jakiescokolwiek

[jakiescokolwiek]

Gabriel's first lucid meeting with Jack Morrison was no less bizarre than the previous three mentioned because he woke up with a pounding headache, his side itching in the most annoying manner, and the memories of uncanny heavenly visions. As soon as he moved, the man in the chair next to the bed jerked awake, stared at him with a look that clearly communicated he wasn't all there, and then glanced at his watch.

"Motherfucker." Gabriel decided the deflated tone with which the cuss was enunciated left absolutely no room for feeling offended by it. "Nineteen minutes. You don't dare to move, I'm going to get someone."

At first, the man simply started to slide off the chair until he managed to catch his balance, barely avoided tripping over his own uncooperative legs, and then shuffled towards the exit from the room where he briefly turned back and gave him a look full of doleful spite.

"I'm serious. Or it's syringe time again. Sir."

Holy shit. Gabriel's mind blanked for a second there because according to his wobbly recollections he had somehow managed to propose to a trash panda that went through a woodchipper. The dark circles under the eyes, at least three days worth of stubble, and the disheveled and blood-soaked uniform were telling a good story somewhere there if one were feeling generous enough to look for it.

"I don't know. Give him something to read, ma'am?" Came from the corridor and Gabriel could almost literally hear it in the tone that it was paired up with hands thrown up into the air. "Hour. At minimum."

"Did you, at least, apologize?" Ana raised one eyebrow from the doorway as she passed it, inspected the chair, and then decided against sitting in it, choosing instead to stand with one hand braced against the bed.

"Fuck. No. Who knows?"

"Everyone," Ana looked at him with exasperation and used her 'I'm so disappointed with you' voice - and that was a good moment to start panicking, Gabriel decided, because he would never live it down. His life was finished. He needed to go underground and change his name.

"Everyone?"

"Gabriel, you broke his nose." Wait, what? The relief on his face must have given something away because Ana slowly angled towards him. "What did you think you actually did?"

"...tried to explain the whole expanded Transformers timeline?" The bait was weak but to Gabriel's utmost luck Ana seemed to snag it. Hook, line, and sinker.

"Merciful God, poor guy. I don't know what's worse, broken nose or that, and that's me saying that when I know what you get up to in your free time. Please tell me you managed to at least retain some dignity and had not started to tell him about your doll collection..."

"They are models and action figures, Ana!"

"They are dolls!"

"I guess the patient's cognitive processes are scrambled a bit yet because if my sister wants to play with them, they are damn well dolls, or whatever she wants to call them," the trash panda was back, with a big steaming glass cup of coffee in his hands. Or rather, some tar-like sludge that tried to imitate coffee judging by the acidic smell of old socks it seemed to produce. Gabriel hissed when Ana elbowed his arm, the one that got assaulted with the syringe.

"What he wanted to say," she glared at him and Gabriel deflated under her gaze, "was...?"

"I'm sorry. For, you know, your face," Gabriel side-eyed the trash panda as he put his cup down on the table and started looking through the instruments lying there.

"He is very sorry," Ana agreed.

"Oh, that, s'okay. I'm told it builds character," the trash panda was wobbling back to the bed with something in his hand, probably to stab him again, and Gabriel was frantically trying to save face.

"It won't happen again."

"I'll make sure it won't," Ana agreed. (It did happen again, and Gabriel had been positively apologetic about it but he really didn't deal well with the standard issue painkillers, and besides, Jack should be ready for it and just fucking dodge. But that was a completely different story and it would do no-one any good to get sidetracked in the narrative.) The suspect instrument of torture turned out to be a small light the trash panda shone into his eyes with no warning and Gabriel winced in pain.

“Extreme reaction, presumed vampirism.” Ana raised her eyebrows at the diagnosis. “Now, sir, please look at my finger.”

“I’m fine. This is stupid.”

“Sir,” the trash panda rolled it on his tongue with a face of someone who had the upper ground and was not afraid of any quantity of sand. A real bastard, Gabriel was sure. “Please look at my finger, or it’s the syringe again.”

Now, anyone who could—and would—stab him in the manner that still elicited a jab of phantom pain in his arm was not to be trifled with. Not to mention the trash panda being in the possession of the potentially life-ruining blackmail material. Scratch that, definitely life-ruining. Under duress, Gabriel complied, but without any enthusiasm – which he clearly communicated with his sour expression.

“Good, good, I’m leaving him in your hands.” Ana straightened and moved to pat the trash panda on his shoulder. At the last moment she reconsidered and vaguely touched his back where his uniform seemed mostly clean. Mostly was the key word in the previous sentence.

“He’s not supposed to be up for another hour.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep him in the bed.”

“Don’t I have any say in this?”

Eerily, both Ana and the trash panda focused their attention on him and simultaneously told him a loud resounding ‘no’, after which Ana just left the room and the trash panda dejectedly shuffled back to retrieve his cup of the coffee-imitating gunk. Gabriel waited several seconds, took a deep breath, and prepared to bargain with his collection of custom figurines in the worst case scenario.

“Now, sir, you move that butt off the bed and I’m doping you up to the gills again,” the trash panda muttered over the rim of the cup, eyes only half-open and staring at some undisclosed point in the space.

“What?”

“I’m a medical officer, and I will have MPs cuff you to the bed. And then, I will take pictures. I also know some people with a lot of followers. It will go viral, that’s a promise.”

“Are you threatening me with...?” Gabriel stared at him in confused disbelief.

“Yes.” The trash panda sipped on the contents of the cup again. “I don’t want my whole work to go fuck itself, I’m counting on a glowing review, and a few days of good sleep in the brig.”

“You what?”

“In the last fifty hours I managed less than two hours of sleep and that’s also your fucking fault. Sir. And I just don’t give a fuck anymore.” The trash panda shrugged in the accompaniment of a maniacal chuckle, almost spraying a bit of coffee with the snort.

“Sure. A glowing review. I can do that. Just,” Gabriel squirmed on the bed, “don’t tell anyone. Please.”

“What?” It was the trash panda’s turn to look befuddled as he tried to stay in touch with his feeble connection to the reality that was very obviously fraying on the edges. “Oh. That. No way, I’m telling everyone.”

Shit. Gabriel made peace with the fact that his life was finished. Dead. Buried. Six feet under.

“Like, what, that a fucking ‘super-soldier’,” the trash panda made a one-handed air quote, which, truthfully, was a tad hurtful, “like, broke my nose while my hand was getting all intimate with his small intestine and right kidney?”

The pantomimed motions were far too realistic, especially that repeated push, pull, and tug. Gabriel winced again. Okay, he could live with that.

“So, like, read something,” the trash panda sunk back into the chair, “and I’ll see you in an hour. Sir.” With one hand, he fumbled with something on his watch, and then the bastard had the audacity to just fall asleep on the spot with the cup held steady by some unexplainable force in his hand.

Gabriel, slowly, and with some considerable reservations, started to explore the possibility of being in the presence of a real life cryptid. Unshaved, foul-mouthed, and with an attitude.

[jakiescokolwiek]

Edits: ((not mine)).

“Fareeha,” Angela gasps. Her hands roam the other woman’s body. Her fingers trace the ridges of defined muscle, travel the grooves and plains of skin seeking to remember them all at once. She doesn’t know where they are—the light is there but only just - just enough to let Angela see the bronze skin shine - and Fareeha’s eyes look at her, clear as day. Warm, safe, floating in the sensations.

Angela pulls the woman in, their lips meet with a passion she doesn’t remember feeling. Fareeha surrounds her, arms on either side of her head. Her hair beads caress Angela’s cheek. They are cool and solid. Tangible. Gold, most definitely, glittering points of light.

And then Angela feels it. Feels Fareeha inside her. A surge of pleasure runs through her, branching along the rest of her body like lightning, electric aftershocks tingling in the nerve endings. She gasps, holding onto Fareeha’s back, as hard as she can. She is jostled back and forth as Fareeha sets a rhythm.

Angela feels herself relax, accommodating more and more of her, until Fareeha is practically grinding her hips into her. It’s intense. Mind-blowing. It’s something she has never experienced before, this odd feeling of being filled.

Heat rises to her cheek. Her ears burn. Heat fills her body as Angela approaches the peak and teeters on the edge of the cliff. Her entire body tenses slowly, as if preparing her for when she falls.

