Apologies for the delay in this chapter being posted. My darling children brought home the plague. Parents, you know what I'm talking about. I am back in the land of the living now and regular posting will continue.

Nova

********

The landscape seemed to almost blur as I ran through it, moving as fast as my legs could carry me over the uneven terrain, through the tall grass, to the base of the hill, and up the ascent. It must have taken the better part of an hour to walk from the bunker to the river, but it couldn't have taken much more than a quarter of that time to run back.

Breathless, sweating more than any two people healthily should, with the throb of my heartbeat pounding into my temples, I ignored the curious looks from the members of the group sitting outside the bunker, threw myself through the gun port, and raced up the corridor.

Predictably, the first person I ran into was, Lousia. "Where's Tom?" I asked flatly, unable to keep the suspicion out of my voice.

"He's busy," she arched an eyebrow at me as she leaned against the wall between the main living area and Holding One, the new hospital. "What do you want?"

There was something about the way she said it, something about the tone of her voice; it was like an indignation that anyone except her could want Tom for any reason at all. "Tell me where he is. It's important!" I wanted to jump down her throat! I had never hit a woman in my life, but I was just about ready to cross that line and beat the information out of her.

"I don't think I like the way you are asking," She crossed her arms.

"Asking?" I stepped closer to her. "Does it fucking sound like a request? Is there a reason why you don't want me speaking to him, Lousia?"

She held my eyes for a few pregnant seconds before her shoulders slumped, her arms uncrossed, and she huffed loudly. "Jesus, okay. He is in there with Amy," she nodded to the door of the hospital.

"Fuck... nononono... I can't be too late."

Without gracing Louisa with another word, or even another look, I sprinted the dozen or so feet to the hospital door and burst through it, fearing the worst with every passing step. Tom was sitting on one of the beds, his pants around his ankles, and Amy was leaning over him. Under any other circumstance, I'd have thought that something was going on between them, but at that moment, I was just grateful he was alive. He arched an eyebrow at me. Amy, on the other hand, shot up from examining a large, dark-looking bruise on his hip and spun around, looking furiously in my direction. "Dan, this is a hospital! You cannot just barge in here! What the hell are you thinking?"

"Amy, I'm sorry, but I need to talk to Tom...alone...it's urgent."

"Well, nothing is more urgent than his health. It can't wait."

"Have I ever struck you as a person who would barge in here like this without a damned good reason?" I glared at her. The look on my face gave her pause.

"No," she sighed. "You haven't."

"Five minutes, please," I asked, making a conscious effort to soften my expression. "It's really important."

Amy cast a look at Tom and then another at me, then sighed again. "Okay, five minutes," she nodded. "I will be in the living area."

"Thank you, Amy. I will explain everything as soon as I can,"

She smiled, nodded again, closed the lid of the medical supplies, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

"Mmmm, is everything okay?" Tom asked, looking down at the floor and still naked from the waist down. I held my finger up for a second, silently counting down from ten in my head, then jerked the door open again. Louisa toppled into the room with a yelp, a dark smudge on the side of her face from where she had her ear pressed up against the door.

"Lost?" I glowered at her.

She pulled herself to her feet, huffed loudly and indignantly, turned, and stormed back out of the room. I waited until I could hear Amy's voice and some of the others talking to her from the central room before I closed the door again and turned back to Tom. "I need to make this quick. I don't know how long we have before we have prying ears again," I started. "I know you are here."

He frowned at me, not even remotely understanding what I was talking about.

"I mean, I know you are not like the others. You are not being controlled. You are normal, and everyone else is acting strange."

Tom let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for days. "Yes... yes... people acting very strange. I didn't know if I should say anything," he nodded, his eyes lifting to mine.

"No, you were right to say nothing. Tom, you are in danger. We are all in danger."

I quickly gave him the rundown, fitting in as much information as I could before our time ran out. To be fair, I expected him not to believe a word of it. Goddesses, possession, mind flowers, whispered voices in the night, the story of Dr. Walker, the more I talked, the more ridiculous I sounded. But Tom just listened silently, taking all of it in.

