Author's note: I stupidly forgot to say so before, but thanks to ardeej for betaing!
Chapter six, Enforcement
Even though Sig got out of bed far later than he normally would, he was met with a haggard glare from red-shot eyes when he glanced at himself in the mirror. He felt worse than he looked. Mechanically, he cleaned himself with the soap and towels that were stocked in the bathroom. There was also a stupid amount of shampoos and – something that made a vague feeling of disgust rise in his throat – an array of colognes.
A razor laid on a shelf inside the cupboard behind the mirror, and he automatically reached for it. Then he remembered Rayn's instructions about his appearance, and he slammed the small door shut so hard that the glass rattled.
Gritting his jaw he went into the kitchen, not hungry in the least but knowing he had to eat something. The packaged meals looked no more appetizing in the dusty morning light, but there was also some yoghurt in the fridge, and he found a box of cereal in a cupboard.
Somehow he managed to force half a bowl of breakfast down his throat, when every spoonful felt slimy and tasteless in his mouth. He left the half-finished "meal" on the table and went into the bedroom he hadn't slept in. His clothes lay in a careless pile on a chair. There were new, clean clothes in the wardrobe.
He pulled on his own clothes, putting off at least one of Rayn's choices for a little while longer. A voice in the back of his head predicted that it wasn't going to be a successful revolution, but he refused to acknowledge it.
The sun still hadn't risen, and wouldn't for quite some time. A cold mist rolled in from the ocean, making it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. Streetlights struggled to illuminate the roads, only creating an otherworldly feel, looking like circles of light hanging in the air.
People appeared and disappeared into the milky void like ghosts, only their footsteps revealing that they were still there even when unseen. Car lights spread through the fog, swelling and then swooping past in a blur. Above it all, neon lights drifted high above on invisible walls.
Sig felt like the wet cold slithered down his lungs for every breath, coating his insides. Darkly, he wondered how long he, accustomed to desert heat, could go on in this environment before one common cold led to another until pneumonia struck.
It wasn't far to the building that housed Rayn's apartment. He wasn't sure why she chosen to place him in a neighboring area of the town instead of in the same building, but he wasn't going to complain about that. Except that he would prefer being even farther from her – however, the city wasn't big enough.
Chilton opened the door within moments as Sig knocked on it. The aide looked him up and down, quirked an eyebrow and wrinkled his nose, but slipped back and allowed Sig to enter without comment. Maybe he sensed that there was an itching fist dangerously close to his scrawny self.
Rayn, of course, had far more control over the situation.
"Didn't the clothes I ordered for you fit?" she demanded as soon as she saw him, halting in her rising from her desk as he entered the office. She sunk back down, folding her arms in disapproval.
"Figgered you'd want dirty jobs done," Sig replied.
He'd prepared that response. He hated himself for that.
Not that it mattered, in the end.
"You may be correct in this case, but you should refrain from assuming things," Rayn said with a scoff. "Go back home and change. You look like you're straight from the desert. And don't punch my wall!"
She added the last as he turned around and stalked out without a word.
When he returned, he was met not only with Rayn's expectant gaze but stares from a dozen other pairs of eyes. There was a large group of thugs in the office, all men of the scarred, tattooed and bulky variety – except for Razer, who stood closest to Rayn, looking as suave as ever. Sig didn't pay him any heed, coldly meeting the searching glares aimed at him. All of them weighing him.
Rayn must've told them, though, because there was no comment. Not even from Shiv, whose lips drew back from his teeth in a feral snarl when Sig glared right back at him. But the man – twice Rayn's size and with his torn-off ears evidence for the brutality he was used to – made sure to keep his face turned so that their boss didn't see him growl.
"If everyone is quite ready," Rayn said in an icy tone, giving Sig a stern look, "I need you to go down to the harbor and strike…"
Sig hardly listened. Rayn's voice became a drone in his ears, only letting enough through to tell him what was expected. A pair of rival gang leaders were meeting along with their guards in a neutral location, and Rayn wanted to begin setting examples.
No survivors.
Their orders given, the thugs filed out. The speed of their movements said that they were quite glad to leave – only Razer appeared completely at ease.
"And Sig…" Rayn said, stopping him by the door. The others kept hurrying out.
