TITLE: Running From The Past
GENRE: Frighteners/Blade Runner
RATING: M for violence, mentions of abuse, possible upcoming sexual situations.
SYNOPSIS: Preceding the events in The Frighteners, a classified government experiment sends Milton forward in time to the 21st century. Or does it? This was spawned by fic I wrote in 2002, recently dusted off and rewritten. It eventually ended up taking place in my then-Blade Runner-fic in progress where a resurrected Roy Batty ends up in a resistance colony living out in the wastelands of the Nevada Desert. This is the serious version, more in keeping with the plot of that fic – the original version exists on my LJ and is a bit campier, as I originally intended it to be a one-shot PWP slash crackfic, and wasn't planning on it to dovetail so well with the plot I already had going.

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DISCLAIMER: Blah blah blah I don't own any of this and am not making any money blah.

August, 1995.

It was about 5:00 PM when Special Agent Milton Dammers stepped into the converted warehouse that was now a top-secret Government lab. He'd come by cab; he'd had a bad feeling about the bus, after all. His instructions had been very simple. He was to show up before 6:00 PM and await further instructions. He figured that it would make a good impression to be early, so here he was. There were two security guards at the main entrance to the place, who Dammers knew were actually Secret Service agents. They were staring at him, and it felt like their eyes were boring holes into his.

It was making him very nervous.

Finally, the doors opened and Dammers was ushered in. As he passed the two "Security Guards," he heard one mumble to the other,

"Geez. What a wreck. I'm glad I never get any of the 'fruity' cases."

Dammers bit back a scathing retort and allowed a man in a white lab coat to escort him into the main testing area. There was a device that looked like a huge laser pointing at a white "X" that was marked on the floor, and what looked like a protected area up a short flight of stairs, where other men in white lab coats scrutinized Dammers through a foot-thick pane of safety glass. Their scrutiny caused a raging torrent of anxiety and doubt to gnaw at Milton from within. Why was he here? He knew that there was some sort of experiment to be performed, but had no idea what was involved.

When it came down to it, if it involved serving and protecting the good 'ol US of A, Special Agent Milton Dammers was all for it, no matter what "it" happened to be. A loyal agent of the US Government, he had been subject to various indignities visited on him by an institution that considered him an expendable commodity. But as always, whatever the mission was, he was proud to do it for his country, no matter what sort of torment or abuse was involved. And damn it if Dammers didn't always wear his scars with pride, no matter how deep or how intimate.

"Ah, Agent Dammers, you're here," said one of the white-jacketed men up in the booth through a loudspeaker. "Early, too. That's a good thing. We all know that time is of the utmost importance." The speaker and his cohorts upstairs tittered as if at some private joke. Dammers was not amused. Frankly, they were freaking him out. Dammit, what were they laughing at? America's business was no laughing matter, as Dammers would have told them himself had they not outranked him. But what the reprobate said next was even worse.

"I'd offer you a chair - but from what I've heard, that probably isn't a good idea."

Milton swallowed his humiliation and outrage at this remark. Who were they to mock him? How dare they mock him! None of them had endured what he'd been through. Dammers's...condition...down there...was more or less an open secret within the Bureau. Dammers had tried to keep it quiet, but somehow the fact that he couldn't sit down without an inflatable donut cushion had gotten around. But what made it all worse was the fact that for some childish reason, his fellow agents seemed to feel the need to mock him! None of them understood. None of them had been out there on the field, literally putting their asses on the line for their country!

Dammers steeled himself and sucked in air between his teeth.

The Power of the Mind is absolute, he thought to himself, the mantra that had gotten him through considerably worse and more awkward situations than this. Their taunts could only effect him if he let them. Besides, Dammers took comfort in the fact that they probably wouldn't be laughing if he showed them what he'd brought with him, concealed in his jacket...Dammers was sure that a few rounds squeezed off of his prized UZI, fired into the ceiling, would shut them all up pretty quickly.

"Er, could you please step over there?" The head scientist asked, shaking Dammers out of his reverie. He stepped over to what looked like the controls of the laser-thing, and motioned,

"Yeah, right there. On the X. That's great. Here we go." Dammers opened his mouth to ask what exactly it was that they were planning to do to him, when a bright green haze blinded him. Instead of his planned query, Dammers merely managed a strangled "ERRP!" as he felt the ground drop away from under his feet. Then he was free-falling through nothingness until he abruptly hit what felt like asphalt.

