Genderbend 'verse; Jak, Daxter, and Keira are all the opposite gender. The Dynamic Duo keep their names (because really, how do you get better than that) but Keira gets an extra 'n'. Warnings include: rape (mostly allusion, no graphic description), violence, torture, human experimentation, sexism, brainwashing, Erol.
She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails. -Elizabeth Edwards
0
It was a good day; sore as she was, the ring was finally in the right place, and Keiran was done with the tinkering. He'd smiled at her; after a single kiss in his makeshift garage, she feels like they've solidified some kind of connection that was waiting to come together.
And then, of course, Jak pushed a button she shouldn't have.
Which is when everything goes to hell.
1
They land hard, and Daxter's first instinct is, of course, to complain.
Jak lets her friend talk and looks around them. There are walls all around and tremendous buildings made all of shiny metal that block the cloud-blotted sky. The ground is harder than stone and the air leaves a foul taste in the back of her throat. There are loud zoomers, and tall, fair people who are dressed very strangely.
Find yourself, Samos had said. She had no idea what that was supposed to mean; old log-for-brains was being just as unhelpful as usual, it seems.
The soldiers come, with their metal suits making a fearful racket (how they expect to sneak up on anything is anyone's guess). Dax bolts, unseen, but Jak's directly in their sights, unable to move. She doesn't know what they want.
Jak supposes that she could fight back, but, well, she's never hit a person before, not really. She's never wanted to hurt anybody. And from the armor, and the face-plates, and the weapons they look like they're keeping at their hips, fighting might cause more problems than it would solve.
She is thankful that Daxter ran though; the ottsel might be panicking now, but she was smart enough to know she might not be safe wherever they seemed to want to take Jak. And if she can find Keiran and Samos, they can come and find her. She isn't going to panic; she's been through worse than this. It'll be all right. Surely it'll be all right.
Nevertheless, Jak feels very alone, surrounded by men in clanking metal.
2
She wakes up on a hard floor in a corner with a large man sitting cross-legged in front of her. The room is all stone, and light comes only from a small eco-bulb swinging from a chain on the high ceiling. There is a rectangular seam in the rock on one wall; Jak supposes that's the door. Outside of their little corner, there are other men, gathered around a rickety table, staring at her with dark eyes.
The man's name is Jan, and he seems to be keeping her safe from them. Jak's clothes are gone, instead a rough white jumpsuit that's much too big covers most of her. Over the cuffs of the suit, her hands and feet are bound with metal. Jan smiles at her kindly, but he's visibly confused when she doesn't speak. Nevertheless, he makes her smile, and he talks to her, about how much she reminds him of his sister, casually slipping words into the conversation that she can't understand. He's the closest thing she has to an ally, and they might even be approaching friends. Jan is evidently one of the "privileged" inmates for agreeing to a program whose name she doesn't catch. All the other inmates are frightened of him, partly of his size (which is tremendous) but mostly intimidated by his advantage.
About half a day later (maybe? Time feels elastic and strange without the sun overhead) the guards shout at them, and everyone is made to stand against the walls. They take Jan by the arms and drag him away.
The other men stare at Jak, and one comes closer. She scoots back into her corner; she has never felt so helpless. He smiles with far too many teeth, and puts a rough hand on her arm.
She does not like to remember what comes next.
3
Afterwards, she sits and stares at the wall.
Afterwards, she can't feel the cold.
Afterwards, the uniform she's drowning in has rips and tears in it.
Afterwards, she feels like a corpse that's still breathing.
Jan gets slammed back into the cell, later, and knows what's happened; but he doesn't know who, and his threats go unheeded by the pack of rabid animals outside their corner of the room. He asks her to point at the one that hurt her, and she only blinks at him. He sits with her, but not too close. She would feel grateful, if she could feel anything.
They take Jan away again, later, and again, and again.
4
Eventually, she has to speak.
She does not want to open her mouth.
