AN: Back on the ball. I need to get back in the swing of things. College apps have sucked out my soul. Jack is a good place to start things off. I'm familiar enough with him that the words come easily.
Chapter 3
The secretary at the desk claimed it was 1992. Jack didn't really believe her. Sure, he had been distracted for a little while, but surely it hadn't been that long. It couldn't have been.
He sat down in one of the waiting room chairs and pulled out his notebook. There was a pencil stuck into it, marking a page with a half-finished sketch on it. It was the latest vision that had squirmed into his head at night. Jars of eyeballs. How he hated them: the preserving fluid filling the air with sharp medical smells and robbing the orbs of their natural flavor. The way Mengele could never quite figure out how to get them clean all the way. How taking them left giant dark holes in the heads of the subjects, and how those holes filled up with blood that slowly pooled and solidified and turned black. How, before they filled with blood, if you used something to move the membranes around, you could see their brains. Just thinking about them made him unbearably hungry and disgusted at his own reaction.
The secretary was giving him a weird look. Jack guessed he deserved it. He had walked in, asked to see the burn victim, and then proceeded to lie that he was the boy's brother, only to be informed that the entire family was currently in the room, and there was no second brother mentioned in any paperwork.
Which made the situation...awkward, but what choice did he have?
The pull had started months ago, and had gradually dragged him, against his will, to this suburban backwoods, where the first newspaper he picked up cheerfully informed him that a boy had been lit on fire by a delinquent five years older than he was and was in critical condition.
Jack had sat down on a bench at the bus stop and thought for a good five hours. Obviously, it was his turn now to take on a new changeling. Everyone had to do it eventually. He had just always assumed that his would come later, hundreds of years later preferably, and packaged in a crate like he had gone to the Butcher. Neat and easy to handle.
What, Jack wondered, would being burned alive do to the psyche of a twelve year old monster? There was one surefire way to find out, so he went to have a conversation with the kid.
And now he was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital, sketching a jar full of blue eyes while waiting for the kid's actual family to leave so he could go up and find out what the hell was going on. How the rest of the family was alive he didn't know.
There was a bark of sharp laughter, almost animal in its pitch, that made Jack look up. He saw two adults, a man and a woman, both looking tired but happy, and a teenage boy, sallow with eyes that jumped from side-to-side in that ex-con way that's immediately noticeable. For one moment, Jack thought that this is his monster, and then the little family moves, and Jack saw that there was another boy.
He was sitting in a wheelchair, leaning forward to look up at his brother. Something was very wrong with him. His skin was bleached white and his eyes were huge and dark and staring. His smile looked like someone had slashed his mouth away, and as they passes Jack caught a few words from his mouth.
"Don't you think I look pretty, Lui?"
Jack waited for them to pass, and when they were gone he stood up, ignoring the secretary's reaction to his presence, and walked calmly to the door.
That was not normal. Jack had met a lot of monsters in the 60 years since he had been hit with an artillery shell, and he knew that most monsters were saner than humans. They put most human concepts of consciousness to shame. Whatever had been in that wheelchair, it hadn't been a monster, but it sure as hell wasn't human either.
Once he was outside, Jack ran for the bus stop and got onto the first bus that pulled up, not caring where he went as long as it was far away from the half-changed thing in the wheelchair that was surely going to rip its entire family apart later that day.
If Jack had ever chosen to remember his childhood-he tried not to think about it-the one thing that would have stood out to him was… Her. More than his parents, more than his three siblings, more than the youth groups and the indoctrination. She was what his life had revolved around.
He didn't remember her name. It was never that important. She was the first one he thought of when he thought "home." That was who she was to Jack: Home.
She had been his childhood sweetheart, if those words could be used in clear conscience. She had been everything good in his world for 16 years, from his first memory to the day he enlisted. She had been his first kiss, his first lover, his first real confidant.
