Author's Notes: In case anyone is wondering about the historical timeframe, this story takes place between Jak II and III.
CHAPTER II
"Have the courage to live. Anyone can die." - Robert Cody
A flash of images; nothing concrete enough to hold onto. A feeling of arousal spurred by a woman whose face swam around, never solidifying. Pain and blood and rain, mixed with a scream as he sped the vehicle faster and faster through his thoughts, zooming passed, merging together until they were a colourless lump of images. He could hear voices, speaking with unclear words. He spun round and round, trying to figure out what he was seeing, feeling and hearing. He spun until he became dizzy and fell over, crashing into a bulldog with walrus-like fangs, whose skin glowed yellow for a moment, before the dog disappeared, leaving behind a vicious cackling, followed by a purposeful fist connecting with his jaw.
The latter image alone jerked him awake. He took a full minute of lying still, staring at an unknown ceiling, just to remember who he was and vaguely what happened leading up to the conscious-robbing punches he received earlier. How much earlier he couldn't guess; at that moment, the only thing he knew for sure was that he was no longer in Central Park. The ceiling he was staring at was definitely not his own. Nor was it a hospital ward's. It was shoddy, as if the plaster was put up quickly and recklessly. Whoever did it didn't care about aesthetics or symmetry: it was done just to be done.
He worried for a moment that he'd been captured by Teivel, and was being held for questioning. The crime boss certainly wasn't above interrogation; but Jinx knew that he was too obsessed with secrecy to risk exposure by taking a prisoner. It was more likely that he would have just left Jinx lying there, bleeding to death. It would have sent a decent message to the Freedom League: mess with me and this is what happens.
Jinx snorted in derision at the thought of Ashelin and Torn giving a shit whether or not he dropped dead in Central Park. They would have just added another tick to the ever-growing casualty list, shrugged their shoulders and sighed, then they would have just gone right back to work. In one sense, Jinx was proud that they could distance themselves so easily: it's what made them such good leaders. But on the other hand, it gave his heart the slightest twang at the knowledge that no one cared enough about him to shed a tear if he died.
He blinked. That's not quite true, he thought, as he stared up at that uneven, plaster-pealing ceiling. Someone cared enough not to let him die in the park. Someone cared enough to bring him to wherever he was and make sure he was okay. His leg and shoulder throbbed in pain still, but not as badly as when he received the wounds, accentuated by the two hammer blows to his gut and face. The latter memory made him instinctively rub his jaw, trying to feel if it was still in place. As soon as his fingers laced around his chin and cheeks, all he could feel was something odd; something he didn't have for a long time:
The beginnings of facial stubble.
He shaved before he left that evening, looking for a woman to bring home with him. The fact that he had stubble now, and what appeared to be more than just a slight growth, told him that he had been unconscious for a long time: all night and most of the morning at least. He tried to sit up, to better assess his situation, get his mind back in the here-and-now, and maybe look for a razor in the meantime. Unfortunately, as he attempted to put his hands behind him for momentum in sitting up, he noticed something else that was odd and haven't happened in a while:
His right arm was handcuffed to a bedpost.
His confusion very quickly turned to panic as he suddenly realized that he was lying on a bed. It had no covers, and a thin sheet between him and the mattress. It was a small mattress, as well, and only barely fit him on it. He jerked into a sitting position, hearing the bed groan under his weight. The legs supporting it were old and splintered; it appeared as if the bed were found in a dumpster after someone else discarded it. The sheet, however, looked clean and laundered, and the pillow supporting his backside was either new or very well taken care of. So the harsh appearance of the bed itself seemed too contradictory for it simply to be a dumpster's hand-me-down.
