Author's Note: This chapter is cursed. Seriously. That's why it's taken so long to get written. So sorry for the insanely long wait.
Also, apparently this needs to be said--this is NOT the final chapter. The final chapter will have a nice, clear THE END at the end of it. Or something similar. I don't know why everyone thinks this is the last chapter, but it isn't. There will be more.

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Eleven: Total Overload

His hair was long, his skin paler than Daxter had ever seen it, and there were so many things that were painfully different about the young man not far below, but none of them were enough to overshadow the person underneath.

It was Jak. It had been almost two years, an eighth of the ottsel's life, since he saw that face or that hair, since he touched that skin or read those eyes in place of listened to a voice, but it was Jak.

And Jak was screaming.

Jak was screaming.

"Holy…" Daxter rose to his hind legs and took hold of the line running up to the ceiling, taking a hesitant half-step backward over the warm metal capping the light. Jak was screaming. Making sound, broken and tormented though it was. He had a voice.

The Commander deactivated the injector and repositioned it away from himself and the youth, unbuckling one shackle and then pausing to whisper something in Jak's ear. Daxter watched as Jak's eyes snapped open and his expression morphed from one of agony to one of rage, and he turned the look on his captor.

"How about you give it a try?" Jak growled, pulling at the shackle still on his left wrist as he attempted to sit up. He reached out, taking hold of Erol by his helmet in a motion so swift Daxter couldn't follow it, and slammed the older man's head into the side of the chair once, twice—the third time Erol's hand shot up to curl his gloved fingers tightly about the youth's bleeding wrist and twist it. He lifted his head to eye-level with Jak and hissed something Daxter couldn't hear.

He could smell the threat in it from here, though.

"Try it," Jak replied, giving a smirk that scared Daxter half to death, a smirk that reminded him of Gol. "You've never fought me without your lackeys or Praxis' tricks, Erol, and I'm starting to think it's because you know that if you ever do you're not going to walk away. You're a coward; Praxis' favorite little toy."

Erol released the boy's wrist, shoving him backward slightly, and took a step to stand out of his reach. "Be that as it may," he replied, seething, "you're no better. Would you like the running tally of how many prisoners you've killed in the last month, Jak?"

"Would you like to see how I did it?"

Daxter was terrified. He had made a thousand plans of what he would do when he found Jak, a thousand different situations with a thousand conclusions running through his head for almost two full years. This, though…this was Jak, most certainly so, but Praxis and Erol had done something to him, something that made him someone else at the same time. They had killed the noble bravery that had allowed him to defeat the Acherons so long ago, to become a hero to the people of their world, and left only this violent rage in its place.

The younger of the two Sandover heroes had seen Jak angry, that didn't bother him in the least, but for Jak—his Jak—to talk about killing people like it was nothing, to actually see him attack another elf with such ferocity… It made Daxter sick to his stomach and brought the too-familiar sting of overwhelming emotion to his eyes.

"Precursors, Jak," he choked, staring down at the seething teen, this boy with his bloody tunic and too-long hair, "what have they done to you?"

OOOOOOOO

"I have seen, Jak. I probably remember it better than you do." Erol folded his arms again and shook his head once, stopping when pain surged through his skull. He felt a warm wetness on the left side of his forehead that clearly denoted the presence of blood, and the chill metal of his helmet pressed hard against the break in his skin. That would explain where the gash had come from in the first place—Jak's attack had caved in the Commander's helmet on one side and it was that that injured him. Helmet damage or no, though, he was going to have one killer a headache in a couple seconds.

Jak's eyes flickered between black and blue, obsidian and sapphire, and the Commander smiled. "You recovered a lot faster than I thought you would. Baron Praxis will be very happy to hear that." He spun on his heel and headed across the divide, waving a hand as he went. "I'll send a couple guards in to escort you back to your cell."

The youth ground his teeth, fighting to keep his canines from sharpening too much, to keep horns from driving their way upward through the pounding in his skull. Not Erol, he told himself. Not Erol, Praxis. Praxis first.

Erol was gone, and Jak let out a sigh, closing his eyes and flopping backward onto the chair again, breathing deeply to steady his racing heart. Exhaustion settled over his limbs, and he remained complacent when four Guards came in a moment later and removed his shackles, dragged him from the chair, and half-carried him away.

"Praxis first," he whispered, eyelids growing heavy. "Praxis first."

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Daxter ran. Gasping and choking and fighting against the urge to scream at the top of his lungs, he scrambled through a pipeline and out into the lower levels, over the flooded passages and back out into the Haven City Slums. The dirty air assaulted his senses, cold and dark and so much worse than it had ever been. It sent a chill through his fur the likes of which he had never felt, worse than that horrible night he had been stuck out in the rain and ended up too sick to walk for three days, worse than the first Haven winter he had experienced, when a gale came down from the mountains and assaulted the city, bits of snow and slush forcing their way through the shield wall that covered the huge city in a great dome of blue and yellow eco.

