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Hallo!
Well, i am, as my dad would say, 'feeling puny'. So no work for me today (or yesterday), and i thought i'd get my updates all...updated.
I posted another ficlet at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
slashthedrabble, a continuation of the same story. It's over at the comm for now - I'll be putting it on my lj soon enough. It's nice to see drabbles and ficlets going up over there!
Also the Space AU! Which, you guys. I feel like such a dork, dragging it out so long, but it's not deliberate! It's just...me. I'm glad my faithful readers are still hanging on, though I totally understand if people want to wait until it's complete to read, too.
I think a couple more chapters will see us through to the end, so not long now, I promise!
Some 'not English' spoken in this chapter, so that's this:
'Tudo bem? - Everything well?
'Tudo bom. - Everything good.
'Chuchu' - Sweetie
'Legal' - Cool
(Brazilian Portuguese)
Also at AO3.
Marvellous happy it was to be
Alone, and yet not solitary,
O out of terror and dark, to come
In sight of home.
Walter de la Mare - The Pilgrim
It was seventeen days before Jensen was conscious again. It had got so bad, Doc had finally just put him out, flat down, 'medically induced coma', she called it. A necessity if she was going to keep his brain from being cooked from the inside out, but practically it meant that Jensen lay like a corpse on the gurney, intubated and catheterized and IV'ed all to hell and gone, surrounded by telemetry monitors, lifted a quarter-inch off the gurney’'s surface by a stolen suspension system, warm air-bed that would combat pressure sores. He was shrouded in a generation web that kept his muscles active if not perfect.
Hell, the state he was in, it might actually get him some muscle back, considering all the crap Doc was pumping into him. She'd even inserted a feeding tube into his stomach, because the IV wasn't cutting it and he was burning up calories faster than she could put them in, heat and sweat pouring off him for days, and then everything locking up as another wave of the storm started yet another shutdown.
The cancers in the ArchANGEL system fought - and fought hard - mutating itself all over the place and finding near-lethal chinks in the system's underlying armor, attacking again and again, while Jensen fought to heal what it tore down.
And Jared...well. He'd quit his job on Alvarez, because there was no fucking way he was going back out there while Jensen was…. Raleigh had found him something else, anyway, working as a fixer on a maintenance skimmer. He'd go out for six or eight hours, suited up, one of many in a fleet of little one-person skimmers, to check and repair the structure of Axis herself. Dust and minute debris caused problems, just like clumsy transports and jump-ship Captains did, and Jared lay in the waldo and fixed the little things, cold-welds and electro-printing, sometimes old-fashioned drilling and bolting, when a radio array, for instance, had been knocked askew by the drunken antics of a tug-driver.
He marked bigger stuff for the two and three-person crews, and helped sometimes with screwed up connections from jump-ships that came in too fast, or tried to get fancy getting away. It was methodical work, mentally challenging, physically taxing, and the chatter and noise of a lively, active system and massive station kept his hind-brain from kicking in too hard. Kept him from sitting and staring and worrying for hours at a time.
Skimmers were the most gossipy set of people Jared had ever known in his life, and their seemingly insatiable appetite for drama, bed-hopping craziness and grief was baffling. It took a week for Jared to figure out about half of it was Into the Black, the longest-running soapie ever. Jared even watched a few episodes, totally lost but grinning in confused delight at the bad science, over-the-top emotions and (mostly) skimpy costumes.
It was at least distracting. It at least kept him from thinking about Jensen, white-faced and motionless, drowning in a tangle of tubes and wires and machines.
Day seventeen, he came in off his shift on auto, tired, brain buzzing. He showered and changed in the prep room, chatter of the rest of his shift washing around him. He was just...drifting, and startled hard, banging his shoulder into his locker when Paloma goosed him.
"Fuck!"
"'Scuse, 'scuse, tudo bem?" Paloma said, hands up, grin fading off her dark-skinned face.
"Fuck. Yeah, sorry, tudo bom. Just-" Jared gestured at his head, willing his racing heart to slow down. "Got a lot on my mind."
“Okay, chuchu. Legal, huh?"
"Yeah, legal," Jared said, giving a weak grin as he let Paloma pat his shoulder. She ducked off down the lockers with her partner, murmuring something too fast for Jared to understand. Skimmers were a pretty handsy bunch, and mostly Jared didn't mind but today….
