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Yes, at last! I am so pokey, it's horrible. But, this fic *will* be finished, and sooner rather than later.
In other news - it's cold, it's sleet-drizzling, my job is tedious, our Xmas tree is awesome. :) We got a nice, big, fat cedar this year, which really - yay! I love a good cedar tree. I'll post a picture soon - before the actual day. 'Cause i know you're all dying to see, heh.
Anyway - here we go.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darkhavens Beta'd for me, of course.
Also at AO3
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.
How sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths.
By the Roman poet Horace
Jensen couldn't think. Everything was so bright, and so loud. Every instinct in him was screaming to run, to hide, to go. Burrow and delve and dive, disappear. He'd tried; he'd fought his way past two men who'd attempted to hold him. He'd found his coat and he had his things but...he was so hot. And his arm hurt. And his ribs, and his head, fuck, his head.... Every shift of his body, every impact of his feet on the ground made it ring and throb and whine in stuttering, white noise static, his vision occluding and clearing in flashes until he was reduced to crawling.
He'd gone the wrong way and reeled back in agony from lights and music and noise, noise, noise, before staggering for the shadows. He went further and deeper, and then had to stop and curl up in a niche to just breathe. Five minutes - ten - and he'd finally eased his aching arm out from under his coat, trying to understand the pain. There was tape on his arm, holding in place a needle attached to a length of clear tubing that dragged and caught. The tape was beyond him, his chewed-down nails scrabbling uselessly at it, so he finally left it alone, wrapping the tubing around his wrist, tucking and pulling so the needle didn't move, the tube didn't drag. Then he shoved his arm back into his coat sleeve and took stock.
No weapons, no shoes, no clothes. A burn in his groin from the catheter he'd pulled out of his dick, a solid ache across his ribs, two taped fingers that throbbed in time with his heart. His gut hurt, too, like he was hungry, but the thought of food made his mouth flood, nausea hovering, and he was so hot. He was on fire, his lips burning, his eyes, his throat like wire, brittle and sharp, and everything hurt, everything hurt.
Jensen snapped upright from a slump, a moment of blank unconsciousness. He could hear...something; people, machinery, he didn't know, but it was too close and too loud and he had to go, had to move, he wasn't safe, here, wasn't safe….
He reached out for the 'net, trying to find Jinx, Five, anyone, but there was only numb silence, nothing at all. Whimpering, Jensen clawed himself upright, to knees and then feet, hunched over, gasping. He followed the wall as it went, further into shadow, to a door, all scarred paint and letters, the yellow and black diagonal stripes that meant selected access only. A fire door, with an easy push handle that moved under his weight and then he was through and into another hall, but this one was dim and quiet, marks on the wall from carts or dollies. Tech access, maintenence, something. Not for the public, so safer.
He moved as quickly as he could, panting harshly, a reeling scurry that banged him into the wall, into door jambs, into the raised edge of section seals. Ship or station, ship or station...station, station…. Jensen leaned against a thick, ribbed bundle of conduit and pipes, thinking. Trying to think. His brain was muffled, his thoughts moving in slow, humming arcs, jumbled into nonsense, nearly intelligible. Station! Think, think…. Had to be Axis, had to be. He remembered Axis...didn't he? Construction and raw girders, the chill of the non-sun side, and Angels, Angels….
There was a noise - a groaning kind of boom, the air itself tearing - a mag-lift, dropping down the shaft, and Jensen pushed himself toward it, leaning and clutching and all but dragging himself along the wall, fighting for air. Black sparkles and white snapping in his visual field, little bursts that made him flinch, distracted.
The wire grating of the lift access was down, a yellow and black protective barrier, little lights winking. Jensen leaned there, feeling the air that wafted out, cool and scented with the smells of oil and grease, hot metal and warm plastics. A sudden up-rush warned him and he leaned back as another lift rocketed past, a little eddy of trash in its wake. This was what he needed.
He ground the palms of his hands into his eyes and just breathed for a moment. He could ride the mag-lift. He'd done it, he was sure he'd done it...sometime...somewhere…(Jinx and Kane and Sinna, suit gauntlets locked into hand-holds, riding a runaway mag-lift, screaming with laughter, howling like banshees, the 'net pulsing with lovefamilyfamily, rush and roar and alive alive....)
Jensen shook his head and winced; found the edge of the control box and pried it up, little indent there for the tech guys, exposing wire and chips, blinking lights. He stared, unfocused, and then finally pulled a chip, touched a wire to the exposed socket, and the guard slid back. Somewhere, an alarm was sounding, but nowhere close. It would take...time. Enough time.
The air pulsed, another lift coming, this one dropping down, and Jensen watched it fall, then gritted his teeth and leapt. He fell with it, a moment of pure joy, weightless and flying. Then he slammed down onto the shell, scrabbling and clawing and sliding, catching a hand-grip just in time. He tucked his legs in close, away from the edge and grimly hung on.
Going down.
"Fucking hell, what happened?" Jared yelled, and Jo One shot him a filthy look, a cold pack pressed to his face.
"What the fuck you think happened? Fuckin' crazy asshole."
"He's sick, it's not his fault," Jared snapped, and Jo One shoved Doc away and stood up, wincing.
"I was talking about you. All'a you. You're fuckin' nuts. He's never gonna be right in the head. All those Angels are crazies, fuckin' felons and rapists and murderers. They gotta psy-block half of 'em just so they can fuckin' eat and shit without takin' anybody out. What do you think this guy is, fuckin' innocent?"
"Fuck you," Jared muttered, but Jo was right. ArchANGELS were 'recruited' - meaning, conscripted - from prisons all over the universe. Whatever had happened to Jensen as a kid, he'd gone on to break the law in a damn spectacular way. You didn't become an Angel for stealing a damn dataspot. "Just...tell me where he went."