Jak knows full well she can talk, just as well as she knows that she just never has; she doesn't want to start now. Her throat sticks, dry from little water. She wants to cry. She hasn't cried since the first time Jan was taken away, but she wants to. She always intended to start talking, but, well, Daxter was always there. There was just no need.
Until now.
Her silence is a childish thing, a soft toy she is unwilling to let go of. She takes a breath in, and lets it out. She hums. Stalls.
Jan looks at her oddly and Jak realizes she's rocking back and forth, back and forth, humming tonelessly to herself. She stops; it makes some of the pain in her back return, but she's been a constant mass of aches and bruises since she learned to climb, she can handle whatever this is. Her hand goes to the small of her back, and it's radiating heat. She wants to cry.
Another breath in, preparing, preparing, she's going to say something, what if it doesn't sound right, what if she actually has no idea how to talk. Jak lets the breath whoosh out without a sound being made. She's tapping her foot frantically against the stone. One more breath. "Ah-" It's noise, but not words.
He looks at her with alarm. "What's wrong, little lady?"
He always called her little lady.
"Jan?" It sounds very quiet, but he hears her.
"You all right?"
She shakes her head, the length of her ears burning with humiliation.
Something is happening to me.
I don't know what's going on, and I don't want to ask for help.
I miss Daxter.
"I'm-" Jak can't breathe properly, her throat closing around unfamiliar words. "I'm bleeding?" Her voice is breathy and cracking, her hesitancy making the statement a question, but it's there.
He looks her over, worried, and then- seeing no obvious blood- something seems to dawn on him. He colors; she's got no idea what's going on, but it's a comfort to know he's embarrassed as well.
"The woman's curse, then? D'you know how to, er, clean up, and that?"
The bewildered look on her face is answer enough. Thank the Precursors.
"Y'ain't never heard of, erm, the monthly sickness?" He's gone as red as Daxter's hair by now.
She shakes her head, eyes wide.
He sighs. "Well, now as I've got you talkin', what's your name, lass?"
She looks at him, with his honest brown eyes and scars on his face, and trusts. "It's Jak."
5
They aren't allowed to look at the guards. They have to face the walls while they stand, and if anyone tries to move they get beaten within an inch of their life.
So it comes as a surprise when one day, instead of dragging her friend off, they take Jak instead. She yelps when they grab her upper arms, but she can't do much with her arms and legs bound. Surrounded by figures in red metal, she looks nervously around at the hallway- flickering lights reaching into hungry darkness, narrow walls closing in. One ducks down and separates the restraints on her legs.
"Try to run and you'll be shot." His voice is very mechanical.
They march her down the hall, turn (two lefts and a right, she notes, tracing out a map in her head) and enter a very strange room. The ceiling is lower than in the cell, the lights more numerous, the floors and counters shining white. Two men in white lab coats with masks are tinkering with something in a corner.
In the center of the room, the only thing not shining, is a smooth metal reclining chair, with straps. Evidently that's where she's going.
"Doctor?" One of the men behind her says it. She fights the urge to turn around; she doesn't like having them where she can't see them.
One of the men in the coats- the doctor, she would assume- turns, with something in his hand. Jak looks once. Looks again. Can't deny what she knows it is.
A syringe- filled with, of all things, Dark Eco. The smell of it, thick and grimy and acidic, is unmistakable. There are three more lined up on the counter in front of him.
These people are clearly out of their minds.
The fear of the foul stuff is enough to propel her to try something that occurred to her when she woke up with about two pounds of metal attached to her hands.
She breathes, letting her muscles loosen.
Her hands come up and hit the guard next to her under the chin, and the pressure of her impressive upper body strength behind solid metal takes him down. At the same time she aims a kick at the man on her other side; he hits the floor. Jak jumps in the air- off-balance without her hands to steady her- spin-kicking the three behind her. The one she didn't strike directly with her legs gets her cuffs slammed against the back of his helmet.
