the drink he'd brought her. She grimaced and pulled a face. "Ugh! What the hells is this?"

"Milk." He shrugged. "You need vitamins."

She stared at him like he was a complete idiot and she was strongly considering flinging the milk all over his face. Edric wisely removed the glass from her hands.

"What?" What had he done now to insult her ladyship?

"Are there any COWS on Galactica?!"

Edric tilted his head, not getting the connection. She lent over until she could grip his chin in her hand, she squeezed hard enough to make his bones creak and he scowled at her. They couldn't really hurt each other, being too evenly matched, but they could beat the hell out of each other if they so chose.

"Edric, honey, sweeting, darling, the only things lactating on the Galactica are the rats and other people. Why would you think it would be a good idea to get me milk?"

"You need it. Drink it." His jaw hardened under her grip and she realised suddenly that she was still holding on to him. She released his chin and turned back to her computer.

"Too busy."

Edric rolled his eyes. "You've been busy for three days. You need chow, rest and less coffee."

"They're still sick, I don't need sleep or food and there's no such thing as too much coffee." She lifted the mug and waved it his nose again hopefully. Abruptly finding his temper, Edric batted the mug away so hard that it clunked off a wall, crumpled on impact and bounced over the floor with a tinny clang.

"Hey! I spent ages breaking that one in!" Colton gave an abbreviated yelp as Edric's hand manacled around her arm and hauled her with him when he surged to his feet. She followed him all the way until her toes could only scuff against the floor. Cottle looked up at their domestic, one of many, and decided to stay exactly where he was between Adama and Roslin's beds. Smart man.

"This is how it's going to go. You're either going to do as you're told, sit there like an adult and eat your chow then rest for a bit or I'm going to knock you out, have Cottle feed you through a tube and airlock every can of coffee on this frakking ship. Got it?" His last words were such a low growl that she shivered under his hard gaze, though probably not for the reason he thought.

"Very forceful, Eddie." She gave an exaggerated dreamy smile and clasped her hands under her chin, batting her eyelashes at him. "Go on, say something else."

Edric snorted in disgust and thrust her away from him and back into the chair.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." He shoved the plate at her and nearly succeeded in slopping its contents all over her white lab coat and the deep blue shirt she had scrounged up from somewhere. She wore dark brown pinstripe pants that clung to her long legs and her feet were bare. As was her habit aboard ship. She said it was pointless to wear shoes in an environment where there was nothing she needed them for unless she was getting into a fighter and that was NEVER going to happen.

Well, that made three times she had been wrong since he had known her.

"No beef steak?" His glower had her daintily picking up the unidentifiable slice of whatever and nibbling on it carefully. He knew she rarely ate, too skinny and disconnected from the normal world to remember, and that she hated to be watched while doing so. So he distracted her with something he knew she would sink her teeth into with relish.

"What's bothering you?"

"Aside from the death penalty hanging over our heads if they kick it?" She jerked her chin at Adama and Roslin on the beds. They were bloated and swollen. Their entire bodies one big allergic reaction. Their skins had formed into one giant blister and they were in permanent agony. Only exhaustion and a coma self induced through survival instinct had silenced their screams. It was made worse by the fact Cottle couldn't really do anything for them save the most basic of medical treatments. Saline drips and cold compresses. Colton had even forbidden him from drying to drain some of the fluid build up under their skins. They had to leave them to it. Let them work it out themselves.

It was driving everyone mental.

Colton most of all.

She looked awful. Her skin was waxy pale, her hair dishevelled and had lost its sheen. Her bones stood out. Her muscles, which had been hidden to wiry proportions when she was well fed, stood out in sharp relief so that veins roped them and individual fibres could be discerned. She looked feral and ready to snap. The gravy thick coffee she had been pouring down her throat with impunity hadn't helped either. It was the one thing that the nanotech turning their blood to sludge couldn't really handle.

She was right, they were far more resilient than any normal human would be and no amount of physical exertion would bring one of them to this state in such a short space of time. It would have taken weeks for Edric to deteriorate so much.

Emotion could though. Stress and guilt being the most common to bring out this reaction in her. Edric folded one foot onto the opposite knee and regarded her carefully.

"You're not afraid of death. You haven't been since you were twelve."

Colton did her best to ignore him, sipped cautiously at her 'milk' and tried not to think about where it had come from too much.

"Too smart for that."

She gave a wry smile. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

"So what's troubling your brain then? Why can't you get this?"

