Author's Note: Yayz an update! I guess I could warn you about the graphic content of this chapter, but if any of you have read this far then you know what it's like. This chapter's not really anything special in that respect.

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Ten: Pushing the Limit

Daxter heaved a sigh as he signed the invoice, passing it over to the guard to take the main sheet, leaving him the yellow carbon-copy for his records. "I'll be back every two or three months for about a year, just to make sure they don't come back," the orange-furred youth explained. It was policy to do at least two follow-up visits after the basic extermination, but Daxter planned on more than that—he needed an excuse to come back here without risking death or dismemberment.

There had been no sign of Jak. No hint of his scent or scrap of his clothing, no cell that felt like Sandover—he was sure Jak's would, positive that he would carry the feeling with him—and no bed with the sheets and blankets reversed, as the ottsel's best friend had always preferred to sleep. No sign of him ever being here.

He was beginning to wonder if he was wrong, if Jak had been taken somewhere else. Erol had said the Baron wanted Jak—could the young hero have been carried off to the palace? Daxter had never managed more than a preliminary examination of the massive tower in the heart of the city, and even then it had only been the lower levels. He couldn't make it up any of the elevators to the more habitable sections of the palace, and didn't dare to try climbing up an empty shaft—Precursors knew there were plenty no longer in use—for fear of falling, being crushed or being discovered by one of the repair teams.

So he had limited himself to scoping out the prison. And it had led him nowhere.

The unmasked Krimzon Guard returned the carbon copy of the invoice, tucking his original into a file folder on the corner of his desk. "Do you really think it'll take a whole year to make sure they place is clean?"

Daxter nodded, assuring the man that it was entirely necessary. "Those things are stubborn as hell, not to mention hard to catch. I found a clutch and got rid of it, but there's no telling that's the only one." He sat down—on the man's desk—and pointed to the map inlaid in the metal. "The biggest concentration was here, on the third level, but the clutch was here, in the first level basement. The whole place is flooded pretty badly, too. You should start posting small patrols down there to keep an eye out for the bugs." Daxter knew that the man had at least some sway over the patrols—the tattoos on his face and ears proved that much, where the youth could read them—and he intended to use that to his advantage.

"But we already have a whole unit that does rounds down there," the brunet said, brow furrowing.

"Thin it a little. If there are a lot of people down there it'll just scare the bugs into moving up a level or two. Next thing you know they could be in the ammo dump, the high-security cell block, or even the barracks." He stood up again, folding the invoice and tucking it into the plastic container attached to the side of his pack. "It's a good idea to keep the patrols slim, but not remove them altogether—if anyone sees anything, anything at all, give my boss a call and I'll come back to get rid of 'em."

"Thanks a lot," the guard said with a heartfelt smile. "You really don't know how much this is going to help the Guard."

Daxter grinned. "Probably not."

OOOOOOOO

"Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you're in, boy?"

Praxis?

"If you were anyone else—anyone at all—Erol would have killed you the moment you broke away."

What was he talking about?

"But, lucky for you, you're not anyone else."

Jak's vision cleared, and with it came a surging pain in his legs. He gasped at the lancing heat, dizzied by its intensity, and realized a moment too late that there was some sort of translucent mask affixed over his mouth and nose. The flavor of the air pushed through that mask was unmistakable—memories of Misty Island, early in the morning before the violet-tinted fog had settled down over the sea, rushed through his thoughts.

Samos had said the mist that the forbidden isle was named for was dark eco that had, over the years, made its way through the fine cracks and chinks in the silo set into the heart of the island. Heated by the sun after so long in complete cold had turned the liquid to a fine haze, potent enough to kill and to taint, but easily avoidable.

He took a deep breath and almost choked on the air, fighting back a coughing fit that tore away at his lungs. Another breath, forced through the hacking, and the pain subsided for an instant. He couldn't avoid the rush of relief at the momentary comfort.

The youth remembered the look of relief on Gol's face when he took a breath of the foggy air on Misty Island, how the pain had faded from his deep scarlet eyes for a split second, and felt instantly sick to his stomach.

