The half-breed followed her silently up the many stairs and ladders back to the roof of the opera house. She had the sinking feeling that she'd really stuck her foot in it this time. Why the hell did she just offer to take this bedraggled man with her? She shook her head at her own stupidity. He could kill her in her sleep for all she knew. He didn't seem to have half an idea of just what he was, but it could be an act. He might murder her and steal her ship. She'd have to keep a blaster close by at all times. She couldn't sleep in the armor, but she wasn't about to let her guard down.

Of course, there was also the possibility that it wasn't an act. What the hell had an Eranae been doing on Earth? What was truly surprising was the fact that the DNA had been compatible to produce living offspring. The man tailing her shouldn't exist! She wondered what circumstances could possibly have led to his birth. Eranae were far from beautiful by human standards, with their hides half-covered by flat bone-like plates and their generally skeletal appearance. The man – Erik, he'd said his name was – had yellow irises but at least his eyes looked otherwise fairly human and he had normal soft-looking (if rather jaundiced) skin. A full-blooded Eranae had bright yellow eyes with double pupils vaguely reminiscent of a goat's that glowed even in broad daylight. They were reputed to be a relatively peaceful people despite their foreboding appearance, however, but there were always rogues in even the most passive races.

She had to stop a few times on the stairs to allow Erik to catch is breath. Now that she was able to get a good look at him, she thought he looked like death warmed over. The marks of his mixed heritage – his impossibly deep-set eyes, the yellow irises, the general lack of a nose and hair (other than the few incongruous thick tufts around his forehead and ears), his height and thin frame – didn't help dispel the image in the slightest. Beyond that, he was pale, sweating, shaking slightly and eyes were glazed over. He had to be quite ill, she thought. Well, she'd take a look at him back in the ship. She had no formal medical training, but she'd picked up a bit of first aid and general knowledge of the available technology for her own sake and curiosity soon after the "accident" that had landed her so far from home. If nothing else, she knew how to use the scanners on the ship and could easily procure medical aid from a proper doctor if the need arose.

After a good hour of climbing, they finally reached the roof of the building. She smirked at the gasp from the man behind her when she disengaged the cloaking shield and her ship appeared.

"Well, come on then."

She held out a hand to him, but he did not even notice her. He was still staring slack-jawed at the small ship she'd only half-seriously christened the Ziggy Stardust. She laughed and walked over to poke him. He flinched when she did so and stared at her as though she were a ghost.

"Are you coming, or are you just going to stand there with your mouth open like a fish? If you're having second thoughts, I'll leave you here. You won't get another chance though."

Erik closed his mouth and seemed to be weighing his options.

"I'm going."

He went around her and walked up into the ship ahead of her. She shook her head and followed after a minute. She found him inside staring at the interior with the same sense of disbelief. She unceremoniously dumped her unconscious bounty on the deck against the bulkhead. He'd be out for at least another thirty hours, so there was no danger of him causing trouble. She could re-dose him with the sedative if she needed to anyway.

"I'm afraid this ship isn't really designed to accommodate passengers. You can sit or sleep wherever you can find a decent spot if you want, but don't mess with anything. Press the wrong button and you could get us both killed. Ask me if you need something. You can call me Tess by the way."

She scratched the back of her neck, feeling supremely uncomfortable and again regretting her actions. She'd traveled alone for over three years now. This was the first time another being had boarded her ship while conscious since she purchased the vessel. She rarely spoke to other sentients these days, except when turning in a bounty. She had little in common with them, really. She hadn't really fit in with her peers when she was still living an ordinary life on Earth. Had she ever been anything other than an alien? She'd certainly never felt like a member of the human race, or any other race for that matter.

Tess ducked into the small cargo hold and grabbed a bottle of water, reemerging and silently shoving the object into Erik's hands, hoping it would keep him going long enough to get him to a medical facility. She left him to his confusion and dropped into the pilot's seat, setting the coordinates for the Civilian Security Agency's headquarters, intending to unload her captive and collect the payment before doing anything else.

Tess guided the ship up from the roof of the opera house and pointed it toward the stars, engaging the pulse engines to clear the inner solar system before kicking in the hyper drive and bounding off into the odd blank white dimension known as subspace. Even in subspace, it would take over an hour to reach the other side of the galaxy and she turned around to her accidental companion. He was sitting on the deck with long legs stretched out before him, staring blankly at some random point on the bulkhead across from him. He looked like a lost child and Tess wanted to hit him for it. At least he'd been drinking the water. He didn't look as ill as before, but his breathing still sounded off. She glanced at the unconscious slave trafficker still slumped over peacefully in the corner.

"I'm gonna turn that loser in and pick up the bounty and then I'm taking you to a medical facility. Don't know what you've got but I don't want it."

Erik seemed to tense at the suggestion.

"I'm not going to a damned doctor. I hate doctors."

Erik's mother had invited a doctor into their home only once, when he'd been deathly ill with scarlet fever as a young child of maybe four or five. The man had refused to simply treat him, instead wanting to buy Erik for study. His mother's hatred for him had not been so complete yet at that point and she'd thrown the doctor out.

"I don't care what you hate. I'm not getting sick from whatever you've got if it's catching. Besides, I know good place on a planet near the agency, very discreet. They're good at what they do, not like those ignorant butchers you're familiar with. Trust me, they'll fix whatever's wrong with you quickly and won't ask questions. It'll be a few hours anyway."