"How the hell do I fuckin' know?" Jo One said, gesturing at his eye. He made a furious noise as Doc approached again, but this time sat back down, grudgingly letting her look him over. "Surprised the fucker can walk."
"He can walk," Jo Two said, coming in through the door. "Somebody tripped a safety alert on a mag-lift two sections over. Gotta be him. Nobody else is fuckin' crazy enough to do some dumb-ass shit like that."
"Both of you shut up," Doc said, and Jo Two came over to peer at his brother. "He's not in his right mind. He's literally not in his right mind, don't you get it? Between all the company shit and what we did to him, if he comes out of this knowing his own name, we're gonna be lucky. I'm sorry, Jared," Doc added, straightening her shoulders.
"I didn't want to tell you, but there's a real chance he'll come out of this with permanent, profound brain damage. That's one thing the company can't fix yet. They can rewire it, but they can't grow grey matter. Not fucking yet, not when it's been burned out." Doc held up a hand, forestalling Jared who could feel himself bristling with fury.
"His best hope is here, where we can keep the damage to a minimum, control his temperature and keep him hydrated and stable. So instead of blowing up at me, you need to find him."
"Fuck! You!" Jared screamed at the ceiling, and Doc flinched. Jared knotted his fingers in his hair and pulled, eyes shut, trying to get a full breath. His heart was pounding against his breastbone like a hammer, and he felt horribly, scarily fragile. Like the wrong move - the wrong word - would shatter him.
"Fuck you, fuck the Company, fuck the fucking Angels. How in hell am I supposed to find him on Axis? He could be anywhere."
"But he's somewhere," Jo Two said. "Start with where you found him the first time. Those fights. Somebody'll know."
"I don't. I dunno how to find those fights; they move all the time and I'm not here that much."
"I am, though." Jo Two patted his brother on the shoulder and stepped toward Jared. "I know the guy that runs 'em. And he owes me. So get your gear, whatever you need. Doc, fix him up; I gotta grab something." Jo Two looked up at Jared, corner of his mouth twisting up in a little grin. "We'll find him."
The guy Jo knew was a tall and skeletally thin man in a dull-green vest and dusty black trousers, ticking and flashing and chirping chronos laddered up his arms. They were distracting, and Jared had to jerk his gaze away from them again and again, try to focus on what Jo and Tick-Tock were saying.
But his brain kept fixating on the chronos, running in aimless little loops. Familiar pattern, this - his brain working overtime to keep him from thinking about things he didn't particularly want to think about. The man looked unhappy to be talking to Jo, to be standing in the light of the concourse. Runner of the dark ways, Tick-Tock was, and he must owe Jo an almighty favor, to make him be out and about with the day folk.
"You think you're going to catch that Angel, then?" Tick said, and Jo made a little gesture of impatience. "You think you'll rescue one of them, make him whole?" Tick shook his head slowly, and the chronos looped around his neck and pinned on the chains that stitched his vest together swayed, chiming. "He no more has his wings. If he don't fly, he die, shetani."
"He's not going to die," Jared snapped, and Tick snorted softly.
"Surely, he cannot live."
"Do you know where he is, or not?" Jo asked, his voice rough with irritation, and Tick sighed, glancing left and then right at the chronos, his long, thin fingers tapping along each face.
"He goes along that road between heaven and hell, shetani. The world road."
Jo nodded once, letting Tick-Tock go. The man touched his fingertips to his forehead, grave little dip of his chin, and then he was moving away, a broken clock-work stalk on legs like pipes.
"So?"
"He's down in the Axis Mundi," Jo said, and started walking, fast.
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"It means we're gonna have to be very, very careful." Jo sorted through a fan of cloned cards and slid one through a lock on a service door. It opened with a sigh, and they stepped out of the lights and motion of Carousel and into a dim corridor, the noise abruptly gone with the shutting of the door. The bare corridor had an access map on one wall, and Jo studied it for a long moment, and then started walking again, fast.
Jared strode after him, easily matching his stride. "So what's Axis Mundi?"
"It's the core. It's where Axis started. Then she grew - got bigger - and nobody wanted to be in so far, and so close to the bones of the place. So mostly it's powered down, just empty corridors and maintenance tunnels. It's the quickest access to the power station, but that's not where we're goin'. We're goin' to the very bottom of the slide, and, Jared-" Jo stopped, his fingers on the butt of the big, ugly blaster he had strapped to his thigh, concealed for the most part under a long-tailed coat. "You gotta do what I tell you, okay? It's- We're not welcome there, and we just gotta be...really careful." Jo's dark eyes were earnest - worried - and Jared felt a little chill shiver over him.
"Yeah, I can- I'll be careful. Just...tell me what to do."
Axis Mundi was dark, to Jared's eye, all shadows and deep wells and long stretches of nothing but blackness, lit here and there by loops of flex-lights, or power-down indicators over doorways. Here, the noise of the mag-lifts echoed, a distant howl, and pumps and filters and scrubbers made a white-noise of constant, low-level sound. But below that, somehow - wound up in that - was the vast, almost noiseless throb of the power source, the heart of Axis, her own sun in miniature, shedding power and heat that the armature was at pains to dissipate.
The closer they got to the ultimate core - going inward, down to the bottom of the well - the warmer it got, until Jo and Jared both were sweating, panting. They passed through more temperate zones, into actual cold spots, and out again, and Jared started to feel...uneasy.
There was just enough background noise to mask more deliberate sounds, and he could swear he heard people talking, moving, maybe even shouting. He kept flinching, jerking quick looks back over his shoulder, and Jo finally rounded on him, his eyes wide, his hand coming up to pinch down hard on Jared's shoulder.
"You gotta calm the fuck down."
"Yeah, I...sorry, fuck, it's- it's just- I feel like...like…."
"I know, but it's not- It's nothing, okay? It's the power station - infrasonic. You can't really hear it; you feel it, and it makes you fucking paranoid. So just- just ignore it. We're okay."
