Upon noticing that Charise’s hands were free Jack attempted to leap backwards. Holding his hands out in front of him as he did so. As he moved, he caught the corner of the bed with his lower back and bounced off awkwardly. His left leg went under and caught on one of the legs sending him sprawling onto the floor.

“What was that? What are you doing?” Groaned Charise. Her eyes closed as she rubbed her forehead trying to deal with the aftereffects of the test.

Deciding that rather than telling her that seeing her hands free made him think that his head was about to be crushed, Jack figured it would be better to go with a rather generic excuse instead. “Sorry I tripped over the bed. Do you think you will be able to move here soon? And I suppose I’ll just ask outright, are you planning on injuring or killing me at all?”

Charise gave a grunting affirmative and then clarified further. “Ughuh. I think I’ll be okay here. Gimmie just a minute. Whatever the fuck that was didn’t just hurt, it gave me the mother of all headaches. Almost like someone played spellbounce with my brain. I wasn’t planning on bashing your face in. At least not until we check out outside this room and I see how honest you’ve been with me. I will hurt you if you have been lying to me and kidnapped me or whatever.”

Jack listened to her response as he was picking himself up off the floor. His exhaustion from the stressful night began to catch up to him as he yawned and tried to figure out just what he was forgetting. When nothing came to mind immediately all he could do was shrug and assure himself it would come to him. Probably at the worst possible time of course, knowing his luck.

He let out a near silent sigh of relief before taking a breath and responding, slightly miffed at the repeated accusations of the possibility of him lying. “Look I have been as honest with you as I can be. Are there things that I have said that could be completely wrong? Yeah of course. I’m still figuring out all this shit myself. But as far as I am aware I have told you the truth as best as I know it.”

He paused briefly and continued, “When you are ready, I think we should try to find out just what happened with the man who had released you. When both of you were chasing me earlier, he decided to suddenly stop and vanish. I have got a bad feeling about that. Even more so after the alarm stopped like it did. I don’t know if he freed yet more patients and they started to escape or if the guards subdued him and now know that we are out of our rooms and somewhere in the facility. Either way it is probably not going to be the best for us.”

Charise opened her eyes and pulled herself upright using the bed as a support. She grimaced slightly and shook out all of her limbs. Slowly testing each to make sure everything was working correctly. Once she had checked herself over, she turned to where Jack was standing. “Right. I think this is as good as I’m going to be getting. I feel a bit off but I think I’ll just have to get used to it. So where to then?”

“Follow me. Pretty sure I remember the way back to where you were being held. I think that might be our best bet for finding the other escapee. Do stay close. This place is a maze at the best of times. I know I have gotten lost on more than one occasion during my explorations.” Jack gestured as he started walking to the door. Most of the night was gone and soon there would be far more guards come the morning. If they weren’t already on their way because of the alarm earlier.

The two walked mostly in silence as Jack tried his best to retrace his steps. One of the few things that was talked about at all was Charise’s reaction to seeing the littered twisted knobs decorating the walls not too far outside of the room when they came out. The sight of those gave more credence to Jack’s claims that she had not been dreaming but had instead been trapped within her own body as it was slowly and steadily hijacked.

As they neared what Jack felt was about the halfway point the silence between them was broken as Charise spoke. “You said something earlier about having an emotion suppressing spell on you? Why would someone do that to you? Plus, how are they able to keep it going in this place with it’s lack of magic and all. Some kind of curse or something? Bound to your blood or body in some way I would guess.”

Jack glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. After a moment to collect his thoughts and determine just what he was willing to share he shrugged and replied. “No, no curse. I did it to myself to help keep me sane. Let’s just say that freeing myself from the system came with its own consequences. I don’t have additional pain for using mana, other then the standard torturous experience that it always is. But when I took myself from its control it played havoc to my mind or brain. With a good number of the problems being linked to emotional triggers. I have some ideas on how to fix things long term but for right now? Best I could manage was making a sustained spell that would mostly suppress them.”

Charise blinked startled at the extreme measures that Jack seemed willing to take. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised considering he had worked hard to convince her not long ago to absorb some of his mana. But the fact that it almost seemed that his first instinct was to use ideas that most would consider madness made her amazed at the fact that he was even alive. “That’s… insane. What could be so bad that you would be willing cut out parts of what makes you you? It seems like that kind of solution would cause more problems than it could ever fix.”

Jack nodded in agreement, “Oh, it certainly would if I wanted to use it long term. I’ve learned my lesson on that. It’s not a good idea to play with bits of your mind too much. I still don’t feel as if I’m fully adjusted and the new problems certainly don’t help with that. How are you dealing with the fact that your body has been in the control of something else? I only had two days of it and it’s made me more than a little paranoid about it happening again.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Charise hummed a bit as she considered if she wanted to answer, “Hmmm… it still doesn’t feel completely real. Pretty sure I’m in shock at the moment. I’m just hoping that I don’t come out of it at a bad time. It doesn’t matter too much though. I’ll deal with it. Just hard to believe that such a thing is even possible. Wait. Did you say you learned your lesson about messing with your own mind?”

