Spooks

Dark suits and ties were really out of place among the white coats and pastel uniforms of hospital personnel.

Maybe that's why Jace noticed them so quickly.

Not that they really would have had to do much to hide their presence in the hospital, Jace was finding it hard to keep track of the blur of faces and people that kept passing through his room. Even the woman who had been there when he 'awakened' was difficult to pick out, and she was supposed to be his sister. He'd had to have Danielle pointed to a number of times before he'd made the association-- brown hair, brown eyes.

Jace was just so uncertain. It felt, in some ways, as though he were blind. Yet another one of those little things that seemed so wrong. Blindness. Deafness. Motor imparement.

His vision, they'd determined almost immediately, hadn't been affected by whatever had changed the color of his eyes from hazel to pale blue.

The only nerve damage was in his hand, the fritzy condition of his memory was being put off as some side effect of the electrocution. He could remember facts and figures like nobody else-- but when it came to his own personal history, nothing.

Jace knew he was seeing the dark figures in the shadows, rather than hallucinating them.

And now that Jace was going down to the therapy room every other day, he was seeing them more-- and starting to recognize individual faces.

Six cycles of darkness and light after he had found himself in this place, and he was already so restless he could punch something. Jace frowned, waiting impatiently for the therapist's aid to come back for him.

"Jason Hunt?" A voice asked him, as one of the shadows near the elevator doors moved.

Jace tried not to jump as the man called him by the familiar/unfamiliar name.

"Yeah. What's it to you?"

"I have a few questions for you." The spooky man said, removing a pair of oversized sunglasses as he took a seat next to Jace on the bench. "If you don't mind."

The tone implied that this guy didn't really care if Jace minded or not, he was going to get his answers.

"Who're you, and what do you want with me?"

"I work for the government. Sector Seven." A badge was briefly flashed, and stowed before Jace could get a good look at it. "I want to know what you remember about Mission City."

Jace frowned.

"It is very important, sir. What happened?"

"Why don't you tell me" Jace said. "I don't have a fraggin' clue what happened in someplace that I've never been."

"You were there, Jason." A sly, almost sly smile. "How do you think you got hurt?"

"Car wreck." Jace said shortly, "Hit a telephone pole or somethin'. That's what they told me."

"They told you?"

"I don't even remember what kinda car I was drivin'-- camero, solstice, civic. Who knows. I don't." This guy knew something that he wasn't telling. Jace scowled, forcing his scarred hand into a fist. "Why don't you answer some of my questions now. Who are you, and what do you know about me?"

"I don't answer the questions, young man." The horribly snake-like smile was still plastered on the suit's face. "I ask them."

Stay calm. He's trying to get a reaction.

"Well then, Mr. Government, sir. Maybe I could help you more if you'd ask me a question. Why're you all here. Not just for me? And why does your friend over there keep pointing that box at me, and muttering about rads?"

The government agent lost his smile.

"Simmons-- try to be more descrete." He rose, making a gesture to the other three lurking figures Jace had noticed, "We're done here."

Almost as quietly as they'd tried to sneak up on him, Jace watched them go.

He had not been in an accident, he realized, as the aide came to take him to his appointment. Whatever it had been, the government was involved. And that alone made him ... curious.

The agents had found that he knew nothing.

Jace would have to change that.