"Fuck," Jared muttered, and wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt - shoved his hair back, looping it into a short tail with an elastic. "Okay. I'm okay."
"Okay." Jo took a deep breath and then pointed to a smear of phosphorescent paint along the corridor wall, down low. "We're gettin' into the territories. People live here, and they do not want us here. So don't fuckin' talk, and don't do anything, and for fuck's sake, don't look at anybody, okay? Curiosity is not your friend."
"Okay," Jared said, and he took a few hard, deep breaths, settling himself before nodding to Jo. "I'm good."
"Okay. Here we go." Jo unsnapped the safety strap on the blaster, settled his hand on the butt and started to walk. Fast.
Jared followed, seeing more of the paint - seeing other things. Alcoves with bundles of things inside; little makeshift camps, a couple with actual, open flame that made his heart kick in his chest, sick fear that he ruthlessly squashed down. And people. Not a lot, not crowds, but enough. People like Jensen, in layers and rags of clothing, hunched and unmoving, or warily turning. Watching.
Jared kept his gaze fixed firmly on Jo's shoulders and just moved, and after a few more turns - after a slide down a set of stairs so steep they may as well have been a ladder - they started to hear something. A voice was shouting - howling - incomprehensible, and Jo's steps faltered for a moment, little catch-step. But he squared his shoulders and moved on, and the noise got louder, closer.
Jensen, Jared thought, because it was. His voice, hoarse and ragged, screaming, sobbing - wailing. Animal noises that made the vid from the Glorianna flicker in Jared's brain, and he swallowed hard and clenched his jaw, forcing himself to shut that down.
They came to a makeshift barrier of plastic sheeting and scavenged wire, and pushed through. On the other side was a long corridor with several spots of dim, greenish light at random intervals, but mostly it was just darkness. Darkness and shadows, but the shadows moved, and Jo froze, stopping so suddenly that Jared actually ran right into him.
"Shit!"
"Shut. Up," Jo said, and Jared froze, as well. They watched a shadow detach itself and move toward them in a slow, hitching kind of way; a sort of stop-start-stop motion that made the figure seem to flicker, in the uncertain light, and which made the feeling of intense unease that was welling in Jared ratchet sharply upward. Another shadow emerged from what Jared hoped was a doorway or alcove - not just the darkness, for fuck's sake - and then a third.
Moving slowly but deliberately, Jared crouched, slow as slow; reached down and slid the Cobra out of its sheath, clutching it tight in his fist. He started violently when a sudden, hideous noise screamed out of the corridor behind him. Metal on metal, it was a sliding, scraping squeal of sound, and Jo was shaking, just a little, the blaster half out of its holster and his eyes huge.
Jensen's voice - and it was so raw and broken it made Jared's own throat ache in sympathy - went on and on, howling and then cursing and then moaning, and Jared's belly was trembling, down inside - tremors that were rippling out through his thighs and his chest and his arms, making his lungs hitch.
"We gotta help him," Jared whispered, and Jo hissed.
"Shut up, shut up!"
"We can't j-just ss-tand here, we c-can't, we gotta he-help him-" Jared flinched again, hard, as a pump whirred to life somewhere near his head, and all three figures seemed to leap forward with more of that metal-on-metal squeal. Something gleamed at the ends of their fingers; long slivers of metal, like nails or knives, scraping over the leperous, paint-flaked wall of the corridor.
"We're gonna fucking die if we do anything stupid- Jared- Fucking shit!"
Jared gulped air and pushed past Jo, shoving the Cobra into a pocket and holding his hands up, arms wide, so freaked out he didn't care, he just couldn't stand that noise anymore. Couldn't take hearing Jensen scream.
"Hey! Hey, I'm s-sorry we came here, in your territory." The figures jerked - froze - and then moved again, a little quicker. Closer. Jared could make out eyes, now, between the swathings of cloth. Feral eyes. "We didn't ask first, and I'm sorry. But- b-but we came for my friend. For- for Jensen. You can hear him, right? He's- he's really sick. He might- he m-might die if we don't h-help him. Please, we just want to help him. He's my...he's...we're Glorianna. We both- c-came from there. He lived there, and he n-needs help."
There was a noise behind him, and Jared half-turned to see Jo standing stock-still, hands out, a - man? - standing behind him, one hand on Jo's arm. The other curled around his throat, ragged metal tines instead of fingers, some kind of homemade prosthetic thing that looked sharp enough to cut, and nasty enough to kill with infection, all in one stroke.
"Please-" Jared said again, taking one long step backward intothe corridor wall, his shoulders touching the rough surface that was chilled here, a random cold spot that made him catch his breath. "He's...he's an Angel, you know? And they- they mustered him out. He'll die, and we- We can help him."
The three figures coming up the corridor kept coming, still moving in that odd, hitching way that made Jared - infrasonic paranoia and all - want to scream. As they swayed to a halt, Jensen's voice tapered off to some kind of hoarse, droning noise, either one or two words repeated over and over or just...noise. Like he'd exhausted himself, brain and body, and could only make this horrible, painful groan now.
"Diaboli," one of them said - a woman's voice - and Jo made a sort of wheezing noise of assent, not moving. "Cut," the woman added, off-hand, and Jared jerked in horror, spinning to watch Jo - be let go. The figure behind him drew away, metal finger-knife things chiming faintly against each other, and Jo let out shaky curse.
"Fuck, Jo-"
"You're Glorianna?" the woman said, and Jared snapped his mouth shut and nodded hard. "Company brat," she said, looking him up and down, and Jared nodded again.
"Won a lottery on Kin-Gin, they gave me the ANGEL system to fix me. Grimes."
The figure next to the woman made an indrawn noise of sympathy, and murmured something. "Ah," the woman said. "That was nasty. Company did that. Changed the reports, deleted the red flags."
"Yeah, I- How did...how did you know?" Jared asked, and the woman tugged at the cloth around her face, pulling it down to show Jared a thin, slightly warped visage, one eye wandering in its socket. The hands that unwound the cloth shook, fumbling with clumsy slowness.