Today he was just spacey, itchy under his skin, and he had no idea why. He finished getting his boots on, then sweater and jacket and scarf, because the skimmers held the heat and the prep rooms were all kept sauna-warm. Walking out into the gangway that connected the skimmer dock and prep blister to the main core of Axis was like walking into a freezer, and it took a while to acclimate.
Jared got his locker shut and checked he had his dataspot and ID and debit card before striding out, into cold-metal smell and that particular stink you got from chemical cleaners, walking fast and outpacing his shift, just wanting to move. Maybe he’d go up to Carousel and get some food; maybe hit the gym on forty, work off some nerves. In the mag-lift to the core, he turned his dataspot on, nerves and habit, and almost fumbled it when the tell-tale lit, flashing 'urgent' at him.
He thumbed the little glowing tab and rapidly scanned the terse message that popped up from Doc. 'Awake. Wanting to talk. Buzz it.'
"Oh...fuck, fucking-" The middling-older guy in Axis tan - money-pusher, credit-checker, just high enough to consider Jared low - gave him a pursed-mouth look of distaste. Jared hit the button for the next level, got out and speed-walked to the first access he saw, using the card Raleigh had got him. Through the door and into a service corridor, and then into a service mag-lift. Card, access code, and the mag-lift was moving, priority designation. Jared was causing delays and stops all along his route, and he didn't care.
Jensen was awake.
Jared skidded to a stop outside the observation room, panting a little. He was warm, finally, and he unzipped his jacket and peeled it off as he slowly walked forward, watching Jensen through the window. Doc was in there, checking the machines, some kind of transcriber in her hand. Jensen was watching her, doing a slow, slow blink every now and again. He looked utterly exhausted, his eyes sunk into their sockets and too many bones showing, tendons stark in the backs of his hands.
But there was the faintest blush of color in his cheeks, and his gaze seemed - clear. Clearer. Jo Two looked up from some kind of broth he was slurping up, and gestured with a pair of chopsticks, noodles dripping.
“Wan’s tal t’ou,” Jo Two said, spitting bits of something green, and Jared made a face. Jo Two made a face back and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. A noodle slipped out of the chopstick and he managed to catch it in the bowl with only minimal splashing. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Um. Is that- Is it safe? For him!” Jared adds, off Jo Two’s look.
“Doc said it was okay. Just go, already.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.” Jared stripped the scarf off and tossed it with his jacket over the back of a chair. He ran his hands back nervously through his still-damp hair and then took a long breath and strode out of the observation room, and into Jensen’s room.
Doc noticed him first, giving Jared a little smile and nod, tapping her stylus on the transcriber, little flurry of soft clicks and almost-musical chimes. “Hey, there you are.”
“Just got off-shift.” Jared stopped a few paces from the foot of the gurney, pushing at his hair again, jerking his sweater down a little, fiddling with the cuffs. Doc rolled her eyes and went back to the machines, touching the display on a last one before making a note and then stepping away.
“Jensen, I’ll be back in a little bit.”
“‘Kay,” Jensen said, and his voice was hoarse and sleepy-slow. Doc patted lightly at the fold of thin blanket over Jensen’s ribs and then walked out, shooting Jared a hard look. Jared stared after her for a moment, baffled, but Jensen made a small noise and his gaze snapped back to that thin, pale face.
“Sore,” Jensen said, pushing weakly at the surface under him. He was still suspended, and the air-cushion immediately adjusted, cradling his body in a way that he obviously didn’t like. Jared swallowed and moved up close, toward the head of the gurney.
“What- Do you want to sit up more? Or-?”
“Yeah,” Jensen said, and Jared found the controls for the gurney, pressed the button and watched as the upper half slowly began to incline upward. It got to about twenty degrees off the horizontal and Jensen made a pained sort of wheeze. Jared stopped it, lowered it a fraction, and Jensen nodded.
“Okay. Doc said...you wanted to talk to me?”
“Mmm.” Jensen’s eyes were half-shut, one hand restlessly smoothing over and over the blanket edge, the other all but immobilized, pressure cuff and IV and pulse-ox and all. “I...remember. Kind of. The...after the fight. You, and...getting me here. H-helping me. I-” Jensen licked his lips and Jared reached for the drinking wand, holding it out to him tentatively. Jensen took a few small, measured sips, sighing when Jared slid it away, as if that minimal bit of conversation - action - had worn him right down.
“I know...you’re not...him. S-sorry.”
