Wow, I'm impressed at how much attention this story has gotten already! I know it's not a huge amount by fanfiction standards, but with this fandom being so sluggish at the moment, getting two reviews, a fave, and two follows within the first twenty-four hours is an honor as far as I'm concerned. So thank you, guys! :)
Also, sorry if anyone noticed any typos in the last chapter yesterday. I forgot that I needed to proofread after I edited. You can wind up with some rather strange phrases otherwise. Yesterday had an interesting one of, "He didn't know how he knew that, but he could knew." Hmmm… okay. That little artifact is now taken care of, and I'll double check from now on that my editing hasn't left these fun little surprises. ;) Feel free to point them out if you do happen to see them though.
Anyway, sorry for babbling. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians or the Guardians of Childhood books or the characters therein.
Other disclaimer: The blood referenced in the last chapter continues in this one, and I think the next one too. Pretty sure it stops being mentioned after that. But if you're still squeamish, I figured I should warn you.
He knew not to tempt Fate since Fate has a nasty habit of pranking anyone dares to tempt it. But sometimes it was hard to avoid doing so. Jack opened his eyes wide and looked around. What he saw made his stomach lurch even worse than when he had laid eyes on his mangled body.
He saw himself. Or rather, he saw a body that looked exactly like his. Whether it was alive, he couldn't tell, but it was limp enough to be dead. And it wore the same clothes that he did. He clapped a hand over his mouth. What on earth was going on?
Jack didn't know much at that moment, but he knew he had to get out of there. He began feeling around his glass enclosure to find any possible weaknesses. Could he figure out how to escape before those people came back? Even he knew that there was no way he would be able to outrun them in his condition.
But the longer he looked, the deeper the rabbit hole went. His hand shot to the top of his enclosure. The cylinder was tightly capped, so he didn't discover a weakness up there. But he did discover a tiny pocket of air. That creeped him out even more than the thought of them keeping him in a display case. The fact that there was air up there meant that he was not breathing in air, and if not air, what was it? Was this some kind of breathable liquid? Did such a thing exist?
Some bubbles escaping from the cylinder next to him caught his attention, and he turned to look. What he saw made his eyes widen as far as they could go. It was another duplicate of himself, once again wearing the same clothes. And beside that duplicate was yet another one, and beside that one, yet another.
Jack slammed his eyes shut and turned away from the view, not wanting to see how many Jacks there were in the room. He wished he hadn't even seen the first. Didn't they say when you see your doppelgänger, you can expect to die soon? What that what was happening? Was he going to die?
The thumping sounds came into the room again. Footsteps. Those must be how footsteps sounded to him while encased in liquid. Despite his desperate wish to see nothing more of this strange place, he opened his eyes. The need to know what was going on was much stronger than the need to hide.
Jack slapped the side of his cylinder a couple times to get someone's attention. "Hey! What's going on? What are you doing to me?"
A single figure approached Jack's enclosure. The closer the person got, the clearer Jack could make out his face. The man watched Jack for a moment. He scribbled on a rectangular object which Jack guessed to be a high tech clipboard. Then he turned and mumbled some things to his fellow workers. Jack still couldn't hear a word of what was being said.
The man then picked up a small handheld device, plugged the cord into the cylinder, and then said, "Can you hear me now?"
Jack gasped. He had not been expecting that. "Yes!" He shook his head to help him recover from the shock. "Yes, I can hear you. What's going on?"
"You don't need to worry your pretty little head about that," said the man. "You'll be back to your normal life soon enough and won't remember a thing about being here."
That didn't sit right with Jack. Maybe they were trying to help him, and maybe they weren't. But he had never asked them to force him to forget he was even there. He shook his head. "No! Tell me why I'm here!"
The man sighed. "Jack, why are you always so difficult every time you come here?"
Jack raised an eyebrow and regarded the man. He had been here before? And yet he couldn't remember it? He knew he'd had a funny feeling about something for a long time, but he never expected it to be this. Was he getting kidnapped and then made to forget about it over and over again?
"What are you talking about?" Jack's voice cracked with emotion. Why couldn't this guy help him understand instead of confusing him more? "Why am I here?"
The man sighed and looked around at the others. It was like he had to judge whether it was okay for him to violate some sort of taboo or something. He turned back to face Jack. "Look, Jack, we're not here to harm you, okay? You only come here whenever you hurt yourself and we have to fix it."
Jack's eyebrows shot up. So these guys were some kind of healers or something? But then why were they being so secretive? Judging by the people's reactions, the man wasn't supposed to have even said that much.
Jack gestured to the cylinder next to him. "But what's with this? Why do you have a bunch of... a bunch of other... other mes?"
The man groaned and turned away to face his colleagues. It seemed Jack wasn't supposed to have noticed that, and the guy wasn't sure what to do about it. The man held the microphone away from his face. It seemed he had forgotten to turn it off, because Jack heard a very faint, "We're going to have to do it now. We can't afford to wait any longer."
"What?" Jack said, and he pounded on his enclosure, but it was very well built and it only hurt his hands. "What are you going to do? Tell me!"
The man turned around again only for a moment and said, "Don't worry, Jack. You won't remember any of this."
"But what is this?" Jack screamed.
They didn't answer his question. Someone in the room flipped a switch, flooding Jack's container with electric current. Jack's body tingled. It zapped at his fingers. He wasn't too concerned until the electricity jumped into his body and wreaked havoc on his entire being.
He was being torn apart. He could feel it. Some part of him was being disconnected from some other part of him. The electricity arced across each of his cells, cackling in its wake as it basked in his destruction. Jack felt as though he had a million fire ants beneath the surface of his skin. Parading around. Trying to bite their way through him until they reformed him into the perfect new home for them.
Despite how much Jack wanted to demand answers right then, he couldn't. The only thing his body and mind knew how to do at that time was scream, and scream he did. He screamed until his own voice echoed in his ears, and he drifted off into silence once again.
See, Jack? Don't ever tempt Fate by saying things can't get worse. Fate doesn't like being told what to do and will always be a brat. :P
Anyway, thanks for reading, guys! Feel free to tell me your thoughts or questions or whatever. They make me happy to see. I'm still working on editing chapters to post, which is a super tedious process, but I should have the next one ready to go tomorrow. :)
Take care, and hope to see you around next time!