Forbidden Love In The Wasteland

Chapter 3: Echoes in the Dark

The dreams were not dreams.

They were cold currents pulling him under, threads of violet lightning weaving through his bones. He was back in the refinery conduit, but the walls pulsed like a living artery. The Dark Eco in the storage cylinders called to him, a buzzing chorus at the edge of hearing. In the dream, he reached for a cylinder, not to scan it, but to touch it. The glass melted under his fingers. The Eco didn’t burn; it flowed into him, a tide of freezing, exhilarating power. It felt like remembering something he’d forgotten. Like coming home.

He jolted awake, a strangled sound catching in his dry throat.

The hideout was quiet, the deep-night quiet where only the drip of distant water and the low hum of the generator spoke. He was on his pallet in the alcove they’d given him, the rough blanket tangled around his legs. His side throbbed, a deep, insistent ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. But it was a different pain, colder, sharper than the burn from the blaster shot.

Sweat soaked his threadbare shirt, cooling unpleasantly on his skin. He shivered.

A shadow moved at the edge of the dim eco-lamp’s glow. “You’re burning up.”

Milly’s voice was a whisper, but it cleaved through the fog in his head. She was sitting on an upturned crate beside his pallet, a fresh roll of gauze and a bowl of water on her lap. Her hair was loose, her face pale in the low light. She looked like she hadn’t slept.

“What time is it?” His voice was a rasp.

“Late. Or early.” She leaned forward, the scent of her, herbs and clean cotton, cutting through the metallic smell of his sweat. “The fever shouldn’t be this high, not from the wound. I need to check it.”

He was too weary, too internally shaken, to protest. He pushed himself up on his elbows, a fresh wave of dizziness making the room tilt. He fumbled with the hem of his shirt.

“Let me.” Her fingers, cool and practical, brushed his aside. She lifted the fabric, her touch clinical as she began peeling back the tape of the bandage she’d applied only hours before.

Daxter, a curled lump of orange fur at the foot of the pallet, stirred. One eye cracked open, then went wide. He sat up fast. “Whoa, hey, maybe let the guy sleep it off, huh? Fever’s normal! Very… healing.”

Milly didn’t look up. “It’s not.”

The last piece of gauze came away. She froze.

Her breath hitched, a tiny, sharp sound. In the lamplight, the neat line of her stitches stood out, black against inflamed red skin. But that wasn’t what held her motionless. From the edges of the wound, thin, branching lines of sickly purple had spread outward under his skin. They looked like cracks in pottery, or lightning frozen mid-strike. They throbbed with a faint, internal light, fading and then glowing again in a slow, sinister rhythm. The skin around them was ice-cold to the touch.

“Jak…” Her whisper was laced with a fear he’d never heard from her before.

Daxter scrambled over, his small paws patting Jak’s leg. “Okay, look, it’s probably just a weird bruise! Reactive… pigments from the sewer gunk! You know, chemical staining!”

“This isn’t staining, Daxter.” Milly’s voice gained a steel edge. She looked from the wound to Jak’s face, her blue eyes searching his. “This is Dark Eco poisoning. I’ve seen it before. In miners who got too close to unprocessed vents. It doesn’t… spread like this. Not unless you were saturated.” Her gaze sharpened, piecing together the nightmare. “The Sector 7 vault. You didn’t just see it, did you?”

The silence that followed was heavier than the damp air. The confession was there, in the chill crawling under his skin, in the haunting buzz of power at the base of his skull.

“I… touched it,” Jak said, the admission feeling like a stone dropping into a well. He looked away from her horrified expression, focusing on the cracked ceiling. “It was calling. I had to know.”

“Had to know?” Milly’s composure cracked. Her hands, which had been so steady with the needle, now trembled slightly as she pressed a cool cloth to his fevered forehead. “It’s a poison, Jak. It corrupts. It twists people into… into things. You don’t learn from it. You die from it.”

“It’s not just poison,” he argued, a desperate heat rising in him alongside the chill. “It’s power. I can feel it. I can use it.” To demonstrate, he held out his hand, focusing on the icy thread unspooling in his veins. A wisp of violet energy, like captured smoke, danced over his palm for a second before sputtering out. The effort made the veins on his arm flare a brighter purple.

