Chapter 1: The Disappearance of John Crichton
"John, did you get anything besides food cubes on the planet?" Aeryn asks, entering their bedroom with D'argo balanced on her hip, and stops short at what she sees: a blue light, all too familiar. She'd thought she would never see another wormhole in her life, and yet here one is, forming around her husband in their bedroom. I thought wormholes were bigger than this. And why is it forming inside of Moya? I hope it doesn't cause any problems…
But she can already see that it will; it's sucking John in. Even though he's holding onto the bed as tightly as he can, his fingers are slipping. She braces herself in the doorway; even without the knowledge of wormholes that he used to have, John is still far more likely to be able to navigate the wormhole than she is, and she knows he'll find a way back if it's even remotely possible. Frell, he's done enough supposedly impossible things over the cycles that she wouldn't put it past him to come back even if it was impossible. He can find his way back; she can't. And somebody has to stay and take care of D'argo and the baby which had just been released from stasis. Even if she isn't as good of a parent as John is, she's learned enough these past three cycles to have some degree of confidence in her ability to at least not mess up too badly.
John's hands finally lose their grip entirely. He scrabbles for a new one, but the only thing he manages to grab is the hologlobe they store their pictures on. With that in his hand, he disappears into the wormhole and it closes behind him. In the sudden stillness, D'argo's crying seems even louder than it usually does.
"Officer Sun, Commander Crichton, are you there?" Pilot's voice sounds through her comm. Badge. "We just had some strange sensor readings, but they've cleared up now."
"John's gone, Pilot," Aeryn says, barely able to keep her composure even though she knows that if she starts crying D'argo will be impossible to handle. "There was a wormhole inside of Moya."
"Do you think he'll find a way to make it back to Moya?" Pilot asks, as shocked as Aeryn is.
"I don't know, Pilot," she replies. "I don't know."
Chapter 2: The Rabbit Hole
John tries his hardest to hold onto the bed, but it's like this wormhole- and since when are wormholes this small? Since when do they form within ships?- seems like it wants him. It sucks him in, like gravity, like vacuum when there's a hull breach, and he can't keep his hold of the bed. Frantically, he grabs for something, anything, to keep him from getting sucked down the rabbit hole again. He's done with his adventures with wormholes. He can't get to Earth in them, home is Moya, and nothing good has ever come from traveling through wormholes except for meeting Aeryn. But his frantic grasp doesn't catch anything solid, anything secured to the deck, only something small that was sitting on the bedside table. It all happens too quickly, and he's too upset and frantic, for him to even look at what's in his hand as he tumbles down the rabbit hole again.
This isn't a nice wormhole, although how much of that is because he doesn't have anything other than himself, and especially not his module so he could actually steer; and how much of it is that he doesn't have a ship or a space suit and everything seems to be getting dimmer as he begins to black out, he doesn't know. He hopes the wormhole leads somewhere with air, but he doesn't have even a little bit of choice in the matter.
Battered from the rough passage and more than a little bit surprised that he isn't dead yet, he reaches the end of the wormhole. He barely manages to land on his feet when it dumps him unceremoniously and closes before he can even turn around. He notes that he seems to be on a planet, and in a city even. Or at least between a few buildings. Well, at least there's air, and it's probably a civilization with space travel.
Something drips on his hand, and he looks down. It's blood. He dabs his nose, and his hand comes away even bloodier. Belatedly, he realizes that something is running down his face like tears, but he isn't crying. And even if he was, he couldn't cry from his ears, too.
This isn't good, he thinks as a wave of dizziness runs through him and he staggers. The next wave of dizziness makes him lose his balance and fall, but he's dead before he hits the ground.
Chapter 3: The Preimmortal in the Alley
Duncan feels the slight buzz of a preimmortal as he walks past the entrance to an alley, and spares a second to wonder who it is and what sort of an immortal they'll make. Will they, like most immortals, be easy prey and die before they've lived even one year as an immortal, or will they be one of the lucky/skilled few who live on for years or even centuries? It's all just idle speculation, though; likely he'll never know. Likely he'll never even set eyes upon them, now or in the future. But he has time to speculate, if he wants. Just not here; his ice cream is melting in the bag he's carrying.
