Chapter 2: This is your life
Sweat slowly beaded at Dylan's temples and the throb in his palm matched the pounding in his head. The smell of stale blood and sweet coffee filled his nostrils as he gazed into the cool blue of Seamus Harpers eyes that stared at him with an odd menacing calm, his hand resting on the table just inches away from his already charged weapon. Dylan swallowed hard ready to jump at his own gun, his muscles tensed but his eyes never wavered from Harpers.
"Let's see, I don't know where to begin." Dylan said with a surprisingly steady voice. His voice covering how he really felt, covering for how truly scared he was that this might end in blood.
"How about the beginning? I hear that's always a good place to start." Harper said with tight lipped sarcasm, his fingers twitching slightly.
"Well, your name is Seamus Zelazney Harper and you were born on earth in a place called Boston" Dylan said but before he could settle into the story Harper reached for his gun with lightening speed. Dylan kicked back in his chair toppling over backwards just in time to see the blue discharge of harpers huge gun zoom past his head and hit the metal door behind him leaving a huge smoldering hole. The sound of the gun firing almost sounded like a cannon firing and it made Dylan's ears ring. Dylan rolled to his feet and lunged behind the couch, landing hard on his hip and wincing. Harper stood up quickly, his face stoic and solid. He looked rigidly calm as if he had done this so many times that he knew just how everything would end, as if this scene was so redundant it was boring.
"You didn't let me finish my story." Dylan said wiping his forehead and trying to figure out what he was going to do, he was cornered. Dylan grabbed for his force lance but his side holster was empty.
"Vee" he murmured remembering how he had let his guard down when she attended to his wound, Leaning over to comfort her, giving her the best opportunity to take his weapon. He swore under his breath.
"I didn't like your story. It didn't start with once upon a time."
"Well, you didn't have a once upon a time sorta life. You had a hard life." Dylan said peeking up from behind the couch and then quickly ducking back down as two shots came his way making the walls crumble and plaster rain down on him reveling the rusty metal frame of there house.
"You weren't very open about your past but from what I know you had to struggle constantly for survival against maggog raids and neitzchean attacks. You had to live through the death of your cousins' because they were infested with maggog. Your family had to make the decision to kill them before the maggog hatched inside of them and that has always haunted you. You had to live through the death of your parents who died protecting you and from the age of 12 you lived by yourself, constantly running away from neitzchean slavers who wanted your intellect...but you refused to be caught, because then your parents death would've be in vein. Finally you got a break when a Bobby Jenson and a Miss Beka Valentine offered you a job that would take you away from earth and you took it. You got away from that place." Dylan said in almost one breath. He took the chance of peeking back up over the couch and he could see Harper deep in thought. Dylan decided to keep going.
"You discovered that bobby was lying to Beka, smuggling weapons behind her back. She kicked bobby off and let you stay. You became like family, like brother and sister. There were other crew members too. There was a maggog believe it or not." He could hear Harper scoff which made him smile. It was a reaction the old Harper would have made.
"His name was rev and he was a priest. You were always leery of him but you learned to respect him and to even care for him. Then there was Trance, A purple girl with a tail, no one knows who she is or where she came from. She was mysterious and you took a liking to her immediately. You two were like sibling, quibbling over little things but sticking up for each other when it counted." Dylan stood now in full view and Harper immediately positioned his gun at his head but he didn't fire.
"I remember something else. Something you never told me but I picked up on. You had a rabbit's foot. You took it everywhere, it was your good luck charm and before every fight you'd rub it between your fingers. It meant a lot to you. You never talked about it but I could tell from the look in your eye when you touched it that it had a deep, deep meaning." Dylan said and Harper looked at Vee who was leisurely sipping her coffee behind the counter. She smiled at him warmly and nodded.
"You remember some of this don't you?" Dylan said stepping from around the couch slowly.
"In my dreams..." Harper whispered almost so low that Dylan didn't catch it. his eyes glistened with sadness. But his stance and body language did not change.
"Beka agreed to perform a job for a nightsider called Genetex. The job was to pull an old commonwealth star ship away from the event horizon of a blackhole and to loot it for all it's worth. When you pulled the ship away and boarded it...that's when you met me, Dylan." He emphasized his name hoping that it might register in harpers mind but he had no such luck.
