A/N: Sorry about the delay. I am a bad, bad fanfic writer.
Again, a big thank you to all my reviewers! I love you guys! I got nothing else to say, so onto the new chapter!
Chapter 16
Drop. Unbelievable burning. Drop. Agonizing pain. Drop. Yells tearing from a raw bloody throat. Drop. Dreams of sweet blissful unconsciousness. Drop. Visions of throwing Harper out the air lock. Drop.....
Dylan Hunt was a trapped, tortured, angry man. Strapped to a bed, his body lost to an intruding alien and his mind flooding with rage towards the individual who was causing pain to said body. So far the psycho had burned his temples, cut his body and was now in the process of dropping acid in those very cuts. The intelligent man realized why his engineer was causing him such pain, but the idealistic High Guard captain could not believe that this was the only way to rid themselves of their intruders. After seeing what Harper had done to the Pythos, he had lost all respect for the little man's moral and compassionate compass. The Earther was a psychotic killer and the captain wanted him off his ship...NOW!!
A new drop of acid fell into the cavern of a cut as tears rolled out of Dylan's tightly clenched closed eyes. The saline drops rolled warmly into his ears after their trip through the deep crevices of wrinkles that were etched throughout his face.
The second mind in this trapped tortured body was another angry man, or better yet, being. Fex was fueled by Dylan's fury and was not going to leave this strong body without a fight. He too understood the little man's plan and was not going to let him be successful. Damn it, he was Fex! Strong and mighty Fex! Some pathetic, weak, all be it scary as hell, runt was not about to chase him out of his adopted body and into death with a little pain. He was stronger than that. He was Fex the mighty!
Another drop of acid silently fell from the dropper that was controlled by the eerily steady hand of yet one more trapped and tortured soul. Harper threw on more and more locks onto his box as Dylan's powerful screams constantly echoed in his ears. They mixed together with the memories of Tyr's deafening yells to cause a harmony of agony that reverberated throughout his deeply repressed mind.
"You monster!! You psycho! As soon as I'm free I'm gonna throw your depraved body out the closest air looooccckkkkkaaarrrghhhhh....." The real Dylan threatened as one more drop hit one of his many inflamed wounds.
A monster. Even in his delirious state, Dylan could still see the truth, Harper thought. He was a monster, he always had been. For the past six years, ever since he meet Beka, he had been hiding his true being behind a mask of helplessness. Now that mask had been violently ripped off. His friends would all see him for what he truly was...A Monster. A Monster, who back on Earth, would club weak elders over the head in the back alleys for any meager food or belongings they had on their frail bodies. A Monster who then left those poor souls to most likely die in those dark and dirty alleys. A Monster who would steal clothing off the dead, who would sell his body for food and then mercilessly beat his customers for their money, food, or weapons. Now the Monster was torturing his friends, his family, simply because he was too dumb to come up with an alternate solution. Harper truly hoped that Dylan would keep his word just this once and throw him out the closest air lock. Vacuum was the only substance that belongs in such a monster's lungs.
Drop. Scream. Drop. Threat. Drop. A more violent threat. Drop. Explosion.
A blast disturbed the steady rhythm of torture as rubble came flying towards the collection of troubled souls as the shock wave hit their bodies. Harper staggered but was able to stay on his feet. He turned his head towards the source of the large blast. Where the strong impenetrable doors to medical uses to stand, now stood the equally strong and very well armed Rommie. Her gigantic gun was still smoldering from the blast it had just produced. Rubble from now huge gapping hole in the wall surrounded the beautifully hand crafted android. An angry scowl filled her finely featured face. Harper's special overrides were now history.
"Go away," Harper ordered through his clenched teeth.
"No," Rommie answered as she started to approach the couple.
The prone half of the pair found his hoarse voice. "Rommie! Throw this piece of garbage out the airlock and get me off this bed!!" It was hard to tell which of the minds in the body was talking. The explosion had made Harper lose track of the electric eye dances.