“No, hey, that’s - that’s fine. I know...I look like...him. We’re - genebrothers.”
“Yeah?” Jensen said, and Jared nodded, tried on a little smile.
“Yeah. Surprised me, too.”
They were silent for a moment, Jensen’s eyes going closed like he had no real control over it, his hand still moving a little on the blanket. He looked cold, and Jared looked at the air-bed controls, nudging the heat up a few degrees.
“Still dunno...why you...helped. Any’ve...you.” His voice blurred a little, slipping out of its Company nothing-accent into something else. ANGEL, maybe, barrack’s talk. Something older, possibly. “You still...got m’stuff?”
“Huh?” Jared stared for a moment, derailed, and then blinked. “Oh! Oh, yeah, it’s- Here.” There was a rolling cabinet pushed off to one side, full of random supplies. Down in the bottom drawer was Jensen’s coat and scarf, clean now, and the little package of stuff Jared had salvaged. He got it out, trying to smooth the wrapper, and then reached over and tucked it into Jensen’s hand. Jensen looked down at it, blinking slowly, and then his shoulders seemed to slump just a little.
“I...lost Sam. An’ then...my s-set, I was th’only one...left after the first...year. An’ then...th’crew. They died, tryin’ to...fix things, tryin’....’ Jensen coughed softly, wincing. “Just th’ little ones...all was...left. And babies, sso maaan...ny babies….”
Jensen blinked up at Jared, seemingly lost. Jared didn’t know what to say - to do - terrified the wrong thing would tip Jensen over some invisible edge, down into some hole in his mind. “Lost me. They got it back - lot of me back...but I killed...those boys. Shouldn’a...brought so much back, I ‘membered how….”
Jensen’s fingers crumpled the wrapper a little, brief tremor. “Why’d you...save me? Just gonna...lose somethin’ else. Lost the ‘net. My Angels’re...all gone. Like a...hole. Like...empty. What’my...there’s nuthin’...left of me. Why’d you want me?”
“Jensen,” Jared breathed, and his heart was pounding in his chest. He had no idea what the fuck to do. He stared helplessly at Jensen, and Jensen stared back, tears welling and slipping away from the corners of his eyes, down into the lank hair at his temples, so long unwashed, untended. His tattoos looked...pale - almost faded - the strange tracery of colored lines that ringed his fingers and twisted around his arms, shoulders and throat so light, like the tracery of the ‘net had faded. He looked like a washed-out copy of himself, even with the frail color in his face, and Jared’s heart just hurt, thumping an uneven rhythm in his chest.
“Jensen...fuck. I want - want to show you something. Okay? Just...here. Wanna show you something.” Jensen made a small noise of protest, weak huff.
“Sso...tired righ’ now,” Jensen said, and Jared felt a twist of guilt but, fuck, this was important. This was...was everything. Jared worked his dataspot out of his pocket and got it on. He paged his way down through layers of random junk, game apps, encryption programs and security systems, down to his private files, the stuff he rarely looked at, but couldn’t bear to delete.
The pictures of his moms. The farm on Kin-Gin. Himself, at age one and three and five and six, ten and fourteen and sixteen. And the vid. Induction tape of himself, down on Salome. Right before they’d given him the first shot, implanted the building blocks of the ‘net into him. Grafted the port into his spine. He opened the vid and leaned gingerly on the gurney, angling the screen so Jensen could see.
Jensen glanced over at him and then back at the dataspot, and Jared tapped ‘start’.
Nothing, then text - his name, his age, his planet of birth. His disease. Then the interviewer, giving a few more details. Height and weight and general health and finally...Jared. Thin as a rail, pale as water. Propped up in the ‘skele, dull grey glassine padded here and there with grimy medical tape and wads of cellulose fiber. That Jared - sixteen, desperate, an orphan, though he didn’t yet know it - was smiling crookedly, telling the interviewer things about Kin-Gin, about his family, in that weirdly precise chip-voice, subvocal activation to circumvent a tongue and lips that couldn’t form most words, couldn’t make sounds that weren’t garbled mutterings. He had so much hope and so much love in his eyes that Jared had to bite down hard on his lip and turn his head away.
“This’s...you,” Jensen said, and Jared took in a ragged breath and turned back to Jensen.
“Yeah. I was sixteen. I had - have - something called Grimes Palsy. Had it pretty bad. Company held a lottery - lifted us off, took us out to Solome. Gave us the ‘net,” Jared said, and Jensen took in a sharp, hard breath.
