Part 1

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"The transport is going to take another eight arns!"

John opened his eyes. Through the half bubbled glass covering his eyes, he could see the city beyond him. He tried to move to get a better look but his legs felt like he was trapped in a pair of lead boots.

"We'll never get any leave at this rate," the man protested again to the other at the pods' helm. Though to John the pod felt more like a transit bus.

He looked at Chiana across from him and frowned at her slightly in his daze. She was wearing a deep red jump suit, still sleeping in a rather awkward position on the seat with a strange device on her head. It looked like she was wearing Geordi's visor from Star Trek, only backwards. Her cuffed hands were in her lap.

Beyond her the city continued to stretch out. He turned his attention to it again through his own massive window. He had a strange feeling like he had been swallowed by Jonah's whale ... the city around him just went on and on from every side, like the endless trail across Veega ...

John turned his gaze to the protesting man as he stepped up to him, his eyes fighting from sleep. "Are we criminals?"

The man laughed. "Hey Draun, the poor bastard's awake."

The protesting man nodded as he brought his hand to the side of John's face, smiling in his amusement. It was then that John realized he was wearing one of the visor things. "That's right boga, you're criminals."

John closed his eyes as something rang off at his head like an over surging pulse pistol.

John drew into consciousness again, feeling as if he were dragging his feet as he walked. He saw a line of people that resembled the Borg walking down the opposite direction of him in the hangar. He blinked slowly, fighting to stay aware as he brought his cuffed hands to Chiana's back while she walked in front of him.

"Night of the living dead," he muttered, barely aware of where he was. "Night of the living dead. Night of the living dead."

"Frell, Tauas!" A man walking beside him shouted to the one leading them. It was the same two from the transport. "I thought you set him, he's awake again!"

Tauas turned around, stopping Chiana. John ran into her, bumping his forehead against the visor wrapped around the back of her head. Tauas held what at least looked like a pulse rifle on John. "Gotta watch out for him, they said allot of this dren doesn't work on him."

"Well fix him again!" Draun insisted.

Tauas shrugged. "It's on its highest setting." He turned as another line of the cyborg looking guys came in a uniform line down the side of them. Tauas grabbed one of them and pushed him into John. "Go on, hold him."

John grabbed the cyborg by his arms, trying to look into his void eyes. He waved his hand in front of them. "Nobody home Lucotus. Nobody home."

"Stop frelling around," Draun protested as he poked John in the back with his rifle. "Let's go, you! Listen up! Walk! Keep walking, do you understand? Get going!"

John looked at him as his hands snatched the rifle from him. He felt like he was standing by in a half dream, like his body was at full force but not his mind. He turned the rifle on Draun and fired, snapping around to Tauas and firing on him. John stared at Tauas' body on the floor as he swooned in place, ignoring the cyborg that simply walked away. After long moments, John brought his hands to the sides of his head, touching the ends of the visor. He ripped it from his temples and screamed as pain consumed his mind. He saw only a blackness, barely aware he was on his hands and knees, screaming over and over at the floor.

His vision began to focus again. He forced himself to stand, weeping in quiet sobs. He turned to Chiana, taking the visor in his hands as he looked into her eyes. They were void, blank of anything just like the cyborg looking guys. He ripped the visor off, staggering over her as she fell to the ground. She began to moan, barely moving.

John took her legs and started to drag her. He didn't know where to, or even why, but anything had to be better than being zombies.

---

John awoke again, uncertain of when he had fallen unconscious again. He was in a dark chamber piled with bins of junk. As he sat up he saw Chiana rummaging through them, gathering items of clothing here and there. She was already dressed in a sleeveless black tunic that came down to her knees and a pair of dark gray pants and black boots with one leather armlet on her left forearm. She seemed to be looking for the other one to go with it, staggering in her steps as she moved to the next bin.

He tried to stand, groaning as he only managed to bend over to his hands and knees. His head screamed with pain as he gaped at the dark, oil stained floor, drooling on it. He forced his hand over to the pile of clothing Chiana had probably piled in front of him. He scooped it over to himself like a bear sweeping in a cub, huddling the pile into himself as he rocked, moaning from the pain. "This goes wayyyyyy past Excedrin headache. Oh God, wayyyyy ... I should have shot myself instead. It hurts. It hurts."

