Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to "Andromeda" or its characters. I am simply borrowing them, I swear!
A/N: Thanks for the reviews!
Title: "The Girl Who Hated All"
Summary: When the Andromeda comes across a very young, and very strange young girl, they have no choice but to allow her to come with them. But when strange events begin to occur, there is only one suspect, and they can't seem to get rid of her.
Genre: Supernatural/Horror
Rating: PG-13 for language and supernatural occurrences.
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Chapter Five
Harper was sitting in one of the chairs in the Maru. He was extremely anxious to begin looking over Agrona's book. Luckily, no one could notice his energized fidgeting, or else they would have begun asking him questions about what had happened on Mykenae. Looking back on the experience, Harper felt as though none of it had actually happened; he could feel the lump in his jacket, which told him that it all had, in fact, been reality.
He inhaled deeply, looking up at the ceiling. This was all so stressful: searching for evidence and now having to read a huge, thick book, filled with all sorts of things that could kill him in less than a second . . . he simply wasn't cut out for that kind of pressure.
His leg began to jiggle in that obnoxious, hyperactive way that always told you that you were either very nervous or very excited. Harper didn't need his leg to tell him how nervous he was; he could feel it in his gut. It was that type of feeling that one often experience when they were, say, up in a tall tree, peering down at the ground, not completely focusing on, but still knowing, the fact that you could fall . . . it was a supernatural feeling, but a dangerous one, nonetheless.
Or, it could be the feeling someone gets when they feel that someone is watching them. Harper turned around in his seat, looking at everyone around him; they all seemed to be focused on where they were going, not him. Whatever, it made him less uptight to know that they weren't staring at him. After all, he had gotten himself lost, and God knows what else . . .
Harper's turned back around, and stared directly ahead, but not really looking at anything; he was too absorbed in his thoughts. 'I wonder if Agrona knew what I was doing. I mean, she does have those telepathic powers, but doesn't she need the spell book to use them? Or maybe, she memorized all of them. No, no way. No one, no matter what powers they possessed could ever memorize a book this big, without getting the spells mixed up.'
He rubbed at his neck, attempting to relieve some of the built-up tension. 'Spells . . . which reminds me, that spell on the tree; I wonder what it did. I probably shouldn't have read it aloud. I mean, that was a real smart thing to do. I wonder if that spell is in here.' He reached up and slid his hand into his jacket, placing his hand on the cover of the book. 'Oh well, what does it matter? I'd never be able to remember it. I guess whatever I did, I'll just have to let happen.'
"Harper, come on." Harper's head jerked upright at the sound of his name. He had been so immersed in his own mind that he had not noticed that the Maru had arrived at the Andromeda.
Harper removed his hand from his jacket and quickly unbuckled himself. "Comin' Boss," he replied, flashing Beka a small grin before standing up and following her out of the Maru.
As soon as he set foot on the Andromeda, Harper could feel a sudden change in temperature. He crossed his arms tightly, so as to keep his body heat in. He didn't know why he felt so cold; it had come on so quickly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Agrona approaching him. He spun around to face her. "Um, hi Agrona," he greeted, forcing a smile.
"Hello Mr. Harper," she replied, a small smile plastered upon her face. "Where were you?" she asked, with general interest, and cocking her head.
"Out," he replied, shortly. He really did not want to talk to her. All he wanted was so get away from her, and the sooner, the better.
"Ms. Valentine said that you went back to Mykenae," she said, her smile unfolding into a toothy grin.
'Beka, I'm going to kill you,' he thought, before replying the young girl standing in front of him. "Did she now? Well, Ms. Valentine doesn't know what she's talking about."
Agrona's smile faded slightly, and she raised an eyebrow. "Oh." She sounded disappointed, and her eyes began to drift towards Harper's chest. Harper noticed this immediately, and folded his arms tighter, hoping that she wouldn't notice the book stashed beneath his arms.
"Well, I gotta run," he said quickly, turning around and walking down the hall towards the Machine Shop. As he got further and further from the Agrona, he could feel his body begin to warm up. His arms unfolded and he looked back at Agrona. Her eyes were locked upon his. She was no longer smiling and her eyes were filled with anger and hatred.
Harper turned his head as an unsettling chill was sent up his spine. He did not like the look that that kid had given him, and he noticed that the closer he got to that little girl, the colder he seemed to get. It was like those old stories on Earth; whenever a ghost would pass by someone, the person would feel a chill sweep by. A ghost . . . perhaps that was what Agrona was? He doubted it; as she was pretty young, and seemed very much alive.
