A/N: {{{{{Reviewers}}}} Thank you! Feedback makes my day! Yes, I'm an addict.

Here y'all go. The gore is gone and replaced by even more angst.

Enjoy!

Chapter 19

Squinting her eyes even farther, Beka focused intently on the bright light that was dancing through her eyelashes. She opened her lids wider and watched as the dance gave way to the blinding intense sterile lights on the ceiling of medical.

Once more she tried to turn her head to enjoy a more interesting view of a wall or of an empty med-bed, anything other than that bright ceiling. As her head moved an millimeter to the left, sharp pain suddenly appeared in every inch of her body. Pain from the spikes that were still driven deep into her, pain from the poison that was cursing through her stomach and intestines, pain from the acid that was still eating away at her cuts, and pain from the thousands of hair-line fractures that covered every limb.

She gave up trying to find a new view and instead closed her eyes tightly. 'To sleep, to dream,' she quoted to herself. 'But in that sleep, what dreams may come?' She yearned for the darkness, for sweet unconsciousness, but the stimulate Harper had given her still fought away any hope of darkness. Instead, it actually was making her more alert, more aware of the pain that consumed her. 'Damn that Harper,' she cursed in her mind.

Her bloodshot eyes focused past the glaring light and onto the ceiling tile. 'One, two, three....' she began counting to herself. She was desperately trying to focus on anything but her pain and her solitude, the solitude that surrounded her in the quite medial room and the solitude that engulfed her mind. Velac was gone, nothing more than a painful nightmarish memory. She had control of her body and mind back....as much control as one can have when they are strapped down to a bed and impaled to the bone with spikes. Beka had her body back, but all she really wanted right now was no body at all.

'Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six. Fifty-six ceiling tiles. That knowledge will come in handy one day, I'm sure of it,' She mused to herself. 'Now what exciting activity shall I try next?'

Blinking was her answer. Open lids, close lids, open, close. Wow, the excitement! Surprisingly, that small activity brought a weak smile to Beka's weary face. She could blink her eyes!! She, Beka Valentine, had control back. She wanted to jump up and down, to run throughout the corridors screaming at the top of her lungs, simply hearing her own voice saying the things she ordered it to say. But she couldn't even move a finger without being rewarded with great amounts of pain.

'Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.....' She thought she was counting the drops of liquid from a leaky coolant pipe, but in reality she was the counting drops of her friends and her own blood. Unbeknown to her, the lack of motion in her neck was a godsend.

'One-hundred-fifty-six, one-hundred-fifty-seven, one-hundred-fifty-eight...' Her intense concentration was broken by a new thudding sound that filled the quite air. Footsteps.

Footsteps meant that someone was near, someone was coming. Footsteps meant she wouldn't be alone anymore. Fear and anguish then dashed away all her hopes as the thought that the footsteps might belong to the one person she couldn't stand to ever see again....Harper. Was he coming back to finish her off? Did he need to cause her more pain, to break more of her heart?

Her panicking mind tried to focus on other possibilities. Dylan? Trance maybe? Tyr? Maybe Harper had finished her off and it was her father coming to greet her. Maybe her mother was the owner of the mystery footsteps. Hope washed over her at the thought of seeing her mother again after all these years. She yearned to be embraced just once more by those soft and gentle arms, just as she had been so many times as a very young child. She wanted to feel the warm breath rush over her wounds before they were lovingly kissed away. 'Please, oh please,' she begged for death and for her mother.

All of her blood drained as the footsteps abruptly stopped as they neared her bed. The person was still out of view and Beka's heart was racing even faster with every agonizing moment of silence.

Finally, the tortured soul decided to take her newly regained control and take it on a test drive. "W-W-Who's th-there?" her weak voice stuttered out.

Her only response as a rapid and shocked gasp.

**********

The rush of air flew in the android's mouth creating a deafening sound of astonishment. The sight of the metal rods gleaming out of the prone form had made her artificial skin pale, but then, as sounds of conciseness arose from the tortured body, Rommie could do nothing more but gasp. Why was Beka still conscious? Why hadn't Harper sedated her like the others? Why would he leave her awake in that much pain? Quickly, Rommie scanned Beka to make sure that the alien energy readings truly were gone. They were. That was Beka, and Beka alone, strapped to that bed in complete agony.

