A/N: I am so sorry it's been so long between chapters, school just went completely insane, but now that I am just working on building a portfolio my updates will (hopefully) become more frequent. Thank you for your patience. Hope you like the chapter, please tell me what you do/don't like...see earlier chapters for disclaimers! love xx shezzi
Aeryn led the way back to quarters, where she quickly roused the others, telling them what Pilot had said. They quickly divided the area to be searched, opting to work in pairs: D'Argo and Rygel, since Chiana still wasn't speaking to him, Zhaan and Chiana and Aeryn and John. D'Argo refused to look at John the whole time they were making plans, though he kept trying to catch Chiana's eye.
"All right, let's go," Aeryn said, taking John's hand and leading him out of the room to their designated search area: Tier 18. They wandered the hall with a group of DRD's skating along around them. Aeryn had to watch carefully that none of them got under John's feet. She hadn't noticed anything unusual, when John suddenly stopped. "John?" She questioned, concerned. "Are you feeling OK?" He nodded distractedly, turning his head one way, then the other.
"Aeryn, can you hear that?" He asked, sounding puzzled.
"Hear what, John? All I can hear is Moya and the DRD's." She told him.
"There's a…a tapping noise. It's faint, but it's there, under the normal noises. Can you ask Pilot to stop these DRD's for a moment?"
"Sure," replied Aeryn, hitting her comms and relaying the request to Pilot. The DRD's that surrounded them powered down, and John frowned, listening.
"You can't hear that?" He asked her again, and she shook her head, then remembered that he couldn't see her.
"No," she replied, making a mental note to use verbal responses.
"How far am I from the wall to my right?" He asked, reaching his hand out towards it.
"About half a motra…there you go." She carefully drew him up to it, shoving a DRD out of the way with the toe of her boot. John placed his hands flat against the wall and pressed his ear against it. He listened hard; there was the noise, a high, metallic clicking, unlike anything he'd heard on board Moya before.
"Here, listen here," he told her, and she pressed her own ear to the wall, her face mere denches from his. "Can you hear it now?" He asked.
"Yes!" Aeryn exclaimed triumphantly. She quickly knelt, and found a DRD access hatch for the wall; opening it, she looked through, and stared in horror. There were bugs, metal bugs, in Moya's walls. One of them scuttled out the opening, then stopped and sprayed something on the wall. Before Aeryn's eyes, the wall pitted and corroded, leaking fluid. More bugs came out after it, advancing on Aeryn.
"John, I think we're going to have to run," Aeryn told him, grabbing his arm tightly. "Do you think you can?" She asked, staring at his face. He nodded firmly. "All right, let's go!" She dragged him around and they were running down the corridor. As soon as they reached a door, Aeryn sealed it and yelled to Pilot. "Pilot, keep this door sealed. Everyone, John has found our problem." The others called in, giving various renditions on a basic theme: they were on their way.
She wrapped an arm around his waist, leaning her head against his shoulder. John cupped her cheek with his hand, running his thumb lightly over her lips, before lowering his head and kissing her gently. Aeryn wrapped her free hand around the back of his head, pulling him closer, lost in the moment, only to be interrupted by pounding feet in the corridor. They broke apart, both panting slightly, to face the direction the other's were approaching from. Zhaan rounded the corner first, and gave Aeryn a knowing look.
"So, what is it?" Growled D'Argo, completely oblivious to the silent communication occuring in the corridor.
"Metal...bugs" replied Aeryn, slowly. "The money is alive, and it's eating Moya" she added, running what she had seen back through her head.
"We need to catch one, find out about them," declared Zhaan, glancing around and recieving nods of approval from the group at large. "Once we have studied them, and discovered a weakness, we should be able to eradicate them. Also, once we can identify them, they will be easy to track throughout Moya. D'Argo, Rygel, why don't you see if you can catch one." She glanced at the two of them, and they nodded, though Rygel immediately began to complain. Growling, D'Argo grabbed the back of Rygel's thronesled and dragged him away.
Zhaan, Chiana, Aeryn and John were left standing in the hall, unsure of what they should be doing. "John, how are you feeling?" Asked Zhaan, walking over and carefully taking his head in her hands, looking deep into his unseeing eyes. He just shrugged, smiling slightly.
"Been better, Blue," he told her, patting her hand gently. "Been better." Zhaan smiled softly and brushed his cheek gently with her fingers.
"Why don't you go get some rest," she suggested, catching Aeryn's eye and smiling encouragingly.
"I can't rest now, Zhaan. Something's wrong, I need to help." Although he was trying to sound strong and like himself, he came across as pleading, pleading with Zhaan not to take away his ability to help, not to tell him that he wasn't useful. Catching the tone in his voice, Aeryn spoke up quickly.
"OK, then, John, let's start brainstorming some ideas to try out on these bugs when we've got them." Aeryn wrapped her arm around his waist, leaning her head against his shoulder and leading him down the hallway towards Command, while Zhaan headed for her lab.
"Acid, acid's good. Alkaline solutions, too. Fire, although that should be a last resort. Water...if they're mechanical, maybe we could drown them, flood the affected sections? That would be my first suggestion, anyway. But remember, we have thousands of these things loose on Moya, we need a solution that will take them all out at once, we don't have time to hunt them down one at a time." He grimaced, involuntarily raising a hand to his head, which was pounding.
"John?" Asked Aeryn, concerned. She stopped, and turned him to face her, staring into his face. She could see the lines now, lines of pain around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. "How bad is it?" She asked, not even needing to ask if he was in pain.
"It's...not good," he replied, quirking the corner of his mouth up slightly, before leaning down, cupping her chin in his hand and kissing her, his tongue slipping out and teasing her lips, which opened under his mouth, and her tongue teased his as her hands wrapped around the back of his neck, kissing him slowly, then pulling back, smiling against his lips.
"You can't distract me like that," she whispered, her lips brushing lightly against his as she spoke.
"Really?" He asked, chuckling, then he gasped, his legs buckling, and Aeryn caught him, carefully lowering him to the floor.
"Hello, John," oozed an oily, smug voice. Scorpius grinned at John, who was strapped into the Aurora chair. "How are you feeling?"
"NO!" He growled, jerking against the straps. "You do not control me! Get out of MY HEAD!" The chair disappeared, and he threw a fist into Scorpius' face. "What's the matter, Scorpy? Can't cope now that daddy's dead?" He threw another punch, then another. He concentrated, and a gun appeared in his fist. "I'm sick of you, Scorpius, and I'm sick of being controlled. It ends, NOW!" He pulled the trigger, shooting the apparition in the head, and it flickered and vanished.
Aeryn lowered herself to the floor, cradling John, grateful once more for her strength. "Zhaan, something's wrong, John's passed out, I can't wake him. Get down here, now!"
"Is he having a seizure?" Asked Zhaan over the comms as she ran towards the Command.
"No, he's just...out," replied Aeryn, fear churning in her gut, and wrapping an icy fist around her heart.