Part Seven
A couple of years ago Erica would never have believed that she would have been so worried, so hurt, over a rich, annoying, geeky kid. Somehow the boy had wormed his way into her affection. She ahd sworn never to let anyone get close again. After her husband had betrayed her and she had been sent to prison, Erica had been very hurt. She had developed a shell, had found a way to keep people at arms length. But when she wasn't looking Trek had broken through her stonewall and in doing so had let the other members of the team in.

Erica sighed.

"We should go back," Kat said. "It's getting late and Kyle will be worried."

"I doubt that," Erica answered, remembering their last conversation. "But I guess we don't want Dante having a fit."

"I told you we shouldn't go out. You have flagrantly broken at least four regulations," Kat stated.

"Whatever," Erica sighed.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Stepping out into the sunshine, Trek blinked and squinted his eyes against the bright light. He looked around. He knew this place... where was it again? Trek shook his head, trying to remember.

"Beautiful ain't it?"

Trek wasn't even surprised to hear his grandfather's voice this time.

"Yeah," he said.

Looking around he saw the team with the vehicles gathered over on the grass. Suddenly it came back to him. The park. This was the park in Blackrock, North Carolina where he'd lived for a couple of years. He turned to the left and saw... her.

Annie. His Annie. Part of his mind was screaming at him now. Telling him that this couldn't be real; that Annie had been dead since a year before he'd joined TKR. She'd been killed in a stupid car accident and he'd sat by her hospital bed as she'd died. Trek chose to ignore the rational part of his mind that was telling him this.

He walked over to her, drinking in the sight of her.

"Are you really here?" he asked.

"Don't you want me to be?" Annie laughed.

Trek noticed a pair of blue eyes peeping out from behind Annie's legs.

"Who's this?" he asked.

"Caitlin," Annie smiled. "Our daughter."

"Our daughter," he breathed.

Trek crouched down beside the little girl.

"Hi," he said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Erica slipped through Sky One's corridors silently. It was late at night again and she couldn't sleep. For a while she wandered aimlessly with no purpose or destination in mind.

Eventually she stopped outside a door. Taking a deep breath she entered and stopped, looking around. Involuntarily she smiled. God Trek was messy. Every surface was covered in clothes, books, CDs, videos, pages of notes and strange, half-built inventions. Even the floor was covered. Erica remembered how horrified she and Duke had been when they'd tried to hide in here when Sky One had been hijacked.

     ** "And... uh... Trek. No more dirty clothes in the situation room it's startin' to smell like your
     room." **

Part Eight