6I know. I haven't updated in...a little while.
I could talk a lot about WHY but it involves lots of thing so I shan't. But I'm back now, at least until my uni assignment's start kicking me where it hurts, so I'm trying to update my fics and pray that I've improved a little bit (funnily enough, turns out I was made for writing for academic journals, not fiction .). I'll deal with canon and discrepancies when it comes to it.
Anyway, old fans, I hope you enjoy the next installment, and expect more regular ones to come!
Disclaimer: I don't own Surface, or I would not be broke right now. Darnit.
"Okay Jackson, I'm heading out!" Laura shouted from the front door. "I'll see you tomorrow!"
Just as she was about to leave, she felt a rough hand grab her arm. Jackson turned her around and smiled.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" he said, holding out her jacket. "Your car keys are in your front pocket, genius."
"What would I do without you?" Laura grabbed the jacket and whisked it over her shoulders. "Thanks. Don't forget to lock the till, alright?"
Two seconds later and the blonde blur was out the door again. Jackson sighed and went back behind the front desk. He glanced around, checking that Laura hadn't wandered back, and then opened the till and took out the coin tray. Underneath lay a thin, plain notebook, which he pulled out and quickly skimmed over to check the pages were there. This was his diary, containing everything he remembered about his life in an attempt to piece himself together. The thoughts were scattered and vague.
Today I saw a house, I'm sure I've seen it before. It's uncanny.
The woman I saw on television today, she's familiar. I know her, I'm sure of it, but I don't knowher name. The boss won't let me have any contact with the surface, so I can't even Google her. She must be a famous scientist. Laura Daughtery? Who are you?
Tonight I had a dream. I was in bed when suddenly the lights turned on and there was a woman there. She had brown hair and she was holding a white box and she was crying. Was there bl…
Jackson hastily skipped over that page. He remembered that dream. He'd had it a few times now, but he didn't know what it meant. He was sure he'd never met the girl before…technically, that was true. This Jackson was barely three years old. He had been cloned from the real Jackson, the rest of whose remains had long been liquefied inside the stomach of a marine vertebrate. The memories he had were his own, but they also belonged to another body who no longer existed. The identity crisis made his head spin at the best of times. It didn't help that there were still gaps in his memory, large holes in his life that he could not account for. He only knew his mother's name because he had searched a family history website until he found her death certificate. Apparently she had died during the tsunami. Jackson knew he should have been sad, but he felt somewhat detached from the whole thing, as if it wasn't his life. He didn't know where his dad was, but he didn't care to know. The memories he had of his father weren't good ones, just lots of conversations about the value of money and endless lectures about accounting. His grandfather, on the other hand, was living in New Zealand and enjoying his retirement.
His other memories were scattered. He could remember studying, he could remember some of his childhood, he could remember a few of his boat expeditions, and he remembered his birthday. He remembered enough to convince Laura that he was, indeed, Jackson, but he couldn't quite convince himself. Laura was the one he remembered the most. He chalked it down to the fact that she was the only person from his life that he saw on a regular basis, and who had helped him the most on the bad nights, but he couldn't deny that there was something else there. Whether he would ever admit it to her or not was a different matter. He was sure she didn't think about the old times as much as he did (it was one of his few vivid memories, after all), but he was also scared that, no matter how much she said that she believed he was the real Jackson, she would never accept him. He didn't quite accept himself, so why would she?
He flipped through some more pages until he found a blank one. He picked up a pen and tried to remember.
The brown haired girl is there again. She's not holding a box, she's holding a black bag. She's not crying anymore, she's smiling. She holds out the bag and says 'look what I caught.'
Suddenly she's not brown anymore, she's blonde, and she's Laura. She has a towel wrapped around her and is flipping her wet hair through a comb.
"Get up, baby." She says, smiling. "You're going to be late for the dive."
Water floods the room. We're in the sub and Laura is staring out the window and her reflection looks at me and she says 'I just want to be your friend'.
He remembered this. The day of their first dive. The day that Laura truly fell in love with the sea and Jackson fell in love with her. After that it's a blur of late night phone calls crying about her husband, lots of night drinking in the back of a boat, and that one week they went to the middle of nowhere and he told her that divorce didn't matter because she was too clever and beautiful to let anyone get to her. After which they spent the night together and then that was the start and end of their relationship. It may not have been his life, but it still hurt when he remembered.
He was pulled out of his reverie by the creaking of the front door. A red haired woman in a neat suit entered and gave the shop a quick once-over before making her way to the front desk. Jackson hastily shut the notebook and nodded at her.
"What can I help you with, m'am?"
"Miss." The woman corrected, glancing around again. "I'm looking for Laura Daughtery? She's the business owner, right?"
"That's right." Jackson replied. "She just left though. I can do booking for you if you like."
"Actually, I'm here on other business." She said, turning back to him. "I wanted to talk to her about her research on the hybridas physignathus gigantis"
"…the what, sorry?"