Regaining control of her body, the ship made flesh rushed over to her XO's side. The full picture of what had been done to Beka finally hit Rommie like a Magog swarm ship. Beka's face was etched with pain, pale from blood loss and filled with fear and heartache. A quick scan of her injures made the android gasp one more time. The fractures, the poison, the cuts, and of course the spikes which were placed ever so carefully to avoid hitting anything vital. Where in the Vedrens' name did Harper learn do to this kind of damage?

Rommie once more shook herself out of her astonishment and focused on her first officer. "Beka?" She asked as she gently pushed back some loose strands of the golden blonde hair that covered the sickly pale forehead.

"R-R-Rommie. H-help.." Beka forced out through her insanely raw throat.

"Shh...It's gonna be ok Beka," Rommie whispered. "I'm here now. I'll sedated you and take care of you. It's gonna be okay."

A single tear rolled out of the blue eyes as a light of hope began to burn once more deep inside them. "T-Trance? ... Tyr?...D-D-Dylan...?" The weak voiced questioned.

"They're all ok. They are free and recuperating in the other room. You'll see them soon, just hold on," she reassured her patient as she brushed away the multitude of tears that now followed that lone rebel.

A battle was raging in the androids mind. She knew she need to sedate Beka now, but an urgent question was burning away at her circuits. Against her better judgment, she decided to poise her inquiry to Beka.

She caressed the weary face as she asked the dreaded question, "Beka, um, I hate to ask you this, but, um....where did Harper go?"

At the mere mention of the name "Harper", Beka's face turned even whiter and the small glimmer of hope faded from her watering eyes. Rommie immediately regretted asking so much from her wounded friend.

"D-Don't k-know...h-he just....l-l-left me..."she gasped out through waves of both physical and psychological pain.

"Shhh, it's ok," Rommie lied as her worry circuits went into overdrive for her engineer's well being. She looked down at Beka's desperate face and realized he would have to wait. Beka needed her now and that was what Harper wanted, for her to be here for the others.

Quickly, as to make amends for not doing it earlier, Rommie searched the tray of bloody instruments for the syringe that held the sedative. Finally finding it, she turned back to her awaiting crewmate.

"It's gonna be ok Beka. This will counteract the stimulant and put you to sleep. When you wake up, all your pain will be gone." 'All of your physical pain at least,' Rommie added to herself. She knew all of her crew would have massive psychological damage after this ordeal and no amount of medicine would be able to heal those wounds.

The hiss of the syringe was followed by a blissful sigh as Beka was finally engulfed by the sweet void of nothingness.

Rommie watched as Beka's heavy eyelids gently hid the tortured eyes. The lines of fear, pain and worry were magically air-lifted off of her sickly face.

The robotic eyes wandered down to the closest shoulder and were greeted by a shimmering spike impaled deep into the swollen and inflamed skin.

"Shit Harper, what did you do?" she cursed under her breath as she began the long and tedious process of fixing the delicate organic.

********

A second delicate organic, who was also in great need of fixing, was currently dragging himself through the cramped, dimly lit conduits that weaved deep into the heart of Andromeda.

Every inch his rail thin body moved over the smooth surfaces of the floor was a Herculean effort for the crippled human. The Buzz was disappearing from his bloodstream and his body was reacting harshly to being abandoned. A growing fever was feeding on what little strength he had left, the tremors had started to wrack his body beyond his control and the rapidly rising sense of paranoia was slowly taking over his conscious mind.

Dragging himself as fast as his failing body would allow him, he finally reached his stopping point. He really had no true destination, only to get as far away from his loved ones as possible before the withdrawal completely overtook him. And it was overtaking him now.

He struggled to rise his trembling hand up to the hatch control panel that would seal him off from any foolish rescue attempt. 'Who would want to rescue a monster like me anyways,' the depressed soul asked himself. After sealing both ends of the conduits that would soon become his grave, Harper let the tremors overtake his body as he went into a full blown seizer.

*******

The clean white medial garb that covered Beka's battered body made her look like an angel taking a short, sweet nap on a soft, fluffy cloud. Her mind was still stuck in a drug induced peaceful state and her body was now on the road to complete recovery. It had taken Rommie hours to pull out all the spikes and to stop the bleeding, even more hours to clean out all the wounds, and even more hours to pump her stomach, inject her with all the necessary medicine and nanobots and to attend to all of her fractured bones. But it was all worth it, Rommie's first officer and crew were going to be physically okay.

Mentally, well that was another matter.

