Chapter two
In the last moment Daxter suppressed a whimper, trying to at least maintain the image of him being nothing but an animal. Too late he realized that after his nodding and headshaking, that was pretty much shot to hell.
"I know you can talk," Erol said.
That comment was a perfect cue to start struggling.
Before he even knew what had happened, though, Daxter found himself face first on the ground, pain stabbing through him as Erol roughly pushed him into the jagged debris. Through the haze Daxter felt big fingers curling around his arm. He would have screamed if it hadn't been for the pebbles pressed into his face.
"I'm not in a good mood right now," Erol hissed. Daxter hardly dared to breathe. "So if you don't behave, I'll break your little bones."
Daxter didn't look up. He laid stock still, begging some lazy god to deign show some mercy and let Jak burst out of the rubble to save him.
No such luck.
However, the paralyzed state of his prisoner seemed to satisfy Erol, as he pulled his catch up and around to stare him in the eye again. Daxter could swear that his pulse was trying to break him apart.
"You've lost Jak, it seems," Erol said, matter-of-factly. When Daxter gave a start, he pressed, "where is he?"
"If I knew, he wouldn't be lost, right?" Daxter hoarsely snapped, voice breaking.
"Hm."
Erol glanced at the sky for a moment. Then he finally let go of Daxter's arm, eliciting a tiny sigh of relief from the ottsel.
Of course, that was far from the end of the nightmare.
Erol lifted his wrist to his lips, using his teeth to tear up one of his red cloth bracelets. It was already tattered, and with just a small effort Erol ended up with two jagged, long strips. He took the thinnest in one hand and made a loop out of it, easily holding Daxter down with only one thumb. The ottsel saw what was coming, and started to squirm.
"K-keep me out of your bondage fantasies!" he choked.
Erol's lips twitched.
"You're a little too scrawny for my tastes. Don't move."
He threw the loop around Daxter's thin legs and pulled the knot until the prisoner writhed.
"Y-you know, it's n-not like they ever tell me anything," Daxter said, words stumbling over each other as Erol started preparing the other strip of cloth. "I'm not worth keeping. Really, I can just scurry off and you've lost nothing but a fancy accessory."
He was thrown down on his stomach, his arms swiftly gathered up and tied behind his back.
"Well," Erol said. "I could just wring your neck for the fun of it."
Daxter bit down on his lower lip so hard he almost drew blood.
"But for now I won't," Erol said as he pulled Daxter up to a sitting position.
Under the glare he got, all the ottsel could do was gulp. He had no jokes to shield himself with from that.
Jak… oh Precursors, Jak, help!
"Now, I'll be a little preoccupied for a few minutes," Erol said and poked Daxter in the chest. "So you are going to keep a lookout for metal heads. Because neither of us wants to get eaten."
Daxter grit his teeth but nodded. He could not run, and for now Erol's goodwill and gun was the only thing that could keep him alive. It was not, however, until Erol put the gun down and braced his hands against the ground, that Daxter realized that it was not merely shadows that kept his warden's legs out of sight. Erol was actually stuck beneath the wreckage.
The tattooed face twisted into a grimace of pain, but he dragged himself forwards. Rocks strained and clattered down in an alarming manner, forcing him to pause. But nothing came crashing down. Erol braced himself again, pinching his eyes shut and face paling to a sickly, sweat matted white – and still not a sound passed his lips.
And suddenly he tumbled forwards to the sound of rolling rocks, panting but free. He pushed himself up quickly, reaching down to check on his freed legs.
From the way he tensed when he touched his left ankle, Erol did not like what he found.
"Got a problem?" Daxter asked in a moment of desperate glee. All amusement died, though, when Erol turned his cold stare towards him.
"Yes," the Commander said through clenched teeth. "We have a little problem."
He pulled off his other bracelet and tore it into a single, long strip.
"Hey what–?!"
Daxter's protests fell on deaf ears, unsurprisingly. The strip was looped around his chest, and Erol completely ignored the pathetic sound of pain as he lifted the ottsel by the makeshift rope and tied it stuck under his shoulder panzer. Daxter was left hanging painfully by his own armpits, his arms and tail thumping against Erol's arm and chest plate.
"What the hell are you doing?" Daxter rasped.
Erol didn't reply. He reached for a thin, fairly straight pipe sticking out of a heap of crumbled concrete, and ripped it free. It reached up far above his head even as he managed to stand, using the pipe as a prop.
