Part One - Perceptions

Chapter 1

No one noticed when he struggled to his feet and stood, swaying slightly, clawing back control over his body. There were too many others who needed attention, who needed the medcons and their high priests, for anyone to protest.

The lights were dimmed to allow the displays to show at their best and the room hummed with whispered consultations and the occasional imperious command. Few people even noticed as he moved away from the medcon that had pulled him back from the edge of life. Bodies, either vertical or horizontal, occupied every centimeter of available space; the glow of the displays reflected on skins blanched of life and colour, either by injury or concern. A man staggering to his feet was a cause for satisfaction rather than curiosity.

They had done as much for him as they needed to, he was alive and he would stay that way, so there was no more reason to watch him. If he could walk then it was better that he made way for those who needed to lie or sit. His body would recover quickly now, the medications would see to that. The wounds to his soul? Well they were someone else’s concern.

The doors had been set open and locked to make the movement of bodies in and out of the medical unit easier, so there were not any physical barriers to his leaving. Later he doubted if it would have made any difference if there had been because his mind was already several levels down. With a final glance around, at faces known and unknown, he left unhindered.

Nor did any one stop him when he left the medical corridor and headed back down towards the tracking gallery. No guards had been posted and no restraint ordered so he was free to go where he wished; and for him there was only one place to go to. Heaven knew he didn’t want to go there, but he had no choice, the place drew him with all the force of a stellar attraction and he couldn’t fight it even if he tried. Tired and sore, ribs aching and feeling as if he had been repeatedly kicked in the gut, his body wanted only to sleep, but he didn’t dare to try knowing that the torment in his mind would not let him rest.

No, he couldn’t sleep, not until he had faced the darkness of recent events and the reality of the deaths of this last day.

‘Guilt,’ a little voice whispered to him, ‘more guilt. Own it, you were the cause, he wasn’t to blame; you should have stopped it before it came to that.’ The rest of his mind couldn’t summon a counter argument that worked, so he went to face the ghosts, knowing that he was lucky to be alive when others were probably dead, and some certainly so; but somehow not grateful at all.

Ghosts, or rather one ghost. One death that he needed to face. The others might yet live of course, but that one at least was dead. The grief and guilt that knowledge brought weighted each weary, reluctant, footstep as he made his way back down to the lower levels.

Later he could barely remember that plodding trek, he had moved like a sleepwalker, keeping his eyes fixed ahead, brushing past friends and foe alike as if they weren’t there. Nerve almost failed him when he reached the threshold, but after a moments hesitation he took the final step that brought him back into the tracking gallery. There he stopped and stood, his eyes fixed on the far wall, listening to voices that only he could hear.

The room itself was empty for the moment, ordinary again, looking as if nothing untoward had happened. The lights were back at normal levels and the floor was clean; on the far side of the room the main station looked just as it had when he had last stood there and talked to Klyn. In the hours since he had been carried away from here they had finished the mopping up, the dead and injured were long gone and the room was silent. No alarms, no gunshots, no sound at all.

For a moment he stood on the threshold, looking across to where they had fallen, and remembered. With a sigh he moved further into the room, and then slowly down the steps to the main floor level. He stopped there, unwilling to retrace his earlier steps. Eyes locked on the far wall he stood statue still, his vision turned inwards, remembering those last fateful words. The memory of the anguish they had carried within them stoked the fires of his guilt and anger, and with them his fear for himself and his sanity.

Head bowed he stayed still for a moment longer, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears rising from somewhere he thought he had lost long ago, remembering that one certain death and the face of a man who had once been a friend. Then he straightened his shoulders and looked up, turning his head slowly left then right, alert to every sight and sound, taking in every detail of this room where hope and trust had finally died. The decision was made, though he hadn’t been aware of its making. This was the last time he would see this room, he knew he couldn’t stay here, not now.

Servalan was on her way they said, and he wasn’t surprised. Whether this had brought her or whether she had been coming anyway no one seemed sure, but she could be relied upon to make the most of it. That much, at least, hadn’t changed. He couldn’t face seeing her here, even if it were safe, and it certainly wasn’t that whatever had happened. So he would go, run, and this would be the last time he would look upon this place of loss and betrayal, there was nothing left for him here now.

Absently he rubbed his hand at the front of his shirt, torn and marked with blood, not all of it his own. The rough fabric rasped against his skin, the slight sound magnified by the silence, but in his head all he could hear was the sound of weapon fire. It seemed to go on for ever.

Deva, heading for the upper levels after completing the unavoidable administration that follows such events, saw him standing there and sighed. It had all gone so very badly wrong, everyone would face some heart searching, but for the man standing frozen in the doorway it would be a thousand times worse; after all he had once called the dead man a friend.

