It was an indeterminate amount of time later when Jack became fully aware of what was going on around him. Opening his eyes, he found himself laying on a hard cot in a small brick prison cell. He couldn’t help but wonder at how he had been dumb enough to trust the same people that had kept him prisoner for the last however long. Cursing his idiocy, he sighed and stood up. Hopefully wherever he was being held would be easier to escape from then the damn complex had been.
It was only after he stood that he realized he was not actually locked in the cell. The door was ajar and had only looked closed due to the angle of where he had been laying. Jack moved out of the cell into the corridor beyond. Looking around he couldn’t see or hear anyone at all.
It was a surreal experience. There was a brief moment of panic where Jack was struck by the thought that perhaps nothing around him was real and hadn’t been for some time. Was he experiencing some kind of vivid dream or nightmare curse perhaps? Had whoever struck him in that alleyway not infected him with the system parasite but rather put him into an ever deeper spiral of maddening illusions?
Jack shook himself. It was certainly possible, but if he allowed himself to think in such a manner then he would have no way of moving forward. It didn’t matter if his last while of experiences were real or not. His only good choice was to just keep doing his best as he always had done. Perhaps it was real, perhaps it wasn’t. Either way he was stuck here and needed to figure out where to go.
With his doubts and fears mostly suppressed Jack chose a direction and started walking. After a short jaunt he reached the end of the row of cells. There was a small offshoot hallway that when checked just led to what seemed to be a small break room. Other than that, it was a dead end.
It seemed his luck was as good as ever. With a slight grump he turned around and walked back the other way. Just past the cell that he had woke up in he found a flight of stairs going up. If he had only taken two steps this direction, he would have seen them and not wasted time checking the rest of the corridor. Keeping down the urge to sigh he began to make his way up the staircase.
When he reached the next floors landing, he could hear the echo of voices in the distance. They were too muffled to be understandable but there were the distinct tones of at least a few people. He headed out of the stairwell trying to determine just where they were coming from.
It didn’t take long to track down just where the noise was coming from. It seemed that the building that he was in was not very large. As he got closer, he was able to make out four distinct voices. He knew two of them, one was Charise, and another was definitely Madam Blue.
Now that he had found others the next order of business was to find out just where they were. Just as he thought that, Jack paused and felt like smacking himself in the head. The guard tower. It had been made of the same style bricks he could see the walls were made of. Plus, it had been literally right next to them earlier when they had signed and ratified the contract with their magic.
Even though he knew he should go check in with the others he couldn’t help himself. He needed to go outside and see the world again. He had been locked in that room and the complex for such a long time all on his own. And while he and Charise had gotten outside, with the state he had been in he was barely been able to pay attention to what was right in front of his face, much less the world around him.
The thought of a fresh breeze upon his face and the smell of anything, anything, other then his own trapped stench put a spring into his step. Hurrying his pace to satisfy the desire, no, the need to be out in the open, he soon found himself standing in front of the exit. Jack took a deep breath to steady himself and pushed open the door.
There it was. Trees. Dirt. Grass. The sky! All things that in his darkest thoughts over the last couple of months Jack would struggle to remember if they were real. That the world was more then twisting corridors and rooms. The next thing he knew he was bellowing up into the sky. A scream of triumph and rage, of joy and hysteria. He was free!
As his yell echoed all around, he could make out startled voices from inside the building. That didn’t matter though. All that mattered in that moment was the rush that Jack felt.
Catching his breath, he knelt down onto the ground and grabbed fistfuls of the dirt. Letting the grains fall between his fingers, reveling in the texture. After a few handfuls he dropped the rest to the ground. Laughing ecstatically, he leapt up onto his feat and began running toward the closest tree.
What he felt was one of the best feelings of his life. It was reminiscent of what he had felt when he had run away from his childhood home. There had been plenty of worries and fears, but more than any of that was his feeling of freedom and relief. He had thought that living on the street had to be better then where he had been.
Time had proven him right. The streets of Desval weren’t a safe place. However, even with all the dangers he was still better off on his own.