Jak takes off down the hallway.
The dark walls stretch for what looks like miles, the flecking paint on the walls looking like blood out of the corners of her eyes. She rushes past, weaving without being able to use her hands, slowed by no exercise and poor nutrition, she keeps running for what feels like hours and doesn't know where she's going except away.
She takes the first turn she can, trying to lose the guards she's sure are following by now-
There's someone there.
Moving on instinct, she swings at the shape wildly.
He grabs her hands before she can hit him, depressing a button on the magnetic cuffs. Her hands are separated, but the cuffs are still on, and her momentary shock gives him the opening to twist her arms behind her back. She struggles a little, but he's got her so that if she moves too much she'll dislocate a shoulder. Jak kicks backwards at him, and he lifts her off the ground. She whimpers, her shoulders straining.
"It looks like this one's got a little more spirit than usual." The voice slithering past her ear sets off a bell in her mind, and she knows she's heard him before.
Thudding boots come crashing down the hallway, and Jak realizes that the man behind her has been moving her forward, back to the walkway she ran down. Three of the five guards she escaped from are in front of them, guns drawn.
They see the man behind her and lower their weapons; two of them salute, but one just nods his head sheepishly, wavering a little. She thinks that's probably one of them that she hit in the head.
"Lieutenant?" One of them speaks up, nervous. The man behind her is high-ranking, then. Just her luck.
"Seeing as you incompetents are evidently unable to keep a teenage girl restrained for any length of time, I will escort her back to where she belongs." The guards shifted, disgruntled by the insult. "Which cell is she in?"
"She's in for treatment now, sir. Just cut and run when she saw what she was up against."
His laugh makes a noise as is rushes past her ear; it's mostly air, with a cruel edge to it. "I see. Is the pretty little girl afraid of needles, then?"
Jak wants very much to struggle, but knows she'll end up with a shoulder out of commission. She tries to relax. Tries not to think of the black ooze inside the syringes, purple sparks flaring and dying with a noise like the fizzing in a fire made with green wood-
Her feet stop moving, but the man behind her just pulls her up by the arms- her shoulders protest, but she relaxes them and she's reasonably sure they won't be damaged- and keeps walking. Either he's very strong, or she's become very light.
When they reach the room, her eyes are closed; tears are sneaking out from underneath her lashes against her will. The man holding her picks her up fully, and sets her on the chair; she struggles, but panic is making her clumsy, and there are six of them, one of her. The straps close around her limbs and it's like a death sentence.
Someone's hand slips into hers. Jak's head turns, and sees a blur of bright red hair- Dax?- with tattoos surrounding bright eyes in a gold color she hasn't seen in any eyes but animals'. He smiles at her, and his other hand comes up to stroke her hair. She tries to wrench herself away, but there's no room to move. She feels like a bug pinned to a board, jerking as it dies.
"Oh, sweet thing." He sighs. "Are you frightened?"
A relatively calm spot in her mind realizes that he's the man that brought her in, the one that knocked her out and took her here.
The doctor approaches with one of the syringes; she tries to move as much as she can, but there's nowhere to go, the straps hold her fast. The lieutenant squeezes her hand. She shuts her eyes, doesn't want to watch the needle go into her skin. Pain becomes a focus point, the needle slowly inching its way through her flesh, and the last thing she can think before the doctor depresses the plunger is, Daxter's going to kill me if I end up an Ottsel.
Then the pain hits.
Her insides are burning, and her skin is freezing cold. Every muscle in her body tenses, straining at the straps on the chair. The poison eats at her bloodstream, hits her heart like a punch to the sternum; she feels its steady thudding falter, unsure, and the Dark just keeps going, spreading throughout her. Her teeth itch, and there's a ringing in her ears. She doesn't realize it, but she's holding onto the lieutenant's hand for dear life.
"I've heard this one doesn't speak." The doctor doesn't sound like he's talking about a person. One of the guards laughs.
