Making a choice
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.
Note: this story contains spoilers for the original series.
"Ah, Mr. Jaqobis," Khlyen spoke neutrally to the younger Jaqobis brother. "We meet again."
"Westerly is burning, it is being bombed," John spoke in an equally neutral voice to the older man. "Did Dutch and my brother get out alive?"
"Yes," Khlyen nodded, frowning slightly: this reaction was not what he had currently expected from the younger Jaqobis brother; if he had, he would have never brought him to Arkyn in the first place. "They did. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation – believe me, I'm much more interested in Yalena than you would ever be."
"I bet you are," John growled softly, but not making an attack moves – he was too beat down from their last face-off, after all. "So what happens now? Is this what thing, what I saw your people doing to the other guy; is it the carrot here or the stick?"
"That is actually a very important question, and one that you will have to decide on your own," Khlyen said calmly – it would take something more than D'avin Jaqobis here to make the older man lose his cool: say, a pointless and stupid bombing of Westerly, or the equally pointless and stupid continuing existence of the Killjoy named Leo. "Let me be honest here, because you earned this much: your presence here is largely an improvisation on my part. I don't have anything against you being bombed into the oblivion with the rest of Westerly, but I did have an inkling that you might be useful to Yalena-"
"It all comes down to her, doesn't it?" John says softly. "I don't know why are you so obsessed over her, for whatever you are, you're not the sexual sort of pervert, but I think that I would rather die than let you use me to hurt her."
"And perhaps this is what'll happen," Khlyen nodded with a grace that he did not feel: just what sort of pervert did John think that he was? "As I was saying, being brought here is a very important decision, or even a choice; few people are selected, even fewer make it and those who don't, like 'the other guy', well, they are still useful, just now how they thought..."
(This last part is a lie: 'the other guy' had never thought anything; Khlyen had purposefully dumped him here in order to make him useful after what the other man had done to Yalena; but John did not need to know this.)
John said nothing this time; he just watched Khlyen with a gaze of a professional soldier of fortune, and the older man didn't like it, albeit for an unexpected reason: if his plan B is to work, he needs John to be full of fire and ire, like he was back in Westerly, when they fought and the younger man wouldn't back down away from Khlyen no matter what. This sort of attitude is annoying, but it is also just what John needs if he's to survive on Arkyn – but Khlyen is not going to tell him this...
"In any case," Khlyen paused, choosing his words carefully, for he had a sudden idea that startled him. "If you're not trying to escape-"
"Right now and here? No," John interrupted the older man once more. "Plus, I do need a strategy if I'm to find and rescue my brother and Dutch."
Khlyen waited some more, but John had apparently said all that he wanted to say, for he said nothing else.
"Fair enough," Khlyen nodded. "Either way, since neither of us feels like talking to each other very much or for very long, shortly afterwards you will go through the doors behind you. There, you will have to make all the main decisions, including the one whether this is the carrot or the stick. Usually people think that this is an honor, but then again, they are usually trained appropriately before they are brought here. You weren't – trained, that is, so you're free to have your own opinions; they matter only to you, after all."
"As opposed to who? You?" John asked bitterly, but without quite the same sort of defiance that Khlyen had seen on Westerly.
"Perhaps," Khlyen smiled, trying to infuriate the younger man, as Arkyn's staff led him out of Khlyen's local office and into the procedure room. "This is something that you will have to decide for yourself too," – and John was gone.
Once that happened, Khlyen shook his head and looked outside. Ironically, but if John was to survive, he had to be defiant, his old self. The symbiont bonding progress was not slow, but it was quite painful, and cooperation was required, for otherwise the applicant's chances of survival were even lower than the norm.
...Not that it bothered Khlyen, not really. His initial plan did involve John being dead – for some personal reasons of her own, Yalena was accumulating a menagerie of misfits, including the Jaqobis brothers, and this was something that Khlyen could go without; same for Yalena herself. If only she was constant in her attentions – instead she tended to change and to shift her entourage as quickly as the space wind blew, so what was Khlyen to do?
Adapt to the circumstances, that is what, and John was, perhaps, just the right way to do it. Provided that he survived, of course, for otherwise it was back to plan A – and Khlyen rather liked the plan A, it was quite simple...
"We sure do live in interesting times," he muttered, as he looked outside, through the space, and watched Westerly burn...
End