Authors Notes: Wow, it's been so long since i wrote Andromeda fanfiction! **Strokes screen with fanfiction on** i missed it! Not much has changed: i still love Harper (hell, i own his fanlisting for crying out loud), but i do like Dylan more than before. You can't tell in this fic, but if i write any more, it might be a bit more obvious. By the by, this is from Andromeda's point of view, i don;t know how it happened. I just typed and it happened. How is the characterisation? I've never really done her before, not properly.
Challenge Response: Yep, this is a response to one of doxymom's 5 minute, 3 word challenges: Fire, certainty, clock.
Please R/R :D
I'll give you all virtual cookies if ya do ^__^
Absolute
There is the kind of absolute certainty when faced with fire, that you know you're immediately pitted against the clock, racing for your life. This time, the fire had entrapped the entire of Machine Shop 17, encasing its occupant with its searing heat and choking smoke. There is also the absolute knowing that I can do nothing. My fire systems are un-operational on that deck as well as the three below and one above. Harper was supposed to get to work on them that afternoon. Now, as I see him backing away from the torturous fingers of flame, I know he might not live to see the afternoon if Dylan and Tyr don't get down there quickly.
Harper will already have been burnt alive.
Dylan skids to a stop in front of Machine Shop doors, but can't enter. I know that. The doors have been fused shut. I tell him as much through my hologram. My avatar is on her way too; I can feel the echoes of her emotions, emotions given to her by our engineer, her creator, and the man currently under serious threat of being barbequed.
My awareness in the Machine Shop is weakening; the severe heat affecting my sensors. It's affecting Harper as well, from the last vitals I took, his heart rate was dangerously accelerated and his breathing laboured through oxygen-deprivation.
He is panicking, for good reasons, and he is running out of places to escape the flames.
Dylan orders Rommie to carry on trying to open the door whilst he and Tyr take to my conduits -they are going to try and reach Harper through them. Harper has realised this option as well, and is frantically dodging the flames that are ravaging his safe-haven in a frantic attempt to reach an entry point to the places he spends his days crawling through.
Tyr has reached the point that Harper is trying to reach, he throws open the hatch and pulls the sweating human inside so quickly that my frazzled circuits barely register it.
They are all safe; I pass the information to my avatar and watch as she sighs in relief. She really is getting too emotional.
As for now however, I can let up on my processor chips and focus on making sure Harper recovers from the likely heat stroke he is bound to be suffering.
He beat the fire clock, this time.
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Post A/N: Waddya think? Should i have stayed away from this genre? Or should I carry on and write something else too? Should i never write again?