Fallen angels at my feet…
Whispered voices at my ear…
Death before my eyes…
Lying next to me I fear…
She beckons me…
Shall I give in?
The Maru was so quiet when they entered, so quiet Harper held hope Beka was in fact alone, but considering the small ship that had been attached to the Maru’s docking port, that seemed unlikely. His heart was beating fast as he, along with Dylan and Rommie, quickly ran through the ship. Eventually they reached the crew quarters, and Harper felt time freeze. Beka was strapped naked to a bunk, his bunk in fact, with red welts down the front of her body, where blood was gently trickling down in small streams, staining the sheets beneath her. But that was not the worst thing.
A man was standing above her. Not having seen them yet he was doing up his trousers while breathing heavily. His belt lay discarded on the floor, Harper assumed not only because he’d been taking his trousers off, but also suspected it had something to do with the wounds Beka was currently sporting.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had just happened. Harper, who could contain himself no longer, threw himself at the unsuspecting rapist. The element of surprise gave him the upper hand, but he had probably been overmanned had Dylan not decided to help out. As they pulled the man up from the floor, Harper gasped.
“You!” he managed to get out. “You…” He threw a punch at Mr Culligan’s face while the man was too restrained to do anything else but growl in pain as his lip split. “How could you…” Harper asked with tears in his eyes. “How could you…haven’t you hurt enough people? Haven’t you hurt her enough? Damn it, how could you?” There was no answer. “Answer me!” Harper shouted, so loudly his throat hurt, but the rush of adrenaline was strong enough for him to completely ignore it. He couldn’t ignore Rommie though.
“Hush,” she said, before returning to look at Beka. Harper immediately abandoned Mr Culligan to Dylan’s care as he rushed over and kneeled next to Rommie. Stroking the hair out of Beka’s face he tried to coax a reaction out of her.
“Beka…you’re ok now. We’re here now,” he tried, but she didn’t seem to be listening. She was staring blankly, blinking being the only sign she was any more than a statue. She wasn’t even crying, or in any way showing she was in pain. He felt himself crying as he stroked her cheek, running his fingers down her face, gently touching her eyes. “Please…please come back.” No one said anything. Rommie undid Beka’s restraints and lifted her up.
“I’m taking her back to the Andromeda,” she said quietly before disappearing through the door. Harper turned back to Mr Culligan, rage and adrenaline flowing through his every vein.
“You…how did you do it? You had something to do with all of it, didn’t you? The voices she was hearing? Huh? And don’t you dare try and lie to me, cause I swear, you’ll regret it.” The man in Dylan’s tight restrain almost seemed to shrink in front of his eyes.
“The implant…” he mumbled, his voice shaking.
“Implant?” Harper found himself screaming. “What implant?” He grabbed his gun and pointed it at Mr Culligan.
“I implant a device in all my employees. It’s so small, so small it’s nearly impossible to notice it unless you know what you’re looking for. It’s there so that I can monitor them, really was only meant in case of violent customers, so I can tell if they’re being hurt.”
“And what has this got to do with anything?” Harper cried while pushing his gun into Mr Culligan’s chest. “You tell me exactly what this means and I’ll give you the courtesy of a quick death.”
“I realised after a while that I should try to prevent any possible physical damage before it happened.” His voice was shivering. “So I modified it to be able to monitor their feelings and emotions. I could also hear everything that was going on around them. It…helped.” He paused for a moment, but hurried to continue as Harper pointed the gun at his knee. “When Rebekah left, I wanted revenge. I discovered that with a little tampering I could not only watch her every reaction and emotion, I could affect them. I could speak in her head; I could play on her depression and make it worse. I wanted to make her kill herself, but she would never go that far! I couldn’t understand it…the closest she ever got was shooting herself in the stomach. Then you locked her up, so I played more on her emotions, making her as happy as I could at the same time as stopping ‘the voices’. I realised I had to kill her myself.” He hung his head, but Harper doubted he was feeling ashamed. Rage was making him shake all over.
