Heavy frost blanketed the ground, covering everything like a shimmering veil. It had crept up the trunks of neighboring pine trees, and the early sun glinted off the icy needles that hadn't yet melted. A rook croaked hoarsely in the distance, but otherwise, the forest was silent with winter on its doorstep.

Jack lay flat on spongy mat of pine fronds, with nothing to guard against the chill but the clothes on his back and the smoldering remains of a fire he had built the night before. The pines pressed in close here, a spot Jack had picked so the heat would be better contained, but the night had seemed to steal it away with the wind. He stared through the trees at the cold stars, disappearing now against the paling sky. It seemed like the dawn took an age to pass in this part of the world, and even though rays of pale sunlight shot through the pines, he could still see a few perverse stars in the sky. It was a colorless, cloudless land, and the sky never turned pink in the morning. It only turned from inky black to gray to a cold, flat blue that stayed until the sun dipped and plunged the forest back into a long night that would only get longer. Even the sun, that would normally hang yellow and fat in the sky anywhere else, flew small and platinum white far above the earth like a cold satellite.

He hadn't seen anyone else for eleven days. The forest was massive, and it had seemed to swallow up civilization like a huge creature, or drive it away entirely. Every time he thought the trees would start to thin out, or that he would happen upon a city, night would suddenly be there and another day had passed with no luck. It was quiet, too. There were no sounds of the city. No engines. No flying ships or metal things to crowd the air, and no great babble from thousands of mouths or the underlying hum of distant highways. Traveling through it was almost disorienting; it felt like in the days since he had been walking, the world had fallen silent and he was all that remained. This land was barren of people, and Jack wondered idly if it had always been that way, even with Aku having ruined the rest of the earth.

Wondering was all he could do right now, or wanted to do, at least. His clothes were already somewhat warm, and if he didn't move they stayed that way, but even shifting reminded him of the cold that had gnawed away at his legs during the night. He had finally given up his old clothes; trading them away in the last village he had passed through in exchange for a coat and other clothes better suited for travel in the winter. It had hurt him to give them up. They had been the last physical tie he had to his homeland, but since the Rams, such things felt almost like dead weight to him. Holding onto the past had slowly begun to feel less like motivation and more like a burden, and he didn't want to freeze to death because of a burden.

Still too chilled to want to move, Jack decided against setting out just yet, and rolled on his side to face the fire. The warmth from the embers bathed his face and he sighed, closing his eyes. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to go back to sleep; he could set out again later in the day, when it was warmer. It wasn't like him to sleep late, but if only miles more of this endless forest were what was waiting for him, it felt pointless to rush.

Heh, he thought cynically. Maybe I could stay until Spring. Stay forever. He entertained the idea for a moment. It would be new, at least; no more running, no more overwhelming cities, no people. The fire popped, and the branches above rustled quietly as something crawled through them. No more heartache. He could live in this wild land and pretend that none of it had ever happened. He could pretend the world was untouched.

More rooks clattered in the trees above him, laughing. Jack shook his head; what was he thinking? There was never time to waste. Never. There was a hunt to be had, and Jack had limited time to carry it out. Besides, isolating himself wouldn't end the heartache; nothing was going to cure that.

Taking in a cold breath, Jack closed his eyes and braced himself for the aches from the cold, but when he sat up, nothing came. What little stiffness there was in his joints eased up when he stood, and didn't return. Jack frowned in confusion at this, bending his knees. This had been the routine in the mornings, and after every night, each of them colder than the last, he expected the pain to finally catch up with him. So far, it hadn't.

Once he had tamped out the fire, Jack wasted no time leaving the stand of trees. He had left a branch a little ways from the fire, pointing in the direction he had been walking. It had always been the first thing he did when sleeping in forests, but in every direction regardless- and even after walking away- there still wasn't any change in scenery that he could see. The troubling thought that he may have been going in circles flitted into his mind like an anxious jaybird, but the thought was half put to rest a few minutes later when he came to the lake.

It was wide, and definitely a landmark Jack hadn't seen yet. Unlike the turbulent rivers he had run across in the woods, this was like a massive silver mirror that had dropped to earth, and like everywhere else, it was strangely silent.

Jack was happy enough to have found the landmark, but he was almost disappointed it wasn't a river. He wasn't as quick to trust lake water for drinking, and boiling it was tedious. Pebbles clattering underfoot, he walked over to the water's edge and winced at the sight of his reflection. His hair was messed up quite a bit from sleeping on the ground and on pine branches, and he hadn't paid it much attention for a couple days. For what it was worth, he looked terrible. He blinked in idle confusion. He could re-tie his hair each morning, so why had this forest made him so lax? Was it the isolation, or the short days? Maybe it was the cold.