And when he went back for her…
Getting back home was hard. He had to walk most of the way back: the roads were practically gone. The bombs had been targeting the infrastructure of the country. Of course there were plenty of bombed out buildings too, and the more he saw, the more concerned he got. Was his family alive? His siblings were all sisters, so he didn't think any of them had been in the army. He could never be sure about the oldest of them: she liked to push limits.
It turned out that, yes, his family was alive. They were a little worse for wear, tired and nervous, and one of the girls had suffered a broken wrist in recent weeks, but they were alive. Jack did not go to them. He watched for a long time, and then he turned away. He would not burden them with this thing he had become, with everything he had seen and done in the past years. He was not that cold hearted.
He turned away, already thinking about where he would go next, where he would have to go, who he was going to find and seek retribution on.
And then someone tackled him from behind.
Five minutes later, Jack was off the bus again. He paced in a circle, earning several nervous stares from people passing on the street. Yes, the kid was only half changed. Yes, it was probably completely insane. Yes, there was a very real possibility he was going to get mauled if he went in there.
But, down at the heart of it, that was still a 12 year old boy. A poor scared boy who really should be nothing but a ghost right now. Damn modern medicine: if Jack had been burned alive in his early teens he would have died almost instantly. Now, instead of a clean changing they had this messy half-finished business.
Jack started walking fast back towards the town. He wasn't that far away. It wasn't that long. He had time. He could make it.
It had been fairly late in the afternoon when the boy was picked up from the hospital. It was growing dark by the time Jack reached the house that, according to the papers, the fire had occurred at. He looked up and down the street, spotted a small toy soccer goal and two balls in the yard nextdoor and decided that that was probably the right house.
Jack walked up to the door and rang the bell. Nothing happened. He rang it again. Still nothing. He turned the handle. Locked.
Jack lost patience. He took two steps back, aimed carefully, and kicked the door just below the handle. There was a snap like a gunshot as the door flew backwards. He stepped into the suburban house and breathed in.
There was death in the air. There was the metallic tang of blood and the thick smell of fast-cooling meat. Jack swallowed down a flood of saliva.
The first body was in the hallway. A woman, the mother. She had been stabbed in the stomach and chest. Five times in all, but the first three attempts had not been deep enough to do real damage. Hesitation, Jack noted. That was good.
The second body was in the living room, and this one bore no signs of remorse. There had been a quick brutal yank on the hair, and then a swift stab to the neck, like the killer had been behind the man. Like an execution, Jack thought, and shook the thought off.
The brother had been in bed when he died. All the way to the room there were smears of blood and cuts in the plaster of the walls. Pictures were knocked down or broken. There was no way to mistake the meaning in the scene: this life has ended now. The body itself didn't really have a face anymore. The stabbing trend continued, but this time it was in the head.
This, Jack thought, was very personal. He looked reflectively at what remained of the brown hair, the hardened eyes. He guessed that this boy had taken the fall for his brother on something, and gone to jail for his troubles. Jack didn't know about Juvenile Detention Centers yet. He figured jail was jail.
Jack left the boy's body be and turned around. He went back downstairs and looked around for the little monster's escape route. He found none.
He went back upstairs, wondering if he had somehow missed an attic, and was just examining the ceiling of the hallway when he heard a soft sound.
Jack stopped breathing. His body screamed at him to run, and run far far away. Instead, he walked towards the sound. He pushed open the door to the other bedroom. The soft glow of a night light silhouetted the shape on the bed, tucked beneath the blankets.
Hardly daring to believe his luck, Jack crept forward. His footsteps were soft on the carpeted floor. His hands twitched, in need of a weapon, but he did not reach for one.
The shape on the bed stirred. A small voice, so different from the one he had heard earlier, said, "Hello?"
Jack stopped moving.
"Who are you?" the monster asked, its dark eyes huge and scared. It could see him. There was something wrong with its face. There were cuts, bloody and open. The muscles were exposed; Jack could see them moving.
"I'm here to help you," Jack replied honestly. He took a step forward.
