Hey, everybody! I'm back with the next chapter. I'm very curious to see what you guys will think of this one. *chuckles*
Queenlaur had an interesting question that I thought I might as well mention here rather than responding to them directly since some of my other readers might be wondering this as well. They asked if Jack had any clothes on. While I had technically addressed this in a previous chapter, it was such a blink-and-you-miss it comment that I'm not surprised it got missed, and I really should have addressed it better, so here you go. Yes, Jack is wearing clothes. Every single body is dressed the exact same way in the exact same clothes, which further creeps out Jack.
Bonus question that I'll address from Sweets-n-Treats because why not? I'm never going to address it directly in the fanfic, so to satisfy your curiosity: the breathable liquid in the containers is a real thing, but I figured that Jack wouldn't have power over it since his power is over the freezing of water. Or I randomly decided that he had no power over it, because apples, haha. The liquid itself is called hydroflourocarbon, though it seems to have some other names associated with it that are a little outside my range of expertise since I'm not a scientist. But yes, people can honestly breathe the liquid when submerged in it. And switching between the liquid and air isn't the most pleasant from what I've heard, since you have to cough one out in order to breathe the other one in. But they have been doing research with using this liquid in artificial wombs since humans can breathe it in. True story. Google it if you're curious. It's a great plot device. :)
Anyway, thank you all for being awesome once again. You guys are more awesome than you know, haha. On with the show!
Jack recovered from the shock before the others did, and he jumped to his feet and ran toward the nearest door. He had no idea where he was running. This body of his wasn't in the mood to cooperate with his attempt at escape as he wobbled and ran into walls. Undaunted, he shook the dizziness out of his head, then kept running.
In time he figured out how this new body worked, and he ran faster. The better he got at running, the more difficult it would be for those strange people to capture him again. This was a good thing.
The hallway came to an abrupt end. He paused long enough to survey his options, then took off running toward the corridor to the left. He could still hear panicked footsteps behind him, so he had no time to lose. He had to shake them off his tail somehow.
Jack darted down another corridor and soon found himself at a crossroads area. He could travel in at least seven or eight different directions from here. Which way should he pick? He had been taking the first turns he saw, but he knew that he was going to eventually loop back to where he'd started. Someone was bound to be waiting for him there. He couldn't risk being careless from this point on, but he had to make up his mind soon.
A breezy sound caught his ear, and he looked up to see a ventilation shaft above his head. The grate was ajar. He was pretty sure he could slip in there if he could figure out how to get up there. If only he knew where his staff was, that problem would have been easy to solve.
But no matter. He could improvise. Jack positioned some random objects, then backed up. He ran up to one of the objects, used that one to take a flying leap at the other, and then jumped from that one to the grate. It was a lot harder feat than it should have been since he wasn't used to this body, but he still pulled it off. His doppelgänger bodies were designed well if they could pull impressive feats like that.
He pulled the grate shut to not leave evidence of where he'd gone. Then he crawled away from sight of any prying eyes as footsteps came running into the room. The confusion that floated up into the ventilation shaft was unmistakable.
"Where do you think he would have gone?" said one person.
"He could have gone anywhere from here," said another guy. He then seemed to realize the predicament they were in and raised the pitch of his voice. "Oh gosh, what are we gonna do?"
A third approached the group. "Now, nobody panic. He can't have gotten far. You know very well that he can't get out of here without help."
"I know," said the panicky second voice, "but now he knows things. Shouldn't we have wiped his memory as soon as we saw this happen?"
"You can't give someone a memory wipe so soon after a transfer," said the third. "We're going to have to catch him again and wait."
Jack regarded the people below with narrowed eyes. They wanted to capture him again and hold him prisoner so they could wipe his memory? He wouldn't have it. He was going to get away, no matter what it took.
Jack held his breath until he heard their footsteps recede. That had been close. Now he finally had the time to think.
