Vacation or War
Chapter Seven-Reality
It was late evening by the time Loor made it back to the underground. She should have been back sooner, but she'd taken a detour while alone in hopes of solving her own problems as soon as possible.
She'd gone to the power station to try and find Vin, but the place was locked up tight.
Of course, he was probably still out at the strip mine, checking up on the operation out there to be later attacked by metal heads. He wouldn't be back at the power station till he was rescued from events that hadn't happened yet.
Strange... technically, she knew the future of this place. She had to mull that over as she drove back to the underground, getting a better feel for zoomers along the way. She wondered, now that she and Fury were part of the underground, would they get sent on some of the missions that were in the game, all on their lonesome? It was a frightening thought; that one of them might end up rescuing Vin, or chasing down Hellcat cruisers, or blowing up blastbots.
She shook her head, frowning. They weren't going to be there that long.
Arriving at the underground, she found Torn was present and occupying one of the eight bunk beds, particularly the top bunk on the left side, furthest from the door. It made her want to shake her head, though she wasn't sure why it bothered her that much. He was just sleeping.
Then it hit her; it was the same reason everything else bothered her. Things like everyone's voices, how they looked, and stuff they said. It was all things she hadn't seen in the game. Information that was not the norm. She had to shake the feeling though; she couldn't freak every time someone did something new.
Anyway, it wasn't a crime against nature. Truth be told, sleep sounded like a good idea. Turning to the left herself, she took the lower bunk closer to the door since it was in a corner. She liked corners, and quickly took the flat pillow on the bunk and crushed it into said corner.
She then took the time to remove her boots, carefully un-clipping them and pulling them off to stow under her bed. She had just removed her scarf, also tucking it away, when she heard the door opening.
"Don't do that, it'll go to his head..."
"But he's so cute! It would be a crime not to hug him once in a while! How can you resist him? He's so fluffy!"
"Cause I'm not gay..."
"Awe, Jak, I won't tell anyone if you don't..."
Lauren could hear Chelsea's ruckus laughter, turning to watch her sister, with Daxter in arms, enter with Jak.
"Nice to see everyone enjoying themselves." Loor commented with a lop-sided smile. "How'd you do on the gun course, Fury?"
"Not as good as Jak." She said with a pout. "But pretty good. He says I could probably hold my own against most metal heads, though I'd hate to go out alone..."
"You could take Dax with you..." Jak grumbled as he decided on the bunk above Loor, climbing up. It would seem Fury had made him uncomfortable by snuggling Dax.
"No." Loor protested. "There is no way I'm leaving my little sister alone with him."
"Loor!" Dax tried to make with puppy-eyes. "C'mon, you can trust me! It's not like I'm evil or nothing."
"Yeah, onee-san!" Fury had allowed the ottsel to climb up onto her head. "He's too cute to be evil."
Loor looked at her sister, raising an eyebrow. "Uh-huh... right. Too cute to be evil... Fury, if there's anything I've learned, the cuter something is, the more evil it is. Have you looked in a mirror lately?" She then moved to get her shirt off and settle in. She'd keep her pants, but there was no way she was sleeping with her weapon on her back. Once she'd slid her top off she leaned over the side of her bunk to push it underneath with the rest of her things...
To suddenly get clocked on the head by something heavy.
"Son of a-!" She snarled, looking up to see Jak moving quickly to get away from the edge of his bunk. Looking back down, she saw that he'd dropped his gloves on her head. She then looked up again, mouth open to start yelling at him, to have his shirt land on her face.
"You watch it!" She snarled, yanking the garment off of her face and stuffing it away. "I'll get you yet!"
"Nah." He finally peaked back over the side to smirk at her. "You'd never get close enough; I'd pick you off at a distance."
Loor was tempted to pout as she heard Daxter and Fury laughing. Jak was teasing her for refusing to practice with them earlier.
"Stuff it, Mr. Hero." She growled, taking his boots and holster as he handed them down nicely instead of tossing them; those would hurt a lot.
