Desperation

by Wesa

Series: War of the Worlds

AU: Forbidden Lust

Sequel to Lamentations and Realizations

Spoilers: References to No Direction Home and Doomsday, though I don't believe that I've given away the plot of either, nor that either is necessary to understanding of this story.

Rating: PG-13 (for nudity)

Disclaimers: They aren't mine. All characters belong to Strangis & Strangis and Paramount Productions.

Category: Angst

Plot: What is causing Kasey's nightmares?

By Wesa.

Kasey sat straight up in bed, screaming wordlessly.

"Kasey!" Her roommates and fellow Omegans burst through the doorway, each of them carrying an automatic pistol, dressed only in the boxers and tee shirts they wore to bed. Stavrakos flipped on the light and scanned the room, while Derriman went straight to Kasey's side, sitting on the edge of her cot and gripping her by the shoulders.

Kasey stopped screaming and sat gasping for air, her nightshirt soaked with sweat.

"Nightmare again, huh?" Stavrakos asked. He wasn't unsympathetic, just tired.

"You're okay," Derriman told her. "You're okay. We're here." He exchanged glances with Stavrakos, then risked pulling Kasey into a comforting embrace.

Kasey let him hold her for a moment, then twisted free. "I'm sorry," she murmured, drawing up her knees and wrapping her arms around them. "I just keep seeing him. Oh, god, it was so real." She had actually started having nightmares the night before she had returned to the Cottage, and they had been a nightly event since. The aliens had cloned Paul, therefore they had Paul. What were they doing to him? Was he suffering, afraid, angry? ...Was he still alive?... She gulped back a sob and firmed her mouth in resolution. "I'm okay," she told her friends. "Go on back to bed. We'll start again in the morning."

They'd been ordered to report to Fort Streeter for reassignment, and by common assent had gone AWOL, stripping the guest house at The Cottage of all the rations, clothes and weapons they could find, loading them into Kasey's Mustang and Stavrakos' big Dodge pickup, and headed into town. There was no way they could abandon their responsibilities to the Blackwood team, and especially Colonel Ironhorse, so easily. They had to find them, all of them, and make sure they were all safe.

They had found an abandoned warehouse and moved in, using junk pallets and blankets to build makeshift rooms in one back corner. The building had a big door on one side, making it possible for them to bring their vehicles in, away from the desperate people outside who would have stolen or stripped both cars.

With Kasey and Stavrakos helping, Derriman tapped into the power lines outside, and they had electricity for heat, cooking, and lights. Not that they needed heat. Temperatures had soared to the upper nineties, barely falling to the low eighties at night, making sleep all but impossible. And when Kasey did manage to fall asleep, she dreamed of Paul, frightened, alone, trapped, and angry.

When she had seduced him, Kasey had had no intention to fall in love with her CO, yet when he'd disappeared she had been unexpectedly devastated. Somehow she had coped, held herself together for his sake and the sake of her squad-mates. Going AWOL had been the only way to be able to search for him, though she had not expected Derriman to come along with her; Stavrakos, maybe, but not Derriman, who had so many more years in the Army and so much more to lose. She would be eternally grateful to him for his gruff gentleness and fierce loyalty.

She got out of bed and went to the single washroom in the warehouse, carrying the clothes she would wear that day, and washed up using the tiny sink. Even though it was not yet dawn, she knew that she wouldn't be able to sleep any more that night, and she had no intention of further disturbing her friends' rest. The water came out of the faucet in a thin trickle, and she didn't try to wash her hair, though she felt terribly grungy. All she could do was to pull it back in a ponytail and think wistfully of the steamy shower she had shared with Paul. She added two knives and a 9mm pistol to her ensemble, and decided to patrol the perimeter. It couldn't hurt, and would give her something to do until time to eat breakfast.

*****

They quartered the section they lived in once again, then headed northwest, toward the more active warehouses of the district, and drove up and down street after street, always looking for any evidence, however faint, of alien activity. They didn't know exactly what they were looking for; they just hoped they would recognize it when they saw it.

The heat was relentless, and bottled water was impossible to find. As water from the city's system drained down to a trickle, people were getting desperate. Looting of stores and markets was becoming more frequent. The mission down the street was overwhelmed with the needy. It was a good place to look for information: people down on their luck would trade information for the smallest things, and those were just what the Omegans had available. They spent one whole afternoon helping clean and paint the men's dormitory at the mission.

Stavrakos teased Kasey about her new friend, a sad and funny little man named Ralph who obviously wasn't all there, but who had none the less spent most of the afternoon telling her about right men and wrong men. "You'll laugh," she retorted, "but I think these 'wrong men' he's talking about were aliens."

"How could you tell?" Stavrakos asked with a grin as he drove into their warehouse.

"I don't know," Kasey replied. "It just seemed like he knew, somehow, like he knew but couldn't express what he knew in a way the rest of us could understand easily." She got out of the pickup and closed the warehouse door behind it. "Whose night is it to cook?" she asked wearily.

"Mine to cook, Alex's to clean up," Derriman replied tiredly.

"Good," Kasey replied. "I need to try to get in a nap before we go out tonight. Call me when it's time to eat." She went to her room and dropped onto the cot tiredly. Where would they look next? What would they do if they found any evidence of alien activity? She needed to be fresh in case they went into action. She turned onto her side and was asleep before she finished drawing her feet up into a fetal position.

*****

He slowly became aware that he was not cold, not hungry, not free. He put his hand up and touched the membrane in front of him, feeling the oddly resilient material stretch where he pressed on it. Light penetrated from outside, tinted strangely, sickeningly, green. He looked around and discovered that he was totally encased in the weird material, naked, covered in slime. They had put him in here, the aliens; he had to escape - wait - was someone out there? He held utterly still, becoming motionless as the two indistinct forms moved past his position, completely ignoring him, speaking to one another in low voices. He couldn't hear everything they said, but he heard enough to know that he and several others were being stored for use in future experiments, and that they were about to be moved to a location further away from the annoying human pests who continually traversed the area. He continued to hold himself motionless until the two figures moved away, then began to try even harder than before to escape. He punched at the confining bag; he kicked; he tore at the bag with his fingernails; all to no avail. In his near-panic he didn't notice that other shadowy figures were approaching. Only when more slime poured down upon him from above did he notice that anything was happening. What was happening?... He suddenly felt so sleepy ... he couldn't go to sleep! ... This might be ... his only chance ... to escape ... Nooo ...

*****

"Nooo!" Kasey screamed, sitting up. She sat blinking at her room, disoriented, until Stavrakos came to check on her and tell her to come and eat.

"Soup's on," he told her.

Kasey stared at him briefly, then grabbed for her weapons. "There's no time. They're moving him!" she announced, heading for her car.

"What?" Stavrakos asked, following her and motioning to Derriman to come with them.

"Are you coming?" Kasey demanded.

"Kasey, you can't!" Stavrakos called after her.

Behind him, Derriman hurriedly poured soup into a thermos, grabbed his weapons, and ran after them. "What's going on?" he asked as he climbed into the back seat.

"Kasey's lost her mind," Stavrakos told him, getting in after their friend had driven out through the door and he had closed it behind her.

Kasey snorted. "Maybe," she admitted, "but I know where Paul is, and that they're moving him. We can't wait."