"Giant Dragon Hybrid" the girl said, unfazed. "I want to know about the lizards that caused the tsunami. I'm doing research on maintaining the population while repairing the ecological damage. What days are she in?"
Jackson pursed his lips. He was wary of anyone who came asking questions and knew Laura would be as well. "Come in on Wednesday and I'll make sure she is here."
"Thank you" the girl smiled. It was fairly reassuring, but Jackson didn't want to take chances. He nodded at the woman then turned to the desk.
"If that's all for today…" he started.
"No." The woman cut him off "I'll take these please." She threw a pair of scuba goggles on the bench. Jackson processed the sale in total silence. He already didn't like this woman, she was too sharp and rude.
"Have a nice day." He grumbled, handing over the change. He barely had time to wityhdraw his hand before she snatched the change and was out the door.
"Fucking women." He mumbled to himself.
By the time they had returned Lee to Guideline's labs it was already 3:00. Thank god it was the mid-year break or he would have had to explain to his parents why he had skipped school. Instead he just had to explain why he was three hours late home. Nimrod had decided to go for a swim thankfully, so hopefully he could sneak in without any lizard growls giving him away. Miles quietly wheeled his scooter into the garage, and quietly opened the front door…
"…and where have you been?" floated his Mom's voice from the lounge room.
Miles rolled his eyes. "Relax Mom. I just had to help Samantha out moving Lee. Nothing exploded this time."
His mother looked up at him from the couch. "Yes, we noticed. Have you watched the news yet?"
Miles put down his bag and moved over to the couch as his mother turned up the volume.
"…North Carolina Aquarium today, there appears to have been a disturbance with one of the specimens. Onlookers were surprised when what was described as two 'giant iguanas' jumped out of the front doors and attacked one another before being subdued by staff."
There was a two second grainy video of the scuffle between Nimrod and Lee, before a young man was posited in front of the camera.
"I knew those lizards were going ta' be trouble." He frowned at them, "I tell ya', such an ecological disaster should not be kept in a local aquarium. We all know they caused that tsunami, why are we still treatin' em' like they're not a threat?"
Silvia looked up at Miles, "I thought that all of this was finally over, sweetheart. What's happened?"
Miles sighed. He had promised he wouldn't lie to his mother any more, but he wished he could. Her paranoia has increased tenfold after the incidents of the last couple of years, and although he may have been granted a looser reign in terms of his love and academic lives, his social life was still somewhat restricted. Understandably, he guessed, but he still didn't like having to convince his mother daily that he wasn't going to be liberating any more dangerous scientific experiments every time he went out.
"Sam is just having a little trouble with him." He explained carefully. "We think he might be sick. It's nothing to worry about Mom, Sam has it under control."
"I'm sure she does." His mother replied, her tone clearly indicating the opposite. "I'm just worried about you. I'm allowed to, as a mother."
Miles shook his head and turned away. At the same time, a creaking came from upstairs.
"Oh, you're sister is home, by the way." His mother added, just as a flurry of purple and blue rushed down the stairs.
"Miles!" Savannah shouted, jumping over to hug him tightly.
Unlike the relationship between Miles and his parents which had remained close to the same, the tsunami had brought the two siblings closer together. The threat of losing one another had been surprisingly hard on the two of them, and ever since they had tripled their efforts to get along. Savannah moving out a year later had only improved it more, as now they didn't have to put up with each other's annoying bathroom-hogging habits.
"Hey Savannah!" Miles grinned, returning the embrace "How is university going?"
"Easy." She replied "I swear, they don't even try anymore. As for the boarding house, don't get me started on the frat boys. I swear they won't let me sleep. Amber and I are ready to scratch out our eyes."
"Has she forgiven me for the dog yet?" Miles asked hopefully. Savannah loosened her grip, took a step back and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Well, not exactly." She looked at his guiltily. "Let's be honest, you did kind of scar her for life there." She paused and bit her lip, stifling a giggle. "Though I wish Nim would eat her new cat. It won't stop clawing at my papers. I never thought that the words "the cat ate my homework" would come out of my mouth, but they did…"
Miles laughed and shrugged off her hand. "So how long are we graced with your presence?"
"A while." Savannah replied. "I deferred for the semester to volunteer in the temp housing district. I figured it would be good to get a break from studying and get some first-hand experience."
Ah, of course. Although most of the South Carolina area had been repaired by now, there were still a few areas that were under-manned, and though initially the funding had been exorbitant, it had slowly trickled down until the only payments were from a collection of charities and anonymous donations that Miles knew Samantha and Guideline were putting through each month. It was enough to keep materials, food and medicine coming, but not enough to pay for staff and there had been a shortage of volunteers recently as the rich went back to their old lives and bank accounts and the working-class went back to rebuilding their lives. Miles made sure to visit after school when he could, but the most he could do was babysit the children as their parents worked on houses or cook (fairly mediocre) meals for the soup kitchen. Savannah could do good work there, since she was studying nursing. They may have had the medicine, but without someone to administer it there was no point, and occasionally they missed more serious illnesses that needed a hospital. It was hard work, but good work.