Milly recoiled as if burned.

Daxter let out a high-pitched whine. “Jak, buddy, no. No, no, no. We don’t do the spooky hand-lights! That’s how you get put on a Baron poster as a public menace! A very, very glowy public menace!”

“He’s been absorbing it,” Milly said, not to Daxter, but to herself, the truth dawning with terrible clarity. “That’s why the wound isn’t healing cleanly. His body is trying to process it. Trying and failing.” She stood up abruptly, the bowl of water sloshing. “I need to tell Torn. We need a medic, real supplies—”

“No.” Jak’s hand shot out, catching her wrist. His grip was too tight, charged with a jittery, unnatural strength. She flinched. He immediately let go, seeing the alarm in her eyes. “Don’t. Not yet.”

“Why?” she demanded, cradling her wrist. “This is beyond a bandage and stitches, Jak! This is killing you!”

“Because he’ll lock me up.” Jak’s voice was low, urgent. “Or worse, he’ll try to cut it out of me. He’ll see it as a contamination, a liability.” He met her gaze, letting her see the fear beneath the stubbornness. “It’s inside me, Milly. I can’t just cut it out. I have to… figure it out. Control it.”

“Control Dark Eco?” A bitter, disbelieving laugh escaped her. “No one controls it. It consumes.”

Daxter hopped onto Jak’s knee, his little face uncharacteristically serious. “She’s got a point, tough guy. Remember old man Korgan? Lived down by the drill pit? Started messing with seepage to boost his harvest. Last I saw him, he was trying to chew through his own shed door. Not a pretty sight.”

“I’m not Korgan,” Jak insisted, but the image shook him. The cold in his side pulsed.

Milly studied him, the medic in her warring with the woman who’d seen his kindness, the rebel who understood secrecy. The trembling in her hands stilled, replaced by a weary resolve. “What do you want me to do, then? Watch it kill you quietly?”

“Help me hide it,” he said. “For now. The bandages cover it. No one else needs to check.”

“And when it gets worse?”

“Then we deal with it. But on our terms.”

She was silent for a long moment, the only sound the relentless drip of water and Jak’s own labored breathing. She looked at the wound, at the alien patterns mapping his skin, then back at his face—the pain, the defiance, the terrifying hope.

“Our terms,” she repeated, softly. She knelt again, dipping the cloth in the water. This time, her touch was deliberate, not just cleaning but examining, tracing the edge of one of the purple tendrils. “The cold is the worst sign. It means it’s digging deep, into the marrow.” She began wrapping a fresh bandage, her movements slow, thoughtful. “There are… stories. From before the Baron. Folktales my grandmother told. About channelers. People who could shape Eco, even the dark kind. They called it walking the razor’s edge. Most fell off.”

Jak watched her face, the lamplight carving soft shadows on her cheeks. “How did they not fall?”

She finished taping the bandage, her fingers lingering for a second on his skin, just beside the wound. “They had anchors,” she said, her voice almost inaudible. “Something pure to hold onto. Something the Eco couldn’t touch.” She pulled her hand away as if the contact itself was dangerous. “I’ll get you some willow-bark tea for the fever. It won’t do much for the other thing, but it might let you sleep without… dreaming.”

As she stood to go, Daxter piped up. “Hey, uh, doc? This ‘anchor’ business. Would, say, a incredibly loyal and handsome ottsel count?”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips, there and gone. “It couldn’t hurt.”

She disappeared into the shadows of the hideout, leaving Jak alone with Daxter and the chill crawling through him.

“You’re an idiot,” Daxter stated, curling up against Jak’s leg.

“I know.”

“A colossal, glow-in-the-dark idiot.”

“I know.”

Daxter was quiet for a minute. “It does feel… different, doesn’t it? Not just sick. Like it’s waiting.”

Jak lay back, staring into the gloom. The phantom call of the Eco was quieter now, suppressed by Milly’s presence, her fear, her reluctant care. But it was still there. A whispering promise of strength, and a chilling threat of dissolution.

