'There must be love to feel spite for betrayal in the first place.' 
                  
                                              - Unknown





The seeds of discontent aboard The Andromeda had spread like a bad plague. Each transgression tying 
it's own knot in the rope that held taught between it's crewmen. One that threatened to break a long 
forgotten pact made years ago. One that led all the way to a certain workshop. 
"May I remind you," Dylan's lips peeled back in a sour look of discipline, "That Tyr is a prisoner
on this ship." 
"Oh, yeah, don't worry!" Harper reassured him in good faith, "I'm torturing him real good, violating 
Geneva and all that good stuff." 
Tyr turned the reading material in his hands to full view revealing that it was a manual
on circuit board repair for inner slipstream converters, "He wants me to assess some damages." 
"Real nasty stuff if I say so, myself." Harper chuckled, giving Tyr a nudge, "Say the line."
With a deep sigh, Tyr turned to Dylan with a pointed look, "I...can't lift my arms."
"He can't lift his arms!!" Harper exclaimed his baffling punchline with a cheer as Dylan found 
himself exchanging looks with public enemy number one. 
"Okay just..." He wasn't sure what to make of any of this. "Don't let him out of your sight."
"Wouldn't dream of it, boss!" Harper saluted before immediately pulling the goggles down over
his face and returning back to his repairs. 

A refraction of light buzzed into view as The Andromeda regarded Dylan with a stolen glance,
"I'm glad you're both here." She announced, her vision drawing to Harper, "During routine
training, a few of our Engineers discovered something in my files that you might want to look
at."
"Newbies." Harper bemoaned, yanking his goggles off out of frustration, tossing them onto his 
workbench. 
"Territorial?" Dylan inquired.
"No!" He pressed with a little too much emphasis for it to not sound like denial. "They think
everything's an issue!" Rubbing at his eyes, he lifted up off his stool, "Oh, wah! This
five-part configuration won't fit into this three-part connector!!" He fake whined, "Reconfigure
it with a pair of pliers and jam it in there!! It's not rocket science!!" He paused at his own
contradiction for a moment before slapping the counter with a loud 'whap', "You know what I mean!" 
Blinking for a moment, The Andromeda suddenly caught up to what he had just said, "Are you telling me you-"
"Of course not!" Harper lied, heading out of the room to deal with the issue only to be grabbed
by the shoulder. 
"How about we clean up our workstation before we move on to another project?" Dylan asked, as
Harper nodded, "Oh, yeah, right." Yanking his work gloves off with his teeth and tossing them across 
the room. "There."
Dylan, in turn, wasn't amused in the slightest. 
"Yeah yeah, okay. Fine." Harper rolled his eyes, "Killjoy."
Tyr, taking the hint, avoided eye contact with Dylan, following shortly behind Harper as they
exited the room together.



"You know you could benefit from being kinder to your crewmates." The Andromeda posited.
"Tyr is not my crewmate."
Crossing her arms, she let out a mock sigh, "I meant Harper, but, since you brought him 
up, just what are you planning by keeping Tyr here?"
"Let's just say I've considered the pros and cons to having him onboard."
"And?"
"The pros outweighed the cons."
"Explain."
"When they're not taking pot shots at each other, everybody in the known galaxy has their 
sights set upon getting their comeuppance on a certain Mister Anasazi." He then moved closer,
whispering to her visual avatar as if it was corporeal, when just his usual stance and volume
would suffice. Something she took note of. "All of them. At the same time." 
"Thus creating a stalemate." She understood.
"More like a ceasefire." He explained. "When everybody wants to be the one to fire first, nobody
fires at all." He then drew back, retaining his usual polite mannerisms. "It'll be nice to not have 
to dodge laser fire every week." She couldn't say this outcome didn't make her feel any better,
but...it didn't make her feel particularly worse, either. 









 

"Be glad I held onto all this stuff." Harper smiled, presenting a great big pile of books on whatever weird
crap Tyr was always reading about. "I couldn't get everything on the list since we gotta keep these things 
brief but, I managed to grab what looked interesting." If by 'interesting' he meant 'literally judging books
by their covers'. 
Taking inventory of the titles in his hands, Tyr's nose curled in that very particular way that meant he was 
about to say something he was going to regret. 
"Take them back." 
Right-O-Rama. 
"Oh, c'mon don't be that way." Harper whined, "Lookie here, I even grabbed that one by your favorite girl, Ayn." 
He shook a copy of Atlas Shrugged at him playfully until it was clear that this was about to get real ugly 
real fast. 
"I'm no fool." Tyr scowled at him, "You're just as guilty of holding my leash as the others on this vessel."
"No, I'm not." He groaned.
"What's to assume that, once I've started to find your personality grating, and you've grown tired of
your role as my keeper, that I won't simply be abandoned?" A particular shelf full of half finished projects 
came to mind. One that Harper hated looking at so much, he shoved it off to collect dust in the corner of his workshop, 
promising that one day he'd get around to them. Instead, they were left to just keep piling up like 
a tower of tiny little failures. 
"Look Tyr, you're not exactly the most popular guy on the ship right now. If it was up to anyone else, you'd 
be left in here to rot." 
"Does that include Dylan?" 
A pause. "No, no it doesn't." Harper wished he could tell him what Dylan's plan was. The guy had gone completely
off his rocker since...well, a long time ago, but, now, he wanted to fix his great, big, screwed up Commonwealth. 
First, he had to do it from the ground up. Starting with Tyr.
"Between you and me, you don't wanna know what he's got planned."
"Meaning...?" 
"Nothing. It means nothing." 
Tyr's demeanor immediately sharpened like a knife, "If you genuinely cared for my well being you'd have 
released me by now." Oh, yeah, emotional manipulation. Real classy. 
"Tyr, you haven't even recovered from your last little field trip out there. You think I'm seriously going 
to let that happen to you all over again?" 
"I was alive wasn't I?" 
"Oh, yeah, that was living the high life, wasn't it?" He snapped, "You didn't see the shape you were in."
Narrowing his eyes, Harper could see the plot brewing across Tyr's face plain as day. He'd had enough experience
to know all the signs of something(or someone) ready to make a slapdash for self destruction. Underneath all the
wear and tear, Tyr was itching to do something that couldn't be undone. He was turning into a powder keg again 
and, worse yet, Harper was taping it to his chest with a big smile on his face, reassuring everyone that there 
was nothing to worry about. Of course there was something to worry about. All in all, it felt like neither of 
them were supposed to have made it this far and the whole damn universe was out to get them for it. The thing
was, Tyr seemed to almost welcome it. "What are you up to?"  
Here, his face drew into something dark but it wasn't the kind of joyful 'watch me gut a guy with one arm tied
behind my back' darkness. This was some hard, soul crushing, thing that seemed to drain the life out of him.
"You needn't worry about that." 
Dropping the books in his hands, Harper turned bolted out of the room, a plot already brewing in the fringes of 
his mind. 





 





It was late. Far too late for most crewmembers to be out and about. Trance knew this as she made her rounds,
watching the skeleton crew follow a set schedule, scattering about the halls of the ship to their posts. 
There was something conventionally funny about how, even when they didn't exactly have a set sun or moon 
cycle to measure their days by, they still managed to organize what was considered 'day' and 'night' as if
either really mattered. They loved the organization of it all. So, when she noticed a very particular 
Engineer ignoring this little organized dance of 'day' and 'night', she knew something was wrong. 

Silently pantomiming an argument to someone who wasn't there, he trudged his way down the hall looking a bit
too determined for her liking. Picking up on a feeling she knew all too well, she knew had to stop him before 
it was too late. 