Chiana gave up her search as she stumbled towards him. Several droplets of her dark blue blood trailed down her nose. Her face was already smeared with her attempts to wipe it.

She trembled as she came to her knees and rested her hand on his back. She laid her head on him, resting her forehead between his shoulders as he sobbed, crying until he had become very still again, his breathing evening out. She felt like she must have fallen asleep with him when he finally began to move again. He pulled some of the items out from under him, looking over the clothes as he tried to undress. Chiana slipped away from him without a sound, foraging through the things that were piled to the floor on her hands and knees.

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John slipped a jacket over the clothes he managed to find that fit. He rested his hands on a bin as he stood and tried to walk to find Chiana. He felt like he was going to be sick as everything spun, like he just got off a really bad tilt-a-whirl ride at the fair - the kind that could terrify allot more wondering if the rusty bolts were going to sling the caged shoe right into the Ferris wheel.

He edged along like a blind man, one hand over the other from bin and wall to the next until Chiana came to his side. He tried to gaze to her, only managing a dazed, slow blink as her head slipped to his side, her hand taking his as she rested it on her shoulder. Her other arm wrapped around him. There was no way she could hold his weight, she didn't seem to be coming around so great herself, but it was comforting to have her so near, know she was there. She was the only thing he knew - could recognize. He couldn't remember anything.

He let her guide him even though the strain not to put any weight on her felt even worse than trying to hang off the sides of the bins. He felt like they must look like two drowned rats trying to drag each other ashore as they came out of the bay or whatever it was into a taller, longer and empty one. He slipped away from Chiana, squeezing her shoulders before he brought himself to the floor again. He groaned, laying flat on his stomach as he felt the coolness of the floor against the side of his face.

"What the hell happened to us?" he finally spoke with some clarity though he still sounded groggy.

Chiana stood without moving, her legs drawn apart with her head hanging off to one side at her shoulder. She swooned a little in place, staring through the long strands of her bangs at several people as they hung around a passageway. A couple of them took rather daring leaps down to the floor in front of it from a second story walkway.

"Maybe we should hide," John commented as he stared listlessly at the cautious approach of a young woman and male. They looked like ragged throw backs to something he felt like he could remember about Chiana but it was more like a taste or a color or smell ... Anyway they looked like they'd been shopping from the same bins. Maybe they were right up Chiana's alley. She seemed to respond to them at least as they came up to her. She drew her arm and shoulder back, easing her nose and lips closer into the neck of the young man until he flinched away from her, backing up towards John. She followed him with her gaze with a new curious interest until the young woman came sneaking up beside her, gaining her attention as she tilted her head to her.

"That's it," John barely spoke as he closed his eyes. "We're punk toast."

---

John opened his eyes again, finding himself laying half curled on a pallet of blankets and pillows in the corner of a room. The room was glowing from the light of a gas fire, flickering like an old stove burner from what looked like a short stool with a pot on top of it. Chiana was sitting on her calves in front of it with the young Nebari couple from earlier and two older males who looked Human ...

He creased his brows. "Sebacean," he muttered. He sat himself up, resting his head and back against the wall. Chiana came crouching to him, sitting with him with two bowls.

"Chiana," he muttered as he looked around for anything resembling a utensil. He half shrugged as he lifted the bowl to his lips to sip on the hot stock. "Mmm, this is good. I never want to know what's in it."

He scooped the chunks of meat and what he hoped were at least in the vegetable arena to his mouth with his fingers as Chiana ate quietly the same way.

"Listen, Chiana," he glanced around himself as he set his empty bowl down. "Do you know where we are? I mean, look at this place ..." he raised his brows to her, glancing back as he ran his hand through his hair at the side of his head to hide his expression from anyone else. "Does anything look familiar? I mean, anything."

Chiana gazed over the room, sniffing in the air. Her lips parted as she slightly tilted her head. "No," she breathed as she shook her head.

"So she does talk," the Nebari male commented as he came to them. He looked to John. "I'm Korash, this is the Urlain sectors."