"Yeah, maybe this time around we won't have to put up with all the noise."
Sorry to disappoint you, comes from some hysterical part of her brain, as she opens her mouth to scream.
6
So her time as a prisoner ended, and her 'privileged' life as a lab rat began.
The 'privilege' of a lonely, stark white cell with bright lights that never turned off.
The 'privilege' of not saying goodbye to Jan.
The 'privilege' of having her white prisoner's jumpsuit taken away, of being left naked and shivering in her cell or in treatment.
The 'privilege' of having her hair shorn off, of throwing up bile laced with eco at all hours of the day and night, of having her cell invaded at any time by doctors and guards who wanted to blow off steam.
Her sleeping and waking hours are both filled with nightmares, black shadows dancing for attention at the corners of her vision.
Her name was Jak. Her best friends were Daxter and Keiran. She was from Sandover Village, raised by her uncle Marius and Samos the Sage.
She tries constantly not to forget, digs at unused corners of her memories to find something she can immerse herself in. She once scratched at the walls until her nails broke and bled, and did her best to paint their names on the walls in her blood. By the time she was thrown back in after her next treatment, it had all been washed off, like they had never existed.
She can't remember the feeling of wind in her hair or sunlight on her skin or grass between her toes.
She starts losing time, waking up on the opposite side of the cell where she fell asleep, opening her eyes to find a section of the wall scratched and battered with no memory of doing it even with the evidence sticking to her hands. Thinking back, she hopes that Jan died quickly, instead of going through this hell.
The needles leave marks on her arms that refuse to fade with time.
7
She sees the lieutenant at her treatments often, and it seems like every other time he's being called by a different rank. He progresses rapidly; Lieutenant, Captain, Major, and soon, Colonel. His name is the only constant among the sea of titles; she finds out it's Erol.
She's hasn't spoken her name (or anything) in front of anyone but Jan, whom she hasn't seen since she was moved out of gen-pop. The guards refer to her as the bitch; the doctors call her 86-12-416, her prisoner number.
Erol calls her sweetheart, and it gives her the shivers. There's a strange, hungry light in his almost-yellow eyes when he looks at her.
She's half asleep when Erol has her pulled from her cell- every time the guards come in it takes more of them, even as she starves the Dark Eco is imbuing her with an alien strength- and she's dragged somewhere she hasn't been before; she's still recording all the turns, keeping a map of what she's seen of the prison in her head. It's become second nature by now, holding where-she's-been together with where-she's-going, and she knows only the tiniest corner of the place. It would be nearly impossible to find her in here.
But wherever they've taken her, it's expansive. It's not the cramped, claustrophobic little rooms she gets taken to for treatment; it's a full-blown laboratory. Instead of the two doctors attending her injections, there look to be about twenty of the similar-looking men in white coats, each working on something different. She can't smell any eco in the room, except for the background hum of blue eco that powers the lights.
Through the crowd of a dozen guards, she sees a head poke up from behind a screen; an older man with glasses stowed on his balding forehead, in front of neon-blonde hair.
Her hair used to be that color at the ends. It's growing back in all green, and when she tries to run her fingers through it she realizes how long it's been since she's bathed.
The man comes close, parting the guards with a disapproving glare. He's very tall, towering over her, and he has bottle-green eyes that search her over like a research project. His hands come up to touch, and she growls, a low rumbling in her throat.
His hand jerks back.
"Doctor Nusair," Erol speaks up from behind her. She tenses her shoulders, bares her teeth. "What we discussed...?"
"Ah!" Nusair gives her another assessing glance, this one much more curious. "This subject hasn't been affected by the injections?"
"Not to the same extent. She seems to have natural immunity."
Green eyes open wider than she would have thought possible. "Fascinating. It would seem that the Baron's pet project is more prolific than expected."
"Can you, then? Your techniques have been shown to work, haven't they?" Erol's tone is somewhere between challenging and hopeful, like a child daring their parents not to give them a birthday present when he's already seen the box in the closet.
