by Xenutia
Disclaimer: Been there, done that. Wish I did. But I don't.
Rating: This one's an PG-13. This chapter begins the bit of the story I thought would warrant it, and it continues to the next chapter.
Summary: Harper and Beka meet up during the crossfire of a data-smuggling operation gone wrong, after Harper has miraculously escaped from earth.
Spoilers: There are nods to some episodes in some chapters, mostly Fear & Loathing In The Milky Way', but not really spoilers. They just relate to background information on the characters a little bit.
Author's Note: This chapter should be a better effort than the last. Much more happening, I enjoyed writing this one! Thanks again for the feedback!
*** 7 ***
Light. Red, dull, burning like a dying sun. That light shone with a hellish, vermillion afterburn, brilliant after the blackness, hot after the cold. The neonicity hurt his...
Wait. It couldn't be that that brilliance hurt his eyes. He could feel his eyelids, heavy and low with exhaustion, and they were closed. That light was inside. It was...
No. The light came from outside his own private void, but it was white, cold, clinical. The colour was only a filter, the hue not the colour of the light but only the glow of his eyelids, transparent enough to allow that sun-like glare inside.
You're losing it, Seamus.
The light had begun as part of his forgotten dreams and ended as part of his waking reality, heralding the uncomfortable awareness of the room he woke in. Those surgical, hellish lights, they were the worst, and the room wasn't hot, it was cold, unbearably cold, he was shivering with just the touch of that air through his thin and ragged clothes...he was restrained again. That, more than anything else, brought back his panic like it had never been away.
"What are you...where are..?" he fumbled the words around his swollen tongue, his mouth numb with horror, and his eyes still protectively closed, a safeguard against things he didn't want to see. He didn't have to watch as they did...whatever it was they were going to do to him.
There was the whisper of movement around him, that same suggestion of shadows, drifting in patterns around the table he lie on, circling like hyenas around a carcass. It was the butcher on Fresia Galla all over again. It was the same, in reverse.
They had put this port in him, cutting and splicing indifferently when he had at last passed out from the initial shots...and now they were going to take it back.
He clenched his teeth tight shut against the terror, kept his eyes closed, the light red, blood-red, the shadows aimless, shifting shapes against it, and prayed. If there was a Divine, if that Divine had any say in this pathetic universe, then it would be in his best interests to get on his - its - her? - good side. His mind babbled and brooked in twisting, incoherent sentences broken by panic, words he wouldn't remember, promises he wouldn't recognise until days later, but one parallel played continuously against it, an overlapping image in the chaos; he was Jonah. Jonah had been one hell of a big-time draft-dodger, he had prided himself on escaping what he didn't want to be a part of, much as Harper had escaped a homeworld he hated with every fibre of his being...he hadn't wanted to make the choice between joining the uprising against the Nietzscheans, or dying by them. He had run away from that to live his own life. But Jonah had been stopped in his travels, hadn't he, swallowed by a whale, and hadn't he himself been swallowed? Not by the whale, but by a ship and its mercenary crew.
He couldn't remember the rest of the story, and that scared him beyond even the sight of this room and the straps at his wrists and ankles. Had Jonah gotten away? Had he gotten out of the whale...or had he died in it?
Damn it, remember. The prayer dissipated, if he could even call it a prayer, but that thought remained; he didn't know the ending.
He opened his mouth to speak, uncertain what he would say, knowing part of him, even in his denying state, wanted to say something...but nothing came out. Just a hushed breath, resignation, shock, the last of his resolve ejected from his body on the outrush of carbon dioxide.
Foolishly, he opened his eyes. A connector glinted dully above him, a line of cold fire along its wicked, needle-edge. He shut them again, and the next thing he felt was the searing hot agony of it sliding into the port below his ear. It felt like a spear had been thrust into his brain.
There was a blinding, kaleidoscopic rush, the sense of being pushed towards the colours, or maybe more accurately pulled by them, and then...
...and then, there was this.
***
Beka stared at the panorama below her, the stars winking in velvet, the planet slowly turning on its axis, oceans blue and deep as lapis on its surface. This was a water world, ninety percent of its crust covered with ocean. The Maru had followed the Magnus' course faithfully, tracing a signature which surprised her with its clarity and...well, it obviousness. Almost as if they had wanted to be followed.
Or at least, one of the people onboard had wanted to be followed.
"Favra Prime," Beka muttered, to herself.
"It is not...completely unexpected," Rev offered beside her.
"Not unexpected? I'll say it's not unexpected - that two-faced son of a Magog, he's been playing us all along!"