He had lost his pack and shock-prod somewhere in the Prison; he couldn't say when he had sloughed it off, but the lack of a weight on his back was proof of its absence. A part of him noted that he would have some serious explaining to do to his boss when he headed back to work tomorrow, that he would either have to go back and get the pack or pay for a new one, but the insight was so quiet it was barely noticeable.

He realized suddenly that he was still running, and stopped just before crashing headlong into the dead end of an alley. He dropped to all fours, then rolled to lean his back against the wall, breath still shaky and fur on his cheeks damp. "Dammit," he whimpered, reaching up to rake a gloved hand over his eyes.

His hands were shaking. His entire body was shaking. He pulled his hind legs up and curled his tail around his feet, becoming as small as possible, and wrapped his spindly arms about himself as though seeking some warmth he would never find.

They had broken Jak, shattered him into a thousand pieces and put them back in the wrong places, used their own shards to fill in the gaps intentionally left in his being. There was no doubt that that angry young man was Jak, but it was a Jak that Daxter had never met, a Jak that should never have existed. A Jak that had endured two years of dark eco-riddled hell at the Baron's command.

Daxter ground his animalistic teeth with a growl and clenched his eyes shut, then threw back his head and howled at the top of his lungs. His voice was a broken wail, a shriek and a sob and a thousand things he had never wanted to show.

"Damn you, Praxis!"

Back in the Prison, Jak rolled over on his cot and pulled his ragged pillow over his head to block out the sound of someone in the distance sobbing.

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It had taken some time to get hold of, but once Erol got the idea into his head to check the outdoor surveillance video from the day Jak had arrived, it was only a matter of time before the disc was slipped into his hands.

Two years in the archives had weathered the disk a bit, degraded the file ever so slightly—no one ever went back and watched the outdoor surveillance videos unless the Underground were somehow involved—but it was still in decent enough condition.

The youth's arrival in Haven was a mystery quite different than the one Erol was researching, but the Commander couldn't refrain from replaying the flash of blue-white light that heralded Jak's arrival several times over. At first the street was almost empty, a normal day, then there was a flash up above that surged down and down and down until it struck; the instant it contacted the metal of the walkway it seemed as though an outer bubble burst, and the remaining light solidified into to tumbling figures. The light faded in the space of a heartbeat, and there was Jak. It was amazing, maddening to watch, impossible on so many levels, and yet clearly defined in moving colors on the monitor display.

But that wasn't what Erol was looking for.

He'd had his suspicions for a while, but they seemed about as possible as Jak's sudden appearance in the city, so he had paid them no heed. Now, though, things were accelerating too much, he had to go with his instincts here.

They were running out of time.

So he played the footage, over again and again, until he was positive that his initial suspicions were correct. It made no sense, there was no resemblance between this little beast and Rune, but there was no doubt in Erol's mind now—after hearing Jak's nightmarish whisperings while he slept, his insane babble during some sessions—that this was the missing piece of the puzzle, the key to breaking Jak once and for all.

Torture hadn't done it.

Rape hadn't done it.

This, he was certain, would.

"Don't worry, Jak!" called the creature on the screen, voice distorted slightly in the degraded footage. "I'll save you before you know it!"

Erol pressed a switch in command for the image on the screen to freeze, and with a smile he brushed his pale fingers over the slim orange figure darting off out of sight.

"Hello there, Daxter," he breathed, yellow eyes narrowing. "We meet at last."

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"We're running out of time," Erol said quietly, eyes narrowing as they rose from the most recent reports to look up at the Baron. "I know he's made progress, but my men can not handle another attack wave like the one that hit the Drill Platform last week."

Praxis ground his teeth, thick fingers clenching about the armrests of his chair. "Do you actually think I don't know that, Commander?" he hissed. The man heaved a sigh and took back the reports, casting his eye downward. "How long until his next assessment?"

Erol cocked his head slightly to one side, a smirk playing at his lips. "Any time you're willing to sit in and watch, Baron."

OOOOOOOO

Jak rolled over in his cot, turning his back to the door. "Go away, Erol."

"I just want to talk to you," Erol said from the doorway, shaking his head slightly in disapproval. "I'm sure you'd appreciate some good company. You must be going mad in here all alone."

The youth almost laughed. Going mad? As if he wasn't there already. A sane person didn't hear voices murmuring in their head whenever the world went quiet, even for a moment. A sane person didn't wake up in the morning and wonder if they had killed anyone the day before, and if so how many and how, under what treatment and what orders and why was this happening to him?

Jak ground his teeth and pushed back the renegade thought. Too often that thought had been trying to take root, too often had he woken in the middle of the night to hear himself asking, pleading for someone—anyone—to just tell him why.

He had been a hero, many lifetimes ago. He had saved the entire world from a madman bent on twisting everything with the liquid darkness that flowed just barely under his control. He had been good.

