Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this before – if anybody can guess where I got the character model for that freaky little dark Eco-girl, I'll give them a cookie and my eternal respect. …Mmmm… eternal respect…. (drools Homer-style) (Hint: Think old-school anime.)


The door swished silently shut behind Jak as he strode into his room at the Palace. As he was heir to the throne of Haven City, Ashelin would have gladly relinquished the imperial suite to him, but Jak declined in favor of more modest accommodations. Opulence never really suited him. Not bothering with the lights, Jak made straight for the room's terminal and turned it on. He pulled up a nearby chair and sat down as the holographic screen flickered to life and ran through the brief start-up routine.

"Hey, you got any good eats in here?" Daxter asked, leaping from Jak's shoulder to the floor. He promptly started scouring the entirety of Jak's room. "My poor little tummy is rumbling louder than a yakkow with a bad case of gas. And would it kill ya to turn the lights on once in a while? Sheesh."

Jak blinked and squinted briefly as the lights suddenly flared to life, but his eyes did not leave the screen. A small icon flashed in the corner; that would be the data Ashelin sent. He touched the image; it opened to reveal several more icons, each representing different aspects of the Dark Soldier program. Now came the hardest part – where to start looking. Subject rosters… That's as good a place to start as any. Jak opened the file and was immediately bombarded by page after page of dense text. Though he was tempted to skim, Jak read each line carefully so he couldn't possibly miss a single clue. Subject 14… Male, age 25… Test one, twenty units of Eco… test unsuccessful…

The bile rose in Jak's throat as he read file after file. Though the data was as dull and dry as any mundane experiment, Jak knew all to well the horrific truth that lay between the lines. Good God, there were so many people… so many…He shook his head violently, banishing the unpleasant memories that were welling towards the surface. He couldn't get distracted; he needed to stay on-task if he wanted to figure out where that girl was from. And if she was another victim of the Dark Soldier program, then maybe… Maybe what? Jak asked himself. Do you think she has a miraculous cure? From the way things looked, she needs your help more than you need hers.

But that was the point, wasn't it? Jak knew what it was like. He knew how it felt to have dark Eco running through one's veins. He knew how it seemed to tear away at one's very cells, how it engulfed one's body in an all-consuming fire. And Jak had it easy – there was something different about him, something about his body that allowed him to survive the exposure to dark Eco relatively unharmed. He couldn't even begin to imagine how horrific it was for others that weren't as "blessed" as him.

"Hey, whassat you got there?" Daxter asked, hopping on to the arm of Jak's chair with a yellow paopu fruit in one hand. He took a bite of the fruit and read the screen, chewing thoughtfully. "Guh! Booo-ring!" he yawned after a few seconds of silence. "Hope you don't mind if I crash here, Jak. It's been a long day; after all that politicking and blowing stuff up I'm just beat!" The little ottsel wolfed down the rest of the paopu before scurrying over to Jak's large four-poster bed and flopping down on one of the soft pillows. He was snoring just a few moments later, surprisingly loudly for a creature of his small size.

Ignoring his friend, Jak closed the subject roster and rubbed his eyes in a vain attempt to banish their tiredness. It had been a long day, and his body was practically screaming for some rest. But he couldn't rest yet; he needed to find that girl, the one other person who had been through the same trials, the same torture. Finally, he'd found someone who could understand him. Jak stifled a yawn and opened the next file. However, it contained nothing but incomprehensible gibberish. This must be what Ashelin meant by the encryption programs, he realized. Though Jak had quickly picked up on Haven City's technology, which was amazingly advanced compared to Sandover Village, he still understood only the basics when it came to the computer system. If Ashelin's best technicians couldn't decode the programs, Jak certainly wouldn't be able to. He closed that file and opened a third.

Jak's breath caught in his throat. Before him, the screen displayed a large photo of a woman approximately his age, half-naked and strapped down to a metal table. Her hands and feet were charred and blackened, the skin splitting open from the heat of the dark Eco injected into her body. Blood trickled from her ears, mouth, and even her eyes. Her gaze was blank and lifeless, yet she seemed to look right at Jak through the lens of the camera.