“Yep.” Was Jack’s succinct response, not offering anything further on that tract.

With that, both of them lapsed back into silence once more. Eventually Jack decided to ask her about who she was before she ended up here. “You said earlier that you were an adventurer. What made you choose to go into that line of work?”

“What? Adventurer? Oh! Yes. Yeah, I have been doing that kind of stuff for a while. I started up when I was a kid so that I could support myself. I was an orphan and the area where I was growing up in had little in the way of opportunities. Most of my childhood friends ended up becoming enforcers in one of the local gangs. I didn’t want that kind of life and wanted to get away from the gangs. I know I’m not the brightest and had no real chance of scoring a scholarship to a university or anything. I was however always good in a scrap. So, when I was twelve, I went to the closest agency and applied for a license. Never looked back.” Charise started a bit at Jack’s sudden question, having been lost in her own thoughts trying to come to terms with everything that was going on.

There was another brief lull of silence before Charise asked Jack in response. “What about you? What do you do to get by? Considering you said you were a jack I can’t see many folks being willing to hire you. Plus, with how low your aspects are I can’t see you having any success as an adventurer.”

Jack let out a harsh laugh. “You’re right about that. Back when I first starting to live on my own, I tried to find work even doing simple jobs like working in a bakery or construction. But nobody wants to hire a magicless cripple. Even if I wasn’t a jack I probably would have struggled. From a young age I was told repeatedly that I would never be able to use magic. That I was too weak. Too useless. That I wasn’t good enough for anything, no matter how clever I was and that I should have died during childbirth.”

Charise’s expression grew uncomfortable at Jack’s blunt statements of just how those with low or wasted potential were treated by society at large. Jack stared straight ahead not noticing how his words were affecting her as he continued on. “There were more then a few times I considered just ending my misery. But I didn’t want to give that bitch the satisfaction. Ha. I’m sure she claimed I was dead after I vanished. Probably had a party wishing for me to turn up dead in a ditch somewhere and spare her ever needing to think about me again.”

Jack trailed off before shaking himself slightly. “I’m sorry, I got lost in my train of thought there. What was the question again? What I do for work, right? Well, I work as a private investigator. Or I’m trying to at least. I started up business not too long ago and got a whole bunch of shits as my first clients. People looking for diviners who didn’t know their worth or people who were desperate. Most of the second group were okay even if many of them couldn’t pay much. Kind of how I ended up on the current case. Even if my current clients have more money than most that found me. Well, I hope they are still my clients considering I went missing several weeks ago at this point.”

“How do you manage to do a job like that if you are a jack? Wouldn’t the lack of being able to use magic stop you from being successful at it?” Charise asked truly curious as how someone in his situation could manage to do such work.

Jack corrected her gently as he explained, “Ah. I see you have the same misapprehension that most people do. Jacks aren’t unable to use mana. In the end most people who become jacks don’t use it because of how painful it is to do so, not because they physically can’t. And while my lack of aspects would make most think that there is no way for me to use magic, I have found work arounds to enable me to cast and utilize mana to a certain extent. So, I get by. It’s not fun, but I swore to myself when I chose this path that I would prove everyone wrong. That I was not useless nor were my namesakes.”

“You said it earlier and I thought you were just lying to cover your ass about calling me a fucking jack, but you really are named Jack aren’t you. That’s…” Charise let out a surprised gasp at the realization before trailing off, not quite sure just what to say.

Jack let out some sad chuckles as numerous scenes from his childhood passed through his mind. “Yeah. I know what you mean. But yes. My mother was a piece of garbage who did indeed name me Jack. From what I learned by rummaging through some of her files before I took off on my own, it likely had to do with her somehow managing to get my aspects tested at birth. I didn’t meet her expectations so she chose to name me the same as what she felt I was. Worthless.”

Jack clapped his hands together at this point to break the line of conversation. “Right. Well, enough depressive talk. We are going to be coming up on where you and the others were being held here shortly.”

“You know, that is something else I was wondering. You keep talking about it like you were being held somewhere else.” Charise stated.

Jack nodded and answered her unasked question., “That’s because I was. I think originally, I was in or around the same area as the rest of you. But after I managed to accidently free myself, they moved me somewhere else. Not completely sure why, but I think that my freeing myself made all the rest of you hyper aggressive towards me.”

Charise thought about it for a minute before agreeing, “From what I can remember from my controlled state, seeing you was like seeing a combination of all the most aggravating things that I had ever experienced. I couldn’t help myself. You had to die.”

Jack let out a big sigh at the confirmation before warning Charise, “Well. That’s just lovely. You should be aware that same aggression may now extend to you as well. Considering that you are well on your way of being fully system free too. Plus, who knows just what we will be finding once we make our way down these last couple halls.”

Both fell once more into silence as they prepared themselves for whatever they may find.