"You can't walk." Daxter spoke the moment it hit him.
To that, Erol made an annoyed sound. He started forwards, leaning on the pipe and holding his gun in his other hand.
"It's just a sprain," he said. "And I figure that you…" he knocked the gun against Daxter's side, causing a wince, "… might ensure that Jak hesitates for a second in case we find your friend before we find any of mine."
Daxter gazed out at the rubble around them, hope sinking like lead. How long had it been? If Jak hadn't broken out yet…
He couldn't think further.
Erol began a struggling trek towards higher ground, turning his head cautiously back and forth. Looking for KGs or metal heads, or Jak. The enemies remained firmly secondary in Daxter's mind by now, though. What if Jak was in no condition to find them, but only to be found? And in what state?
Daxter glanced up at Erol's face, suppressing a shudder. He had to get free. Had to.
A groan rose up from somewhere ahead, near the water. Whoever it was, that was a human voice. Erol headed for it, and Daxter's heart dropped at the sight of red armor.
It creaked upwards from a hard heap, heavily rolling over. The KG grappled for the cracked mask covering his face, fumbling and blinded. Erol reached him and pulled off the mask, revealing a pale, tattooed face warped with pain.
"C-commander…" the KG hoarsely whispered.
"Can you stand?" Erol asked.
The KG slowly blinked, dazed. After a moment, though, he pulled himself together and managed to sit up, holding a gloved hand to his forehead.
"I'm… I'm just dizzy, Sir. Give me a minute…"
Erol ignored him, sitting down on a jagged piece of wall with the mask in his hands. At the edge of its inside was a small black box, and a snapped cord crawled out of it. The other end of the broken cord came out of a tiny microphone, set just about where the mask's wearer's mouth would be.
Holding down a button on the small box, Erol took the torn metal strings of the cord between his thumb and pointing finger, rolling the threads against each other until they were tangled. Then he moved his thumb from the button and raised the mask closer to his face.
"This is Commander Erol," he said. "Command, do you read me? Do you read me?"
A crackling rose up from the black box, but nothing like a voice could be heard through it. Erol growled and spoke again.
"This is Commander Erol. Command, if you read me, I require backup in Dead Town. Repeat, need backup in Dead Town. We were attacked and a building collapsed. Unknown number of wounded and dead."
He glanced at Daxter with an unreadable look, then turned back to the mask once again.
"Command, renegade Jak is in the area, possibly wounded or dead. Repeat, renegade Jak possibly wounded or dead in Dead Town."
The KG jumped up straight, panic blazing on his face. Erol took one look at him, dropped the mask, stood up with the help of the broken pipe, and then backhanded the soldier with such force that he fell on the ground. The violent motion also gave Daxter a painful swing and he winced at the agony shooting through his shoulders, but apart from that the world seemed to have gone numb.
He can't say that. He can't say that Jak is dead. He can't. He isn't. He can't.
"Don't give me any bull about him being immortal!" Erol was snarling at the KG, in Daxter's mind sounding like he was speaking through a wall. "He's as human as the rest of us, no matter what you idiots think!"
"Wow, oughta be bad when you admit you're not better than him," Daxter dully said, automatically.
The butt of the gun smacked into his stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs.
"You shut up." Erol turned back to the groaning soldier. "Being an eco freak doesn't stop him from bleeding. But if you need a chicken boost, this rat is Jak's pet, and he's important enough to him to make him think twice about attacking."
The KG got up, looking far from convinced but probably more afraid of his Commander. He did clutch his gun tighter.
"We need to find a working radio," Erol said, dropping the broken mask. "They'll send a team to check on things since they lost contact with us, but if Jak is somewhere around here I want him found before he can recover. Now…"
He pushed Daxter's chin up with the top side of his gun, forcing the ottsel's head back.
"Where did you lose him, rat?" All strain was gone from Erol's voice this time, and he spoke smooth and slow. This was the voice that could make Jak freeze up.
"I don't know," Daxter winced. "I don't know!"
"Really?" The gun pressed a breath tighter against Daxter's brittle jugular.
"It all came crashing down, how'd I know?" he choked, squirming.
The gun let up a little bit, but with the back of Erol's fingers touching his chest Daxter still hardly dared to breathe.
"I see," Erol said, and the smug note made Daxter's soul turn to ice before the conclusion struck with all its force. "So he was caught in the collapse."