She screams when Fareeha pushes her off the edge. She feels the rush run through her entire body, making her tremble with pleasure. Involuntarily, she kicks the air, and Fareeha, who is still keeping up the rhythm, comes making a different kind of warmth spread through her, deeper, much deeper, as if right in her core.

As the two of them catch their breaths, coming back to their senses, Fareeha pulls out, and Angela lays her eyes on her toned arms, the ripped abs, her shapely chest, and when her eyes roam between her legs — What? Angela’s eyes fly open as she wakes up with a tiny gasp.

There is darkness around her. Her eyes remain wide open as she lets her breathing calm. She confirms she is in her own room, sleeping on her side. She definitely feels something between her legs; it must be the aftermath of that dream. She feels the arm around her midriff and almost squeaks out in horror when she realizes she has fallen asleep with Fareeha.

And even if it’s Fareeha’s deep gentle breathing right behind her ears that makes her feel safer in this wild mess of thoughts and sensations, Angela carefully wriggles herself out of her arms and silently walks to the bathroom, opening the door as little as possible and closing it behind her quietly. She quickly removes her leggings and puts the useless by this point damp panties in the hamper. She doesn’t have enough in her to deal with it right now. She checks her leggings next: they have miraculously survived the incident, and the smell hasn’t kept.

She goes to the sink, looking at herself in the mirror. Her face is flushed and her eyes are wide open, pupils still slightly dilated. Amidst the confused thoughts swimming in her head and the blood roaring in her ears, she tries to remember the sight that made her wake up. It fills her with a strange cocktail of fascination and shock, and…

Before leaving the bathroom, Angela splashes some water on her face, to achieve a little more clarity. She stops on the way back, just by the edge of the bed, looking down on Fareeha. Reason having abandoned her long ago, she lets her hand roam a little, and only peculiar curiosity moving her hand now. Her fingers make contact with cloth, feeling Fareeha’s body radiate heat to the pads of her fingers. She moves them about, almost patting her down. Fareeha recoils a little in response, moves a little to readjust and breaks the contact.

Angela almost sighs in relief, as if she is lucky to not have her dream bleed into the reality, and then blushes hard when she realizes how lewd - how inappropriate - she had been with her touch, her fingers straying somewhere so private without the knowledge of the other woman. It was like a violation. She ignores her burning cheeks and quickly lies down. Burrows into Fareeha’s front, placing herself back where she had been when she woke up. Fareeha also brings her arms back into position, holding her again.

Angela falls asleep fast, desperate to put this behind her.

[jakiescokolwiek]

His fingers still grip the rifle, the knuckles white on the dark surface of the gun, and he still stares into dark crimson eyes. The last words reverberate between them – him and the Beast – the talk of ashes and charred bones left in their collective wake somehow does not sound like merely a pretty metaphor anymore. Jack swallows back another question and slowly lifts himself off the floor. The walker is gone in the minutes that had trickled by and he tries somehow to justify its lack of awareness of his own position – was he shielded by the structure or was a single signature not worth the hassle, or, maybe, the interference had messed with the mech’s systems? There is also a different possibility, one that now is not as far-fetched as one would imagine otherwise, and he knows it’s the morphine talking as he glances back to the Beast. “I’m dead, aren’t I?” “Now, what makes you say such a thing, Sunshine?” The Beast tilts its maw to the side, playfully contrarian – yet under the light timbre something darker lurks with the intensity of razor-sharp fangs biting into the nape of his neck. “This is limbo. Tartarus. The ceaseless punishment,” Jack shakes his head, picks up the pace. “Do tell me, Sunshine, how does one escape from such a predicament?” The Beast now keeps his stride slinking forward at his side, the words simultaneously mocking and paternalistic. “One doesn’t.” “One doesn’t unless one has their own guide,” the Beast chortles. “I don’t remember ever being so goddamn fucking vague.” “You’re learning yet, Sunshine. You're learning yet.” "Goddamn fucking morphine," Jack murmurs. His vision is focused and swimming at the same time. His breath coils around his tongue with a taste of rusted iron. "If you're my guide, I'm fucking lost." "Oh, Sunshine, did I ever aspire to such a title?" The barbwire lull of the laughter pierces his ears together with the roar of the fire, and the smell of burning plastic and artificial fabrics suddenly becomes dominant. The plane. One wing is broken off and missing, the other is buried deep in a collapsed building. The fuselage is smashed into three neat pieces - the tail rests sideways on the street. The inside of the craft is still on fire and the asphalt is soaked by fuel. No bodies. No blood. The luggage is strewn around. No body parts. Nothing. There's a ripped in half pink suitcase in front of him with a small plastic hand sticking out of the bundled clothes. "Who's there? Please!" A woman. Jack turns towards the voice and a greenish silhouette swivels there with its hands outstretched as if fumbling in the darkness. A child cries. "Please, say something!" "They're all dead," Jack whispers taking a step back. "Yes, they are, and it was us who killed them, Sunshine, or did you so conveniently forget?" The Beast seethes with smug satisfaction. "Only ash and charred bones, no evidence and no witnesses," it hisses as it focuses the glare of its crimson eyes on him, like he is a mere insect under its scrutiny, "this is what remains in our wake. This is," it bares its fangs in a feral growl as it punctuates every word, "what we are, what we were, and what we are to become yet again." "No," Jack backs further, a stumbling step after a stumbling step, away from the encroaching darkness that swallows him only to spit him out in a green-lit hell. "No." His fingers move over the panel covered with a delicate synthetic mesh designed to evaporate on blast. A child cries. The explosive arms without a sound. The goggles give him fleeting vertigo with a split-second delay of the processed image. "Please, say something!" The woman moves in his direction, slightly off to the side, and Jack evades her. The carpet muffles his steps. "I know someone's here!" The child is still crying. A man screams in anger somewhere down the corridor. "One. Two. Three. Boom," the Beast intones with a static of bad reception raising in the background - its voice morphs into that of a newscaster, "...that Mehdi Benjelloun has just claimed the responsibility for the bombing for..." White noise. Everything drowns in white noise. The clock is ticking. The hands do not move, do not even strain, and the room is white. “Mr. Morrison,” the psychiatrist whose name he cannot recall smiles, the kind of impersonal smile one could expect from a professional detached from the situation. “Did the change in the prescription have any adversarial effects? Any notable differences you have experienced regarding your frame of mind?” The Beast stings behind his teeth, scrapes the sides of his throat, looks through his eyes. “No. Can’t think of any. Can’t…” Jack turns his gaze to the tree in the painting hanging above the vibrant ficus to his left, to the maelstrom of the painted sky behind it. The rapid strokes of the brush give it an illusion of a slow deliberate motion. “Felt worse for the first week but I don’t think I really thought about killing myself since then.” “That’s good to hear,” the man types something on the keyboard. “You redecorated.” “Excuse me?” “This picture, it’s new. It’s different from the one before.” The doctor looks at him quizzically, maybe even slightly alarmed. The Beast whispers of danger, a hissing kind of murmur seeping into his thoughts. “And what do you see in the picture, Mr. Morrison?” “Morbid landscape with a tree,” Jack swallows, eyes darting to the other side, searching for a route of escape from some undefined peril that now sits heavy on his shoulders. Its claws dig deep enough below his collarbone to draw blood that seeps through and stains the fabric. “Visual hallucinations. This merits additional evaluation.” The man extends his hand under the desk and the Beast roars in fury, it roars as everything is white noise again. The white room. The chair is covered in dark rust, no - not rust - old dried blood, cracking and flaking off. The infernal ticking thunders louder and louder until he wants to scream just to drown it away. "Getting lost in your own head again, Sunshine? We can't have that, not yet," the Beast whispers. "Inhale." Inhale. "Count." Count to five. Count against the ticking. Don't lose focus. "Exhale." He exhales, slowly pushes the air out of his lungs. "Remember..." "Remember my training," Jack repeats opening his eyes - when had he closed them? The plane is yet again in front of him but in the meantime, he must have passed it. The cockpit looks almost intact - if not for the missing panes of glass and something still sparking inside. He's hunched behind a concrete barrier - it seems the street had been closed off to the traffic before. Jack leans to the side to observe the plaza. There are several cars and a bus, one unmarked APC lying on its side. Recreational area primarily. He can see a bright red restaurant umbrella halfway thrown through a display window. A lot of bodies on the ground he can safely identify as Blackwatch personnel. Jack grimaces when from behind the APC a figure shambles out, a man in a stained dress shirt with a suitcase held in his right hand. Something unsettling in how strangely his neck twists to the left. "I wonder, Sunshine," the Beast teases, "fight or flight?" The man turns away and Jack mentally reconstructs the area mapping the best route. He licks his lips, runs his tongue over the chapped skin. Changes the grip on the Patten and moves hunched - eyes darting between the man and the ground - trying to find safe footing. Seconds he measures in breaths trickle by as he makes his way towards an overturned cart painted with happy pastels now greyed with settled ash. Jack stops to take another look at his surroundings. Crumbled building blocks the nearest street - he could climb over the rubble but the prospect is risky especially if he wants to avoid meeting the civilian or whatever else the man with the suitcase actually is. Slowly, as the figure disappears behind the APC, Jack raises. Maybe he can circle him. A blink, and the man stands before him in a cloud of swirling black ash. No. Not a man anymore. Something that used to be human. The lower jaw is missing, the eyes are white, the broiled skin sloughs off the meat. The creature shrieks with an unearthly tone; the wave of sound hits with a multitude of stabs and knocks the breath out of him. Jack falters and almost drops the rifle, scrambles to regain his composure. Twisting tendrils of purplish light lash out but not towards him, no, to the side, and with growing dread he sees a body dragged upwards with the entrails flopping from under the vest and limbs swinging in disjointed tugs like a ragdoll shaken erratically by attached strings. It raises the gun and turns towards him. Jack ducks behind the rubble. Bullets thunder against the cement. A shriek again, his vision darkness for a second, and another body joins in the puppet dance. Shots spray wildly in a wide swipe rising clusters of dust where they hit. Jack emerges quickly from the side and aims at the closest enemy. Two shots send the helmet flying, the third one shatters the brow, and the glowing tethers snap as the body hits the ground. It’s not enough, the strings spring out from the creature anew and latch onto the fallen cadaver, sink and dig into the flesh, and bring it upright again. “A resourceful abomination, isn’t she?” The Beast rumbles with glee, its presence growing, enveloping him, and mucous darkness shifting against his skin. The taste of mildew and rot steals into his mouth. “She tests our patience. We will kill her.” “We will kill her,” Jack echoes as yet another puppet joins the fray. “We will grind down her bones between our teeth,” the Beast purrs. Claws rest over his hands, and then he runs between the bullets sailing with deadly grace through the air. The Beast keeps his pace; the loud empty thumps explode in the sudden eerie silence as its paws hit against the pavement rising up clouds of ash. It bares its fangs, its maw low to the ground, and then it jumps through the motionless air swamped in the iridescent afterglow. The Beast’s jaws close around the creature’s neck with a nauseating crunch. It turns and twists thrashing its head from side to side until meat, tendons, and bones separate. Mutilated head rips off and freezes midflight in the air. With a snap, the movement resumes. Hunks of meat hit the ground with wet squelches, the violet tendrils dissipate, and the risen corpses fall over once again. The Beast roars triumphantly, and Jack, with his hands buried to the elbows in the creature’s clawed apart chest smiles mirroring its expression: all teeth and savagery.