"Was on the terraforming team. Thought I'd get me a house, got this instead. Wasn't bad enough to win a Company spot, though."
"I'm- I'm sorry. Fuck, I-"
The woman shrugged, shoulders uneven beneath her layers of clothing. "Not your fault. You had it bad, to get a spot. They wanted the ones who'd rather be dead than say no." She looked over at Jo, then back at Jared, assessing. "You really gonna fix Quemeul? The angel," she said, at Jared's puzzled look.
"Yeah, we are. We can. He's...he's special, okay? He's....he might be the cure for what the Company did to the ANGEL system," Jared said, and Jo made a strangled sort of noise, glaring at Jared. Jared ignored him. "His 'net, it's pure. We can break the Company's back with this. With him. But he's gotta live, and he can't do that down here. Please, please let us take him back."
The three figures shuffled together, talking too low and fast and coded for Jared to understand. Next to him, Jo was muttering under his breath, sounding furious, but Jared didn't care. He'd do anything, right now - say anything - to get Jensen out of there. There was no love lost on the Company down here, anyway.
The woman shuffled forward a few steps, and reached up to touch Jared's cheek. Her hand was icy-cold, smelling of machine oil and sweat and something faintly sweet, like soap. She patted his cheek gently, the little tremors running through her making Jared shiver. Sense-memory, superstitious aversion - he hated it and understood it, at the same time.
"We know you. Diaboli. We know. Don't think we can't find you, if we need to." She looked over at Jo and nodded, then, shuffling back. "Go and get him. He's hurt."
"Thank you," Jared breathed, and started walking, but quickly broke into a trot and then a run, uncaring. He could hear Jo behind him, the blaster rattling and Jo's muttering getting a little louder, but Jared ignored him and sprinted down the corridor, skidding around the corner at the end into a wide spot under a heat exchanger. The whole wall was covered in dense, cramped symbols and words and pictures, with a safety light shedding an unhappy yellow-green light on the scene.
Jensen was huddled in what looked like a nest of recycling, wrapped up in a silvery medical blanket, blood-streaked face bent down over bloodied hands. He was mumbling now, his voice nearly gone, and as Jared watched, his whole body stiffened into something that could be a seizure, could be just an all-over cramp of muscles. Fever and ague, Mama Signey would say, chills that would grip Jared's body and twist it like a dishrag, shaking the whole bed.
Jared went cautiously closer; crouched down, right at the edge of the raised platform Jensen was on, hoping like hell not to startle him too badly.
"Jensen?"
"Mmm…?" Jensen looked up slowly, his head angled oddly and his whole body shaking, shaking. His gaze was glassy and unfocused, but after a moment he blinked, rubbing the back of one hand over his eyes. "Ss...Sam. I thought you died."
"I- he…." Jared grimaced; stopped for a moment and thought. "I'm sorry, Jensen. I'm Jared. Sam...did die. A long time ago. On the Glorianna. You remember? The fire?"
Jensen blinked once - twice - slowly and unevenly, and then his face twisted, crumpling. "I...remember. There was a...'namoly. The ship...went in and we...we got hurt, she got...hurt. Then the f-fire. And they...died, the Doc and...Ssam and...they died." Jensen curled his arms around his ribs under the blanket, hunching and rocking, just a little, as another bout of shaking consumed him, the muscles in his forearms and neck going rigid, his teeth chattering.
"Jensen, you need to be in the- back in the med lab. You're sick."
"They...they were- I knew about the...babies. Sam shh-showed me. But I couldn't make it…ss-stop, they wouldn't...stop, and they cried and they...cried and we...nothing made them stop and they were- There wasn't any...food and I ff-or...got. I…I was...not...not...and they just...kept borning, they...wouldn't...ss-top… Sam!" Jensen's hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of Jared's jacket, twisting and pulling him closer. He stank of sweat and blood, and something else, some chemical underlay, the cytokine storm, poisonous medicine making his system go rapidly - lethally - haywire.
"Jensen, what-?"
"Sam. I'm ss-sorry I ran away."
Fuck, fuck, fuck, Jared thought, and reached up to very carefully pat Jensen's hand. "It's okay. I know you didn't mean to. It was- was really scary, and you were just...little. It's okay."
"Okay?" Jensen said, and Jared nodded. Jensen blinked again, slumping a little, and glanced vaguely up and around, focused on Jo for a moment, and then back down, at Jared. "Okay. Okay. I killed those people. I couldn't help it. They were...bein' really...really loud and it ss-scared me and I tried, but it...they didn't...stop. So I killed...them. But they let me...they still let me...fly. Sam-" Jensen smiled, and for a moment it was the sweetest, brightest smile Jared had ever seen.
"Sam, they let me fly. Dul-chay et decorum est. That’s what Kane said. It is sweet…sweet…." Jensen's head dropped, and he was still for a moment, and then the shaking started again, harder than before, and his hand twisted tighter in Jared's shirt. "H-help me. Plee...ase help...me…."
"Yeah,, fuck, I can- We can help, I got you, we'll help-" Jared got up, crowding close to Jensen and getting an arm around him; looked up to see Jo coming close and doing the same, on the other side, both of them lifting Jensen up and out of the nest. His little bundle of junk tumbled down off his unfolding legs and Jared snatched it up and held on, got a shoulder under Jensen's, and then Jo was lifting from his side and together they dragged Jensen upright. He was shaking harder now, hard enough to chatter his teeth, his muscles like rock under Jared's hands, and Jo tugged away in the opposite direction they'd come in.
"Service lift down here, we can use that, take us right up to Carousel. I'll have Jo with a gurney-"
"Okay, let's go, let's go," Jared said, and they staggered off down the corridor, all but dragging Jensen between them. The others - shadows - followed until they didn't, and by the time they reached the service lift, the three of them were alone.