It appeared he was turning out to be Gol after all.

Praxis leaned over him. "You really don't know what you've gotten yourself into, do you?" The Baron's words were taunting, arrogant and painful to hear. Jak knew at his captor's tone that his attempted escape could not have come at a worse time for either of them, and cursed himself for not waiting just a little longer, just one more treatment—

He cried out—the noise more like a bark than a scream—when Praxis prodded one of his legs, causing the pain to escalate to dizzying levels.

At least the red eco was almost completely gone from his system now; it still burned his lungs a little when he inhaled—though the pain swiftly faded when the mist reached his insides—but he no longer felt it in the tips of his fingers or surging around under his skin.

He had been warned against this.

"It's like you constantly have your foot on the gas. You need to learn to hit the brake sometimes, or sooner or later you're going to crash." Calloused fingers, pale in spite of the constant sun, brushed his knuckles. Green eyes went dark with some secret knowledge. "I don't want to have to watch you crash, Jak."

He had smiled and waved a hand, promising that he would be fine—what could being able to channel eco possibly do to hurt him? He had spent hours jumping between the ground and blue eco vents; danced through the green until scars from his childhood faded to nothing; shaped clusters of yellow into stars and suns and planets before throwing them high in the air and watching them burst; reveled in the rush of red through his body, certain he could take on anything. What, he had wondered, could any of them possibly do to hurt him?

He knew now. He had crashed, burned and broken himself from the inside out.

At least Keira hadn't been there to see it.

"Don't you have anything to say?"

Jak opened his eyes again, glancing down the reclined chair he was strapped to, taking stock of the thick metal spike driven into his left leg—the broken one—and the line it connected to, dark eco that sparkled with hints of green. Green-treated dark eco, just like Erol had claimed they used to repair his vocal cords.

Praxis followed the youth's gaze and chuckled dryly, coming around the chair and flicking the spike with one thick finger. Jak's vision went white with pain for an instant as the shifting of metal against the bone shattered any sense of calm he had felt.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" The Baron said evenly. "It's driven right into the bone. I would have preferred to use straight green, but it looks like your body can't take any eco aside from dark anymore, so we had to settle with green-treated." He turned, fixing his single burnt-sienna eye on the youth, and glared. "You're lucky you're worth so much. If not, I would have killed you myself a long time ago."

"Why don't you?" Jak ground out. Praxis stared, taken aback, and the teen spoke again. "Why don't you kill me? It's obvious I'm never going to be what you want me to, so why bother?"

Praxis took a breath, and angry flush creeping up the little skin he had visible. He tapped the spike lightly, just enough to make Jak's vision blur. "Because, Jak, I know you can take orders. I've seen what you can do, and you're going to make one fine weapon when we're done with you."

"I won't do this," Jak asserted through clenched teeth. "I won't kill for you, Praxis. Not again." His eyes narrowed, flashing black. "The only people I ever intend to hurt are you and Erol."

"If a soldier cannot learn to use his weapon in such a way that it won't turn on him," Praxis whispered, voice an angry hiss, an oath, a blow to Jak's psyche, "then he was never a soldier to begin with." He reached out to toy with one of the dials on the face of the contraption the line of green-treated eco connected to, never taking his eye from the youth. "And I'm quite the soldier."

Praxis spun the dial as far as it would go, and Jak screamed at the top of his lungs as burning fluid flooded his bones.

OOOOOOOO

Erol sighed as he looked the broken youth over, shaking his head. "He's a giant bruise, Baron! What did you do?"

Praxis smirked, and the Krimzon guard knew that it had been a matter of pride, whatever it was. "I just sped up the healing process a little. The bruises are fading by the minute—watch, there goes another one." Erol turned just in time to see a patch of skin pale out to ashen white, then darken to a proper tan once more. "It will bring up his stamina, in the long run."