He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to listen to the war inside his own body. The clean, sharp pain of the blaster wound was gone, replaced by this deeper, more intimate invasion. He thought of Milly’s fingers, so warm against the cold corruption. An anchor.

He hoped it would be enough.

He hoped it would be enough.

Milly returned not with tea, but with a moth-eaten ledger and a determined set to her jaw. “My grandmother’s notes,” she said, dropping the book beside his pallet with a soft thump of dust. “She was a hedge-doctor. Collected everything. Even the forbidden stuff.”

The pages crackled, whispering of mildew and dried herbs. She carefully turned the brittle parchment, her fingers tracing faded ink sketches of root systems and celestial charts. Daxter peered over her shoulder, his nose twitching at the ancient smell. “Any of these recipes involve not turning into a purple rage-monster? Asking for a friend.”

“Quiet,” Milly murmured, not looking up. “Here. ‘Counteractions for Shadow-Sick.’ It’s not called Dark Eco here. It’s called ‘shadow.’” She pointed to a paragraph of cramped, spidery script. “It speaks of balance. Of using opposing energies to stabilize the patient.”

“Opposing energies,” Jak repeated, the phrase feeling strange on his tongue. He pushed himself up, the cold in his side giving a resentful pulse.

“Green Eco is growth, life,” Milly said, thinking aloud. “But we don’t have any. Not pure. The Baron controls every wellspring.” She flipped another page, her brow furrowed. “But warmth… sunlight. It mentions ‘sustained heat of a devoted focus.’ What does that even mean?”

“It means get a tan,” Daxter offered. “Hard to do underground.”

Milly ignored him, her eyes scanning the text. “It’s metaphorical. A focus. A thought, a memory, something the shadow can’t touch.” She looked at Jak. “When you felt it calling you in the vault… what did you think about? To pull away?”

Jak was silent. The memory was a confused whirl of violet static and invasive cold. But beneath it, just before his hand had made contact, there had been an image. Not of power, or victory. It was of the yellow cloth, neatly folded on his shelf. Of a quiet promise in a sunlit market.

“Something yellow,” he said, his voice rough.

Milly stared at him. For a moment, she didn’t understand. Then she did, and a faint color rose in her cheeks. She looked back down at the book quickly. “Okay. So that’s… that’s your anchor. Hold onto that. The feeling it gives you. Warmth. Safety.” She spoke like she was reciting a medical prescription, but her tone had softened.

She spent the next two days in the hideout’s dank library nook, a space crammed with stolen technical manuals and rebel reports. She cross-referenced her grandmother’s folklore with torn fragments of pre-Baron scientific journals. Jak watched her from across the room, pretending to clean his gear. She’d chew her lip, make a note on a scrap of paper, then rub her eyes in frustration.

“It’s all theoretical,” she confessed one evening, sliding onto a bench next to him while Daxter snored softly on a stack of crates. The hideout was between shifts, nearly empty. “They talk about conduits and channels, like the Eco is a river. The sickness happens when the river floods its banks. Control is about… building levies. In the mind.”

“How?” he asked. The cold had spread, a subtle spiderweb now reaching toward his spine. He kept it tightly wrapped.

“Meditation,” she said, the word sounding absurd in the gritty rebel base. “But active. You have to visualize the energy. Shape it. When you feel it rising, you can’t just let it crash. You have to give it a path.” She hesitated. “I think I can guide you. I’ve been reading about neural pathways, bio-feedback. It’s not magic. It’s discipline.”

He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Discipline. Right.”

“You’d rather let it chew through you?” The sharpness was back, born from fatigue and fear. “Fine. Just… lie down. On your back.”

He did, on the cold floor of the alcove. She knelt beside him. “Close your eyes. Feel for the cold. Don’t fight it. Just… find its edges.”

It was a terrible thing to focus on. The cold wasn’t passive. It was a hungry, whispering void. He found its center in the wound, a knot of freezing darkness. His breath hitched.

“Good,” she whispered. Her voice was a lifeline. “Now, find your anchor. The yellow. Bring it forward.”