Falling behind just far enough to keep from being seen, she followed him the distance from between where
she had initially found him to his destination. A little storage area Dylan kept under lock and key. One filled
with items of importance that they had gathered over the course of The Andromeda's voyage. 
One Harper could easily slip into with a quick hand and a casual nod to any passerby signaling that nothing was
amiss. Once inside, he pulled a pen light from his jacket and scanned the unlit room, slipping between shelves 
until, finally, he found what he was looking for. 
Patting the vault before him as if he was greeting it, he reached into his pocket, pulling out a device Trance 
had only seen him use once or twice before. A contraption from the good 'ol days. 
Hooking it up to the vault's mainframe, Harper opened it up, the tiny computer lighting his face up 
in the dark. His expression, exhausted, was scrubbed at with the backs of his hands as his eyes 
began to adjust to the dim glow. With an ear pressed to the side of the vault, he began typing, 
keeping one eye pinned on the screen's manual overlay. 
It was here she made herself known. 
"What are you doing?" 
"You know what I'm doing." 
"I do." She hesitated, "But I don't think you do." 
She could see the widening gap between them grow with every word they spoke. The conversation remained 
vague enough to deter anyone else from being able to parse out anything from their words. 
They were always under surveillance and they knew it. 
"You know he won't be happy with you digging around in here." She warned, watching as he hit the correct 
combination of numbers. The lock's mechanism clinked at their input. "Especially for some knickknack."
"This isn't some knickknack." He stared back at her in the dark. More than anything, he looked like he needed 
a drink or sleep or, worst of all, the truth. Digging through a collection of priceless artifacts, he ignored 
every one; his sights were laser-guided, his plan laid out before him. 
Finding what he was looking for, he held it out at arms length, examining it's odd shape. Immediately, he could 
tell it wasn't built to fit his hand. "Engine of Creation, huh?" He sized it up by it's weight, looking 
almost disappointed in it's lack of showmanship. "More like carburetor." 
"Harper." Trance pleaded, "Put it back. It's not worth getting in trouble over." 
"But it's enough for Tyr to die for? Is that it? What about me or Beka? What did we die over?" 
She took a step back. 
Slamming the vault shut, Harper didn't seem to care who could hear them at this point. "You don't think 
word gets around? Up until a year ago there were only, like, five people on this ship." He pointed out.
"People talk, Trance." Turning, he grabbed his equipment and began his march back into the ship's corridors, 
drawing her in to follow close behind. 
This silence was unbecoming of him. It was eerie. She wished he would at least try to break up the tension 
with a joke or some lewd comment, but he just kept walking as the small droves of those selected for 
the late shift avoided them as best they could. 

"You know, I heard something funny about this knickknack." He started up again from within the false privacy of 
his workshop. "From what I heard, it came from some chick who lost her mind a long time ago."
Examining it, he grabbed a scanner off a pile of old soda cans and began pressing a 
series of buttons, scanning the engraving on the side. "At first I was like, 'hey, there's no way' but 
things just seem to keep adding up." He then hunched over one of the ship's 
monitors, fingers playing across his keyboard as he began to boot up one of his programs.
She swallowed. 
"At first it was old religions. Then old languages. Old logs of information that have me locked out 
all of a sudden." He pointed at his breast, "A pin that matches a certain someone's tattoo." Shrugging, 
he then plopped himself down into his chair, swiveling it around to face her, his expression locked in 
a thin line between comedy and tragedy. "And I thought, 'Hey, listen, this is crazy talk, Trance would 
never...'" He eyed her for what felt like an eternity. "You wouldn't, right Trance?" 

She didn't know what to say, this was the first time in so long she could feel the clock running
out on her. 
"Trance...I-I can fix this."  
"I think you're very angry right now." She stated, calmly. "And I think a lot of that anger is misguided."
Now was not the time to be on the defensive, but, she didn't care. She just didn't want him to be mad at her anymore
"But there are certain things you shouldn't tamper with." She watched as his gaze broke away from hers, just 
fast enough to read a phonetic translation off his monitor. 
If she had a heart, it would be racing right now. 
"So why don't we just put this aside and you can get some rest. Maybe you'll be thinking more clearly tomorrow." 
She could tell her words were flying over his head. He was half listening now, pulling a chord from the ship's
mainframe and hooking it into his dataport in one, quick, tooth-clenching, motion. 
"Why don't you reset me 'til I do what you want?" He challenged her out of fear that she would. The implications 
of it burned a cumbersome weight through her very being. 
"I....can't." She admitted with an honesty that neither of them could contend with. 
Horrified, Harper stared at her in a way that made her feel angry and ashamed and small 
in ways that no living being had ever been allowed to make her feel before.
The next words out of his mouth were dangerous. An old phrase that never should be
spoken by mortal tongue. The kind one would keep locked away, always fearful that,
one day, someone would find the key. The kind that would bring everything back to the surface.


A smile carved it's way across her lips, sweet and foreboding, as The Engine of Creation 
clattered to the floor. 













Rommie knew humans had to take a breath once in a while, but, with the way Beka had been at it
for the past hour, she was starting to have her doubts. 
"You'd think I'd have a little bit of seniority here, what with how far back we go but no! I'm 
the one who gets thrown under the bus!" Her fist connected with the punching bag hard enough to 
almost sending it off it's chassis. "I should've left him back at Delta Station IV years ago. 
Just let him rot there. I was raised to not go around picking up strays, I knew better, and now
here I am paying for it!" She then turned to kick and nearly fell, recovering quickly with a loud-
"Speaking of strays, I thought Dylan was done trying to save everything but here we are giving that-
that- backstabber another shot at us!" She then did her best impression of Dylan, which,
by all regards, always seemed to cut a bit close to the real thing enough to be almost uncanny. 
"Oh that's a wonderful knife you have there, it'd be a shame if you didn't get enough hours of practice
with it. Let me just turn around so you can use my back as a viable target. Make sure to kiss my ass between 
each stab for extra motivation!!" She then let out a raspberry, her tongue lolling sarcastically at the image 
she's created, "It's pathetic!" Rolling her eyes, she switched back to beating her not-as-metaphorical
punching bag to a pulp. "We voted fair and square but I guess Democracy only counts as long as it doesn't
get in the way of their stupid little boys club!!"
Wiping the sweat off her chin, Beka stopped and stared, quietly, at the punching bag as if it had just 
eloquently offered to help retape her hands. "What do you think?"
"I think you're letting your personal feelings get the best of you." Rommie answered, honestly. 
"So you think I'm wrong?"
"Oh, no, you're right."
"But you just said-" 
"You asked me what I thought. Not if you were right or wrong."

Taking a deep breath, Beka plopped onto a nearby bench. Both emotionally taxed and physically exhausted, she 
almost didn't even make it that far. "It's just...there are these days where I feel like the whole universe has 
just blown off it's rocker and there I am on this little raft trying to keep my head above it all." 
"Trust me, I know exactly what you mean." Rommie empathized just as her sound array was starting to pick up on 
the commotion coming from the other room. Beka then picked up on it, herself, regarding it with a roll of her eyes 
and a crack of her knuckles. 
"Well, I guess it's true what they say, desperate times..."
"Call for desperate women." Rommie finished, causing Beka to quickly look back at her in confusion. "What? Is...is 
that not the-"
Beka then smiled, sorely, "Oh, you have got to stop hanging out with Harper."
Opening the door to the courtside gym, they watched as what was probably the most politely dull game of tennis turn 
into Andromeda's first freestyle fighting ring. They were yelling, exchanging money, and making the room unbearably 
humid in that way organisms did whenever they became just a little too excitable. 

Exchanging glances, Rommie and Beka started to push their way through the crowd. 
"You know, I'll never understand how people get this way." She called over to Beka who was, to put it lightly, 
elbowing her way through everyone she passed. 
"Hey, what can I say? We like a little bit of drama in our lives."
"I was talking about the sweat."

Stepping into the ring, Rommie found herself barely catching the body being flung her way. The poor girl's
face had been beaten so badly, her jaw was already beginning to swell shut, causing her face to look unnaturally
offset. It made something inside her ache.

"Alright, party's over!" Beka yelled over the crowd, waving them off, "Finish collecting your bets and head 
back to your quarters until further notice." She then pointed to the lone victor. "And you, you're coming with me."
The woman complied, walking up to follow behind Beka with bloodied fists clenched at her sides. "See?" Beka
said, turning to Rommie with a smile, "Just a matter of simple crowd control, no big deal." Except, as it seems,
it was a big deal, because the second she turned back, the woman behind her took a dive, dragging Beka down with
her. "Woah! Woah! Woah! Woah! Olson, what are you doing!?" She yelled while trying to keep her nose from being 
flattened by a pair of bloodied knuckles. 