Erol sighed, but held his peace regarding the treatment of his captive, instead turning and gesturing for a small metal crate to be carried in by the guard standing outside the door. "I brought another batch of the blue-treated stuff, double last time's dose." Yellow eyes narrowed. "Although Vin seems to be less than agreeable lately—he was extremely reluctant to part with this. I think he's up to something, sir."

The Baron gave his second a disbelieving look. "Vin? Vin, up to something?" Praxis let out a loud laugh. "Are we thinking of the same person?" Erol folded his arms and stared at his superior impatiently. Praxis sighed and waved a large hand. "Vin would never have the guts to do anything besides dream." He paused, arching his one eyebrow. "Actually, I'm not even sure he does that anymore."

"I don't trust him. He's seen too much—he already knew too much even before we started this project."

"Well, he does have the highest blue eco channeling abilities on record," Praxis reminded the younger man. "We couldn't very well leave him out in the slums to join the Underground, could we?"

"But, sir—"

He sighed in annoyance. "Fine! If he's bothering you that much, have him reassigned. Send him to the Drill Platform or the Dig or something." He paused. "No, wait; make him foreman at the Strip Mine. They've needed a replacement out there for months."

Erol gave a short bow. "Thank you, Baron." He straightened and turned his gaze to the unconscious youth on the Baron's other side. "In the meantime, though, I believe we have some work to do."

OOOOOOOO

He's awake, sir.

A deep breath.

Keep your eyes open.

Why wouldn't he? His eyes were open, seeing and learning and understanding, he had no urge to close them. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, looking between the two figures standing on either side, and waited for one or the other to speak.

You still take orders, don't you?

"Of course I do." His voice tasted electric as it pushed through his mouth, ricocheting off teeth and bouncing out in a gravelly crackle.

Do you remember last time I had you fight?

His chest seized, some painful emotion that he couldn't quite place surging through his heart. He had done something wrong, last time. Something that hurt him inside, made him feel sick. He had wanted to throw himself into a wall at full force, last time, just to clear the images from his head. Why? It had been easy, why should he have felt so badly about doing as he was told?

"Yes," he replied. "I remember."

This time I want you to do more than just fight. Can you do that?

Chapped lips curved in a grin, eyes narrowed and flashed black. "It's easier that way."

OOOOOOOO

There were fewer this time. A dozen, maybe. Probably less. It had been even easier than last time; he didn't feel anything when blue or brown or amber eyes widened and lips parted, howls and pleas torn from damaged lungs over and over again.

Then Erol, yellow-eyed and tattooed and smiling, was there, and his hand was gripped firmly around a slim, pale arm, a wiry figure struggling against his hold for only a moment before being shoved against the white-haired and blue-eyed creature that had been a hero, long ago.

"Last one," Erol said.

He looked down at the skinny boy staring up at him. The hair was wrong, just barely, and the eyes seemed different, but it didn't matter. He blinked, and the colors of fire overtook the deep auburn, blue shadowed brown and it didn't matter that there had ever been differences in the first place.

Jak took a shaky step backward and shook his head. "No," he hissed.

"Last one, Jak. You have your orders."

"I don't care!"

Erol sighed, his eyes slid past the youth, and something cracked against the back of Jak's skull, snapping against hair and skin and bone, and he fell.

OOOOOOOO

Jak awoke as though from a nightmare, in his cot and in his cell, as safe he could get in this place. He wiped a hand at the cold sweat on his face, using his headband when he recalled its presence, and tried to calm his breathing.

Daxter, wherever he was right now, was safe. Jak was certain of it, more certain than he had ever been of anything in his life. Brown eyes and too-dark hair flashed in his thoughts, the scent blood and the taste of fear, and he jerked. Leaning forward on his meager bed, holding a hand over one eye when pain pounded behind it, Jak's long hair fell forward over his shoulders as they began to shake. He ground his teeth, fighting back a strangled sound of hurt that tore free from the back of his throat.

No. Daxter was safe, he hadn't hurt him. He had said no, refused and swore to never harm that too-familiar face. No matter what they said to him, no matter what they did to him, that was one order he would never complete.

"I think you might be relapsing."

