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Harper's lungs burned, and he struggled to open his eyes. At least up until he managed, at which point the feel of knives driving into his pupils had him slamming them shut again, and a scream escaped unbidden.
It would have been a scream, anyway, if his throat hadn't suddenly been on fire and it came out as more pained croak than anything else.
"Shh," someone said. "Shh, now. You had a bad reaction to the gas."
Gas. Engineering. Right. And of course he'd had a bad reaction, because there was nothing in this damn universe that he didn't have a bad reaction to. He gritted his teeth and forced his eyes back open. If the pain had lessened he couldn't tell, but at least he'd been braced for it this time, and he could make out a distinctly not-Tyr shape to go with the not-Tyr voice in front looming over him. Given how his throat felt he wasn't going to be making any long speeches anytime soon, and he tried to mimic typing. Unfortunately his arm was ridiculously heavy, and he wasn't sure he managed much more than twitching his fingers.
"Now, you just relax, and we'll get you fixed up in no time."
He struggled automatically against the hand that lifted his head and tilted it back, but whoever was doing the tilting was a lot stronger than he was—that or this weakness extended past his arms, which was entirely possible—and something cool was poured into his mouth. He swallowed despite himself, and then blackness claimed him again.
The next time he woke up he was considerably warier about opening his eyes, but while his vision wasn't entirely clear, it was better and nowhere near as burn-y. He tested his lungs with a deep breath, drawing air in slowly and then releasing it again, and while like his eyes it didn't feel good, it was better than it had been.
He curled his fingers and then flattened them against the bunk under him, bracing and pushing himself into a sitting position. Or trying. He was definitely weaker than he should be.
"Now, now, stay where you are."
Harper was pretty sure that this voice was different than the one who'd been with him before, and he turned his head and blinked hard, trying to clear his vision.
"Just relax, you'll be fine. I'm Dr. Saugrin."
Squeegee. Made sense, them being docked at Squeegee Station. He turned his head slowly from side to side and then focused back on the doctor. "Tyr?" Unfortunately it came out as more of a cough than anything else, but he was pretty sure the two of them were alone in this medbay. Or what was probably a medbay, anyway. It smelled like one. A gas that flattened him wasn't even guaranteed to annoy Tyr, but he found it hard to believe that Tyr wouldn't have left him a message or something.
"Just relax," Dr. Saugrin repeated. "You'll be fine."
"Where's Tyr?" Harper tried again. A croak was marginally better than a cough, at least.
"Relax. You're safe now."
Safe? What the hell? This time Harper forced himself up. Definitely a medbay, definitely a Squirgin doctor, and especially definitely no Tyr. Had someone invaded the ship? That didn't explain why he was here, though; Tyr was no fool and without a good reason to stand and fight would just have taken them out of there.
"You're safe."
"Yeah, yeah, got it," Harper croaked, doing his best to shake off the hand on his shoulder. "Safe from what? Where's Tyr?" Different station, coincidental doctor, maybe? Tyr's medbay still didn't have that much human-appropriate so it wasn't out of the question that he might have taken Harper somewhere if he needed more patching up than was doable on the ship.
"Medsila told us what happened. You're safe now."
He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, wondering what his odds were of staying upright if he tried to stand. Probably not great. Still. "Safe from what?" Trying to emphasize the last word made him cough again, but he was pretty sure he go the point across.
The doctor smiled sympathetically. "We have our own history with them, but you don't need to worry about that anymore. We can help you get back to your own world, or I'm sure you can find a place here if you'd like."
"What?" He took a chance on pushing himself off the bunk and would have landed on his ass if the doctor hadn't caught him and set him back on the bunk. Because it wasn't annoying enough when Tyr did that.
"You can make whatever life you like."
"Would you just tell me where's Tyr?" He was way better than Harper at growling annoying people into cooperation.
"You're not his property anymore. You're free."
That was enough to bring Harper up short. "What?"
Tyr glared down at the station master. He was going to have those recordings one way or the other because his engineer was still missing and this fool was wasting time that could be spent searching.
"Have you considered that he might have wished to leave and was concerned about your reaction?"
Tyr ground his teeth. He'd considered everything, of course. But while Harper was certainly capable of altering security recordings or even the cameras themselves, he'd never have been so sloppy about it. Nor would he have called a warning to Tyr partway through the process. Nor would he have had reason to do any of it. Tyr might have become accustomed to Harper's presence since he'd picked him up, but he wasn't a jailer. "I did, and he did not. Now, show me the security recordings."
The station master made another protest, but Tyr wasn't in the mood to hear it, and after a few moments he finally let the recording play.
The quality was poor, even to Tyr's eyes, but unlike his ship's security cameras it didn't glitch at the vital moment. When there were definitely two figures with a third between them exiting his ship.
"Have you considered that your station has a kidnapping problem?" Tyr asked. Now that he had confirmation that Harper had been taken the question became who and why. Or perhaps the why was more important that who. To his knowledge Harper knew no one here—Harper certainly hadn't acted like he did, and there was no reason that he'd keep such information from Tyr—which made it more likely that it had something to do with Tyr. And there were a number of questions still unanswered regarding that virus that had infected Tyr's ship. And what had happened to the information that had been transmitted elsewhere when his ship had been boarded. "I assume you can handle the notification of the local authorities." His tone implied the opposite, but it wasn't as if he expected them to be of much use anyway. "And I require a copy of the recording. The raw data."
"That isn't standard—"
"I assume it isn't standard for you to waster hours before confirming a kidnapping, either."
Once he'd secured the raw data of the recording since if the station master had attempted to show Tyr a lower quality vid than was actually available to obscure faces or something along those lines Tyr wanted to know, he returned to his ship. He'd changed most of the security codes after Harper's abduction, but assuming Harper freed himself it wouldn't do for him to be completely locked out.
Unfortunately the security vid seemed to be as poor as it had appeared at first glance. Which, since it was intended to cover the entire bay and was in place more to discourage theft than anything else wasn't unreasonable, but...
Tyr ran through it three times, studying it as closely as he could, and then set up the filters that he wanted to run. This was a case where having an artificial intelligence available would be useful since he wouldn't have to go to such manual efforts, but it still wasn't something that he wanted to entertain on board his ship.
Besides, if Harper was available he wouldn't need to go to such manual efforts then, either.
The first set of filters didn't show him anything particularly useful except that Harper had his head down. It would have been confirmation enough for him that the two of them were dragging him along even if Tyr hadn't already suspected it—even when Tyr was hauling him around by the collar Harper's head was up and he was chattering complaints—but he doubted that it would mean anything to anyone else. He still hadn't been contacted by the station security forces that he assumed would want to speak to him.
The second set did confirm that Harper's abductors had been Squirgin, and if pressed he would say that he didn't think either of them were members of the delegation that he'd recently transported, but he couldn't completely rule it out. The ones he'd transported were the only ones besides Harper and himself who'd have had time to access his security systems.
He pulled up his own security logs over the course of the trip as he set the third filter to run. The Squirgins they'd transported had been clear that they preferred to keep their own company, but he wasn't in the habit of letting people roam his ship without observation, and while the security vids overwrote themselves when there was no motion, he fully expected to find something.
Most of the vid was irrelevant. He and Harper's morning sparring matches, himself working out, Harper bouncing around engineering to that infernal racket he insisted was music...ah. The Squirgin exiting their quarters. And not, for once, to simply exchange quarters.