Jack reached the tree and swung himself around it several times until he grew too dizzy and had to stop. Chest heaving from the sudden exertion he let himself fall onto his back at the foot of the tree. As he lay there staring up into the branches, he couldn’t help but ruminate on his fears that everything was just a dream and he would wake up back in that room again.
Trapped and alone. Countless hours passing, throwing himself into insane projects because even dying was better than continuing to be stuck like a rat in a maze.
He took a deep breath savoring the taste of nature. If this was truly naught but a dream then he would savor every moment of it. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to hold the sensations he felt tightly. They would help him remember that there was more to life than four walls and his own voice for company.
As he lay there trying to imprint the sensations deep into his mind, he heard a melodic laughter coming from the doorway. Instead of opening his eyes to see who it was coming from, he chose to roll over and press his face into the ground near the roots of the tree. Inhaling deeply the scent of the earth and loam.
He continued to stay there, face buried in the dirt, until he felt a soft hand on his back accompanied by a chuckling voice. “I know the feeling. Did something similar not too long ago when I woke up.”
Jack took a steadying breath, his voice muffled by the ground he plaintively asked, “Is this real? Or is it just an illusion brought on by my steadily going mad while trapped in a box? Please let it be real. Please.”
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The hand on his back began to gently rub. “You know, while we were making our escape earlier, I had this thought that there was no way that anyone could have it as bad as I did right in that moment. Selfish I know. Especially now that I’ve had more time and space to think.”
There was a brief pause and the rustle of fabric, then both the voice and rubbing started back up, “Looking and thinking about it now, I have to say I get the feeling that your situation in there was far worse than any of the rest of us. We haven’t talked about it, which considering the absolute insanity of the last few hours is certainly understandable. But from I was able to piece together from what you said to the director earlier. You have spent the past who knows how long by yourself without any real human interaction.”
“Short term, I guess I was lucky that to me, everything from the time I got taken over felt like just a bad dream. I’m sure that I will end up with plenty of nightmares about it. But I can’t imagine how horrific it would have been to be experiencing all of that vividly and then followed by being isolated.”
Jack spoke up at this point, still not moving or lifting his head. “I just did my best to keep on going. It was all I could do.”
He let out a harsh chuckle and continued. “I’m pretty sure that after a while I lost the plot. Just kept moving forward as best I could, but damn if some of the things I tried weren’t absolutely mutantshit. I am beyond lucky that I didn’t kill myself via mana poisoning or drive you insane alongside me.”
“No kidding. I’m still amazed that I agreed to let you do that, much less the fact that it worked.” Charise laughed. “But I’m glad that we did. Even if things aren’t perfect, it is fantastic to move my body because of my own choices.”
Taking one last deep breath of the soil, Jack flipped over and looked at his conversation partner. It was the first time that he really, truly looked at her.
During everything that had happened from when they first met up until he awoke a short while ago the only things that stood out in his mind about her were her strength and the contrast between her skin and hair colors.
As he looked at her now, all the little details that he had overlooked before jumped out at him. There was a light dusting of freckles running in a band across her nose and checks. Her nose was very slightly crooked, like it had been broken once and set just a little bit off. He could see the bleaching on her hair was starting to fade with a good portion of the roots showing her natural hair color. A deep blue, making it obvious that she carried some level of agerian heritage.
As she pulled her hand back, he could see all the scars covering them and a section of her arms. Clearly remnants of her harsh training and fighting style.
Catching himself starting he cleared his throat and asked, “Speaking of choices, any thoughts on what you are going to do once we are fully done and out of here?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t even know for certain just how long I’ve been here. It’s not like I have much to go back to anyway. I was barely getting by before I got infected. It’s part of why I started moving artifact fragments.” Charise shrugged; her voice unsure.
“You were barely getting by? Considering just how strong you are without any mana augmentation I find that hard to fathom.” Jack asked in disbelief.
Charise confirmed her statement, “Oh, I have skills, the problem was reputation. I don’t know if you remember me saying it, but I’m a slum rat. I came to this city to try to get away from it but some things die hard. It’s hard to trust anyone when you think that as soon as they learn where you come from, they’ll toss you to the curb. What makes it worse that I learned that they really do from experience.”
