TITLE: The Unintended
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing from the Andromeda series, I'm just borrowing.

CHAPTER EIGHT Early Stages
""Beginnings are easy, but only to those who have been to the end.""
Emperor Jyntin Illiji
CY 875

"Do we have engines yet?"

"It will take a further half an hour," Andromeda told to a livid Dylan.

"That's it, I'm taking the Maru," Beka announced, shaking her head."If we wait any longer we'll never find him again."

Trance stood in her way. "Beka, you can't." Dylan was pleased for once he didn't have to be voice of reason.

"She's right, Beka," Tyr agreed. "The Barbell isn't as powerful as the Andromeda but the Maru is no match for her. You won't stand a chance."

Beka stood huffily, knowing they were right. It was just that she felt so useless, and she hated sitting around on her ass doing nothing while Harper was in trouble. The others knew exactly how she felt. "God, why does this crap always happen to Harper? He can never catch a break," she said, both angry and sad at the same time.

Harper writhed in anguish at the unrelenting nightmare that had gripped his slumber. Images, scenes and words brutally assaulted his sleeping mind. He saw people - Beka, Tyr and Rommie. Rayne was in there too talking to an older man he didn't recognise and a skinny woman with brown hair. At first they were all simply emotionless pictures, but as the images flashed quickly by they became interlaced with images of each of them in agony, screaming and sobbing, pleading for their lives.

The other side of the mirror, Doctor Gaou watched her temporary patient in confusion. The readings she was getting from his cerebral monitors were off the chart.

"What's going on?" Rayne asked. He'd been lurking in the background when Harper had begun to show obvious signs of distress, and the monitors started bleeping madly.

Gaou was flustered as she tried to recallibrate the machines. "I...I don't know!"

"Is he dying?" Rayne demanded. He didn't like not knowing what was happening. It stripped him of the illusion of control.

"He's showing massive cerebral activity, but this much can't even occur when a human is awake, let alone during sleep! I don't understand it."

"Wake him up," Rayne ordered, but it didn't matter. The distressed man stopped thrashing and was still. The frantic beeping of the monitors melted back to a steady pace and all was quiet. Harper was awake.

After the panic and bustle, Gaou's assistant, Lambreck, looked over the readings from the episode, a look of puzzlement on his face. "These readings can't be accurate..."

"What is it?" Gaou asked.

"According to this...the patient was awake when the readings occurred."

Gaou took the read-outs from him and checked them for herself. "That's impossible," she said, confirming that the readings were accurate. Rayne simply listened intently to the conversation.

"Could this be another side-effect of the virus? Some kind of waking dream?" Lambreck suggested.

"No...no, this is something I've never seen before. And I've seen a hell of a lot in this job."

Rayne snatched the read-outs form her hands and broke into a grin that didn't fit his face. "The Beta team are going to have a field day."

Harper awoke from his rancid nightmare, but he didn't feel fully aware. It was like half of his brain was still unconscious as the other wearily tried to make sense of the waking world. He knew immediately he had been given some kind of sedative. He struggled to get the disturbing images of the twisted dream out of his mind. Finally he managed to dismiss them and focus on trying to wake up properly. Harper looked around and saw he was in another white room - it might have been the same one as before, he couldn't be sure. The mirror wasn't cracked, but they might have replaced it. Again it seemed he had no idea how long he had been unconscious or where he was. It was disorientating to say the least.

His eyes were drawn to the opening. Door. Rayne walked in. It seemed the incident earlier had done nothing to reduce his smug, self-satisfied demeanour.

"Let's start again shall we?" he said, sitting on the chair in the corner.

"Screw you," Harper said groggily, planning on ignoring him completely. When he had forced Rayne into the mirror, the power surging through his veins had scared him. Truthfully, it wasn't the power that scared him, it was the fact that he enjoyed it. The lust for more was overwhelming, and nothing that addictive could possibly be good. He didn't intend to let himself go down that road.

Rayne smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile, if he even capable of such a thing. "I apologise for earlier, it was necessary to provoke an emotional response in order to gage the virus' progress in your system." He spoke so coldly it sent shivers down Harper's spine. "You appear to be in the early stages," Rayne continued when he saw Harper had nothing to say. "There's no need to feel like a prisoner here, Mr Harper."

"Oh really? The fact that you drugged me up would seem to suggest otherwise," Harper bit back, trying hard to overcome the urge to sleep.

"Just now, what were you dreaming?" Rayne asked, changing the subject.

"I don't remember, why?" Harper lied.

Rayne wasn't convinced. "Are you sure about that?"

Harper watched him warily, wondering what his angle was. "Yeah, I'm sure."

Rayne silently got up and approached the bed Harper was sitting on. "I realise the sedatives are still in your system, and being that you've only just woken up, perhaps you haven't had the time or the lucidity to notice the dull ache behind your right ear."

Harper tensed instantly and he found himself locked in a stare-out with Rayne. Becoming painful aware of his own body, he began to notice his head was indeed throbbing. When he'd woken up he's dismissed it as having been just another one of the many aches and pains he accumulated after a normal rough sleep, but now Rayne had mentioned it, it was obvious it was something more. Harper's hand timidly rose to the source of the pain. His fingers came across something that wasn't supposed to be there. A device was attached to the skin just behind his ear, not just the skin but deeper, it dug into his skull.

Rayne showed the slightest flicker of pleasure at the horror on Harper's face.

"What the hell have you done to me?" Harper snapped, his anger rising.

Another wicked smile spread across Rayne's face. "Now, now Mr Harper, remember what happened last time you lost your temper?"

Harper knew that Rayne was baiting him but he didn't care. Along with his anger came the rush of power and the knowledge that he could use it. "Yeah, I kicked your pansy ass without lifting a finger," he said, twisted pleasure stowing away on his tone.

Rayne stepped forward to come face to face with Harper, they were only inches apart. Neither man's gaze faltered. Rayne was going to enjoy this. "Try me."

The next moment didn't happen as Harper planned. He had gripped the power that rippled through his body and had every intention of kicking the crap out of the smug bastard. But instead all that happened was pain. The most intense pain he had ever endured, and given the crap that Harper had been through, that was really saying something.

"Do you honestly think we are stupid enough to design a virus capable of giving super-human powers to our soldiers without the ability to control them?" Rayne said as Harper's contorted body convulsed on the deck. "It's called an inhibitor. I don't know exactly how it work but it works so well, wouldn't you say? Every time you get the urge to exercise your new gifts, you will experience the pain you are experiencing now, in all its agonising glory."

When Rayne grew weary of the one-sided conversation, he knelt down beside Harper, who had tears uncontrollably running down his twisted features. "You have to relax and the pain will stop," he said clearly. It was obvious the man could barely hear him, so Rayne held his head and forced Harper to meet him in the eye. "Calm down, and it will stop."

The notion of being calm when you felt like you were going to explode was laughable to Harper, but somehow he managed it. Somehow Rayne's words had struck some logical cord in his brain, and it worked. The pain stopped, but its effects lingered on. He could hardly see, and seemed to have lost control of his limbs.

Rayne stood back up and folded his arms. "By the way. I have the ability to turn the inhibitor on and off at will. I'm hoping you won't make me use that power, Harper." There was no leeway in Rayne's voice. "Now why don't you tell me about that dream?"

End of Chapter Eight