Harper entered his Machine Shop, closing the door behind him. As he walked over to a table, he pulled the book out from his jacket. He sat down on a stool, running his hand over the blood red hexagon. He opened the book to the first page: Chapter One. "Great, it doesn't even have a 'Table of Contents'?" he whispered, rolling his eyes. "Great, just great.
"'Chapter One-The Rules to Spell Casting.'" He paused. 'Don't I already have that?' he thought, reaching into his pants' pocket and pulling out the piece of paper. 'Yeah, thought so.' He continued to read in a low voice. "'Rule One: Do not use the same spell in order to raise your skill' . . . blah, blah, blah, I know . . ." His voice trailed off. "Well, since I already know all of this . . ." He flipped past chapter one. "'Chapter Two-"
His voice was cut off at the sound of footsteps approaching the door. He slammed the book shut and shoved it beneath one of his old tee shirts that he (thankfully) had left in the machine shop a few days prior.
Harper grabbed a random piece of machinery and began inspecting it as the doors to the room slid open. He sucked in his breath. 'Please don't be Agrona, please don't be Agrona,' he thought over and over in his mind.
"Mr. Harper?"
'Oh, wonderful,' he thought, sarcastically. Before turning around in his stool to look at her, Harper cast a small glance at his tee shirt, hoping she didn't know about the book. "Yes?" he said, feigning general politeness.
"Whatcha doin'?" she asked, her hands folded neatly in front of her.
"Just . . . working," he replied, gesturing towards the machine part.
Agrona nodded. "I asked Captain Hunt where you had been," she announced, attempting to look Harper directly in the eye.
Harper's eyes danced around the room, too flustered to make eye-contact with Agrona. "Really, and what did he say?"
"That you were on Mykenae, like Ms. Valentine said. Why did you lie to me?" Her eyes flashed, but the small smile remained on her face.
'Uh oh,' thought Harper. It was going to take a quick, and believable, lie to get out of this one. "Well, Agrona, I didn't want to say anything to you because . . ." 'Think, Harper, think!' "Because . . . I thought that you would be too upset to even think about your planet again." Whoops, a slight slip of the tongue. "I mean, your home planet." There, that was a pretty good lie and cover-up. Besides, it wasn't a complete lie; he didn't want to make her upset . . . oh, what good was it to lie to himself? It was a lie, no mistake there.
"Huh," said Agrona. It was obvious that she didn't believe Harper. "Well, why did you go back there in the first place?"
Oh good, another tough question. "Because, Agrona," Her name tasted like poison in his mouth, "I accidentally left something on the planet. Remember, when I first saw you, I tripped and fell? Well, it turned out that I had dropped something."
Agrona stared at him, her green eyes glistening from the lights in the ceiling. "Oh, okay," she said.
"Why were you so curious, Agrona?" Harper asked. Now it was his turn to hit her with the trick question.
"I was just wondering . . ." she replied, turning around. "After all, it was my planet. But you would know all about that, wouldn't you Harper?" She turned her head and gave him a knowing glare, before walking out of the room, the doors closing quietly behind her.
Harper shuddered. His body temperature must have dropped, at least, two degrees simply from sitting there, having a conversation with that girl, but that was not the reason he had trembled. 'Oh, my God, she knows. Dear God, how did she know?' Harper's teeth began to chatter. "Oh God," he groaned, lying his head down on the table.
He looked over at his tee shirt, where the book was hidden. From the angle he was at, he could see, but just barely, the word "Wrath" appearing from underneath the shirt. His head shot up. 'She couldn't have . . . have seen it, could she?' he thought, anxiously. 'She's definitely short enough . . . oh, DAMMIT!' He screamed the word in his mind.
'What the hell am I going to do now?' he asked himself. 'She knows that I have the book, and if she gets it, she'll kill us all. Good going, Harper.'
He stood up, taking a hold of the book and wrapping it with the tee shirt. 'I'm never going to leave it alone,' he decided. 'I don't care if I never have to sleep again; I won't leave it alone . . . I can't.'
Harper glanced at the door, and then unwrapped the book. "Where was I?" he said, aloud, flipping back to Chapter Two. "'Chapter Two-Common Spells . . .'" He read aloud so as to not miss anything, but was careful to keep his voice down, so that no one would hear him.
After two hours of reading, he had only reached Chapter Five. He yawned; reading always made him tired. "'Chap-Chapter Five,'" he read, forcing down a yawn. "'Bewitching.'" He paused for a moment as he stretched his arms. "'Remember, there is only magic where . . . where . . .'" He yawned again. "'Where there is belief. If one does not believe that you can bewitch you, then bewitch you, they can't.'"
Harper noticed a footnote scribbled in next to that sentence. Most likely from Agrona's mother. "'Remember, everyone on Mykenae is very superstitious; they believe that all can curse them, and that they can curse all.'"