Deva watched the unmoving figure and wondered if there was anything he could say or do that would make it easier, somehow he doubted it. The woman beside him followed his gaze and raised her brows, turning to look at him questioningly, concern etched in the lines of her face; concern and fear. With a shrug and a look of resignation Deva waived Klyn to continue on without him, and, after a second of uncertainty, turned toward the silent man.

For a moment longer he watched the unmoving figure, then, as Klyn's footsteps faded away, he squared his shoulders and moved silently over the short distance between them. Halting on the lowest step just within touching distance, he reached out a hand, then let drop just before it brushed the stiff shoulder. He hesitated for a moment, then, casting a quick look around him, he spoke in a voice too low for anyone else to hear,
“Blake, leave it. There was nothing you could have done. From the moment he arrived here there was nothing you could have done. Not without risking everything else.”

The man in front of him said nothing but continued to stare around the now deserted tracking gallery. Soon other people would arrive to man the stations, but for the moment all systems were on automatic and the room was empty. Deva sighed again and stared at the stiff back uneasily; then he reached out his hand again. This time he didn’t stop until he could grab the other man’s arm.

The muscles beneath his fingers were tight and hard and if the silent man felt the touch he gave no sign of it. Keeping his voice low Deva tried once more to reach him.
“ It was bound to happen eventually you know that. He was on self destruct, that much was obvious to everyone. Even you must have seen that he wasn’t the man you had known. It is over Blake, unfortunate, tragic even, but over; and you are free. More now than you have been for a very long time. There are things still to be done, things that only you can do. We must take the opportunity that this sorry business offers to us, it’s the only way to make any sense of it. In time you will see that, however it feels at the moment.”
He hesitated for a moment, waiting for a reaction that didn’t come. He spoke again.
“The others are still alive and they will be safe we will see to that, I promise you.”

“And him?” Blake spoke for the first time; his voice sounded flat, all life, all emotion, purged from it. Deva looked at him uncertainly, worried by the dead, yet dream like, quality of the voice. But this was not a time for the niceties and there were things that had to be said.
“They took the body. Apparently she is coming for it, just to make sure I should imagine.”

Blake spun round at that, catching at Deva’s arm, his grip hard enough to bruise.
“No, not her, Deva we can’t let her have him!” The voice was harsh, commanding even, yet it had an edge of pleading too.
Deva looked at him in confusion and dismay,
“Why not, it isn’t going to matter to him any more is it? Think Blake! I have already made the necessary adjustments, there is no reason to believe they will find out about you. We need her acceptance, her belief. Unless we gain that we will lose the advantage this wretched business has tossed into our laps. Think what it could mean, the time it can buy us!”
Deva paused holding Blake’s angry eyes with his own, he spoke slowly and with emphasis,
“He is gone Blake, the man is gone, it’s just a body. No one can hurt him any more. Just don’t forget what’s at stake here.”

He felt Blake’s eyes on his face, almost painful in their intensity, and he continued to stare back silently for a moment; then the gaze, and the hand, fell away,
“No, I suppose you are right.” the voice sounded unbearably weary. Blake turned his eyes back to the tracking gallery, back to the place where the other man had fallen under a hail of shots, “it certainly isn’t going to matter to him any more, not now.”
He shook Deva’s hand from his arm,
“Give me a moment Deva, I need time to come to terms with it.”

“Blake!” Deva’s voice was both protest and question but the concern was unambiguous. Blake turned back to meet the worried brown eyes and he smiled faintly,
“I’ll be fine,” the lie came surprisingly easily, “just leave me for a while, please.”
Deva frowned and shook his head slightly, but he turned away without further protest and left Blake standing alone.

Drawing a deep breath Blake turned towards the tracking gallery again, glad to be able to say his goodbyes without prying eyes. It didn’t matter what Deva said, or Klyn, or any of the others, he knew this day wouldn’t leave him for a very long time, if ever. Just as he knew he couldn't risk staying; there would be no more deaths on his account. Deva would find a way to account for his disappearance, keep things going as planned, and eventually they would understand why he had to go. They would go on without him, events had their own momentum and he could rely on Deva. One last look then he would leave, and he would be far from here when she arrived.

His eyes drifted across the scene before him, sliding quickly away from the smear of red that still marked the edge of the steps where one of them had fallen. For a second he closed his eyes before opening them again to stare down at his hand, at a ribbon of dried blood that was still staining the underside of his fingers, as if it were a thing apart. Then, with a shudder, he turned on his heel and left.

