Chapter 24

HARLEM
What happens to a dream deferred?

. Does it dry up
. Like a raisin in the sun?
. Or fester like a sore—
. And then run?
. Does it stink like rotten meat?
. Or crust and sugar over—
. Like a syrupy sweet?

. Maybe it just sags
. Like a heavy load.

. Or does it explode?

- Langston Hughes

00000

Harper was immeasurably tired of walking. His feet hurt, his hands hurt, everything ached, but over the long days, he'd accepted pain as the new norm in his life and pushed it purposefully aside. The pain wouldn't kill him...but the boredom just might.

They'd been trudging across this planet for roughly two and a half weeks. Dylan had tried to keep track of their days, but he wasn't entirely sure he'd counted it right. Not that Harper really cared all that much. Walking mindlessly for that long was enough to drive anyone nuts, but doing it in never-ending, all-consuming darkness was brain-numbing. The days all ran together in blank sameness and the nights were all variations on discomfort and humiliation.

Harper felt like he was slowly going insane.

Dylan tried to help. He talked to him, and Harper latched onto his voice like an anchor. It was the only thing that kept him connected and reminded him that there really was a world out there beyond the dark void he existed in now. But you could only describe trees and rocks and grass for so long, and sometimes even Dylan ran out of things to say.

There were also awkward moments when Dylan actually forgot that the boy trudging silently beside him was walking in the dark. "Have you noticed all the wrecked ships?" he'd say, or "Harper, look at that!" he'd exclaim trying to draw the engineer out of his shell. Silence would follow as Harper sadly ducked his head and Dylan realized what he'd just said, or Harper quietly reminded him he couldn't see. Harper didn't need eyes to know the captain was kicking himself for those slips, and he tried to pretend it didn't matter, it was all good.

He was pretty sure he fooled neither Dylan nor himself.

And he went on, one weary, bruised foot after the other. For the last several days Harper had felt the rocky ground steadily rising under his bare feet, and he prayed they would be at the prison camp soon. It was a classic case of 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' but he didn't really care. Anything to stop this stupid, pointless walking.

The day finally ended and they were lead to their tether just like all the other nights they'd spent on this wretched journey. As soon as he reached the metal post, Harper sank wearily to the ground, pretense abandoned ages ago. Once they were both secured for the night and had their meager supper, the Niet left and for the first time in days, no one returned to drag Harper back for the nightly 'slave comedy act'."

The atmosphere of the camp felt odd tonight. Even Harper could feel it; he didn't need his eyes to know something was different. Just listening he could tell the Nietzscheans unpacked less, their meal was hasty, and no fire was lit.

"Think we'll be there tomorrow?" Harper finally asked, knowing Dylan would have noticed the changes as well.

"We're pretty far back in these mountains now. I'd guess we'll be there in the next day or so," Dylan replied, glancing at his friend as he spoke. Harper lay on his back, blind eyes staring blankly at the night sky. The constant walking and the pitiful amounts of food, coupled with his injuries and illness hadn't been kind to the engineer. He'd lost weight – rapidly – and the slave clothes that had been too big on him to begin with hung ridiculously loose now. "Why," he continued, trying to keep his brain from dwelling on what he couldn't fix, "you excited to get there?"

"Maybe," Harper replied, turning his head toward Dylan's voice. "And wipe that my-engineer's-gone-nuts look off your face; I know it's there. No, I'm not crazy, and yes, I know what's waiting for us there, probably better than you do, but if we keep walking like this for much longer I really am gonna snap. I'm so sick of walking and tripping and eating trail grit and dust day after day I could scream!"

"You've got a good point there."

"Of course I've got a point. Super-genius, remember?"

Dylan laughed. He knew Harper's carefree tone and light comments only hid the hurt, humiliation, and fear he really felt, but then so did his own laugh. No matter the truth, it still felt good to laugh.

Still on his back, Harper raised his chained arms and ran his better hand through his greasy, matted, dirty hair and across the beard that now covered his face, grimacing.

"You know, space has spoiled me, Boss. I grew up not really carrying, but right now, I'd give anything for a bath, clean clothes, a toothbrush, and a shave. Definitely a shave," he said firmly, scratching irritably at his cheeks.

Harper with a beard was certainly something it had taken Dylan a bit to get used to. In the three years they'd served together, he'd never seen the boy anything but clean-shaven. Okay, maybe a bit scruffy now and then, but never a full-fledged beard. It looked wrong on him. It was, however, the only thing that kept the horrible clothes and the young man's slight frame from making him appear all of twelve-years-old. Dylan didn't need personal experience to know it probably wasn't a good thing to look pitifully young and weak in an Uber prison camp, so maybe the beard was okay.

"Oh, I don't know," Dylan teased. "It kinda suits you."

"Hey, you have no room to talk! By the smell of ya, you're doing your own rendition of 'back to nature', Captain Shaggy Mountain-Man."

"Actually, I'm not. At least, not shaggy," Dylan replied with another laugh.

"What!" Harper cried, sitting up.

"Nanobots," the captain explained. "Like Beka's. Only mine control the length of my hair, not the color. Never have to shave if I don't want to. Comes in handy on long missions."

Harper frowned and crossed his arms. "I don't believe you."

"Here," Dylan said, gently extracting Harper's right arm from his pouting posture. He pulled his friend's hand up and touched the back of it against his face, once again reminded of exactly how isolated and cut-off Harper was. "No scruffiness, just like I said."

Harper shook his head and pulled his hands back. "That is so freakin' not fair," he muttered, scratching at his own face again.

"Sorry," Dylan shrugged. "I always thought you knew," he added.