[jakiescokolwiek]

Sometime later

The wolf towers over them, its bulk seemingly too broad to fit into the spaces under the shadowed archway.

“You. You, I will know as you unleash me on the world,” it speaks to Jack – baring its yellowed fangs as it turns its head towards Gabriel and focuses the glare of its one golden eye on him. The other eye is gone and in its place a glistening wound seeping pus and clear fluid matting its fur sits. “But you, you I already know, Destroyer, and you are not welcome here, nor is your kin. Were it not for what you took from me, I would have ground your bones between my teeth long ago, as weak and pathetic as you are now.”

“We seek the passage to the cockatrice, to retrieve what it guards,” Jack answers before Gabriel has his chance to speak.

“The cockatrice? The old wyrm is long gone doddering mad to the singing whispers, and shriveled,” the wolf growls slowly stepping back into the shadows. “So be it. Let the wyrm bring you to your doom sooner than later, Destroyer. I will take from you what you stole from me, and then I will eat the sun and plunge the world into eternal darkness.”

 Sometime later

Herald of the Lost slithers forth from the womb of the void with a silent scream of singing whispers – and nothingness clings to his form in mucous strands of ripped membranes as he thrashes gasping for breath. Then, he raises slowly, his movements sharp and broken, like something that only wears flesh and bone for a fleeting moment and cannot fathom how it bends and flexes.

Herald speaks in the language of angels and around each syllable reality fractures and bleeds the void to seal itself with sluggish urgency – for it should not be uttered, and left to the singing whispers of the void.

Yet, Akande steps forward as Herald regards him with a smile that splits his face in a macabre gash – for this is the day of his vindication, and his is the reward to be reaped – the boon for his toils awaits him.

Fingers brush against his cheekbone in a caress, words curl around his senses, and his skin molts of his frame to reveal moist scales shimmering underneath. With each violent jerk of bones adjusting and slurping muscle shifting, with each unimaginable stab of pain and down on his knees, Akande has time to reflect on the nature of the recompense he had not expected – and to regret his pride with what remains.

When he stands, he is the first of the new race. He will sire the Lost back into the world ripe for the picking, and Herald leads him back into the darkness.

 Sometime later

The Sabbath murmurs, and Queen of Spiders presiding over her subjects stands proud and indignant, the dark crown wrought out of bog iron and betrayal sitting atop her head.

“You, a man, you dare to challenge me for my right to rule?”

“I come to you with the moon in my belly. I come to you with my brow adorned by the Lord of the Hunt and the blessings of Herne on my thighs. I come to you bedded by the Seven Year King. What have you to show for yourself, Queen of Spiders, but a crown forged with the still hearts of your dead lovers?”

 Sometime later

Jack can feel the void encroaching – the tendrils slowly climbing up his body – the searing cold and the freezing heat peeling the skin off his flesh and wriggling into his very existence – the hungry angels fighting in their frenzied avarice, the starvation and the desperation urging them onward.

Still, the calm descends upon him, for he can see the same darkness in Gabriel clutching his wrist with fraught strength, and understands this is the moment of the choice because Gabriel is not ready, not yet.

“Listen to me,” Jack smiles, “just listen, the mask, you don’t really need it, you never did, you never will.”

“This is really not the time,” Gabriel shouts back at him, his teeth bared and eyes smoldering red coals.

“No, listen, you only think you need the mask but you don’t, but because you think you need it, you need it,” Jack uncurls his fingers and releases his grip, “so you have to find the missing pieces. Two more, just two more, Gabe.”

“Don’t! Don’t let go, I can get you out!”

“I made you a promise, once, long ago, and time to keep it has come. A life for a life.” It is easy, easier than ever before, to focus, and the pain of his blistering wrist is nothing – nothing at all – as are nothing the writhing claws of the Lost dug under his skin. “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.”

And Gabriel lets go, his hand burned, screaming until all sounds are drowned out by the singing whispers. In the void, Jack curls around the last remnants of what is him lingering, and the smell of freshly tilled earth and lush growth assaults his senses. He looks to the sky where the stars sprawl in the shape of long-forgotten constellations and galaxies in memory of universes long gone and just waiting to be born again in violent explosions, each birth a cruel end and a hopeful beginning. Insects buzz a melodious cadence and fireflies dance a hypnotic ballet in the air.

He steps forward, his toes sink in the damp and soft soil as he brushes away the cornstalks – the hushed rustling continuing when a light breeze stirs in the fields.

He knows he is alone, save for the one waiting for him in the small clearing full of broken bleached bones.

Reaper reaches out and Jack accepts, twines his fingers with black claws – dark and sharp like jagged obsidian. The question in a strange tilt and trill carries a sound of an accusation.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jack smiles as Reaper pulls him close and its face nuzzles into his neck. “I won’t be here for it to end. A life for a life,” he gasps at claws traveling the length of his back. “Suffering for suffering. It’s a selfish wish born out of a selfish love.”

Reaper croons in a language that should never be spoken for it belongs to a different place and time, to singing whispers vibrating in the void, and around each syllable the reality bends.

“Forgive me my selfishness,” Jack traces the ridges of the skull with his fingertips – observing every little bump and irregularity – and as he is slowly laid down on the damp soft soil among broken bleached bones he knows Reaper’s face will feel like warm living flesh – but this time he will keep his eyes open as his world dies. Maybe this is the last act of kindness the cruel fate allows him.

Elsewhere, out of the womb of the void, Herald of the Lost slithers into the reality, to foretell the coming of those who were forgotten many a turn of the world ago.