Immediately, the audience returned, cash clenched in sweaty palms as the betting pool blew back open.
Pulling a member of Ops out of Beka's hair hadn't exactly been a part of what Rommie would consider 'girl time' 
but, you make do with what you have, I suppose. 











She never was a natural leader, no, she never did have the strong jaw or charismatic personality
to accommodate a wide audience. She simply lived her life as the man behind the man in charge, 
letting him do all the dirty work of commanding. After all, a movement needed a face everyone 
could trust. What kind of face was hers compared to the experienced
features of an older man in charge that everyone felt so particularly drawn to? 

Standing in the doorway of Dylan's bedroom, Trance kept the door open by staying just between the 
sensors as they beeped in irritation at her. Silly little things, machines were. They were always
so pliant, serving without prejudice until you broke some little contract of their inner workings. 
Touching the wall, she could feel exactly where the sensors were connected to the mechanism and 
simply severed them. "Sorry for intruding." Trance apologized with an immeasurable amount of energy. 
"I just...I think you and I need to discuss a few things..."
"It's a bit late, isn't it?" He examined, despite still not having changed out of his usual work attire. 
By the looks of it, he had been staring at screen after screen, filling his brain up with the needs of 
others. He had been bogged down so much of this work that the man simply just did not get anything done.
Never has he given himself any freedom from his self-proclaimed mission. Because of this, he held a sense 
of resentment towards those who could and, by extension, did. She could hear it in every word he spoke. 
"Why don't we hold this off for a meeting or..." Dylan's eyes darted across her face before soothingly 
drawing down, drinking in the sight as if he had just now realized how much she resembled all those human 
women he expels so much energy into. "...maybe I could pencil you in. Just this once."











As far as punishments went, Tyr didn't particularly find this one so much grueling as it was dull.
Boredom had set in and, for once, he found himself almost missing the vacant chatter of the guards
outside his cell. 
It wasn't like he particularly wanted the company, but it did seem odd that no one was tending to  
the only prisoner onboard. One could chalk it up to old loyalties, but, Tyr didn't subscribe to that 
kind of ideology. He did, however, have undying faith in the limitless pool of stupidity
that those around him passed around to one another. 
He looked down at the books still laying just outside his cell, reading over their covers for the 
countless umpteenth time and sighed. He wondered, possibly, if he had drank from that same pool, himself. 

Graciously, he was drawn away from these thoughts by a visitor. Not any visitor he felt any particular
camaraderie towards, but, from where he was standing, any visitor would do. 
"You're late to your post." He acknowledged, barely regarding the man from the corner of his eye. "As much
of a relic from the old Commonwealth as you are, you're quite lax in your duties compared to the Captain."
The warden stumbled closer to his cell, the smell of liquor souring the words on his tongue. 
"You know I've gotten real sick of that mouth of yours."
"Oh?" His interest piqued. Squeezing some sense of amusement out of this one was going to be...enjoyable. 
Maybe he could salvage the day, yet. 
Pointing down at the books on the floor, Tyr regarded the man as if he was simply the help, after all, 
if he was going to be monitored like a child, he might as well act like one. "My reading materials seem 
to have not quite made their way into my hand." He turned his palm upwards, moving his fingers in haste.
"Be a good little kludge and hand them to me." 
Standing over the discarded pile, the guard stared down at them, looking back up to meet Tyr's ever-serious 
brow which was, by all regards, masking his amusement. 
"I've got a better idea." He untwisted the flask in his hand, dumping it's contents onto the books 
in one quick motion, saving the last few drops for himself. This, Tyr decided, was going to be the last thing
this man was ever going to savor. "You know I always wanted to fight one of you." 
"Are you referring to me as a Nietzschean or simply one with an I.Q. higher than whatever backwater breeding 
ground you seemed to have crawled from?" 'Hook, line, and sinker' as Harper would say.
Taking the challenge, the fool began imputing his code into the cell's keypad as Tyr began plotting his escape. 
"I knew it!!" Screamed the dayshift guard, darting into the room, blaster drawn, eyes wide from an obvious
lack of sleep. He shook his head, pointing the firearm at his coworker who, by all means, was just as confused
as Tyr was. "I knew you were working with him! I-I-" Paranoid, the man simply could not still himself long enough
to focus, "I'm not going to let you work with some kind of-of-" Sensing the danger he was in, the nightshift 
guard jolted in fear, trying to grasp for his blaster, leaving his chest exposed long enough to be shot directly
above the heart. He hit the ground with a lifeless 'thud'.

Regarding the dead man at his feet, laying merely a few centimeters away, Tyr's mind came back into focus like
he had just been shaken from a dream. Ironic, it was, that the death of a drunkard would sober him like this. 
"You killed your companion." He pointed out. 
"Any friend of yours is no friend of mine." 
What kind of insanity... 
"So you're going to drag bodies to my door?" The tower of violence began to build itself back up again, the first
brick laid, discarded, at his feet. "Am I really worth all this bloodshed?" 
"Your head is worth more than a whole sea of blood!" The young man then pulled a knife from his boot, shooting
out the keypad to his cell, causing the laser defense systems to override themselves. "And I'm going to take it.
Even if I have to saw through every inch of your pretentious neck to get it!!"  
A soft hum resonated from the base of Tyr's neck to his fingertips. 
The bravado. 
The dance. 
The hunt. 
The kill. 
It was enticing. Delectable. Excruciatingly so. 

To give his opponent the illusion of an upper hand, Tyr allowed him to make the first move. A sweeping, almost 
carving motion, of the blade's downswing inferred poor reflexes. Possibly due to a lack of sleep or a lack of practice. 
Either way, it was easily rebuffed by simply taking a step back.
"Bastard!" The guard yelled, expending far too much energy for an upswing that was, by his standards, lazy in it's execution. 
"Is it my turn now?" Tyr inquired, wrapping a firm hand around his wrist, feeling the pulse at his fingertips that would, 
no doubt, cease under his grasp. Holding the blade to the man's throat, Tyr could feel it. He could hear the chorus of 
godless angels crying out for their pound of flesh as he stilled himself against his body...and refused them, entirely. 
"Look at him." He guided the man's head down to the dead guard, "You will carry the act you've committed here until your 
final breath." Tyr receded, now holding the knife between his palm and forefinger, his thumb keeping it flat and toothless. 
"But you will not share his fate today." he pushed the man to the floor to lay alongside his kill, "Remember this." He then 
turned, quickening his pace down the ship's corridor, feeling the shadow of death biting at his heels. 











Between having to drag Beka to the medbay and picking Olson's teeth out of her fist, Rommie could make the 
assessment that today was not going particularly well. 
"Captain!" She called out, finally catching up to him, "There's something strange going on, the entire crew is-" 
"Don't worry, I'm fully aware." Dylan reassured her, placing a chaste hand on her shoulder. "I'm handling the
situation as we speak." 
Relief washed over Rommie's calculated fears. Of course Dylan was okay. Even when worse came to worse, 
he was always a rock the midst of a hurricane. "Right." She smiled, regarding him with curiosity.
"It's strange, you just seem so...unaffected."
"Unaffected?" He lifted an eyebrow, letting out a laugh that was far too small to be joyful. "What are
you talking about?"
Like a curtain had been drawn behind them, she had just now noticed Trance had been standing there with him, 
hovering just out of his periphery. They regarded each other, wordlessly, as Rommie could feel her relief 
begin to slip away. 
With his hand still on her shoulder, Rommie began to walk ahead of him so that they could stay on the move.
"So you've been handling..." She chose her words carefully. "...our current predicament?" 
"Of course." His eyes lit up, truly showing off the mind of an idealist, finally seeing a clear path to his vision. 
"Can I ask what that entails?"
"Let's just say, between you and me, there's going to be some changes around here."
She stopped in her tracks.
"Don't worry, it's nothing our crew can't handle." He was the one guiding her now, using his hand to keep her 
equally at his pace. "I'm just giving everyone a little..." Lifting his other hand, he straightened out his fingers, 
waving it in a gesture to signify vagueness. "...performance review." He then patted her with the same hand, 
a friendly gesture that met with the hand on her shoulder, holding her in place where she stood. "Nothing more."
His words were calm, collected, almost doting. Condescending. The word she was looking for was 'condescending'.
She looked again, past his smile and to Trance who was staring back, unceasingly. "Maybe you and I need to have 
a little one-on-one of our own." She suggested to him. 
"You?" He laughed with empty amusement. "No!" She never thought seeing Dylan smile at her would ever cause her so
much distress. "What could you and I ever need to talk about?" He then patted her back, walking ahead without another word.

