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U ɴ ƒ o ʀ ɢ ɪ v ᴇ ɴ

Chapter One: Weakness

The young Jumper stood at the feet of his parent's bodies. They had fallen, sprawled over each other in a pool of blood that was still warm. He was shaking violently, but otherwise betrayed no sign of emotion. His face was a mask of apathy, and even as he felt the blood around his ankles cool, he turned to face the dark man behind him who had brought this chaos, this destruction, into his life. The dark man smiled. The child smiled back, a terrible and twisted grin that was a hint at the insanity that would pursue him for the rest of his life. For a single, unbroken second, the two were at peace with their fates, accepting them, accepting their adversary, the lives which they had unknowingly entwined. And then that one moment shattered as the dark man knelt in front of the child and –

\/\/\/\/

Griffin awoke in a cold sweat, shaking as uncontrollably as he had seconds ago in the dream-memory which had haunted him for months. His eyes were glittering in the darkness of Chechnya, reflecting the light of the distant explosions. His clothes were torn, his skin was burnt, his sanity was hanging by a thread, and yet, he was still alive. Alive in a life of agonizing, anguishing pain.

How long had he been here now? How long had it been since David had abandoned him? Hours? Days?

Weeks?

He couldn't tell. He'd passed out of conciousness several times from the electrical surges, and from sheer pain in other instances. All he knew was that he was still alive, and he wished to God that he was dead. No matter how many times you felt a certain pain, it always felt as though it was new. You couldn't become desensitized to pain, it was the very antithesis of its existence.

He wondered maniacally why he wasn't dead yet. There was moisture on his skin, and it was raining, and he was trapped in an electrical tower, and God knew, he'd endured enough in the last (oh, God, how long, how long?) week? that he couldn't even make sense out of the simplest things. He'd tried every technique he knew of to block out the ceaseless, relentless pain, and still it broke through his defences, reducing him to a screaming wreck. His throat was hoarse, his muscles were trembling with exhaustion and fear, and every inch of his body was howling in burning protest at the white fire that was surging through it –

– but it wasn't.

Griffin paused.

There was no new pain. There was pain, of course, but there was no new pain. No ceaseless surges or burning, no electricity, no new torture. The electricity had stopped.

So that was why he wasn't dead.

Griffin shakily raised one hand up to grip the freezing metal, blindly looking through the night for some clue as to what had granted his release. When he saw none, he tried to pull himself up, and instead fell backwards, dangling from his ankles and knee as his torso lost the position it had held for so long. His arms had no strength; they couldn't keep him up.

As another flood of pain swept from his ankles, Griffin dimly became aware of the fact that he was, indeed, upside down. Curious. How long had it taken him to notice that? Five minutes?

"Losing your touch," he whispered to himself, and then laughed crazily, face going red from the blood flowing to it. Slowly, numbly, he lifted his knee up, extending his leg in as though he was a ballet dancer. At the same time, he wriggled his ankle, cutting it on the sharp metal and not even noticing. The fact that he was falling –falling?– had driven that from his mind, until he crashed into the soft clay of the earth.

"D-I-R-T," he murmured. "That spells dirt. I-N-S-A-N-I-T-Y. That spells being crazy, and Griffin, old boy, old chap, that's what you are."

Chuckling weakly at his own oh-so-witty joke, he turned over onto his stomach and clawed at the earth, slowing pulling himself along it. He made about half a foot, before stopping and panting for breath. He vaguely considered Jumping, and then without even realizing it, fell through a wormhole that he might have created. Had he made it? Had another Jumper? Who knew? It was there.

Raising himself up weakly on two torn and bleeding hands – when had that happened?– he looked around the area that he was in. A cave. Black rock. Sand on the floor. Completely dry, save the waterfall that fell past a tiny, less than a metre-square hole about ten feet away from him.

Oh, yes.

Backup lair.

How fun.

Griffin slumped back onto the floor, aware that he was soaking wet with blood and rain, and found that he couldn't care less. He was so tired. So tired…

He passed out.

\/\/\/\/

And then that one moment shattered as the dark man knelt in front of the child and lightly laid his hands on his shoulders. Their eyes locked, one pair that suddenly seemed too old, and one pair that seemed eternal, ageless. Then the first of the electrical shocks began, and the child ripped himself out of the dark man's grip, running to the kitchen and grabbing the biggest, the longest knife there. Rage was all that his mind could process. Gone was the peace and acceptance of the moments before; now he was furious, and fighting for change that was never going to be granted to him. He ran to stab the dark man, who laughed and easily disarmed him, taking the knife and quickly slicing the arm of the child who had carried it. The boy began to cry, and the air shimmered around him, before exploding inwards with a massive CRACK!

"Goodbye, little boy," the dark man whispered. "We'll meet again, soon."

And they did.

\/\/\/\/

Returning to conciousness was nasty. Returning to conciousness and then having waves of pain sweep your body, both mental and physical, was worse.

Griffin lay helplessly on the sand of his new lair, unable to summon the energy to move. If Roland himself had appeared before him, Griffin would have just stayed down and taken the knife. He was that exhausted.

How long had it been since he had eaten? Drunk? How long had he been enduring the everlasting electricity?