And there we have it. Enjoy!
Part eleven.
In other news - it's cold, it's sleet-drizzling, my job is tedious, our Xmas tree is awesome. :) We got a nice, big, fat cedar this year, which really - yay! I love a good cedar tree. I'll post a picture soon - before the actual day. 'Cause i know you're all dying to see, heh.
Anyway - here we go.
darkhavens Beta'd for me, of course.Also at AO3
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.
How sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths.
By the Roman poet Horace
Jensen couldn't think. Everything was so bright, and so loud. Every instinct in him was screaming to run, to hide, to go. Burrow and delve and dive, disappear. He'd tried; he'd fought his way past two men who'd attempted to hold him. He'd found his coat and he had his things but...he was so hot. And his arm hurt. And his ribs, and his head, fuck, his head.... Every shift of his body, every impact of his feet on the ground made it ring and throb and whine in stuttering, white noise static, his vision occluding and clearing in flashes until he was reduced to crawling.
He'd gone the wrong way and reeled back in agony from lights and music and noise, noise, noise, before staggering for the shadows. He went further and deeper, and then had to stop and curl up in a niche to just breathe. Five minutes - ten - and he'd finally eased his aching arm out from under his coat, trying to understand the pain. There was tape on his arm, holding in place a needle attached to a length of clear tubing that dragged and caught. The tape was beyond him, his chewed-down nails scrabbling uselessly at it, so he finally left it alone, wrapping the tubing around his wrist, tucking and pulling so the needle didn't move, the tube didn't drag. Then he shoved his arm back into his coat sleeve and took stock.
No weapons, no shoes, no clothes. A burn in his groin from the catheter he'd pulled out of his dick, a solid ache across his ribs, two taped fingers that throbbed in time with his heart. His gut hurt, too, like he was hungry, but the thought of food made his mouth flood, nausea hovering, and he was so hot. He was on fire, his lips burning, his eyes, his throat like wire, brittle and sharp, and everything hurt, everything hurt.
Jensen snapped upright from a slump, a moment of blank unconsciousness. He could hear...something; people, machinery, he didn't know, but it was too close and too loud and he had to go, had to move, he wasn't safe, here, wasn't safe….
He reached out for the 'net, trying to find Jinx, Five, anyone, but there was only numb silence, nothing at all. Whimpering, Jensen clawed himself upright, to knees and then feet, hunched over, gasping. He followed the wall as it went, further into shadow, to a door, all scarred paint and letters, the yellow and black diagonal stripes that meant selected access only. A fire door, with an easy push handle that moved under his weight and then he was through and into another hall, but this one was dim and quiet, marks on the wall from carts or dollies. Tech access, maintenence, something. Not for the public, so safer.
He moved as quickly as he could, panting harshly, a reeling scurry that banged him into the wall, into door jambs, into the raised edge of section seals. Ship or station, ship or station...station, station…. Jensen leaned against a thick, ribbed bundle of conduit and pipes, thinking. Trying to think. His brain was muffled, his thoughts moving in slow, humming arcs, jumbled into nonsense, nearly intelligible. Station! Think, think…. Had to be Axis, had to be. He remembered Axis...didn't he? Construction and raw girders, the chill of the non-sun side, and Angels, Angels….
There was a noise - a groaning kind of boom, the air itself tearing - a mag-lift, dropping down the shaft, and Jensen pushed himself toward it, leaning and clutching and all but dragging himself along the wall, fighting for air. Black sparkles and white snapping in his visual field, little bursts that made him flinch, distracted.
The wire grating of the lift access was down, a yellow and black protective barrier, little lights winking. Jensen leaned there, feeling the air that wafted out, cool and scented with the smells of oil and grease, hot metal and warm plastics. A sudden up-rush warned him and he leaned back as another lift rocketed past, a little eddy of trash in its wake. This was what he needed.
He ground the palms of his hands into his eyes and just breathed for a moment. He could ride the mag-lift. He'd done it, he was sure he'd done it...sometime...somewhere…(Jinx and Kane and Sinna, suit gauntlets locked into hand-holds, riding a runaway mag-lift, screaming with laughter, howling like banshees, the 'net pulsing with lovefamilyfamily, rush and roar and alive alive....)
Jensen shook his head and winced; found the edge of the control box and pried it up, little indent there for the tech guys, exposing wire and chips, blinking lights. He stared, unfocused, and then finally pulled a chip, touched a wire to the exposed socket, and the guard slid back. Somewhere, an alarm was sounding, but nowhere close. It would take...time. Enough time.
The air pulsed, another lift coming, this one dropping down, and Jensen watched it fall, then gritted his teeth and leapt. He fell with it, a moment of pure joy, weightless and flying. Then he slammed down onto the shell, scrabbling and clawing and sliding, catching a hand-grip just in time. He tucked his legs in close, away from the edge and grimly hung on.
Going down.
"Fucking hell, what happened?" Jared yelled, and Jo One shot him a filthy look, a cold pack pressed to his face.
"What the fuck you think happened? Fuckin' crazy asshole."
"He's sick, it's not his fault," Jared snapped, and Jo One shoved Doc away and stood up, wincing.
"I was talking about you. All'a you. You're fuckin' nuts. He's never gonna be right in the head. All those Angels are crazies, fuckin' felons and rapists and murderers. They gotta psy-block half of 'em just so they can fuckin' eat and shit without takin' anybody out. What do you think this guy is, fuckin' innocent?"
"Fuck you," Jared muttered, but Jo was right. ArchANGELS were 'recruited' - meaning, conscripted - from prisons all over the universe. Whatever had happened to Jensen as a kid, he'd gone on to break the law in a damn spectacular way. You didn't become an Angel for stealing a damn dataspot. "Just...tell me where he went."
"How the hell do I fuckin' know?" Jo One said, gesturing at his eye. He made a furious noise as Doc approached again, but this time sat back down, grudgingly letting her look him over. "Surprised the fucker can walk."