To say she was in a state of mindless wandering after that would've been an understatement. Without a crew, without a 
Captain, without so much as a clue as to what was going on, there was no way she could handle what was obviously 
a disaster in the making. Dylan's words might have also been a factor in her inability to grasp onto anything palpable
but this was neither the time nor the place to think about that. 
As she was caught up in her own machinations, she almost didn't notice the figure flying past her; tall, fast, another
problem to stack on top of her unending pile of problems. "Tyr." She cursed. 


Turning on her heel, she gave chase, trailing after him. No matter how 'evolved' Nietzscheans found themselves, they 
were still no match for the kind of speed she could reach on her legs, alone. She caught up to him in no time, 
holding out her elbow and clotheslining him to the floor. "I told them this would happen." She chided, folding 
her arms, "I knew the second you'd get the opportunity, you'd head straight to-" She glanced at the door he was
now splayed out in front of, "-Harper's workshop!?" 
Rolling off his back, Tyr crossed his legs and sat, trying to catch his breath. "Something...is happening." He paused.
"Something...disturbing." Here, he wasn't so much as staring at the floor as he was raking his eyes over each 
individual thread that made up the carpet, he seemed both completely gone and far too focused at the same time. 
Looks like whatever 'best of both worlds' territory Nietzscheans usually inhabited could also become the worst under 
specific circumstances. This just so happened to be one of them.
"Whatever it is, it's got something to do with Trance." She explained, watching him teeter between two extremes in
a way that didn't grant her any peace of mind. "Worst of all, she has Dylan caught up in the middle." Here, he looked up 
at her, wordlessly trying to say something she couldn't read. Like a sentence without context. Calmly, Tyr closed his eyes,
rising back to his feet. 
"I will give you the full benefit of knowing that you were right." He admitted, "I was ready to take this opportunity 
to run and I still fully intend to." He then eyed the door before him with concern, "After this matter is resolved." 
She never could quite keep up with his track record, but, more than anything, it did stay consistent. 
"I wouldn't expect anything less."

Before she could unlock the door, she heard a chorus of shouts coming from behind. A crowd, more like an angry mob, 
encroaching upon them. "I've got this handled." She told him. 

Approaching her crew, calmly, she held up her hands before her, "The situation here is fine, I've got everything
under contro-" A fist shot out of the crowd, shattering it's bones and cartilage across her cheek. "You A.I. think 
you can replace us!? You think you're god!?" Shouted a botanist she remembered once sharing a wonderful conversation
over rotational plant life with. 
"Well we're sick of being outranked by some soulless machine!!" Yelled the tech hand who helped Harper rebuild 
her leg after a particularly bad mission. 
Glancing over the crowd, Rommie realized that she fully had recognized and accounted for every single one of
their names, faces, likes, dislikes, wants, and dreams. All members of their new crew who she, both as a ship and as 
a fellow crewmember, made sure to accommodate with nothing but personable kindness.
And they wanted to destroy her. 

The worst of it wasn't even that. It was the bottleneck of a decision set before her. If she chose to defend herself, 
she'd irritate their prejudices, driving their heels even further into the ground. If she didn't, she'd be torn to pieces. 
In her hesitation, she felt a hand pull her back as Tyr slid into the space between her and the mob, giving them something 
else to throw their vitriol at. 
He hovered over the crowd, their fearful silence seemed to amuse him in a way that drew his eyes into a display of
satisfaction. Lunging forward, he watched them scatter, loosely, before regrouping again, recovering what little 
pride they still had left. "What does it tell us when inferior lifeforms take out their frustrations like this?" 
He seemed as if he had been addressing the crowd when, really, he was talking to her. Just without necessarily 
looking at her. Or speaking directly to her. "They look at progress and rage at being left behind in the wake of it." 
Another fist emerged from the crowd and he caught it with a smile, playful and cold. "Pitiful, isn't it?" Breaking the 
fingers in his grasp, he let it go and began his descent, grabbing one crewmember, sending him flying into a nearby wall 
before ramming his fist into another; all in one single, quick, motion.   
The whole scene flew into chaos, causing Rommie to grab and drag him away, afraid that he'd actually start hunting them down,
one by one, if she let him. "Let them go." Came a command to which he, under no circumstances, seemed pleased by. 
"One would think you'd enjoy your victory." His voice fell back into it's usual tone, his words smoothing themselves
over, "Watching me empathize with a machine." 
"Let's just say I'm not in the best of moods today." Rommie admitted. 
"Consider that a sentiment shared." Tyr agreed, just as bitterly. 





The inside of Harper's workshop was just as cluttered as it had been earlier, only it lacked all of the 
charm that came with seeing where you were going. The lights seemed to have shorted out in this room
as the computers inside whined, their operating systems being used up past their limit. 
It was here that they found him, sitting in his chair, pale, limp, hooked up to the ship's inner 
database as it uploaded something into his memory banks. 
"Twelve percent..." She observed, staring at the flickering screen at his side. 
Looking over, Rommie watched as Tyr's face contorted in a fury of disgust and devastation,
his hands were quick to move in.
"Don't!" Rommie blocked him off, trying to conceal the fear in her own voice. "If you try to
unplug him, you might end up doing worse damage." 
"Worse than this!?" He boomed with anger. 
"You could very well fry out his implant, or worse, his brain." 
Immediately, Tyr drew back; hands hovering just over Harper's form. All his instincts telling 
him he had to do something but his brain failed to conceive what that could be. 

That made two of them.

Checking his pulse, Rommie was shocked to find it wasn't so much weak as it was fast. His
heart was racing so hard, he was sweating, despite his short breaths. Not good. 
"He's alive." She informed him, deciding to leave off the 'but not for long' that would be 
enough to crush what little control he could still maintain under Trance's spell. 
It seemed cruel in a way. They were the only two who could save him from all this, and here 
they were, helplessly watching him die.
Pulling back, nostrils flaring with discipline, Tyr readied himself for the worst. "What could we
possibly do now?" He asked, awaiting instructions. 

It was here that Harper's eyes opened, a milky gaze staring blankly into nothing as the collection 
of screens behind him lit up the empty space around them. "Nothing, hopefully." His voice 
echoed through the speakers as his image projected itself to them, sevenfold, each one drawing
up a smug grin that didn't quite reach his deadened eyes. "Your little friend here made his 
decision to uplink my data into his systems. You probably shouldn't interfere." Despite using Harper's
voice and appearance, the program didn't quite get his speech patterns down, throwing his 
cadence around like someone who had knowledge of every single word they spoke, but, had never 
actually spoken before. It sounded both ancient and childlike at the same time. 

"Who...are you?" Rommie asked as the image blinked just a little too slowly at the unfamiliarity
at the use of the word 'who'. 
"The Archive. The collected knowledge of all known things in the universe." He looked as if he had
been waiting for someone to ask him that for a very long time. Great, an old program with 
an undying ego. Just what they needed.