Rommie stared down at all four of the peaceful sleeping faces of her "children". The white medical gowns made them look paler than they really were, but it also made them look more innocent, more fragile. Even Tyr looked less menacing with his dreadlocks gently draping over the white clothed shoulder. His eye were motionless as he existed only in his dreamless deep sleep.

Then her brown eyes fell on the one very empty bed. The empty bed that might soon hold only the corpse of her engineer. The other's should wake up in a few days as the sedatives wear off. She had done all she could for them until then and that meant that now, finally, she could focus fully on finding and fixing her Harper.

"Any luck on finding Harper or finding a way to save him from the withdrawal?" Rommie's voice boomed in the silent medical room as she began conversing with herself.

Light flickered into form in front of Rommie's position to create a slightly altered mirror image. "Yes and no...well no and yes really. I've discovered what causes the violent reaction to the drug leaving a body. The main culprits are only two of the chemicals in the mixture of Buzz. We can create a drug that will allow Harper to slowly tapered off these substances without experiencing any of the effects of Buzz. Unfortunately, I can't locate him in order for you to administer the drug to him."

"Great, just great!" Rommie began to release her frustration through power pacing. "Why is it that you can't locate him?"

The hologram kept turning her head to keep track of the ping-ponging avatar. "I believe that he turned on that signal blocker he used earlier with the Pythos."

"Shit!" Rommie wanted her engineer back and she wanted him back now. Her pacing quickened. "There has to be some way to track him down, there has to be...."

Silence once again took over medical as the two massive computers processed all of their options. After only a few minutes, the identical faces lit up with hope as an answer came into their collective mind.

"Body heat!" they said in unison.

The hologram's head tilted back and closed her eyes. "Searching..."

Rommie had halted her pacing but had began taping her foot furiously as she awaited what was hopefully good news.

The face formed from light opened her eyes and meet with Rommie's pleading face. "Got him! There is an area of extremely elevated heat in conduit 53c, level 82...." The hologram's face filled with electronic worry.

"What?" the avatar pleaded with herself.

"If that is him, the temperature level is way too elevated. I'm getting readings of 104.5 degrees and rising. You need to get the drug to him now." Worry was starting to slip into the normally cold voice of the A.I. Deep in her circuits she had to admit that that scrawny little genius had won her over. She was already missing his annoying but reassuring presence in her matrix.

Before Rommie could even demand the instructions for making the drug, her larger self had downloaded it into her mainframe. "Thanks," she needlessly said to the A.I.

Quickly, she made up a batch of the drug that could save her Harper and filled a syringe with the mixture. Before she dashed out the door, she grabbed a medical kit. With a temperature that high, he could already be experiencing some of the worst withdrawal effects. She had no idea of what shape she would find him in.

Taking one last fleeting glance at her sleeping crew, she madly rushed out of medical and began hurdling the rotting corpses that still lined her halls.

With all of her programming, she forced a whisper through her lips, hoping desperately that by some miracle her suffering engineer could hear her. "Hang on Harper, I'm coming."

*****

"You useless ego-whore!! Every second I dream of throwing your pathetic ass off my ship! You disgusting creature!" Beka's face came within inches of Harper's sweat-filled, quivering face.

"Shut up!" he screamed at the apparition as he lunged towards it. Beka fizzled out just as Harper reached her location. He ended up crashing into the nearby wall of the tight space. "AArrgghhh!" he yelled in frustration.

Beka came back to life behind him. "Look at you, so disgusting, so pathetic. And to think I saved you. God, what was I thinking?!" The ghostly being moved closer to the quivering ghostly face. "I saved your pathetic ass time and time again and look how you repay me. Not only do you leave me in agony on that medical bed, but you actually drive stakes through me unnecessarily. I should have left you to die on that dump heap I found you on. You are the biggest mistake in my life Seamus." Beka spat out the last words like she was swinging an axe through Harper's heart.

"No... Beka..." Harper reached out to the ghost, trying desperately to connect with it, but his hand just passed through the mirage and Beka vanished.

The normal paranoia of a Buzz withdrawal that he was expecting had turned ugly. The paranoia didn't play on his physical fears like it had the other times. He didn't feel his hairs standing up on the back of his neck expecting a Magog to jump from the shadows. He didn't feel the blood rush from his face as he gripped his knife tighter with each sound he hear. No, this time was different. This time the double dose of Buzz was playing off of his psychological fears. No amount of ammunition or fighting would ward of these demons. Harper now realized that the story he had heard about the man who had killed and raped his wife and daughters during a Buzz withdrawal was wrong. He hadn't mistaken them for ubers. The withdrawal had finally allowed the man to hear and see what they really thought of him. He had seen past their smiling masks and seen the real truth. Harper now realized that the girls and wife probably got what they deserved.

