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A/N: Lora; this is what's going on with Tyr & Harper. Don't hate Pitch! He's not that bad really... um... well, maybe. And you're SO not going to like the next chapter, that's all I have to say... evil mode cancel

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Chapter Four: Lost boys

They had given up looking for Beka after about half an hour. It was impossible, she could have gone anywhere. Running off like that without informing them of her plans was careless and stupid and Tyr was feeling annoyed. Well, even more annoyed than he had up until now.

"Well, at least we know she's looking for Milon as well..." Harper said, "so when we find him, she'll probably find us..."

"And what makes you think that he would be that easy to find?" Tyr snapped.

"I don't know! He's famous, isn't he?"

"Well, maybe you think that we should just start asking around then? And even if we do find out where he is, do you think it will be that easy to get to talk to someone who is that famous?"

Tyr was raising his voice. It had been a long day.

"You don't have to shout at me!" Harper shouted, "I'm so fucking sick of you shouting at me! You've been in this pissy mood ever since he left, so I thougth you'd be the first to want to track him down! What the hell is wrong with you?"

Tyr held back the urge to slap Harper in the face and bit back any other words of anger that were on their way. The boy was right. Only, Tyr did not think anybody else had noticed how much worse he felt these days. Just having to look at that scar on his stomach every day. Keep getting reminded of the fact that Milon had saved his life. It was grating on his mind.

"I was not shouting," Tyr said, "there is no need for you to throw a tantrum."

Harper just gave him an uninterpretable look and did not say anything else. Good. A bit of peace and quiet and maybe Tyr would have a chance of coming up with a plan.

They wandered around for a while, looking at the wild mixture of hi tech and utter ruin that was this city. It was dark now, a clock on one of the buildings showed ten past eleven. Only a few people were still out, almost running between the buildings. As if that was not enough, it started raining.

"Oh, this is great!" Harper called over the sound of the heavy raindrops smattering against the asphalt, "We're gonna get soaked! Hello pneumonia!"

That was a point. The last thing Tyr wanted was a sick Harper on his hands. He would only slow him down. They seemed to have ended up back in the bad parts of town as well. Tyr could see a fire burning in a car at the end of the street. This was Earth, all right. He reached out and pulled the rotting boards from a window on the house they were passing and looked in. A musty smell greeted him from inside, but it was too dark to see very much. Harper pulled out a flashlight from his toolbelt and shone it inside the room. It was full of broken furniture, stacks of old newspapers and empty tin cans. At least it did not look like the water was leaking into the room. It sure was smelly though.

Harper crawled through the window with ease, but Tyr had to squeeze through the remaining boards, rusty nails scraping at his back. Once inside, they found that there was only one room left of what must once have been an apartment. On the far side of the room, the wall had fallen down blocking off the doorway. There was probably a risk of more stones falling down into the room, but Tyr could not see any on the floor. The ceiling was made of planks, they looked solid enough. The rubble blocking the doorway might have come from the other side. This room looked stable enough.

"Look, a fireplace! Throw some of those newspapers over here," Harper said.

He had the fire lit in a matter of minutes. Tyr sat down, making sure he was not leaning against something that might give way. He supposed it could be worse. They were not in any immediate danger and, as far as he knew, Beka was not either. They sat quiet for a while, listening to the rain pouring down outside.

"So, you gonna tell me what happened six months ago?" Harper said finally.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, why did you get so pissed off when they left? Did Milon do something I don't know about?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, do I? That's why I'm asking you?"

Harper was most likely just talking to keep the boredom away. But Tyr was not in the mood. Sounding a bit more serious than he actually was, he said:

"Mind your own business."

Harper glared at him angrily, then muttered something under his breath, of which Tyr could only make out 'mood' and 'bastard'. If there was something Tyr could not stand it was people who would not speak up.

"If you have something to say to me, say it to my face instead of mumbling to yourself!" he roared.

Harper jumped to his feet, his face red with anger.

"I said: I've had about as much as I can take of your foul mood, you don't have to be such a bastard! There, happy now!"

Before Tyr could answer him, Harper ran towards the window, crawled through the boards and disappeared from Tyr's view. Tyr walked up to the window and looked out, but Harper had already gone, turned a corner or something. Tyr deliberated internally for a while whether to follow him or not, but he knew that by the time he had squeezed through the window and chosen a direction to go, Harper would already be far gone. He knew where Tyr was, when he'd calmed down, he'd be back. Hopefully. Why the engineer had to be so impulsive was beyond Tyr. They were in enough difficulty as it was, Harper running off on his own was not going to help. But this was Earth, so much like the place where Harper had grown up, only there was no war on here. The boy would be fine, Tyr was sure of it. Well, almost sure.

He sat down in front of the fire, throwing on another bit of wood from the broken table. The rain was still hammering against the street outside, but in here it was starting to get really toasty. Tyr was starting to feel a bit sleepy.