“But they...sabotage it. You know that, right? Gotta get your medpacks, gotta get your test, gotta get your physios. Gotta do what the Company says or they take it all back. Call in all those loans, want that bill paid.”
On the screen, then-Jared was being carefully helped out of the ‘skele. Was held up by a white-coated tech, stripped down to underwear, and Jensen made another small noise. Then-Jared had slick, flushed sores where the ‘skele rubbed him raw; had limbs that were twisting out of true as tendons shortened and constant muscle spasms deformed weakened bones. Then-Jared shook with a constant, body-wide tremor, sometimes so hard he hurt himself, and his head wobbled weakly on a neck that couldn’t support it. He said his name - tried - mouth slurring, spit stringing away from his lip without the ‘skele syphoning it away. He’d choke on it, if he was laid down.
The vid froze on then-Jared and his crooked smile and his wandering eye and his crottled, useless body, and Jared shut the dataspot off. “That’s Grimes. And I still have it. And if- if the Company wanted to, I’d be back...back to that in a year, Jensen. Less. We all would. If my ‘net stopped, if they- if they killed it.”
Jensen just stared at him, breathing a little harder - faster - mouth pulled down in a thin, unhappy line. “Ssorry ‘bout that. Sorry. But- how is…I can’...can’ help you.” Jensen just looked so tired, and Jared was really sorry but damn, he had to know, he had to see.
“You can, though, Jensen. You really can. God, it’s...amazing, it’s fucking unbelievable, almost but…. You’re going to set us free from the Company, Jensen. You’re going to set us all free.”
Jensen stared at him, confusion and what looked like maybe the beginnings of a bit of a mental freak-out in his expression, and Jared stared back, hoping he hadn’t...fuck, hadn’t totally just fucked things up. They both looked up in sheer, panicked relief as Doc breezed in, twirling one of her suckers in her mouth.
“Okay, Jared, how about you let me do this, huh? You’re freakin’ him out.” Doc leaned against the foot of the gurney, and the smile on her narrow, tattooed face was kind. “It’s all true, though, Jensen. You really are going to save us all. Just like the ANGELs always do.”
Part twelve.
Well, i am, as my dad would say, 'feeling puny'. So no work for me today (or yesterday), and i thought i'd get my updates all...updated.
I posted another ficlet at
slashthedrabble, a continuation of the same story. It's over at the comm for now - I'll be putting it on my lj soon enough. It's nice to see drabbles and ficlets going up over there!Also the Space AU! Which, you guys. I feel like such a dork, dragging it out so long, but it's not deliberate! It's just...me. I'm glad my faithful readers are still hanging on, though I totally understand if people want to wait until it's complete to read, too.
I think a couple more chapters will see us through to the end, so not long now, I promise!
Some 'not English' spoken in this chapter, so that's this:
'Tudo bem? - Everything well?
'Tudo bom. - Everything good.
'Chuchu' - Sweetie
'Legal' - Cool
(Brazilian Portuguese)
Also at AO3.
Marvellous happy it was to be
Alone, and yet not solitary,
O out of terror and dark, to come
In sight of home.
Walter de la Mare - The Pilgrim
It was seventeen days before Jensen was conscious again. It had got so bad, Doc had finally just put him out, flat down, 'medically induced coma', she called it. A necessity if she was going to keep his brain from being cooked from the inside out, but practically it meant that Jensen lay like a corpse on the gurney, intubated and catheterized and IV'ed all to hell and gone, surrounded by telemetry monitors, lifted a quarter-inch off the gurney’'s surface by a stolen suspension system, warm air-bed that would combat pressure sores. He was shrouded in a generation web that kept his muscles active if not perfect.
Hell, the state he was in, it might actually get him some muscle back, considering all the crap Doc was pumping into him. She'd even inserted a feeding tube into his stomach, because the IV wasn't cutting it and he was burning up calories faster than she could put them in, heat and sweat pouring off him for days, and then everything locking up as another wave of the storm started yet another shutdown.
The cancers in the ArchANGEL system fought - and fought hard - mutating itself all over the place and finding near-lethal chinks in the system's underlying armor, attacking again and again, while Jensen fought to heal what it tore down.