"So I am immune?" He asked cautiously.

"Yes,"

"And you?"

"I... I don't know. I think so, but I'm not sure."

"Mmmm, okay," he nodded as if all of this were the most simple thing in the world. "What do we do if Lousia tries to hurt me?" he rubbed his hand over the painful-looking

"You have my permission to stop her," I replied with a pointed look.

"Who is hurting whom?" Amy asked suspiciously as she re-entered the room.

"Fuck!"

"Dan, what the hell is going on? I think I have given you more than enough leeway. If you are inciting some sort of violence against the other people here...." She was getting louder and louder, more and more irate. Only a few more decibels and she would be able to be heard clearly by the others in the central room.

I moved without thinking, or at least without thinking consciously. I lunged toward her, one hand grabbing her wrist and pulling her closer toward me while the other pressed my palm to the side of her head. Her eyes flashed wide with sudden fear, held there for half a heartbeat, and then cleared.

It was like I could see the influence of whoever was with her leaving. Her eyes became sharper, her breathing more ragged, and her words caught in her throat. "Dan?"

"You with me, baby?"

"Fuck. Yes, Jesus, what the hell happened?" she panted, falling into me and wrapping her arms around me. "The last thing I remember clearly was being in that room with you and listening to that tape. Everything after that is a blur."

"You don't remember any of it?"

"I do, but it's like a dream. Like I was watching a movie of the things my body was doing. But I don't remember anything else of that night until we were in the other room..." she cast an embarrassed glance to the inquisitive-looking Tom, "...making love," she finished with a whisper.

"Alright," I sighed. "You have some catching up to do."

********

It took over an hour to explain everything... again. Although to be fair, Tom hadn't heard the detailed version either. But where Tom seemed to have taken the entire thing in his stride, Amy turned pale-faced and looked utterly terrified. It was hard to argue the truth of my explanation when faced with the realities of her own memories. She never particularly enjoyed performing oral sex on a man in the past, for example, but now, even when not under the lust-inducing influence of the Goddesses, she was quite partial to the idea. When she was under, however, she outright craved it. The taste, the texture, the hardness between her lips, the throb of my pulse against her wandering tongue. Her eyes glazed over and took on a dreamy, hazy look just thinking of it before she snapped back to the conversation. Just the thought was enough to almost render her insensate again.

The idea that she could be controlled in a similar manner to the aggression shown in rabid animals - the example Dr. Walker had used - plus what little she could remember of the recording was very disconcerting to her. Amy was a woman who prided herself on how far she had come in life. Countless months and years of devoting herself to her studies through medical school. Every single shitty night shift during her internship. Every single position and procedure that she didn't want to do was another step on the road toward the ones she did. She had dreamed of being a doctor since she was a girl, and the level of self-discipline it had taken to achieve that dream would blow the mind of most people. Getting my degree in structural engineering had been no walk in the park, but compared to hers, it had been a breeze. She had denied herself relationships, a social life, and more sleep than she could possibly measure, and now she was regularly being reduced to acting like a sex-crazed bimbo without her even realizing it.

She had no regrets about her time with me, and the hazy memories were enough for her to know that they had been some of the most liberating and pleasurable experiences of her life. But they were now tinted by the simple knowledge that the choices that led her to those experiences were not hers.

She was sitting on the bed next to Tom, none of us commenting on the fact that Tom was still entirely naked from the waist down.

"What do we do about Louisa?" She asked softly.

"It's not Louisa," I replied with a sigh. "It's the entity controlling her. Mother. When that woman killed Dr. Walker, she was made to watch through her own eyes. I'm not even sure which of the women it was, but even though she was working with Mother, I don't think it was voluntary."

"But that doesn't make sense," Amy frowned. "If Louisa was under Mother's direct control in the tunnels that night, why was Mother giving her instructions? Surely she wouldn't need to if she was controlling her. She'd just do it."

