Disclaimer: I own no part of Red Eye, and am in no way earning any profit off this story. It is fan fiction, and is written for enjoyment, not monetary gain.

Cynthia and Lisa stared at Jackson with matching blank looks on their faces.

"Um…hate to break the news, but…you're dead." Lisa pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't you see? That's the point!" Jackson hissed, frustrated. "Either they don't know I'm dead, and they'll never get their ransom, or they know I'm dead and there's something we don't know." He let out a little huffing noise of aggravation and leaned against the wall again. "Either way it means we're in trouble. By the way – have they fed you?"

Cynthia shook her head. "I haven't eaten anything since um…the morning. How long have we been in here?"

Jackson blinked. "It's still daylight outside, but I don't know how long we've been down here." he walked towards the door again. "I saw a calendar in the kitchen, but – "

He walked right into the door, but he didn't go through it. "Oomph!"

Lisa jumped at the loud noise. "Jack? What's wrong?"

"What's wrong is I can't go through the – " he let out a long, hissing chain of swear words as he kicked the door and hobbled backwards. "Ahh!"

"Is he alive again?" Cynthia asked, moving forward and peering at him through the gloom.

"Might be…" Jackson murmured, checking his wrists and then his neck for a pulse. "I'm breathing, I've got a pulse, and I can't walk through the door…I probably am." he blinked, leaning against the wall and sliding down to sit on the ground.

"Woah." Cynthia remarked, sitting down with Lisa, opposite Jackson. "I didn't know that could happen…"

"Well he didn't exactly die in the most usual of ways." Lisa pointed out dryly, trying hard not to laugh as Jackson kept pinching himself in different places to see if he was awake. "Maybe he wasn't really dead."

Cynthia gave her a bizarre look, and was about to say something, when the door opened and they were flooded with a blaze of bright, yellow light.

"Well, it's about fucking time." said a voice, and then Jackson felt his arm grabbed; he was being dragged out of the room.

"Let go of me! Let go of me!" he snarled, kicking and punching, but he couldn't see through the bright light.

Lisa and Cynthia were dragged out too, protesting roughly, but were shoved into chairs round the small table.

A gray-suited man with several holstered guns stood by the open doorway, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall. Another man, clad also in a gray suit, stood by them at the table.

"Looks like you found our note, Rippner." he said in a sarcastic voice. "The process is complete."

"What process? What's going on here!" Jackson demanded, tight sneer on his face.

"Re-animation." the other man smirked. "The chemical process worked perfectly. You're the first fully successful test subject in a line of experiments designed to create the perfect assassins."

"Not quite perfect. My body was nearly in a state of decay." Jackson snarled. "I was coughing up pieces of my lungs!"

"Yes, well, a few kinks in the chemical cocktails." the man shrugged, grinning slightly. "But the mix is now complete; you're back to living human form. In the peak of health, I might add." he said proudly.

Jackson gritted his teeth and fought the urge to spit. It probably wouldn't help their situation, but he had the horrible feeling he'd been used. He had been used; his body was a chemical experimentation field. "Someone could've told me."

"Ah, but would you have volunteered? No. And besides, you were going to 'die' anyway. We persuaded your benefactors to allow us to pump your body full of the rest of the necessary chemicals, and then we set you free again."

Lisa watched Jackson's cold fury building and felt a little bit of it too. At the same time she could feel terror gnawing in her gut. That invisible, ghost-like assassin was the future? Someone who could go anywhere, do anything, get so close and then kill? She shivered slightly, involuntarily. Glancing over at Cynthia, she noticed the other woman pale and wavering a little. Reaching out, she took her friend's hand under the table and squeezed it to try and help steady her.

"So now that you know your precious little formula works, you'll do away with me?" Jackson guessed, raising an eyebrow.

"We've no real reason to keep you around." the man shrugged. "The two girls as well. However, you're a threat to us if you tell. So you see our dilemma."

"We won't say anything." Cynthia blurted out. The man just looked at her dully.

"If we say we'll keep our mouths shut, we'll keep our mouths shut." Jackson stated, with an air of calmness he did not feel. "Cynthia barely knows anything at all, and Lisa – in my experience – is very, very good at keeping secrets."

"Interesting, but what about you?" the man asked with a smirk.

"What about me? I'll go back to my job." Jackson shrugged. "Get a new ID, passport, and birth certificate, whatever I need to become 'alive' again."

"You're no use. You failed in your last mission."

Jackson shot a glare at Lisa; she shot him one full of equal fire. "That wasn't my fault."

"It was hers, wasn't it?" the man chuckled. "Fine, then. You can go. But why don't you take a little revenge first?"

Jackson stood up. Half of him was thrumming with rage, and the man was practically giving him permission to take it all out on Lisa.

Lisa met his stare, inch for inch. Silently she told him she wasn't backing down from this, even though she knew that he couldn't hear her any more.

Cynthia trembled slightly at first, then squeezed Lisa's hand and moved closer, backing her up from behind and to her left.

Jackson was hardly intimidated by this, yet as he took the proffered gun from the gray-suited man, he could almost hear them in his head. He blinked, and Lisa narrowed her eyes, concentrating on sending him a message with whatever telepathy they had left.

Divided we fall, Jackson. The moment you shoot one of us they'll take us all down.

He cocked the gun, then whipped his arm out to the side and pulled the trigger. The bullet took the guard by the stairs in the throat, nearly taking his head off.

The other man, to his right, jumped and tried to get his own gun out; he wasn't fast enough and Jackson had the barrel of the gun rammed down his throat.

"Get out!" he yelled at the girls, and they ran up the stairs; Lisa took one of the man's guns with her as they went. He could hear a car starting; he pulled the trigger then blocked the mess with his back as he took the steps two at a time.

"Get in!" Lisa hissed, and Jackson leapt into the passenger seat, closing the door as they took off down the road.

To be continued…