He tried. The memory flickered—the softness of the cloth, the scent of market spices, the startling blue of her eyes that day. A faint, fleeting warmth bloomed in his chest.

The cold recoiled. Just for a second.

“It moved,” he gasped.

“I saw.” Her voice held a trace of awe. A thin tendril of violet light had flickered over his bandage, then vanished. “Do it again. Build the levy. Make the warmth a wall.”

They practiced in stolen moments. When Torn was out on patrol, when the hideout slept. It was exhausting, mental work that left Jak drenched in a sweat that smelled faintly of ozone. But the cold receded, millimeter by millimeter. The branching purple lines under his skin faded from a livid glow to faint, grey scars.

His control, however, was a different beast.

Three nights later, a sparring session with a new recruit went wrong. The kid was over-eager, his practice staff swinging too hard, too close to Jak’s injured side. A spike of instinctual panic—not pain, but a deep, defensive fury—surged up from that cold place.

Jak didn’t mean to do it.

A wave of force, visible only as a shimmer in the air, erupted from him. It threw the recruit six feet back into a stack of supply crates with a crash. The kid lay stunned, the air knocked from his lungs. The purple lines on Jak’s torso flared brightly under his shirt.

Silence swallowed the training area.

Milly, who had been mending a torn uniform nearby, dropped her needle. She was at Jak’s side in an instant, her hand on his arm. “Breathe,” she commanded, her voice low and urgent. “Right now. The anchor. The yellow. Breathe.”

He sucked in air, forcing the violent energy back down, shoving it behind the mental wall they’d built. The light under his skin faded. The cold settled, sullen and contained.

The recruit groaned, sitting up. “What was that?”

“You got sloppy,” Torn’s voice cut through the tension. He stood in the doorway, having seen the tail end of it. His eyes, like chips of obsidian, fixed on Jak. “Eco-fluctuation. The pipes in this place are garbage. Builds up static.” He jerked his head at the recruit. “Get cleaned up. And watch your swing.”

It was a blatant lie, a cover so thin it was transparent. Torn held Jak’s gaze for a long, charged second before turning and walking away.

Later, in the alcove, Jak’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “I could have killed him.”

“You didn’t,” Milly said. She was mixing a paste of ground lichen and distilled water, something her book suggested for ‘cooling the channels.’ “You pulled it back. That’s the point. You’re learning.”

“It’s learning me,” he shot back, watching his trembling fingers. “That wasn’t me. That was… it.”

She moved closer, dipping her fingers into the cool paste. “Look at me.” He did. Her face was calm, resolute. “It is you. That’s what you have to accept. It’s a part of your landscape now, like a river. You can’t hate the river for flooding. You have to learn its moods, build your walls stronger.” She began applying the paste to his skin, over the bandage. The sensation was immediately soothing, a physical counterpart to her words.

He let out a long, ragged breath. “Why are you doing this? Putting yourself at risk. Torn could have figured it out.”

Her fingers stilled for a moment. “Because you asked me not to tell him,” she said simply. “And because I’m tired of just patching people up after they break. I want to see someone not break.” She resumed her work, her touch firm and gentle. “And my grandmother’s book… it talks about channelers having guides. Someone who knows the maps, who can read the weather. Maybe that’s me.”

The vulnerability in her admission hung between them. He was shirtless, marked by a corrupting power; she was tracing those marks with careful hands, not in horror, but in study. In commitment.

“I don’t know the maps either,” he said quietly.

“We’re drawing them together,” she replied, not looking up. A faint, determined smile touched her lips. “One stupid, dangerous session at a time.”

Daxter, from his perch, chimed in. “Just make sure the map has a ‘you are here’ dot. And maybe a little cartoon of me pointing the way. For clarity.”

Jak finally laughed, a real one, and the sound felt like a crack in the ice inside him. Milly’s smile widened, just a fraction. In that shared, fragile moment, the anchor wasn’t just a memory of yellow cloth. It was the steady pressure of her fingers on his skin, the shared secret, the grueling, terrifying work of building a levee against the dark, together. The cold was still there. But it was no longer the only thing he felt.