It was so strange for her to be interacting with anyone like this, the fact that it was her favorite game character of all time simply added to her own discomfort and confusion. She didn't do people. She usually never hung around her friends for more than twenty four hours because she was prone to emotional explosions.
Not knowing how to handle the situation, she shut down, quickly hiding back in her bunk and pressing her shoulders into the pillow, yanking up the thin blanket to cover herself. She watched as Fury lost most of her gear, settling in to sleep on the bottom bunk furthest from the door on the right. Daxter took the top bunk closer to the door, opposite from his partner, able to curl up completely on the pillow.
Aware that everyone had settled in, she closed her own eyes and tried to relax. It was so strange; the last conscious memory she had was sitting in Chelsea's room, watching liquid energy collect in a jar- validating what she considered to be the greatest accomplishment of her existence. Now, finally settling in to sleep, she was in the underground after escaping from the Baron's prison.
One hell of an eventful day, if she did say so herself. Right now, however, seemed like a moment of truth. She'd had crazy long and detailed dreams before, and they usually ended upon falling asleep, or dying, in said dream. If her theory was correct, that this was all just a flight of fancy, she'd wake up back in her own bed after drifting off. She'd start the day over again, and suffer a sickening case of da-ja-vu as she compared every moment of it to her dream.
...but if she fell asleep and woke up in the underground, she'd be forced to accept it was all real. The Dark Warrior Program, Jak, Daxter, Torn, Haven, everything. It was mind-boggling, and made her want to curl up under her bunk and hide till the war was over.
She shook her head while tugging her pillow around, turning to face the corner and stretching out under the blanket. It couldn't possibly be real. Why would Fury have changed, and Loor felt no effect? Supposedly she'd been in that tube for longer than her friend, so shouldn't she have changed at some point too?
Shouldn't something have happened by now, if indeed she was a successful project of the Baron's?
Thinking the way she was, it wasn't long before she found herself yawning, and then, finally, dozing. She lost her focus of thoughts, letting them wander to and fro, snuggling her pillow and able to pretend, just for a moment, that she was home in her own bed.
Just a nightmare... just a horrible nightmare...
Her head jerked around violently.
Jak had not fallen asleep. He'd released himself from his equipment, laid back, gotten comfortable, and then stared at the ceiling. He should have been sleeping, since he had to be ready for whatever came next, but his mind was working too hard for him to drift off.
These two girls, Loor and Fury... how had they survived? He knew why he had lived; the blue sage told him back before he'd come to Haven. He had a talent for channeling eco. It was like his body had been made for it. But these two... did they have the same talent? Or was there something else about them?
He wondered if they'd both experienced the transformation, like he had. The day he'd escaped had been his first change, and it turned out to be a positive thing. Since then, he'd stopped trying to reject the eco. Before, like all other test subjects, he'd go into violent seizures as he tried to reject what didn't belong.
It was how most test subjects died; thrashing so hard they broke their head on cold metal floor of the fortress, or their neck from the lurid force. If they were able to ride out the rejection cycles, the taint of the eco usually killed them within a few weeks of testing.
Only he'd survived. He'd seen so many die over two years of treatments, but he'd survived. The rejection cycles had even become routine after a while. He knew when they were coming, and he'd pin himself somewhere with a pillow wrapped around his neck to soften the force.
But then he'd changed when Dax rescued him. After the first transformation, it all stopped.
But what if they hadn't gone through that yet? The thought was mildly upsetting to him. He had memory of being a cell across from someone who died going through the rejection cycle; listening to them flop about like a fish out of water. It had been torture, not being able to help, having to just sit there till the sickening crack of their skull coming open put an end to it.
He rolled over. He'd never be able to sleep if he kept thinking about that. Pressing his head into the pillow, he made an effort to close his eyes and try and shut off his brain.
In this effort, he felt the bunk sway under him. It was short, jerky movement, that suddenly stopped and then went the other direction.
Then the choked-off noise of someone trying to breathe through locked-up lungs.