***

The hum was getting louder and the blackness that surrounded him was lightening to a pink tinged grey. If he thought about it he could feel the beat of his heart and the movement of air across the back of his hand. He was still alive then.

Had he expected that? No, it seemed that he hadn’t, not really, and he had a feeling somewhere in the mist that was currently his mind that it might not be the best outcome. He tried to sink back into the comfortable darkness, to stave off the feeling of unease, but it refused to return and unwelcome consciousness pushed itself upon him. He had no choice but to accept it, whatever it brought, and he had an uneasy feeling that whatever awareness brought now was not likely to be pleasant.

Warning voices rose from somewhere unremembered; ‘take stock’ they whispered, ‘before anyone is aware of your wakefulness’. The compulsion to obey them cut through his weariness and forced him into effort. Slowly he inched his forearm up from the supporting surface, but was not surprised when the movement was halted by the pull of a restraint. The same when he tried to raise his leg or shoulders. So he was someone's prisoner, well now that wasn’t unexpected was it? Or was it? Why should he expect to be a prisoner? And whose prisoner?

Keeping his eyes closed he listened more closely to the sounds around him. The steady hum probably came from some form of equipment; the background hiss would be a ventilation system; the low level rattle was almost certainly from the vibration of powered movement; but no alarms, no battle sounds, no human sound at all. Maybe he was alone. ‘Only one way to be sure’ the voices whispered insistently.

Carefully he opened his eyes a little, squinting through his lashes. After the darkness it hurt. The room was light, almost bright, and pain lanced his skull as he attempted to make out the shapes that surrounded him. He blinked twice trying to accustom his eyes to the harsh light, but the room stayed out of focus. His head started to swim and he closed his eyes again and concentrated all his effort on listening. Still there was nothing to explain where he was, or to suggest that anyone else was around. Gradually exhaustion overcame him and he stopped listening.

For a while he lay between sleep and waking; time passed but he had no idea of how long, the background hum was soporific and, without anything else to judge by, it could have been minutes or hours. All he was aware of was the pain in his head, and the mental fog that defeated him whenever he tried to think. Finally the thought that he must try and find out where he was surfaced again and he opened his eyes. It hurt less this time and, though his head still throbbed, slowly his eyes focused and his surroundings became clear.

The ceiling above him was white, plain and unremarkable, curving round into the smooth walls of the room. The walls had a dull sheen that suggested that they were constructed of some artificial material and the light came from luxpanels set in the ceiling and the far wall. Carefully he turned his head. Still no sounds came to suggest that there was anyone else around. He raised his head as far as the restraints would permit and examined the area nearest to him carefully. Several small units were close to his right hand side, each one with a display registering some form of trace, tubes snaked down from some and there was an unseen panel on the edge of his vision just above his head. He tried to twist a little to see more but the pain in his head intensified and the room began to sway; hurriedly he relaxed back onto the bed as dizziness threatened to overcome him.

He lay still, reviewing what little he had been able to see from his prone position. The equipment looked vaguely medical, but that didn’t mean much. No indication of where the room was or to whom it belonged. It could be on a ship, the vibration suggested it might be, but then again he could be on a ground base somewhere close to a large power source. Either way the room told him nothing about who held him, all he could do was wait and see who arrived. One thing he was sure of, someone would come sooner rather than later.

He closed his eyes and tried to relax. The aches that he had been vaguely aware of in the darkness were becoming more insistent and he was conscious that as well as the pounding in his head there were feelings of nausea and disorientation. His whole body felt heavy and exhausted, and thinking seemed more effort than he could make; but he had to think, to remember. Where was he? How had he come to be here?

With a sudden thrill of shock he realised that he didn’t even know who he was. Now why was that? He struggled to recall falling into the darkness but found to his dismay that he couldn’t. Fighting down the growing fear he concentrated on trying to remember something, anything. He pushed against the fog that drifted between him and his memory, picturing it rolling back, melting away. That seemed to help, small shadows started to form in the mists, only hints at first, then they grew to give fragments of images and to his surprise echoes of feelings. Each one seemed stronger than the one before and came more quickly until they began to merge into pictures, snapshots that faded away almost immediately.

He would remember, he raged silently, he would not be beaten. Despite the encroaching exhaustion he persisted and slowly the images grew more stable, lingering long enough for him to inspect them. Still they made no sense, but they were coming faster and maybe the next one would be the key; he frowned and tried to hurry them along. Now his brain began to respond to his commands, to move more swiftly as if it was remembering a forgotten skill, the images rippling through his head like fast running water. For a while he rode the passing tide but still he could recall nothing of the meanings of the images he saw. Drawing on all the energy and concentration he could muster he struggled to take control of the stream of pictures, but discovered that he had no command over what appeared.