He glanced around, and Rayn shook her head at him with a sigh.
"I don't know what statement you're trying to make by sleeping on the floor in the hall," she said. "However, you could at least try to act civilized when you're not working."
That caught him completely off guard.
"What?" he said, disturbed by her knowledge.
"You heard me," she said and waved him out.
He could clearly see that no more delay would be tolerated, so he left with a lingering, sickening unease in his gut. Nobody else commented, either not hearing or caring – or daring to – challenge him.
As Sig walked down the stairs leading down to the street outside, Razer glanced around and waved at him to stick close. While not a pleasant option, there were no better alternatives. Jaw clenched, Sig got into the passenger seat of Razer's car as the other thugs went to their own. Within a minute, they were off.
It began to rain as they left the residential districts behind and came into the harbor area, which eased up the mist. Work had not yet begun there. The cranes were tucked up and the ships rested in the docks, silent and unlit.
Neither Sig nor Razer said a word to each other. Razer spoke into his communicator as they got deeper into the harbor, only taking one hand off the wheel. On his word, both he and everyone else turned off the lights on their cars and they continued on with only the lamp posts and occasional lights on a building to guide them through the alleys.
On another command from Razer, half of the cars went off in two different directions. Razer and a couple more continued on, driving up behind a dark warehouse. There they parked, and Sig followed Razer out.
Rain poured down, striking his face like thousands of tiny needles. Far below, above the howl of the wind, there were the constant, wet crashes of waves hitting the pillars holding the city aloft. There were no colorful neon signs here. Only streetlights creating haloes of jaundiced light, floating in the cold, wet darkness.
Razer pointed towards another warehouse on the other side of the street. From outside it seemed shut-off and abandoned at first, but Sig caught a flicker of light in one of the windows above the closed and barred gate.
"Would you mind flaunting your skills?" Razer said with a mildly curious tone, motioning towards Sig's Peace Maker. "And do be quick, they may have been alerted."
Pressing his lips together, Sig changed his grip of the gun.
Just another dirty job. He'd done this before.
It never felt right even when he'd had a good reason.
"Sure it's the targets and not just dockworkers in there?" he grunted.
"Sure enough for the Princess," Razer said with a mild smirk. He tilted his head sideways and glanced at Sig from the corner of his eye. "You're not unfamiliar with the risk of a little collateral damage, are you?"
Sig didn't dignify that with an answer. Back when he worked for Krew, he had needed to maintain a certain image, even with the grunts. If anybody had asked him such a question back then, he would have coldly said that he just hated wasting ammo.
But he had no reason to explain himself here, nor any desire for Razer's or any of the other thugs' respect. Not that they would ever give him that either way.
He activated his mechanical eye, seeing several faint heat sources through the wall, like wisps of orange and green. At least, he could try to make it quick.
"Stand back."
He heard them move after a moment, and pulled the trigger, holding it as a furious, electrical hiss rose up and seared through his eyelid as the Peace Maker charged. The rain and water already on him led some of the electricity back to him, stinging his skin, but he was used to it. One of the thugs yelped, though, not far enough away and not ready for it.
There was a muffled shout from inside the warehouse and the colored wisps he saw through his mechanical eye dispersed, having caught on to the sudden burst of light. Sig raised the Peace Maker and fired.
The shot flared straight through the gate, tearing through steel storage racks and whatever goods were on them. With a series of deafening crashes, the scaffolds came tumbling down, drowning out the screams of the people inside. Some of the wisps fell to the ground amongst the falling rubble.
The sound of nearby gunfire revealed that there had been some survivors who tried to make it out that way, only to run into their enemies' line of fire.
Moments passed, and finally the noise stopped.
"Holy shit!" one of the thugs behind Sig muttered, with a sickening glee in his tone.
They had peace maker bullets in the racing cars during the championship, but those weren't Wastelander grade.
Silence.
"Care to take a look?" Razer said, motioning towards the building.
When Sig mutely looked at him, he smiled and added:
"Oh, we'll be right here behind you."
Holding in a growl, Sig crossed the street and carefully entered the warehouse, keeping his eyes open for any signs of enemies or more falling objects. A burnt smell filled the air. Some cloth was smoking further inside, blackened by the blast. Sig kept it in the corner of his eye, in case it was actually burning. He hoped there wasn't anything explosive in there.