 Sometime later

The rent is paid for another year. Gabriel closes the door behind himself and stops in place, unsure, observing the private mausoleum bereft of a body – in its place dust and remnants of life, all left almost like the day he set foot inside for the first time – the open cd case, the book thrown haphazardly on the table, the half-empty pack of cigarettes and the blue lighter, the shirt kicked under the desk.

Pictures in the frames, of people he knows, and even one or two of his own, and a ghost of a conversation they once had.

Gabriel slowly slips off his gloves – it feels only right here, inside, in a place that is still Jack’s – to accept himself as he is, just as Jack had accepted him.

[jakiescokolwiek]

Three stories about things that dwell in the cornfields, two nights on the train, and one end neither man nor monster can escape.

Or:

There are monsters in the corn, and Reaper might not be the scariest of them all.

[jakiescokolwiek]

This is the story that always stays with me – the story of one swelteringly hot summer. I’m thirteen going on fourteen or twelve going on thirteen, and the summer is spent, at least partially, at one particular resort by a small lake circled by even more smaller lakes.

The word ‘resort’ brings now a different imagery but then, it was a fenced-in collection of little plywood cabins of which the most didn’t even have the running water. Even the bigger ones – the better ones – only had a little kitchenette area with a sink and a gas cooker. The showers and WC were all in a completely separate building, one made out of brick and mortar for once, overlooking the parking lot through the moderately dense pines.

It’s me, my cousins, and their friend, doing stupid things the children are wont to do but in retrospection, every adult cringes fondly at the precarious edge of danger every memorable childhood adventure teeters on.

The nights are spent fishing, playing strange games in the confines of the resort or around the banks of the lake where the paths are well known, or on loud overdramatic readings of cheesy romantic novels brought by my aunt or one of my cousins.

One of the books – I managed to track it down once – is ‘Fire and Ice’, an unapologetically bad romance novel we all laugh at then, but it manages to resonate somehow with me, enough that some time later I use the names of the main characters as the names for my original characters: Bryony Rose and Kynaston Germaine.

The resort’s manager has two sons, the younger one is deeply fascinated by my father, they are both scientific and philosophical minds, and my father likes to be seen as an authority figure – he is a bit of a demagogue and will run circles around you and beat you with your own arguments using them sometimes a tad out of the context. The manager’s younger son brings the offerings of Sapkowski’s Witcher books as they are published in exchange, and I devour them, all the blood, sex, and cruel realities included, yet no worse than other things I read, or watch. He also lets me play along with the game he is dming in Cyberpunk, the first game I play and will always have a soft spot for.

His older brother suffers from muscular dystrophy. When I meet him, he is an adult, but the disease gives him in part a childlike appearance that sends the deep pangs of discomfort in my childish mind. He died several years ago, and I’m thankful for having ever met him, not because I grew to see him as a friend, that never happened, but because I had been forced by the circumstance to socialize with him however unpleasant in the beginning it had been for the child me. It gave me perspective, and it gave me understanding. All I needed was for the person to be visible, to be a part or even merely a background of that part of my life to flip my outlook and the way I carry myself around them, to take note of what they need help with exactly and what are they capable of by themselves. It’s so easy to blame some people for their shitty – or well-meaning in a wrong way – attitude towards people with disabilities but forget they were never socialized in any way to be around them to start with.

I suppose it’s around this time I see ‘Orlando’, and I’m in love with both the woman at the end and the boy at the beginning. Never do I question that in my mind, the fact I want to kiss both girls and boys, and with my forays into sheltered English-speaking fandoms of the time the motion there is nothing wrong with that is cemented in my understanding. What helps probably is there is almost absolutely no representation whatsoever, be it negative or positive, of the same-sex attraction in the immediate world around me. A friend of my cousins’ is playfighting his older brother in the parking lot, although they might have lost the ‘play’ part somewhere along the way. The bastard swords collide with loud visceral clangs and whines in showers of sparks as I look on, enthralled, from the shadows of the pines. I have a crush on the older brother, I follow him incessantly like a lost puppy, and they let me fight for a while and we set up training sessions. I love swinging the heavy sword, learn how to properly change the holds on the handle, learn to block and attack. I feel happy.

Then, one night, I manage to convince two of my cousins I’m summoning a demon and the only protection there is in case of a broken circle is water. I pour the sand into the shapes on the old landing and chant vaguely magic made-up songs as I prance around throwing weeds and grass and flowers, and my cousins, they stand on the other side of the railings ready to drop themselves into the lake at any inkling of something going wrong. I finish the ritual, and keep the prank to myself for years. It teaches me the power the words have, and how easy it is to wrap people in the worlds they build.

There is a bar and a disco in one in the village, everybody calls it ‘At Jew’s’. Only much later it strikes me, coupled with mandatory school literature and the ‘good Jew’ portrayals in it, how wrong it is. For now, it’s a place frequented by two older boys we ‘hate’. We also ‘hate’ the scouts that have their own resort bordering with ours. Through circumstance, we take off their gate by the lake off its hinges and run away with it, later throw it into the water, and evade the pursuit. Later the same night we lounge on the wooden landing and hear the shouts, the chase, the sounds of heavy blows. It’s only the next day that a realization comes our prank had resulted in those two childishly disliked boys getting their asses beat by scouts by no fault of theirs – this time. The knowledge I had by my own actions hurt others, albeit unknowingly, sits heavy in my stomach, and I promise myself to never do that again.

This all is the story of one summer that always stays with me, one summer that is probably three summers mixed together in my childhood memories. It is the summer of me becoming myself.

[jakiescokolwiek]

Preface: My family, especially the extended family, is colorful – and most of the stories I have about them are gathered together from little crumbs over the years for various reasons including, but not limited to, a schism over the inheritance. Colorful, yeah, that’s the word to describe a Soviet spy, an eighty years old aunt discussing a trip with her then-current boyfriend to a sex shop with children present, a relationship drama rivaling telenovelas, a relative who escaped on foot from exile in Siberia, and a relative who lived through Volyn genocide and then survived the raids by the ‘Cursed Soldiers’ (basically war criminals or terrorists, at best indiscriminate resistance – though this is a very sore point for current revisionist history that tries to paint them as heroes).

But this story will be about love and loyalty.

My great-grandfather from my father’s side was a doctor specializing in homeopathy. Mind you, it was during the Inter-War Period, and homeopathy then was a respectable discipline that had nothing to do with the ‘intelligent water’ nonsense.

My great-grandfather was a doctor with his own practice which made him a very desirable candidate for a husband.

No-one knows why Grandpa had decided to forgo marrying some local woman – or even a woman of his own nationality. No, Grandpa instead had set his sights on a woman he had never met before, and as far as I know, there were no communiqués and no matchmakers involved except for the declarations of intent.

So Grandpa fetched himself a wife from a neighboring country, a German woman to be precise, yet the affair itself was a far more scandalous one - for you see, said woman had a son out of the wedlock, a wee boy four winters old.

Grandpa treated the boy as his own and between him and Grandma, four more children were born. Every source I heard points out their marriage had been a happy one.

Then, the war came, and around 1941-42 grandpa had been interred in a German labor camp.

Come a month, Grandma’s brother comes to visit her, and it is the first time he contacts her since she had left Germany. He promises her he will get Grandpa out of the camp under one condition: she will take all of the children and come back with him to Germany – to Berlin to be precise.

Grandma laughed him out of the house because come hell or high water she would neither leave Grandpa nor return to Germany.

Now, you might think it might have been a tall order for some random German to claim he can get any prisoner out of anywhere as Grandma’s brother had. You might be right. But not about Grandma’s brother, oh no, because, you see, he was a member of NSDAP, and not only that – his membership card’s metaphorical number was in four digits. Better yet, it was under 5000.

The brother had left and, surprise, Grandpa had been released two or three months later. After the war ended, Grandpa and Grandma lived happily together for the rest of their days until Grandpa’s death.

This has been a story about love, loyalty, and why I might be tangentially related to an accomplice of the Holocaust and some other war crimes.

[jakiescokolwiek]

Now, Gabriel wonders what would have happened if he had turned around. Had Morrison hesitated and faltered in his step, waiting to be stopped, or merely pressed on without a glance back?

The chill slowly sets in his flesh and with the indifferent stars and the void of the space inside his helmet, Gabriel finds letting go is easier than he ever thought it to be. He slips his eyes closed and floats away.