But it was no longer the only thing he felt. Her fingers, still cool from the paste, rested just above the bandage’s edge. The contact was simple, almost clinical, yet it held him in the present more firmly than any meditation. He watched her, the focused line of her brows, the slight part of her lips as she concentrated on not hurting him. The hideout’s constant drip and hum faded. For a handful of heartbeats, it was just this: her touch, his steadying breath, and the fragile space between them where the cold couldn't reach.

Daxter’s loud, dramatic sigh shattered the quiet. “Well, this is all very touching and non-lethal, but I’m gonna go scout for snacks.Or ammo. Something that doesn’t involve fungal poultices and creepy glows.” He hopped down and scampered off, his tail flicking.

The silence he left behind felt different. Heavier.

Milly’s hand didn’t move. She seemed to realize it was still there, a grounding point on his skin. She didn’t pull away. “Does it hurt?” she asked, her voice barely above the generator’s hum.

“Not when you do that,” he said, the words out before he could filter them.

A faint flush crept up her neck. She finally withdrew her hand, busying herself with capping the jar of paste. “The lichen is a mild analgesic. It’s probably just that.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

“Probably.” He sat up slowly, the muscles in his stomach pulling around the wound. The paste was a dull, numbing cool over the deeper, persistent chill. “Your grandmother’s book… did it say what happens if the levies hold? If someone actually channels it, instead of being consumed?”

She looked at him, really looked, and he saw the medic’s assessment give way to a deeper, more personal fear. “It said they become something new. It didn’t specify if that was a good thing.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, a gesture he’d come to recognize as her gathering her thoughts. “The stories called them ‘Storm-makers.’ ‘Shadow-walkers.’ The Baron’s propaganda calls them ‘Eco-freaks.’ A danger to be purged.”

“Which are we building?” he asked, the question stark in the dim light. “A lever for control, or just a prettier cage?”

Before she could answer, the hideout’s main door groaned open on protesting hinges. Boots clanged on the metal gangway—too heavy, too fast for a regular patrol. Torn’s voice, sharp as a whiplash, cut across the chamber. “Jak.My office. Now.”

All the softness vanished from Milly’s face, replaced by immediate, protective tension. She shot Jak a warning glance, one that screamed be careful.

Torn’s ‘office’ was a boarded-up storage locker with a cracked plastic chair. He didn’t sit. He stood, a broad silhouette against the single bare bulb, arms crossed. The air smelled of old grease and his particular brand of simmering anger. “The recruit has a concussion,” Torn stated, no preamble.

Jak’s gut tightened. “He swung wild. It was an accident.”

“Accidents in my training yard don’t throw grown men ten feet through the air.” Torn’s eyes were like drill bits. “Static discharge from the pipes, my ass. I was born at night, but not last night.” He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. “What’s in your side, kid? And don’t you dare say it’s just a blaster burn.”

The truth was a cold stone in Jak’s throat. He saw the options: lie and be disbelieved, or tell the truth and be locked in a dark hole.He said nothing.

Torn let the silence stretch, then exhaled through his nose, a frustrated sound. “Milly’s been pilfering medical supplies.Different ones. Antiseptics, sure. But also nerve-blocking agents, metabolic stabilizers. The kind of stuff you’d use to treat system shock from a neurotoxin.” He leaned in, his breath smelling of cheap coffee. “Or from a radical Eco infusion. She thinks I don’t inventory my own stock.”

Jak kept his face a blank mask, the one he’d perfected in the Baron’s prisons years ago.

“She’s covering for you,” Torn said, and for the first time, Jak heard something other than anger in his voice. A grudging, weary respect. “She’s clever. But she’s not a soldier. She doesn’t understand what she’s playing with.”

“She understands more than you think,” Jak replied, the defiance quiet.

Torn’s fist slammed down on a crate, making the tools on it rattle. “It’s Dark Eco, isn’t it?From the refinery. You didn’t just touch it. You soaked it in.” It wasn’t a question. He’d seen the signs, connected the dots. “Do you have any idea what that makes you? To the people here? You’re a walking containment breach. A friendly fire incident waiting to happen.”