The troubled thoughts tumbled around in Jack's head as crouched next to the water and pulled his hair down, but a sound suddenly got his attention, and he jerked in surprise.

"Aw, awh, awh!" Jack blinked. A scrawny rook had lighted on the beach near him, needling through the pebbles with its beak. He hadn't even heard it land. It stalked around for a moment, eyeing Jack with one beady white eye before it crouched in the shallows and began flapping its wings frantically in the water. Jack blinked passively at the washing bird before turning back to his own reflection and shifting onto his knees.

He combed through his hair with his fingers, wetting his hands in the water if it felt like there was any sap. Looking at himself, he suddenly got a funny feeling, and he turned again to the rook. It was further away now, tittering idly and picking at its feathers. They were a glossy black, but Jack noticed paler streaks in them down its back and face. It was spindly, and its tail was frayed with age. The feeling spread, and it began to feel more terrible than confused. He turned back to the water and ran his hands again through his hair- looking this time- and the dread only increased, but the more he looked, the more it began to sway back towards confusion. Then, relief gradually chased both feelings away like a warm wind.

No gray hairs. Not yet; he still had time.

The rook cawed throatily at him and flapped away, silent as a ghost. The pebbles on the beach didn't even shift at its wingbeats. Jack watched it stagger over the lake, standing completely still, as if the slightest movement would shatter it across the sky. With the strange things he had noticed out of the corner of his eye lately, he almost believed it might actually happen, but it didn't. The dark, raggedy shape finally slid away over the distant treeline, and one last faint caw rippled over the water. The rook was gone. Jack's breath billowed out in front of him in a cloud of steam, and one of his hands shook with relief he hadn't known he would feel for such a thing.

You made it, he thought. You were old, but you made it.

Looking at himself again, Jack frowned. He couldn't really be that old, could he? He tried to remember how old his father had been, but the realization slammed into him when he couldn't recall it. At first a lump rose in his throat out of grief, but it quickly disappeared in a wash of anger. He kicked at the beach, sending pebbles scattering and scewing the glassy water.

"Am I just going to forget now?!" he shouted, not knowing what else to do or who he was even cursing. He had already been separated from his home, and now it seemed like time was going to take even the memory of it; like a rock weathered by water. He wasn't showing signs of age yet, but there could be explanations for that, and the thought did nothing to stave off the dread.

It's going to happen, a small voice needled; timid and jeering and horribly true. It's going to sneak up on you.

"No," he hissed. He wouldn't let it. His hairpin was still clenched in one hand, and without a word Jack reeled back and threw it as far as he could. If there were going to be any gray hairs popping up in the near future, he didn't want to see them, and he wouldn't waste time fiddling with something as insignificant as his appearance. Jack didn't bother to watch it land ; he had turned his eyes away from the lake altogether. Seeing his reflection was suddenly unnerving, and he stared instead at the line of trees far away, where the bird had disappeared.

The sun silently rose in the distance, bright but cold. Rooks laughed at him in raucous caws from beyond the pines, the shrill sounds bouncing off the water in waves. Jack's hand still shook, and he grabbed it, feeling nothing. The tremors died.

The clicking of talons and the wall under Jack's fingers was all that guided him along as Sigg led him blindly through a maze of hallways. With every few turns he wondered if any lightning would shine through a window or skylight, but claps of thunder came and went, and the hall stayed dark as ever. Jack couldn't tell, but it seemed they were moving away from any outer walls. Sigg offered no explanation.

The wall changed, becoming smoother in some parts and more rough in others. Jack wondered how many of the rough patches were actually fire damage, and his arm tingled with unease at the thought of brushing over bullet holes. At the thought, he expected some to suddenly appear and he tensed, but the wall stretched on unscathed.

Ahead, he heard Sigg change direction, the clicks moving to the left of him rather than in front. The wall under his hand fell away, and he was left standing in an open space.

Jack looked from side to side, squinting, but it was useless; the building was still as dark as if his eyes were closed. Without the wall, he worried he might stumble or hurt himself. He must have made an uncertain noise, because he heard Sigg's talons fall silent and the fibrous feathers sighed on the tile as he turned.

"Come on," he said. Jack wondered if his species could just see well in the dark, or if the surgeon had simply stalked his haunt so many times he didn't need the light. Either seemed possible.

"Why keep it so dark? I saw the light on in the other room," Jack said. He didn't speak loudly; the deserted place felt like somewhere to speak low. Sigg apparently didn't feel as compelled, and his gruff voice filled up the space like a reverberating bowl.