Now possessed with a flicker of energy, Griffin stretched out his arms, both of which were still steadily bleeding, and pulled himself through the sand to a dark metal cabinet against a rocky wall. It was a safe, one of dozens in the cave, and, barely able to remember the combination, Griffin inexpertly opened it and pulled out a small digital clock.

"What…?"

Nineteen days.

How the hell had he survived nineteen days without nourishment?

Almost afraid to look, Griffin carefully raised himself up again, and looked at his body. His thin body. His scrawny body. The muscles had atrophied in the space of a two and a half weeks, providing food for his body to live off. That explained a lot, but what about water? If you were to go more than two days without water in a place like Chechnya, you were running a high risk of dying, and if you went nineteen days…

He should be dead. By all rights, he should have died long ago, but in this case especially, he should have been dead.

Interesting.

Griffin reached into the safe again and pulled out a bottle of water. Unscrewing it, he greedily drank the whole bottle, throwing up a second later as his stomach revolted.

"Okay, rewind," he whispered. He brought out another bottle (there had been three in there to begin with) and drank it, a sip at a time. It was slow, but his stomach didn't rebel again, and he felt slightly more sane. He repeated the process with the last bottle in that particular safe, and then lay back, thinking.

Nineteen days in Chechnya, and he was still alive. Bleeding, half-insane, emaciated, but alive. He wasn't strong enough to even think about Jumping, and another train of thought interrupted his current one. He knew he hadn't created the wormhole that had let him go through to his lair. Someone else had. Not David; David didn't even know of the existence of this. So, who?

Griffin thought about that for a long period of time, eventually coming upon the answer in his own twisted, delirious way. It slipped away as soon as he thought it, but the truth itself was still there, hidden under layers of mental incoherency. He might have passed out again for a moment, maybe not. When he came around, or became aware of the situation he was in again, he realized that he needed more food. And water. And food. And … everything.

Nineteen days…

He pulled himself along to the next safe, this one stocked with food and water, and fumbled with the lock, trying different combinations. Each time one failed, he grew increasingly panicky, before finally the last code he could remember opened it. He dragged out another six bottles of water, and several packets of dried fruits. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

Nineteen days.

Two and a half weeks.

No water beyond that which had been brought to him by the Russian electrician.

Russian electrician?

Oh, yes. The old man who had that ridiculous moustache and amazingly long ladder that could actually reach him. The electrician and the technician. The water carriers. The angels, he seemed to dimly remember calling them at one point. What had happened to them? He wasn't sure. He couldn't remember. What was the electrician's name? He couldn't remember. Why had he saved him? He couldn't remember.

Groaning softly in frustration, Griffin pulled himself slowly into a sitting position, leaning against the cool safe. Sipping on another water bottle, he closed his eyes and began to think.

The electrician.

Andrei Alkaev.

Founder of the Anti-Paladin Activist group.

Or had he just made that up in his head?

Griffin groaned again, louder, and gently hit himself in the head, whispering harshly to himself "Get a grip!"

Where was he right now? The backup lair, hidden within a massive forest. The entrance was nothing more than a hole, smaller than a metre-square, and about six feet long. You had to crawl through six feet of rough, damp rock to get into this cave if you were a normal human, and right now, that was impossible. Griffin couldn't quite think why, but he knew he was safe, somehow.

Why was he here? Because he'd been abandoned in Chechnya for nineteen days. Why had he been in Chechnya? Because of David.

David.

David, who betrayed him, abandoned him, forgotten him.

Griffin felt a sick mixture of anger and hate start to begin throbbing in his head, and he turned so that he was sitting between two of the ten safe's, leaning against one, with his head resting on the cool surface of the other. Able to think a little more clearly, he continued reassessing his situation.

He was in the new lair. His old one had been violated, destroyed. David was responsible for his current state of injury. He probably needed to go to a hospital and get treated for dehydration and starvation, not to mention electrical burns, but the risk of the Paladins was too high. He couldn't Jump, yet, and he was exhausted. Not to mention, still in a lot of pain. He had food, and water, and a bed –

Griffin's thoughts stopped there. A bed. If he slept, he'd be able to start recovering. And if he went into a coma, well, even that seemed better than being conscious right now.

He let go of the safe and weakly started crawling across the sand to the three queen-sized mattresses he'd stacked on top of each other in a corner. They were top quality when he'd taken them, and probably still were; there weren't any insects or damp to affect them in the new lair.

So. How did he get up?

Griffin pondered that, lying on his stomach and resting his chin on his interlaced fingers. At the moment, the top of the bed was about sixteen inches higher than his head. He couldn't move his legs properly, and his arms were trembling with the effort of simply moving himself, let alone pulling his thin frame up again.

"Get a grip!" Griffin hissed at himself again, and with a tremendous effort of will power and sheer stubbornness, threw his arms up and grabbed the top mattress. Gripping a handful of the material in each hand, he slowly pulled himself into a kneeling position. Slowly. It took at least five minutes for that to happen, and he stayed in that position for a moment, before rolling his eyes and pulling the rest of his body up.

Once he was entirely on the mattress, he let out a short and vicious laugh of triumph, before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Author's Note:

Just a quick note here - calling Roland "the dark man" isn't intended as a racist slur. It's a throwback to Stephen King's "The Stand" and the awesomness of the antagonist Randall Flagg - nicknamed, the dark man.

Hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Please leave a review and let me know what you think!