For a moment panic jolted him and the mists started to roll back in; he swallowed hard on the growing fear knowing that he had to fight if he was to remember. With effort he slowed his racing heart and pushed the fog away again. New images stirred in his mind but as before nothing seemed to make sense. With difficulty he relaxed, realising that he would have to allow them to order themselves. He took a deep breath and let them come.

Within seconds he wished that he hadn’t.

Once started they came as an unstoppable parade, a stream of hazy recollections swimming up from the darkness of a memory he couldn’t control. But they had to be memories, surely he couldn’t have imagined such an extraordinary set of events. A trial, a convict ship, a star ship, a battle, all appeared from out of the mists, shivered in the light of his incomprehension and went, fading back into the formless swirl of his uncooperative memory. He had no way of knowing whether they were his experiences or memories of other people, but they made uncomfortable and confusing viewing.

The flow of images accelerated with every passing second. Names and faces rose now and shifted making patterns that formed, spoke to him, and then broke to form again. Yet they all seemed disconnected and uncertain, like some alien kaleidoscope, nothing seemed to belong. Several of the faces occurred again and again, together and alone, but he wasn’t sure why. He was aware of a feeling of unease, totally separate from the current panic, yet again he couldn’t be sure exactly what he was uneasy about. Though waking up strapped to a bed in a strange room, unable to remember your name, or how you got there, would make any one uneasy. He knew that this was not a good sign yet he couldn’t bring himself to care very much. Everything felt so remote.

A door opened with a low hiss and he heard footsteps entering, hesitating for a moment, then the staccato clip of someone crossing the room and coming to stand beside him. He froze, concentrating on keeping his breathing slow and regular. A hand grasped his head pulling up his eyelid to shine a light into his eye, it was too bright and he pulled back without thinking.
"So you are awake," a male voice.
He opened his eyes then, squinting against the glare, and looked up into an impassive face. Grey hair, grey eyes, pale skin, a face that was accustomed to guarding its expression, to keeping secrets. Now what made him think that? It was an ordinary face, what was it that made him suspect duplicity?

The man turned away to consult the displays.
"You were lucky, one more bolt and you wouldn't have made it, for a while we thought you hadn’t" he turned back to the bed, avoiding eye contact, as he checked the overhead display, "and if they had got to you first, well I doubt if you would have survived for much longer."
The man on the bed wondered survived what and who? He said nothing.

The newcomer looked down at him this time meeting his eyes and holding his gaze steadily.
"But then maybe you would have preferred that? In your position I think maybe I would have done so".
For a moment a faint compassion seemed to pass across his face, but it was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving his expression as calm and neutral as before.

The man on the bed remained silent; with some effort he kept his own expression as controlled and shuttered as the man standing over him. Behind the blank expression he was struggling to remember, but nothing would stay still for long enough to mean anything. The images continued to come and go through his mind, but they remained outside of his control and he seemed unable to hold onto any of them. Instead they ran away like water through his fingers, leaving only the half memory of their passing. With a sudden shock he realised he couldn’t even be sure if any of the names and faces that drifted through the pictures was his own. He would have liked to ask this man where he was and what had happened, but some deep rooted caution held him back, that and a vague but growing feeling that maybe he didn’t want to know.

The newcomer looked down at him again, and his eyes softened with something approaching sympathy,
"Well you don’t have to talk to me, but there will be others who will take a different view of the situation. Not yet, but soon, I would rest if I were you."
The man on the bed continued to gaze at him in silence until the newcomer sighed and turned to leave.

As the door slid open an alarm sounded somewhere outside, faint but insistent it cut through the hum of the white room. To the man on the bed the sound seemed to open the gates of hell. Memory flooded in again, breaking the dam that had held it back it sent a torrent of images pouring into his consciousness. Recollections of noise and confusion surged through his head, pictures of helmeted figures and falling bodies chased each other before his eyes. More and more of them came faster and faster until one picture took hold. Like a seed in fertile ground it grew until it blotted out the others and dominated his mind.

Blood, so much blood that he could smell it. Alarms and the sound of gunfire echoed round his head, eyeless faces swum around him until forced aside by others with wide dying eyes, until they were replaced in turn with the single image of a man falling towards him, hands grasping at his arms, eyes full of confusion and sorrow and disbelief. A man who spoke a single word, "Avon". His name.

The end, he had been so sure that it was the end.

The man on the bed heard someone shout NO, and then hurried footsteps as the visitor returned; he felt a rush of something cold in his bloodstream and he realised that the voice had been his own. Then darkness washed up and across his eyes and the returning memories faded with the voice.