"Avoiding suspicion, mostly, but the ice last winter froze out the breakers for this part of the building anyway." Jack nodded, humming in acknowledgment, and took a wary few steps forward, reaching out blindly with his hands.

He started when his hands suddenly ran against something that wasn't a wall- cold and smooth and flat. It wasn't very tall, and when he felt over the edge there was another surface below covered in dusty papers. It was some kind of counter.

An impatient whistle echoed off of walls Jack couldn't see, and his eyes fixated on a dim point of orange that streaked through the air above the floor somewhere in short, erratic loops. Sigg's cigarette.

"Geddon with it," he growled. Jack felt his way along the counter and found that it curved around in a big circle. Feeling the strange, massive desk, Jack tried to envision what the rest of this place could possibly look like, but beyond what his hands could tell him, all of it was still only an inky void. He could vaguely picture the desk, but no more. He was blind here.

The cigarette's light trailed further away, and Jack reluctantly let go of the counter and walked blindly until the clicks of the surgeon's talons were right in front of him. He tried to reach out for a wall, but both hands swept through empty air. They had been walking for what felt like forever.

Suddenly, there was the silhouette of Sigg against a doorway and glorious, glorious light. It was dim and watery, but it was startling to Jack. The surgeon was shoving a heavy steel door open, pressing up against it with his shoulder. It was a wide door, one of two that spanned the width of the hall, and Jack noticed neither of them had handles. From the effort it took for Sigg to shove one open he guessed that they must have been automatic at one time.

Sigg braced against the door and waved him through, snubbing his cigarette on the metal. Jack was dismayed to see another corridor past him.

This shorter hallway was in as much a state of disarray as the 'lobby' he had been in before. Reddish light from the city filtered in through large plate glass windows, all of them marred with cracks and cross hatched with hair-thin wire. Jack thought they looked more like something that belonged in a prison. Blackened bits of ceiling plaster littered the floor, which sloped up and curved toward another set of doors.

Sigg led him up the corridor to the doors, but Jack ran ahead and shouldered one of them open before the surgeon could reach it. Sigg stopped in composed surprise, raising an eyebrow in confision. Jack shrugged, still bracing the heavy door against his back, and the surgeon only glowered as he shouldered past.

The next corridor flanked a courtyard set in the middle of the building, but it was densely overgrown and riddled with graffiti. The other side was lined with doors. Both walls were marred with fire damage and bullet holes.

Jack saw that only some of the doors were closed, and others stood open idly. A few had been blown from the hinges entirely, and were lying inside the rooms. The light couldn't reach inside the open ones enough for him to see anything, but it was the closed ones that unnerved him. He didn't want to contemplate why they were closed.

Everything they came across- whether it was equipment or part of the building- was in terrible disarray, aged and derelict or burned beyond recognition. One of the windows had been busted out by gunfire, and rain fell into the hall. Bedding and equipment of all sorts was strewn about, laying up against the walls on either side. Strange beds on wheels, monitors, locked cabinets, myriads of tools, sheets and blankets and machines. All of it looked like it hadn't been touched in years. Jack shivered when he saw a pink blanket lying in a stagnant puddle. It was too small for even a child, and three smiling frogs embroidered on the fleece stared silently at him as he passed.

Jack expected Sigg to say something, or at least show some reverence, but the surgeon's eyes remained forward, unfazed. He swept past the carnage like it wasn't even there. Soon, the windows ended, and the brief break from the dark ended as the hallway grew dim again. Not completely black this time, but dim enough.

"So," Jack said. "Is Sigg your real name?" One chestnut eye arched confusedly over the surgeon's shoulder, and Jack heard him laugh gruffly under his breath.

"You really don't know anything about dealing with criminals, do you?" he jested, shaking his head

Jack glowered. He thought 'criminal' was a bit of a generous title for the street surgeon. "I know more than you think," he muttered, sidestepping a long metal rack with hooks adorning the top. He thought it was a rather odd-looking thing. "The people I've dealt with in the past were a lot less careful and a lot more..." His eyes ran over the heaps of junk and the crumbling walls. "... organized." Jack thought he saw the surgeon's head feathers tick back in irritation, or curiosity, or not at all. He didn't speak again, and Jack didn't goad him.

Sigg led him through another set of doors into more merciless darkness and through nearly a thousand more halls and corridors until finally, there was light again.

There was an immediate contrast, even in the dark, to the rest of the building. The floor here was scrubbed clean to the point of shining, and from what he could tell no debris was lying around either. The chemical smell, which he had noticed after he'd first gotten there, was even stronger now, and sharper. The light shone from underneath closed doors that stretched a ways down, and he heard the sound of the surgeon opening one of them.