If Erol had just walked in or been there all along, the young man couldn't say. The Captain stood there now, though, leaning back against the wall to one side of the door with a manila file folder in his hand, reading over the numerous papers inside. "We used a higher concentration of blue-dark eco than we have before, though…"

Yellow eyes rose from perfect white parchment and the man grinned. "You've been out for almost two weeks," he hissed, voice like liquid metal. "Tell me, Jak, when you're unconscious for so long, when you're only asleep from eco shock, do you dream?"

Blue eyes and orange hair—or fur, maybe it was fur—and a high voice that howled in pain, screaming for help over and over and over…

The youth met his captor's eyes. "No."

OOOOOOOO

"You really should eat something, Jak."

"I'm not hungry." He arched an eyebrow, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned back against the wall beside the commander. "Is that really much of a surprise?"

Erol thought for a moment, pursing his lips slightly, then shrugged. "I suppose not." He tilted his head sideways, one ear cocking downward. "The last thing I want is for you to starve to death and leave Praxis with me as his only willing subject."

Jak let out a scoff, turning to face the older racer. "I'm willing?"

The Dark Eco Captain smirked. "You've never met our basis for comparison."

It was moments like this that left the former hero most unsettled outside the recent assessments; another of Erol's masks, this one more similar to a frustrated older brother than a murderer and a rapist. This was the one mask that Jak couldn't gauge, the only facet of Erol's being that he was entirely incapable of predicting. The last several months had given him plenty of time to get used to this recent development in his captor's behavior, but the problem lay in the fact that Jak could never tell when this mask was going to fall, metal and glass clatter at the feet of his psyche, to be replaced by a darker, sharper expression and disposition.

It was almost as though Erol had divided his emotions so completely that they had formed their own separate sections of his soul, pseudo-personalities that the Crimson Guard flitted between like a hummingbird in the middle of a flower field. A hummingbird with very sharp teeth. And an interest in boys significantly younger than himself.

Jak had recently noticed, and was reminded at this moment, that in spite of their obvious age discrepancy there was little difference in size between them. Erol was maybe a fingerlength taller than Jak, and barely thicker in musculature in spite of the Captain's regular meals and the youth's regular torture sessions.

They were putting him through assessments almost weekly now, charging him and tossing him into rooms filled with people that probably didn't deserve to be in this place at all with orders simply to do more than fight. Jak, though he hated to admit it, was used to it now. Those people were better off dead anyway, he told himself. Death brought safety, the one thing they would never have in this horrible place.

"Actually, I have," Jak replied. "Remember my first assessment?"

Erol waved a hand, pushing off from the wall. "That was hardly a proper meeting. In fact, it was a bit of a fiasco if you ask me." He shook his head, brow furrowing. "You certainly caused a fair bit of trouble for the rest of us."

"You're still alive," he hissed through clenched teeth, blue in his eyes slowly eclipsed by violet-tinted black. "I'd say that means things went off pretty well."

"But there's someone else who's still alive, too," the older man whispered in reply, yellow eyes slanting back over his shoulder to meet black without a hint of trepidation. "And that poses quite a problem." He turned around on one foot, almost like a pirouette, and leaned forward to stand at proper eye-level with the young man. "So, when are you going to tell me who Daxter is?"

"When you're dying at my feet," he said, not even blinking.

Erol laughed. "That's just the sort of answer Praxis likes to hear."

OOOOOOOO

Screams tore through the rank air, both electric and alive, ricocheting off a thousand panels of metal, distorting to inhuman roars and a song that sent shivers through the other prisoners. There was nothing quite like the screams of Praxis' last Dark Warrior, the only subject remaining after the recent escalation of assessments and treatments. There were whispers of him between cells, in the mess hall, in the dark places where the dead were thrown after he was through with them.

The other prisoners, the guard, the few assistants that transported the eco back and froth from treatment areas to the prison—all were absolutely terrified. If this thing ever got out, if Praxis and Erol ever lost control, the entire city would be at risk.