"I'm still piecing this together myself," I nodded. "I don't have all the answers. But Dr. Walker said that Mother's control was different; not only was it more aggressive, but it was more intense and shorter lived. I wonder if there is a difference between these entities' outright control over us and their general influence. I'm not sure any of us have been controlled by Mother yet, but we..." I gave a pointed look to Amy," ...certainly have been controlled by Freja. When under her control, I seem to know exactly what to do and say to, well, to get you off. I can feel it coming, like an itch in the back of my head."

"I... I don't think I've felt that since the day at the lake when we all passed out," Amy frowned.

"That's because you have been under Freja's influence in the times between. I don't think I have. I am either completely lucid or completely controlled, and I only seem to be controlled when I am...."

"Fucking our brains out," Amy finished for me, not able to contain the teasing smirk despite the seriousness of the conversation.

"Yeah, that," I couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle. "You all seem to be working towards Freja's goals even when you are not being controlled. Hell, for all I know, you may not even need to be directly controlled by her."

"There is a certain logic to that," Amy nodded. "Her influence seems to be making us want to have more sex, which we all enjoy, and to make us want to be bred. I mean, that last part is a huge deal by modern standards, but biologically speaking, it's not much of a leap. I'm not sure how much I can speak for the others, but I know I have always wanted to have children one day. I'm not sure it would be much of a push to get that desire to the forefront of my thinking when I am under the influence. A little push in the direction she wants and our own biological impulses would do a lot of the rest of the work for her."

I nodded slowly.

"But Mother's control, that aggression, is against our characters, or at least against our characters," She looked between the three of us. "Maybe Mother needs more time to get people like Louisa to work for her because it goes against our natural instincts."

"Mmmm, so what do we do about Lousia?" Tom repeated the original question.

"I don't know," I admitted after a pause. "I'm not sure there is anything we can do about her. Even if we were to imprison Lousia or somehow keep her away from the group, Mother would just switch her control to someone else. I think all we can do is stay vigilant. Watch her. Try to work out what her plans are and then stop them."

"That's what Dr. Walker tried to do," Amy said in a resigned tone. "And they killed him for it."

"No, he didn't. He tried to work alone. He even said that if he had known that it was possible to work together, he would have done that sooner." I rested a hand reassuringly on her shoulder. "I will wake the others over the next few days and explain all of this to each of them. We will have to come up with a system where everyone can report what they see to Tom or me."

"Dan, that makes Tom the lynchpin," Amy warned. "You heard how they killed Doug on the tapes. There were five of them; they dragged him outside and...."

"I know," I nodded. "But Tom has something that Doug never did."

"What's that?"

"Information," I turned to our group's youngest member. "Tom, I need you to visit the comms room and listen to Dr. Walker's message yourself. Listen to it carefully. If you start to see anything like what he saw, especially when it comes to the dark-haired woman or if any of the rest of us start to act aggressively toward you, I need you to run!"

"Mmm, run to where?"

"Damn, good question. Where could he go that Mother wouldn't think of looking?"

"North," I answered after a few moments of thought. "If it comes to running, go as far North on the Island as you can go. If I am lucid when it happens, I will do everything I can to defend you. Doug was taken by surprise when he was attacked; he didn't have a chance to fight them off. I'd rather not hurt anyone if I can avoid it, but I will if I have to. This ability to wake people up seemed to have worked on Amy. I will use it on Ray if we are attacked. Between the three of us, we should be able to at least keep ourselves safe, even if that means locking ourselves in a room and waiting Mother's control out. But we are going to need to stay vigilant. Complacency could get us killed."

"But what if she comes for him while the rest of us are sleeping? I can't be the only one who has noticed that Lousia likes to sleep apart from the rest of the group." Amy asked.

"I'm not saying there are no risks, but what choice do we have?

Silence filled the room for a few moments. "The labs," Amy finally said, her head jerking up.