Colton chewed thoughtfully and he knew she was trying to break down her answer into something he could understand. It wasn't arrogance on her part (mostly) but there were things she knew about that would forever be beyond him and they were both smart enough to know that.

"Your brain is like…oil poured in an engine." She licked her lips and picked up something else to eat. She'd already moved onto the second plate of food at her side. Now that she had started to eat, she was ravenous.

"It's chugging along, minding it's own business, and then you begin to think of something, really concentrate on it and the oil slops onto the top of the engine. It trickles down through the cogs and wheels, oiling everything up, making it all slick and slidy and everything begins to work better. The engine throttles higher, moves up a gear and you go faster and faster and faster…" She finished her milk with barely a grimace this time, distracted enough not to think about it.

"My brain, is like a beehive and all of the little bees, thousands and thousands of them, have brains like yours." She shrugged. "No queen bee. Too much going on and not enough focus. I've been like this since we woke up. There's no harmony."

For the fist time since he had known her, Edric saw that she was afraid. He knew that her father had gone mad. His brain too highly powered and constantly thinking to ever shut down. Eventually it had killed him.

"I'm missing something. I know I am." She sat back in her seat with a growled sigh from between clenched teeth. "I know it's simple. Obvious…but it's just…" She reached out with her fingers out stretched like she could catch it as a tangible thing. Her hand fisted and she shook her head sharply. "Can't quite grab it yet though."

"Is there something specific you don't understand?"

"It's happening too slowly."

"What? It's been three days."

"I know that, but if you'll think back, it only took us two."

Edric sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. He mulled that over for a moment.

"That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. The others that died, they died within the first twenty four hours. The fact that they've survived so long is a positive thing surely?"

"Maybe not, and don't call me Shirley." Colton answered absently, tapping her fingers over her chin. "It's wrong. Timeline is off."

"Maybe it reacts differently for everyone."

"Mm-mm." Colton shook her head. "The nanotech is a machine. Machines are predictable. If it's being unpredictable then it's mutated and that opens up a whole passel of problems like the fact we might be contagious and if that's the case they won't have to airlock us, I'll do it myself." Edric looked at her sharply. "This is the last of our entire race Edric. We can't allow our survival to supersede ours. And there's no way I'm repopulating with you."

"Comforted to know I'm safe from your clutches." Edric smiled tightly back at her.

"So, why do you think they're so slow at changing? This is the third stage right? So far it's taken them a day to move through each but we're moving into our fourth day and there's no change yet."

"Aye, it's like they've stalled or something."

"Maybe they ran out of fuel." Edric turned to her with a smile to see her staring at him. Her pale face dropping down another three shades of white. "Hey, I know it's my first joke but it wasn't that bad."

Colton surged to her feet. "Holy frak." She bounced on her toes, a grin changing her face as if she was lit from the inside. "Edric you fantastic man, you!" She seized him by both sides of his face and kissed him full on the mouth. "Genius! Genius, I say!" She was already running across the lab, leaving a stunned Edric staring after her for several rushed heartbeats before he scrambled out of his chair after her. He arrived to see her babbling almost incoherently at Cottle.

"I've figured it out, Doc!" She was stripping her lab coat off her body and throwing it at Edric. "Well, it was really Edric, but semantics later. Gods! It was so simple!" She was rummaging through the drawer of the medical tray that had been wheeled to the bedside so that Cottle didn't have to go back and forth between patient and cabinets. She yanked two of the largest syringes Edric had ever seen from the drawers and held their sterile packets, one in each hand before gripping Cottle's shoulders with her spare fingers. "We're not contagious." She yanked the mask she had forced Cottle to wear when the possibility had occurred to her and ripped it from his face. "Breathe the free air, Doctor!"

"Um…good?"

"No! Fan-frakking-TASTIC!" Colton had grabbed Edric having stuffed the syringes into her pockets. She was working the zipper of his flight deck overalls down (he had been spending his free time cleaning up Betty, under armed guard of course). Edric looked mildly alarmed until he realised she was just trying to get at his biological arm and he helped her by pulling the massive limb free of the material. She focused on the muscle roped appendage and stared for a long moment.

"What?"

She yanked her head back up. "You are a freakishly large man."

"That's what they all say." Edric flashed her his rarely used lady-killer smile. She took a moment for a long blink behind her glasses.

"You were having an epiphany?" Cottle interrupted and Colton shook herself back to the life-saving at hand.

"It wasn't us that infected them. It was Betty."

"She did nothing of the sort!" Edric leapt to his flyer's defence.

"Yes she did. I'm always right. Accept it, move on." Colton retaliated for this interruption by ripping open one of the syringes and jamming it into one of the thick veins lining his inner arm.

