Title: Waking Up 2: Progress
Author: hannahthewriter
Rating: R (15)
Warnings: Strong language, sexual references, drug use and one scene containing violence. (Phew, I'm hanging onto this R-rating by a thread!)
Summary: Sequel to Waking Up. Harper's nightmares are far from over.
Spoilers: None
Archive: Ask please, just 'cause I want to know where it goes!
Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one in this story except for Dino. It is my own work. Don't sue me.
A/N: For part 1, clicky here
Chapter 1
"It takes the average human seven minutes to fall asleep, but, according to Hand's Human Physiology, it takes the same average human fifteen to twenty minutes to wake up, as if sleep is a pool from which emerging is more difficult than entering."
- From Stephen King's Pet Sematary.
Seamus Harper lay flat on his back, squinting in the half-light, with a soldering wand in his hand and a flexi between his teeth. Every so often he would remove the flexi and consult the specs, surreptitiously removing saliva from the bite-marks with his thumb. This was like a ritual to him, for he had done it so many times. He had often thought that one day he would learn the art of sleep-fixing and do all this whilst unconscious, leaving the rest of his time for leisure, which in Harper's life consisted of beer or Sparky Cola and films featuring women in bikinis. But until that day, he would be stuck in this conduit, with a tool in his hand and the slightly acidic taste of the flexi in his mouth. He sighed and reached for the bottle of amber-brown liquid at his side, tipping it to his lips and savouring the last few drops as they trickled into his mouth. He wasn't supposed to be drinking whilst working, particularly not alcohol, but who was there to see?
'Anyone in here?' Beka called, standing in front of the entrance and cutting out any light that might have once been seeping in. Harper sighed in disgust.
'Nope!' he yelled back.
'Then who's that shouting?'
'Just a harmless dust-bunny, now move along, people; there's nothing to see here! Especially since it's pitch-black.'
'OK, Mr Dust-Bunny, but if you see Harper tell him that there's a short-circuit somewhere so we've had to resort to setting fire to his shirts for light on decks three to six.'
'Will do,' he replied, then a thought crossed his alcohol-addled brain and he frowned. 'You're setting my shirts on fire? Are you crazy?'
Beka sighed. 'You may be a… uh… "freakin' genius", Mr Harper, but you're pathetic at lying. Have you been drinking?'
'No… I'm completely shober,' he replied. Damn!
'Hey, if you're looking for my point, Harper, it's that thing you just proved,' she sighed again. 'Now, are you gonna fix these lights or not?'
'Nah, I just thought I'd sit in here for two hours straight because I find it helps my posture,' he snapped back. 'There's a short-circuit somewhere here and I'm trying to find it even though it's as bright as a Nightsider's brain in here. Did I mention that you're not helping?'
'No.'
'You're not helping.'
'Right,' she replied. 'Well, we're sitting in the dark out here, and Tyr keeps punching big holes in the wall. But you take things at your own speed, Roadrunner.'
'Beep-beep,' he muttered distractedly, and with a final twist of a wrench three decks of the Andromeda were suddenly flooded with light as two ends of slim copper wire connected with a tiny spark. Harper yelped and scrabbled at his eyes as the conduit flooded with light. His pupils shrank almost to the size of pinheads, but it wasn't fast enough. Tiny white spots danced in front of Harper's eyes and he felt a nastily familiar stinging sensation at the back of his head, like someone had grabbed the top of his spinal chord and was twisting it viciously. This was more than too much light at once; there was something really wrong in Seamus Harper's world. And suddenly he saw…
White tiles, people in white coats talking holding clipboards with white paper and holding white pens.
Cold metal pressing against his skin with adhesive pads attached to his temples and the buzzing of a machine mixed with a beeping sound. Spinning down and being plunged into darkness whilst someone screamed his name from a million miles away and then… nothing.