Another Man's Treasure, part 4

seaQuest and all its characters are property of Amblin Entertainment and Universal Television. This is fanfiction only, and the author acknowledges all copyrights on seaQuest. This story is not intended for commercial distribution.

The rhythm continued sporadically, as it had for three days now. Like a drum in his head. Like his head was a drum. It came and went, like hiccups. Like hiccups, he couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t stop it.

He was somewhere new. A different place than he’d been the last time he’d woken up. Lucidity ebbed and flowed. Where was he?

He sat still, tucked away in a vent shaft somewhere. His senses registered hungry/thirsty/cold/tired/hurt. Shivering a little. The shiver brought agony to his side as broken bone jabbed swollen tissue. For a moment, the rhythm stopped. He coughed involuntarily. Another flash of pain. Silence. Maybe it was gone now.

What was this rhythm? Something Dagwood had said (or maybe Tony) about the dream . . . . He couldn’t remember. He tried again to remember.

What was he trying to remember? “46038,” a corner of his mind whispered. He tried to push the number back deep into his thoughts, where all his secrets lay. It wouldn’t fit; all his scattered thoughts mixed together, overflowing. The mental feeling of scraping his thoughts back together let him forget all about his side. It was like gathering broken glass with bare hands.

He came sputtering back to reality. No glass. Just himself, alone in the dark. “Stop.” He only mouthed the word, and it came out with his exhaled breath more quietly than a whisper.

The pain didn’t stop, but he had come out of the nightmare-world. He felt the cool metal behind his back, and clung to that sensation--it served as an anchor to what was real. He opened his eyes, though it made no difference. The darkness of the tunnel was complete. The lack of light didn’t scare him, but the silence did. It was so quiet, he could hear his own heartbeat, louder than the distant thrumming of seaQuest’s engines. That, and the bouncing rhythm (like a bouncing ball?).

He couldn’t tell the difference between waking and dreaming anymore. Dark and cold, and he was hemmed in--trapped, suffocating in the tiny space. “Let me out!” This time the words made no sound at all.

The rhythm jerked him awake again. Tiny space? No, that was an illusion. He was in seaQuest’s vent tubes. He reached out a hand into the nothingness on either side of him. Vent tubes? How had he gotten here? He was escaping from . . .

But trying to remember only brought him back to the beginning. No matter what he tried to think of, his aching brain only brought back shards of the truth. Again he found himself mouthing “four-six-oh-three-eight.” He scrunched his eyes closed, trying to keep from thinking of the missile access code: Think of the alphabet. Or multiplication tables. Or nothing at all.

But he had learned that it’s awfully hard to not-think of something. Especially when somebody else has been driving your mind for a while. Not just reading your thoughts--taking a ride, actually slipping in behind the wheel and taking over. It was a wild, desperate drive, because Clay had been running out of time. Once the psychic had found what he wanted, he was done with the vehicle. Marshall had bailed out while Lucas’ mind hit a tree at 80 miles an hour. Thoughts and memories had scattered like a broken windshield.

The hiccup rhythm (as he’d come to call it) interrupted the image. Where was he? How long had he been here? It sure was dark. This time he actually felt lucid--how long would it last? His mind was full of Clay Marshall’s footprints. Psychic litter. Leftover thoughts. “Go to hell, Clay,” he whispered for the hundredth time, hoping that the terrorist was already there. He began to slither down the vent tube, following the air flow.

Writhing, he slipped back into the confused waking/dreaming cycle. A kaleidoscope of frightening images--some were memory, some were nightmare, and some were both. Strong hands tightening on his throat. Fists grabbing at his hair. Someone throwing him across the room. His father walking away. All the secrets he’d locked away in his furthest corner of memory. Running from something he couldn’t define. Crawling when he couldn’t run anymore. Faces with names he couldn’t seem to remember. Those and other dreams, a collage pasted together from the confetti that comprised his brain. The worst dreams were the old nightmares; ones that had always been with him--even now in the moments when he was awake. He was locked in a small dark space, screaming to get out, but nobody came to open the door. Maybe nobody could hear him. Was he awake, or was he dreaming? He was alone, and nobody could hear him.