And apparently, considering the amount of pain he wakes up to, letting go is worth shit, and some more. Something simmers under his skin, hot and freezing simultaneously. The light is too sharp and darkness crowds the edges of his vision. A voice, calling, insistent, drifts in and out, too lost in the static buzzing in his ears.

Gabriel rolls to the side and tumbles down to the ground, disoriented. Something is very wrong in how his body does not want to listen to what he tells it to do. Hearing and sight slowly return to him. Explosions. Shots. Structural damage if the tremors that run through his arms he leverages himself on are not originating from the muscles he feels like he is using for the first time in days. Voice, female, steady but hurried, calling him through the broadcasting systems.

“Reyes. Give me a sign you hear me. Stand up.” Gabriel hoists himself up and defiantly stares at the probable source of the voice, the rude gesture is an afterthought but brings a modicum of satisfaction. The room decidedly does not resemble a proper medical facility, the equipment speaks more of a science laboratory – and vertigo threatens him with nausea. “Good. The base is under attack and you need to move fast.”

The question of the woman’s trustworthiness hangs in the air but the sounds confirm the situation. Gabriel turns towards the door trying to keep his balance – something is off, the way he feels how his body catches up to his intentions. The corridor is empty, the smell of spent ammunition and smoke wafts from the outside.

“The security is compromised and there is no other personnel surviving. We do not have the feed from the next room but other sensors indicate at least one person, you have to find a way to bypass them.”

He notices Talon emblem on the wall, and that brings up many issues in a split second, the most disconcerting being what exactly is he doing in a facility clearly belonging to Talon, and why the woman speaking to him sounds as if he should be here. Gabriel sets the questions aside, the same as he does with his evident survival  of the assault on the Overwatch. He runs through possible scenarios as he approaches the door from the side, the rescue mission is a possibility considering the clear association of the base with Talon.

He has no suit and no weapon, which could prove troublesome, but overcoming one enemy while unarmed is not a hard feat, especially if he expects them to be inexperienced in comparison.

After the first shots are fired, Gabriel rushes forward taking in the details. No, no Alliance equipment, the assault rifle is of make not used by the military – ERCS. Not the rescue, at least not official mission, and the man shoots continuously without pause. The simmer and static rise in volume until it suddenly stops and he stands over a body, twisted and bent, skin grey and gaunt, stretched strangely over the facial bones, eyelids pulled back. He does not recollect what took place except the sudden rush forward.

“Now this is amazing,” a new voice joins in, an accent Gabriel cannot place, “the vitals show unexpected abrupt system stabilization.”

“Doctor, we have no time…”

“This is my experiment, Lacroix, I remind you.”

Gabriel picks up the rifle and checks the ammo. The sensation of being lagged and strangely displaced recedes.

“And this experiment, doctor, will prove to be a worthless venture if Reyes fails to join us. Reyes, you need to go up the stairs and reach the dock. The shortest route will have compromised security bots and human enemies.”

An experiment, an interesting thought. Gabriel cracks his neck and slowly ascends the stairs. The occasional droids he finds on his way are easy to dispose of – no living targets, only bodies. The first woman gives him steady instructions and warnings, and from other information that slips through her guidance he can glean the situation.

The Talon base he is traversing is, hilariously, under the attack by the members of the very same organization, the snake is eating its own tail. Lacroix’s allegiance also becomes clear. His own role in this whole mess is unexplained but at this precise moment he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, not yet, not until he gets answers and blows this joint.

The door to the supposed dock hisses open and Gabriel is faced with the first sight of a human since the moment he woke up less than half hour ago. The woman stands pointing a pistol at a hunched down man with his hands in the air.

“Amelie, you don’t understand! What are you doin…” The woman fires a single shot and then holsters her gun turning towards him. Her visible skin gleams with an uncanny tint of bluish coloration.

“Finally, Reyes, you took your time, now put you weapon down because the only way you’re getting off this station is with us,” she nods at him, and Gabriel feels anger with her – a Talon member – trying to issue him orders. “He was the leader of this little mutiny,” Lacroix misinterprets his posture.

“What’s stopping me from blowing out your brains?”

“For starters, there is only one functional shuttle, and the only person that has access codes is me,” she shows her back and starts to walk away. “Follow me.”

“Not a care about any other survivors?” Gabriel lowers the rifle and follows slightly behind her.

“You are no stranger to necessary sacrifices yourself. Everyone in this facility is expendable but you. Even me, but only after I deliver you to a meeting with my superior.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less of you, Reyes,” Lacroix lets him enter the ship first and closes the hatch behind, fiddles for a moment with the keypad. The undocking begins the moment he sits in front of the other woman inside, a redhead, in a much more flamboyant attire than Lacroix’s bodysuit. Heterochromia, judging by the unusual pigmentation, unless the eye is artificial, with metallic plaque around the socket.

“Attention to detail, good. Topical albinism,” the one Lacriox referred to as ‘doctor’ earlier gives explanation observing him with a scrutiny that makes his skin crawl. The simmer in his muscles is back. “The parameters still read off the charts, especially with the fact we had to jumpstart you before the planned date, but system stability holds. Tell me, Gabriel, what did you do then? Used medi-gel?”

“Doesn’t concern you,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes, and Lacroix seats herself next to her.

“On the contrary. Doctor O’Deorain is the head of the Reaper Project, and she is singlehandedly responsible for bringing you back to life,” Lacroix flicks open a datapad. “The whole venture took over twenty nine months since the moment we had recovered your body, and sunk more funds than the production cost of the Alliance fleet up to two years ago over the entire period of its existence. We had expected to exceed that significantly but the project had been cut short by seven months.”

Gabriel forces down the unease over the new information – if it’s even true – and puts the rifle on the seat to his right but keeps his hand on it.

“Please, Moira will suffice, and I’m amazed at the headway I had achieved, with the starting parameters he shouldn’t even be functional yet,” the doctor smirks. “Run the personality test.”

“I’m not something you can run tests on,” Gabriel snarls lunging forward, fingers clenching around her neck, digging into the jugulars, and momentarily he feels a cold twist in the back of his throat. His hand loses definition, the edges fuzzy, like smoke, but everything else in the backdrop keeps sharpness of its contours. “What have you done to…?”

Moira pins him with a glance.

“Sit down, Gabriel. It seems that the cohesion suffers in moments of agitation, dare I say, emotional agitation,” he releases her and falls back, staring at his fingers. “Interesting, it’s the same readings from a moment before the system’s stabilization. And to answer your question, I had introduced a swarm of my own design into your body to aid in the reconstruction and to jumpstart your organs. If you are worried about the grey goo scenario, I took the precautions. The swarm is keyed to your genetic blueprint and cannot interact in the same fashion with any other organic or inorganic matter. Amelie, the test.”

Gabriel still cannot tear away his gaze from his hand slowly returning to the solid shape.

“Of course, doctor. Now, Reyes, your career is a surprise with your background. An orphan without traceable kin, outside the system, enlisted military as soon as possible. Torfan, batarians?”

“I’m no stranger to necessary sacrifices, Lacroix, said that yourself. Done the job,” he growls, “some called me a criminal.”

“Which was a surprise considering that even earlier you were lauded for facing the impossible odds and leading your squad with minimal casualties on Elysium.”

“The strategic goal had been repelling the attack, not leading the offense.”

“I think you should try something more recent, we have to at least gauge if there are any significant reticency issues,” Moira fiddles with her omni-tool. “This is still ancient LTM.”

“Virmire,” Lacroix stares at him over the datapad. Virmire. One of the very close calls. The first friend he had lost. “Ana Amari, one associate that had been working with you the longest. Why have you left her behind to die?”

“It was her choice, and in the end it gave us the time we needed to obliterate the facility,” and this dull pressure on his lungs is the loss, the longing for her presence and advice.

[jakiescokolwiek]

Jack moves slowly through the post-apocalyptic remains of the city weaving in and out of the ruined buildings where streets are blocked – the offhand descriptor has lost its sarcastic luster when the actual apocalypse had already happened on top of the nuclear detonation. The radio stays silent except for the moments the call flows over the area blanketing the surfaces with sickly rust. The smell of burning fuel and artificial materials comes and goes with the wind.

He is half of a mind to rip the communicator from his ear now that he knows what comes with each wave, the only thing stopping him is the hope of hearing Lena again, or maybe Shrike, even if his own attempts to hail either of them were so far met with uncaring static.

