Crichton opened his eyes.
John found himself lying on the floor of the Marauder he stole from the Peacekeepers.
His head felt like an atomic bomb, which could go off at any second.
Pain numbed his senses as he got off of the floor.
Crichton's tired eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness inside the Marauder.
When Crichton's eyes could finally see through the darkness, he saw the magnitude of the damage that the craft had to endure.
Consoles were ripped apart and the window was shattered. Green branches and leaves stuck through the glass, as if they were desperately trying to get in the ship.
Bright sunlight entered the dark interior of the Marauder through a small hole in the shattered window.
As Crichton carefully approached the front of the ship, he suddenly felt a shock going through the craft.
The balance had been disrupted. Weight has been
altered.
The craft heaved and shook, and Crichton had to hold on
to the seats to keep him standing up.
Crichton felt that this wasn't a good thing. He headed swiftly towards the Marauder's doors, which lead to the outside world, he hoped.
As he pushed
open the doors and looked around, John found himself stuck in a
tree.
Not John himself, but the Marauder.
It was caught in the
huge branches of the enormous trees, hanging some 10 metras above the
ground.
With every step he took, he could feel the Marauder shake: the sudden shift of weight seemed too much for the trees to handle.
As the Marauder began to break loose from it's
wooden chains, John jumped into the trees, which seemed the smartest
thing for him to do.
He held on tightly to the enormous, green
branches.
The branches broke.
The trees shook wildly as
the Marauder fell down onto the ground with a large bang.
John
climbed down, still recovering from the pain, the shock and the
surprise.
As he touched the ground, he really felt happy to feel
solid ground again.
He was glad to be free again.
"You call this freedom?"
A sudden burst of pain in his head reminded Crichton of the person he didn't want to remember.
Harvey.
The imaginary Scorpy-clone sat comfortably on a large branch of the tree in front of Crichton, looking down on the human with a painful gaze.
John didn't answer his question.
"What did you do to me?" John shouted to him.
The pain spread all over his body again.
"What did you do to my body? To the Marauder!"
"Pilot!"
Chiana
commed him time after time, but every time Chiana tried it she got no
response.
Joolushko was wondering who that Pilot she was trying to contact was.
Chiana landed the Pod nice and easily in Moya's docking-bay.
As she stepped out of the Transport Pod, carrying one of the boxes with supplies on board, she noticed something was wrong.
It was too quiet.
She loaded the
supplies into Moya's Cargo Hold, followed by an amazed
Joolushko.
As Chiana loaded the box onto the floor, she froze
up.
She heard something.
"What?" Joolushko said.
"Shut up." Chiana said.
"What!"
"Shut up and get the other boxes!" Chiana said.
She left the Cargo Hold.
"You can't just..." Joolushko tried to say.
"You want my help?" Chiana said.
"Well, yeah..."
"Then do as I say!"
She left Joolushko standing shocked in the middle of this unknown room, in the middle of this unknown ship, in the middle of this unknown part of the universe.
"I'll get through this..." Joolushko said to herself.
She walked back to the Transport Pod.
"I'll get through this..."
Her blue eyes reflected fear, but also a bit of confidence.
"My parents said I could do anything I set my mind to. I've never doubted them before."
As she walked through another passageway and found herself walking towards a room she had never seen before, she began to hyperventilate.
"Maybe once or twice."
She was lost.
Perhaps Jool didn't hear
anything, but Chiana did.
Nebari always had better hearing then
any other species.
The strange noise had faded away, until it was gone, but Chiana knew where it came from.
She headed towards Pilot's Den.
"Pilot!" she shouted over the comms, hoping that this time she would get an answer.
"Aeryn? Jothee? Why won't you answer me?"
There was something wrong.
Moya felt differently. Weaker.
Angrier.
"Moya? What's going on?"
Chiana walked into Pilot's Den, where she found an unconscious Jothee, and an unconscious Pilot.
Pilot
didn't wake up, even when Chiana tried shaking his head.
Jothee
woke up much quicker.