"I hear you mutter these things in your dreams Zee. A purple girl, a magog you weren't afraid of. A huge ship with that insignia." She said pointing to the patch Dylan had on his sweater.
"Give him a chance. Maybe this will help you get your memory back. How can it hurt you? If you don't like how it's going you can always shoot him." She said smoothly. Her silky hands gently running down the sides of his face. She lowered his gun and smiled at him and he struggled to smile back. He looked like his greatest battle was being waged in his mind. He didn't know what to believe, what was a memory or just a dream, what was fantastical and what was real. Harper relented under Vee's touch and slowly made his way to the table where he straddled it once again. Dylan made his way to his former seat, picking it up off the floor and sitting in it hesitantly. Vee sat just inches from Harper, she gently slid the gun out of his tense hand and holstered it for him. He didn't protest. She then rested her chocolate brown hands on Harpers pale hand and he seemed to relax even more. She looked like she was his glue, his sanity and his consious.
"Let's try this again." She said. Dylan nodded and began again adding even more detail this time to what he knew of Harper's life. Harper seemed to remember some things but mostly everything drew a blank. All he could remember was what he had seen in his dreams, a purple girl, a big ship, and a friendly magog but nothing more. The images he had of them were just that, nothing more, no feelings, he couldn't remember there voices or the things that they had done, just old snapshots of things he thought were figments of his imagination until today. Dylan finally got to the end of his story and waited for Harpers reaction eagerly.
"What happened? how did we lose track of each other?" Harper asked seeming to yearn for the life he had on the andromeda, as an engineer. His eyes lit up when Dylan had told him he was the fixit man, running around with a tool belt, a genius able to fix and build anything.
"You and I went on a mission to infiltrate one of the Drago Katsov bases where they were holding Tyr prisoner. You accessed the main computer and downloaded key battle plans and ship designs and uploaded a nasty virus. While I searched the computer screens for Tyr's cell which was easy to find. Everything was running smoothly, it was easy. To easy. We got Tyr and were running to the evac point when Tyr suddenly stopped in his tracks. I still remember that moment. The smile on his face." Dylan closed his eyes. The events playing out in front of his eyes. The violence.
"I could see Beka in the distance...waving her arms frantically screaming. "Dylan it's a Trap! Dylan it's a setup!" I looked back to see Tyr sink into the dense brush with a smirk lingering on his lips. We ran as hard and as fast as we could while Beka and Trance laid down cover fire. Bullets rained down on us coming from all directions. It wasn't long before they captured Beka and Trance and finally surrounded us. We stood back to back you and I, our weapons depleted. Tyr re-emerged from his hiding spot and I asked him why but all he did was laugh. He bestowed upon Beka and Trance the honor of choosing which one us to save...he said one of us had to die so the other may live." Dylan swallowed hard running his hands over his face to gather himself.
"That moment went on forever, their eyes welling up with tears as they looked back and forth between us. Finally trance spoke up, she had made a decision. God I can still hear Beka screaming, fighting against the neitzcheans that held her back, calling for you over and over and right there with your back against mine, without any warning... I could hear a shot fired, I could feel your weight leaning heavy against me, your breath labored as you slid down, crumpling to the ground as if you body was void of bones." Dylan said, tears stinging his eyes.
"After that they let us go...dragging your body with them. There was nothing we could do Harper...we thought you were dead...there was just too many of them." Dylan took a deep breath and continued staring at his hands.
"After that day Beka was never the same, she withdrew from everyone, she never forgave trance for what she did." Dylan said, looking up to see harper's wavering eyes.
"But you kept looking for him...even when you thought he was dead..." Vee asked questionably.
"I thought you were dead up until 6 months later. We once again got into another entanglement with the Drago Katsov. We were winning when a ship we had never seen before appeared and fired on us with devastating weapons and amazing speed. It could also tesseract through space seeming to disappear and reappear at will. That's when I knew you were alive...only you would have the knowledge and sheer genius to build something like that. That's when I vowed to find you, that's when beka came back to life and now she's waiting anxiously on the andromeda for me to signal her, to tell her whether I found you or not."
"What If don't want to be found? What if I don't want to remember?" Harper said balling his fists.
"That life is gone now...what good would it be to remember it now?...just added torture!." Harper said abruptly getting up from his chair.