The boy had a knife in his hand instantly. He pointed it at Jack. "Don't touch me," he spat.
Jack moved forward again, thinking it was only a matter of time before someone saw the broken door and called the cops.
The boy lunged. The knife slammed into Jack's abdomen, piercing his skin easily. Jack looked down at the knife, up at the face of the boy in front of him.
He grabbed the monster around the waist and lifted him under one arm.
The boy was screaming now, yelling nonsense about the police at the top of his lungs. He was kicking and hitting, but Jack didn't feel it.
He walked back down the stairs. The boy went silent at the sight of his mother's body. Jack shifted him up higher, holding him around the chest rather than the waist.
He carried the thing out the back door, into the alley behind the house. There he set him down. The child was dressed in a bloody hoodie and dark jeans. It would do.
Jack started to tell the boy that he was here to help, that if the child stuck close everything would be okay.
It was on him in an instant. It ripped the knife out of his side and brought it up to hit Jack's sternum.
He felt no pain of course, but even so he was aware of his bone shattering. Blood flooded his lungs, and Jack sat down hard on the ground.
"I said don't touch me!" The monster was shrieking. Then it was gone. Not back towards the house, thank god, but off into the night. Into another place.
Jack decided it was better to let the boy go this one time. He was going to have a hard enough time finding somewhere else safe to heal as it was.
Jack knew immediately who had him around the chest, hands pressing on broken ribs, making the bone that had at one point punctured his lung rake again across soft tissue. He moved her hands down briskly and spun her away behind the nearest building.
She said his name, hugged him again, this time from the front, and he put his arms around her too. He rocked her back and forth for a long time, eyes closed behind the glasses. Then she pulled back almost violently, and slapped him smartly across the face.
"I thought you were dead," She hissed.
Jack raised a hand to touch his cheek. There was no pain, but he could feel the startling transfer of energy. He found his voice after a moment. "I'm sorry," he said, "things came up."
"How are you here?!" She asked, "we know what happened in the Soviet Union. How could you make it out and not tell us?"
Jack looked at her, really looked at her. She was blonde and slight, small around the torso, with thin legs and arms. There was no muscle on her, and suddenly he found himself perturbed by it, by how little physical work she had ever done.
"I had a lot of things on my mind," he said, "there are… there are things you're better off not knowing about."
She said his name again, pleadingly. Her big blue eyes were filling with tears.
Jack suddenly recalled that they had spent so much time trying to get blue eyes, had gone through so many people trying to engineer a certain color. He was starting to shake again. He leaned forward, looked left and right. No one could see them there, pressed against the wall.
He reached inside himself, looking for that familiar warmth he'd had in his chest every time he thought of her for the past 6 years, and found nothing. He scrabbled for the affection and came up terrifyingly blank.
"What is it?" She asked, her brow creasing. She looked vaguely unsettled, "take off the glasses, I can't tell what you're thinking." She reached up and grasped one of the lenses.
Jack jerked back, or tried to, he grabbed her wrist, "Don't."
"Why not?" She looked confused.
Jack reached again for soft words, for fondness, and again he missed it. There was nothing. He was dead.
"I need to go," Jack said, "I'm sorry." He stepped sideways, away from her, and ducked out of the alley. It was over.
Luckily for Jack, the place where the little monster had stabbed him was not far away from the Butcher's shop. He snuck back, doing his best to hide the spreading stain on his jacket from passersby, and went down into the basement of the house so quietly he was sure even the creature would not hear him.
He slipped into his old room, pulled off the jacket and shirt to look at the damage. There was no saving his sternum. He was going to have to reassemble it.
Jack stepped back out into the open, found the equipment cart and pulled it over to the operating table. He turned on the light above the table, double-checked the tools to make sure they were clean. He found a mirror and brought it over, propped it on a chair so that he would be able to see it from the table. Then he stripped off his jeans and sat on the edge of the operating table.