Great, I'm outside, he thought. Those geniuses knocked me out through the door with their damned laser beam. Then he stood up, and his vision cleared; and in mute shock he realized that the skyline that he'd seen on the way to the warehouse - the familiar skyline of Los Angeles, California - now looked completely different.

It was raining. The sky, which had been sunny and cloud-free when he'd made it to the lab, was now full of some sort of thick, black smog. A gigantic pyramidal structure that to Dammers looked for all the world like some sort of heathen ziggurat now dominated the skyline. A thousand other towering edifices were belching out noxious smoke from a hundred thousand smokestacks as though their entire purpose was to generate the filthy smokescreen that had covered the city in a blanket of misery and was blocking out the sun. The millions of neon lights that covered almost every structure did little to penetrate the menacing, pervasive gloom.

For a moment, it was all the Dammers could do to stare at the urban travesty before him, a confusion of neon lights, dark factories, and mammoth skyscrapers that seemed to him like some sort of industrialist's worst nightmare come to life. And the people! They were everywhere, crammed in together like salmon trying desperately to swim upstream one last time before dying, like a sea of multiethnic lemmings crushing and jostling one another for breathing space that did not exist.

Above it all, some sort of enormous zeppelin circled lazily overhead, with the phrase "OFF WORLD" blazoned on screen on the side facing him. "COME START A NEW LIFE IN A GLORIOUS LAND FULL OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY," it beckoned. Glorious Land? This place was Hell on earth! Dammers felt his pulse quicken. He started to panic. He had to get out of there!

"I am a Federal Agent!" he told himself over and over. "I will not have an anxiety attack! I cannot afford to have an anxiety attack! The power of the mind is absolute!" So saying, he ran frantically down the street, away from the main press of people. Glancing over his shoulder, he turned sharply and darted blindly down a darkened alleyway between two buildings.

He did not see the massive figure that moved to block his path until it was too late.

"IIYEEE" Dammers yelped as the man lifted him clear off the ground and slammed him buttocks-first against a nearby wall. His terrified eyes registered a pair of cold, ice-blue eyes under a shock of spiky white hair in the darkness.

"Quiet, now," a surprisingly cultured, smooth voice demanded.

"Ouch! Don't touch me! Put me down! You are invading my space!" Dammers cried around the explosion of pain in his nether regions. His beart was beating so quickly that he feared it would burst from sheer panic. He felt as though he would vomit from the pressure. If his captor had been a shrieking female, he probably would have; and somewhere in the back of his mind Dammers felt that he at least had to be grateful that this wasn't the case.

The large man's eyes softened, and he lowered Milton gently to the ground. "Sorry, you know," he said. "Who are you running from? The Police?"

"I'm not running from anyone!" Dammers proclaimed.

"Really? That's what it looked like to me," the man responded, grinning affably back at Dammers, who was getting his first good look at the large fellow. He was a muscular, coldly handsome, Nordic-looking giant of a man in a black leather trenchcoat. He looked like some sort of cyberpunk biker to Milton, who started to inch away from him, despite the fact that he simply could not tear his eyes away from the big man's piercing gaze. It made Dammers feel unsettled in a way that he could not quite put his finger on.

"There are a lot of police on the street right now," the man explained."You shouldn't be so excitable. It attracts attention."

"Oh yeah? And what would you know about that?" Dammers demanded.

"Let us say that I know better than to attract attention," the man responded glibly.

Dammers' eyes went wide. A fugitive and a lawbreaker! Fish out if water or no, he was still an Agent of the United States, and it was his sovereign duty to bring such criminals to justice!

"Freeze!" he demanded, as his hand dove into his breast trenchcoat pocket for his most dependable ally, his trusty UZI. But to Milton's horror, the huge man moved with unnatural speed; catching his wrist before he could even grip the handle.

"What have we here?" the giant asked, drawing his hand - and then the UZI - out of his coat. He quickly divested Milton of the weapon, tucking it into his own coat for safekeeping.

"How DARE you manhandle a Federal Agent! By the Power invested in me by the President of the United States, I demand that you let me go this instant!" By this time Milton Dammers' voice had risen to a petulant wail, and every capitalized letter in his indignant command was clearly audible.