Her stomach sinks. More needles and tests. Then again, what was she expecting?
"I don't know." Nusair chews on the inside of his cheek. "Dark Eco infection might prevent the triggers from taking hold, or it might be doing damage to her brain. The mind is a delicate thing, Colonel. Even trauma can impede the conditioning."
They both pause for a moment. She looks up; Nusair avoids her eyes religiously, looking at everything in the room but her. Erol stares into her for a minute on end, searching for something she's not sure is there anymore. He turns back to the doctor.
"I am merely asking you to try, Mathias."
The doctor's teeth come out to gnaw on his lower lip. He nods, and turns away.
Erol takes her hand firmly and leads her sit in a chair by a desk. The fabric feels strange against her bare skin. He kneels down in front of her, still holding her hand, staring up with eyes that would devour her.
"Sweetheart," he says, making her cringe, "I need you to understand; we're doing this for your own good."
Her stomach falls again. Nothing done to her for her own good has ever been good.
"You're going to be uncomfortable. But I just want to keep you safe. Are you frightened?"
She only blinks at him.
Doctor Nusair comes back and stands next to her chair. He gives her water- it's dusty, but heavenly- the guards give her barely enough to stay alive- and talks to her in a soft, even voice. She forgets what he says before she has a chance to think about the words, and her eyelids feel heavier with every passing second, and everything gets fuzzy and colors bleed into each other until she finally blanks out.
She wakes up alone in her cell.
8
They start pumping gas into the room before they take her, and she has very strange dreams.
Dreams of running, running, through a foggy city, focused single-mindedly on a mission objective. Of holding a gun to someone's head as they cry frantically and pulling the trigger without feeling. Of dancing a ballet by herself, in a large white room, to music no-one can hear but her and then Erol is there, following her steps and she doesn't even want to get away when he lifts her. His fingers leave burning red marks on her skin. He holds her hand up to touch a picture - look, all the information is there, you only have to look, you only have to put it together I know how smart you are sweetheart now show me. The images are jerky and frantic, like the little cartoons she and Dax used to draw on pads of paper, making them flicker and move when you flipped the pages.
The back of her neck feels sensitive and strange. She runs her fingers across it, carefully, and there's something there, some little rise under the skin. They've put something on her, in her. She starts clawing at it, half-awake, and when it depresses her eyes roll back into her head and she sleeps. She doesn't remember it happening when she wakes up, but then after it's happened three times her body realizes cause and effect enough not to touch it.
All the guards have stopped coming into her cell. Except Erol.
She's stopped fighting him as much, when he takes her. She doesn't know why, she just can't bring herself to claw at him like she has with the others. He whispers things into her ears, dark things: you're mine, sweetheart, my little whore, no one else touches you, no one else can save you like I can.
Are you frightened, sweetheart? He does frighten her, shakes her to the core, and she can't even hate him with the fear in the way. The animal in her brain tucks its tail between its legs when she sees him.
He takes her to a makeshift shooting range in the back room of a lab, hands her his gun. She stares at him- it would be easy- she has nothing to lose- she could be rid of him-
She turns to face the target. Within a week she can put three bullets through the same hole. Erol smiles at her with possessive pride. Good girl.
He gives her clothes again, the jumpsuit is too small but it covers her, and it isn't filled with holes. He kisses her, hard, when she's dressed, and she lets him out of some pathetic sense of gratitude. (She hates herself for it, later.)
She finds out why when the next treatment she's dragged to isn't in a lab, but in a chair under a machine; her skin is toughening enough that the needles have problems. The machine pumps the Dark directly into her heart, and she's imbued with enough already that she's beginning to be able to channel the stuff.
It hurts like a bitch; besides the burning, searing pain of the eco racing through her system, the skin over her sternum blisters like a bad sunburn, and bruises like she's been kicked by a yakkow. It leaves her prickling like a limb when she falls asleep at the wrong angle, except twice as bad across her entire body. She feels like an anthill is living under her skin.