Erik didn't seem convinced, but was too weak and out of his element to argue further at the moment. Tess had nothing to do until they reached the Pharia system and sat down on the crate of blaster power packs that was she'd left sitting on the deck a week before.

"So nobody really ever told you about your heritage"

"No. My mother grew angry if I asked about my father."

"Oh… Huh. I just wonder what your father was doing on Earth in the first place. It's a Class 3 planet – a habitable planet populated by primitive sentients that is – and it's off limits to travel, highly illegal. There's not much there of any great value anyway…"

Erik shrugged at her. It made no sense to him. Nothing made sense to him at the moment. He wondered if he were merely caught in some mad dream brought on by a fever. He decided he probably was. He might as well play along for the moment, then. He'd probably die soon anyway. Maybe he already was. Some afterlife, then.

"From which planet did you come?"

"Same Earth as you, actually. The United States, Georgia specifically, though not 19th century. I was born in 1984. Will be born in 1984. Was, will, hell if I know. Time travel makes grammar confusing... I got tossed into a different time and place by some botched alien experiment. Stupid Chizorian researchers, don't know their arse from a hole in the ground…"

"1984? What is the world like in 1984?"

"Dismal."

Tess turned from him before he could respond and ducked back into the cargo hold, digging out some ration bars. They tasted like cardboard, but would keep you going for weeks if you had nothing else. That and they were dirt cheap. She tossed one to Erik, who didn't seem to know what to do with it, and ripped the wrapping off of hers, all but stuffing it into her mouth. She hadn't eaten in nearly a day, so consumed had she been with tracking down her prey once and for all. Erik copied her motions in removing the wrapping, but ate with more manners and far less gusto, grimacing at the first bite. How something could have almost no taste and yet taste awful all at once was a mystery Tess had never solved, but as she rarely paid attention to what she ate, she didn't much care.

Erik swallowed the dry pasty food thickly as another pain shot through his chest. He rubbed at his sternum and breathed shallowly. Tess watched him through wary eyes.

"Hang in there, alright? It won't take long to dump off stupid over there and collect my money. Then I'll get you fixed, whatever's wrong with you."

Fixed? What was he, a broken chair? Erik leaned his head back against the cool metal of the bulkhead and tried not to breath too deeply and upset whatever was catching behind his breastbone. Aren't dreams supposed to be painless?

Tess didn't know why she even gave a rip whether this man died or not. She used to have a habit of picking up strays when she still lived on Earth, though they were usually of the feline variety. Maybe his yellow eyes reminded her of a cat. She went back to the pilot's seat and sat down, fiddling with the navigational settings and generally trying to look preoccupied to discourage conversation.

They continued in silence until the ship dropped back into real-space. Tess manually piloted the ship toward the docking area of the large satellite station in orbit around the fourth planet of the Pharia system, sending her identification and receiving clearance before docking the Stardust with a jolt that had her passenger clutching his chest once again.

"Wait here, alright? I should be back in less than half an hour."

She pulled the visor back over her face and bent down to pick up her catch. The space station was bustling as usual, mostly with disgruntled and corrupt government employees of more species than she could count. The exoskeleton she wore commanded respect though, and the sea of aliens parted nervously before her. It was a quick trip to the little-known basement office where a couple policemen unloaded her burden and handed her a receipt. She took the disk up several floors and stood in line with all the other government employees to receive her payment. She found it slightly amusing for some reason that she was paid for her grim services in the same manner as the pencil-pushers and paper-filers (well, it was all digital of course, but bureaucrats are bureaucrats, no matter where in the universe you go).

She pocketed the 1500 credits. Meager pay for the amount of work, but it would feed her for a few weeks… and pay for Erik's treatment, whatever was wrong with him. She had a bank account that she'd been filling for a while and had enough money saved up to purchase a very comfortable home, had she cared to settle somewhere, but somehow she didn't think she'd ever use it. Life had become little more than an arcade game to her, see how many points you can rack up, and the bank account was nothing more than a scoreboard for her at this point. The accumulation of material goods wasn't very attractive to her. She knew some Hunters who were like that once they became successful, buying expensive homes and clothing themselves like kings and growing fat, lazy and greedy. She dreaded becoming anything like them. The idea of spending money on someone other than herself made her feel a little less selfish.

Tess took the maglift up a few more floors to the small shopping mall at the top of the satellite. She usually hated shopping in such blatantly commercial places, but spared a few minutes to duck into one of the clothing stores to pick up a few changes of simple, comfortable clothing for her new alley cat. She doubted that a Victorian-era Frenchman would care for them, fashion-wise, but he'd be better off in them than in one of those monkey suits, wherever he ended up. She almost picked up a pair of boots as well, but while she could easily guess out a shirt size for him, she had no clue what size shoes he took. There would be time for that later, anyway. She was tempted to spend a bit more time browsing the shops, but remembered the man clutching his chest on the deck of her ship and returned to the docking bay.

She found him in pretty much the same state she'd left him in. He glanced up at her when she entered but didn't speak. She stashed her shopping in the cargo hold. She could give them to him later, but at the moment, she was in a hurry to get him to a clinic.