A/N: Just a fair warning: this and the next few chapters contain the most violent scenes of the story, though nothing above original Red Dwarf level, I think.


XII. Prisoners

Rimmer came to with a flash, sensation rushing back inside of a second. He blinked away the white spots before his vision, and tried to banish the white noise whistling in his head to the back of his mind. Something had happened to his link with the Wildfire. It had been bad before, but now it was damaged, or blocked, and the residue of the cut connection was doing its best to induce a headache. Not to mention the fact that his lightbee sent pulses of pain throughout his body, though he hadn't yet figured out why. He hoped it was only the ongoing corruption but if felt different – like something was suppressing his functions, rather than the piercing pain of before.

He was strapped to a table raised to forty-five degree, which was definitely not good news. Rimmer tugged at the ropes binding his wrists above his head and found them coarse and unyielding. He could see his boots if he raised his head a little, and of course his ankles were trapped in shackles.

Rimmer panicked.

He knew he shouldn't. He knew it would shoot his T-count through the roof and put him in danger of a hologrammatic heart attack. He knew his lightbee couldn't handle it in his present state. He knew he should be Ace and shrug it off, and think of an escape plan. He knew all that, but it didn't help when he also knew that he was terrified of physical torture, that a situation like this could only get worse, that there was a gap in his memory, that people could try quite insanely painful things when they found that his hard light drive was not easily damaged.

"Hello?" he asked into the oppressive silence, hating the sound of his own small, high-pitched voice. It was all he could manage with his breathing just that far away from hyperventilation.

Suddenly, there was a heavy groan somewhere behind him.

Rimmer craned his neck, but couldn't see a thing. "Anyone there?" he tried again.

"Rimmer? Is that you?"

Lister! He sounded close by, probably behind him. Rimmer didn't know whether to be terrified or relieved. "Of course it smegging is me! What the smeg is going on?" He remembered the Simulants heading for them. He remembered trying to keep it together by being Ace. He remembered sending his alter ego away so he would be safe – which was probably the single most stupid thing he had ever done. Because there was only one reason why a Simulant ship would turn up in this sector where there were no derelicts, no resources and where there should not have been any life (and he had checked, and checked again the instant the Wildfire had told him what Holly's sensors had picked up). The Simulants were there because they had picked up either the Wildfire's energy signature, though that was unlikely considering the damage she had sustained, or had noticed the sealing of the dimensional rift. And if the Simulants in this universe went through an even marginally similar development as the others he had encountered, they were after Ace, and they were after the dimension jumping technology. Because once you had established yourself as the supreme being, you had to find new hunting grounds. And Rimmer had seen first-hand to what that could lead, and he couldn't let that happen. So, he had sent nano-Rimmer to the Wildfire in the hope that she would take him on and had gone and put himself in the line of fire. Because he was dying anyway, that had to be it. He wasn't sacrificing himself for others. That couldn't be actually happening.

Rimmer tucked at the ropes again, then realised that Lister had never actually answered. "Listy?"

"Ace thought you'd be safe."

For a moment, that statement made no sense whatsoever to Rimmer. Then, he pieced it together. Lister could probably see him no more than he could see Lister, and so he had come to the conclusion that he was nano-Rimmer. Rimmer wasn't sure whether he should set him right.

Lister just kept talking. "Smeg, we'll get out of this, Rimmer, yeah? Like we got out of the Hole."

Rimmer had no idea what Lister was talking about, and he could only assume that it was a reference to the experiences he had had with his alter ego.

"Or that CANARY mission – when Cassandra said everybody would die and we all survived? Or when Red Dwarf was decayin'? It all worked out in the end, didn't it?"

Rimmer really didn't know what to say. He wasn't sure whether Lister was trying to reassure himself, or trying to reassure the other Rimmer, or whether he was just talking to fill the eerie silence. The room was featureless, blank, vaguely greyish walls, no windows, no visible door. A prison cell or torture chamber. Or both. Rimmer wanted to be in neither, and normally he would have been the one talking, to compensate for his nerves. Not that it really masked them where potential torturers were concerned.

He dragged in a shaking breath, and mentally called out for the Wildfire. He only got static back. At least, he still looked like Ace, so maybe he could keep up the act. Only, Lister would have to know. "'fraid you've got us mixed up, Skipper," he said in his best Ace voice.

Lister stopped his babbling instantly. "Oh. Sorry."

"Skipper, they mustn't know. I shouldn't have to ask this of you, but they must never know, under no circumstances. Do you understand?"

"Yeah… Ace."

Rimmer nodded to himself. He had no idea whether the Liverpudlian really grasped the danger – he had always had the impression that Lister was developing an unhealthy hero complex and recklessness, but lacked in terms of self-preservation.

"D'ye know what's goin' on?"

"We seem to have gotten ourselves into a bit of a fix," Rimmer said, and thought it was the understatement of the century. At least concentrating on Ace had brought his anxiety down.

"'m tied down," Lister announced.

Before Rimmer could reply, there was a flicker in the lightlevels of the room, and a voice boomed at them: "Ace Rimmer." At the same time, a spark of pain exploded in Rimmer's midsection, and he reverted to soft light. He immediately slid through his bonds, and crumbled to the floor at the foot of the table, all conscious thought replaced by deafening white noise as he clutched his chest, trying to make the pain stop.