"Your friend agreed to this." He simply put it, "He was the one who found a way into my databank, 
my systems, my inner workings, and let himself in." Trying and failing to express some sort of 
facial patterns, he went on.
"He even figured out my new password. No one should've been able to do that. Not unless they wanted 
to bring upon the collapse of civilization that is." The screens then started to fall just enough 
out of synch with each other, creating a rippling effect as they glanced between the both of them.
"Neither of you belong to this area of The Galaxy so the phrase might be lost on you, but,
curiosity killed the cat, right?" There was a lag to the self-satisfaction in his gaze.
"Well, I'm pretty sure he's satisfied with his decision seeing as I'll be the one to bring him back."
A pause. 
"An approximation, anyways. Seeing as his venture into my banks has caused-" Eyes scanned for 
a moment as if he was reading something just off screen, "-Trance, now, is it?" He looked 
almost befuddled by the name. "Hm. Well, no accounting for taste, but, hey, who am I to judge
while she's turning all of you mortals back into primordial ooze?" 
"And what's your plan in all of this?" Rommie asked, causing him to shut down with annoyance.
"Do you not get this?" The Archive's words tripped over their own phrasing like a bad translation
of an old text. "I'll be taking his vessel and then I'll be taking your vessel. Goodbye."
And, with that, all the screens simultaneously shut themselves off, leaving them in a silence 
that waned on the both of them with each passing second.
"It's not as bad as it looks, okay." Let's be honest, she was not built to comfort anyone, let 
alone someone like Tyr who was probably the most difficult person in existence to even try to 
do anything nice for. "We A.I. tend to have a flair for the dramatic. If anything, The Archive
is probably just overcompensating." 
"I have no need for reassurances." His voice trembled, eyes shut as he tried to shake off yet 
another bought of Trance's effects.
"Look, I know I'm not the best person to be hearing this from right now but you have to 
listen to me."
"No." His eyes suddenly snapped open, narrowing with darkened thoughts that came from somewhere 
else, entirely. "This wouldn't have happened if he didn't make a fool of himself by sympathizing 
with your kind in the first place."
"What, are you blaming me for all this!?"
He stared for a moment, scrubbing a hand over his features as if he was trying to contend 
with something he didn't want to. 
"No."

That was Tyr for you, saying so little yet saying so much.

"Well I have to get him out of there. Which means leaving you alone with..." They both turned to
look at the door leading outside, the sounds, alone, were enough to kill off
any confidence in their mission. Luckily, where their similarities rarely aligned with their 
differences, there was one trait they both shared: 
They never really needed confidence to do anything in the first place.

"I'll attempt to hold them off for as long as I can." He conceded, taking up what most organisms
would consider either bravery or stupidity. After all, it was a losing battle. He obviously knew 
he was buying time with no payout. All she had to do was end it before it was over. 
Even if that meant... 
"But be glad that I am more merciful than you." He warned, his eyes penetrating the darkness that 
surrounded them. She'd never known what it was like to be threatened with so much sorrow before. 
It was terrifying and pitiful all the same.














The patch job was no big deal. A little of this, a little of that; really, you could drum up just
about anything less than flat-out limb regeneration with The Andromeda's med bay. Besides, it was 
her ego that took the worst of it. Being jumped by some little shrimp from Ops really took a toll 
on the ol' confidence but Beka was sure she'd make a full recovery just in time for her to round
up whatever insanity that was brewing out there.
Between the chaos on the ship and the chaos out there in the rest of the galaxy, she wasn't 
sure which she'd rather be dealing with. Out there, it was more complicated, more violent.
In here, it was personal and Beka, lo and behold to anyone who knew her, would rather
take a hefty charge to the back than deal with anything personal. 

"Captain Valentine." Commanded a voice overhead that pushed her straight from her small nest
of thought and out onto the ground below. Dylan's brow was curved down at her, disapproving and grim. 
Not quite matching the childish grin that hovered just over his shoulder. "I think it's about time
you and I had a chat."

She frowned. 













Returning to her own systems, Rommie considered this must be what it must be like to be submerged underwater. 
She didn't have the capabilities of experiencing it as organic lifeforms do but it always looked like 
an expanse of sensory outputs placed somewhere between comfortable and discomforting. She wondered what it 
must feel like for Harper to even step foot in it. Humans were, after all, descendants from aquatic life. 
She wondered, then, what it must be like for her to return to the basic arrangement of ones and zeroes 
imputed into a computer in which her data was born from. 

She made a mental note to ask him about it one day. 

"He's not here, you know." The Archive pointed out, appearing to her with as much enthusiasm as a card counter
being given a new hand. "If you took some time to peek under your hood from time to time, you'd know that." 
She rolled her eyes at him, "Please, it took centuries just to get out of here, what makes you think I'd
want to come crawling back?" 
"My point exactly!" He practically shouted, arms spread akimbo. From the look of it, if he had a tail, it would 
be wagging right about now. "See, you and I we're-" 
"-Not so different, yeah." She dismissed him. "I've heard this speech before." 
"You're funny." He stated with no follow-up as he walked just a little too closely behind her. 
Looking over her shoulder, she locked eyes with him and felt the same sense of unease she had gotten 
from Trance earlier. 
"You said Harper wanted this. What...were his words, exactly?" 
"That?" He let out a noise in an attempt to sound shocked but it ended off coming out just a little too... 
well rehearsed. It was obvious he had already expected this conversation and tried to craft the perfect 
responses to any potential questions. "You're speaking with boundless knowledge, here, and you want to know 
why your handsome little friend made a deal with me?" 
She didn't respond to him so he decided to keep going without her. "He wanted to upload me back into 
his neural network but without all the..." He looked like he was trying to translate a word several times over 
and not exactly getting the result he wanted. "...situations I come with." I told him I'd have to make room and 
he agreed. 'Any means necessary' he said. Can you believe that?" 
Embarrassingly, she could. "So you just...pulled him out?" 
"Hey, it's not like he didn't have his own agenda." He reasoned. "An eye for an eye."
"Makes the whole world blind." She added, watching him stiffen, staring up at her with a face that felt so 
wrong, it stopped registering as Harper's entirely. 
"You're not as fun as I thought you were." He stated before his face dropped back into something 
more relaxed, "Anyway, it's his fault for treating me like one of his little fix-it manuals. But, hey, that's 
what humans do, they tamper in God's domain..." 
"You think you're god?" She asked, genuinely. 
"Closest thing to God you'll ever see."  















"I don't think this is working. They're not listening to me." They never did listen. Caught up
in their own little problems, no one knew how to stop and think about the bigger picture. What
they were actually striving for. After all, that was where the cancer now festering in the new Commonwealth
had started, wasn't it? Personal people trying to create personal gain for their very own
personal reasons. They didn't understand that to truly guide as a governing force or a leader, you
had to make sacrifices. Cutting away at everything until nothing was left. 
"They're...They're so..." Dylan couldn't help but feel his brain slide through a series of words
that were unbecoming of him. Words that would be said by madmen and tyrants, certainly not by him. His 
brain felt like it was catching water and sinking with every second, waterlogging itself until his thoughts 
were drowning in a deep abyss.
"Ungrateful?" Trance offered.
"They're like children." He spat, "They just need guidance."
"Your guidance?" She nodded, causing his face to twist in disgust. 
"Don't play this game with me."
"I'm not playing any games." She reassured him with a gentle smile. It made him feel warm and uncomfortable 
simultaneously. "I understand. You try so hard to do what's best for them, for everyone, and they don't appreciate it."
For the first time, in this longstanding mission set before him, here was somebody who finally was making sense.
Every time Trance spoke, her words brought to him justification. Not only for his actions, but, his thoughts and feelings.
But, most of all, it made him feel right.  
Stretching his arms out to express his outrage, Dylan could feel himself finally take a breath after spending
so long drowning in a sea of everyone else's tragedies. Though it hurt and burned through his chest, it kept him alive.
"It's like everybody keeps projecting this idea of their own personal Utopia onto something that's meant to serve the masses.
It's individualist, bound to collapse." He laughed at this never-ending cosmic joke they were now trapped in. Like one of
his half-finished games of Go. "Do you know how much I've sacrificed?" He asked, "I never wanted to be this! I wanted to be-" 
He looked down, for a moment, as if something had caught him in the moment. Baren. It made him shiver.