And Jared...well. He'd quit his job on Alvarez, because there was no fucking way he was going back out there while Jensen was…. Raleigh had found him something else, anyway, working as a fixer on a maintenance skimmer. He'd go out for six or eight hours, suited up, one of many in a fleet of little one-person skimmers, to check and repair the structure of Axis herself. Dust and minute debris caused problems, just like clumsy transports and jump-ship Captains did, and Jared lay in the waldo and fixed the little things, cold-welds and electro-printing, sometimes old-fashioned drilling and bolting, when a radio array, for instance, had been knocked askew by the drunken antics of a tug-driver.
He marked bigger stuff for the two and three-person crews, and helped sometimes with screwed up connections from jump-ships that came in too fast, or tried to get fancy getting away. It was methodical work, mentally challenging, physically taxing, and the chatter and noise of a lively, active system and massive station kept his hind-brain from kicking in too hard. Kept him from sitting and staring and worrying for hours at a time.
Skimmers were the most gossipy set of people Jared had ever known in his life, and their seemingly insatiable appetite for drama, bed-hopping craziness and grief was baffling. It took a week for Jared to figure out about half of it was Into the Black, the longest-running soapie ever. Jared even watched a few episodes, totally lost but grinning in confused delight at the bad science, over-the-top emotions and (mostly) skimpy costumes.
It was at least distracting. It at least kept him from thinking about Jensen, white-faced and motionless, drowning in a tangle of tubes and wires and machines.
Day seventeen, he came in off his shift on auto, tired, brain buzzing. He showered and changed in the prep room, chatter of the rest of his shift washing around him. He was just...drifting, and startled hard, banging his shoulder into his locker when Paloma goosed him.
"Fuck!"
"'Scuse, 'scuse, tudo bem?" Paloma said, hands up, grin fading off her dark-skinned face.
"Fuck. Yeah, sorry, tudo bom. Just-" Jared gestured at his head, willing his racing heart to slow down. "Got a lot on my mind."
“Okay, chuchu. Legal, huh?"
"Yeah, legal," Jared said, giving a weak grin as he let Paloma pat his shoulder. She ducked off down the lockers with her partner, murmuring something too fast for Jared to understand. Skimmers were a pretty handsy bunch, and mostly Jared didn't mind but today….
Today he was just spacey, itchy under his skin, and he had no idea why. He finished getting his boots on, then sweater and jacket and scarf, because the skimmers held the heat and the prep rooms were all kept sauna-warm. Walking out into the gangway that connected the skimmer dock and prep blister to the main core of Axis was like walking into a freezer, and it took a while to acclimate.
Jared got his locker shut and checked he had his dataspot and ID and debit card before striding out, into cold-metal smell and that particular stink you got from chemical cleaners, walking fast and outpacing his shift, just wanting to move. Maybe he’d go up to Carousel and get some food; maybe hit the gym on forty, work off some nerves. In the mag-lift to the core, he turned his dataspot on, nerves and habit, and almost fumbled it when the tell-tale lit, flashing 'urgent' at him.
He thumbed the little glowing tab and rapidly scanned the terse message that popped up from Doc. 'Awake. Wanting to talk. Buzz it.'
"Oh...fuck, fucking-" The middling-older guy in Axis tan - money-pusher, credit-checker, just high enough to consider Jared low - gave him a pursed-mouth look of distaste. Jared hit the button for the next level, got out and speed-walked to the first access he saw, using the card Raleigh had got him. Through the door and into a service corridor, and then into a service mag-lift. Card, access code, and the mag-lift was moving, priority designation. Jared was causing delays and stops all along his route, and he didn't care.
Jensen was awake.
Jared skidded to a stop outside the observation room, panting a little. He was warm, finally, and he unzipped his jacket and peeled it off as he slowly walked forward, watching Jensen through the window. Doc was in there, checking the machines, some kind of transcriber in her hand. Jensen was watching her, doing a slow, slow blink every now and again. He looked utterly exhausted, his eyes sunk into their sockets and too many bones showing, tendons stark in the backs of his hands.
But there was the faintest blush of color in his cheeks, and his gaze seemed - clear. Clearer. Jo Two looked up from some kind of broth he was slurping up, and gestured with a pair of chopsticks, noodles dripping.
“Wan’s tal t’ou,” Jo Two said, spitting bits of something green, and Jared made a face. Jo Two made a face back and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. A noodle slipped out of the chopstick and he managed to catch it in the bowl with only minimal splashing. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Um. Is that- Is it safe? For him!” Jared adds, off Jo Two’s look.