He laid down, took a scalpel from the tray and put it to the hollow between his collarbones. He pushed in, broke the skin, and slowly, so slowly, peeled back the muscle. He tilted the mirror, and followed where his midline used to be with the blade. It took a while, but eventually the remains of his ribcage were exposed. Jack set aside the scalpel and started picking out the fragments of bone.
The kid was strong, that was for sure. He hadn't changed quite right, but some of the benefits had obviously kicked in. That was going to be a problem.
The urge to find the child was fading. He could still feel a slight pull, but it wasn't nearly as strong as it had been. He hoped that meant the kid was going to be okay. It could have been worse, it could have been something like the Butcher.
He switched to a pair of tweezers to pull out the smaller fragments. His lungs were starting to leak blood into his chest cavity. He wished for a moment that the Butcher was here to help, then dismissed the thought. He still wasn't ready to face the creature, not after what had happened.
He still felt vaguely dirty at the memory of it. He tried not to think about it. When he met the girl by the name of Lea, more than 20 years later, he would have more than a little empathy for her situation.
Jack worked on himself, using the mirror to guide his hands, for another hour. He reached to the cart for the tube of adhesive so he could start reassembling his bones, but his hand found nothing. He had forgotten to get it.
Jack stayed where he was, looking at the mirror reflecting his guts. He was screwed. He couldn't get up, not like this, with his lungs slowly inflating and deflating in the open air. He had to do something.
Jack took a breath. "Hello?" he called, as loudly ashe dared, "are you there?!" His voice was still weak, and fluid came up his windpipe as the remaining blood in his lungs was forced out.
There was a shifting from near the door. Jack reached out one bloody hand and changed the angle of the mirror so he could look. It was the Butcher, with several more limbs than he had last seen it, blinking its golden eyes in amazement.
"I need a bottle of glue, or tape, or something," Jack said, "I don't care what as long as it will hold my bones together."
The creature used one hand to pull a bottle of something from a cabinet and two more to write something in the little book it always carried.
"It doesn't have to last long," Jack continued, most out of unease now, "I heal fast. I just need to set it."
The creature thrust the pad of paper in front of his face, "What happened?"
"A little monster," Jack said. He wiped some blood from the corner of his mouth, "strong, but nowhere near as sane as he needs to be."
The Butcher made a noise. It scribbled again for a moment, "Stay still, I'll put it back together."
Jack tried to protest, but the Butcher was already taking the tray of bone fragments. It crossed to the other side of the room and put on a worklight. Jack sighed, watching his own lungs expand and contract in the mirror. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back. It was okay. The Butcher was physically incapable of hurting him. It would help, by virtue of the pairing and a faint sort of respect.
It was more than an hour before the Butcher had pieced his sternum back together. It brought it back to the operating table and presented it to Jack, along with the bottle of adhesive. It wasn't proper medical procedure, but right then Jack didn't really care. He took pains when he was taking meals, but on himself he couldn't care less.
Jack fitted the bone back into place and pulled the muscle back over his chest. He reached for the needle and thread and sewed himself up slowly, carefully. When he was done he sat up.
The Butcher scribbled in its pad, "Is he here?"
Jack shook his head, "No. He ran off. The kid is only half-changed as far as I can tell. All sloppy."
"Will you be able to handle it when you are."
Jack looked down, thought about it for a moment. "Yes," he said, "I can handle that."
It just looked at him for a moment. It twitched. Then it wrote a moment more, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," Jack said. He got up, and pulled on his jeans, hopping from foot to foot to get them on. He dug into his bag and took out his extra jacket. He was going to burn the old stuff. It was useless now.
The Butcher shoved a paper into his face again. "I'm sorry."
Jack sighed, turned to look at the creature. "I know, and I have to forgive you."
The creature's shoulders dropped.
"I'm never going to trust you ever again," Jack said, "and once I actually have the kid, I'm not bringing him anywhere near you."
The Butcher inclined its head. "That's fair."
"I'm glad you agree." Jack got to his feet and left.