Erol repositioned the eco injector, massive spikes of tapered metal spinning as he evened out the levels and reached for the activation switch again. He hated this method—it was messy, loud and dangerous. The injectors themselves, the great huge needles the drove deep into Jak's chest as he writhed in his metal bonds, were too large to assure a complete flushing of dark eco upon deactivation. Because of this, there was often a bleeding of eco over the subject's skin when the injector was removed.

The head of the Krimzon Guard liked to keep the tainted energy contained at all times, whether it was in a plastic line or the veins of a seventeen-year-old boy didn't matter so long as there was no way for it contact his skin. This method of infusion made it impossible to keep that precious separation, and Erol didn't like it. That, among other things, was the reason he wore a proper tunic and slacks today rather than his normal jumpsuit—under those he wore the black protective bodysuit the young mechanic, Keira, had designed for him last year.

Really, though, what was wrong with the showers and the IV and the vapor? Sometimes the fiery-haired racer really had no clue where the Baron got his ideas…

Jak's eyes flew open and they weren't blue, or even black, but the brightest violet he had ever seen, glowing and inhuman and terrible. And Erol, for a moment, understood why the Baron was so fond of this method. He loved every minute of it.

The injection cycle finished and the Commander took hold of the bar bolted to the side of the apparatus, pulling to one side and then pushing upward, muscles straining until the machinery kicked in and finished the move. There were holes in Jak's shirt and trails of dark eco soaked into the fabric, great holes in his skin dying the violet fluid scarlet in tiny rivulets.

The youth's breath was heavy, his eyes clenched tightly shut and his body twitching, jerking against his shackles. Erol reached down and pressed the switch beside the one binding Jak's right wrist, opening the thick band of metal, and instantly the teen's hand went to his chest. Clawing at cloth and skin, smearing eco and blood together into a mass of rancid odors, Jak gave a ragged whimper.

Erol folded his arms and smirked. Jak's wrist was sliced open where he had tugged against the shackle, and the wound on his upper left arm—left over from the assessment two days before, when he had gone after the Commander in place of Rune at the last minute—had reopened, staining white bandages deep red.

"Praxis wants to keep you on this one for at least the next month," Erol said. "I'm sure you'll get used to it eventually."

OOOOOOOO

Daxter stopped dead in his tracks as he made his way carefully over the piping that ran along the catwalk high above the central chamber of the Prison, ears pressed back against his head as a horrible scream tore through the quiet hum of machinery and air conditioning. He turned, looking down at the platform set in the middle of the room, and his eyes narrowed.

"Bastards," he spat, clenching a fist tighter about his shock-prod. He recognized the telltale violet spark of dark eco long before the scent reached him, and the realization of what was happening hurt even more than the screams had hurt his ears.

What Praxis was doing here was nothing short of evil. Whatever sick and twisted goal had him trying to make another Gol Acheron was beyond the ottsel's knowledge, but he knew that he didn't like it. He crawled forward, across a pipe toward the center of the room, and shimmied down a thick wire that hung a light from the ceiling to get closer. He could probably hit one of the feed lines with his prod from here, and that would be sure to put the machine out of commission for a while, at least long enough for that poor guy down there to take a breath that wasn't followed by a scream.

He looked down at the two people below; there was Commander Erol in his trademark blue and yellow, that stupid insect-like helmet pulled up to his hairline, but the machine was in the way of the other figure. Not that it mattered, not really—whoever it was, they didn't deserve this.

Erol reached up to adjust the injector at the same moment Daxter made the leap from his perch on the light to one of the power lines, and the sudden motion of his intended landing place caused him to miss. He scrambled to catch another line, another pipe, and managed to take hold of another light cord, sliding down and giving his hands a nasty burn under orange and yellow fur.

He winced, righting himself, and turned to see how close he was to the Commander, how much danger of being discovered he was risking. When he turned, though, he didn't even see Erol.

Instead, Daxter saw the young man on the metal chair—writhing and screaming and bleeding all over—and his heart stopped.

"Oh my god," he breathed, voice barely a choked gasp. "Jak?"

OOOOOOOO

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