“You! We thought she was schizophrenic but it was you! All the medication we gave her, it was pointless! All of this…” He lifted his gun and shot Mr Culligan in the knee, eliciting a loud cry of pain. He moved his gun and shot off the other kneecap. The man was now only held up by Dylan’s relentless grip. Harper stared him straight in the face.
“I hope you rot in hell,” he mumbled as he shot the final shot straight in the chest.
****
“We’ve found and removed the implant,” Rommie stated. “It was cleverly hidden, I must say that.” They were all collected in medical, even Tyr who was looking slightly ashamed of himself, and for him, that was saying a lot. “Now it’s up to her. She’s fallen asleep on own accord, she’s been sleeping for nearly twelve hours, and me and Trance have agreed that we can wake her up.” She walked over to the bed. “Now, I must warn you…while we know that she is physically fine, we don’t know what’ll happen when she wakes up. She could be hysterical, she could be non-responsive…” She trailed off as Trance shook Beka gently. Her eyes opened and she blinked a few times, looking around her with a confused look on her face. The crew held their collective breaths.
“What’s happened?” Beka finally asked. She sounded normal, just confused.
“What do you mean?” Trance asked gently. Beka turned her head, looked at her as she pulled herself off the bunk.
“I…I remember leaving you guys. Oh God, I’m so sorry for doing that. I should never have left.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry Beka. You didn’t know what you were doing. It’s all fine now, he can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Oh, I can’t blame it on that.” She turned to Dylan. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed away for so long, regardless of how long it had been since I saw my friend. I shouldn’t have argued with you when you told me off, and I definitely shouldn’t have just taken off like that. Can you forgive me?” Dylan just nodded in stunned confusion. Trance set Beka down on the bed again.
“Beka, what can you remember?” Beka frowned.
“What do you mean? I was on a mission, met a friend, stayed away for longer than I was meant to…Dylan got angry, I got angry, I left, I went to a drift…” She frowned. “But you’re right. I can’t remember leaving the drift. I just remember getting there and…it’s kind of a blur. What did you mean that he can’t hurt me anymore?” Trance’s eyes widened.
“I…you were attacked on the drift,” she hurried to say. “Nothing major but you must have got a blow to the head if you can’t remember it. I’m going to put you back to sleep so that I can check you out, ok?” Beka shrugged and lay back down.
“Just make it quick,” she warned, “I need to get back to my duties.” She smiled at the collection of friends who were still standing, speechless, in a little group in the corner. “I promise…I won’t screw this up again.” Trance injected her, and she immediately fell back asleep. Dylan quickly marched up to Trance.
“What was all that about?” he demanded. Trance sighed, and opened her mouth to explain, before Rommie rescued her.
“This was one of my suspicions,” she stated. “She’s been lucky though.”
“What? How? Please explain!” Harper joined in.
“Amnesia, brought on by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In a lot of cases she would have forgotten everything; who she is, who we are, where she is…it seems to be short term. She can’t remember anything that happened after she got to the drift.”
“And you lied to her?” Dylan burst out at Trance. This time it was Harper who came to her rescue.
“What should she have done? Told the truth? And what good would that have done? We would have had to start over again. I don’t know, Dylan. Maybe this is for the best. If she can’t remember…well, we could go back to normal. Make up a story about being attacked and robbed by a Nietzschean, we found her and brought her back. That’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“And,” Dylan asked, looking at Trance, “what if she starts remembering?” The purple medic shrugged.
“We will get to that when it comes to it. She might remember one day, she might not. I believe…that it might just be better to lie to her. Sometimes…” they all looked over at Beka, where she was laying, seemingly so peacefully on her bed, “the truth does nothing but…hurt.”
Upon my end shall I begin…
Forsaking all I've fallen for…
I rise to meet the end…
I rise to meet…
I rise to meet…
The End