He stops at a windowsill and climbs inside to avoid the rubble of a half-collapsed elevation in front, biting his lip when his side protests with a numb feeling of an alien object moving inside. He still should have two hours on the morphine, give or take some, and he is either going to be in an agonal state at that point, or he should try to secure another dose in the meantime. If it’s going to be the first one, he still has got a lot of ground to cover between here and the stadium, then to Still Island.

Jack blinks, his eyes adapting to the gloom inside. A convenience store, the shelves knocked over and their contents spilled, but there is a row of almost intact refrigerators to the side and before he catches himself in a few strides he crosses the distance, hand almost ripping off the door, searching frantically.

He has the juice bottle uncapped and halfway to his lips when he freezes. If his intestines are damaged by the bullet, he is only taking the time away from himself, he should not be drinking or eating anything. Jack licks his lips, his throat parched, hand slightly trembling when he looks at the contents of the plastic bottle spilling over the rim under his grip. The Beast purrs and pushes its maw into his wounded side, feels almost like a dog affectionately lapping around the field dressing.

“Oh, Sunshine, you do need it,” it nips at his skin with razor-sharp fangs, nudging him into action as his left hand falls down to ground himself in its undulating substance, fingers sinking into it in need of purchase as he feels it trickling down over his skin.

“If there’s a tear…”

“It won’t matter. Drink, Sunshine,” the last part is a hissed order, and he obeys, gulps down greedily, the escaped juice dribbling down his chin. In seconds, the bottle is thrown to the ground as he starts on another one. “Good.”

The relief is all but godly, the cheap off-brand juice is sweeter than anything he had ever had. Jack looks around and grabs one of the packaged sandwiches lying just next to the bottles on the shelf, tears the wrapping away not bothering to even glance at the label what the contents are. The bread is still considerably fresh, the cheap margarine had never tasted that good, enough so that he lets out a satisfied chuckle. He finishes it, taking big gulps of the juice in between ravenous bites.

“Good,” Jack repeats, slowly setting the empty bottle on the counter. His skin itches, his fingertips tingle, a familiar sensation, same as undefined vertigo, and he idly wonders what had taken it so long to manifest. “Nothing was ever good, was it?”

“We are good together, Sunshine, always were,” the purr reverberates in his chest. The Beast climbs up on its hind haunches, grips his shoulders with claws, and he lets it nose at his neck, even welcomes it. His hand travels down the fluctuating ridges of its spine, the touch leaves crimson afterimages behind, cruel eyes chaotically wriggling around sprout out in its wake. “Even apart, we always are. Always,” the long coarse tongue licks up his cheek leaving a trail of something wet, “and never apart.”

“Never apart,” Jack whispers, his head lolling to the side, eyes half-closed. “But you left me.”

“Did I? Or were you taken from me, Sunshine?” The purr is undercut with a possessive rumble. “Did you not hide from me, Sunshine?”

“Why would I?” Jack brings his hands up to embrace its bulk, to draw it closer, resting his forehead against where its shoulder should be.

“Such a dutiful little soldier, always, the doctors say jump, and so he does.”

“The pills,” Jack locks his arms tighter at the mention, yet the jitteriness is not there, not at the moment. Morphine high. His breath is shallow.

“The pills,” the Beast’s maw locks around his neck, the sharp teeth sink into his flesh, and he gasps at the pressure and the intrusion into skin and muscle below, feels the burning blood gushing over his skin even when darkness slips through his fingers and he is left alone in a white room.

All the surfaces are immaculate and evenly lit, there are no cracks nor seams, no entrance nor exit. A clock hangs from one of the walls, round, with a white rim. Steady ticking creeps in around the edge of his hearing but the hands are stuck and immobile – the mechanism not even straining against the obstruction. He has no shadow.

“…accumulation of the protein in the subject’s prefrontal cortex…” A woman’s voice comes with a stab behind his eyes, he scrambles for a purchase, finds it, a metal chair screwed into the floor, not in the center of the room, just a bit off to the side. “…comparable, it remains dormant…”

There is a tickling sensation crawling up his face, up to his temple, wetness spreading throughout his hair, he glances after it – the droplets of his blood from the torn throat dripping upwards against the gravity – to the ceiling where they gather in a growing puddle.

“…therapy accelerated…” The stain keeps spreading, inching towards the walls, and then spilling over them. The clock, even covered in transparent red, keeps on ticking. With each turn, the sound grows louder, thunderous. Ominous. Time is an enemy of its own kind. “…unsuccessful in activating the transmitter…”

The blood reaches the floor and there it starts rising. Jack starts, wants to climb the chair to avoid the liquid but stops because it has suddenly gained an inhabitant. A limp form of one of the failed commanders, slumped forward, kept in by the heavy restraints, a wretched starved creature with abundant traces of abuse, self-inflicted and not.

“…synchronization rate nearing one hundred percent…”

The blood is up to his knees when the creature surges and strains, screams garbled sounds in no way similar to what a human voice should articulate, at least not without a significant damage to the vocal chords.

“…the transmitter gene offsets the…”

Numerous hands emerge from the red sludge, take hold of him, crawl upwards over the fabric leaving ghastly red smears – some of them longer than humanly possible – and tug and pull him down, under, until there is only darkness locked between his arms.

“The room, what happens in the room?” Jack whispers into it and the Beast stirs in his embrace with a satisfied growl.

“This is for you, Sunshine, to find out,” the Beast slinks over his shoulder, down his arm, its intimidating form fizzing to nothing and then reappearing by the door in the back behind the counter, and Jack shakes his head, spares a thoughtful glance towards the refrigerators. One bottle. He takes it and slips into a pocket on his thigh. “Now come, Sunshine, our old friends are waiting.”

“I know of them. Do I know them?” There is a touch of hyperawareness and fluidity to his senses now, his thoughts jump from subject to subject. Sensory overload. He follows the Beast, the door needs a bit of force to open, a metal shelf tilts back and crashes on the other side when he pushes on it. “And the room, the clock?”

[jakiescokolwiek]

@drift-ed

(…)

And ways of the weapon bombard

Building mountains of them body bags large

Rubbernecking while collision greet your car

And you may know your name but don't know who or what you are

(…)

 He is leaning on the desk, eyes wildly searching around to orient himself. His hand brushes against something and Jack focuses on the PDA. Its screen, smeared with blood and broken as if someone punched it, flickers irregularly. Hesitantly he reaches for it.

His own hands are covered in fresher blood, scraps of skin under his fingernails. Where did it come from? Still holding the PDA he turns around, looking for the source. There is none.

He remembers grasping the datapad, searching for something, but now the thing is wiped clean when he manages to get it to react to his touch. Seventy-six. Seventy-six is something important, something that still stays with him – the number, there is something going on with the number, something that makes his vision swim and his breath shorten when he concentrates on it. Seventy-six. Seventy-six. He feels the bile rise in his throat.

Jack glances towards the camera. It seems somehow… dead now. The oppressive paranoid sensation of being observed is gone, like an invisible weight lifted from his shoulders.

“Yeah, the blighter is away now, luv,” Lena sighs. “If he could bloody see us now, hah, I reckon you gone and pissed into his cereal real good with this bloody stunt. Don’t say we didn’t warn you, luv.”

“We did, didn’t we?” The Beast laughs, malevolent vestiges of sound floating around Jack is sure he is the only one able to hear. “But do you ever listen, Sunshine?”

“Seventy-six, what does it mean? Why is it significant?” He turns towards Lena who shrugs without a care.

“You tell me, luv,” she rolls her remaining eye, “I wouldn’t even bloody know where to begin…” Her words are cut short by the electric hum of the communicator. Jack almost screams in relief when he hears the voice, distorted by the interference, but still recognizable.

“…lost them… think I found exit… can hear me… verge on my position…” It’s Lena. She’s alive. Alive and not that thing before him, but any answer he might want to shout at her dies in his throat as the apparition changes shape and form, its gaze and skin darken, hair grow long and black with hints of grey, the uniform loses any identification but not the stains of dried blood, and under the single eye that is not a gaping hole a tattooed symbol comes to life.

“This is no moment to dwell on the past, rafeeq,” the woman – the woman he knows not – speaks, and he understands. Rafeeq. Friend. One you trust with your life. “You do not have much time left to linger here, yours is the soldier’s lot and the battles are before you.”

It’s too much, too much of everything, he feels like drowning, like the ground is slipping from under his feet, and there is no-one to catch him as he falls into the hungering darkness of his own mind that creates those phantoms for him. Crazy or not. Not a question. A denial. The fractures propagate. He cannot see himself behind the spider web they create.