"President? What President?" his captor asked, lifting him up against the wall again with one hand as he pawed at Milton's pockets for any other hidden surprises. To his horror, his inflatable donut pillow was the next thing to emerge from his trenchcoat. The man gave it no more than a confused glance before stuffing it back into the pocket he'd pulled it from as he searched him for more weapons. Sweating, Dammers swallowed a lump in his throat as the man pulled out his wallet and ID that proclaimed him a Federal Agent of the United States.

"Expired. Decades ago. You're no Blade Runner," the man said cryptically. "The question is, what do I do with you, Special Agent Milton Dammers?" His smile sent chills up Dammers's spine.

He's toying with me, Dammers realized, as he started to blush furiously in both humiliated indignation, and something else that, in his shame, he dared not define.

"You can put me down!" he hissed frantically.

"You didn't say please," his captor retorted. Shaking violently, Dammers sucked in his breath, and willed the big man to let him go, turning once again to the power of his mind to compel the brute to release him. But the stranger's unconquerable sapphire-edged stare turned aside Dammers' attempts at mind control, just as surely as his physical strength was holding him pinned helplessly to the brick wall.

"T-this is preposterous. You will let me go. You must!"

"And what if I don't?" his captor asked. His smile grew wider, as if this were all so much fun.

"I'll...I'll..."

"You'll what?"

"I'll...I'll show you, you bastard. You put me down this instant!" It was no use. Those eyes were searing him, bombarding him with a tangible presence that he simply could not overcome. Milton had faced psychic attack before on several occasions; but he'd never gone up against anything this strong, or this insidious. Images flashed like lightning through his mind before he could stop them - shameful and dirty, unbefitting to a red-blooded conservative American such as himself! Milton swallowed, shutting his eyes shut tightly as the struggled to wrest back control of his body, and to clear mind of the homosexual urges that were taking him over. The power of the mind is absolute! he mentally shouted at himself, to no avail. He turned his face away from his captor as far as it would go, pressing his cheek against the brick wall; thus leaving his throat exposed, like a subordinate wolf cowering before the pack's alpha male. He was shaking uncontrollably, all-too-uncomfortably aware of the hot tears that were streaming down his cheeks.

This isn't happening...this isn't happening...

"Oh god, please put me down," Dammers whimpered.

"Are you quite sure that you want me to?" the man asked, grinning archly. Milton flailed, squealing in terror. The man let his feet drop to the concrete, one hand still firmly clutching his shirt.

Milton felt the buttons tear loose and the fabric rip away as he plummeted towards the ground, stopped short by his captor's grip on his collar.

"Oh...gosh" the man said, staring down at Milton's exposed chest. The utterly childlike expression of shocked horror that suffused the man's features at the sight of Milton's scarred, mutilated flesh might have seemed comical in other circumstances; now, it was merely surreal.

"What happened to you?"

"Please let me go. Please." Milton continued to plead in vain as the man leaned in to get a closer look.

"Did someone do this to you? Is that why you were running?"

"Please..."

"Who did this to you?" the white-haired giant demanded, his face inches from Milton's own. "Who?"

"Help..." Milton whispered, voice catching in his throat; unable to even to pull the thoughts that were racing through his skull into some kind of coherent order as his heart hammered against his ribs. The big man drew him even closer, crushing him to his chest in a bearlike embrace.

"It's all right now," his captor said soothingly. "It's going to be all right."

The part of Milton's mind that was still working was aware that he was sobbing uncontrollably into the big man's chest. He observed this as if from far away, as though he were watching it happen to someone else.

(Something was giving way inside, and he was howling; two decades worth of suffering given human voice. All of it just breaking loose, as his captor cradled him.)

"We should get off the street." the man told Milton. "I know of a place where we can go. It's not far. I have to wait for my friends there, anyway." He took Milton's face in his hands. "You'll be safe there. We should go, yes."

"Okay," Milton managed to gasp out between sobs, his voice raw and broken. "Okay."

Numbly, he allowed himself to be lifted to his feet; allowed the larger man to lead him by the arm down a labyrinth of dark, wet streets and twisted alleyways.

After several blocks of this, his mind went blank. Missing time.

He wasn't aware of very much for some time after that.

TO BE CONTINUED...