"Ow." He told her.

"Don't whine, it's unattractive." She drew the plunger back slowly, pulling thick dark blood from his body until the syringe was full. She lifted his hand and wrapped it around the syringe. "Hold that." She whirled back to Cottle, who couldn't have looked more clueless if he had tried.

"When you pulled us from Betty all this gunk fell out with us, right?"

"Uh…yeah."

"Yes, it did." Colton held up two fingers to show she was doubly right. "Now that gloop was formed to put us into a sort of deep-freeze hybernation state. That's what kept us unconscious for all these years and kept us from dying onboard and shrivelling into pottery laced unattractive mummies."

She hurried on when Cottle began to get impatient and started to roll back her shirtsleeve. "Now, Betty is filled with the same nanotech as we are. It runs through her like blood does us and that's how Edric's the only one that can control her. That's what made up the sludge, she formed a kind of…womb around us, if you will." Colton began to speak faster and faster as excitement overtook her. "We were COVERED in it. When Edric grabbed the President, when the Admiral grabbed me, it got all over them too. In fact, Adama got it in his mouth and the President was cut on the throat by knife-boy over there."

She hissed in pain when she pushed her own syringe into her arm and began to draw the blood as carefully as she had Edric's. She didn't stop talking though. "Didn't you say that the President's throat and Adama's mouth were swollen when they were admitted?" She didn't wait for Cottle to answer. "That's how the nanotech got into their systems. Why it stayed instead of shutting down like it's programmed to because of the President's cancer and Adama because of the open heart surgery he's had and that he has enough common DNA with Edric to confuse the little frakkers." Colton was pushing Edric bodily towards Adama's bed, then uncapped the syringe he was holding and ripped off the one on her own needle. She moved to stand over the President.

"Mother always said; 'NEVER be the first to stick your face in a viscous substance, it always comes back to bite you in the ass'. She was right. Mum's are ALWAYS right."

"None of this explains why their stuck at this stage." Edric pointed out.

Colton planted her hand on her hip. Annoyed. "You know, I hope you don't have this short an attention span during sex." She held up a finger when Cottle opened his mouth to interrupt.

"They're stuck at this because, while Betty's nanotech is made in the same batch as ours it doesn't have the same coding as ours. Think of how chimpanzees are ninety nine point nine percent genetically the same as humans. That point one percent is what stops them from finishing the job. They make physical repairs and then they're designed to die off, unlike ours which are designed to replicate. The nanotech in Adama and Roslin's systems is depleted so much that it's barely keeping them alive and there aren't enough to finish the job. Essentially, their bodies have run out of the super-juice."

"So, what's with the blood?" Cottle demanded, he had a bad feeling about where this train of almost logic was headed. He had a nasty feeling about derailment being in the near future.

"They need a top up and new instructions. Edric and I are the only sources of that."

"You mean to put that in them?!" Cottle yelled.

"Yes! Stop speaking in italics."

"You're not even the same blood types."

"Won't matter. I think." Colton shrugged. "It's all academic in a few hours anyway, when the nanotech in their systems finally die off and they suffocate under…this." Colton prodded at the whole body blister that both Adama and Roslin were suffering from. "Adama shares Edric's DNA and I had cancer like the Roslin does. It's their best chance."

"I can't condone this." Cottle railed at her and moved around the bed to stop her.

"Never asked you to." She glanced down at Roslin's twisted features. "Sorry if this doesn't work, Laura." A sweeping glance of bubbled skin revealed a wrinkle in Colton's plans. "No veins. Ah well, heart's on the left side, right? Here goes nothing!" Colton jammed the syringe down just left of the sternum, it caught briefly on the hard carapace that the skin had formed over the liquid caught inside. With an extra effort, Colton punched the syringe through cartilage, missing bones and piercing the labouring lump of heart muscle there with the needle. Her thumb flexed and emptied the contents of the syringe directly into the left aorta.

Edric watched her example and followed it exactly on Adama a half second later. He didn't know if this would work himself but Colton was nearly always eventually right and that was enough for him. Cottle yelled inarticulately and the armed Marines that had been escorting them everywhere and keeping a close eye on them lunged from the doorway. They reached Colton first and grabbed an arm each. There were only two of them. She allowed herself to be dragged back, attention focused solely on Roslin and Adama.