"Chiana?" he asked, seeing her face as he opened his eyes.
"What happened?" Chiana asked. "Where's Aeryn?"
"Aeryn's gone." Jothee said. "They're all gone."
"What the frell are you talking about?" Chiana asked as Jothee crawled onto his feet.
"Aeryn went over to Talyn." Jothee explained as he pressed his wounded forehead with his sore arms.
"Where's Talyn? I didn't see him in orbit." Chiana said.
"Talyn got...swallowed...by a..."
"WORMHOLE!" Pilot suddenly shouted.
"You are unharmed." Harvey said. "And you should consider yourself lucky."
The neural-clone jumped down from the tree and walked towards John.
John's headache returned.
Both Crichton and Harvey felt it, but only Harvey
did not show his pain.
Crichton reached for his head.
The
pain felt like a wave, which rushed through his mind.
An echo,
which bounced against his skull.
An echo of a pain he had felt somewhere before.
The Aurora Chair.
The machine which had scarred his soul, still haunts his mind and memories.
But his second experience with Scorpius's Chair, here on Yo'brakh, did more damage then either Crichton or Harvey expected.
"It
hurts, doesn't it Crichton?" Harvey said. "I know it hurts,
because I feel it also.
The pain which roams through your
subconscious, and through my neural-chip."
"Your neural-chip?" Crichton said. "The neural chip...feels the pain...the neural-chip...IS the pain!"
Crichton suddenly
realised what was going on.
Why Harvey crashed the Marauder.
Why
Harvey couldn't take him back to Scorpius.
Why the pain has
grown worse.
As Scorpius reanimated Crichton with the use of
his Aurora Chair, the energy which flowed through Crichton's mind
short-circuited the neural-chip, and it's connections to Crichton's
mind.
The neural-chip still stored the wormhole-technology which
Harvey had extracted from Crichton's mind.
"You know it, don't you?" Harvey said to Crichton.
"My neural-chip is
damaged. It's connections now burn into your brain. Into your
mind.
The longer it stays, the more damage it will do. Until
eventually...
You will die."
"Well, that's just
great, isn't it?" John shouted. "That's just 'yeeha'
fuckin' great, no?
Fucking fantastic! Make's you leap into the
air out of joy! I've got a tumor in my brain.
And it has a name.
I call it Harvey."
The look in Crichton's eyes could've murdered a man by just looking at him.
Harvey returned
Crichton's gaze, but said nothing.
The days when Harvey was in
control of his own future, and objectives, were over.
His fate,
and the fate of the universe, lay in Crichton's hands.
Harvey
wasn't a threat to John anymore, as he could not take over
Crichton's body anymore, or affect it in any way, but by talking to
Crichton in his daydreams.
If he would try to intervene in
Crichton's actions, it would only speed up the process of
Crichton's death.
And Crichton's death would mean the loss of
the wormhole-technology.
And Harvey wasn't going to let that
happen.
Pilot freaked out.
Moya freaked
out.
"Pilot!" Chiana shouted at the blue navigator of
Moya.
"Pilot!"
Pilot went totally berserk.
Adrenaline
pumped through his veins. Moya's adrenaline.
"Pilot!"
"Moya's gone crazy!" Jothee said. "When Pilot went nuts the first time, I tried to help him, but he knocked me away! I almost fell down!"
"Of course Moya's gone crazy!" Chiana said as she looked up.
"Her son's missing! How would you react if your son got swallowed by a wormhole!"
She climbed over Pilot's consoles to help him. She almost got knocked off, just like Jothee was, but she managed to grab his arms and get close to Pilot.
"Pilot!" she said. "It's me! I'm back!"
She put her arms around his head.
"It's Chiana!" she said. "I've brought the medical supplies for Moya, and for you. I'm here to help!"
Chiana could feel Pilot's heart pounding in the middle of his huge blue chest.
"Chiana..." Pilot suddenly whispered to her.
"Calm down, Pilot. Relax. It's me."
"Moya... " Pilot whispered. "...she's terrified..."
"I know, Pilot." Chiana said. "I know."