In fact, the whole room he was in was littered with contradictions. It was small; barely enough for one person to live in. There was a stove near the front door, which was boarded up with so many locks the door could barely be seen under them. Looking around, Jinx couldn't see if there even was a back door. He did notice a small refrigerator unit and a mouldy-looking cupboard above the stove, and what he assumed was a closet on the wall facing him. Beyond that, there were no lamps, no shelves, no end tables, no pictures, no nothing in the house to make it look like anyone lived there at all. And the fact that the paint was peeling and there was no carpeting made Jinx think that whoever did live here was seriously down on his luck.
But the house was clean. He noticed that right away. There was no mess on the floor, no filthy smell invading the senses, no disorganization in any way, shape or form. Even he, who recently received massive shoulder and leg wounds, was clean and proper; whoever brought him here and chained him to the bed took very delicate care of him, patching his wounds and cleaning the blood so perfectly that it looked as if he weren't injured at all.
Inspecting the bandages on his body made him very well aware of the fact that his leather straps and, more importantly, his shirt, were missing. He wasn't even wearing his big, military-style boots, although that may have been more because the neat-freak living here didn't want mud and whatever else getting all over the bed. He saw his boots over by the door, resting comfortably on a flat, metallic, make-shift floor mat. He would need those before he left. As well as his shirt. And his backpack, which he also noticed was missing. But first, he had to find a way out of the handcuffs, which were set to a comfortable position, but were tight nonetheless, threatening to cut off the circulation of blood to his hand should he continue tugging on it as hard as he was doing.
After several minutes of trying to weasel out of the cuffs, scratching his wrist something terrible, he gave up in a huff. "I could really go for a bloody cigar right now," he muttered, frustrated. It only added to the urgency to find his pack, wherever it may be. Possibly stashed in that closet, if only he could reach it...
No plan had time to form in his mind as his thoughts were interrupted suddenly by the sound of the front door's handle jerking around. Jinx's head spun around to the door, worry pounding in his chest. He contemplated feigning sleep, but the door slowly, purposefully, opened before he could even twist his handcuffed arm around to do so. Instead he sat up straighter, trying to look imposing, despite the unimpressive position he was in currently. If he was to go down, it wasn't going to be while he was cowardly lying on a bed.
But the petite woman who walked through the door, with a brown sac slung over her shoulder, made Jinx gasp so unexpectedly that he choked a bit and coughed his wakefulness to the familiar stranger. She looked up at him, not with the smugness of someone capturing an enemy, but with the big, apologetic eyes belonging to a remorseful friend. She avoided eye contact with him after that, placed her sac on the floor, and proceeded to close her door and latch the many locks upon it. She took off her sandals and placed them on the floor mat next to Jinx's, then picked up the bag and moved to the closet, careful not to look in Jinx's direction, as she opened the door and placed the sac within it. Jinx got a quick view of his backpack before the raven-haired young woman closed the door and only then raise her eyes to meet his regrettably.
"I'm sorry," she whispered right away, as Jinx opened his mouth to demand what the hell was going on. He snapped it shut, waiting for an explanation. "This was the only thing I could think of to do. You were going to die if I left you."
A thousand questions came to mind. He asked one: "Where the hell am I?"
The look on his face, mistrust and anger, diverted her eyes again. "I brought you to my home. I couldn't bring you to a hospital: they would have asked too many questions."
"So instead of endurin' a few minutes of discomfort, you chose to kidnap me?"
"It's not about discomfort!" she replied, restoring a bit of confidence. "You don't understand. I work for Daren Teivel. If I walked into a hospital with a severely wounded man, with obvious ties to the Freedom League and bulldog teeth marks on his shoulder, would they have just asked me, 'Where'd you find him'? They would have put two and two together and I would have been arrested!"
She made a great point, and it certainly accounted for her actions, but that didn't mean it was going to exonerate her for kidnapping. He was going to retaliate harshly, yell until his lungs popped, demanding freedom and the like, but all he had to do was look at her, and he calmed down instantly. She was on the verge of tears, clearly hating herself for what she had to do to protect her secrecy. She was willing to go through with kidnapping an injured man rather than turn him in, for the sake of her life. She could have left him there to bleed to death; that would have protected her secrecy much easier. But she chose to bring him home, nurse him back to health, and patch him up as well as any doctor.