Harper's eyes narrowed. "Well then, at least the others are safe, seeing as they don't believe that Agrona's a witch." His eyes were straining as he searched for the last sentence he had read. "Why am I so tired?" he moaned, rubbing at his eyes. "I know that I've slept plenty over my adventure to Mykenae."
Nevertheless, he could feel his eyelids begin to get heavier and heavier. He stood up and began to pace about the room. 'Okay, no sleeping. None. As soon as you go to sleep, Agrona will snatch the book, and you'll be left with a slow, painful death. Just like that Dijon guy.'
Harper continued to pace about the machine shop, thinking of anything and everything that would keep him awake: Magog, Nietzscheans . . . whatever popped into his brain.
"What is he doing?" inquired Dylan. He and Beka were watching Harper pace back and forth in the Machine Shop, mumbling something.
Beka shrugged. "I don't know; he hasn't really been the same since, you know, Agrona came on board."
Dylan raised his eyebrows. "I have noticed that. It wasn't like him to just take off and leave. What do you suppose is the matter with him?"
Beka shrugged again. "No idea; I'll go talk to him." Dylan nodded at her, and she turned to leave. Dylan turned away from the screen, and the screen went black.
Beka strolled down the hallway, towards the machine shop. As she approached the closed doors, she knocked loudly. "Harper?" she called. "Can I come in?"
She heard a shuffling of papers and hurried footsteps before Harper replied. "Uhh, yeah, sure. Come on in." The doors slid open, revealing Harper, sitting at a table, inspecting a machine part. "Hey Boss," he greeted, not turning his head. "What's up?"
"Nothing really. Dylan and I were just wondering what you were . . . doing in here."
"Oh, uhh, nothing special; just examining stuff."
"Oh." Beka bit her lip. Harper was lying to her; she had just seen him pacing frantically around the room, reading some book. She looked at the table; the book was gone. Her eyes narrowed. "Harper," she began gently, "are you sure that there's nothing you want to tell me?"
She heard Harper inhale deeply. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Thanks though."
"Okay then, I'll see you later." She began to turn around. Harper lifted his hand at her in a half-wave. She turned completely around, nearly tripping over the small figure that had been beneath her. "Oh! Oh, Agrona, I'm sorry; I didn't see you there."
Harper's ears perked up at the sound of that name. "It's okay, Ms. Valentine," replied Agrona, kindly. "I was just gonna talk to Harper."
Beka nodded at her and began to leave, but stopped in the doorway. She wanted to see why Harper was so freaked out by that little girl. "Hi, Harper," greeted Agrona. Harper did not move nor respond. He simply stared at the table in front of him. "You know," continued Agrona, "that's the same part that you were looking at two hours ago. Is there something wrong with it?"
Harper squeezed his eyes shut. 'Get away from me, little god dammed demon,' he thought, fighting every urge in his body to scream it at her. "Yeah, there is."
Agrona walked up behind Harper, so that she was not even a foot from his turned back. "But you weren't working on it earlier. You were pacing around the room."
'Little god dammed demon,' he thought again. "I was a little stressed about it, okay?" he replied, shortly.
Agrona approached him and placed her small hands on his back. Harper froze; her hands were like two red-hot irons pressing into his skin. How could someone who made him feel so cold whenever she came too close also burn him?
Harper bit his tongue, not allowing himself to cry aloud. If anyone heard him, they would force him to tell them everything, and he couldn't do that to them . . .
His eyes welded up with tears. The heat was searing through his shirt and scorching his skin. He could literally feel the heat coming from her fingers. "A-Agrona?" he stammered.
"Yeah?" she replied, pressing even harder onto his back.
"Is-is there some reason you w-wanted to talk to-to me?"
"Umm, oh no. No reason." Agrona released her hands from his back. "Bye." She turned around and walked out of the room, not noticing Beka, who was leaning against the wall outside of the Machine Shop.
Beka watched Agrona walk down the hallway and round the corner, out of sight. She peeked in through the open doors and looked at the engineer. She gasped at what she saw; Harper's shirt had two large burns etched into the fabric, where Agrona's hands had been.
She wanted to ask what had happened, but jumped back as the doors slid shut. Beka pressed her hand against the doors. What the hell had just happened? Was Harper right about Agrona? No, it was impossible; Agrona was just a little girl. The marks on his shirt must've gotten there when Harper was on Mykenae. Yeah, that was it.
Beka turned and began to walk away from the doors. She shook her head. Harper's paranoia was spreading to her . . .
Or was he being paranoid?
To Be Continued . . .
A/N: Okay, there's chapter five . . . now review, please.