"Sorry?"

"You said that there were references to labs on the tapes. That Doug and that other woman were doing tests on the original infected women and then investigating the source of the infection itself."

"Yes, that's right."

"Well, do you remember finding any labs? All that work could still be there. If we could find it, we would continue that work, maybe even develop something like an antidote."

"Shit, I didn't think of that. I just assumed that none of the materials you would need to make a chemical countermeasure would have survived this long."

"Mmm, depends on the chemicals and the method of storage," Tom answered, still easily the calmest of all of us. Amy nodded enthusiastically.

I took a deep breath and nodded. "So that is the next thing we need to find."

"And the munition dumps," Tom added.

"Yes, and the munitions."

"And we have to go through Dr. Walker's notes from the desk," Amy piled on as well.

"Urgh, yeah, that too."

"And we need to find the mind flower," Tom added again.

I sighed. "Fuck, this is going to take ages with me having to work on my own. It's already hard enough to sneak off."

"Actually, I may be able to help you with that," Amy smiled. "The tests on the girls earlier? I was running pregnancy tests. You are going to be a dad."

"What? Really?"

"I mean, you are going to need to be surprised when they tell you, but Hayley and Hannah are both pregnant. So is Zoe."

"Which one is that?"

"The one with the birthmark on the inside of her thigh, right up by her... you know."

Well, that's unhelpful. I can't exactly ask them to spread their legs each time I need to talk to them. But Damn, I'm going to be a father!

The smile spread quickly over my face. I had always wanted kids; it wasn't just that it seemed like the natural progression of the relationship I'd had with Sarah back home. It was just something I always felt would make my existence more complete. Even with all the dangers we were facing, even with all the hardships we would have to deal with on the island, whether those dangers were there or not, I was excited.

Amy stood and wrapped her arms around me with a huge smile. "Congratulations, baby. Two down, four to go. They will need plenty of checkups, which will give you a little extra time."

I laughed. "Alright, I will try to act surprised when they tell me. Now, before we head back out, is there anything else I need to worry about?"

"Yes," Tom said simply.

I felt myself groan. "What is it?"

"I would like to get dressed now," Even looking at the floor, the curl of his lips into a teasing smile was enough to make Amy and I snort into another round of laughter.

"And I should finish up with my examination before you do," Amy wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. "Which means you are going to have to go," She finished with a pointed look at me.

I nodded, leaned in to kiss her cheek, gave Tom another smile, and headed out of the room.

Straight into Louisa.

The buoyancy and happiness that found a new home in my chest vanished in an instant as I gazed into her eyes. The hostility there was unmistakable. A burning hatred that surpassed anything that Louisa herself could justifiably contain. I knew it in an instant. I was looking into the eyes of Mother.

"I don't appreciate being treated that way, Dan. I am not one of your groupies!" she hissed.

My face hardened in an instant. "Tell me, Louisa," I stepped a little closer to her. "Did you enjoy your little walk through the bunker the other night? Did you find what you were looking for? Did you enjoy your chat with Mother?"

Her eyes widened in surprise for a brief moment before seeming to swirl even more violently. "You are dealing with forces beyond your comprehension, boy!" she hissed.

"Oh, cut the crap!" I barked back, "I know exactly who and what I am dealing with. I know exactly what you are, Mother. You are nowhere near as subtle as you think you are. Did you think that killing Simon Walker and the others was enough to stop them from letting us know what is going on? Your arrogance is fucking astounding."

"I knew that little cockroach was up to something," She growled.

"And yet, you did nothing about it," I laughed into her face. "So convinced of your own superiority that you let that cockroach undo all your work with this group before you have even started."

"And what do you think is stopping me from killing you as I killed him?" she sneered back at me.

I made a dramatic display of looking up and down the corridors. "Nobody is stopping you. Oh wait, you don't have any weapons, do you?" I smiled tauntingly back at her. "In your arrogance, you made that innocent woman kill Dr. Walker with the only firearm on the island and then didn't bother to stick around to see what she did with it. Have you seen it lying around?"