“Why? Why can’t you all let me be? What… What are you, who are you?” Jack all but screams the questions at her but she steps closer and cradles his face in her palm. It emanates warmth and familiarity.

“That I cannot tell you, rafeeq, the only answers I know are the ones you know yourself, but he, he can show you the way,” she smiles and cranes her head to the side, it is not a happy smile, but a smile nonetheless. “He knows all the answers, you feel it, and you have to make him understand he needs to share them, you have to make him show it to you. Because it’s you that has to understand for whom he’s looking for and help him find that person.”

“He is dead,” Jack remembers the body in the morgue and the wraith’s words, “he can’t find someone’s who’s dead.” He feels tired, so tired, his voice comes out hushed and pained.

“And maybe, rafeeq, this is exactly what you have to show him, make him realize his search is in vain, and the only thing left is balancing the scales,” she steps back and pulls him by his wrist towards the exit. “He has chosen you, after all, given you a part to play.”

“And no choice in the matter,” he lets her lead him, somehow her presence is comforting.

“And if you had the choice, what would you do?”

“I don’t…” Jack starts to respond, but the Beast, dormant till now, purrs against his skin.

“Tell it how it is, Sunshine, don’t be coy,” it shows its fangs in a wide grin, long dark tongue licking its maw.

“I would still follow him,” he admits. He cannot deny the draw, the purpose, the drive, something lacking for so long he cannot recall when was the time he had an objective – a goal – something to look forward to. He remembers endless days spent drifting and counted only by dwindling prescriptions and sessions in-between deployments, the dull haze of waiting for a presence that was never there. “Waiting for him,” the realization staggers him as he swallows. “Why was I…?”

“The same way you know the path. You have seen those halls, rafeeq,” she lets go of his hand. “Maybe you don’t know him but you do know him because there is a formula to creating you and a recipe for making many more of you,” she points towards the turn of the corridor, at the door protected with a code lock. “The sacred sequence of life.”

Jack looks at her, at her tattoo and missing eye, at the throat punctured by bullets, at the dark stains on her stomach, and then advances towards the lock and lays his hand on it. The letters become the equations, present an elegant solution that makes his stomach lurch and tie in knots as his fingers slide over the keys with a mind of their own. Muscle memory. Muscle memory of something he had never done before. When he looks back over his shoulder, she is gone, her absence feels almost physical, and he wonders if she were someone important to him, once, or if his mind chose her shape on a whim.

“Oh, I’m not telling, Sunshine,” the Beast chortles behind him as he crosses the threshold into pristine halls far removed from the chaos and death made comfortable in other parts of the facility. Talon logos adorn the walls. “Merely the withdrawal.” At the mention, Jack feels the perspiration on his skin and his fingers stray from the proper code, the next lock beeps at him accusingly before he gets it right. The pills. The goddamn pills. His mouth runs dry and he staggers, leaning against the wall. Crazy. Crazy. Batshit crazy. No question about it.

Footsteps. Jack brings up the shotgun and hugs the wall, peering over the corner. He takes a deep breath, then calls out, tries to call out but the first time he fails.

“Genji.” The footsteps abruptly stop.

“That you, Morrison?” Jack extends his hand out, fist clenched, then shows two fingers in confirmation. “Fuck. Never have I thought I’m going to say I’m happy to see you, you old fuck.”

“Your comm, what’s up with it?”

“Man, you’re not gonna believe that, but it’s wrecked, something smashed me against a wall, still got splinters in my face,” Genji comes closer and Jack moves out of his cover to meet him. “And it fucking well didn’t look human. Or didn’t feel like one, either.”

“I know. What’s your status.”

“Fucking relieved, man,” Genji laughs shortly but his expression stays nervous, lips straining. “Nothing much. Lot of bodies, scavenged some for rifle and magazines. Fuck, there’s a lot of those PMCs strewn around, and civilians, and something fucked them up real fucking good.”

“There are no civilians,” Jack steps to the side, “this is Talon blacksite. Blackwatch’s purging it. Some of their specimens must have gotten out in the meantime.”

“Ah, shit, you weren’t joking about that Blackwatch shit,” Genji’s face scrounges up in disgust. “Fuck. Fiddlesticks. Fuck. Have you heard anything from my brother?”

Jack lets him take the point. It’s good… to talk with someone breathing. Living. Real. Corporeal. Maybe he’s not as crazy as he expects.

“I heard him,” he admits. “Some time ago. He didn’t sound well, but no-one here is well,” Jack adds. “There’s someone else in here with us. Reaper.”

“Now, sunshine, that’s a fucking stupid name, if you ask me. You come up with it?” Genji chuckles, nodding at him and gesturing towards another bend with a sway of his head. Jack moves and crouches. Clear.

“LaCroix used the designation. Team One supposedly released him out of containment.”

“So Jesse’s…”

“I don’t know. But if you start seeing, hearing strange things, he’s close,” Jack turns back to look at Genji and freezes at the shadows whirling behind him. He stands up while his visor glass crackles with interference and blinks.

“Jesus fucking Buddha, I have something on my face, what?” Genji takes a step as Jack moves back raising his hand to gesture at the person – Hanzo – emerging from the rippling gloom. Static in his ears becomes unbearable, stabbing into his brain. “Fucking shit, Morrison, talk to me!”

Hanzo stops and lifts his handgun, levels it with Genji’s head. Jack wants to call out, to warn him, lips starting to form sounds when the older Shimada pulls the trigger. Something wet sprays on his face. Jack feels strong shudder traveling along the length of his own body.

Genji falls forward.

He’s shivering, his fingers are trembling, but it’s something besides the point, besides everything, because he’s standing to the side. He feels nothing as he reaches for the cigarette and puts it between his lips. Absentmindedly, he notes his fingers are still covered in blood, there is still flesh under his fingernails. He lights the cigarette up staring at motionless Hanzo, at the horror slowly spreading on the man’s face.

Inhale. Count. Exhale.

He feels nothing.

Inhale. Count. Exhale.

“No… No, that’s not… the demon,” Hanzo is babbling, his eyes glance erratically to the sides, he’s hyperventilating, and Jack knows he should run but he is an observer standing to the side. “The demon, oni, it killed… it killed him.”

Jack is somewhere else and the Beast laughs, it laughs when it kisses his cheek slobbering on it with black tar. Inhale, count, exhale.

“No,” this isn’t his voice, can’t be his voice, he cannot speak calmly, he feels nothing as he locks eyes with glaring red points in the darkness over Hanzo’s shoulder, “he merely gave you a nudge.”

“What do you speak of?” Hanzo’s head snaps up and Jack continues.

“He gave you the conviction to make real on what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve removed the disgrace,” Jack shakes his head. Shadows crowd the edges of his vision.

“No, no… You,” Hanzo suddenly hollers, ”you scheme with the demon. I can see that! It’s your doing! Your…!” Jack stares down the barrel of the gun and at the same time sees the image of Hanzo pulling the trigger.

The bullet hits something with a wet splotch just beside his left ear and Hanzo fires again but from the writhing gloom behind him a gnarled growth springs forward and grabs at him. It pulls him back into black miasma, his body contorts amidst howls of pain and sickening crunches of breaking bones and muscles being torn. Jack finishes his cigarette and throws the butt away.

He feels nothing staring at the oily glistening remains in the corner. His hands shake. It must be shock.

“No, Sunshine,” the Beast whispers against his skin as Reaper drifts past him, “you just don’t care.” He does not care. He cannot afford to care. His legs buckle under him and he sinks to knees, breathing sharp and deep. “I told you, didn’t I, Sunshine, that we will kill him? And we just did.”

And we just did. You don’t like him. We will kill him. And we just did. Jack tries to find purchase, lift himself, but his body seizes and he spews the bile until his throat burns and there is nothing more left to vomit.

And even then he’s still retching slimy mucus and saliva.

You don’t like him. We will kill him.

[jakiescokolwiek]

“You were supposed to save me!”

“Save you? Should I remind you of my problems at the moment?”

“Should I remind you of your oath?”

And then they said… Have a character say this and build on from there. Where the conversation and the story goes is up to you!

Submitted anonymously. Thank you mysterious stranger 😉

[jakiescokolwiek]

“My friends,” Reinhardt breaks the radio silence, the normally jovial man sounds somber. “There was a fatality. One of custodians had been shot in men’s restroom.”