The rumored Baron comes to observe her once, a large man with machinery set in his face. He stares at her.
She hisses and spits at him, daring him to come closer. He started this; he should see what he's done, what he's created.
Erol does his best to keep the Baron out of her reach as she gets strapped in yet again.
She can see the approval in the bastard's eyes and it spells a death sentence for her.
9
When they throw him into her cell, she doesn't realize what's going on until the door clicks shut and there's a new body in the room.
He's large and smells close to death. Dark Eco is coming off of him in waves, but not in a powerful way; he reeks of it the way that a roast pig smells of its stuffing, like they gutted him and filled him up with the Dark. He's unconscious for now, laying flat in the middle of the cell. There's not much room on either side with him spread out on his stomach, so she puts her shoulder to him to roll him over-
She catches a glimpse of his face. His eyes are swollen shut, grayish ooze sealing the lids, his skin an alarming shade of white. There are cuts all over his face, and what's oozing out is so close to black she can barely tell it's blood. He seems familiar, and she doesn't know why.
He stirs; she shoots up, darting to the other corner of the room. He's wounded, but an animal is always at its most dangerous when it's hurt and cornered. He whines, trying to sit up.
They cohabit for what feels like a long time, keeping to their own sides of the cell; he's sick, nearly dead, but she refuses to be the one to finish him off. She has to remind herself, every time that she snarls at him, that he's a victim of the same program she is; he's been through the same things. They ought to be allies. But the predator in her mind thinks of things in terms of this-is-mine, that-is-yours, if you touch what-is-mine I'll rip you apart. She claws her way back to humanity, slowly, but she keeps slipping further and further behind.
It comes to a head when the guards bring water. They leave it in a bowl on the ground, like someone would do for a pet, and it happens to get knocked over to "his" side of the cell.
He lumbers over to it. He's closer, but she's faster, it's all over in a matter of seconds and she has no time to think.
The water bowl is tipped over on its side. He has a hole in his throat. She has thick blood running down her hands. He's gazing up at her, with eyes that are wide and brown and scared and he opens his mouth like a fish gasping on the shore- Jak?
She stares at him, frozen in wordless horror, until his mouth slackens and his breath stops gurgling.
Jan's body stays untouched for what feels like ages; they bring water five times, bread twice. She can barely bring herself to move out of her furthest corner to keep herself alive.
Eventually, she crawls over to the door, out of her mind with grief and rage and despair. She begs them through the slat in the bottom of the door, "Please take him away; I can't stay here with him, please, please let me out, I don't care, anything, anything, please." All she hears is laughter. She's sobbing and no tears will come and it's the worst feeling in the world.
10
She's started lashing out at the guards when they try to put her in the chair; she takes a half a dozen out this time with animalistic ferocity, but there are nearly twenty close at hand. They don't even sedate her, just lock her in and dial the power up higher than usual. She grunts, writhes, and snarls, but she does not scream. She won't scream for them anymore.
By the time they take her out of the machine, her body is exhausted, but her blood is boiling. How dare they, how dare they, touching her, grabbing her, don't they know she could kill them so easily- Erol is walking up the platform- she twists away, revolted- don't you touch me; I'll kill you, don't touch me-
Purple sparks swim in her vision, and the darkness takes her away.
When she comes to, there's a veritable pile of guards behind her, and Erol is backed against the railing, gun up and aimed for her heart. He's staring, his gold eyes horrified and scared; she revels in the feeling of power, how do you like it, feeling weak?
"Are you frightened?" She pants, victorious, watching his lips twist into a gruesome sneer. He slaps her, and she hits the ground hard.