A pale, fluorescent wedge cut a path across the pristine floor into what had to be the exam room, and Jack followed it, stepping through the door after the surgeon, who whipped into the room and let the door fall shut without a word.

The exam room was smaller than Jack expected. A bland color paint that wasn't quite beige but wasn't white either coated the walls, and almost everything else it seemed. Scores of hand-drawn charts were tacked to the far wall, and a long counter with a sink lined another. In the middle of the room was a strange bench and behind it, a wicked looking machine hung bolted to the wall. Everything looked almost hand polished.

Sigg swept through the room and began rummaging through a locked cabinet. Jack watched as he pulled out a steno pad and an absolutely absurd binder. Despite being several inches wide to begin with, it looked ready to fall apart for all the paper inside it. Sigg looked equally as ridiculous trying to juggle the two items as he sat on a metal stool by the counter.

Jack must have been looking at him funny, because Sigg looked back at him and held each of the items up in regard. "No computers," was all he said.

Even though the surgeon hadn't said anything yet, Jack stood there and watched as Sigg took out a pen and began scribbling down God knows how many notes on the steno pad. The surgeon glanced occasionally at him before returning to his frantic chicken scratching. Jack was beginning to understand the size of the binder.

"Scale," Sigg barked, pointing with his pen to a black square set in the floor against the chart wall. Jack trudged over to the scale and stared at some of the charts. They were mostly about substance abuse or cholesterol, but one that caught Jack's eye was about mental health. He wasn't able to read much of it before Sigg interjected.

Sleep deprivation for long periods of time can lead to high stress levels and depreciating cognitive ability. Insomnia has been linked to several mental conditions as a causation and as you are, I was-

"... like a chicken bone. Are you even listening?" Sigg crowed. "I said you're one sixty-two even. I suggest you try eating something other than sticks and bugs for a change." Jack blinked, staring at the poster, but he could see nothing about 'as you are, I was.' There was nothing that said anything even similar to it, but Jack had seen it there, in print. Confusion ate at him as he scanned a few other posters, thinking that maybe he had read something subconsciously out of the corner of his eye, but no such thing was written there either.

"I... eat what I can," he murmured, not taking his eye off the wall. Sigg didn't look up from his writing.

"If you have money to pay for a street surgeon, you have money to pay for food. Hell," he said. "You're paying double just for being you, so you're either stiffing me, or you're dense. Take your pick." Jack frowned.

"Double," Jack echoed. "You said nothing about double." The surgeon shrugged, a shrewd glint in his eyes.

"You said you would pay anything," he jested. Jack clenched his fists at his sides, glaring at Sigg with as much composure as he could muster. The longer he spent time around this wretched jackdaw, the more he found his patience to be dwindling. He held his tongue, though. He wouldn't risk this visit in favor of his temper.

"Double," he growled. "Very well." The surgeon smiled, baring his teeth, and jotted down more notes.

"Well nonetheless, your diet is deplorable. You're half-starved."

Jack glowered at Sigg. "I don't like populated areas." Don't push it, he thought, and lucky for the surgeon, he didn't. He only scowled at Jack with more disappointment in his stare than anger, and slowly he turned back to his work. There had been something else in the surgeon's eyes, but Jack couldn't place it. He wasn't sure he wanted to try. Sigg continued with a slew of questions.

Are you on medication? Do you take drugs? Any known allergies? Do you have a history of alcoholism? And many more. Jack noticed that when Sigg was asking questions or writing things down, his demeanor changed significantly. He dropped the cockiness and took up a more professional attitude. Jack tolerated him a fair deal more when he was like that. When all was said and done, Jack had answered a ton of them and Sigg had two new pages of notes in his pad.

"Alright, get on the bench." Sigg pointed to the ugly beige thing in the middle of the room and stood, walking over to the black steel machine bolted to the wall. Jack's irritation was chased away by brief panic as he sat down on the paper. The machine looked more fitting for the times; coal colored and unnatural. It reminded him of the city. Sigg stepped around the far side of it and pulled what looked like a control console out of its hull, and with the push of a button it awoke. As it hummed to life, a metal arm coiled away from the inside of it with a hiss. A capped needle glittered at the end of it, almost two inches long. Jack jumped, flinching away from the machine and standing ramrod still well away from it.

"What's this?" he shouted. Sigg raised his hands in defense and shot Jack a thunderous look.

"Do you want your blood test or not?" he said. Jack balked at the hulk of machinery and glared at Sigg as if it wasn't obvious.