Edric suffered no such handicap. He rounded the beds and caught the nearest marine by the face. He squeezed, until the man grunted in pain at his features being scrunched to the tip of his nose, and then tossed him the length of the ward with a flick of his wrist. The next marine was caught by his belt buckle before he could bring his gun up and flung straight upwards until he smashed into the ceiling and then crashed back down to the floor. The guards posted outside the door threw open the hatch and poured inside. Edric turned, hands balled into fists and brought up ready for them.

"Look!" Colton was pointing at the beds and everybody obeyed her command and stared openly.

Roslin's eyes had flown open, her lips parting in a deep gasping influx of air to her lungs. Her back arched up off the bed as much as she was able under the hindrance of the blister covering her. She began to struggle against her bonds, hands clawing and snarled sounds like a trapped animal coming from deep inside her. In the next bed over, Adama was going through exactly the same thing.

"Get them out of here!" Colton gestured at the marines like they were naughty children and not gun-toting military men. The nurses knew that tone of command and had the marines out of the med-bay before they even knew they were being overruled by a prisoner's orders. One of them got on the horn to Colonel Tigh and another went to find him to make sure he got out of his rack and down here PDQ.

"You know what's happening?" Cottle demanded as Colton lunged to the bedside and pried Laura's lids open to check her reflexes. For the first time in days her pupils retracted to pinpoints.

"Yes. Maybe. They're not comatose anymore anyway." Colton had moved to Adama's side and did the same test. "I don't understand. The swelling should be going down." Colton was looking between her two patients, not understanding.

"Maybe it can't." Edric offered, tapping at the hard shell of skin that had encased Adama.

"Yes!" Colton snapped her fingers and pointed at Edric. "Another reason to keep you around, flyboy! Human skin is several layers thick, let's hope this works." She yanked open the med drawer and yanked out two wrapped scalpels. She tossed one to Edric, who caught it easily. "Do exactly as I do." She moved to Roslin's bed and Edric to Adama's.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Cottle gripped her wrist and that cold look of anger overtook Colton's features again. She was getting more than a little irritated with this lad constantly questioning her. "Saving their lives. I've brought them this far and I'm NOT losing them now so you can either get out of my way or I can move you."

"Colton!" Edric grabbed Adama when he snapped one of his restraints and pushed him back down onto the bed.

Colton waited. Cottle had to trust her because what she was about to do was frakking freaky. Even for her. A long moment of pained sounds from the President did the trick.

"Alright." The older doctor stepped to the side and lit a cigarette. Smoking with nervous shaking fingers.

Colton bolted past him and loomed over the twisting Roslin with her scalpel uncapped and gleaming sharp under the harsh sterile lights. She gripped Roslin's chin, forcing the other woman to remain still, placed the tip of the razor sharp scalpel at her hairline right in the centre of her forehead and drew it slowly downward, between her eyes, over the line of her nose, even over her gasping lips and down over her chin and throat. When Colton reached the neckline of the hospital gown, she ripped it aside and kept cutting. She glanced over to see Edric mimicking her on Adama's body. When she reached Roslin's navel she stopped. The skin where she had cut had split apart and thick viscous liquid was oozing out. Colton grimaced. This was why she wasn't a people doctor, they were bloody disgusting.

"Holy Gods…" Colton coughed out a trail of smoke that he had swallowed the wrong way at the sight.

"Ain't seen nothing yet, Doc. Ugh." Colton plunged her fingers into the watery blood laced pus that splattered up over her arms and stained her shirt. She could have worn overalls, but there was no time and it didn't matter anyway. She was never going to feel clean after this anyway. She gripped the hard shell of skin covering Roslin's chest. "Ever gut a Piscean Albino shark, Doctor?"

She saw him shake his head out of the corner of her eye.

"I have, their nervous system doesn't shut down until you rip out their entrails. They can still bite you even after they're brain dead." A cracked section of eggshell hard skin crackled away and splattered more fluids over Colton. It splattered dangerously close to her mouth and Colton dry heaved before she got a hold of herself. That thing masquerading as dinner had been bad enough on the way down, she had no desire to see it again. Roslin kept twisting and screaming, swearing actually, Colton hadn't heard words like that in years. She'd bet if the President ever walked into a bar, sailors would be running out of it not five minutes later.

"What's your point?" Colton asked hollow

"It was a stinking, disgusting job that I was made to do as my worst punishment and it wasn't nearly so bad as this." More pus slapped over Colton's glasses. She fought down another heave from her stomach at even the thought of what it was that was liberally covering her and decided to get this over with as quickly as possible.