I was making shit up at this point, but the pattern fit. That woman had been free of Mother's control before Dr. Walker's body had hit the ground.

Intense, aggressive, but short-lived.

More than that, the slight twitch in her eyebrows told me that I was on the right track. "What? Did you think that Walker was the only one working against you? Do you think that every time they were free of your control, they weren't investigating to find out what you are? What you really are. Your hubris is astonishing! They hid the weapons, all of them. They carried on Walker's research. I know all about you and your mind-flower. I know where they hid the weapons! I know everything. And what? You are standing there threatening me with some mystic bullshit 'cause you think I don't know any better?"

I could see that my words were having an effect. There may not have been any fear behind those dark, dangerous eyes, but there was plenty of shock.

"I'll tell you what," I went on. "Why don't you crawl back under whatever rock you have been hiding under for the past few decades, and maybe I will forget you exist."

That malicious smile curled onto her lips again. "You are alone, Dan." she seemed to spit out my name as if the very taste of it was foul. "Maybe I can't kill you; maybe I can't stop you. But what about your girls? What about your unborn children? I can certainly kill them. I can make it so that you spend the rest of your miserable life on this island completely alone."

My hand moved before I even thought about it. My hand clamped around her throat and shoved her hard back into the wall behind her. I squeezed hard! "Threaten them again," I hissed. "I don't want to kill Louisa, I know she is only the vessel that you control, but I will snap her neck like a fucking twig if it means protecting everyone else on this island. Mark my words, Mother. I am going to find you, the real you. And I am going to end you!"

There was a gasp, and Louisa suddenly started thrashing against my grip, her eyes clearing in an instant as Mother fled her body. I couldn't help but groan at myself.

"God fucking Dammit! I pushed the control out of her with Freja's powers."

I let go of Louisa, and she crumbled to the floor, sobbing hysterically. Amy and Tom opened the hospital door behind me, both of them immediately moving to help her as she curled into a ball. It only took one look at them for Louisa to clamber away from them, kicking and crawling along the wall until she scrambled into the open door behind her. The open door of Holding Two.

For the briefest moment, this surprised me. I was still operating under the mistaken belief that they couldn't see it, but the look of shock on Amy and Tom's faces when - at least as far as they were concerned - a room magically appeared in front of them told me beyond doubt that they could see it too. We all followed her in.

"Don't come closer," She almost screamed. "Please, I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Shhh," I said, trying to calm her as I knelt in front of the woman, trying her hardest to press herself into the corner of the room. "She's gone. You're you again."

Louisa blinked for a few moments, looking around at me and the others. Tom and Amy seemed to be having an inordinate amount of trouble with dividing their attention between Louisa and the rest of the room. The bodies and the bloodstains were, to be fair, pretty distracting. Suddenly Lousia threw herself at me, wrapped her arms around my neck, buried her head into my shoulder, and sobbed uncontrollably. I could only hold her as her shoulder bounced and her tears rolled onto my skin.

"She is going to kill you," she whimpered between sobs. "I saw her plans. She is so angry! None of us are safe unless we do what she wants."

"Mmm, that is not how tyrants are beaten," Tom said from behind me.

Louisa's eyes snapped up as if it was the first time she had properly seen him. She unwrapped herself from me and hurled herself across the room and into his arms. "Tom, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Please don't hate me. I am trying so hard to fight her."

Tom just held her, stroking his fingers through her hair.

I scratched my head, another warning from Dr. Walker drifting from my memory. "That is why she is winning," I said quietly. "The effort you put into fighting her produces adrenaline. She feeds off that to grow stronger. The more you fight her, the stronger she gets."

"So what do I do?" Lousia asked, turning her head to look at me but not even attempting to leave Tom's arms. "I can't let her win."