Those people had said that he couldn't get away without help. He wasn't sure why, but that probably meant they were somewhere that was difficult to get away from. Perhaps they were in the middle of a desert. Maybe the help he needed was for someone to return his staff to him. He would have no problem escaping then. But where might they keep his staff?
Well, whatever the case, Jack didn't feel safe leaving the ventilation system for the time being. He decided to explore this strange place from within it. So he turned and crawled through the narrow ventilation tunnel in a new direction. He hoped being up here would provide some answers.
After a few minutes of crawling, he came upon a grate that overlooked what seemed to be a lunchroom. Several people sat around a table, eating and talking about random stuff. He didn't recognize any of the faces. He was about to move on when someone at the table said, "so have you heard that Jack Frost got loose?"
Someone else gasped and almost dropped their lunch. "He got away? But couldn't that ruin us?"
"I said got loose, not got away," said the first person. "He can't ruin anything so long as he's stuck on base, and I don't see how he could get away from here."
"But what if he finds out how to contact the Guardians and tells them everything he knows?" said the second person. Jack nodded in appreciation of this second person's worries. They were giving him some great ideas. Now if he could figure out how to contact the Guardians from here, wherever here was.
"You give him too much credit," said the first person. "He'll never figure it out. We're safe."
A third person piped up then. "I don't see why everyone's tiptoeing on eggshells around that guy. If he's causing so much trouble, shoot him. That's what I say."
Jack's hand flew to his mouth to stifle a cry of alarm. They wanted to kill him for what he knew? But what did he know? All he was aware of was that they had switched out his real body for this strange fake one. He began to feel terror over this body he now had and whatever secrets it might contain. For all he knew, they could have turned him into some sort of trap for the Guardians. Maybe they had made him into something that recorded vital information. Or maybe they connected to him by remote access and he would explode on command. A living bomb seemed as believable as anything else, right? Who knew what these people were capable of? He needed to find a way to get back into his own body, mangled or not.
Jack resumed his quest crawling down the tunnel. The first person reprimanded the third person for thinking such thoughts. The sentiment did very little to make Jack feel better. Someone in this strange place wanted Jack dead, and he wasn't going to ignore such a threat.
The tunnel tapered so it was too narrow, and he had to to find himself another loose grate to let himself out. It didn't take him long, which was surprising. One would think they would check these grates more often. He guessed these people had more important things to do.
Jack glanced around the corridor before he leaped out of the ventilation shaft. He then walked in the direction he had been exploring in the ventilation.
He came to a wall. Undaunted, he turned left and continued to follow the hallway wherever it led. There was a window up ahead, and Jack's heart rate quickened at the sight. If that window led to the outside, he could use it to gain a clue on where he was, if not to break out of this place altogether.
Jack ran to the window, then stopped and turned to look out of it. His heart stopped the instant the view outside met his eyes, and his jaw dropped. Outside was an expanse of darkness and some of the clearest stars he'd seen, accompanied by... planet Earth? Was he seeing things?
Jack became too dizzy to continue standing. He couldn't process all this new information, so he collapsed into a fitful heap on the floor. He wrapped his arms around his legs and held himself in a protective little bundle. He wasn't on the Earth? Then did that mean he was on the moon? How did he get here? What did these strange people want with him?
...And now you finally have a clue as to what's going on. I'm very curious as to what you guys think is happening from here on out. Feel free to guess at me. I don't care how outlandish the guess is. It makes me a better writer to know what ideas and images I'm conjuring up in my readers' minds. That's how I've learned as much as I have over the years, since I pretty much taught myself to write through fanfiction. It's an awesome writing school, really, and it's free. XD
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you around next time! (Feel free to kick my butt about editing. I need to get my butt kicked before I run out of backup chapters that I've already edited or you guys are going to have a gap of time with no chapters, which would suck. I have two more edited chapters after this one, so if I don't get around to editing the next arc within two days... Meh. Well, you get it, haha.) In any case, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Take care!