A groan from the side made him glance, and he saw a man half-buried under a toppled rack. A man with his blond hair in a pony tail.
For a moment, Sig thought it was Jinx. Logic drowned – maybe it wasn't even impossible, Jinx had been as closely tied to Krew's world as Sig if not more – and all thoughts flew out the window as Sig ran over and wrenched the wreckage aside. Dust tumbled through the air, concrete pebbles peppering the ground around his feet.
It wasn't Jinx. The man was far younger and bulkier. Only the blond hair in a messy ponytail matched. He groaned, squinting up with eyes misted over with pain. His left arm was twisted behind his back at an impossible angle and blood seeped through his pants and sleeveless, torn shirt.
A gun laid half buried in crumbled concrete near his hand, but his fingers only twitched uselessly. He probably didn't even know where he was.
Shiv stepped up, crouching over the man.
"No…"
It was a weak croak. Then Shiv slit the wounded man's throat. A few weak spasms, followed by stillness.
Sig saw the smug, silent challenge coming in Shiv's movements, knew how the thug would look at him, search him for disapproval to mock and gleefully report to Rayn. Refusing to give the scumbag that triumph, Sig turned away.
He just watched in silence as the others cleaned up the enemy thugs that had survived.
When he returned "home" that evening, he found out how Rayn had known he slept on the floor. Somebody had been there to restore the kitchen to its pristine state, removing all signs that he had used it at all. Even the little trash had been taken out from under the sink. The cleaner had also gathered up the mattress and the blankets and returned them to the bed.
Sig tore up the bedding and threw it all out in the corridor again.
The next day they repeated the same dance, he and the unseen cleaner, and the next and the next. Rayn had another exasperated talk with him about how he should use the bed like a normal person.
Then Sig wrote a note and left it on top of the mattress.
I like it this way. Cut it out.
He returned to find a response scrawled on the piece of paper.
I'm just doing my job.
But after that the mattress was left alone, and Rayn didn't complain about his sleeping habits again.
Within a couple of weeks, all who had openly stood against Rayn were crushed or terrified into submission, and her dominance began to solidify.
It was Tess who brought it up first, calling Daxter's communicator early one morning.
"Have you seen Sig lately?"
Daxter pulled his feet from the table of the simple Spargus apartment, tipping his chair forwards out of its precarious balancing on two legs. Even though he didn't think twice about it, the question was not what he had expected – and when he opened his mouth he realized that he had to ponder the answer.
"Nooo…" he slowly said, thoughtfully. "One sec." He turned his head. "Jak, have you seen Sig?"
Metal clattered softly as Jak lowered the piece of the morph gun he had been cleaning, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
"Not since we came home after the championship," he said. The two of them exchanged glances. That was almost half a month ago. Of course it didn't have to mean anything, but Sig did tend to give them a heads up if he went off on a long mission, just in case they wanted him for something.
"I've tried calling him several times over the last few days. Torn didn't know where he's at either," Tess said, her voice getting clearer as Daxter fiddled with the communicator speaker volume so that Jak would be able to hear her better. Jak was already coming closer, though, to look over Daxter's shoulder. "We made a bet, and he's gotta owe up."
"Bet? How come I didn't hear about this?" Daxter said, quirking an eyebrow. Behind him, Jak was pushing buttons on his own communicator.
Tess let out a chirping laugh.
"We bet on whether Torn or Ashelin would get kicked out of the competition first," she said. "Now he has to let me take his Peace Maker apart to see how it works."
"And what if he had won?" Daxter demanded, other eyebrow rising too as he grinned.
The answer never came, as Jak cut in.
"He's not answering my call, either," the blond said.
"Okay, so he's not just hiding from me then." Tess tried to smile, but a worried note crept into her voice. She scratched her cheek, looking at the two of them through the camera and searching for something to reassure her.
"Don't say that, baby, he knows we're the first you'd call to collect his ass for you," Daxter commented, but his laugh didn't reach all the way through. He cleared his throat and pulled himself together. "Eh, don't worry, okay? He's probably just out on something that requires radio silence. We'll check it out for you."
"Thanks. And tell him I expect him to pay his debt ASAP."
