-----------------------------------------------------------
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.
Richard Lovelace, To Althea from Prison
-----------------------------------------------------------


Total darkness consumed me. Cold, damp stone was behind me. Where was I? I remembered the club slightly. It became more clear, and I remembered the cloaked ones. They grabbed me before I could run. I yelled out to Harper to run, but they caught him, too. The likelihood that he was here with me was fairly high, then. I blindly reached for a wall or a person to grab onto, hoping to find Harper. I discovered a cool body. I found its neck easily enough. It had a cerebral port. I found no pulse. A creature of some sort scurried away, scratching against the stone with its feet.

"Harper," I sobbed. He had a cerebral port, and the body felt like him. "I should make my wishes more specific. I wanted to find you alive. Not dead."

I had never been adept in coping with extreme emotional situations, especially death. A great aunt of mine died when I was six years old. I had never met the woman before, but I spent two months in mourning. I felt guilt for never seeing her and regretted pretending I was sick to avoid social functions. If a woman who I didn't even know could do that to me, remembering what the death of people I was close to has done to me wasn't a pleasant thing.

"I'm sorry that I didn't let you kiss me back at that club. I could tell you wanted to kiss me after we danced. But this whole kissing thing, well, I've never done it before. And it's all kind of scary. But now you're dead now, and it's all my fault for dragging us down to the planet in the first place. I wanted a cerebral port, but it isn't worth this. If you can hear me somewhere, I would do anything to make this up to you. I...I know Beka and Captain Hunt will never forgive me for this. I won't forgive myself, either."

The grief and guilt were eating me from the inside out. I crawled forward until I hit a hard stone barrier. I mapped out the room. I was in a prison of some sort. "If it isn't prisons in my mind, it's physical prisons," I muttered. What was it with me and being entrapped in some way?

"Harper...god it feels weird talking to a corpse. I hope you didn't die a painful death. I wonder where you went. I've never really been too certain about what's in store for us in the afterlife. Maybe you're in a place of wine, women and song. Those always seemed to make men happy. Now that I think about it, I could have made you a lot happier when you were alive if I had tried. You seemed to be rather fond of me. You didn't know a whole lot about me, but I could have made it a point to tell you more. Why don't we have second chances? It's just not fair. If you were alive, I know you'd say something sarcastic and funny to make me laugh right now. I miss you already, and it hasn't even been an hour." I started sobbing again. "I wish I could look into your eyes and tell you how sorry I am for making all of this happen. You belonged here, unlike me. And you had a future ahead of you. I just have my stupidity and my futile attempts to belong in this world. You were the only one that welcomed me with opened arms. Without you, I would have just killed myself when I woke up. Life is so precious. It slips through your fingers like that, you know? It's true what they say. You never do realize what you have until it's stolen away from you. I never thought I knew what love was...but on some level I think I loved you. I miss you so much, Harper."

I felt a pair of arms wrap around me from behind. "Don't cry, baby."

"Harper?" I sniffled.

"The one and only."

I pulled away from his grasp and turned around to embrace him. I held him tightly, afraid it was a hallucination that would slip away in moment's time. His body was warm and very much alive. I had never been so relieved in my life. I didn't care about anything else. As long as he was alive and there with me, I had hope.

"Do you know where we are, Harper?" I rested my head on his shoulder.

"I was hoping you did. We've gotta find a way out of here."

"There's a door over there near the corpse."

"I can't see your hands or any part of you."

"Oh yeah. I forgot. Sorry." I took his hand and pointed it towards the door.

He started crawling away, and I tried to hold his arm so I could follow him. "Sheesh, Lise. I know you're happy to see me again, but you don't have to grab my butt."

"I missed my target." I found his hand and held it.

"You want me to show you where you were trying to grab me?"

"Maybe later. Now, can we try to find the door?"

"What kids are calling it these days. Sure we can, baby." He made his tone very seductive.

I laughed. "This is serious, Harper."

We discovered the door easily enough. The handle was a bit of a challenge, though. It was positioned at my neck level and was long and rectangular. It was locked, as expected. Harper slammed his body into the door a few times, but it didn't budge. We were trapped until further notice.

"We're gonna have to find some other way out of this place."

"Can we go on the other side of the room for the mean time? That body is starting to creep me out."

"Me too. You'd think they'd at least get rid of the stiffs before tossing us in here."

We moved to the other side of the cell. I kicked a corner several times to assure myself I wouldn't sit on one of those creatures or something else even less pleasant. I plopped down on the cold floor and shivered when the stone made contact with the exposed portion of my lower back.

"This place is boring. Can we do something?" I asked.

"Like what?"

"Tell ghost stories...play a game...whatever you want to do."

"What kind of game can we play in total darkness?"

"Ummmm...truth or dare...maybe a word game?"

"The kind of truth or dare you play isn't my kind of game."

"Oh. Then do you just wanna talk?" I wondered what kind of truth or dare was his game.

"I wanna get out of this hell hole before those bastards in the robes come back." His tone made me feel like this was all my fault that we were here, and I concurred with that opinion. It was my fault. I heard him stand and walk across the room.