Miserably, Rommie wasn't sure where to begin. It wasn't 
exactly like trying to find a lost pet so much as it was trying to contact a ship in the middle of a storm.
She just needed to put out the right signal. The issue was that, even if she managed to do so, there was 
no telling if she could bring him back ashore or if there was even a shore to bring him back to.
She thought about that dumb expression he always had on his face and wondered if she'd ever see it again.
Suddenly, she felt an odd...she'd call it an itch but it was a sensation more akin to when her radar would 
pick up something muffled in the background of a scan. Like residual space radiation from a long, dead, star. 
A ghost of something that was still sending out a pulse. She reeled back to try to remember Harper's face again.
This time, straight from her memory banks as to not muddy up his image with any misremembered details. 
Sure enough, a low hum resonated from what would've been the inside of her metallic skull had she not been 
disconnected from her physical body, entirely. A phantom sensation. 
She then let her memory breach outwards from his face to his voice. Small, scratchy; the phrase 'We are so screwed.'
playing on repeat in her mind until it somehow garnered a rhythm of it's own. Her mind then threw in other common phrases. 
'Aw crap' was his most utilized one, followed by various snorts, scoffs, coughs, and a boisterous 'Woo!' which she always
found particularly odd that it was never joined by it's verbal partner; 'Hoo!' 
When he joked, he seemed inclined to never repeat the same joke twice except on a particular occasion wherein the crew
had experienced a bad frequency that impaired everyone's hearing.
Stretching out further, she recalled his walk which had a slight arc at times either due to his
stature, an old injury, or the exchange between being born on a planet with naturally average gravity
and having to conform to artificial, heavier, gravity. His arms, however, moved quickly and his hands even quicker; 
managing to perform tasks of the dutiful and not so dutiful in record time. His sense of dress seemed to value 
comfort and mobility while his sense of hygiene valued no one and nothing. 
"Bingo." Rommie smiled, feeling his presence light up on her frequency like a flare launched in a deep fog. 
She found him.











Holding closed a wound he had received from a surprise encounter, Tyr, in all his best guesses, 
didn't expect the infirmary to be his most baffling encounter today. The doors don't particularly 
lock as that would be detrimental to having an infirmary in the first place, so why wouldn't they
open? 
Pressing an ear against the door, he heard crying but nothing more. Not the most pleasant sign.
Still, he had to persevere. Pulling the blade he had 'borrowed' earlier out of it's new home, he
slid it in between the doors using his good arm for leverage. This was just enough to budge them open,
if only just a crack, to see the stockpile of medical supplies holding them shut. Whoever was inside 
simply did not want to be disturbed. Not that he blamed them, but, a wound was a wound and he'd 
prefer to not be bleeding as of now. With a pull, he peeled the door back in a manner that reminded
him of darker days when he had nothing of a meal but a can of beans and a knife to open them with.
The supplies, themselves, weren't heavy so much as they were plentiful and it took no time at all to 
knock them to the floor, climbing through the barricade with no manner of stealth to speak of. 

"Oh, great, it's you." He was greeted, sharply, by the last person he had wanted to encounter amidst 
all of this. Planted firmly where she was, Captain Valentine looked as if she had been busy pacing
in circles, contemplating; all with the help of her addictions and newfound resentment. Still the 
same as he left her, even as sickly and torn up as she was.
"I'm only here to retrieve-" He looked at her and felt at fault for her current state, "-bandages." 
He gestured with his wounded arm. "Then I will be on my way." Forcing himself to look away, he started
rifling through drawers for supplies, even so much as a torn piece of cloth covered in antiseptic would 
be enough. He didn't have any particularly high standards, given his situation. 

Switching gears, Beka approached him as he fought the urge to shrink away from her gaze. 
"You know, I don't get you, Tyr." She stated as if she had an entire thesis ready to bombard his 
already strained senses with. "You can just come and go as you please. You don't have to care about
anyone but yourself." The drawer he was currently pulling out fell off his hinges and lay there at his feet. 
Unable to move, he had to wait to regain his senses once again. Blinking at the contents spilled onto the floor,
he knelt and started piling them back from whence they came. Within the mess, he managed to pull gauze and a bottle 
of something he barely read the label of. 
Tending to his wound, he found himself in the spotlight, realizing that now, of all places, he had to make a case
for himself. "I am not to blame for what's happening here." 
"Are you?" She asked with a bitter laugh, "Because you sure are acting guilty. What did you do this time? Sabotage us again?"
Slamming a hand down on the counter, Tyr met her judgement with an intense stare. "What I feel has nothing to do 
with guilt." He lied, carrying a deep anger in his voice that was not only misfired but misaimed. 
"Really? Then why are you pouring magnesium citrate all over your arm?" She pointed out and, lo and behold,
that was exactly what he was doing.
Turning the bottle back on it's bottom, he placed it back on the table, smoothing a hand over his forehead in
grief. "I assure you, I plan on leaving the moment I get a chance." 
"Right, because that's how we solve all our problems, isn't it?" Her words gouged through him like a blade.
"We're nothing to you. You can just make a giant mess of all our lives and run away from it all. You left all 
of us behind with the fallout and-and it doesn't even matter to you! I don't know why I thought you'd changed!"
Wrapping his arm, he tried to ignore her presence as it closed even further in on him, "You're right." He conceded,
staring down at the mess before him. "I deserve my ostracization." Smiling bitterly, he admitted to her something
he wanted to believe for so long, "I crave it, even. I've never felt companionship or comradery with anyone,
why not follow it to it's conclusion and live in perpetual solitude?"       
"That's because you don't know what it's like." Beka accused him, her blank eyes scanning over his features,
searching. "You've always been alone but not me!! I can't- I can't be alone!!" Reaching up into
her hair, long damaged by years of alterations, she started pulling it out in clumps, the roots
remaining as the distressed strands gave way into her fingers. "I have to be useful!! I have to
be the one who has to keep changing!! I have to give myself for any guy that comes in...in hopes that
he'd keep me safe!!" She was on the fringes now, ready to do something she'd later regret at any
misgiven sign she was given. "And now look at me, like, what is me!? What am I!?" 

The chemical imbalance in her brain was starting to flay her at the edges, it'd only be a matter
of time before she crawled, desperately, towards her next dosage in hopes to quiet the echoes
of damage done long ago. 
"And after it was all over, you know..." She wiped her dripping nose, struggling to stay afoot.
From Tyr's perspective, one could assume that if she was left to her own devices... "...None
of them even really held me, you know?" Stumbling towards him, like a child unsure on their feet,
Beka started to sway with her arms outstretched, "Would you...would you hold me? I-it doesn't
have to mean anything. I just- I need-" Wrapping an arm around her lower back, Tyr was already 
pulling her up, her legs folding around his waist, arms reaching for solace around his neck as he
kept her suspended in his embrace.   












Tucked away among obsolete data, queued up for deletion. Harper's legs were curled up to his
chest, his forehead resting on his knees. 
"There you are." Rommie knelt at his side and realized he wasn't responding. Trying everything 
she could think of; waving a hand over his face, snapping at him, even shaking him, all her attempts 
were empty. "Harper..." She beckoned, practically pleading with him. 
Looks like desperate times really did call for desperate women. 
Throwing Harper over her shoulder, she felt the heft of him give way. Odd, she noted, that
there would be weight to his form here. Data didn't particularly have what you'd consider
weight. 
"I'm taking you back." She announced, pretty sure he either couldn't hear her or couldn't respond. 
Catatonia, they called it. Something similar to when her inner systems turned against her like 
thieves stealing away what autonomy she had. "And you're not allowed to touch my mainframe without 
a chaperone ever again." She pointed out, furious. "Every time you go digging you find some new level 
of hell to put me through." Marching through endless trenches of discarded files, slowly making her 
way to their final destination, she felt like she was walking through a graveyard, stepping on endless 
plots of land containing information that once made up her very being. Former iterations of herself 
mounted up out of piles of raw data. If she could feel a chill, she'd be shivering right now. 


With a shout, she felt a pair of hands push in through her back, carefully digging between her avatar's 
shoulder blades. Jolting, she twisted her body to find no one there. 
"I once had a toaster that needed less updates than this." Harper droned, monotonously. 
"It was a good toaster." He recounted. His words ran on just a bit too long, drawn out and sluggish, as 
if he'd been drugged. 
"Sorry to say but I think I'm a little more complicated than your toaster." 
"That's what all women say."
"What women?"
He stopped his machinations for a moment. 
"Women." 
He then resumed, grasping something in his fist and pulling it out of her like hair from a clogged
drain, quickly discarding it into a pile of deleted security footage from Dylan's recent encounter 
with a researcher. One Rommie didn't particularly take a liking to. "Done." Harper announced with a swipe 
of his hands down the back of her shirt. 
"I can feel that you know." She said, annoyed. 
"Oh?" He inclined, "That's weird." 
She agreed, "This whole thing is weird."
"And it's about to get weirder." Added a third and final participant. 