Whatever happened left her battered self too tired to fight anymore, so she lets them pick her up off the floor, drag her back with triumph still coursing through her veins. Jan's body is gone by now, but the cell still smells like death, and she still avoids the stains his blood left. They toss her in, the door slamming shut behind them. She's gone very strange; her body is so tired it's shaking, but her mind feels above everything, like she was underwater and now she's broken the surface. There's a disconnect between what her limbs are feeling and what's actually getting to her brain. Rolling on her back, she stares at the ceiling, at the single bulb dangling just out of reach. Turning backflips off the walls is the main way she keeps herself sane in here, but her legs feel like they won't hold her up right now.
She's only been back a little while when the door opens back up, revealing Erol. Commander, now, as she's heard. He still scares her, but it's not as paralyzing, knowing he's afraid of her as well. She smiles- well, smiling isn't the term, she's showing her teeth. It's more of a warning; I bite.
Erol's face is serious. "You little whore. You haven't any idea what you've just done, do you?"
The 'smile' turns into a grimace. She flips herself over to all fours, ready to fight.
He pulls something small from his pocket. It's a black box, small enough to fit in one hand.
Pointing it at her, he pushes a button. The pain makes her fall to her stomach, knocks the wind out of her. It stings, all over. Like being bitten by insects. He grabs her by the back of the neck, flips her over. His hands ghost over her throat, a sick smile on his face. He holds the box to her skin.
"If you struggle, I will pull this until you pass out. And you might wake up to a few unpleasant surprises." He sneers at her; he's never been this cruel, always masked his sadism with 'kindness', tender and reassuring even as he tore her apart. The change is almost refreshing. Almost, aside from the bodily harm he's threatening. She can be nearly certain he's bluffing. She's the only one left of their experiments; too valuable to kill or damage beyond repair.
Then again, she can take a lot of unpleasant damage before she hits "beyond repair".
She grits her teeth, growling at him as he reaches for her clothes.
This has been an awful nightmare since the very first time, but there's a humiliation to it now, that she could be subdued by this bastard. She's familiar with the hold he has on her- there are trigger words that make her docile, or put her to sleep, things that only Erol and Dr. Nusair know- and it never gets any easier, fighting a battle against her own body, being betrayed by her own mind.
Before he finishes, he pushes the button again, harder, and it gets worse with every passing second. She screams- the sound is ear-splitting in the tiny cell- and blacks out.
When she wakes up, she's moving. She can smell things- people, zoomers, rain, marsh gas- and there's air rushing past. She's still surrounded by bars- no surprise there- but she can see the city outside. It's very loud, and far too bright. The light gives her a headache.
She's still groggy from whatever they put in her to keep her out, but she's certain she hears someone shouting.
A familiar voice.
She blinks, slowly, not realizing at first. Not until they're unloading her, carrying her back indoors, does she put the pieces together.
That was Daxter's voice.
Jak smiles.
So begins my genderbend comprehensive. This is going to be a labor of love; likely, no one will review it, but I need to get it out. Also I need to actually finish something for once in my life. Here's to hoping.
The little vignette-numbers? I do one every night. I'm up to twenty now, and when I get to thirty, I'll publish 10-20 (I need time to round up a beta or two and do my own editing).
Many thanks to letmefallasleep and Rainfelt (Phoe-chan), who both beta'd this chapter.
I was going to have Erol's ranking be in the US Army system, since we don't actually know how the KG ranks progress, but it looked really strange. This is in the US police system of rankings, with Inspector replaced by Commander and made the highest rank.
86-12-416, Jak's prisoner number, is a combination of two prisoners from the Stanford Prison Experiment; Prisoner 8612 staged a rebellion, barricading himself and two other "prisoners" inside their cell with a bed. Prisoner 416, who took 8612's place when he left, went on a hunger strike. (Interestingly, 416 is also the number of the session [from the R. Tam Sessions] in which River kills her psychologist.)
Mathias was the name of the doctor who was in charge of conditioning River Tam in the movie Serenity; "Nusair" is an Arabic name meaning "bird of prey".
Many thanks for reading,
S.S.o.D.