Sorry, but I realised I'd published two chapters as one, so for all of you who realise they've allready read this chapter; you're not getting a bad memory. Skip this and go right to the nex one if you don't feel like a re-run. This is what was the later part of chapter 9: A dangerous place.

Haven City looked even more horrifying than he remembered it.

Jak took a deep breath and tried not to think about what waited for him on the other side of those walls surrounding the city.

It had been a little more than two years now since he'd decided to leave for good. He'd been fed up with the entire city and all that came with living within its concrete walls.

All the demands and cravings.

The dark plots of the underground organisations that secretly controlled the place in spite of Torn's eager attempts to scatter them.

Even after the whole calamity caused by the war had calmed down, Jak had seen proof that the reign of baron Praxis had caused even the smallest child to mistrust anyone with power, no matter in what way that power was used.

In the dark alleys of the slums, as well as in the centre of the city, crime prospered in all the ways possible.

It was when Ashelin had demanded he'd take his place on the throne as the rightful heir, that Jak had made his final choice to leave.

He didn't want to have anything to do with this nest of mistrust and anger. He had enough of that by just trying to stay in control of himself.

And then it was Keira.

That woman had made things pretty hard to endure once they'd gotten back from Kras City.

Jak shook his head at the memories.

He'd choked up on the demands.

Ashelin wanted him to rule the city, Torn wanted him in the front lines of the guards and Keira wanted him to settle down.

Why couldn't things just have stayed as they were?

And now he was once more facing those very walls he'd sworn never to return to.

He was sent on orders from Sig to get in contact with Torn, or most preferably with Onin or Samos, in order to try and find a reason for the metalhead activity around Spargus.

Jak knew Sig had picked him to go simply as a way of forcing him to make contact with those he'd left behind.

He also knew that he didn't want to do it, but as he couldn't make himself turn down the mission or disobey the orders given, he simply had no other choice than to follow through with it.

"Welcome back, we're glad to see you're still alive. Have a nice day."

The automatic message that played itself as the gate opened made Jak wrinkle his nose in disgust. Why they still hadn't changed that message was a bit hard to understand. Maybe the technology controlling the gates was still malfunctioning since the blasts the central had taken during the war.

But it still made his skin crawl.

Jak stepped out onto the street and stood still for a moment as he tried to locate himself.

Sure, he knew the city just about as well as he knew his way around in his own pocket, but the streets had changed a bit since the last time he'd been there.

For example, last time he'd checked this entrance, there hadn't been a building standing on the spot in front of him. Nor had there been this much traffic in this area before.

Some of the walking citizens took a really long look at him as they passed him by, making sure they didn't get all too close to him. At least not much had changed in that area.

Probably his wastelander outfit, completed with a gun strapped across his back and the desert dust on his face and arms, didn't exactly help him to fit in, but he still thought it shouldn't create as much of a ruckus as it did.

Luckily he'd left the tough puppy outside, or else he'd probably get arrested right away for creating a scene.

After a little wandering, keeping to the shadows in a try to avoid attention, Jak finally managed to get to a place he did recognize.

The central market place.

After trying to get some information from the spooked shopkeepers, he found his way to the spot where Onin had used to live in her tent. All though as he got there, Jak realised that the old fortune teller had moved her belongings elsewhere.

"Great," Jak muttered under his breath and forced himself not to kick at a stone by his feet.

The very air simmered with the noise of the city and its inhabitants and Jak was starting to feel like a caged animal.

This was going nowhere!

He didn't want to meet with Keira, or else he'd gotten himself over to the arena for some directions.

If Onin wasn't possible to find, then he'd have to go for Samos or Torn. And last time he'd checked, the old man had lived at the palace, the very place where he'd just be happening to find both Torn and Ashelin as well.

This day sure wasn't turning out to be a good one.

As he stood there in the middle of the square, trying to decide which way to go, Jak's line of thoughts was interrupted by the scream of a little girl at the stand next by him.

Curious of what was happening he turned to look.

A woman who was probably the girl's mother tried to hush her in the same time as she was arguing with the shop keeper.

"I swear, she didn't mean anything by it, she simply liked the colour and reached for it!"

"You break it, you buy it!" the fat shopkeeper rumbled back at the distraught woman and the little girl cried even louder.

"But it was an accident! I don't have the money to pay for it!"

"Then I'll just have to call for the guards, won't I?" the man said in an angry voice as he towered over the mother while she desperately tried to calm down her daughter. The poor girl couldn't be more than four years old and apparently she'd happened to break a pretty large, and by the sound of the shop keeper, expensive vase.