He began bashing himself into the door again. "You're just calling them to come, Harper. Stop it!"

"I'm getting us our of here, which you don't seem to give a damn about doing!" He was obviously very upset.

"There are better ways to escape." I looked up and saw a slight glimmer from a spot a few feet above my head. "Come over here."

"Why should I come over there?" I had never heard him sound so hateful before, and it scared me.

"You will come over here, and I mean it! I don't care how much more godly you think you are than me. I don't care how mad you are at me. You're gonna come over here, and you're gonna do it NOW!"

"Sheesh. You don't have to scream. Ya know, that guy heard you in the afterlife." He was no longer irate.

"Hoist me up. I think I see something."

I guided his hands to one of my feet and used it as a step. I felt the wall and found a ledge. I clutched onto it for dear life and found a curtain made of a scratchy material. I tried to pull it down, but it was tightly secured. I let go of the ledge with one hand and grabbed the curtain. I followed this process with the other hand and the curtain was ripped down. I toppled down onto Harper.

"That kinda hurt." He pushed away the curtain.

"Sorry." I glanced up into the barred window. A soft moonlight illuminated the room.

For the first time, I got a good look at the cell. It was about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. The corpse was slumped over beside the door. The door itself was about ten feet tall and made of some kind of wood. The walls were a deep gray stone and had been hastily constructed. I felt several of the slick bricks. There appeared to be no secret escape devices. But this wasn't James Bond so I didn't really expect to find any.

I stood and helped Harper back onto his feet. "Are you afraid?" I walked around, looking for that little creature that had scurried away before.

"I don't know. I do know I'm hungry, though."

I reached into my sweater pocket. I had an unopened bag of chocolate candy. I was hungry, but that didn't matter. I handed him the bag. "They're thousands of years old, but haven't been opened."

"Thanks, Lise." He opened the bag and cautiously ate one. "These are good. You want some?"

"I'm not hungry," I lied. I was too anxious and worried to eat. Every second I feared our captors would take Harper away and leave me alone here. Nothing was worse than solitude in a place like this. "What's going to happen when we get back to Andromeda? Will Captain Hunt punish me?"

"Why would he punish you of all people?"

"It's my fault."

"No, it's not your fault. It's nobody's fault."

"But I was the one who made us go to Utrecht."

"I'm gonna be frank with you, Lise. Shit happens. Dylan knows it. I know it. Beka knows it. We didn't bank on any of this happening. We're here now, and we're gonna get out. We'll go back to Andromeda, and I"ll go back to fixing everything when it breaks as always. You'll...you'll decide what to do. And while you decide, we're gonna have a ball. I know you haven't had much fun while you've been here, but the future doesn't always suck like this. I wanna show you what you've been missing. But first we've gotta get out of here."

I was lacking words to expressed what I wanted to say. So I just smiled and stared up at the moons in the window. There were two moons, both of them a shade of pale crimson. I found myself yearning for those star filled nights back on Earth when the moon was full, and the crickets serenaded my stargazing. I always wondered what it was like on other planets and if there was life beyond that of humans.

"Is there still a moon and clear starry nights on Earth?" I asked.

"It was one of the few things that pulled me through when I was there." He grew serious, his blue eyes glazing over reminiscently.

"Me too. It made me feel less alone. It's funny how you can be surrounded by people, but still have this loneliness eating at your heart."

He nodded. "The loneliness didn't get to me at first. I missed those who I lost, but I didn't cry or anything. But then I found my first girlfriend back on Earth when I was fifteen I think. I missed her when I wasn't with her, even if it was just for hours. So we'd sneak out at night and look up at the stars together. The Magog attacked a few months after we'd been together. She and others who were infested with the eggs had to be killed. I didn't know what loneliness was before that."

"I've never been in any romantic relationships before. But I understand what you feel. I've lost a few close friends over the years. It was all so sudden. The worst part about it was never getting to say goodbye. Or tell them that I loved them. I think they knew I did, but I never said it. I still wish I could have the chance just to talk to them one more time. When I was on Earth and the stars were still a mystery, I thought they were in the stars watching over me. I would talk to them sometimes and make wishes. Stupid, isn't it?"

"What did you wish for?"

"To find friendships that will last forever...to find something I can do as a career...to fix my parents' broken marriage...to dance in a real performance...to experience a moment of perfection...to find my Romeo...just a bunch of things." I felt the tears slide down my cheek and hung my head.

He slipped a finger under my chin and lifted my head. I looked into his eyes and felt a chill go through me. I didn't know what I saw in his eyes, but it was very intense. He pulled my face closer to his and wiped away my tears with feather light kisses. His lips found mine, and I closed my eyes. I was carried from the confines of the cold cell into a floating sea of warm clouds and sweetness. I was suspended in time for what felt like an eternity. It abruptly ended, forcing me back into the cold, cruel world. My body tingled from head to toe while my skin seemed to burn where he touched it. He just held me in his arms in silence.

I smiled. One of my wishes had been granted. I thought nothing could hold more perfection than that moment did.