Vol 1: The path to Liberation

Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. Any resemblance to existing stories is unintended.

Chapter 1

Notes: Like many things, I have been a fan of this for a long time but have never written anything about it until now. Like many, I was totally disgusted with the lame attempt at a TV series continuation of 'The final Battle' so I decided to totally disregard it and do my own version.

Summary: Set the day after the events of 'The Final Battle', this will also focus mostly on the core characters of the original V miniseries. In the aftermath, the humans and the surviving former members of the fifth column begin the long, arduous process of rebuilding in the aftermath of the Visitor invasion.

Juliet Perrish ran as fast as her legs would take her, she took in huge gulps of air, her lungs felt like they were on fire and the muscles in her legs screamed in protest. She could hear the heavy breathing behind her, getting closer no matter how hard she ran.

"Julie, Julie!" Mike Donovan's voice cut through the darkness.

"Mike!" Julie cried as she summoned what was left of her strength and ran towards the sound of his voice.

Suddenly, something grabbed her from behind, she tried to fight it, but whatever, or whoever was too strong.

"Julie! Wake up!"

Julie's eyes snapped open and Mike's face came into focus.

"It's okay, Julie, everything's okay, it was just a nightmare. Probably a side effect of what you endured when they tried to convert you." Mike said as he pulled her into an embrace in an effort to comfort her.

"You mean when they converted me?" She corrected as she pulled back to look at him.

"When they tried." Mike corrected again in earnest.

"Mike … there's something you've got to know, something I never told you or anyone else. I'm the reason Diana got away. She was able to use the effects the conversion had on me to convince me to let her escape." Julie said as she averted her eyes from his.

"Hey … it's okay, it doesn't matter, she and the other Visitors can't come back here anyway; Earth is toxic to them now." Mike said.

"I don't know … something tells me we haven't seen the last of Diana … or her minions." Julie replied as she snuggled closer to him.

Mike could offer no argument to that, from what he knew of Diana, what he had seen and what the fifth columnists had told him, she was resourceful, she was ruthless, and she had a tendency to hold a grudge. Her defeat at the hands of what in her eyes was a lesser race was going to certainly eat away at her.

"If they comes back, we'll be ready." Mike replied.

"Morning Robin, morning Elizabeth, have you seen Willie anywhere? I'd like to get started with developing a more permanent option to the antidote for our Visitor friends." Julie said as she walked into the infirmary building rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"Nightmares again?" Robin quipped.

Julie merely nodded as she walked down the hall to find Willie, usually he would be feeding their reptilian specimens, but she couldn't find him anywhere.

After asking everyone she could think of to no avail, she thought for a moment; the nights in this part of California were much cooler than in Los Angeles and thus made all the buildings cooler, so with the warm sun rising, she got the idea to check the lighthouse.

"How did you know to find me?" Willie said as he looked over his shoulder at her.

Julie shrugged as she came to stand beside him. "Just a hunch." She said.

"You are so lucky to have this." He said as he gestured to the rising sun.

"You didn't have sunlight on your planet?" Julie asked.

"Yes … but our planet didn't … round the way yours does." Willie said.

Julie looked at him with a blank expression for a moment before she realized what he was trying to say.

"Do you mean your planet doesnt rotate, like the Earth?" She offered.

"Yes … sorry, my English still has work." He said embarrassingly.

"I think you're doing just fine; so … do you want to tell me the real reason why you're up here all by yourself? I have a feeling there's more to it than just the warmth of the sun." She said.

"Harmony … she … died for me." Willie said sadly.

"I know, Mike told me." Julie said as she put a hand on Willie's shoulder.

"I … I told her I love her before she … but she never said it back." Willie said despairingly.

"Oh, Willy … I'm sure she did, what she did for you was an act of love." Julie replied.

"There's so much hurt … in here." He said as he put his hand on his chest.

Julie draped her arm around his shoulders.

"That's why we Earthlings call it heartache. Now come on, what do you say we busy ourselves with formulating a more permanent antidote to the Red Dust for our Visitor friends?" She said as she steered him towards the stairs.

Ham Tyler peered through the night vision goggles he had managed to commander from Sierra Army Base right after things had gone really bad. Just then, he saw something moving in one of the supply houses. Ham reached for his radio, his eyes still glued to the binoculars.

"Go for Farber."

After a moment, Chris Farber's voice came over the frequency.

"Yeah, boss." He replied.

"Farber, we got movement in supply house 5, I want you to take a couple of men and check it out, it might be nothing, but I don't want to take any chances." Ham said.

"Roger that, over and out." Farber said.

"Hey, Robert, Elias, Ham says there's someone movin' about in supply room 5, let's go check it out." Farber said, Robert and Elias shared a look but did as they were told. Some of Julie and Donovan's group were still slow to warm up to Ham and his men, but like it or not, they needed their military experience.

As they neared the supply house, they could hear the unmistakable sounds of someone … or some thing rummaging around.