Rommie just looked down at the struggling form on the bed. Her circuits began to misfire as she saw her powerful captain resigned to fighting the restraints. Her programming sent back error messages as she took in the damage Harper had already caused to her highest ranking crew member. The error messages then began flooding in as she tried to envision herself torturing any of her crew. Would her programming even allow her to do what had to be done to save the others? Her eyes then switched to her broken engineer.
Ignoring Dylan's screaming orders to introduce Harper to the nice environment outside the ship, she addressed the downtrodden young man in front of her. "Harper, let me help you."
"No, go away," Harper hissed back as he kept his eyes locked on the empty space in front of him.
"Harper, you haven't eaten or slept in the past seven days. I know the only way you could still be standing is the drug, but you still need some food and rest. Look at yourself, you're wasting away." It was true, the normally skinny engineer was now just a shadow of what he used to be. The sunken in eyes were the most freighting aspect of the stick of a man in front of her.
"Rommie...Just...Go...A...WAY!!!" Harper yelled as he ripped his eyes off the air before him and locked them onto Rommie's artificial eyes.
It took all of her control not to jump back when she saw his eyes. They were so empty and yet so filled with rage, fury, and sadness. There was no sign of her happy-go-lucky engineer anywhere in the man that stood before her.
She charged her massive weapon that still sat heavily in her arms and aimed it straight at the stranger who stood in front of her. "Put down the dropper and step away from Dylan."
"Yah baby!! Kill the psycho!!" the peanut gallery cheered on from the bed. That was undeniably Fex in control now. Even though he echoed Dylan's thoughts, the wording was completely alien to the body.
Harper surprisingly did as Rommie had ordered but quickly followed it up by grabbing the android's arm and forcing her through the hole in the wall she has just previously created.
"Harper!?" Rommie yelped as she reluctantly gave into Harper's shoving.
"Shut up and move," Harper hissed.
Once the stumbling pair were well away from Dylan's earshot, Harper pushed the somewhat willing Rommie up against the wall. "Don't talk, just listen," Harper spat out through still clenched teeth. One would have thought someone super glued his teeth together.
Rommie noted that Harper was still making eye contact with her and was actually talking. Realizing that this might be a good sign she did as the boy wished. He let up on the grasp he had on her arm and let her body come off the wall a tad. The cold look that infiltrated his eyes made Rommie's hopes diminish. Maybe him talking was not a good sign.
"Rommie, I'm on Buzz, ok, one dose lets you not eat or sleep for four days. Then you get this nice nasty withdrawal. I'm on my second dose and the more doses you take the stronger the withdrawal. Few are known to survive more than one dose, so please consider me dead. So be a good, smart android and let the dead man take your crew's hate for the pain they must endure. You just heal them, mentally and physically. They will need you after I'm done with them. They will need your shoulder to lean on. Your NEUTRAL shoulder. I've only got a little over three days left of my current dose and don't really wanna take my last one. So, if you would be so kind as to leave me alone for the next three days to try to save your crew, I would be eternally grateful. Then you can find my pathetic corpse and chuck it out an airlock." Harper finished up as his empty eyes were still glued onto her as to emphasis his point. A second of silence later, the head dropped and the eyes once again went back to watching the every so interesting air.
The calm voice Harper spoke with sent electric chills down Rommie's back. The gun that still filled her arms dropped and clunked onto the floor. She once more cupped Harper's chin in her hand and forced his face upward.
"Harper, sadly I must admit that you are correct on a number of issues. Honestly I'm not even sure if my programming will allow me to do what you're doing... what needs to be done. But you are gravely incorrect on the other issues. We are NOT, EVER, going to throw your body out an airlock. You ARE NOT going to die from the withdrawal. And we WILL make the others understand. They will not hate you. I simply won't allow it. You are part of my crew too, and I will not loose you either."
Harper's eyes had dropped again by the end of her speech. Rommie made a mental note to find a good shrink after all this was over.
A silent moment passed as Rommie's words were shoved into Harper's lovely black box. Once secure, he broke off from her tender embrace of his chin and turned away.