"He can walk," Jo Two said, coming in through the door. "Somebody tripped a safety alert on a mag-lift two sections over. Gotta be him. Nobody else is fuckin' crazy enough to do some dumb-ass shit like that."
"Both of you shut up," Doc said, and Jo Two came over to peer at his brother. "He's not in his right mind. He's literally not in his right mind, don't you get it? Between all the company shit and what we did to him, if he comes out of this knowing his own name, we're gonna be lucky. I'm sorry, Jared," Doc added, straightening her shoulders.
"I didn't want to tell you, but there's a real chance he'll come out of this with permanent, profound brain damage. That's one thing the company can't fix yet. They can rewire it, but they can't grow grey matter. Not fucking yet, not when it's been burned out." Doc held up a hand, forestalling Jared who could feel himself bristling with fury.
"His best hope is here, where we can keep the damage to a minimum, control his temperature and keep him hydrated and stable. So instead of blowing up at me, you need to find him."
"Fuck! You!" Jared screamed at the ceiling, and Doc flinched. Jared knotted his fingers in his hair and pulled, eyes shut, trying to get a full breath. His heart was pounding against his breastbone like a hammer, and he felt horribly, scarily fragile. Like the wrong move - the wrong word - would shatter him.
"Fuck you, fuck the Company, fuck the fucking Angels. How in hell am I supposed to find him on Axis? He could be anywhere."
"But he's somewhere," Jo Two said. "Start with where you found him the first time. Those fights. Somebody'll know."
"I don't. I dunno how to find those fights; they move all the time and I'm not here that much."
"I am, though." Jo Two patted his brother on the shoulder and stepped toward Jared. "I know the guy that runs 'em. And he owes me. So get your gear, whatever you need. Doc, fix him up; I gotta grab something." Jo Two looked up at Jared, corner of his mouth twisting up in a little grin. "We'll find him."
The guy Jo knew was a tall and skeletally thin man in a dull-green vest and dusty black trousers, ticking and flashing and chirping chronos laddered up his arms. They were distracting, and Jared had to jerk his gaze away from them again and again, try to focus on what Jo and Tick-Tock were saying.
But his brain kept fixating on the chronos, running in aimless little loops. Familiar pattern, this - his brain working overtime to keep him from thinking about things he didn't particularly want to think about. The man looked unhappy to be talking to Jo, to be standing in the light of the concourse. Runner of the dark ways, Tick-Tock was, and he must owe Jo an almighty favor, to make him be out and about with the day folk.
"You think you're going to catch that Angel, then?" Tick said, and Jo made a little gesture of impatience. "You think you'll rescue one of them, make him whole?" Tick shook his head slowly, and the chronos looped around his neck and pinned on the chains that stitched his vest together swayed, chiming. "He no more has his wings. If he don't fly, he die, shetani."
"He's not going to die," Jared snapped, and Tick snorted softly.
"Surely, he cannot live."
"Do you know where he is, or not?" Jo asked, his voice rough with irritation, and Tick sighed, glancing left and then right at the chronos, his long, thin fingers tapping along each face.
"He goes along that road between heaven and hell, shetani. The world road."
Jo nodded once, letting Tick-Tock go. The man touched his fingertips to his forehead, grave little dip of his chin, and then he was moving away, a broken clock-work stalk on legs like pipes.
"So?"
"He's down in the Axis Mundi," Jo said, and started walking, fast.
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"It means we're gonna have to be very, very careful." Jo sorted through a fan of cloned cards and slid one through a lock on a service door. It opened with a sigh, and they stepped out of the lights and motion of Carousel and into a dim corridor, the noise abruptly gone with the shutting of the door. The bare corridor had an access map on one wall, and Jo studied it for a long moment, and then started walking again, fast.
Jared strode after him, easily matching his stride. "So what's Axis Mundi?"
"It's the core. It's where Axis started. Then she grew - got bigger - and nobody wanted to be in so far, and so close to the bones of the place. So mostly it's powered down, just empty corridors and maintenance tunnels. It's the quickest access to the power station, but that's not where we're goin'. We're goin' to the very bottom of the slide, and, Jared-" Jo stopped, his fingers on the butt of the big, ugly blaster he had strapped to his thigh, concealed for the most part under a long-tailed coat. "You gotta do what I tell you, okay? It's- We're not welcome there, and we just gotta be...really careful." Jo's dark eyes were earnest - worried - and Jared felt a little chill shiver over him.
"Yeah, I can- I'll be careful. Just...tell me what to do."
Axis Mundi was dark, to Jared's eye, all shadows and deep wells and long stretches of nothing but blackness, lit here and there by loops of flex-lights, or power-down indicators over doorways. Here, the noise of the mag-lifts echoed, a distant howl, and pumps and filters and scrubbers made a white-noise of constant, low-level sound. But below that, somehow - wound up in that - was the vast, almost noiseless throb of the power source, the heart of Axis, her own sun in miniature, shedding power and heat that the armature was at pains to dissipate.
The closer they got to the ultimate core - going inward, down to the bottom of the well - the warmer it got, until Jo and Jared both were sweating, panting. They passed through more temperate zones, into actual cold spots, and out again, and Jared started to feel...uneasy.
There was just enough background noise to mask more deliberate sounds, and he could swear he heard people talking, moving, maybe even shouting. He kept flinching, jerking quick looks back over his shoulder, and Jo finally rounded on him, his eyes wide, his hand coming up to pinch down hard on Jared's shoulder.
"You gotta calm the fuck down."
"Yeah, I...sorry, fuck, it's- it's just- I feel like...like…."
"I know, but it's not- It's nothing, okay? It's the power station - infrasonic. You can't really hear it; you feel it, and it makes you fucking paranoid. So just- just ignore it. We're okay."
"Fuck," Jared muttered, and wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt - shoved his hair back, looping it into a short tail with an elastic. "Okay. I'm okay."