"Awesome. You'll do great there." He nodded. "Now I've gotta get upstairs and change. I smell like wet fish."
"I'm cooking tonight." Savannah said he jumped upstairs. He wasn't sure if it was a warning or not. If Savannah was cooking it was either going to be beautiful or incinerated. He made a mental note to check the saucepans.
The second Laura got to her car she felt her phone buzzing violently in her pocket. She pulled it out and answered.
"Hello?"
"Hey Laura, it's me." Came a familiar husky voice.
"Hey Rich! How are you?"
"Yeah. I'm good. I've got something important to tell you."
No bones about it, that was Rich all right. Laura's hands instantly went for her temples. Rich's tone didn't sound good and she felt a rising anxiety in her chest. "Okay, shoot"
She heard a shuffling of papers over the other line. "Okay, so I've been investigating this new case. Suicide we think. We found the victim in his bathtub this morning. His name is Jason Greene. He had these weird ridges on his spine and some scars on his neck. Autopsy revealed that he had an abnormally large spinal cord, several unknown substances in his blood, and this..." he paused "...this stringy stuff growing in his neck. The Doc said it looked like he's swallowed a ton of burley. Nobody can figure out what it is, and the wife confirmed that he didn't have any noticeable physical abnormalities before she left two days ago. It's weird, you know?"
Laura felt a chill rush over her skin. "So you think it might be Iderdex?"
"Maybe." Rich grumbled. "I don't think we should worry just yet though. That Granger couldn't have made enough money to experiment again, since Sam took over most of the pharmacies. I just wanted to let you know. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious and let me know if you see anything strange. But don't worry about it just yet okay?" he added hurriedly. "I don't want you to start panicking on me now."
That's ironic coming from you. Laura thought.
"Alright. I'll keep an eye on the water and see if anything odd is happening. I'll tell Miles when he comes in on the weekend. Keep me posted."
"I will." Rich said sombrely, then he hung up. Laura put the phone back in her pocket, turned on the engine and pulled out of the carpark, all the while trying not to panic. Rich was a policeman now, he would handle this, nothing was wrong, nothing was going to happen, all the people who were after her were gone.
Right?
Rich hung up the phone and began filing away his papers. The desk was completely covered with them. He'd been at the station since that morning, collecting information and trying to piece it all together. Coffee 'o' clock had long since come and gone, and he was wavering fast. Right on cue, the smell of bitter instant espresso reached his nostrils and he looked up to find his colleague Xavier kneeling in the doorway.
"Rich, my man." He said with his usual suave smile. "I thought you might need a pick-me-up."
"Right on the ball, my friend." Rich smiled in appreciation. "Bring it over, I'm swamped here."
"I noticed." Xavier walked over and popped the steaming cup on his desk. "Listen Rich, i know you're real interested in this case, but you know I can't put you on it right?"
Rich looked up at him in surprise. "What do you mean, can't put me on the case? I'm already on the case. I saw the guy, I ID'd him, I..."
"...am still a rookie." Xavier finished, perching on the edge of the desk. "Look, I know you want to get into the high priority cases, but we need the pros on this thing. It's not that you're bad at what you do, it's just that you don't know all the ins and outs of police work yet. You were only fast-tracked because of all that work you did with those critters. Don't get me wrong...you're a damn fine investigator. But if you get put on this case the higher ups are going to ask questions."
Rich frowned but didn't say anything. Xavier was right, of course. He was still the rookie in the force, and couldn't really do much beyond small assignments. At least, not legally, and now that he was in the law he didn't really have an urge to break it. Though he could probably think of ways. As he was daydreaming of databases he could search and loopholes he could abuse, Xavier hopped off the desk and began heading out of the office.
"I'll see what I can do." He said on his way out. "Worst case scenario, you don't make it on the team. Best, you get the paperwork."
"Better than nothing." Rich said optimistically. Xavier left and he took a sip of his coffee. Disgusting, but it would keep him awake until home time. He was about to re-shuffle his papers when Xavier reappeared at his door.
"Oh, there's someone outside to see you. Says it's urgent."
Rich sighed, then put down his papers and picked up his coffee. He wasn't too impressed about being pulled away from his work, but the only people he could think of that would be calling on him at work would be Tracey or Laura, and neither of them were to be ignored. However, when he stepped into the foyer, neither of them were there. There were a few people sitting on chairs, most of them disinterested. A couple of them were hiding under hooded jumpers.
"Did someone ask for Rich Connelly?" he called. One of the men stood up and pulled back the hood on his jumper.
There was a very, very long pause, and then the cup fell from Rich's hands and shattered on the floor, spilling coffee over his feet. He felt dizzy. His mind went blank and his throat went dry and he could feel his mouth moving but wasn't entirely sure if he said it out loud or not.
"...George?"