"You are referring to Randall Stamp, I presume? It does appear we may have...underestimated our employer's plans somewhat." He cast a sly, assessing glance in Beka's direction. The captain of the Maru was sitting in the Slipstream seat, her hands still clutching the controls, her fingers convulsively tightening, turning her ringed knuckles white. "Twenty thousand thrones is more than sufficient to waive a person's sense of caution."
"You trying to say I was seeing cash and nothing else, Rev?"
I am merely interested in what you are trying to say, he returned, with a slight bow.
Beka sighed, her head lolling back against the chair, her hair spread across its headrest in a static gold halo. I always knew Eric Guldavian was a creep. I mean, I knew. I shoulda known that rat was onto something. I'll bet his little dinner invitation was just to keep me distracted while Harper fixed his ship up enough to fly outta there. With my blueprints.
Don't you mean Stamp's blueprints?
She huffed, hands spontaneously releasing the controls to throw themselves ceiling-ward in a hopeless gesture of frustration. I don't know what I mean! That's just the point. That creep did my dad and me out of some good deals, and you know what? He's not gonna beat me at this one.
Rev nodded, graciously. Are you quite certain that there is no other reason for your reaction?
Like what? But his question had startled a rush of colour into her cheeks, and she cast her eyes downward, carefully directing them away from his cool, collected stare. Was there another reason? Did she...did she feel somehow obligated to rescue Harper, as well as recover her cargo? And aside from that, even, was there perhaps a third reason? Maybe this little crusade, aside from a business venture, aside from a philanthropic mission, was just a little bit of revenge. Just another mark on her record, another chance at proving she was the best, and would not be trodden down.
***
This was something else.
Harper - or at least, the tiny part of him that had sped down that psychedelic tunnel into this world of binary codes and twisting lights - looked around him in stunned awe, his pain and weariness left behind him, feeling...feeling healthy for perhaps the first time in his life. Wherever his body was, it couldn't hold him back in here. It couldn't betray him by not being strong enough or fit enough or good-looking enough, couldn't give out on him before he reached the finishing line, couldn't...couldn't die on him.
It couldn't, could it? What would happen to his mind, in here, if his body died in the real world? Would he be trapped in this computer world, a wandering consciousness without a form to return to, or...
And if something should happen to his mind, in here...would it kill him on the outside?
He put the worry aside, too relieved at being free of the discomfort for a short while. Too amazed by the dance of information melting down the walls of the vast electronic cavern, codes streaming like the wind past his virtual face, blazing green and gold against the peripheral blackness. And this, he suspected, was only a low-grade system - what would the best technology be like?
Only one thing, a sensation entirely new, singularly unpleasant, yet elatingly staggering, troubled him:
He was alone. There was nothing living beyond this residual image of him, this physical representation made by his own mind in a world where physical bodies did not exist. Not a soul in forever. He was nothing, but in here, he was everything.
In here...
I am a god! he exclaimed, and spun deliriously on his heels under the reaching dome of binary spinning over him like shooting stars.
But even in that moment, the loneliness weighed on him. It was a frightening emptiness, worming its way inside, to be truly, and utterly, alone.
Harper revelled a moment, but the pressing matters they had sent him in here to take care of called him back, and he walked on, crossing bridges of data streams over chasms of the same. They had presumably sent him in here to download the information from his port into this computer, now that they were at their destination. They must have a way to force the download, and would no doubt start to do so any moment, not trusting him to do it of his own accord. After all, that data was the only thing keeping him alive. That...and the trail of breadcrumbs he had laid as the Magnus sped away from Fresia Galla to this place - wherever this place was - hoping foolishly and without any grounds for doing so that the hot woman and her ship would follow.
So...what you got in here that's so damn important? he mused, swinging his arms at his sides as he strolled through towering walls and stacks of computer commands. Oh smuggled data! Woo-hoo! he called, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify the sound. It echoed once, twice, thrice, the sound reverberating throughout the system, making the structures tremble like paper in the breeze. Come to Uncle Harper! Here, kitty-kitty!
And suddenly, there they were. They appeared in front of him, the things his invaded mind had been carrying through policed space:
Weapons. Hi-grade, hi-powered, weapons.
Harper stared. And stared. And stared...
To Be Continued...
Author's Note: Despite what I say here, I actually think Harper's very good-looking (when he's wearing that black t-shirt - oh boy) but I sometimes get the impression he doesn't think he is. Okay, so once he said Somewhat good-looking engineer, but still...I detect a bit of insecurity and I think it makes him who he is.