He snapped his mouth closed again and rubbed his shoulder instinctively. It took a while to form the right words in his mind to say, but after much thought, settled on simply, "Thank you." She nodded, but didn't reply, staring at her feet instead. He asked, infinitely calmer than when she first walked in the door, "How did you get me here?"
She risked looking up at him again and was relieved to see his eyes were much softer than before. Licking her lips, she answered, "Your, um, vehicle has an autopilot. I just told it where to go and it came by itself." She added with a smirk. "Slowly."
He couldn't help but return the smile. "You don't know how to drive?"
"I never had time to learn."
"I could teach you." He gave her a sly look; one that made her blush slightly and turn her head yet again.
"I still don't have time to learn." She gestured to the closet, where she just put her sac. "Teivel quadrupled the contract: I need to collect sixty Skull Gems a week. I actually just came back to get more ammo."
She tried to walk away, toward a narrow hallway passed the bed, but Jinx shifted and said, "Whoa, wait up for a minute!" She paused in her walk and looked at him, standing next to where his arm was handcuffed. "I can help you, you know. Just let me go, and I can gun down those Metal -"
"I'm sorry, I can't let you go." She looked away guiltily.
Instead of getting angry, he simply asked, "Why not?"
"Because you know where I live! If anyone finds out, I'm dead."
He huffed sarcastically. "I was unconscious when you brought me here. I have no idea where I am. Unless you're stupid enough to make a home in the middle of a Metal Head area, I don't -" He stopped because Cera wrapped her arms around herself, as if protecting herself from his realization. He spoke quietly, "By the Precursors, that's what you did, isn't it?"
"It was the best idea at the time," she rationed. "It was the last place Teivel would think to look for me, and I have access to all these Metal Heads. All I had to do was install some EMP pillars to disrupt radio waves, sonars and other detection devices and no one would find me." She could see he wasn't convinced that being shrouded in secrecy was worth chaining him to her bed, so she continued, "If I let you go, the first place you're going to go to is the Freedom League! They'll ask you all kinds of questions leading up to Teivel, and as soon as he finds out I have an accomplice, or worse, if he even thinks I brought you to my home, he'll kill me!"
His raised-eyebrows expression didn't change. He sat in silence for a few moments before ranting, "You need help, Dollface. And judgin' by this -" he yanked his arm, making the handcuff and chain jingle significantly, "- it looks like you need mental help, too. But the Freedom League can protect you. They're trained to handle crime bosses and whatever retaliation they may dish out."
"You can't help me. They can't help me. No one can! I have to do this on my own!"
"Why?"
"You don't understand!"
"I can if you just tell me!"
She swallowed her anger, building up, threatening to explode. She squeezed her hands into fists and closed her eyes. It took a second to calm down, and when she did, her next words were spoken so softly that Jinx had to lean in to hear her. "It's complicated. It's... It's not just my life at risk. You may be able to protect me, but if Teivel thinks for even a moment that I betrayed him, he'll... he'll kill..." She swallowed again, opening her tear-filled eyes, big and wide, pleading at the man who saved her life once. "I have to do this on my own."
For a moment, he just returned her stare, feeling a mixture of pity and confusion. Everyone gets hurt when dealing with crime bosses; he never faltered before. For some reason, though, this woman tugged at his heartstrings more than anyone before her. He opened his mouth to agree with her, that she was better off on her own, but what he said was, "That's bullshit, Sweetheart! You can't just assume the Freedom League is useless until you give them a shot! They're experts at handlin' covert missions. It's the reason they're still in power. You don't want your identity revealed, or your home discovered, or for Teivel to know anything about what's goin' on under his nose? Then you need the Freedom League. You need them more than you need him."