He was up and out of bed like a shot. He knew that noise. He knew what it meant.
The girl below him, Loor, hadn't had her first transformation yet. She was rejecting.
Thankfully, he was in a position where he could help for once. It had only just started, the less severe spasms of the neck having sent her into the panic that caused the whole event to escalate.
By now she'd rolled unto her back, her mouth open wide in the desperate attempt to breathe, something she wouldn't be able to do till she stopped panicking. All her efforts produced at the moment was a painful and squeaky noise of her lungs laboring.
He dove down, taking hold of her and yanking her away from the wall to the center of the bunk, pinning her shoulders down and holding them with his knees, also trapping her head between his thighs. He could see the muscles in her shoulders and neck, cording and sticking out at the random impulse to jerk about. He reached over her to hold the rest of her body down, looking as her eyes had finally come open. She must have been nearly asleep when this struck her; her eyes were wide and fearful.
"Calm down." He commanded. "It'll pass, but you have to calm down."
She would have nodded if her neck hadn't been twitching so much, but calming down was easier said than done.
She was terrified, staring up at the shape of a person she didn't even know. Her half asleep mind said she knew the voice, but she didn't want to trust. She looked up at the only part she could see clearly; the aqua eyes that told her she had to trust him, or die.
Slowly, the twitching died down. Moments later she was able to let in a shuddering breath that tasted so sweet. She took her first few breaths in gasps, staring at the shape that loomed over her in the darkness. Something told her she knew him, but she had been asleep only moments ago... Her eyes were ill adjusted to the dim light she'd woken into, and her mind was a mess.
What had just happened to her? Where was she? She'd expected to wake up in her own bed from some kind of nightmare.
She looked at him again. Her eyes had begun to adjust by now, but what she saw didn't make sense.
"Are you okay?" He asked, still holding her down.
His voice. The eyes. She could see his face now. "No..." She whimpered, struggling. She wanted to run, to bolt for the door and somehow escape.
She wanted to escape this nightmare.
But the face she stared at was real. The bed under her back, and the room she laid in; all real as could be.
But it couldn't be. It just couldn't.
I won't accept it. I can't.
The twitching returned in her fear, the catch in her breath coming back as her terror brought back her body's reaction to what had been done to her. She felt like she was burning up on the inside, the whole of her person racked with pain as her neck tried to jerk free of the constraints that had been placed.
She stared up as Jak held her down, kept her from hurting herself. He shook his head at her, frowning in the darkness. "You have to calm down and stay calm, or it'll just come back."
She felt tears welling up, wanting to deny what she saw. She wanted to deny all of it, but it was right in her face, and it wasn't going away.
She gritted her teeth. She had to calm down; her lungs were aching for need of air.
The tears came more freely as she was able to draw in another shallow gasp. With it, she whispered, her voice one of desperation.
"You're not real..."
He had released her when she stopped struggling, and now he gave her a look as she proclaimed this. Had a monster started talking to her, dragging her into insanity by plaguing her thoughts? The eyes he got form her, her gaze didn't go through him, it stopped at his eyes.
"You're not real." She said with more strength, like a child protesting their first taste of reality.
She'd started hyperventilating now, glancing around. He took hold of her again, frowning. "Keep calm, or it'll start up again."
She shook her head, sniffing and swallowing. "It's not real... it's not real... it can't be..."
In her mind she knew it was real. It was no longer a nightmare; it was her life no matter how illogical and impossible it was.
He thought she was talking about a creature similar to the beast that lived in his mind. The mental split that dark eco had caused in him; that he'd had a similar reaction to. He'd denied it for the longest time, wanting to ignore the voice that ripped his sanity.
"Jak..." Her voice pleaded, as if he could change it. "It's not..."
"It is real." He said, finding that the truth was always the best answer to such chaos.
She closed her eyes a moment, tears sliding down her cheeks, before managing a sad nod. She knew. Then, finally, her tense muscles relaxed.
A few moments later he noted that she'd passed out like that, falling into sleep.