"You're joking," he said, nodding his head toward the device. "That?" The surgeon's feathers twitched as he scowled at him in silence, and Jack knew that he wasn't. He had expected whatever treatments Sigg had in store for him would be beyond his knowledge, and of course; his time, but the thought of leaving his well-being in the care of a machine was disconcerting to say the least. He had seen machines kill countless times. Not once had he seen one care. He figured it would be ridiculous to suddenly fling his trust upon one now.

Jack shook his head slowly at Sigg, who still had a claw on the controls. "No." The surgeon blinked. Anger glinted in his eyes, but Jack didn't care. "No," he growled. "I'm not doing this. Not like this." Sigg blinked.

"This is the only way I can run any tests," he said, gesturing to the mechanical arm with his own. Jack trembled, balling his hands into fists. He took one threatening step forward. Sigg was taller than Jack, but a small part of him was pleased to see genuine fear in the alien's eyes at his advance. It was easy to forget the weight of his reputation since he spent so much time on his own, but seeing the impact written on Sigg's face was telling enough. he wondered what rumors about him this one creature alone had heard before. He wondered how many of them were true. Sigg backed away from Jack toward the wall of charts, eyes wide and pinning like a terrified animal.

His voice was low and hollow. "I want-" he stammered. Jack caught the wobbliness at the ends of his words. "I want you to know firsthand." Trailing off, he didn't break eye contact with Jack, and only moved to pull the lapel of his labcoat further to the side with a scaled hand. Jack saw the holster peeking through his ribbonlike feathers, and the weighty pistol attached to it at the surgeon's side. "I'll do it," he said, voice still wavering a bit, but he steadied it and stood taller. "I don't care who you are." Jack scoffed.

"What do you take me for?" he said, pulling the hem of his shirt up. Sigg glanced down and snarled, baring his fangs at Jack's own gun, as well as the Kevlar vest under his shirt. He gave Jack a withering look.

"Of course," he muttered. "Because why would I expect you of all people to bring a sword to a gun fight?" His voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Common sense, that's what," Jack growled, dodging the bait. The alien's eyes narrowed, and for a moment Jack thought he saw doubt or suspicion cross his face. Before he could fully tell, it disappeared, and Jack silently willed him not to pry. Thankfully, he didn't; scrutinizing with eyes only. Dead air bloomed between them as they stared each other down. Both their hands hovered over their pistols in silent threat, and Jack

Sigg acted tough, but Jack had seen what the surgeon hadn't told. His voice had been wavering, and the terror was in his eyes. It was very possible- likely even- that he was only afraid of him, but Jack still wondered, rolling the thought around in his head. Looking at the slight tremor in the surgeon's arms, Jack wondered if he had even fired a gun at all.

He looked from Sigg to the machine and back again. Agonizing uncertainty coiled in his chest, but the reason he had come tugged again at his mind. Finally, Jack yielded, concealing the gun and lowering his hands. Sigg remained obstinate.

"I'll give my blood," he said. "but not to that." Jack pointed to the machine, and Sigg blinked at him in heated astonishment. He glanced from the machine to Jack in evident contemplation and after an age heaved an exasperated sigh. He let his labcoat fall back over his pistol and walked over to the machine. Fear jabbed at Jack, but he stood a little less on edge when the arm and its needle folded in on itself and back into the machine's hull. The surgeon stormed over to the counter and began to rummage through a cabinet.

Jack leaned against the door and heaved his own wavering sigh. He was regretful that it had come to blows, but he could never be careful enough. The machine certainly looked the part of one of Aku's scraps of metal, just in a different form perhaps; another drone built to kill him with one strike to an artery. He just couldn't trust something that could make so much sense even in a world turned upside-down.

In one ear, random snippets of what sounded like voices piped up and cut off. There were no words or tone, just sporadic sounds that sounded both far away and right next to him at the same time. White dots and lines twitched and spasmed on the wall out of the corner of his eye, but Jack didn't need to look. He knew he saw things more often when he got worked up over something anyway. A pit formed in his stomach at the sight, and he silently willed Sigg to look up; to notice them too, but he didn't. No one ever did. He merely reached for his notepad and began scribbling. His head feathers were still. Despair twisted into Jack's gut like a knife. He couldn't bear it when he knew others couldn't see what he saw.

The points of light blinked back out of existence when Sigg suddenly pulled a syringe half the length of Jack's arm out of the cabinet, and his eyes widened. The surgeon scowled quietly and shrugged.

"We already tried the easy way," he said bitterly. "So you get the hurts-like-a-bitch way." Jack gulped, and watched as Sigg uncoiled a long, plastic tube out of the side of the machine and screwed the end of it to the syringe. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the bench, but Jack shot him a venomous look and the surgeon rolled his eyes, teeth grit in a frustrated growl.