"No," Harper cringed. "Why would I know the personal hygiene habits of the great Captain Hunt? A – that's just a little bit odd and a lot creepy and B – I had better things to do and think about!"

Dylan laughed again, and Harper scowled.

"Loving the sympathy I feel radiating from you here," Harper muttered grumpily, although not really meaning it. "At least you still stink, and have to wear the nasty pajama uniform with me," he added huffily. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. Wouldn't want someone to steal my suite. I just got the down comforter the way I like it."

00000

Harper and Dylan knew they were approaching the mining camp long before it could be seen. It stunk of unwashed bodies, human waste, filth, sickness, and death. More than that, it reeked of hopelessness and despair. The scent permeated the mountains around it for a good mile before the camp even came into view, dragging Harper's already broken spirits even further down into the dust.

Sometime later, it was impossible to judge how long as he walked in the dark, the wagon tugged Harper around a turn in the windy road, and he heard Dylan sigh beside him.

"You can see it, can't you?" he asked quietly.

Dylan nodded then remembered Harper's eyes. "Yes," he said, unable to disguise the weariness in his voice.

"Tell me," Harper said firmly, resolutely raising his head as they plodded ever nearer.

Dylan sighed again. When they'd turned that last corner and he'd seen what lay ahead, he'd felt cold, hard fear and despair grip his heart with icy fingers. Down the road about a quarter of a mile was an ugly wound in the otherwise beautiful surroundings. Three huge barbed-wire fences formed half circles through a barren wasteland, only stopping when they dug right into the solid rock of the mountain face. Dirty, dark buildings sat in rows off to the sides while a filthy open space filled the middle of the camp, the black mouth of the mine yawning threateningly in the background. The road lead straight into the camp, passing through three gates of iron bars, and guards walked the perimeter, both inside and out. Just inside the last gate and off to the left sat two stone buildings, well-kept and clean, jarringly out of place with the misery around them. One even had flowers planted in the windows. With sudden clarity, Dylan realized these were for the Nietzscheans, offices and rooms to live in comfort and safety, well within sight of the pitiful slaves, taunting them in their squalor.

Squalor and misery they were heading straight for.

Dylan had never felt more like a failure. Here they were at the slave camp and he still hadn't managed to think of an escape plan. Nearly three weeks on the open road, sleeping at night with no guard and only a metal chain between them and freedom… Harper looked up to him as some kind of hero; why hadn't he even managed to save them yet, then? Why were they about to be herded into some cesspit of misery?

Because, Dylan admitted to himself with anger, unlike what Harper and many others in the universe thought, he wasn't Superman. They might have only been chained up, but even he couldn't break solid steel to free them. And where would they have gone? Empty plains and fields for miles, nothing to hide behind and no way off the planet?

And a friend that might put on a front of snarky attitude and humor but was still in a world of hurt.

Dylan glanced at Harper and noticed the ever present lines of pain etched through his face, the hobbling limp that had become the norm, the blank and drifting eyes, the clawed left hand, fingers curled and stiff, useless… Then he looked back at that ever-nearing camp and his guts twisted in despair.

"Oh, heaven help us," he whispered to himself.

"Dylan?" Harper asked again when his friend failed to respond, breaking into the captain's drifting thoughts.

"It looks like something from Ancient Earth, Harper, straight from Nazi Germany." Dylan's voice was sad.

"You're surprised?"

"I'd just hoped that after three thousand years, civilization would be better than this. Plus, I thought the Nietzscheans were more imaginative."

"Dylan, they might be 'superior,' but deep down they're still human. And humans have a long history of cruelty as well as kindness. Nietzscheans have gleaned from the same history as we have, and they've grabbed after the uber best of human history and the uber worst."

Harper stopped speaking, but he could feel Dylan still looking at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Just that, sometimes, you surprise me, is all," Dylan finally said, but Harper could hear a note of admiration in the comment as well.

They were only fifty feet from the first gate now, and Dylan knew things were going to happen quickly.

"Harper," he spoke quietly, feeling he should try and keep the engineer up to speed and also growing in apprehension. "We're about to enter the camp. Any idea what will happen next?"

"Some. Nothing pleasant, I can tell you. I'm not at all sure they run things here like I remember it from my last slave experience. The complete lack of technology has me stumped and leaves me guessing as to what comes next."

"Harper," Dylan said again as the wagon passed through the first gate. "I'm not sure they'll keep us together." Dylan caught the flicker of fear that raced across Harper's face at the thought of being blind and alone in this horrible place. "If they do separate us," Dylan went on, "promise me you'll keep your head! Don't do anything stupid. Just stay alive until I can think of a way to get us out of here, please!"

"I promise I'll try, Boss," Harper said, his voice hollow. He heard the first gate clang shut behind them and flinched. It sounded so cold; so final.

"Boss, I need to say this. I never said it before because…well…lots of reasons. But I want you to know, before whatever happens here, happens… Thanks for what you did, coming with me and all."

Clang.

Gate number two slammed shut, and Harper hurried on with urgency. "Whatever happens, know I'm not mad at ya. I never really was."

"I know, Harper."

The wagon rolled to a stop.

Clang.

The last gate closed behind them with a vibrating echo, and Harper couldn't help but feel he would never be on the other side of it again. All the dreams and hopes and wishes that he'd dared to let take root and start slowly growing in his soul since Beka had found him shattered like glass with that clang. Instead, the smells and sounds of the prison camp assaulted him full force and moved in to replace them, but he also felt Dylan step closer so their arms were brushing, offering silent support and guidance, reminding him that he wasn't totally alone in this. He turned toward the friend and captain he could no longer see, his lips twisted into a resigned smile, and spoke with a voice that was trying hard not to become a sob.

"Dylan, welcome to Hell."

END of PART TWO