"No, WE can't," I tried to smile reassuringly at her. "You are not on your own with all of this. But next time she tries to take control, let her. It will give her less power to feed on, and she won't be able to control you for as long."

"How can you know that?" She asked.

"I have my ways. To be honest, I think the less you know, the better. But we are all behind you, Lou. We are not going to let anything happen to you or to anyone else if there is any possible way to stop it. We do have a plan."

She seemed to think about that for a moment before nodding in acceptance. Neither of us knew if Mother could control her into giving up all of our secrets, but it wasn't worth the risk.

"So, am I going to be the one to point out the dead bodies?" Amy asked after a few minutes of silence. "And the room that wasn't here yesterday."

I was about to open my mouth when Lousia answered for me. "They are some of the people who were here before us. There was a group of them working against Mother. She made the person she was controlling back then kill them, some of them, anyway. I could see her memories. It was... It was horrible. I think some of them escaped, though."

"Really? This was new information."

"What makes you say that?"

Lousia frowned. "It's a memory, a fuzzy one, though. It's the last thing she remembered about that group," she nodded at the skeletons. "Whoever she was controlling saw them, and they left her here. She watched a ship come to the bay from on top of the mountain; the rest of the group was there waiting for it. By the time Mother got there, they were gone. Mother went back into hibernation then, and I think... I think the woman was left here to die." She pulled herself free of Tom's strong arms and stepped a little closer to the bodies. "I remember this, though. They were sleeping. All of them were women, I... I mean, the woman I remember, she burst in and just started shooting. That one was first," she pointed to the body sumped on the bed. "Then that one." A nod to the body leaning against the wall. "And these two were killed when they tried to rush her. Mother made her watch; she was crying the whole time. It was like a nightmare."

"Do you know why she killed them?" Amy asked.

Louisa swallowed hard and turned back to look at our Doctor with a nod. "They... they were infertile."

"Jesus..."

"Amy..." I could see the tears starting to form in her eyes. "I'm infertile. I had a hysterectomy four years ago."

My mind briefly flicked back to what Freja had told me about healing our group during my first vision. Ray had been convinced that he'd had the snip, but with Zoe pregnant, he had obviously been healed. Perhaps Louisa had as well. But that was a detail I didn't want to share. The question was, however, how these women were infertile when Dr. Walker recounted a period of unconsciousness just as we had experienced. Had they not been healed too? Or was there something more sinister going on?

Tom and Amy both flashed a look at me. I had told them about the healing at the lake, and I assumed they both understood why I wasn't telling Louisa, but the same question seemed to have occurred to them.

"How often are you lucid?" I asked Lousia.

"I'm not sure," she answered after thinking about it. "It's not regular, but Mother says she will know what I had done when she wasn't with me, and she would make me hurt someone if I didn't follow her orders."

"She lied. She can't see anything you do unless you tell her."

"But can she make me tell her?"

"I don't know, but if she has to make you tell her, then you may be able to be selective about what you say." I offered carefully.

Lousia seemed to think about it. "But until we know either way, you can't tell me anything. If I know, and I am made to tell her...." she left that hanging in the air.

I nodded. "Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Okay, here is what we can do. Mother is going to try to get into you again sooner rather than later. Swim with the current," I said, parroting Dr. Walker's words. "Don't fight her; let her in. She will make you tell her what happened after she was forced out. See how much of this conversation you can keep from her. Then, next time you are lucid, come and tell me." I didn't want her to know that Tom was always lucid, either, something else that the other two members of our conversation seemed to understand.

Louisa nodded before moving back into Tom's arms.

"Let's get you into the hospital and have a look at your neck. I'm not sure what Mother said to get Dan to grab it so hard, but I can already see the bruises forming. I'd like to check them over to make sure that's all there is."

Lousia nodded again and looked over at me. "Considering what that bitch said to him, I would say he was quite restrained."

I offered her a weak smile. "Okay, you go check her over. I will give you privacy this time. And we can deal with all of this," I gestured to the rest of the room, "another time."