With that, she signed off, leaving the Demolition Duo to their intelligence-gathering mission.
They called Freedom HQ to double check with Ashelin and Samos – because after the Dark Maker invasion, Torn had been ordered to stop trying to keep track of every single detail – but received nothing helpful from there.
Daxter, of course, instantly picked up on the small but deepening crease between Jak's eyebrows. Something didn't feel right about this, at all. So Daxter did what any Daxter would do in that situation.
"Whoa, buddy," he said with a wide, theatrical sweep of his arms and overly obvious roll of his eyes. "Yanno I'd put my life in Tessy's hands almost as quick as in yours, but I can't blame Sig for going into hiding. That ol' gal of his isn't something to part with that easy, and you know Tess will get the crazy eyes the moment she lays her pretty fingers on that thing. Scary stuff."
Jak listened to the ramble in silence, frown easing up as the corners of his lips twitched. Once Daxter finished, though, he just nodded and looked back down on his communicator, pushing a few buttons. There wasn't much else Daxter could do to help right then, so he shut his trap and waited along with Jak.
Within a couple of seconds there was a response.
"Yes, Jak?" Damas's hoarse voice came from the speakers.
"Got a minute?" Jak asked. "We may have problem."
"I'm in the throne room."
A click and beep that announced that Damas had ended the call, just like that. Daxter wrestled down a snicker as he got up to follow Jak out of the apartment and down the street.
The truth about Jak and Damas's connection hadn't earned the two youths any free rides – quite the opposite, to little surprise. In fact the King oftentimes appeared even more strict than before, at least when anybody not in the know was present. On the other hand, there had been times when he'd had to rein Jak in from doing anything too reckless. The fear of losing his son again was evident if you knew where to look.
And that, perhaps, made for some unusual allowances.
Daxter took every opportunity to show off his war amulet. Especially since he hadn't been sure that he'd even get a chance at his third piece. There had been one trembling, uncertain hour a few days after they took down the Dark Maker ship and Erol, when Damas suddenly summoned the two of them to the throne room and looked them both over.
"Jak, I want a word with you. Without Daxter."
Damas didn't use nicknames. But he seldom used names, either, and that had made both Jak and Daxter's guts drop to the floor. They had seen it coming. Everyone else had figured out their relationship quicker than they had preferred, but probably should have expected. Subtlety had never been a skill either of them could master.
It had really just been a matter of time with Damas, and they had both known it. It just so happened that he was so busy with leading the clean-up work after the Dark Makers, that they had gotten a little breather before he demanded to have that chat alone with Jak.
Afterwards, Jak assured Daxter that it hadn't been as embarrassing as they had feared, and left it at that. Damas even deigned to give the redhead a slanted smile the next time their eyes met.
The words kept burning on his tongue, but even Daxter wasn't crazy enough to call the King "dad-in-law." He full well understood that the line of Mar had a long, very important history and accepting that it would abruptly end with its strongest heir must be a bitter pill to swallow.
But Damas did it anyway, and with little fuss, because Jak was that precious to him.
Now, back in the throne room for a whole other matter, Jak glanced over his shoulder, making sure that the lift had descended out of hearing range before he looked forward again. Damas walked down the steps from the throne. He stopped before Jak, who kept watching him as the King raised one hand and placed it on the younger man's shoulder.
Daxter stood back, simply watching them watch each other, and keeping his mouth shut just for this.
It was brief, and silent, but it was their little thing.
In the next moment, Damas's hand slipped off Jak's shoulder and he was all business again.
"What is it?" he asked.
"We seem to have misplaced a really big guy somewhere," Daxter piped up.
"Nobody's heard from Sig in the last couple of weeks," Jak clarified. "Is he on a mission?"
"None of mine," Damas said, his ever-present scowl digging deeper into his forehead. "He told me that Freedom HQ wanted him for something that would take a while, but that was shortly after the championship ended."
"Torn says they thought he was busy out here since then," Daxter said.
Damas's scowl twitched, and Daxter shuffled a little closer to Jak. Because he saw Jak's hands clench and unclench, and the look that flashed in the blue eyes. Confusion took a dive right into worry, and that was a doubly eerie feeling when it was about somebody like Sig.
Without a word, Damas took out his communicator and punched a few buttons.