She was silently crying. Tears were forming in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Jinx noticed, of course: he noticed everything about her. From the individual eyelashes wet with tears, to her dark hair, fluffed up from not being in the rain. He noticed her raggy clothes, clean and prim, but torn up anyway, possibly from fighting Metal Heads. He also noticed her neck, although that was hard, as her shirt's collar very nearly covered it all. There was a vein that throbbed with every beat of her heart; he wondered what it felt like. He even reached out his hand to her, until he was stopped by the handcuff and chain. He gave a sharp curse, which made Cera back up further.
In order to hide the embarrassment, Jinx said, quickly, "I really need a cigar."
"Oh, I don't allow smoking -" She paused when he grinned sardonically and shook his right arm. She rubbed her own and muttered, "I guess, under the circumstances, it'd be okay." She moved away from the bed back toward the closet, holding his backpack and the cigars within it. She opened the door and had to move her sac out of the way first. A Skull Gem accidentally fell out of it and rolled across the floor, making a stop at the foot of her stove. It reflected the light in the room in a yellow, glittering manner, making the Gem look more shiny than it actually was, as if it were made of glass instead of metal. For now, she ignored it as she shifted through Jinx's backpack, looking for his cigars.
Jinx asked, "How many Skull Gems do you have there?"
"Eighteen," she answered, as she pulled out a cigar and a match. She then zipped up the pack and put it back more neatly in the closet, before walking toward her chained captive, handing him the items. He took them from her, deliberately grazing his fingers along hers, grinning mischievously as she blushed and turned around, pretending not to have noticed as she walked toward her stove.
He striked the match on his leg, as the cargo pants were thick and tough, and held the flame under one end of the stogie, while he puffed on the other end. Cera opened the cupboard above the stove and took out a small plate: one cracked in places but otherwise acceptable. She closed the doors after she acquired it and finally bent over to pick up the fallen Skull Gem. Jinx watched the latter movement with such intensity that he forgot he was inhaling the smoke until his lungs forced him to expel it by coughing it all up. She looked at him with concern, which Jinx found surprising: most people look at him with disgust when he smoked, or coughed while doing so, claiming that if he quit, he wouldn't have that problem. But this was the first time someone was actually concerned about his health. He flashed her a bright smile, waving the match vigorously until the flame went out, then flicking it away, on the floor.
Instantly, her concern changed to anger. She marched up to him and practically shoved the plate into his hand, saying, "Ashtray," before walking to the discarded match and picking it up. He almost apologized, but in her eagerness to keep her floor clean, she had to bend over again, and the view shut him up instantly. He knew she didn't do it on purpose; it wasn't as if she were trying to get his attention. In fact, it was that exact naivety that intrigued him most. Every other woman he dealt with were all tall, slender and long-limbed, but this one was petite, shy and unlearned. It was fascinating how Cera had all the curves a woman needed, but had no idea how to use them. And, unfortunately for Jinx, covered them up so carefully that even in her tattered clothing, appeared more like a tomboy than a female.
He watched her deposit the used up match in the garbage bag, a small plastic thing carefully placed next to the stove. He watched her with his brow scrunched together in thought, concentrating as if trying to figure out a tough puzzle, subconsciously imagining what she would look like under her clothes, as she walked back to the closet, presumably to put back the Skull Gem under her arm. He crossed one leg over the other, inhaling his cigar smoke deeply. In nothing more than an attempt to distract his body from his imagination, he asked her, slightly painfully, "So why does Teivel want Skull Gems? You never explained it to me."
"There was never a need to," she answered instantly.
"You owe me."
"I already saved your life."
"That was in exchange for me saving yours. Now you owe me for the kidnappin' and handcuffin'."
The door to the closet was halfway opened when she paused and looked up at him guiltily. But he just smiled at her, amused, as if it were all a game. She sort of envied his nonchalance about the situation; she wished it were just a game, herself. She sighed in defeat, as he was correct: she did owe him. Even though it went against everything she tried to keep a secret, she felt comfortable around him. Too comfortable; she hoped she wouldn't end up trusting him. She remembered what happened the last time she trusted someone she didn't know.