"That life isn't gone. You can have it back! Just come with me and I'll show you that there is still a place up there for you!" Dylan said standing as well, pointing to the up to the orbiting andromeda, almost pleading for Harper to understand and to just see how much he is wanted. He couldn't lose him after he had just found him. Harper gazed at the clock on the wall, Dylan hadn't noticed its ticking until he had seen it then suddenly the sound of time slipping away drummed in his head agonizingly.
"I've got work to do. Harper said walking over to his coat.
"If I come back and your still here then we'll talk." He said. Without so much as zipping up his coat or putting on his hat he walked out into the blistering cold, closing the door solidly behind him. Vee looked after him in shock. Dylan didn't know what to make of the situation. He looked to Vee for some answers but she quickly got up from her seat and ran into her bedroom, leaving Dylan to his thoughts. He had never imagined Harper not wanted to come back. The andromeda was his home...wasn't it? Dylan pressed his neck communicator and was about to tell Beka that he had found Harper but he had changed when suddenly Vee reentered the room dressed in a black tight jump suit that hugged her every curve. She finished zipping up the collar that snugly covered her neck and swept her hair back into a clamp. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a necklace, it's silver chain dangling from her hand refracting the light. She squeezed it tight. Then she lovingly put it around her neck. There hung the rabbit's foot, a startling white fluff against her black clothes. She rubbed it between her fingers gazing down upon it.
"I don't know exactly what it means but I could feel that it was important, special in some way. He gave it to me for luck and protection. He told me to carry it with me always, and when I was about to face overwhelming numbers and when fate and chance were against me, to hold it in my hand and squeeze it tight. I never knew what compelled him to tell me that...what compelled him to give it to me..." She said never meeting Dylan's eyes. She just stared at the rabbit's foot. She finally inhaled loudly and went about the task of strapping guns to her thighs and on either side of her chest. Then she commenced to strap knives on her legs. She sunk her feet into boots that ran half way up her shins and buckled each one with a loud click. Finally She grabbed her flowing cloak quickly wrapping it around her in one movement making her cape billow forth majestically before falling all around her. She lifted the hood over her dark locks and stood in front of the door.
"Catch" she said tossing Dylan his forcelance with a flick of her wrist.
"He's not gonna come back unless we bring him back." She said with a snarl.
TBC
Sweat slowly beaded at Dylan's temples and the throb in his palm matched the pounding in his head. The smell of stale blood and sweet coffee filled his nostrils as he gazed into the cool blue of Seamus Harpers eyes that stared at him with an odd menacing calm, his hand resting on the table just inches away from his already charged weapon. Dylan swallowed hard ready to jump at his own gun, his muscles tensed but his eyes never wavered from Harpers.
"Let's see, I don't know where to begin." Dylan said with a surprisingly steady voice. His voice covering how he really felt, covering for how truly scared he was that this might end in blood.
"How about the beginning? I hear that's always a good place to start." Harper said with tight lipped sarcasm, his fingers twitching slightly.
"Well, your name is Seamus Zelazney Harper and you were born on earth in a place called Boston" Dylan said but before he could settle into the story Harper reached for his gun with lightening speed. Dylan kicked back in his chair toppling over backwards just in time to see the blue discharge of harpers huge gun zoom past his head and hit the metal door behind him leaving a huge smoldering hole. The sound of the gun firing almost sounded like a cannon firing and it made Dylan's ears ring. Dylan rolled to his feet and lunged behind the couch, landing hard on his hip and wincing. Harper stood up quickly, his face stoic and solid. He looked rigidly calm as if he had done this so many times that he knew just how everything would end, as if this scene was so redundant it was boring.
"You didn't let me finish my story." Dylan said wiping his forehead and trying to figure out what he was going to do, he was cornered. Dylan grabbed for his force lance but his side holster was empty.
"Vee" he murmured remembering how he had let his guard down when she attended to his wound, Leaning over to comfort her, giving her the best opportunity to take his weapon. He swore under his breath.
"I didn't like your story. It didn't start with once upon a time."
"Well, you didn't have a once upon a time sorta life. You had a hard life." Dylan said peeking up from behind the couch and then quickly ducking back down as two shots came his way making the walls crumble and plaster rain down on him reveling the rusty metal frame of there house.
