TITLE: The Unintended

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

NOTES: The end is nigh! I'll post the final two chapters together, in the meantime, enjoy this installment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE On and On

"There are answers, but none you want to hear."

Jakaryn's infamous trial

CY 19284

"What's happening! Why won't the doors open?" Harper asked frantically. He was panicking because he felt weak. He had been stronger than he ever thought possible and now he had that strength taken away, he felt utterly defenceless.

Trance wanted to tell him to be calm but it was difficult seeing as she was on the verge of panic herself. Harper didn't know what she knew - that there was only one survivor on The Barbell. It made her shiver thinking that someone with the same powers that drove Harper mad and allowed him to kill so many people could be coming their way.

In Command Dylan, Tyr, Rommie and Beka were in a similar state. Rommie had lost the connection with her grander self and had no information to put the others at ease.

"The door is sealed, Rommie can you open it?" Dylan asked her. Whoever had control of Andromeda was already onboard.

Rommie concentrated for a moment and sure enough the doors slid open. "It seems systems I'm close to still respond to my influence," she announced as they headed out the doors. No sooner were they through, they had to leap straight back after the internal defences activated.

"This is not going well!" Dylan said through gritted teeth as he pulled himself from the floor.

"Whoever is remotely jacked in still has control of my systems," Rommie said, helping Beka up. "I'll try and deactivate the internal defences but he or she is in my core. They have the more power over me."

"Just do it, we need to get to med-deck as soon as possible," Dylan told her.

"Med-deck?" Tyr questioned. "How do you know the intruder is heading there?"

"Because I just figured out why they would want to."

Trance was at a loss. "We have to get out of here. We need weapons, we have to protect ourselves," she rambled. She remembered she kept a force lance stashed in one of the cabinets just in case.

"You know who's coming don't you?" Harper asked solemnly.

Trance got the force lance and looked up at him with guilt evident on her expression. "The Barbell...there was only one survivor onboard."

A high-strung silence descended upon them. Harper felt a fear he hadn't felt since the Magog attack. When he knew his worst nightmare was coming to find him.

"Maybe Ana can open the door," Trance suddenly thought aloud.

"I don't know if she's ready to connect to Andr-" Harper stopped mid-sentence. He looked at Trance and knew she had heard it too. A door opening, down the corridor.

Trance lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. "It could be Dylan or one of the others..."

Harper stared at the door, terrified of what might be behind it, rooted to the spot. By the looks of it, Trance was feeling the same way. Ana was still standing in the corner hardly reacting to the situation. Trance envied her. The three of them were deathly quiet as they strained to hear any sound from outside. The doors in the corridor slid closed, and then there were soft footsteps. They grew gradually louder until they were right outside the door and then they stopped. No-one drew breath.

Getting through the ship was proving to be difficult. As Dylan and the others moved towards med-deck they had to stop each time they came across an internal defence station so Rommie could deactivate them. Unfortunately she could only do this one at a time and had to keep her concentration locked on the task for as long as the others needed to get through.

They were decks away from Harper and Trance and each of them knew they wouldn't make it in time, but they had no choice but to keep on moving.

Trance held the force lance ready to fire on whoever came through the door, but they didn't open. Instead it was something that happened in the room that scared her out of her wits.

In a burst of movement Harper grabbed his head and stumbled backwards, crashing into the shelves behind him. The look on his face was one of agony and Trance knew that somehow the inhibitor had been activated. Forgetting whatever danger outside she rushed to his side but was unable to do anything to help. All she could do was watch in horror as Harper convulsed on the floor, still conscious, as the inhibitor sent constant streams of pain through his body. His back was arched and his hands clung to his head trying to get some kind of relief but there was none.

Trance ran to the cabinets on the other side of the room to get some pain medication. It was all she could think of to do. She set the force lance down and got a syringe, but there wasn't time to get back over to Harper. The doors to med-deck opened.

"You must be Trance."

Trance was shocked and dropped the syringe. "I know you...you were on The Barbell, you're one of Taylor's men," she remembered, terrified.

"Taylor doesn't have men anymore. They're dead. And so is he," he said. "Arion Rayne, at your service."

Trance's gaze flicked to Harper for a moment. He was back into a corner, still very much in pain. "You turned on the inhibitor."

"Well done my dear," Rayne said, moving further into the room. "I happened to have a spare controller lying around, thought I'd bring it along."

"Turn it off, now!" Trance demanded, though she would have sounded more authoritative if her voice hadn't been trembling with fear.

"I don't think so," the madman denied. He had backed Trance against the wall. His eyes were filled with the same rage and emptiness that she had seen in Harper's. "Tell me what I want to know," he said, his gaze piercing into her. "Give me the cure."

End of Chapter Twenty-Nine