Harper ran down the street. He was already soaked to the bone, his clothes clinging to him as if they wanted to stop him from going any further. But nobody was going to stop him. Why couldn't it be Tyr who got lost and Harper and Beka could've stuck together. They could've gone somewhere fun, a bar or something. Had a bit of a laugh, a holiday. But no, it had to be that big, sulky, stupid Tyr who he got stuck with. Well, no longer. He would track Milon down on his own. Find Beka on his own. And hopefully get back to the Andromeda without Tyr. That would be sweet...

When the air was burning in his lungs and he was starting to see little white spots in front of his eyes, he stopped and breathed. He must have run back into the newer parts of town. The houses here were intact, the windows unbroken. There were lights and billboards. It looked like a normal city, not some bombed out warzone. Harper suddenly caught a glimpse of a blonde head of hair coming out of a doorway across the street. It looked like some kind of nightclub. Beka! And she was with that guy, Milon's friend. Pitch. If that was in fact his real name! Harper laughed invertedly, talk about luck! This was a real two-in-one job!

As he started to cross the street, a car suddenly pulled up outside the club and Pitch and Beka got in. No! Harper ran as fast as he could towards them, calling Beka's name, but it was too late. They didn't see him, and the car sped off down the road, the red taillights shrinking away into the darkness. Typical. The bouncer outside the club gave him a suspicious look, so Harper turned and walked around the corner to the side of the club. There was an alley leading off the street, in behind the building. Maybe, if he was lucky, there would be a window he could crawl in through. There was no way that bouncer would let him in, besides, it looked like a classy place, they probably charged entrance. The alley was narrow and cluttered up with litter and overflowing bins. But there was a warm flow of air coming out of a vent in the wall. And there was a window. Harper climbed up on top of the largest bin (more like a skip with a lid) and peered in through the dirty window. It was the toilets, of course, and he couldn't see anybody in there at the moment. Balancing carefully on the edge of the bin, Harper reached up and tried to jimmy the window open. It didn't seem to want to budge, and he really didn't want to smash the glass. Suddenly, a door opened inside the room, and Harper ducked down quickly to avoid getting spotted. Unfortunately, as he did so, his foot slipped on the grimy edge of the skip and he fell backwards, down onto the smaller rubbish containers below. His falling body managed to knock over several bins and the clang of denting metal echoed between the walls. Smooth, Harper. He looked up from his place among the garbage and saw the window open and a head stick out. Harper jumped to his feet, ready to run in case this meant more trouble.

"Hey, what's going on out there?"

A man in his thirties with dark blond hair and a fake-looking tan eyed Harper like he was trying to memorise what he looked like. Maybe he was thinking about what he'd say to the police? Harper told himself not to be so paranoid, but really, didn't paranoia and realism go hand in hand on Earth?

"Nothing," Harper said, removing the token lettuce leaf from his trouserleg.

"Is that right? So, you weren't trying to sneak into the club then?"

"What? No!"

Harper made an insulted face, but the guy in the window just laughed.

"Well then, I guess you don't want to come in for a quick pint before we close?"

There was something slightly odd in the way he was looking at Harper, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was right now. Harper knew that he probably shouldn't accept favours from complete strangers in this place, but what could go wrong? He didn't have any money, or anything else that anybody would be interested in robbing him off. The place would be full of people and the guy really didn't seem to have any reason to hurt him. Besides... a pint would be nice right now. Like, really really nice. He deserved one after having to put up with Tyr's bad humour and all the shouting.

"Okay then... if you're buying..."

He climbed up on the bin again, and slipped in through the open window. Landing on the white tiles of the toilet, his boots left big, muddy footprints on the floor. The man who had invited him in said:

"Caught out in the rain, huh? You from around here, I haven't seen you before?"

"Nah, I don't... don't live around here..."

Harper walked over to the sink and started wringing oily water out of the sleeves of his jumper. The other man watched him quietly. He was quite tall and thin, wearing clothes that Harper thought made him look like a pimp. Well, maybe he hadn't been first in the queue when God handed out taste, but so what?

"What's your name?" the other man finally asked.

"Harper," Harper said before his brain had a chance to consider lying.

"Harper... well, seems you really got drenched out there... maybe you'd like to borrow some dry clothes?"

"Sure, but where?"
Who was this weirdo? And was he carrying around a spare set of threads wherever he went? Harper's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by his stomach making a loud, rumbling noise. He had actually forgot how hungry he was.

"I'm the house DJ, I have a room upstairs. I've just finished for the night, the place is closing up... the management don't mind som after hours drinking though, they'll just deduct it from my fee..."

"Ah, well, in that case..."

It was just too tempting to resist. Drink. Maybe even food. Dry clothes and somewhere warm to keep the rain off his head. What motives this guy had for helping him out... well, that could wait until later.

"What's your name by the way?" Harper asked.

"Call me Viper."

Oh, that's right, this was the city of weird names, wasn't it? Harper gave up on trying to make his jumper stop dripping water onto the floor and followed Viper out of the room and up the stairs.