"Fine," he said. "I'm done." He strung the tube out to the door where Jack was standing, muttering all the way. "... practically breaks down in tears begging for my help, but nooo..." He grumbled more as he wiped the inside of Jack's arm with a cold cloth and squinted down as if searching for something. Sigg's eyes widened and he promptly jammed the needle up under his skin. Jack grit his teeth, but he couldn't keep a hiss of pain down. Sigg laughed and fastened it in place with medical tape. "Sure you don't want to sit down?" he jeered.

Jack glared vehemently at the surgeon. "No," he growled, talking through his teeth. Sigg shrugged almost jubilantly.

"Suit yourself," he said, and swept back over to the console. "Ready?" he chirped. Jack nodded, scowling. Sigg smiled one last time, flipped a switch on the side of the machine, and the world went white. At first Jack's arm only felt hot and numb, but then a plume of fire seemed to devour it, and he watched in agony as a black-red line shot up the tube. He grit his teeth so hard they hurt, and a strangled noise clawed out of his throat as a pump somewhere in the heart of the machine wrung his arm dry. Sigg was watching it all with a passive expression, arms folded as a glass canister in his nightmare machine's side filled with inky maroon. He shut his burning eyes and heard the surgeon chide him on clenching his fist.

"It'll just move the needle around," he said. "That will only make it worse." Jack groaned, and only watched with watering eyes as the blackish fluid rose. What felt like years dragged by before a loud k-chunk! rang out and the IV spasmed to a stop.

Sigg whistled long and low, brows arching. "Thirteen point four seconds. That has to be some kind of record." A gutteral noise shuddered out of Jack's lungs and he was suddenly on the floor, trembling. The lines in the tile split and blurred before his eyes, and he closed them again.

"And that's why-" rough, clawed hands wrapped around his good arm, pulling him off the floor like a ragdoll. "-we sit on the bench." Jack heaved shuddering breaths, lamenting the smirk in the surgeon's voice as he was hauled back onto the paper. This time he didn't object, and let himself fall sideways onto the bench. His head was swimming.

"Hey, uh-uh," Sigg snapped, and Jack felt himself jerked by the shoulder back into the sitting position. "Hand to the ground." Jack let his arm dangle off the edge of the bench while Sigg set to work undoing the IV. The room was still spinning, and he watched a rivulet of blood trail down his arm before the surgeon wrapped him up in obnoxiously orange gauze.

"Light-headed?" Sigg asked. Jack nodded, and immediately regretted it when the surgeon and the entire room appeared to tip over on their sides.

"You see," Sigg said. "If you had let me explain myself before freaking out, I would have told you that that arm-" he pointed to the insidious machine. "-gauges your pain receptors' activity, and adjusts the speed of the intake to it. I can't do that." He rested his hands on his chest for emphasis. "So I set it to manual mode and-" He snapped his fingers. "Boom– all in one shot. Thing wrung you out like a sponge up to your shoulder." He finished wrapping Jack's arm and slung it on the bench flippantly. Jack hissed in pain, but he could tell the surgeon had been wounded, in his pride at least.

"But what does an old slakter know, right?" he muttered, typing in a few keys into the machine. It whirred to life, growling and sputtering like an animal as the blood in the canister began to drain down into its depths. "It's going to take a minute to get the results," he said. Jack groaned and pressed a palm to his pounding forehead, grimacing halfheartedly at Sigg, who put his hands in his pockets and tipped his head to the side, smirking at his misery. Jack noticed that the smirk didn't reach his eyes. They were unreadable.

"But hey," he chirped, rooting through another cabinet. "There is a bright side-" He shoved something small and cardboard into Jack's free hand. "-the pigheaded get juice." Jack gave a withering look at the juicebox and then at Sigg. The amused look disappeared from the surgeon's face.

"And- if you're pigheaded enough, you'll pass out from low blood sugar," he growled. "Drink it." Jack glared at him and begrudgingly fumbled with the straw. When he finally managed to get it in the box, he took a sip and gagged. It was sugary to a toxic degree, and tasted only theoretically of fruit, but he choked it down nonetheless. Sigg looked like he was watching the funniest thing on earth, and Jack honestly couldn't blame him. He must have been a pretty ridiculous sight, and the thought only made him finish it faster.

"There," he said, throwing the accursed thing in a waste basket. "Satisfied?"

"Immensely," Sigg said, grinning from ear tuft to ear tuft. Jack wanted to deck him. "Now," he said, turning back to the machine. A long piece of paper was feeding out of a slot in its side, and Jack saw that it was covered with medical jargon. Sigg tore it neatly out of the machine and pored over it, leaning on the counter and feeling for his notepad and the binder of patient information. Jack let his eyes fall shut while he worked, wanting nothing more than to just sleep.