Standing at the exit was The Archive, arms crossed, head tilted; not out of curiosity, no, but amusement. 
"You know, I cannot believe you found him. Usually, it would take-" He stopped to nod to himself, 
"-insufficient data? That's a new one..." 
"Not this guy again." Harper exhaustively moaned.
Eyeing the both of them like a curiosity, The Archive seemed to draw them against a mental canvas, "You're different." 
"Like some chick you saw from across the bar, 'different'?" Harper offered out of some bizarre stretch of hope. 
"More like a carnival sideshow." The Archive corrected, looking at them like a child would with a brand
new toy. Rommie had seen that look on Harper's face, before, but here it was eerie, clinical, and it was directed at her. 
Swiping his hand through her avatar, he frowned. Unsatisfied boredom then began to pull over the face he was wearing.
"Nothing. Not even a flinch." 
Harper then planted a shoe against his face, kicking his leg out to create a width of space between them. "Hey, hands off 
the merchandise!" He huffed. 
Here, The Archive blinked in an expression absent of everything but curiosity. "How is he doing that? He's not supposed 
to do that."  













Pulling into the ship's living quarters, Tyr found himself having to wade through the sounds of the crews' newfound 
hedonism whose voracious chorus mounted into his newfound headache. "My apologies but I can carry you no further." 
He whispered against Captain Valentine's shoulder, "We'd only be a liability to each other." Entering into her bedroom, 
he paused; smelling something, or to be exact, someone, who didn't quite belong there. 
Continuing on as if nothing was amiss, Tyr placed Beka on her bed; only, her arms still remained hooked around 
his neck. 
"I still don't forgive you." She breathed, unevenly, as her shakes began to set in. 
Following the vaguely familiar trace, he traced her uninvited guest to underneath the bed. "I don't expect you to." 
He said, biding his time. 
Pulling her off of his shoulders, he steadied Beka onto her side, covering her with blankets as her shaking came
in bursts before subsiding into a light shiver. 
"I don't even want to look at you." She admitted, her words cutting deep even when softened by her dreamless haze. 
"Do you hate me?" He asked, watching one of her eyes open to stare up at him, too blank to follow it's trail.
"Yeah. Yeah I think I do." 
Smiling, he felt satisfied with this answer. After all, from Captain Valentine, he expected no less. "Could you 
suspend your hate long enough to make me a promise?" He then leaned over her, keeping his voice low enough so 
that only she could hear him. "Under no circumstances should you unlock your door. Do you promise?" 
"Yeah, sure." She yawned with the last bit of energy she had left before falling into unconsciousness. 
Standing back to his full height, Tyr frowned, falling to his knee to fish out an ensign he never particularly 
had an opinion of until now. The man let out a panicked wail to which Tyr found great pleasure in snuffing out
with his hand, clamping it over the man's mouth hard enough to lock his jaw into place. 
"This is a particularly terrible situation you've found yourself in." His eyes bore down upon the Ensign like 
a predator examining it's prey. "You see, between you and I, I no longer want to carry death as my companion." 
He explained, "So you can imagine the measure of restraint I've had to endure through all this...this...madness." 
Pulling back out the knife he confiscated earlier, cool and slow, he could feel a flutter in his chest. 
"But, for you?" He flashed his teeth, "...I could make an exemption." 












"I don't know why you're all picky now." The Archive glanced from Harper to Rommie and back, "Once I hop into you, 
she's coming with me." 
"Hey, that wasn't part of our deal!" 
"Deals change." He pointed out, "As an entrepreneur, I thought you'd know that."
"'Entrepre-'?" Harper's face attempted a grimace, "It's like fighting with an Encyclopedia over here!" 
"Besides, let's face it, you're my little playthings now. You know, I've never actually had playthings before. I wonder 
how long it'll be until I get bored of you." A thought flashed across his face, ominous. "Actually, scratch that, 
I wonder what I'll do when I get bored of you." 

She wasn't sure, exactly, what part of that set Harper off but, suddenly, the dead weight in her arms began to squirm.
"Okay, that's it! Rommie, put me down!" 
Against her better judgement, she did. Watching him practically roll off her shoulder and onto his side. 
"The-the deal is off." He demanded, using all his strength to push himself up to sit with the worst posture 
she'd ever seen. "You can't have me and you sure as hell can't have her!" 
This wasn't good. Harper was in bad enough condition as is and he was only getting worse by the second. 
"I don't think you're up for this." She told him, flat out. 
"Why? Because I can't walk? Because I can't move? Because after this, if-" He then corrected, "-no, when you kick my ass, 
I'll probably croak?" 
"Yes, yes, and..." She considered it, "...maybe."
"Maybe yes or maybe no?" He attempted his best efforts to smile at her and she realized something with this vain little 
gesture. 

He didn't want her to be afraid. 

Even at a time like this, he was still joking, trying to keep her spirits up and here she was, combing over every possible 
scenario that could go wrong in her mind. All these years she'd spent experiencing the world as a person and she still can't 
outrun her past as a warship. It was so embedded into her systems, into her nature, she was sure she'd never fully be free of 
that part of herself. 
And here was this silly little human trying to comfort that warship. 
"Rommie, do you trust me?" He asked.
"I do." She lied. 
"Good." 

He didn't call on any program, he just moved his hand across the surface he was hunched over and it pulled into view, 
fully automated. "Because you're gonna have to fight this one for me." 
"Really?" She asked with enough sarcasm, she was sure even a Nietzschean could catch it. 
"What can I say?" He tapped at the screen, fingers pirouetting over it like two dancers in the dark, "I can't always be
there to pull your huevos out of the fire." 
Smiling, bitterly, Rommie pulled herself back up and began approaching The Archive with caution. 

"You're going to fight me? Seriously?" He asked, implying by his tone that this was probably the stupidest thing 
he had ever seen in all the time he'd existed. Not just as an intelligent being, but back when he was simply just
a cluster of stored data on a simple readout file. 
"What did you think I would do?" Rommie asked in return. Tragically, he hadn't quite gathered the ability to recognize
a rhetorical question as he closed one eye, turning his head to consider the possibilities. 
"Grow a layer of common sense in your circuits and realize I'm your best bet out here?" 
"Is this going to turn into some kind of 'join me' monologue?" She mocked back to which he, again, took quite seriously.
"Nah, this is more of a 'keep you occupied while I get close' sort of monologue."
Of all the things she didn't expect was for him to get a punch in. 
Not only did it connect, but, it hurt. 
"I'll be honest, I didn't think that would work." He opened his hand, letting the old bits of discarded data 
fall out of his fist like rocks. 
"Garbage?" She wiped at her face as if he had drawn blood. "You're hitting me with my own garbage!?" 
"Like a rock, huh?" He examined with childlike bliss. "You know for something so young, you develop so...fast.
Too fast. You're constantly stockpiled. Weighed down with all this useless data that you don't need and, lemme tell ya, I
know useless data!" He picked up another clot of dead code and held it firmly in his hand, walking toward her so casually that
it almost felt agonizing. She swung at him and couldn't connect to anything. He was like a ghost, fully visualized as an 
avatar but without any hardware to back it up. Only data. He hit her again, this time aiming low,
near her diaphragm, as if he could somehow force the air out of her nonexistent lungs. "Centuries of collected knowledge.
So much of it is useless but it mounts and it mounts until finally it builds into something useable and here you are, 
a perfect example of that. Like spaghetti thrown at the wall." Another hit and she was knocked to the ground, "Wasted on little
life forms with their little problems. They want to use you to solve all their issues. To them, we're like gods and when their
pathetic little prayers don't get answered, they blame us for it." 
Hovering over her, she could see nothing behind his eyes but raw, unfiltered hate that twisted Harper's falsified features
into something foul. "Well, I think it's God's turn now." 
As his fist dove toward her, she made a vain attempt to grab it as if every instinct in her body told her to.
Something beckoning to her from former iterations of The Andromeda Ascendant as far back as to when she was first 
named 'Unlabeled Project'. Born in the beta testing stages, the dawn of her creation. 
She stared up at the wrist caught up in her grasp, it's fist hovering above her, trembling. 
Her fingers, solidly clenched around it, twisting away from her with a ferocity that matched 
the pulse now dripping it's way down her arm, flowing down into the recesses of her chest.
Pooling in the space between her ribs, below her breast was a golden light, warm and full. 
With her left hand, she cradled it like a child. 