"His communicator is shut off," he said, not looking up. "Wait."
Jak and Daxter exchanged glances as the King pushed more buttons. Both of them tried to scrounge up an assuring look, but neither one did very well.
"Yes, Your Lordship?" came a female voice from Damas's communicator.
"Locate Sig's war amulet," Damas said.
"Right away."
Moments passed. Then the voice returned, with a concerned note.
"Your Lordship, there's no signal."
"Can you locate where it was before the signal was lost?" Damas said, without missing a beat.
"Please wait a minute."
The silence stretched as the three men watched the communicator in Damas's hand. From the speakers came only a muffled crackle and distant tapping of buttons. Daxter struggled not to fidget, but Jak soon started shifting his weight impatiently. Only Damas stood still as a statue, waiting.
"I found it, Your Lordship," the woman on the other end finally said.
"Send it to Jak. They'll go have a look."
"Right away."
Jak had already snatched up his communicator and activated it, so that the map was up on the screen when a beep came from the device. A green, blinking dot appeared on the picture and Jak was halfway to the elevator with Daxter in tow before he caught himself and looked around.
"Good hunting," Damas said. He had no other encouragement to give, and not even a hint of a smile. Not for something like this.
Hurrying down and to the car pit, Jak and Daxter boarded the Sand Shark and sped off into the desert, heading straight for the signal. Halfway there, a scouting group of marauders unwisely got in the way. Jak hardly seemed to register blasting their cars – the championship had managed to refine his combined driving and shooting skills to a terrifying art form.
With little effort they found their way to the place where Sig had done away with his past life.
However, it didn't help them.
The melted, twisted remains of Sig's war amulet were in that very area, but the boys never found it. A storm and heavy, clawed feet had long since pushed it around and concealed it amongst the sand and pebbles.
They did find the crater of melted, twisted sand from the Peace Maker blast that had destroyed the amulet, partly crushed by a metal head's foot, but those were a dime a dozen in the desert. It offered no clues.
Jak was calling in the air train even before they started heading back to Spargus, and the two of them were in Haven City that same evening. By now concern had turned to real worry. They sped through the industrial section, deaf to the shouts of the workers to watch out as Jak dodged and swerved a zoomer past the myriad of construction scaffolds. Haven was still hard at work with rebuilding after the war, and the smell of sweat, wood and metal hung in the air.
As soon as they reached the edge of the residential district and Jak started to slow down, Daxter jumped out of the zoomer and rushed in through a doorway to an apartment complex. Jak followed within seconds, their vehicle still gliding through the air. Neither even looked around at the hard, metallic thud as a wall got in the zoomer's way.
During the renegade days, Sig had let Jak and Daxter have a spare key to his apartment in case they needed someplace to hide. He'd given them a new key when he got a new apartment later on, even when there was less need to have multiple safe places then.
They searched the place from top to bottom – not a difficult task since it was as simply furnished as could be. All they could conclude was that it didn't seem like anybody had been there in quite a while. Sig had always kept some basic foodstuffs there, but they were canned goods, and biscuits that had passed their expiration date a month ago. Nothing new, except for a fine coating of dust.
"Okay, okay, okayokayokay…" Daxter muttered as he put down the unopened bag of biscuits on the counter. He needed a second to gather his thoughts, then cleared his throat and folded his arms. "Nobody panic. Nobody think the worst."
He reached out and touched Jak's arm, meeting the gaze from the blue eyes as they turned towards him. Of course Jak wasn't panicking.
But he was thinking the worst. There was no way to avoid that any longer.
Even though Daxter could have done with a healthy dose of reassurances himself, he was acutely aware that in situations like this, he had the most important role to play. So he swallowed against the icy feeling in his heart and tried to smile.
"Siggy's a tough dude," he said. "And you know he'll just smack our heads for worrying once he turns up."
Eventually, seconds too late, Jak nodded. Daxter tugged at his arm, to get him moving. It wouldn't help, but he knew just standing around was the worst thing they could do right then.
"Come on, let's go tell everyone to keep their eyes peeled," he said.
Jak made an agreeing sound and they left, locking the apartment behind them. Even with the worry, though, both of them still felt hope that it was just some coincidence, that Sig was out on a mission and just took his time to get back.
But then the weeks began to wear on to months.