“Doc said it was okay. Just go, already.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.” Jared stripped the scarf off and tossed it with his jacket over the back of a chair. He ran his hands back nervously through his still-damp hair and then took a long breath and strode out of the observation room, and into Jensen’s room.
Doc noticed him first, giving Jared a little smile and nod, tapping her stylus on the transcriber, little flurry of soft clicks and almost-musical chimes. “Hey, there you are.”
“Just got off-shift.” Jared stopped a few paces from the foot of the gurney, pushing at his hair again, jerking his sweater down a little, fiddling with the cuffs. Doc rolled her eyes and went back to the machines, touching the display on a last one before making a note and then stepping away.
“Jensen, I’ll be back in a little bit.”
“‘Kay,” Jensen said, and his voice was hoarse and sleepy-slow. Doc patted lightly at the fold of thin blanket over Jensen’s ribs and then walked out, shooting Jared a hard look. Jared stared after her for a moment, baffled, but Jensen made a small noise and his gaze snapped back to that thin, pale face.
“Sore,” Jensen said, pushing weakly at the surface under him. He was still suspended, and the air-cushion immediately adjusted, cradling his body in a way that he obviously didn’t like. Jared swallowed and moved up close, toward the head of the gurney.
“What- Do you want to sit up more? Or-?”
“Yeah,” Jensen said, and Jared found the controls for the gurney, pressed the button and watched as the upper half slowly began to incline upward. It got to about twenty degrees off the horizontal and Jensen made a pained sort of wheeze. Jared stopped it, lowered it a fraction, and Jensen nodded.
“Okay. Doc said...you wanted to talk to me?”
“Mmm.” Jensen’s eyes were half-shut, one hand restlessly smoothing over and over the blanket edge, the other all but immobilized, pressure cuff and IV and pulse-ox and all. “I...remember. Kind of. The...after the fight. You, and...getting me here. H-helping me. I-” Jensen licked his lips and Jared reached for the drinking wand, holding it out to him tentatively. Jensen took a few small, measured sips, sighing when Jared slid it away, as if that minimal bit of conversation - action - had worn him right down.
“I know...you’re not...him. S-sorry.”
“No, hey, that’s - that’s fine. I know...I look like...him. We’re - genebrothers.”
“Yeah?” Jensen said, and Jared nodded, tried on a little smile.
“Yeah. Surprised me, too.”
They were silent for a moment, Jensen’s eyes going closed like he had no real control over it, his hand still moving a little on the blanket. He looked cold, and Jared looked at the air-bed controls, nudging the heat up a few degrees.
“Still dunno...why you...helped. Any’ve...you.” His voice blurred a little, slipping out of its Company nothing-accent into something else. ANGEL, maybe, barrack’s talk. Something older, possibly. “You still...got m’stuff?”
“Huh?” Jared stared for a moment, derailed, and then blinked. “Oh! Oh, yeah, it’s- Here.” There was a rolling cabinet pushed off to one side, full of random supplies. Down in the bottom drawer was Jensen’s coat and scarf, clean now, and the little package of stuff Jared had salvaged. He got it out, trying to smooth the wrapper, and then reached over and tucked it into Jensen’s hand. Jensen looked down at it, blinking slowly, and then his shoulders seemed to slump just a little.
“I...lost Sam. An’ then...my s-set, I was th’only one...left after the first...year. An’ then...th’crew. They died, tryin’ to...fix things, tryin’....’ Jensen coughed softly, wincing. “Just th’ little ones...all was...left. And babies, sso maaan...ny babies….”
Jensen blinked up at Jared, seemingly lost. Jared didn’t know what to say - to do - terrified the wrong thing would tip Jensen over some invisible edge, down into some hole in his mind. “Lost me. They got it back - lot of me back...but I killed...those boys. Shouldn’a...brought so much back, I ‘membered how….”
Jensen’s fingers crumpled the wrapper a little, brief tremor. “Why’d you...save me? Just gonna...lose somethin’ else. Lost the ‘net. My Angels’re...all gone. Like a...hole. Like...empty. What’my...there’s nuthin’...left of me. Why’d you want me?”