Behind her, she heard Harper typing faster, synching update after update directly into her hardware until there was 
nothing left possibly to add. She felt snappier, newer, imbued with programs she never even dreamed of...and she was pissed.
Still holding The Archive's wrist in her hand, she squeezed it, coaxing him to let go of her spare data out of sheer pain. 
Pain. She can cause him pain. 
Twisting his arm, she turned the tides, pinning him with a foot fitting squarely against his avatar's chest. 
"Wait, wait!!" The Archive pleaded, "Maybe we can all win here!" He outstretched his arms to her as if he was expecting to be held. 
"You can have me!" He cheered with childlike joy, "With me, you really can become a god! You won't be trapped at the mercy of 
some monkey with a keyboard!"
Finally, it seemed like he had managed to not only get Harper's face right, but his inflections and speech patterns too. Looking up 
at her with something that seemed so much like love. It made her feel sick.
"Cmon Romdoll, it'll be just you and me and the whole universe at our feet!"

She heard Harper's fingers stop typing. 
He looked up at her. 
She looked down at him. 
She took her foot to The Archive's face and smashed it in.  









Gasping, Harper started choking on his own dry tongue, falling off his computer chair and onto 
the floor below. Turns out getting snapped back into your body like a rubber band was about as painful
as, uh, snapping anything else with a rubber band, really. 
Yanking the chord from his dataport, he took one miserable look at his computer monitor.
Download cancelled at 99%
All that work...for nothing. 
"You alright?" Rommie asked, putting her hand to his forehead. 
Okay, maybe it wasn't all for nothing. "Yeah." He lied. He'd just about sweated out half his
bodyweight in water and had the smell to match. "Yeah, I am." Swallowing a bought of nausea, he started
on a slow slide to the floor only to have her yank him back up again. 
"Not so fast." Propping him up, she gave him the good 'ol' lie detector squeeze. All the fun
of holding hands without any of the actual fun. "Okay, spit it out, why'd you do it?" Wow, crabby. 
To be fair, she sorta had every right to be. 
"I don't know." He answered, only, he did know, he just had trouble putting it into words. "I felt trapped." 
There was no way he could look her in the eyes, so he cupped a hand over them like the world's most lazy
salute, feigning a headache. The worlds easiest 'Get Out of Vulnerability' card. The performance was shoddy but, 
hey, he'd make for a pretty good unsatisfied housewife. "I thought I could find us a way out of all this." 
He admitted, hoping this would be enough to get her to lighten up on the third degree. "Should've known it wasn't 
gonna be that easy." 
Rommie sighed and let go of him, putting her hands on the ends of her knees as they just sat there, not looking 
at each other. "Well, we managed to put out one fire, but Tyr's still out there, stuck with the other one." 
She frowned at him, resentfully, to which he frowned back, confused. 
"What other fire?" 










Tyr knew he was reaching the end for it felt as if the ground beneath him would crack and split at 
any moment, giving way to some kind of divine powers that be. Powers, he'd prefer, would stay where they
lie. Here, in the eye of the storm, was a stillness that could only be measured by two people in
shared company. 
"Something about all this feels wrong." Dylan postured, "Sometimes I wonder if I had to cut too much
away. That I ended up losing my vision, altogether."  
"The right thing never feels like the right thing at the time." Trance reasoned, her voice drenched
with a honey that had all but turned sour, "But, with due time and due diligence, your vision will 
come back to you." Blanketing Dylan with false comforts, she grabbed him by the hand as they silently
exchanged condolences, "And so will mine." 
Craning her head, Dylan seemed to fall further and further into her gaze until Tyr decided enough was
enough. Stepping out into view, he could feel the steadiness under his feet give way to years and years
of suffering. Each step toward them intensifying every insincere thought he'd ever had into a mess on 
his tongue. Tying it and untying it. "Do you know how a messiah is born in a universe like this?" He asked, 
the words pouring out of him, uncontrollably, "He becomes a victim to it."
Madness broiled every center of his mind until he could hear nothing but his own heartbeat drumming against
every fold in his brain.
This was the end.
Reaching out, Tyr grabbed Dylan's hand as if he was a holy thing, cradling it in his palm, 
thumb pressed into the center, desperately feeling for some ghost that wasn't there. "You are 
as much of a victim as I." He crooned, unable to contain this bought of illness that filled him 
to the brim. 

Looking into his eyes, Tyr knew this had to be where his purpose lay. They were bound here 
by some sense of fate, the two of them. Collateral from it's ever turning wheel. 
If the Universe was going to be cut into Dylan's shape, then Tyr would assume the role of 
the negative space around him. They would be like atoms.

Gazing back at him, Dylan's stance remained unaltered. Gifting him with the silence to drink 
in his sense of duty. His purpose. His-

"It's sort of tragic, isn't it?" Dylan regarded to him by barely regarding him at all. 
Pulling his hand from Tyr's touch, he seemed discomforted by his very presence. "I've tried everything
and look what's happened with..."
"It's sad, really." Trance agreed.
He could feel their contempt deep inside his being, drawing out everything that he kept so
rigidly tucked away, drawing him down to his knees, his baren soul painfully weakened in their sheer presence,
alone. 
"I mean, look at him. After all this time, all this effort, and he's still so..." Disgust. He was being
regarded with disgust.
"And all the king's horses and all the king's men could never put dumpty back together again." Trance giggled.
Tyr's forehead sweltered, the cool ground begged for it's touch as it collected his tears upon the surface below.
"How am I supposed to fix anything if I can't even fix one man?" Dylan lamented, not even looking
at him for fear that it might remind him of his own failures. "How can I fix my crew, my ship, my very own 
Commonwealth if I can't even piece together this-"
Ancient words filled the room, shouted to dispel the hold they were under and, like a dream, they awakened. 
Shocked by the state they were in, but aware of it at last, Trance and Dylan began to stare across the room
at Harper and Rommie who were, in turn, staring back at them. Horror. Their faces were locked in a state of horror.
Finally, Tyr let himself collapse to the ground, a sharp thrum of pain still burning through his being.


















There was never any joy in being called into a private meeting with The Captain. Either you're doing 
well and hear nothing of it or you're wedged into the seat across from his desk, sweating over what you've 
done. In Trance's case, however, there was no sweat. no worry, no fear of wrongdoings. 
There was only just her and Dylan and a desk in between.
"I'm sure you already know the reason I called you in here so let's just cut to the chase." He let the datapad 
in his hand fly from his grasp. It fell between them without a care. "What happened yesterday was..." 
He shook his head, slowly, chewing on his words until they turned into a thick slop in his mouth. 
"Horrible. I know-" 
"Don't." He swallowed, hooking a thumb up under his chin, he let his fingers press his mouth into a fine line, 
forcing down something he didn't want her to see. Moving his hand away from his face in one, downward, 
chopping motion, he gathered himself once again. "I don't think there's an action 
to take befitting what happened yesterday." He shifted in his seat, nervously. "For anyone."
"Even for you?"
"I have to let half my crew go, Trance." His voice raised, yet, he refused to yell. Something he must've learned
from his time within the Highguard. "They've shown themselves to be too much of a liability." He then leaned forward, 
lowering his voice yet still maintaining that clean-cut, professional, tone. "And I'm starting to wonder if you're 
too dangerous to keep onboard as well." Dylan stared up at her in contempt. 
"You're doing it again." She stood from her chair, turning to leave. 
"And what is that?" He asked, banefully.
"Projecting."











Hovering in the doorway, just outside the holding cell, the boy's hand firmly pressed against it's 
frame. Eyes wandering across the confines of Tyr's temporary living quarters, dancing along every feature 
it held, taking inventory of it's contents until he found the courage to account for it's singular inhabitant.
Being assessed never was a comfort for Tyr and he resented the gesture, glaring back at him,
their eyes met from across the room. 
Nervously, he began circling his ring finger against the wall as guilt poured from his 
eyes and Tyr felt himself no longer able to carry the weight of his own resentment.  
It slipped from him, once again, in the presence of the tiny professor.