"Well, you're anemic, and deficient in nearly everything- big shock- and your blood sugar is abysmal even before the test; I'm shocked you aren't a diabetic..." The surgeon rambled through a slew of statistics and percentages that Jack didn't understand, and he took a moment to let his mind go blank, leaning back against the wall. His arm still felt like it had been stretched like a rubber band, and wrathful pins and needles felt like they were going to eat through to bone, though they had been subsiding for a time now. The headache stayed put, much to Jack's chagrin.

"...-ite blood cell count is low, but since you're 25, you shouldn't need a supplement if you-" Jack's eyes flew open and he sat ramrod straight on the bench, exhaustion and dizziness forgotten. Sigg started, ceasing his babbling and blinking confusedly at him. Jack felt like he had been struck. Even Sigg began to look concerned after a few heartbeats of silence. More particularly, the surgeon looked alarmed at the look he must have been wearing.

"..What?" Jack said. His voice was low and hoarse. Sigg stared at him, brows knitting, and his russet eyes flickered back to the printout in confusion.

"Um- your blood count is point seven percent below-"

"No," Jack hissed. "I never told you how old I am." Sigg blinked, looking to be at a loss. He glanced, wide-eyed at the paper again and scratched behind a head feather.

"Uh, I-" he stammered. "You didn't have to. It's all right here." Sigg waved the paper in the air and Jack snatched it away from his talons before he could utter another word. The surgeon yelped, drawing back his hand as if he'd been burned. "It's true!" he squawked. "I swear. Chemical levels, hormones, hemoglobin, it's all there." Jack glared at him from the bench. "Y- you're twenty-five years old– it's right there on the paper. Look if you don't believe me." Jack balked, bringing the paper almost to his nose to read the minuscule print. Much of it was impossible names of chemicals or some other jargon that Jack couldn't understand, and his eyes stung when he realized how little he truly did understand.

Why was he still like this? He had been here for years and years and he had refused to learn, and now he knew nothing when it meant everything. His eyes pried through jungles of fibrinogen, leucocytes, aqueous... The nonsense disappeared as Jack's vision blurred with hot, angry tears. It was useless.

Finally, he spotted it. Plasma levels: 51% Subject age approx. 304 mo. The words didn't move, but to Jack, they were spinning. The room was all dead air to Jack. He felt like he was underwater. He felt like he had already drowned. He couldn't make his lungs move.

Subject age approx. 304 mo.

304 mo.

No, Jack thought as the floor slanted. "No." He was suddenly on the shores of the lake, watching the old rook fly away over the trees and fearing his own mortality, but then the rook was right in front of him, flapping its ragged gray wings and crowing raucously. The hoarse calls twisted into a cruel, throaty guffaw. It spread its beak wide, laughing harder and staring at him all the while with a beady eye. To Jack's horror, all its feathers began to slide off its body like dead leaves. More and more gray and black feathers littered the ground and surf at his feet until only stark, white bones hovered in the air before him, and Jack had gone silent with horror.

Staring into the empty sockets, the realization finally struck Jack like lightning. Years and years had already gone by. The rook was dead. He was not. He had never gotten close.

The rook in front of him was growing feathers now, white ones. They poured out of its skull and down its ribs in silken cascades. All the years of feeling funny. All that time spent wondering when he would start to ache in the morning. Jack saw sharp teeth prick up out of the thin jaws. Bone ground against bone as the rook twisted to stare emptily into Jack's eyes, and to his horror it began to speak.

"As you are," it croaked. "I was. As I am," Jack shuddered, seeing the wind whip around its thin feathers to expose the bare ribs beneath. Its voice was familiar now. "You will be."

Pale skin stretched over its beak and crimson eyes appeared in the sockets, bright with fear. Both of Jack's hands appeared as well, wrapped around its throat. Reality bled back and Jack realized that that was exactly what he had done. His whole body felt numb as he lifted the kicking, choking surgeon off the floor by his neck. Raw terror contorted his face, beak curling up at the edges around fangs in feral panic. Jack felt his racing pulse against the sleight of his hand where he was trying to crush his windpipe. This can't be real, he thought. But he knew the spell had passed, and the pain in his arms told him this wasn't an illusion.

Both their arms were slick with Jack's blood where Sigg had cut him open, goring at his arms with his talons in an attempt to get away. Long slashes dribbled blood onto the tile.

He brought Sigg close to his face until the tip of his beak was barely an inch from his nose, forcing the alien to look into his eyes.