"You weren't very open about your past but from what I know you had to struggle constantly for survival against maggog raids and neitzchean attacks. You had to live through the death of your cousins' because they were infested with maggog. Your family had to make the decision to kill them before the maggog hatched inside of them and that has always haunted you. You had to live through the death of your parents who died protecting you and from the age of 12 you lived by yourself, constantly running away from neitzchean slavers who wanted your intellect...but you refused to be caught, because then your parents death would've be in vein. Finally you got a break when a Bobby Jenson and a Miss Beka Valentine offered you a job that would take you away from earth and you took it. You got away from that place." Dylan said in almost one breath. He took the chance of peeking back up over the couch and he could see Harper deep in thought. Dylan decided to keep going.
"You discovered that bobby was lying to Beka, smuggling weapons behind her back. She kicked bobby off and let you stay. You became like family, like brother and sister. There were other crew members too. There was a maggog believe it or not." He could hear Harper scoff which made him smile. It was a reaction the old Harper would have made.
"His name was rev and he was a priest. You were always leery of him but you learned to respect him and to even care for him. Then there was Trance, A purple girl with a tail, no one knows who she is or where she came from. She was mysterious and you took a liking to her immediately. You two were like sibling, quibbling over little things but sticking up for each other when it counted." Dylan stood now in full view and Harper immediately positioned his gun at his head but he didn't fire.
"I remember something else. Something you never told me but I picked up on. You had a rabbit's foot. You took it everywhere, it was your good luck charm and before every fight you'd rub it between your fingers. It meant a lot to you. You never talked about it but I could tell from the look in your eye when you touched it that it had a deep, deep meaning." Dylan said and Harper looked at Vee who was leisurely sipping her coffee behind the counter. She smiled at him warmly and nodded.
"You remember some of this don't you?" Dylan said stepping from around the couch slowly.
"In my dreams..." Harper whispered almost so low that Dylan didn't catch it. his eyes glistened with sadness. But his stance and body language did not change.
"Beka agreed to perform a job for a nightsider called Genetex. The job was to pull an old commonwealth star ship away from the event horizon of a blackhole and to loot it for all it's worth. When you pulled the ship away and boarded it...that's when you met me, Dylan." He emphasized his name hoping that it might register in harpers mind but he had no such luck.
"I hear you mutter these things in your dreams Zee. A purple girl, a magog you weren't afraid of. A huge ship with that insignia." She said pointing to the patch Dylan had on his sweater.
"Give him a chance. Maybe this will help you get your memory back. How can it hurt you? If you don't like how it's going you can always shoot him." She said smoothly. Her silky hands gently running down the sides of his face. She lowered his gun and smiled at him and he struggled to smile back. He looked like his greatest battle was being waged in his mind. He didn't know what to believe, what was a memory or just a dream, what was fantastical and what was real. Harper relented under Vee's touch and slowly made his way to the table where he straddled it once again. Dylan made his way to his former seat, picking it up off the floor and sitting in it hesitantly. Vee sat just inches from Harper, she gently slid the gun out of his tense hand and holstered it for him. He didn't protest. She then rested her chocolate brown hands on Harpers pale hand and he seemed to relax even more. She looked like she was his glue, his sanity and his consious.
"Let's try this again." She said. Dylan nodded and began again adding even more detail this time to what he knew of Harper's life. Harper seemed to remember some things but mostly everything drew a blank. All he could remember was what he had seen in his dreams, a purple girl, a big ship, and a friendly magog but nothing more. The images he had of them were just that, nothing more, no feelings, he couldn't remember there voices or the things that they had done, just old snapshots of things he thought were figments of his imagination until today. Dylan finally got to the end of his story and waited for Harpers reaction eagerly.
"What happened? how did we lose track of each other?" Harper asked seeming to yearn for the life he had on the andromeda, as an engineer. His eyes lit up when Dylan had told him he was the fixit man, running around with a tool belt, a genius able to fix and build anything.
"You and I went on a mission to infiltrate one of the Drago Katsov bases where they were holding Tyr prisoner. You accessed the main computer and downloaded key battle plans and ship designs and uploaded a nasty virus. While I searched the computer screens for Tyr's cell which was easy to find. Everything was running smoothly, it was easy. To easy. We got Tyr and were running to the evac point when Tyr suddenly stopped in his tracks. I still remember that moment. The smile on his face." Dylan closed his eyes. The events playing out in front of his eyes. The violence.