“Jensen,” Jared breathed, and his heart was pounding in his chest. He had no idea what the fuck to do. He stared helplessly at Jensen, and Jensen stared back, tears welling and slipping away from the corners of his eyes, down into the lank hair at his temples, so long unwashed, untended. His tattoos looked...pale - almost faded - the strange tracery of colored lines that ringed his fingers and twisted around his arms, shoulders and throat so light, like the tracery of the ‘net had faded. He looked like a washed-out copy of himself, even with the frail color in his face, and Jared’s heart just hurt, thumping an uneven rhythm in his chest.
“Jensen...fuck. I want - want to show you something. Okay? Just...here. Wanna show you something.” Jensen made a small noise of protest, weak huff.
“Sso...tired righ’ now,” Jensen said, and Jared felt a twist of guilt but, fuck, this was important. This was...was everything. Jared worked his dataspot out of his pocket and got it on. He paged his way down through layers of random junk, game apps, encryption programs and security systems, down to his private files, the stuff he rarely looked at, but couldn’t bear to delete.
The pictures of his moms. The farm on Kin-Gin. Himself, at age one and three and five and six, ten and fourteen and sixteen. And the vid. Induction tape of himself, down on Salome. Right before they’d given him the first shot, implanted the building blocks of the ‘net into him. Grafted the port into his spine. He opened the vid and leaned gingerly on the gurney, angling the screen so Jensen could see.
Jensen glanced over at him and then back at the dataspot, and Jared tapped ‘start’.
Nothing, then text - his name, his age, his planet of birth. His disease. Then the interviewer, giving a few more details. Height and weight and general health and finally...Jared. Thin as a rail, pale as water. Propped up in the ‘skele, dull grey glassine padded here and there with grimy medical tape and wads of cellulose fiber. That Jared - sixteen, desperate, an orphan, though he didn’t yet know it - was smiling crookedly, telling the interviewer things about Kin-Gin, about his family, in that weirdly precise chip-voice, subvocal activation to circumvent a tongue and lips that couldn’t form most words, couldn’t make sounds that weren’t garbled mutterings. He had so much hope and so much love in his eyes that Jared had to bite down hard on his lip and turn his head away.
“This’s...you,” Jensen said, and Jared took in a ragged breath and turned back to Jensen.
“Yeah. I was sixteen. I had - have - something called Grimes Palsy. Had it pretty bad. Company held a lottery - lifted us off, took us out to Solome. Gave us the ‘net,” Jared said, and Jensen took in a sharp, hard breath.
“But they...sabotage it. You know that, right? Gotta get your medpacks, gotta get your test, gotta get your physios. Gotta do what the Company says or they take it all back. Call in all those loans, want that bill paid.”
On the screen, then-Jared was being carefully helped out of the ‘skele. Was held up by a white-coated tech, stripped down to underwear, and Jensen made another small noise. Then-Jared had slick, flushed sores where the ‘skele rubbed him raw; had limbs that were twisting out of true as tendons shortened and constant muscle spasms deformed weakened bones. Then-Jared shook with a constant, body-wide tremor, sometimes so hard he hurt himself, and his head wobbled weakly on a neck that couldn’t support it. He said his name - tried - mouth slurring, spit stringing away from his lip without the ‘skele syphoning it away. He’d choke on it, if he was laid down.
The vid froze on then-Jared and his crooked smile and his wandering eye and his crottled, useless body, and Jared shut the dataspot off. “That’s Grimes. And I still have it. And if- if the Company wanted to, I’d be back...back to that in a year, Jensen. Less. We all would. If my ‘net stopped, if they- if they killed it.”
Jensen just stared at him, breathing a little harder - faster - mouth pulled down in a thin, unhappy line. “Ssorry ‘bout that. Sorry. But- how is…I can’...can’ help you.” Jensen just looked so tired, and Jared was really sorry but damn, he had to know, he had to see.
“You can, though, Jensen. You really can. God, it’s...amazing, it’s fucking unbelievable, almost but…. You’re going to set us free from the Company, Jensen. You’re going to set us all free.”
Jensen stared at him, confusion and what looked like maybe the beginnings of a bit of a mental freak-out in his expression, and Jared stared back, hoping he hadn’t...fuck, hadn’t totally just fucked things up. They both looked up in sheer, panicked relief as Doc breezed in, twirling one of her suckers in her mouth.
“Okay, Jared, how about you let me do this, huh? You’re freakin’ him out.” Doc leaned against the foot of the gurney, and the smile on her narrow, tattooed face was kind. “It’s all true, though, Jensen. You really are going to save us all. Just like the ANGELs always do.”
Part twelve.
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