So why was this happening? What could he possibly have done for the Precursors to decide he deserved this? Was Gol not truly meant to die, and was this payment for killing him? Was this recompense for pretty much destroying Daxter's life with his senselessness?

He had been a warrior of light! Why had he been the one chosen to go through this hell, this darkness?

And why had no one come yet to—

Again he forced the thought to break off, this time prematurely. He would not doubt his friends. They were looking for him, searching for him with all their might. They were worried and afraid for him, and they prayed for his safety at every chance they had.

They were out there, and that knowledge was keeping him alive.

"So quiet, so deep in thought," Erol crooned, stepping fully into the room and heaving a sigh. "Poor thing, you must be terribly hurt right now. Two years it's been since we found you, since we chose you…"

Jak faced the wall and tried not to listen.

"…and since Daxter abandoned you."

The youth was upright in an instant, turning to face Erol with wide eyes, features pale with shock.

Erol smiled. "Yes, I know all about that. 'I'll save you before you know it,' he said. He promised to come get you, to rescue you from Praxis, from prison, from me." Both orange eyebrows rose toward his hairline. "But he hasn't yet, has he? Not even a sign that he's even looking for you."

"Y-You're wrong…" Jak hissed.

"Am I?"

A long moment passed in silence, Jak's eyes slipping ever lower, until they were finally rooted on his lap, on his hands clenched into tight fists about the tattered fabric of his pants. The tap of Erol's approaching footsteps cut through the quiet, and the redhead leaned in so close Jak could taste the heat of his breath.

"Daxter is never coming for you, Jak," the Commander whispered. "Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Daxter doesn't care about you anymore. No one does."

"You're wrong," Jak asserted, louder this time.

"No one is looking for you, no one is going to save you, no one even knows you exist anymore."

Jak ground his teeth and clenched his eyes shut, just willing the older man to stop, the whispers in his head now practically screaming for his death.

"No one knows," Erol continued, "except for me. You're mine, Jak. You've been mine since I found you on the street, since I took you and your little friend ran away, never to return." A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "I'm sorry, Jak, but no one is coming for you, no one wants you anymore. No one but me."

Jak shook his head, holding both hands to his head, to the pounding pressure in his skull where his horns were fighting to push up through his hair. "You're wrong! Daxter is looking for me and he is going to save me and I'm not going to be yours forever!"

"Why would he want to save you?" Erol replied, eyes narrowing, lips parted in a horrible grin. "After everything you've done, everything that's been done to you, why would anyone want you?"

Jak let his hands drop, looked at Erol, and shouted a response before he could think better of it; his voice almost broke, the strain tautening the muscles in his face, hands clenched into fists so tight they shook. "You still want me! That has to mean something!"

Erol's grin broadened. "Oh yes, Jak," he reached out and cupped the young man's chin in his hand, leaning in so close their faces were a hair's breadth from touching, "that means more than I think you know."

Something stabbed into Jak's midsection and he jerked away, reaching his hands and casting his eyes downward to pull out and see the hypodermic needle, practically a dart, jammed into his skin.

His brow furrowed in confusion. "A tranquilizer?" Sparks flashed in his mouth when he spoke, snapping against his tongue and barely singeing the inside of his cheeks. "N-Not enough to knock…to knock me out…all the way…"

Erol grinned, lifted a hand, and snapped his fingers. Jak thought he saw the door open, but his vision was beginning to twist as he fought against the darkness at the corners of his vision, to shift and change into the eyes of that monster that was him, that he was, that he didn't want to be and would always be for as long as he lived—

"Tell Praxis we're ready," Erol told the figure in the doorway—not the doorway, the hallway—how did they get into the hallway?

The Commander's grin was predatory, and Jak could smell the stink of his arrogance as he began to back away. A strong hand—a guard, maybe? Jak couldn't see anything there but he assumed it was a guard—took hold of Jak's arm and began to pull him off down the hall.

Erol turned and started off the other direction, his voice carrying back over his shoulder as he walked away. "I'll go get the boy."

Jak blinked, and the universe shifted. He was in another room, larger but not as large as he remembered, and his body was screaming again. Something was tugged out of his hand, something cold and metallic and sharp—the method of his most recent infusion?—and he let out a sigh of relief.

He took a deep breath that should have been cleansing but wasn't, that could never come close to cleansing a monster like him, and sapphire-charged violet lightning arced between his teeth as he inhaled, flickering over his skin.

The youth turned to the familiar figure that now stood on his left; Praxis met the glance, and when he spoke Jak could feel the words ricocheting off the very air around him.

Last one, Jak. Last time, last try.

Erol was there, too, on the right, grinning and glowing with power, with pleasure in his condescension. When he spoke it was quiet, and traveled from him straight to Jak, so sharp and crisp and close that Jak doubted Praxis even heard him.

Make me proud.

A part of him wanted to rip out his own heart when his own voice, slightly graveled and a little deeper than normal but clear as a bell nevertheless, replied without a hint of trepidation, without a flicker of forethought.

"I will."

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