She held up the Gem in her hands and asked, "How do you melt a Skull Gem?"
Jinx thought about it for a moment, puffing at his stogie, before finally settling with, "You can't. Skull Gems can take a lot of punishment, but if it ever got to that point, it would shatter or crumble."
She licked her lips. Even though she was talking about something serious, Jinx couldn't help but notice every moment her tongue was on her lips. He rubbed his face instinctively, remembering that he needed to shave. She continued, "Teivel found a way."
"To melt Skull Gems?"
"Right. He found out by accident, actually. You take the blood of an Ottsel, boil it with Eco, and the Gem melts like warm butter on a hot, summer day."
Jinx scoffed sarcastically. He wondered how someone could 'accidentally' come to that realization, but instead of voicing that concern, he said simply, "So what? Why would meltin' a Skull Gem be cause for so much secrecy?"
Cera put the Gem back in the sac before closing the door and returning her disbelieved face back to him. "You saw what a melted Skull Gem can do when you unloaded your ammo on Crusher and nothing happened to the dog!"
Suddenly the seriousness of the situation hit him too hard to joke around anymore. "Are you talkin' 'bout impenetrable armour?"
"If he learns how to perfect the formula and gather enough loyal soldiers, yes. But I've been collecting Skull Gems for him for over two years and he's never wanted so many at once before. I fear he's getting closer to his goal."
"Why would it take so long to get to this point?"
She shrugged. "The only person on the planet more cowardly than me is Daren Teivel. He wouldn't risk exposure by amassing an army, and even if he did, he wouldn't outfit someone in invincible armour he didn't completely trust or couldn't completely control, for fear of betrayal."
"So the sudden demand for more Skull Gems implies that he found a way around that problem?"
She nodded. "That's the theory that makes most sense. Loyalty can always be bought, and Teivel has a lot of money and connections. Even Eco isn't difficult to find, if you know where to look. Skull Gems are the hardest thing to get a hold of, since you have to kill Metal Heads to get them; his whole plan revolves around that contingency."
She deliberately left out the Ottsel blood for some reason. They both knew it, which is why she broke eye contact and pretended to be interested in the edge of the bed, smoothing the creaseless sheet before her. Tentatively, he asked, "What about the Ottsel blood?"
She breathed in deeply before answering, "He has a farm." Her voice broke. "I saw it once. An Ottsel farm just outside the city. They breed like rabbits and his dog... Crusher..." She swallowed. "Crusher eats Ottsels."
"That's sick," Jinx replied, fighting to keep his stomach down.
"It's how he found the formula for the invincible armour. When he was a Krimzon Guard, he was feeding Crusher next to a vat of Eco and some blood dropped in, contaminating the lot. The Baron wanted him executed, but Commander Erol, who was Teivel's friend, talked him into just kicking him out of the Guard. In anger, Teivel threw some captured Skull Gems into the useless vat as well, and watched as they melted. His curiosity nearly made him fall in, but Crusher saved him by pushing him out of the way and falling in as a result. It took a full day to nurse the dog back to health, but when he did, he discovered that his skin was tougher than before. He was still several months away from knowing why that was significant. His discovery was what pushed him into a life of crime, and that was also roughly when I met him."
He finished his cigar at the same time she finished her explanation. There were a lot of holes in the story, of course, such as, "How did you figure all this out? Did Teivel tell you?"
She waved a hand dismissively. "He barely tells me anything. I pieced it all together after bribing Krimzon Guards when I was looking for my -" She snapped her mouth shut before she could continue and turned away from him, hoping stupidly he wouldn't notice the sudden cutoff.