"I could see Beka in the distance...waving her arms frantically screaming. "Dylan it's a Trap! Dylan it's a setup!" I looked back to see Tyr sink into the dense brush with a smirk lingering on his lips. We ran as hard and as fast as we could while Beka and Trance laid down cover fire. Bullets rained down on us coming from all directions. It wasn't long before they captured Beka and Trance and finally surrounded us. We stood back to back you and I, our weapons depleted. Tyr re-emerged from his hiding spot and I asked him why but all he did was laugh. He bestowed upon Beka and Trance the honor of choosing which one us to save...he said one of us had to die so the other may live." Dylan swallowed hard running his hands over his face to gather himself.
"That moment went on forever, their eyes welling up with tears as they looked back and forth between us. Finally trance spoke up, she had made a decision. God I can still hear Beka screaming, fighting against the neitzcheans that held her back, calling for you over and over and right there with your back against mine, without any warning... I could hear a shot fired, I could feel your weight leaning heavy against me, your breath labored as you slid down, crumpling to the ground as if you body was void of bones." Dylan said, tears stinging his eyes.
"After that they let us go...dragging your body with them. There was nothing we could do Harper...we thought you were dead...there was just too many of them." Dylan took a deep breath and continued staring at his hands.
"After that day Beka was never the same, she withdrew from everyone, she never forgave trance for what she did." Dylan said, looking up to see harper's wavering eyes.
"But you kept looking for him...even when you thought he was dead..." Vee asked questionably.
"I thought you were dead up until 6 months later. We once again got into another entanglement with the Drago Katsov. We were winning when a ship we had never seen before appeared and fired on us with devastating weapons and amazing speed. It could also tesseract through space seeming to disappear and reappear at will. That's when I knew you were alive...only you would have the knowledge and sheer genius to build something like that. That's when I vowed to find you, that's when beka came back to life and now she's waiting anxiously on the andromeda for me to signal her, to tell her whether I found you or not."
"What If don't want to be found? What if I don't want to remember?" Harper said balling his fists.
"That life is gone now...what good would it be to remember it now?...just added torture!." Harper said abruptly getting up from his chair.
"That life isn't gone. You can have it back! Just come with me and I'll show you that there is still a place up there for you!" Dylan said standing as well, pointing to the up to the orbiting andromeda, almost pleading for Harper to understand and to just see how much he is wanted. He couldn't lose him after he had just found him. Harper gazed at the clock on the wall, Dylan hadn't noticed its ticking until he had seen it then suddenly the sound of time slipping away drummed in his head agonizingly.
"I've got work to do. Harper said walking over to his coat.
"If I come back and your still here then we'll talk." He said. Without so much as zipping up his coat or putting on his hat he walked out into the blistering cold, closing the door solidly behind him. Vee looked after him in shock. Dylan didn't know what to make of the situation. He looked to Vee for some answers but she quickly got up from her seat and ran into her bedroom, leaving Dylan to his thoughts. He had never imagined Harper not wanted to come back. The andromeda was his home...wasn't it? Dylan pressed his neck communicator and was about to tell Beka that he had found Harper but he had changed when suddenly Vee reentered the room dressed in a black tight jump suit that hugged her every curve. She finished zipping up the collar that snugly covered her neck and swept her hair back into a clamp. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a necklace, it's silver chain dangling from her hand refracting the light. She squeezed it tight. Then she lovingly put it around her neck. There hung the rabbit's foot, a startling white fluff against her black clothes. She rubbed it between her fingers gazing down upon it.
"I don't know exactly what it means but I could feel that it was important, special in some way. He gave it to me for luck and protection. He told me to carry it with me always, and when I was about to face overwhelming numbers and when fate and chance were against me, to hold it in my hand and squeeze it tight. I never knew what compelled him to tell me that...what compelled him to give it to me..." She said never meeting Dylan's eyes. She just stared at the rabbit's foot. She finally inhaled loudly and went about the task of strapping guns to her thighs and on either side of her chest. Then she commenced to strap knives on her legs. She sunk her feet into boots that ran half way up her shins and buckled each one with a loud click. Finally She grabbed her flowing cloak quickly wrapping it around her in one movement making her cape billow forth majestically before falling all around her. She lifted the hood over her dark locks and stood in front of the door.
"Catch" she said tossing Dylan his forcelance with a flick of her wrist.
"He's not gonna come back unless we bring him back." She said with a snarl.
TBC