"Fine, whatever, just stay clear of medical for now. I'll call you when Dylan is Dylan again," he distantly said as he headed back towards the room of pain.
Rommie watched the broken man's back retreat down the corridor. As he was turning the corner, her view was rudely interrupted by her hologram self.
"He's not Harper any more you know," the light coldly stated.
"Yes he is. He's just....lost." Rommie said the last word in a sad whisper.
"He's also right. I've finished running the scan's on the chemicals in his system. The withdrawal will most likely kill him," Holo-Rommie said most mechanically.
Rommie's face hardened. Sometime the coldness of her sisters really pissed her off. "Well let's use that giant computer of ours and find a way to save him!"
The hologram did it's best impersonation of a sigh. "Fine, but you know this is why you are suppose to keep military detachment from the crew. It would be better if you just accepted his imminent death. It would be easier on all of our collective systems."
Circuit after circuit popped with anger. "S-Some....Sometimes, I...you, can be so...so....so....BINARY!!" Rommie yelled as she stormed off.
*******
Medical continued to echo with Dylan's screams of pain as well as his roars of threats. Hour after hour passed. The acid gave way to electrocution. Deeper, scarier screams ripped from Dylan's throat. The pain was unbearable, but sill Fex would not leave.
Hour after hour passed. The electrocution gave way to poisoning. Harper forced a substance down's Dylan's throat. At first, it soothed his raw passageway, but as soon as it hit his stomach, pain ripped through his body starting from his stomach then reaching out to his lower back and finally spreading out to his extremities. Chills ran through his body as he felt ice filling his veins. Still, Fex endured the massive pain instead of giving in to sweet death.
Hour after hour passed. Cold sweet beamed off of Dylan's pale forehead as the poison took a greater hold on his body. Cold sweet also is a great conductor for electricity. Harper gave Dylan the combo action. The restrained prone body writhed as waves of power surged through his body.
Hour after hour passed. Dylan's screams were only primal screeches now as his voice was almost completely gone. Still Harper sent volts of electricity through the writhing body. Still the poison worked it's way farther into Dylan's system. And still, Fex refused to leave.
Hour after hour passed. It had been almost twenty four hours since Harper had first woken Dylan/Fex. Twenty four hours of constant and intense pain. This was Fex's breaking point. With a yell of pure energy Fex left Dylan's writhing, mutated body. His power storm, as Harper was calling the wave of energy that left the bodies, was much stronger than Stolic, much angrier. Cabinets all over medical flew open, counters shook and whatever beakers Stolic had left standing, now shattered into a million pieces.
Then silence.
Harper looked down at the still twitching Dylan. The one and only real Dylan. Their eyes locked for a fleeting moment. Harper felt all the hate, rage, disgust and pain from Dylan engulf his being. The cynical engineer normally didn't believe in telepathy, but right now he was a true believer. Quickly he sedated Dylan simply to get those haunting eyes off of him. Harper then contacted Rommie as promised in order to take Dylan to the recuperating room. He informed her of the poison and told her to pump his stomach to free him from the vial substance.
Once again he was left alone in the room of horrors. Like a ghost, he stood watching over his lovely ladies. Beka or Trance? Protective big sister or his golden goddess? He drudgingly pushed his Tray-O-Torture over the next bed. The thought of either women screaming broke what remained of his heart. In the eerily silence, he could actually hear the shards fall to the ground. He decided he would save the hardest for last. The one that at just the idea of hurting caused his entire soul to collapse sobbing to the floor. If he hurt her last, he would have to live with the memories for a shortest amount of time. Oh, how he envied Fex and Stolic for the sweet death that now embraced them.
Steadying his only functional hand, he gently placed the syringe against his beloved's neck. Against her soft, flawless neck. With great remorse, he injected the stimulant that would wake his sleeping beauty. A small tear escaped his blood shot eyes as he reached for the laser.
Minutes later screams could be heard echoing throughout the ship. In every corridor, in every room. Screams that only a golden goddess could produce.
TBC.........