“Point blank. Back of the head. Efficient. Clean up,” Hanzo curtly elaborates. “Hostiles in area confirmed.”

“Lobby bloody fucked up too, luvs. One down and at least another dead bugger somewhere else because it looks like someone did some fingerpainting with a bucket of bloo…”

“Enough, Lena. Genji, Jack, status?”

“Spoilsport,” Lena chuckles over the comm.

Genji looks over the counter at him and Jack lightly shakes his head, pushing open the back door with the barrel of the rifle. No one and nothing. There are stairs leading up and a seemingly cut off area going deeper into the building. Genji follows in his steps.

“Bucket of everyday cheer mimes he ain’t seen anything yet. And the fucker is considering using the fucking stairs!”

“Gate is locked anyway,” Jack fights the urge to grab his pills when the display crackles with interference, cold pinpricks of anxiety in his shoulders biting deep, and walks down the stairs he was just checking out. He jumps over the barriers to the lower level.

“Righty-o, come to the dark side, we have cookies and Lacroix’s private elevator. Though, still fighting for the bloody access to the bloody thing.”

“Lena.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Papa Winston. Go help the boys with their grand entrance.”

Jack smiles lightly at the exchange, maneuvering between the shelves, yet the unease is still there, sits rooted well in the back of his mind. Next corridor is definitely more posh and elegant, with some kind of abstract art on the walls that is probably supposed to look cheerful or uplifting but in the dim light brings back the smell of burnt meat.

“Done sightseeing?” Winston holds up the metal lattice barring the way to the lobby and waves them over. Jack ducks under it.

“Blame the ray of sunshine here.” Genji laughs. “Hell, looks nice, man, real marble floors. Not to mention I like the touch with all the blood, must’ve been nice hit to the aorta.”

“The aorta?” Hanzo narrows eyes at his brother and Jack just walks around them, to join Lena behind the counter. The receptionist lies face down on the table top, white shirt turned red – still wet and bright. “Mayhaps, it was the carotid or the subclavian artery?”

“Man, making fun of a man for his knowledge is a sign of insecurity, brother.”

“Only if that man is not a buffoon.”

“Shut your goddamn faces,” Winston scowls at the both of them as Jack runs the security footage. The military uniform is run of the mill, but the technique and the protocol of the shooter…

“We’re in deep. This is Blackwatch,” he does not know how he knows it, but he does. “Talon’s private enforcers.”

“Brings back sweet memories, doesn’t it? All the blood on our hands,” the Beast laughs into his ear and Jack shakes his head, trying to drown it out.

“Huh, so I was bloody right, that’s all bloody inside vendetta. Oh, and the elevator is on, you’re all welcome.” Lena snaps her fingers. “So we do have a straight line to Lacroix. Jackie, luv, you okay there?”

“Yeah, didn’t think I’d see…”

“See what? Your old friends? Do you wonder if any of them are still alive and kicking? Not for long,” the malicious murmur fades away, but not without the last parting shot. “We will kill them all.”

“…them in action again.” Jack finishes after the pause, with Lena observing him with a momentary flash of concern in her eyes. His files are sealed and classified but she is a curious bird that likes to know things and snoop where she should not.

“Right, luv, but about…”

“Hanzo, secure the lobby. Genji, take the stairs,” Winston takes the point by the elevator. “Rest with me.”

“The fuck, man? Stairs? I’ll die before I’ll get up there! There is, like, a bajillion of those!”

“Then hurry, luv, and catch up with us.” Lena laughs and Reinhardt nods, both taking positions on the sides. Lena hits the switch for the elevator release and Jack almost doubles in sudden pain blooming behind his eyes.

“Careful, Sunshine,” the Beast gazes at him from the corner, gone in the blink of an eye, and Jack takes a fumbling step back in pain, just out of the line of unexpected fire, the stabbing hurt leaving immediately as he brings up the rifle and shoots in unison with Lena and Winston. The uniformed man in the elevator twitches and crashes in the fountain of blood.

“I am hit,” Reinhardt mutters from his crouched position. “A flesh wound.”

“Fuck, luv, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig!” Lena moves forward but Winston holds his palm up.

“We will stabilize him, you and Morrison go after the soft asset.”

“I bloody don’t like it, Winston,” Lena voices her discontent but obeys with the order, entering the elevator after Jack.

“It is only a light scratch,” Reinhardt tries to reassure her, but she cuts him off before the doors close.

“And you’re not a bloody Black Knight, Rein!” It takes him a moment to get the reference and Jack laughs while she kneels down by the body, examining it. “Blackwatch, you say, luv? Don’t look so bloody tough now, does he?”

“It’s about the training and the protocol,” Jack turns to the panorama of the city spread below as the cabin travels upwards. The vertigo is only fleeting.

“Never knew you were one of them.” He feels the stab on anxiety deep inside, prodding at something that isn’t there.

“I wasn’t.”

“Okay, Jack, I trust you,” Lena smiles, toying with her radio. She stands up from the body and cursorily checks her gear. “Patching their frequency through, so we can listen to the bloody murderous bastards as we plow through them, what say you? Some old-fashioned fun.”

“Tactical advantage.”

“Happy killing, luv.” Lena clicks her tongue as the elevator stops and the radio comes alive.

“Everybody, listen up! We may have a problem. And I don’t like problems.” Jack freezes, cold recognition seizing him with a tremor. He knows that voice. It does not matter how, and it does not matter from when.

Gerard Lacroix.

[jakiescokolwiek]

(…)

Vivid echoes of the dream on his mind

This week the 3rd of its kind

Now his bottles of meds will conceal

But wounds left open are harder to be healed

(…)

 “My friends,” Reinhardt breaks the radio silence, the normally jovial man sounds somber. “There was a fatality. One of custodians had been shot in men’s restroom.”

“Point blank. Back of the head. Efficient. Clean up,” Hanzo curtly elaborates. “Hostiles in area confirmed.”

“Lobby bloody fucked up too, luvs. One down and at least another dead bugger somewhere else because it looks like someone did some fingerpainting with a bucket of bloo…”

“Enough, Lena. Genji, Jack, status?”

“Spoilsport,” Lena chuckles over the comm.

Genji looks over the counter at him and Jack lightly shakes his head, pushing open the back door with the barrel of the rifle. No one and nothing. There are stairs leading up and a seemingly cut off area going deeper into the building. Genji follows in his steps.

“Bucket of everyday cheer mimes he ain’t seen anything yet. And the fucker is considering using the fucking stairs!”

“Gate is locked anyway,” Jack fights the urge to grab his pills when the display crackles with interference, cold prickles of anxiety in his shoulders biting deep, and walks down the stairs he was just checking out. He jumps over the barriers to the lower level.

“Righty-o, come to the dark side, we have cookies and Lacroix’s private elevator. Though, still fighting for the bloody access to the bloody thing.”

“Lena.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Papa Winston. Go help the boys with their grand entrance.”

Jack smiles lightly at the exchange, maneuvering between the shelves, yet the unease is still there, sits rooted well in the back of his mind. Next corridor is definitely more posh and elegant, with some kind of abstract art on the walls that is probably supposed to look cheerful or uplifting but in the dim light brings back the smell of burnt meat.

“Done sightseeing?” Winston holds up the metal lattice barring the way to the lobby and waves them over. Jack ducks under it.

“Blame the ray of sunshine here.” Genji laughs. “Hell, looks nice, man, real marble floors. Not to mention I like the touch with all the blood, must’ve been nice hit to the aorta.”

“The aorta?” Hanzo narrows eyes at his brother and Jack just walks around them, to join Lena behind the counter. The receptionist lies face down on the table top, white shirt turned red – still wet and bright. “Mayhaps, it was the carotid or the subclavian artery?”

“Man, making fun of a man for his knowledge is a sign of insecurity, brother.”

“Only if that man is not a buffoon.”

“Shut your goddamn faces,” Winston scowls at the both of them as Jack runs the security footage. The military uniform is run of the mill, but the technique and the protocol of the shooter…

“We’re in deep. This is Blackwatch,” he does not know how he knows it, but he does. “Talon’s private army.”

“Brings back sweet memories, doesn’t it? All the blood on our hands,” the Beast laughs into his ear and Jack shakes his head, trying to drown it out.

“Huh, so I was bloody right, that’s all bloody inside vendetta. Oh, and the elevator is on, you’re all welcome.” Lena snaps her fingers. “So we do have a straight line to Lacroix. Jackie, luv, you okay there?”