"Sectors of what," John asked as he tenderly brushed his fingers along his temples. "What is this ... ship - city ..."

"You don't know that?" Korash snorted at him. "It's the Nirthrian Prime."

"Prime," Chiana looked to him sharply. "Like South Walden Prime."

"You coming from the colonies?" Korash wondered at them. He shook his head at Chiana, correcting her. "Like Metropolise Nirthrian Prime."

"So we're in the Nebari Prime sector ..." John closed his eyes with a heavy sigh as he continued to massage the numbness at the small puncture wounds in his temples.

"Frell they really put a mind job on you two," Korash stated, his eyes softening in empathy as he adjusted himself to sitting on his calves in front of Chiana. "I don't know anywhere that isn't a sector, colony or servicer to the Establishment."

"Does that sound right to you?" John asked as he lifted his gaze up to Chiana.

Chiana shook her head as she gaped at Korash. "No ..."

"What about the Peacekeepers?" John asked. "Scarrens, Luxans, Hyneria ... the Charrids?"

"All sectors," Korash frowned at him slightly. "But you'll have a hard time finding any of the rest of those races other than the Sebacean. They're still deemed non-conformist," he smiled wryly. "They're hostile bastards who can't stand us and aren't affected by mind cleansing treatments."

"How ..." John licked his lips, wiping his face as he let out his breath. "How long ago was it - when Nebari Prime took all those over," John raised his hand to him when Korash moved to answer. "Just - humor me okay? I think - Chiana and I are so knocked out of it we - we kinda feel like we're coming right out of the past ... right Pip?"

Chiana nodded as her eyes widened with awe.

"Chiana..." Korash breathed out a hum of a laugh and shook his head at Chiana. "What's your name?" he asked Chiana. "Pip?" he asked, trying the unfamiliar word.

"Nebari Prime has every territory?" John slowly asked. "Everything?"

Korash nodded with a bewildered look at them, and then glanced to Chiana with a slightly worried expression. "After the ultimatum and the activation of the great contagion. Whole worlds thrown into chaos ..."

"Nh-nh-nh!" Chiana strained to breath, taking in her breaths in sharp, short gasps as she suddenly stood with the bowl in her hands. She slung it across the room, wrenching her face as it shattered against the wall. "You frelling bastards!"

---

A pair of black eyes peered from between two beams in the ruined roofing of a building, watching a nearly empty transport train whir and clatter from the dismal station above. Chiana's head turned, following the course of the transport even after it was out of the view afforded by the gap between beams. Closing her eyes, she drifted with it a microt, as she once had with the transport above her instructional facility as a child.

But she'd been forced to stay behind then, and chose to now. He still couldn't move far. She let her hands go from their grip on the beams and hopped down from the bric-a-brac she piled up into a stairway. The pains reminded her she wasn't any better off; only she didn't care. "Crichton," she mustered a bright tone before landing on her feet, bent over in front of him. With her elbows back, she swayed her back further to raise her rump and her head in a frisky, shifting stare.

He lifted his head and glared to her with one bloodshot eye. "Where the hell is the fire, kiddy?"

Abruptly, her forearms rested on her thighs and she leaned forward to nuzzle his forehead. "How's the head?"

He managed an amused exhale. "Aw hell, ask me someday when I can be sure I got one."

Chiana replied with a supple laugh.

"Besides, what the heck for? If these guys are helping us, that isn't too bad news."

"That's it," Chiana shifted her cheek from one of his cheeks to the other, looking around cautiously, "they can't afford to. You can tell. Let's... let's just blow."

"For, sheez Pip, just... eat something and settle for a few arns for a change."

Chiana made a murmur of frustrated objection.

"Look, I know you're upset, Pip. I'm a little ticked myself. There a helluva lot we need to figure out. And we will. We will."

Chiana's gloved hand squeezed around his for a microt before she broke away with another noise of frustration, turned and sat awkwardly against a nearby crate. First a drop fell. Then another she jerked from her shoulder. Then the shower began to fall through the fragmented roof. Chiana bolted up and around a few steps in wordless alarm.

Crichton smiled into his hands. "Of course it rains." He chuckled.

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