Jack blurted out a question before he even realized that it might offend her, “What do you mean?”
Charise gave him a look but shrugged and decided to answer, “When I first got to the city and got my registration and licenses set up with the local businesses, I did manage to find a couple groups that I worked with on a regular basis. The money wasn’t great, especially split several ways. But… it was enough to get by. A couple months went by in that manner, working the odd job here or there with each group along with a number of solo jobs.”
It was at this point that Charise let out a massive sigh. It was apparent whatever came next was still upsetting, even if the incident was not recent. “Then came the problem. There was a client for a job who wanted to go ruin diving. Nothing too unusual there. Those kinds of people pop up every now and then. Someone wanting a semi-authentic experience where they can feel like they have gone out and done this risky and dangerous thing, without of course ever really being exposed to the dangers of it.”
She paused for a moment her fingers twitching and her expression cloudy. Jack, seeing her expression spoke up. “You know, if you don’t want to continue, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to pry or bring up bad memories.”
Charise looked at Jack and shook her head, taking a breath to steady herself she soldiered on. “No, no it’s fine. It’s not you or anything. Just remembering how much it hurt when the people I thought I knew turned on me so quickly. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Taking a rich idiot on a ruin dive. Well, the start of the grand adventure for the moron went fine. He brought a personal bodyguard along with hiring our group. No problems there. We were mostly meant to act as guides anyway. We got out to the ruins that our client was interested in and everything seemed to be going well. It was maybe a few days after we had gotten to the ruins that things went wrong.”
Her face twisted into a scowl as she continued, “I didn’t know it at the time, and if I’m honest, even if I had known I still likely would have acted the same, but our client had done very through background checks on everyone in the group. Now that in and of itself isn’t bad. I can understand people doing just that to make sure that they don’t bring someone along who will chose to rob or abandon them in the middle of a dangerous location. But this fucker, this absolute piece of human garbage, he didn’t just use it for that.”
Her eyes flashed with rage as her voice took on a harsh edge, “No, what he would do would take the information that he learned, and if there was anything incriminating in there, even something simply embarrassing. Well, he would take that and use it to blackmail women who he had hired into sleeping with him.”
Charise paused again and let out a harsh barking laugh. “He tried to do that to me and I wouldn’t fucking have it. Told him to go stick his cock in a mana socket. He tried to pressure me a couple more times before he finally stopped. I felt relieved and just wanted the job to be over. I had gotten too used to the soft life it seemed because I didn’t even think to keep too much of an eye on the asshole after he gave up.”
Letting out a long-drawn sigh she continued her tone a bit more subdued. “Well, I should’ve. Turned out that at some point he, or his bodyguard more likely, planted several of his expensive belongings in my pack. When we were almost back in town, he made a huge todo about his stuff being missing. Luckily it seemed he had an artifact that allowed him to track his amulet or whatever it was. And of course, where did it lead? Why right to my bags.”
“My groupmates stuck up for me at first, but that’s when good ol’ moneybags dropped the bomb about my having been a gutter rat growing up. That many of my old friends were in gangs or jail. Most for petty crimes like theft. Didn’t matter what I said after that. All of them had made up their minds. Because nobody wants to think that someone can come out of that background and want to do more or be more with their lives then just a fucking criminal. After that? Nobody would work with me anymore. All I ever got was we don’t work with thieving gutter trash like you or similar statements.” As Charise finished, her tone was extremely bitter.
Not quite sure what the best way to comfort someone was, Jack reached out and patted her hand gently. “I can see that. Not that you would do it, but peoples rather easy time just choosing to believe stereotypes rather than what is actually happening in front of them. Plus, people with money and power get away with a lot. Far more than they ever should.”
“From your tone it sounds like you have some experience with that too.” Charise looked over at him her voice still bitter, but with a hint of relief.
Jack shrugged uncomfortably, memories of his childhood coming to the forefront. Even with the not so fun choice of topic just having someone to talk to had him decide to press on. “Yeah, I can tell you a few things I’ve seen. Let’s see… where to start?”