She began to rip into the President of the Twelve colonies like a Mountain Varg over a fresh kill. She heard the nurses gasp behind her. Someone was violently ill into the nearest rubbish bin and Colton moved up over Roslin's chest peeling back the skin over her throat and thrusting her fingers over the woman's jaw, under the skin and sloughing it back off the woman's face like she was peeling a rotten onion. The stuff coated her to her elbows, was embedded under her nails and she tried not to think about how horrific this was for Roslin. Imagine being trapped in the stuff…no, actually, better not.

Roslin burst out from under her own skin with a rasping gasp that exhaled on a horrified scream. Colton grabbed hold of her torso, pushing the last of the horribleness from the president's face and peeling it away from her hair, the back of her neck and down her back. Roslin heaved her arms from within the useless sleeves of dead skin and jelly stuff that was slick inside them like she was shedding a particularly disgusting suit. She gripped Colton back so tightly that the scientist thought her lungs would never inflate properly again.

More jelly-like gunk sluiced over the sides of the gurney and splattered onto the floor. Colton had to be careful not to slip as she murmured soft words to Roslin, assuring her that she wasn't going anywhere she was going to get her out of this pronto. She stepped back, pulling Roslin with her and out of the useless crumpled cocoon that she had been trapped inside. It began to collapse in on itself.

She glanced over at Edric to see him hauling a similarly shell-shocked Adama from within his own flesh suit. When she saw the apparently seasoned medical staff staring in disgusted and slack jawed amazement.

"Well, don't just STARE, people!" She yelled at them and quieted when Roslin flinched in her arms. "Blankets. Now."

That jumpstarted everyone back into motion. Blankets were provided, the patients were moved to new, cleaner, beds and nurses began to strip down and gingerly clean up the mess they had left in the other two. Colton helped clean up Roslin, Edric helped with Adama and everyone took a huge step back when all the gunk was finally cleared. Colton's mouth worked for a moment, speechless for the first time in her life. For some incongruous reason, this hadn't occurred to her at all. She had known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this should have happened but it was hella freaky to see in action.

"Well, that's…" Colton gestured obliquely.

"Impressive." Edric supplied.

"That'll do." Colton nodded.

It was at that moment that Saul and his trusty marine troop burst through the locked hatch with a small explosion.

"WHAT THE FRAK IS GOING ON IN HERE?!"

"Hello, Saul." The deep gravel voice of Adama rumbled through the ward and Saul turned to him and promptly dropped his mouth open in shock. Then he rounded on Colton and Edric.

"What the hell have you done to him?" His eyes landed on the President and this seemed to much for him. "And her!?"

Colton actually took a step back at such ferocity and Edric moved between them and cracked his knuckles with intent at Saul.

"Good morning, Colonel Tigh." Roslin said smoothly, ever the consummate professional. Colton slipped under her arm when she was gestured to and helped Roslin to her feet. She held her blanket around herself and tucked it under her arms. Wearing it as if it was the latest thing in Caprican couture. She ran a hand through her wet hair and let it slap down her mostly bare back. She looked shaken, horrified and more than a little pissed off. Colton watched, impressed, when Laura pushed that all aside to deal with the situation, no matter how odd it was.

"It's after eleven." Colton supplied helpfully.

"Evening, whatever." Roslin waved it away. "The point is, Colonel, that this woman and her companion have just saved our lives and your bellowing is not improving the killer of a headache I have. I would appreciate it immeasurably if you'd shut the frak up." She smiled at him sweetly.

Saul opened his mouth to say something more and Adama interrupted him.

"Inside voice, remember. What's up?" He asked when Saul seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

"You're both too young!" Saul blurted and twin expressions of confusion marked the leaders' faces. They glanced over at each other and shock washed over them. Adama blinked and reared back as if slapped. Roslin nearly lost the grip on her towel and it was some strategic knotting on Colton's part that prevented embarrassment for all concerned.

"Frak me." Adama muttered.

"Sideways." Roslin echoed the sentiment and crossed the thin gap between them, reaching out in amazement and traced the sharp line of the Admiral's cheekbone. Adama tilted his head and examined Roslin's face with equal intensity. It had abruptly become clear why everybody had been gawping at them like landed catfish.

Neither of them looked a day over thirty.

The End

Don't worry chicas, just the end of part one. Part two is already nearly finished, i just have to wrap up chapter 4 and finish five and then it's onto part 3!!

I know, not much Rodama action in this one, so putting that as the pairing might have been slightly misleading, but there is DEFINITLY some action in the next one.

Who knew the President of the Twelve Colonies could get glomped?

On that i leave you to await the next installment, thanks for reading and reviewing.