Jak was going to leave it be, figuring it would all soon be solved, when he saw how the fat man deliberately pushed the crying child into the table of his stand, making yet another vase crash to the ground in the process.

"Now look at what you've done!" the man yelled at the woman.

This whole scene had attracted a crowd by now, but surprisingly enough, no one interfered or objected as the shopkeeper harassed the woman, demanding her to pay even more money than before.

Just before the man raised his hand to hit the woman, who was now down on her knees trying to pick up the pieces of the vases, Jak stepped in front of him with a set face.

Squaring his jaw, he slowly shook his head at the man, who, quite surprised at Jak's appearance, took a step back and blinked in disbelief.

"What? Who- who are you? How dare you interfere with my business?" he stammered out and worked up his anger once more. "I'll call the guards!"

Jak helped the woman back up on her feet and didn't bother to give the fat man a look.

Still not saying a word, he lifted the now silent but still crying girl over to her mother's arms, before he finally turned towards the enraged man.

"Guards! Help! Guards! He's got a gun!" the shopkeeper suddenly yelled out, having spotted the gun strapped onto Jak's back as he'd returned the girl to her mother.

Jak didn't think to bother about this and simply rolled his eyes at the yelling man.

He reached down into his small bag of money that he'd brought with him in case he'd need to buy something to eat, and brought out a small amount of coins together with a small metalhead skull gem.

He pressed the money into the man's hand and turned to leave as he saw him gawking over the gem, when two men in blue armour suddenly showed up from behind the corner.

Noticing Jak's outfit, they stopped him and took a long look at the scattergun on his back.

"It's against the law to carry heavy weaponry within the city walls, wastelander. Please remove your gun and come with us," one of the guards said in a calm voice.

Figuring he'd get to Torn way faster this way, Jak decided to agree and started unstrapping the gun.

"But he didn't do anything wrong!"

Surprised to hear the objection, Jak looked up.

The mother of the crying girl was now standing next to one of the guards, still holding her daughter in her arms.

"It's still against the law. But don't worry, ma'm, he's not from around here, so he'll be off with a warning. We just have to go through with some procedures first."

"But…" the woman tried to object, but Jak simply shook his head at her.

"Don't bother, I'll be just fine. Don't make anything you'll regret later for my sake," he said in a low voice as he turned over his gun to the waiting guards.

"Just take me to the commander in chief and I'll discuss this with him," he said as he turned to the guard who had spoken first.

"All right, fair enough," the guard answered him and turned around to leave.

"Follow me then."

And so he did, only feeling slightly annoyed as the other guard fell in behind him, acting as if he was a prisoner. As if he was dangerous.

Walking through the city in this manner, he could just as well had been hand-cuffed and marked with a sign saying he was a criminal.

Every other person they passed stared. Some of them made a face telling him he was disgusting for breaking the law. Others seemed to sympathise with him, giving him looks that told him to hang in there.

But none of them did anything more than just look.

Not a word was spoken to him or his guides through the labyrinth that was Haven City.

Jak couldn't help but regretting ever stepping back inside the walls.

The guards took him to a high building close to the grounds of the old palace.

As they stepped inside, they were immediately met with the sound of the guards that were off duty for the moment, playing cards or simply arguing about something.

As they saw Jak, most of them silenced.

Taking someone here, to the headquarters of the guard, either had to mean the person was a very dangerous criminal, or something was about to happen.

"Where is commander Torn? We have a request to see him," one of Jak's guards asked one of the others.

The man in question took a long hard look at Jak, who simply stared back at him in silence until the other man averted his eyes.

"All right, he's in the back, having a meeting of sorts with that old man. I'd wait it out if I were you," the man said and pointed with his thumb at a door further down a hall.

The guards who'd taken Jak to the place were about to agree with their colleague, but Jak didn't think he'd get a better chance to talk to Samos than this, so without further ado, he simply walked up to the door before anyone had the time to stop him, and opened it.

"Hey, what are you doing! You can't just…" the guard who'd been closest to him yelled out, but he was cut short in his objection as the people inside the back room saw who it was that had entered.

"Jak!?"

Three voices yelled out in chorus.

And Jak felt like leaving at the spot, seeing the faces of Ashelin, Torn and Samos turn towards him in wonder.

The guards behind him seemed all to draw their breath at the sound of his name.

Jak sighed.

Everybody knew his name and what he'd done.

But no one knew who he was. And right now, he didn't need an extra audience, so he stepped inside the room and slammed the door shut in the faces of the guards who had risen to get closer.

"Jak, my boy, where on the face of this planet have you been?" Samos asked him in a voice that was simultaneously worried and accusing.