"Yeah … there's someone in there, all right." Elias whispered as he clicked the safety off his weapon.

Farber silently motioned for them to advance forward.

"One more step and you're dead!" Farber said, the figure, still cloaked in the shadows froze.

"Now hands up, where we can see them and turn around, nice and easy." Elias added with a wink at Robert, who chuckled in spite of himself.

Hands still raised, the figure did as they were told.

"Now step into the light where we can see you!" Elias said.

They did as they were told and the three men couldn't help but recoil in shock.

It was a woman who looked to be about Julie's age, she was tall and slender with a muscular build and wild, black curly jaw length hair. She wore a black leather pants and a black leather biker's jacket over a filthy wife beater undershirt. But what was most disconcerting about her was the patch over her left eye, and the web of thick, ugly scars that ran from beneath it.

"Come on, let's take her to isolation for the night, we'll decide what to do with her in the morning." Robert said.

The woman was roused from a restless sleep on the hard bed in the isolation cell by the sound of someone entering the isolation area. She quickly stood, ready to defend herself as a man came to stand in front of her cell, accompanied by a woman.

"Hello, my name is Mike Donovan, and this is Juliet Perrish. We run this compound, would you mind telling us why you're here?" He asked.

"Because I wasn't quiet enough and I caught?" The woman offered, Mike couldn't help but chuckle at her bit of dry humor.

"What's your name?" Julie asked.

"Isabela … Izzie for short." The woman said.

"Well … Izzie, I see you were trying to steal some of our provisions, so you must be pretty desperate." Mike said.

"Well … things still ain't right since those assholes left, there's no food, no running water, I did what I had to and I won't apologize for it, so you do what you think you have to." Izze replied defiantly as she crossed her arms in front of her.

"Hey … take it easy! No one's judging, we were going to ask you to join us." Mike said as he offered her a friendly smile.

She eyed him suspiciously for a moment.

"You … you really mean it?" She replied after a long pause.

"Sure we do, we need all the help we can get to rebuild." Julie said.

Izzie shrugged. "What the hell, I'm in." she replied.

"This will be your sleeping quarters, sorry it's not the Ritz." Robin said apologetically.

"It beats some of the places I've stayed, that's for damn sure." Izzie replied as she looked to Robin and caught her staring at her ruined eye.

"I'm sorry … I didn't mean to …" Robin trailed off, embarrassed.

"No … it's okay … I know it looks like shit. I was shot by those scaly assholes while trying to save my mother and my sister. Mom was a high school biology teacher, and my sister was just in the way. They killed her, took my mother and tried to kill me when I tried to stop them, when I came to they and my mother were gone ... I never saw her again." She explained.

"Oh … I'm sorry to hear that, my dad's an anthropologist, but we were lucky, we found Mike, Julie and their group before the Visitors found us." Robin said.

"Mike and Julie and everyone else here are good people, just give them a chance. Oh … I almost forgot to tell you … dinner's at seven sharp. We have a lot of dudes here so if you're late … there might not be any food left." She added in an attempt at humor to break the tension, and was relieved when Izzie laughed at her joke, and the tension between them loosened slightly.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Izzie replied, still chuckling.

Izzie walked into the makeshift dining hall and leaned against the doorway, observing this rag tag group of people laughing, joking and talking as if they were family. The sight of it warmed her heart.

"Izzie! I am so glad you could make it!" Julie said.

"Well … I was told to get here promptly at seven, or be square." Izzie said with a smile.

"Well, let's grab something to eat before it's all gone." Julie said as she led her to the line, which was cafeteria style and chose their seats at the end of the table with Robin, Robert and Elizabeth.

"Robin told me the Visitors killed your mother and your sister, I lost my wife to the Visitors, too." He said as he offered her a sad, empathetic smile.

"Didn't you say you were a scientist?" Mike asked Izzie as they ate.

"Well … I had one year left on my bachelor's degree in wildlife biology at UC Davis … I would hardly call myself a scientist." Izzie said with a dry laugh.

"But you still could help us, meet me in the lab after lunch." Julie said.

"I still don't know what kind of help I'll be, I'm no doctor." Izzie said as she put on a surgical mask and gloves.

"Hey … I was just a student too, hell, I wasn't even a medical doctor, I was going for my doctorate in biochemistry. " Julie said with a laugh.

"Well … I guess I can give it the old college try, so … what's the plan?" Izzie said.

"We're trying to develop a more permanent form of the antidote to the red dust toxin." Julie explained as she looked at samples from the day before through her microscope.

"Why the hell would you want to make an antidote for it?!" Izzie asked as she backed away, her anger rising.

Julie opened her mouth to explain when Willie walked into the lab.

"Julie, I have …" was all he got out before Izzie let out an inhuman roar and launched herself at him before anyone could stop her.

Notes: I did my very best to research and make the science in this story as authentic as possible, so I apologize of anything is amiss.