"Tell me," he murmured. His voice sounded like a stranger's. "Look into my eyes, see what I've seen, and you tell me how old I am." The surgeon froze, grip clawing into the skin of Jack's arms. Horror was all he saw in those chestnut eyes. He had no answer, though his mouth was opening and closing in desperate cries. After an age, sound returned to him.

"-irty! Twenty! Nineteen at least– oh, God, let me go!" Jack blinked, and blinked again. Awareness finally returned to him, washing into his body like a flood of icy water, and he gasped, dropping Sigg in shock. The surgeon scrambled across the floor and grabbed madly for his gun, suddenly towering over Jack like a pale building when he shot off the tile. He pointed the pistol dead on target between Jack's eyes, but he was still trembling as he had been before when he had threatened Jack with it. His eyes were wide, and terrified like a child's, but Jack knew it was only partly because of him. He realized then that the surgeon hadn't ever pulled the trigger. He had the look to him; that he was anything but prepared to destroy what he was aiming at.

Jack made no move to stop him. He just stood there, staring into some middle distance that the surgeon's eyes couldn't see. All the lifeless savagery seemed to have gone from him, and now there was nothing but grief in his gaze.

"I'm sorry," he said hollowly, staring at Sigg, who hadn't turned him away. His vision blurred at the animal terror that was still there. He had put it there. Jack said it again, and again, not really feeling like he was speaking at all. The surgeon still pointed the gun at him, staring listlessly. He whimpered when Jack moved to pick up the chart that had fallen on the tile, but still didn't pull the trigger.

Years. Years had gone by and he hadn't noticed. He hadn't noticed anything because there wasn't anything to notice. No mystery pains. No gray hairs. No change or soul crushing realization that he couldn't run as fast or jump as high as he once could. The carbon printed number mocked him silently, cast-iron as all the other information on the page. Arguments boiled up and died in his throat; maybe the machine had malfunctioned. Maybe Sigg had stuck the wrong arm. Maybe the computer had misread, or Sigg had misread, but his true age, he knew, was going to be nowhere on that printout. His hands trembled so hard the paper fell back to the floor with a sighing sound.

He wasn't aging.

"Run it again," he muttered, eyeing Sigg. "Run the diagnostics again, on this arm this time. I'll do it your way." Jack trudged to the bench and sat down, holding his good arm out beneath the machine without fear. "Please." His voice wavered, and though most of the terror looked to be subsiding from the surgeon's eyes, he still gave him the look that was more crushing to him than any scathing remark that he had said that night. Sigg, with the pistol still pointed straight and true at his head, was looking at Jack with cold, furious pity.

"Please," he said, looking for all the world like he was about to break down. "Please. That can't be right, it just can't." Sigg didn't move, still staring at him with that horrible expression. Grief and rage suddenly crashed into Jack, and he pounded the bench with his fist.

"Run it again, dammit!" Two loud sounds like thunder rang out in the room, and white pain exploded in Jack's leg, like he had been splintered apart below the knee. The world felt like it had been thrown into slow-motion as he stared at Sigg blankly. The surgeon was still holding his gun and looking terrified when he fell off the bench. He didn't feel himself hit the floor, but the surgeon sprung into action, grabbing a needle out of his pocket and leaping halfway across the room until he was crouched over Jack.

Talons poked his back as Sigg forced him on the ground with one hand, and Jack felt the needle jab his neck as he scrambled for his gun. "I'm sorry too," Sigg said, tone unreadable. Jack screamed nonsensically at the surgeon in a rage, lashing out blindly as Sigg threw his body on top of Jack's and grabbed both of his arms. He folded them behind his back, immobilizing him. Jack thrashed against his grip, trying to get away, but the pain in his leg seemed to fill his body like a basin, and he felt heavier with every second as the morphine coursed through his veins. Soon, even the pain dulled and he felt too heavy to move. He was tired. He was so, so tired.

The surgeon was still trembling when Jack went under.

A/N: YES, I know birds don't gray with age but it was for symbolism, blah blah. Ugh I'm glad I got this over with. I wasn't too heavy on revisions so if there's mistakes I'm sorry. I was sick of working on this chapter; it was a long one. Don't worry though, things will start moving faster in the next couple. I would say I'm only two or three away from being finished with the fic.

I imagine the forest he was stuck in was the southern part of Siberia, which I think is the world's largest forest. I'm sorry the medical equipment isn't all futurey or whatever but the truth is I'm pretty bad at the creativity thing when it comes to machines :0 plus Sigg is a backalley doctor, so I imagine a lot of his gear being pretty 'ancient' anyway. Nothing is really exactly the same as any equipment we use, though; It would be kind of impossible for everything to magically end up identical, but if a method works, use it I guess.

Capri Sun is gross, eh Jack?