Decently, he went along with it, wanting more information about Teivel's plans more than he wanted to know what she was looking for. He asked, "If other people knew about that concoction, why wouldn't someone else come up with the idea for invincible armour?"
She looked back at him, her eyes sharp and piercing. He'd never seen her like that before and it shocked him. When she replied, poisonously, "Because it takes a sick person to kill innocent animals and harness their blood just for better armour," he decided that her refusal to let the ends justify the means immediately made her a better person than most other people, and he would protect that innocence as best as he could. It was refreshing to know that even in Haven City, there were still some people who believed in morals. Having her around would be good for him, too.
Jinx lost sight of his morals a long time ago.
He tried an old argument again, for the sake of protecting her: "You need the Freedom League's help. They have to at least know what's goin' on. If Teivel succeeds in this, they won't stand a chance unless they're prepared."
"They can't help me," she replied instantly.
"Do you trust me?" he asked, hopefully. As soon as she averted eye contact, he knew the answer was 'yes'. It made him grin.
"I shouldn't, but yes, I do."
"Then listen up, Dollface: I need you for your connections to Teivel, and you need me for my connections to the Freedom League. You may not know it now, but you will need their help. We're goin' to have to work together on this one." He flashed her a smirk that made her blush. "It'll be an experience for both of us: I've never worked with a lady before." Not without the end result bein' to wake up a little less 'stressed', he thought to himself.
She shyly rubbed her arm as she considered his offer. Every slight movement she made gave Jinx the suspicion that he would be 'stressed' for the duration of their teamwork. After a while, she finally said, "Alright. We can work together. As long as Teivel never finds out! If he knows I have an accomplice -"
"Yeah, yeah: he'll kill you." He continued before she could comment on his lack of concern for her life. "First thing we've gotta do is contact the Freedom League. They'll be able -"
This time, it was her turn to cut him off. "We can't contact them."
He raised an eyebrow. "But you said -"
"I mean we can't contact them over electrical channels. Teivel has Freedom HQ tapped. It's how he's always able to stay one step ahead of them."
"How was he able to do that?"
She shrugged. "I think he has an insider."
"Is that why you're so opposed to trustin' them?"
"It's one of the reasons, yes." She didn't elaborate, so he didn't ask.
Instead, he scratched at his sandpaper face as he said, "We need to at least contact Torn. He wouldn't be the insider, and as I mentioned before, he's an expert at covert missions. He would keep his mouth shut."
"But we can't call him."
"There is a way." She looked at him expectantly. He gave her a sort of apologetic smile before elaborating, "You're not goin' to like it."
"I already don't like this. Might as well just tell me."
He nodded, his smile broadening at her discovery of sarcasm. "Tomorrow, the guys are gettin' together at The Naughty Ottsel for a night of poker and booze. It helps to get our minds off the wars around us and just relax. Torn will be there. We can contact him that way."
"Would I be welcome there?"
He coughed. "You would if you were my girlfriend. The guys bring their girlfriends all the time." Her eyes widened and she blushed. He laughed. "I told you that you wouldn't like it!"
"It's just... It's a little..." She flustered for a bit, making Jinx grin more and more, until she finally gathered her thoughts and said, "If it's for the sake of stopping Teivel, I suppose I could pretend..."
"Good!" He certainly enjoyed the idea of pretending. He enjoyed that thought too much. He crossed his legs again and asked, to distract her from the movement, "I suppose since we're on trustin' levels with each other, you can maybe...?" He jerked his arm again, making the chain handcuffing him to the bed jingle.
"Oh, right. Yes." She reached into her pocket and took out a small key, then moved around the bed to the post he was latched to and proceeded to unlock him. While she was doing it, she said, humbly, "I'm sorry about doing this, in case it's any consolation."
He scoffed dismissively. "Don't worry about it, Dollface; I met my last two exes this way."
She started to laugh, but the stoic look on his face implied that he wasn't joking. She blushed again, wondering if trusting him was really a good thing after all...