Harper's thoughts were interrupted by another wave of dry heaves. His body struggles to bring up something, anything, from his empty stomach. Not even bile was coming up anymore. He finally felt warm liquid rise up this throat. He coughed and spat the vial substance up. Fear ran across his insanely pale face as he saw what his stomach had produced. Blood, dark crimson blood.

"Great," he muttered sarcastically out through his raw and dry throat. He sat curled up against the cold metal wall as his body continued to shiver uncontrollably. Within seconds, the cool wall had warmed and was radiating his own heat back to him. Harper pulled his aching legs closer to him and began rocking in time to his tremors. There was not a single inch on his body that wasn't yelling out for pain killers. He wheezed as he tried to take a much needed deep breath, his ribs crackled as he did so.

A deep, loud sigh filled the small space, a sigh that did not come from Harper.

"Look at yourself boy. How much more inferior can one get?" Tyr's massive image shimmered into existence before Harper's very clouded over eyes.

"Go away," the kludge muttered as he curled himself up even tighter.

"Go away? Always trying so hard to make jokes. Now why would I take orders from a kludge like you? You are the most inferior kludge I have ever had the misfortune to meet. How many times have I had to save your pathetic life? Too think I even laid down my life for...you. That mistake shall be forever be etched in my genetic code and for that I am gravely ashamed." Tyr paused to admire his sharp, flawless bone blades. "I believe it is time I resolve that mistake." In a second, Tyr had his bone blades pressed up against Harper's neck. "Go on, beg and whine just like you always do!" Tyr yelled at the trembling boy.

Harper responded by instantly grabbing his gauss gun from his belt, charging it and pointing it at the uber's stomach. "I said...go away," he hissed through clenched teeth.

Tyr looked down at the gun. His stoic face broke with a huge grin as deep laughter leapt from his diaphragm. "Try it boy." he taunted.

Harper fired. The bullet passed right through the mirage of Tyr and lodged itself in the opposite wall. Harper's face fell.

"Can't even kill a figment of your own imagination. Truly pathetic." Tyr's ghost vanished as his heavy laugh echoed through the acoustic conduit.

Harper fell forward to his hands and knees and let his head hang from his sore shoulders. "No more..."

"No more?! What do you mean no more kluge?!" A new, yet familiar voice boomed into the conduit from hell.

Harper looked up only to realize he was no longer in the cramped space of the conduit, but was instead back on that concrete block that he spend that hellish year with the Pythos on. He was staring at the cracks in the concrete as he laid on his stomach with his bear back exposed to the stale air. One of his regular customers, a big, towering, powerful uber who had a knack for torture, was hovering above him.

"No more...please.." Harper's younger voice cracked out.

"HA! I have only started my lovely kludge." His tone was wickedly playful.

A crack filled the air as Harper felt the barbed cat-o-nine rake once more across his bloody back. A small yelp escaped his lips and a loud, hardy laughter filled the air. "Don't worry kludge, only a hundred more to go. Let's hope I don't lose count again like last time."

A tear fell from the youngster's battered face and magically landed on the metallic surface of the conduit floor.

Once more Harper lunged forward as waves after wave of bloody heaves wracked his body. He clenched his good hand into a fist as an outlet for the pain. As the heaves mercifully left him, he opened his palm to see blood gushing out from four deep puncture marks.

He gave up on being semi-upright and laid down on his side, curling up into a nice tight fetal position as tears flowed freely from his eyes.

"Mr. Harper!! What do you think you're doing!? There is a ship to fix, corpses to clean up, and where do I find you!? Here, laying around crying!!" The deep High guard's captain's voice filled the previously quite space.

"You are so useless! I could find a better engineer in trash heap. Oh wait, that's where Beka found you. How desperate she must have been to take you on. I pity her so." Dylan's face now danced in front of Harper's sideways face. "We give you food, a place to sleep and look how you repay us. By torturing us! By sharing your pain! I want your homicidal scrawny ass off my ship now! Find the closest air lock and escort yourself out."

Harper stared at the illusion as the words washed over his foggy mind. He hated to admit it, but Dylan made sense. "Ok," he whispered as he started pulling his unforgiving body towards the locked access hatch. The least he could do for the kind people who had taken care of him was to take out the garbage...that garbage being him of course.

