Hello everyone! Hope you're all doing well! I've wanted to write this story for literal years now (ever since the first movie came out) and just never had the time. It's been a lot of fun and I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :D

A/N: The title comes from Shine on You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd; it seemed oddly appropriate

Disclaimer: I own nothing =/

Peter flinches.

There's something dripping on his face. Something cold and wet and falling from enough height that the impact against his skin is stinging. He winces and forces his eyes open, frowning when he discovers that it's a much harder task than it usually is. His eyelids feel heavy and bruised and his eyes feel like they've been rubbed raw with sandpaper. It takes several long seconds for him to open them all the way and when he does he immediately gets a stinging drop of something in his left eye for his efforts.

He curses quietly and grumbles, shying away from the annoying and intrusive dripping that continues to fall on him from above. Considering that fact that his eyeball hasn't dissolved into a puddle of horrific goo he's reasonably certain the dripping is just water. He's not sure where it's coming from but a safe bet would be the pipes in the ceiling.

He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his vision from both the water and whatever the hell else is going on. Judging by the heaviness of his eyes and the rest of his body, he's reasonably certain he's been drugged. By what and by whom he's not sure; one step at a time.

His head feels full and weighted and if he wasn't already laying down he might wonder if he was top heavy. There's a dull, full body ache that seeps into every joint and bone in his body and his arms and legs are stiff and unresponsive.

He tries again and comes to a rather alarming realization: he's strapped down to a table. He'd been so busy worrying about the water dripping on his face that he hadn't even noticed the thick leather straps looped across his legs, torso, and chest. They're tight and rigid and try as he might, Peter can't shake them loose.

"The hell is this…?" he hears himself mumble, his voice syrup-thick and words slurred. Yup, definitely drugged. He tries again, struggling against the restraints holding down his arms and legs and is met with the same lack of progress. It's a little terrifying, a little disconcerting, but mostly it's just annoying.

"Hello?" he calls out, voice bouncing off the walls and echoing off high ceilings. He's able to turn his head slightly, just enough to make out the length and width of the room he's in. It's not a big room but then it doesn't need to be; he's the only one in here and it looks like that will remain the case for the foreseeable future.

The walls are metal with large, heavy bolts and brackets holding the panels together. There's what looks like a work bench shoved into one corner of the room and a metal bin next to it that looks like it might be used for trash. The ceilings are high enough that he really can't make out where the walls end and the ceiling begins but judging from the stinging drops of water that are still landing on his face every few seconds, he's guessing they're pretty high. He can just barely make out the outline of several pipes and shafts snaking their way up the walls and into the ceiling but they disappear upward into the gloom.

Peter pulls against the restraint on his left wrist one more time, wincing when the strap digs into his skin painfully. He growls in defeat and slumps back against the table, head rolling loosely against the cold metal. He needs to get out of here, get off this table and find a way to get the hell out of Dodge, but the drugs that are still coursing through his system, whatever they are, are making him feel dizzy and lightheaded.

He rolls his head to the side again and sees a door across the room. It's made of thick metal like everything else but there's a small window up toward the top and he thinks he sees someone walk past it after a second.

"Hey! Hello! Can anyone hear me?!" he calls out again, desperate to get some kind of attention. "Does somebody wanna tell me what the hell is going on here?!" He's not exactly sure what's waiting for him on the other side of that door but it can't be worse that what's waiting for him in this room.

"Is anybody out there?! Hello!" The words bounce around the room like rubber balls and fall flat like lead balloons. No one hears him and no one answers the door.

Peter grumbles another curse and sighs, blinking up at the shrouded ceiling just in time for another water droplet to smack him in the face. He glares; that leaky pipe is going to get on his last nerve very shortly…

He tries a different approach this time and tries to think back to the last thing he remembered before waking up in this room. They had been on a job on Walsh, a little trader planet just outside of the Parsa quadrant. It hadn't been anything big or high profile, nothing that would have garnered extra attention on their parts, but someone had been watching them apparently. Or, more specifically, someone had been watching him.

He doesn't remember much but he knows they were scheduled to meet with their would-be employer in a shop at the edge of the city. The others had been right behind him, at least he thought they were, but when he ended up at the designated meeting spot he was alone. He remembered turning to search the crowd for his missing companions and that was it, lights out. No warning, no fight, just darkness. And then he was here.

Problem is, he doesn't really know where here is. Judging by the walls and the pipes, he's guessing he's in a warehouse or a factory of some kind but he can't be sure. The air is thick with the smell of rust and evaporated fuel and heavy, dark patches of corrosion on the walls around the room lead him to believe this place hasn't been used in a very long time.

He tries the straps again, pulling as hard as he can against them. They cut into his skin and leave raw, red marks across his wrists but he keeps trying. Whoever had taken him, whatever they had planned, it couldn't be good. Good things generally don't happen after you wake up to find yourself strapped to a table.

There's a shuffle of movement outside the door of his room and Peter stops struggling for a brief second to listen. There are footsteps, coming slowly and closer to his door. He doesn't know if that should make him struggle more or stop moving altogether so he compromises and fidgets with just the straps at his wrists, abandoning the ones on his legs.

The door creaks open a second or so later and the figure in the doorway is shrouded in shadows against the backdrop of bright light in the hallway behind them. They're not tall but they're not short either and there's an odd hunched stoop in the way they stand that makes Peter believe they'd probably be at least a foot taller if they stood up to their full height.

He turns his head to get a better look at the figure standing in the doorway but suddenly a painfully bright light snaps to life over his head and Peter finds himself blinded and squinting. He blinks rapidly, tears flooding his eyes at the harshness of the light, and tries to make out the movement of the figure as it shambles into the room.

"Oh my dear friend," the figure says in a deep, garbled voice. There's a horrible pitching quality to it and it warbles up and down between alto and baritone, high and grating at one moment and low and shuddering the next. "How lucky I am to have found you."

Peter feels an involuntary chill at the words and he tries to keep a neutral expression. "Not feeling so lucky on this end, pal," he mutters, squinting just a little in an attempt to see who he's talking to. The figure is almost certainly male but most definitely not human or anything close to it. In spite of his best efforts, the light above him is far too bright and the figure is able to blend in seamlessly with the shadows around him.

"You will," the thing (?) tells him with a small, satisfied chuckle that sounds like broken glass and ruptured fault lines. "You are going to be part of something so much bigger. You will see."

There's a flicker of light in the thing's hand, something long and sharp and distinctly needle-shaped. Peter doesn't even have time to react before the needle in plunged deep into the side of his neck and the contents are injected into his bloodstream.

The effects are instantaneous and the room begins to blur and dip all around him. Peter swallows thickly, not sure if he's about to be sick or pass out, but his brain opts for the latter option and quickly begins shutting off everything from the forehead down. Peter struggles to stay conscious, he really does, but in the end it's just too much. His last thought before he slips into a deep, murky sleep is that his friends need to find him quick or there may not be anything left to find.

More to come soon!