He starts to move on, but his motion is arrested by the feel of the sudden spike in the Buzz from preimmortal to immortal. Whoever's in that alley just died for the first time. Sighing, Duncan throws away his bag of groceries. He isn't about to wait around in an alley for however long it takes the new immortal to revive, which could be anywhere from half an hour to several hours; for some unknown reason there's variation in revival times, even when dealing with only one immortal and not the population at large. So he's going to take the new immortal back to the dojo. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a walk because he hadn't taken the T-bird to the grocery store- it's in walking distance, but a bit far to carry a dead body. Oh well, he can pass the new immortal off as drunk if they look old enough to drink legally, even if it's way too early in the day to be drunk. If the new immortal's recognized their reputation's going to be ruined, Duncan thinks with amusement.
Duncan enters the alleyway cautiously. The new immortal died down here, and he doesn't know the cause yet. They might have been killed by a gang or the mob; or they might have died of starvation or disease. Preimmortals are immune to none, and the first two are at least temporarily dangerous for immortals, too.
The new immortal's alone, though, just collapsed on the ground like he'd been walking along and suddenly dropped dead without warning. Duncan leans over and hefts him up. This isn't the most efficient way to carry a dead body, not even the most efficient way to carry a body without anything other than one's own self- he's carried enough bodies, both on battlefields and those of temporarily or permanently deceased immortals, to know them all- but it's the method that looks the most like he's carrying a passed out drunk friend rather than a body.
The new immortal's head lolls back, revealing lines of blood from his eyes and nose and ears: obviously the cause of death, but what could make someone bleed from their eyes, ears, and nose at the same time, to the point of killing them? Duncan isn't a doctor, but he's been around for long enough to see any number of medical conditions, and he's never seen anything like this. No matter what caused it, though, he can't carry this man down the street with this much blood on his face. He doesn't have anything to clean it off with, though; the new immortal's dressed entirely in leather, which is useless for wiping up blood; and he'd look decidedly strange carrying a passed out man dressed in leather without a shirt.
He puts the new immortal back on the ground and thinks. At least to him, this new immortal is his responsibility now, even if he knows that most other people, especially Methos, would see it otherwise. So he can't just leave him here and go get the T-bird, because what if he revives before then, and runs off and gets his head chopped off by the next immortal who sees him? Duncan would feel responsible. But he can't carry the man because of the blood on his face, and he can't call a taxi or take a bus for the same reason. There's only one option open to him. Duncan pulls out his cell phone.
"Joe's Bar," Mike answers the phone.
"Hey, Mike, can I talk to Joe?" Duncan asks.
"Sure, he just finished a set…Joe, phone for you!" Mike hands the phone over to Joe.
"Hello?" Joe says.
"Joe," Duncan says. "Sorry to ask another favor, but can you give me a ride?"
"What happened to the T-bird?" Joe asks.
"It's fine, but it's at the dojo and I don't want to lose this guy."
"This guy? You're going to tell me the details later, right?"
"Sure, Joe. But I need that ride fast."
"Just give me directions and I'll be there."
"Thanks, Joe."
***
Joe pulls up to the entrance to the alley and Duncan drags the new immortal over to the car and dumps him in the back seat.
"Is that a body?" Joe asks.
"New immortal," Duncan explains. "Strangely enough, he doesn't have any identification on him. No driver's license, credit card, anything. Just a little metal ball and a handful of pieces of plastic in a bag and a toy gun."
"Maybe he's a criminal," Joe suggests. "Dressed all in leather, maybe he's a member of a biker gang or something."
"With a coat like that? It isn't made for sitting on a bike, and the whole style just seems different. I'm not ruling out the possibility that he's a criminal, though. Or that he was mugged. The toy's weird, though."
The new immortal revives with a gasp and looks around wildly, hand immediately going to the toy gun with the reflexes, if not the equipment, of someone used to combat and war zones.
"Where am I?" he asks, his hand not moving from the toy although he hasn't drawn it yet. He thinks it's real, at least. He raises a hand to rub his left eye, which is twitching. Duncan wonders if it's a tic he's always had, or if it's an atypical reaction to the Buzz like a few immortals have. "I was on Moya, and then…" he trails off and his face fills with dismay. "Where am I?"
Moya? Duncan thinks. "You're in Seacouver. Hope you don't mind that we took you out of the alley you died in."
He expects the new immortal to react to the statement that he's dead, but unexpectedly he says, "Seacouver? As in Seacouver, Washington? I'm on Earth?"
Oh, great. Another immortal with mental problems. Just what Duncan needs. Because it always turns out so well. Although to some extent all immortals have mental problems, most of them aren't surprised to find out they're on Earth. "Of course you're on Earth, where else would you be?"
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