"Okay." Jo took a deep breath and then pointed to a smear of phosphorescent paint along the corridor wall, down low. "We're gettin' into the territories. People live here, and they do not want us here. So don't fuckin' talk, and don't do anything, and for fuck's sake, don't look at anybody, okay? Curiosity is not your friend."
"Okay," Jared said, and he took a few hard, deep breaths, settling himself before nodding to Jo. "I'm good."
"Okay. Here we go." Jo unsnapped the safety strap on the blaster, settled his hand on the butt and started to walk. Fast.
Jared followed, seeing more of the paint - seeing other things. Alcoves with bundles of things inside; little makeshift camps, a couple with actual, open flame that made his heart kick in his chest, sick fear that he ruthlessly squashed down. And people. Not a lot, not crowds, but enough. People like Jensen, in layers and rags of clothing, hunched and unmoving, or warily turning. Watching.
Jared kept his gaze fixed firmly on Jo's shoulders and just moved, and after a few more turns - after a slide down a set of stairs so steep they may as well have been a ladder - they started to hear something. A voice was shouting - howling - incomprehensible, and Jo's steps faltered for a moment, little catch-step. But he squared his shoulders and moved on, and the noise got louder, closer.
Jensen, Jared thought, because it was. His voice, hoarse and ragged, screaming, sobbing - wailing. Animal noises that made the vid from the Glorianna flicker in Jared's brain, and he swallowed hard and clenched his jaw, forcing himself to shut that down.
They came to a makeshift barrier of plastic sheeting and scavenged wire, and pushed through. On the other side was a long corridor with several spots of dim, greenish light at random intervals, but mostly it was just darkness. Darkness and shadows, but the shadows moved, and Jo froze, stopping so suddenly that Jared actually ran right into him.
"Shit!"
"Shut. Up," Jo said, and Jared froze, as well. They watched a shadow detach itself and move toward them in a slow, hitching kind of way; a sort of stop-start-stop motion that made the figure seem to flicker, in the uncertain light, and which made the feeling of intense unease that was welling in Jared ratchet sharply upward. Another shadow emerged from what Jared hoped was a doorway or alcove - not just the darkness, for fuck's sake - and then a third.
Moving slowly but deliberately, Jared crouched, slow as slow; reached down and slid the Cobra out of its sheath, clutching it tight in his fist. He started violently when a sudden, hideous noise screamed out of the corridor behind him. Metal on metal, it was a sliding, scraping squeal of sound, and Jo was shaking, just a little, the blaster half out of its holster and his eyes huge.
Jensen's voice - and it was so raw and broken it made Jared's own throat ache in sympathy - went on and on, howling and then cursing and then moaning, and Jared's belly was trembling, down inside - tremors that were rippling out through his thighs and his chest and his arms, making his lungs hitch.
"We gotta help him," Jared whispered, and Jo hissed.
"Shut up, shut up!"
"We can't j-just ss-tand here, we c-can't, we gotta he-help him-" Jared flinched again, hard, as a pump whirred to life somewhere near his head, and all three figures seemed to leap forward with more of that metal-on-metal squeal. Something gleamed at the ends of their fingers; long slivers of metal, like nails or knives, scraping over the leperous, paint-flaked wall of the corridor.
"We're gonna fucking die if we do anything stupid- Jared- Fucking shit!"
Jared gulped air and pushed past Jo, shoving the Cobra into a pocket and holding his hands up, arms wide, so freaked out he didn't care, he just couldn't stand that noise anymore. Couldn't take hearing Jensen scream.
"Hey! Hey, I'm s-sorry we came here, in your territory." The figures jerked - froze - and then moved again, a little quicker. Closer. Jared could make out eyes, now, between the swathings of cloth. Feral eyes. "We didn't ask first, and I'm sorry. But- b-but we came for my friend. For- for Jensen. You can hear him, right? He's- he's really sick. He might- he m-might die if we don't h-help him. Please, we just want to help him. He's my...he's...we're Glorianna. We both- c-came from there. He lived there, and he n-needs help."
There was a noise behind him, and Jared half-turned to see Jo standing stock-still, hands out, a - man? - standing behind him, one hand on Jo's arm. The other curled around his throat, ragged metal tines instead of fingers, some kind of homemade prosthetic thing that looked sharp enough to cut, and nasty enough to kill with infection, all in one stroke.
"Please-" Jared said again, taking one long step backward intothe corridor wall, his shoulders touching the rough surface that was chilled here, a random cold spot that made him catch his breath. "He's...he's an Angel, you know? And they- they mustered him out. He'll die, and we- We can help him."
The three figures coming up the corridor kept coming, still moving in that odd, hitching way that made Jared - infrasonic paranoia and all - want to scream. As they swayed to a halt, Jensen's voice tapered off to some kind of hoarse, droning noise, either one or two words repeated over and over or just...noise. Like he'd exhausted himself, brain and body, and could only make this horrible, painful groan now.
"Diaboli," one of them said - a woman's voice - and Jo made a sort of wheezing noise of assent, not moving. "Cut," the woman added, off-hand, and Jared jerked in horror, spinning to watch Jo - be let go. The figure behind him drew away, metal finger-knife things chiming faintly against each other, and Jo let out shaky curse.
"Fuck, Jo-"
"You're Glorianna?" the woman said, and Jared snapped his mouth shut and nodded hard. "Company brat," she said, looking him up and down, and Jared nodded again.
"Won a lottery on Kin-Gin, they gave me the ANGEL system to fix me. Grimes."
The figure next to the woman made an indrawn noise of sympathy, and murmured something. "Ah," the woman said. "That was nasty. Company did that. Changed the reports, deleted the red flags."
"Yeah, I- How did...how did you know?" Jared asked, and the woman tugged at the cloth around her face, pulling it down to show Jared a thin, slightly warped visage, one eye wandering in its socket. The hands that unwound the cloth shook, fumbling with clumsy slowness.