He stared in horror, utterly motionless, for several seconds before he snapped out of his revolted trance and noticed a brief description next to the photograph. Subject number 7, test 5. Severe burning on subject's extremities is the result of Eco's exothermic reaction as it mixed with the subject's cellular structure… Jak quickly moved on to the next picture. Next was the image of a small boy, no more than twelve years old, whose veins were colored a ghastly shade of violet, and who had ugly, bruise-like discolorations all over his face and body. Subject number 20, test 3. Discoloration of subject's skin possibly caused by Eco rupturing subject's capillaries and absorbing into muscle tissue. Coloration of subject's circulatory system unique; further testing recommended.

Image after horrific image assaulted Jak as he scrolled through the file. He didn't want to see the atrocities, yet he couldn't turn away; some vile curiosity compelled him to keep looking, as much as it nauseated him. They were all young – none of them looked older than twenty-five – and some appeared only six or seven years old. There were a few young girls who looked similar to the aged creature Jak had seen, but none shared the distinctive bluish skin and white hair, and Jak hadn't gotten a good enough look at the girl to be sure that one of them was her. He jotted down the numbers of the pictures that might be significant and kept looking.

Suddenly, he came upon a photograph that made him pause. The boy in the picture looked familiar to Jak, though the kid's face was beaten almost beyond recognition. He peered more closely at the prone, unconscious figure. Lean, a bit on the short side, with an angular face and blonde hair, though it was green at the roots…

Holy shit! Jak stood so quickly that his chair toppled over backwards. That… that's me! He slammed his fist on the terminal's control panel, and the image of him disappeared as the screen flickered off. Jak's heart pounded in his ears as he stood in a sort of daze. Those bruises… it must have been right after I tried to escape… Memories of that experience – and the brutal punishment that had followed – flooded Jak's mind, and he squeezed his eyes shut against them. I should have guessed that I'd be in there. It makes sense, after all. Even so, Jak couldn't stomach looking through any more of the Dark Soldier files. Not for a while.

He turned off the light and felt his way through the darkness to his bed, peeling off his clothes in the process and leaving them in a trail across the floor. The maid could clean up after him tomorrow; it was her job, after all. Jak put out his hand and felt something warm and furry. He gently picked up Daxter and moved the snoozing ottsel to the other side of the bed, which caused Dax to stir briefly. "…I'll have… one of… those…" he muttered as he fell back asleep.

Jak hadn't expected to get much sleep, and, as the hours dragged by, he found that he'd assumed correctly. Though he was absolutely exhausted, his mind reeled from all that he'd just seen. He'd never assumed that he was the only person subjected to the Baron's dark Eco experiments, but the sheer magnitude of the Dark Soldier program was astonishing. There must have been well over a hundred victims depicted in those rosters and photographs, and no doubt many more would be uncovered once the rest of the data was decrypted.

When the Baron had held him captive for those two long years, Jak had never seen another prisoner. Oh, he'd known they were there – he could hear their screams of pain day and night – but as the months crawled by it had become nothing more than background noise, no more important or interesting than the drone of traffic outside. This new information gave those screams faces, made them human again despite the project's best efforts to reduce them to mere numbers. They had names. They had lives, families…

Rolling on to his side, Jak resisted the urge to punch the pillow beside him angrily because Daxter was there. Killing the Baron was supposed to have ended this nightmare, not revive it! He switched to his other side; the jostling of the mattress roused Daxter, who yawned and snuggled up against the nape of Jak's neck. Sighing, Jak reached behind him and scratched the top of Daxter's head absently, more out of habit than affection. Though his mind still buzzed with activity, he forced it to quiet and closed his eyes. He knew he had to sleep, though he dreaded what his dreams would bring.


Awww, they're so cute sleeping together like that! (Don't worry, this is NOT going to be a Jak/Dax slash!) Anyway, I have to say that the… um… details of the Dark Soldier project were partially inspired by Krin and her fic "Taetra Mussala." All bow to Krin! She's a writing genius!