"We were starting to think you'd never come back," Ashelin said, a new light awakening in her eyes as Jak walked up closer to them.

"Well, say something!" Samos demanded as Jak silently sat down in one of the chairs around the conference table.

Jak didn't feel like talking.

He didn't even want to be here in the first place.

He looked at Torn, who was the only one who hadn't said anything to him yet.

The hard blue-grey eyes observed him in silence for a few seconds. Then he made a face telling he'd discovered something odd.

"Where's Daxter?" he asked.

He'd been the last one Jak had expected to notice or even mention the absence of the ottsel on his shoulder.

Now that Torn had mentioned it though, both the others suddenly seemed to realise that there actually was something missing in the picture.

"I thought it was a little too quiet," Ashelin noted and looked around the room as if to see if the little animal in question was actually just hiding out somewhere.

Samos, however, was the one to notice Jak's reaction towards Torn's question.

"Something's happened?" he asked carefully in a gentle voice.

Jak didn't want to answer.

Sooner or later they'd all figure it out anyway.

"I'm not here to stay."

Ashelin gave Jak a disappointed and scolding look as he said this.

"I'm just here on orders from Sig. He needs to get in contact with you regarding an unusual behaviour among the wasteland metalheads. They've been attacking Spargus' walls for some time now and we're starting to get out of ideas as how to track down the reason for this."

Torn slowly shook his head in thought and Jak waited for someone to comment on this before he said anything more.

"So, how do we get in contact with him, then? Can't we use the communicators' frequencies as before?"

It was Ashelin who'd decided to speak.

"We can't make our coms catch your frequencies. Something's bugging them," Jak explained and put down two coms on the table.

"That's why I've brought you two of our own. They'll work. Just make sure to contact Sig as soon as you might have an answer to this," he said and got ready to leave the room.

He'd gotten as far as rising from the chair and turning around, when Samos stopped him, laying the top of his wooden cane onto Jak's shoulder.

"There's something you're not telling us Jak," Samos mused. "What has happened? Where's Daxter and why did you just pack up and leave like that? I need you to answer me on these questions."

Jak didn't turn around.

He could feel the anger caused by the eco move inside his chest and pushed back the desire to simply hit someone.

"If something's wrong, we might be able to help you," Samos continued, filling the awkward silence between them.

Jak breathed out slowly.

He couldn't afford to lose it right now, the control over his darker side. But the questions Samos asked him made him feel things he didn't want to know about.

Things he wanted to forget.

"You can't help me."

Jak had forced the words out from behind his teeth, his voice sounding much darker than he'd intended it to.

"Don't speak nonsense, boy! Just tell me what it is!"

Samos was worried now; he could hear it in his voice.

It was time to leave.

"Just leave me alone, ok?"

"Jak, where's Daxter?"

Ashelin's voice was sharp and commanding. She didn't just expect him to obey and answer, she demanded it.

"He's…" Jak struggled to find the words. He didn't want to say it, because if he did, it was as if he made it true in a way that it wasn't until he admitted it. But he couldn't just leave without answering now.

"Dead."

One word.

It was one small word, and still it hurt more to say than any other words he had ever heard himself say.

He didn't turn around to see the stunned look on the faces of the others, neither did he stay put to hear their reactions.

He simply walked out of the room, just as easily and calmly as he'd walked in.

The guards outside in the entrance room tried to look like they hadn't been trying to listen to the conversation, but Jak didn't even bother looking at them. He just grabbed his gun as it was held out to him and then he was off.

He ran through the streets at random, taking a turn when ever he thought it would be good to do so and not caring about the looks that he got as he rushed past groups of pedestrians.

Strangely enough, he was at the gate before he even knew how he'd gotten there.

"It's dangerous out there. Please come back."

The mechanical voice carved its message into his mind.

Yes. He knew it was dangerous out there.

That's why he wanted to get outside.

He needed for something to occupy his mind for a while.

As he stepped outside, Jak realised something was wrong.

The car wasn't where he'd put it.

He looked about for a while before he spotted it lying with the roof down some distance away.

Wind wouldn't do that.

A loud roar made him turn to look to his left and from behind a hill he could see a monstrous wasteland metalhead rise up to stand on all four.

It had tracked him down and waited for his return.

This meant big trouble.

If the metalheads were attacking in planned movements and tracking down their victims exclusively, someone had to be in the control of their actions.

Again.

Jak could feel the adrenaline rush to its purpose and the dark eco within his veins started to move faster, urging him on to release the built up anger.

He smiled and he almost didn't feel it as the horns started to grow out of his skull.

"Bring it on," he growled, the monster laughing inside his head as the metalhead rushed forward to crush him.