"Was on the terraforming team. Thought I'd get me a house, got this instead. Wasn't bad enough to win a Company spot, though."
"I'm- I'm sorry. Fuck, I-"
The woman shrugged, shoulders uneven beneath her layers of clothing. "Not your fault. You had it bad, to get a spot. They wanted the ones who'd rather be dead than say no." She looked over at Jo, then back at Jared, assessing. "You really gonna fix Quemeul? The angel," she said, at Jared's puzzled look.
"Yeah, we are. We can. He's...he's special, okay? He's....he might be the cure for what the Company did to the ANGEL system," Jared said, and Jo made a strangled sort of noise, glaring at Jared. Jared ignored him. "His 'net, it's pure. We can break the Company's back with this. With him. But he's gotta live, and he can't do that down here. Please, please let us take him back."
The three figures shuffled together, talking too low and fast and coded for Jared to understand. Next to him, Jo was muttering under his breath, sounding furious, but Jared didn't care. He'd do anything, right now - say anything - to get Jensen out of there. There was no love lost on the Company down here, anyway.
The woman shuffled forward a few steps, and reached up to touch Jared's cheek. Her hand was icy-cold, smelling of machine oil and sweat and something faintly sweet, like soap. She patted his cheek gently, the little tremors running through her making Jared shiver. Sense-memory, superstitious aversion - he hated it and understood it, at the same time.
"We know you. Diaboli. We know. Don't think we can't find you, if we need to." She looked over at Jo and nodded, then, shuffling back. "Go and get him. He's hurt."
"Thank you," Jared breathed, and started walking, but quickly broke into a trot and then a run, uncaring. He could hear Jo behind him, the blaster rattling and Jo's muttering getting a little louder, but Jared ignored him and sprinted down the corridor, skidding around the corner at the end into a wide spot under a heat exchanger. The whole wall was covered in dense, cramped symbols and words and pictures, with a safety light shedding an unhappy yellow-green light on the scene.
Jensen was huddled in what looked like a nest of recycling, wrapped up in a silvery medical blanket, blood-streaked face bent down over bloodied hands. He was mumbling now, his voice nearly gone, and as Jared watched, his whole body stiffened into something that could be a seizure, could be just an all-over cramp of muscles. Fever and ague, Mama Signey would say, chills that would grip Jared's body and twist it like a dishrag, shaking the whole bed.
Jared went cautiously closer; crouched down, right at the edge of the raised platform Jensen was on, hoping like hell not to startle him too badly.
"Jensen?"
"Mmm…?" Jensen looked up slowly, his head angled oddly and his whole body shaking, shaking. His gaze was glassy and unfocused, but after a moment he blinked, rubbing the back of one hand over his eyes. "Ss...Sam. I thought you died."
"I- he…." Jared grimaced; stopped for a moment and thought. "I'm sorry, Jensen. I'm Jared. Sam...did die. A long time ago. On the Glorianna. You remember? The fire?"
Jensen blinked once - twice - slowly and unevenly, and then his face twisted, crumpling. "I...remember. There was a...'namoly. The ship...went in and we...we got hurt, she got...hurt. Then the f-fire. And they...died, the Doc and...Ssam and...they died." Jensen curled his arms around his ribs under the blanket, hunching and rocking, just a little, as another bout of shaking consumed him, the muscles in his forearms and neck going rigid, his teeth chattering.
"Jensen, you need to be in the- back in the med lab. You're sick."
"They...they were- I knew about the...babies. Sam shh-showed me. But I couldn't make it…ss-stop, they wouldn't...stop, and they cried and they...cried and we...nothing made them stop and they were- There wasn't any...food and I ff-or...got. I…I was...not...not...and they just...kept borning, they...wouldn't...ss-top… Sam!" Jensen's hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of Jared's jacket, twisting and pulling him closer. He stank of sweat and blood, and something else, some chemical underlay, the cytokine storm, poisonous medicine making his system go rapidly - lethally - haywire.
"Jensen, what-?"
"Sam. I'm ss-sorry I ran away."
Fuck, fuck, fuck, Jared thought, and reached up to very carefully pat Jensen's hand. "It's okay. I know you didn't mean to. It was- was really scary, and you were just...little. It's okay."
"Okay?" Jensen said, and Jared nodded. Jensen blinked again, slumping a little, and glanced vaguely up and around, focused on Jo for a moment, and then back down, at Jared. "Okay. Okay. I killed those people. I couldn't help it. They were...bein' really...really loud and it ss-scared me and I tried, but it...they didn't...stop. So I killed...them. But they let me...they still let me...fly. Sam-" Jensen smiled, and for a moment it was the sweetest, brightest smile Jared had ever seen.
"Sam, they let me fly. Dul-chay et decorum est. That’s what Kane said. It is sweet…sweet…." Jensen's head dropped, and he was still for a moment, and then the shaking started again, harder than before, and his hand twisted tighter in Jared's shirt. "H-help me. Plee...ase help...me…."
"Yeah,, fuck, I can- We can help, I got you, we'll help-" Jared got up, crowding close to Jensen and getting an arm around him; looked up to see Jo coming close and doing the same, on the other side, both of them lifting Jensen up and out of the nest. His little bundle of junk tumbled down off his unfolding legs and Jared snatched it up and held on, got a shoulder under Jensen's, and then Jo was lifting from his side and together they dragged Jensen upright. He was shaking harder now, hard enough to chatter his teeth, his muscles like rock under Jared's hands, and Jo tugged away in the opposite direction they'd come in.
"Service lift down here, we can use that, take us right up to Carousel. I'll have Jo with a gurney-"
"Okay, let's go, let's go," Jared said, and they staggered off down the corridor, all but dragging Jensen between them. The others - shadows - followed until they didn't, and by the time they reached the service lift, the three of them were alone.
And there we have it. Enjoy!
Part eleven.
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