A sweet voice interrupted his painful crawling. "Dylan! No! Wait!" Harper's golden goddess joined the delusion as she blocked his path.

A confused and straining face looked up at the wonderful being. 'Had she come to defend me,' Harper thought with much doubt. 'But what was there to defend?'

"Dylan we can't just throw him out of an airlock." A small ball of hope built up in Harper's heart. Trance continued, "The vacuum of space doesn't deserve to be littered with such trash. Plus it's too good for him, too painless. After what he did to us, he needs a nice slow agonizing death." Disgust dripped from every syllable and Harper's small ball of hope bounced away down the conduit.

"As always, you're right Trance. Let's let him die here like the weak druggy he is."

The faces of the manically laughing Dylan and Trance circled Harper's head. "Enjoy your long awaited death Mr. Harper."

"I hope the pain will engulf you like it did to us," Trance added right before the dancing heads vanished.

Harper pulled his trembling legs in even closer as he still laid on his side. He vomited up more blood, but this time he didn't even bother getting up to do it. It was too much work. Right now, breathing was even too much work.

"Look at what we created honey, just look," a new, very familiar voice brought life into the conduit.

A second deeper voice joined in, "I know dear. I just don't know where we went wrong."

The sounds of the voices Harper never thought he would hear again tore at every heart string he had left. The images of his mother and father appeared before him.

"We tried our best, we gave up our food for him, we gave up our blankets for him, we even gave up our lives for him. What a mistake that was," his mother said with regret engulfing her eyes.

"And to think of how many other people died for that...that...monster. There are just too many to count." Harper felt his father's steady gaze land on his cowering form. "Such a waste, such a waste..."

Harper reached out his trembling hand, trying once more to touch the ghost of his past. "Mom...Dad...no...please.." But his pleads fell on empty ears as the image of his long-lost parents vanished just like the others. "Such a waste.." could still be heard echoing thought the conduits.

New tears ripped themselves from his eyes. Sobs and bloody heaves shook their way out of his trembling body. His pale skin was starting to turn a nice shade of blue as he wasn't able to get enough oxygen through the vomiting and sobbing. He desperately gasped for breath between the retched heaves.

"Harper...are you in there? Hang on. I'm coming," a new muffled voice entered his world of delusions.

"N-N-No.... no more..." he gasped out between sobs. He couldn't take any more visits. He once more reached for his fully charged gauss gun.

"Harper! Answer me damn it!" The faceless voice yelled again.

"No more," he said with more control this time as the wrenching and sobs had subsided. He raised the gun up with his trembling weak arm.

The hatch creaked open and created a gentle cooling breeze as the body-heated air of the sealed conduit wafted out above the cooler air that was flowing in from outside.

"No...no more...can't...not from you Rommie," he sputtered out as he took aim.

Rommie's eyes widened as she caught her first glimpse of Harper. "HARPER!! NO!!" Rommie lunged towards the armed engineer.

"No more.." he said with determination as he pulled the trigger of the gauss gun that he had aimed at his own head.

The android had leapt just in time to knock the firing gun way from it's intended target. The bullet, just like the other, left the gun and entered the far wall, hitting nothing but air in between. She easily wrestled the smoldering gun away from the weak and trembling hand.

"HARPER!! What do you think you're doing!?"

"Killing a monster," he whispered through trembling blood coated lips.

Rommie took in the shuddering, pitiful excuse for a living being that knelled before her. Harper was now so far gone that she feared that even if he did survive they would never get him back. But still, she had to try.

"Seamus, look at me. You are NOT a monster. You are a hero! You saved me from the Pythos and you saved the crew from the Calastors. Do you understand that. You did good," she said as she drew herself closer to him. Even a foot away, she could feel the intense heat that was radiating off of him.

Cold, dead eyes looked into hers sending a wave of electronic chills up her spine.

"No, I'm a monster...I...I..." His sorrow filled voice was cut off as a massive seizer took hold of his body.

"HARPER!" Rommie yelled as she raced toward the convulsing body, catching his head before it hit the hard ground.

Quickly she ran a scan on his body and realized that he was not only having a seizer but was also going into cardiac arrest.

"HARPER HANG ON!" the terrified android yelled.

Seamus Harper's already cold, empty eyes gave Rommie one last long gaze before they rolled up into his skull. Rommie watched in horror as his shattered heart finally gave up on it's short and tedious battle with life and stopped beating.

TBC........