Daxter could have bitten his tongue off.
"Radio and survivors," Erol said, lowering the gun as he looked at the KG, who stiffly saluted him. "Move out."
The two of them started to move towards higher ground. It did not take long to spot a piece of armor sticking out of the debris, and the KG bent down to dig out his comrade while Erol stood by, looking about.
"I hope you realize that if you can," Erol said, looking down at Daxter, "you should point to where you think Jak is."
Daxter didn't reply.
"We'll dig him out eventually, but if he's alive now he may not be then." Erol's voice took on a musing tangent. "Lying buried beneath all this," he motioned at the jagged landscape around them, "unable to move, a few bones broken. Maybe even suffocating slowly."
Daxter remained silent, but the mental images poured into his already vivid fears about how and where Jak was right now.
However, he could also very vividly imagine gloved hands roughly pulling Jak out of the wreckage, ignoring his groans of pain, and clapping iron around his wrists.
Jak would rather die than be a prisoner again. And Daxter did have an idea of where he might be, but he'd rather be killed than let them get Jak again.
He suppressed a shudder, twisting about in an attempt to get some blood flowing to his numb hands and feet. Tried not to think about what would happen to him, regardless of how things went down from here.
The KG straightened up and shook his head at Erol. Just a dead body. And the mask in the guard's hand was a bloody, mangled mess. Daxter silently, bitterly cheered.
A loud hiss made both of the men spin around, but they and Daxter recognized that sound well enough to know what it was even before they saw the metal heads. Three hulking forms moved at the edge of the ruins, creeping out of the still standing buildings farther out. There were smaller ones, too, slithering and skittering around.
"Orders, Sir?" the KG asked, admirably even-voiced.
"Retreat," Erol said with a growl.
"Good call…" Daxter murmured.
He realized after a few steps that the two men were moving dangerously close to just about where Jak should be buried, though.
Please… please…
But they passed, hurrying on as quick as Erol's sprained ankle allowed.
The two of them reached the ground and ducked around a wall just as the first metal head was about to rise above the top of the wreckage mountain.
Loud sniffs were brought down by the winds, followed by quick steps and the click of claws against concrete. Erol and the KG began backing further away, obviously expecting to be the prey. But then the hard paws stopped coming closer, and instead there was an irregular scraping. Daxter's breath stuck in his already tight throat.
A low hiss escaped Erol and he moved again, until he could spy on the metal heads between two broken walls.
Sometimes, it seemed to Daxter that metal heads just knew where Jak was. Like they could smell his blood.
He realized too late that Erol was studying the look on his face, and that his thoughts must have been written all over it.
One of the metal heads heaved a huge piece of fallen wall upwards, sending the concrete slab landsliding down with a thundering rasp of rolling rocks. The monster let out a triumphant shriek––
But that drowned in a sharp crackle of dark eco and Jak's roar. A pale hand came up and black claws sliced the metal head grunt's head clean off. The heavy body tumbled down and Jak crawled out of the hole the dead monster had opened up.
Daxter's first wave of flaring joy went up in smoke as he once again remembered where he was, and how he could be used.
As if he had heard his small prisoner's thoughts, Erol moved his hand up and pressed his fingers over Daxter's mouth once more, the edge of his gun digging into the ottsel's cheek.
The other metal heads came rushing over the top of the mountain, hissing and roaring as they descended on the figure that crackled with dark lightning.
"Uh, Sir…?" the KG whispered.
But Erol ignored him, moving closer to see better.
Jak heaved himself fully out of the hole and struck out at the first stinger who leaped at him. It crashed amongst the rubble in three pieces, oozing dark eco. The second and third fared no better, but…
Something was wrong.
Jak had never been graceful when he was in his Dark form, but his movements now were wilder and rawer than normal. Worse, he never got to his feet, dragging one leg behind him. Daxter dared a glance up at Erol's face and regretted it immediately.
The remaining grunts tore down towards Jak, only to be blasted right through with a wave of pure, dark energy. They flew out of sight, the thumps, rolling and splashes the last thing that was heard from them.
Silence.
Jak crashed on the edge of the hole, shuddering back into his normal shape. His heavy panting was loud enough to be heard even down to the ruins. Completely spent, and unaware of the danger he was still in.
Erol looked at the KG and made a motion with his head.
"Stun and cuff him," Erol murmured.