“I have it under control.”

“Bullshit.” Torn paced a short, tight line. “I don’t care if you can juggle the stuff. The second the Baron’s scanners or one of his wack-job sage advisors gets a whiff of that signature on you, they will burn this entire district to the ground to dig you out. They’ll kill everyone even suspected of hiding you.” He stopped, pinning Jak with a stare. “Including her.”

The words landed, each one a precise, calculated blow. This wasn’t about Jak’s safety, or even the mission’s. It was about collateral damage. The cold in Jak’s side throbbed in time with his suddenly racing heart.

“What do you want me to do?” Jak asked, his voice flat.

“There’s an old pumping station. Deep in the Dead Factory district.” Torn pulled a folded, grimy map from his vest and slapped it on the crate. “It’s where the Baron’s men first tapped the major Dark Eco vein under the city. It’s sealed, written off. Too unstable.” He tapped a marked location. “But our intel says his sages still go there. For ‘field tests.’ You’re going to get inside. You’re going to find out what those tests are. And you’re going to do it alone.”

“A suicide run,” Jak translated.

“A containment run,” Torn corrected, his voice grim. “If you’re as in control as you say, prove it. Use it.Get the intel. If you’re not… if the Eco takes you in there, the blast will be contained in a zone that’s already a crater.” He held Jak’s gaze. “You don’t come back until you’ve got answers, or you don’t come back at all. Those are your choices.”

The ultimatum hung in the greasy air. This was exile with a purpose. A test he was meant to fail. Jak looked from Torn’s unforgiving face to the map, to the lines of the Dead Factory district—a tomb of rusted metal and forgotten screams.

“When?” he asked.

“Tonight.”

Back in the main chamber, Milly was waiting by his alcove, her arms wrapped around herself. She read the answer on his face. “What did he say?”

“He knows,” Jak said, quietly. He started gathering his few things: the worn leather wrist-guards, the compact eco-booster unit Keira had tinkered with, the yellow cloth he carefully folded and tucked into an inner pocket.

“Jak.” Her hand was on his arm, turning him to face her. Her eyes were wide, searching his. “Tell me.”

“He’s sending me to the Dead Factory. The old pumping station. Alone.” He said it quickly, like pulling off a bandage.

The color drained from her face. “That’s a death sentence. The ambient Eco levels there… they’re off the charts. It’s why nothing lives there. Not even rats.”

“He knows.” Jak fastened his chest-strap, his movements deliberate. “That’s the point. If I lose control in there, the problem solves itself.”

Her grip tightened. “You can’t go. It’s madness.”

“If I stay, I endanger everyone. You heard him. The Baron’s scanners…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t say the words they’ll find you.

“Then I’m coming with you.” The declaration was immediate, fierce.

“No.” The refusal was absolute, louder than he intended. He saw her flinch. He softened his voice, placing his hand over hers on his arm. “Milly, no. Your grandmother’s book, the guides… they can’t help in that place. The second we step in, it’ll be screaming in my head. I won’t be able to protect you. I might not even recognize you.” The horror of that possibility was a physical chill worse than the one in his side. “I need you here. As my anchor. Not… not there in the dark with me.”

Tears glittered in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. They were tears of frustration, of fury. “So I just wait? And wonder if today’s the day the Baron’s death squads knock down my door because they found your body? Or if today’s the day you come back as something else?”

He had no answer for that. There was no good answer. He pulled the yellow cloth from his pocket. It was faintly stained now, with grease and a smudge of his own blood. He pressed it into her hand, folding her fingers over it. “Keep this. Consider it a down payment.”

She looked down at the cloth, then back up at him, her expression crumbling from anger into something raw and terrified. “A down payment for what?”

“For when I come back.” He leaned forward, his forehead gently touching hers. It was the closest they’d ever been. He could feel the heat of her skin, smell the herbs on her clothes. “The anchor,” he whispered. “Remember?”

She nodded, a tiny, choked movement. Her hand came up, her fingers brushing the side of his neck, just below his jaw. A touch so light it was almost imaginary. “You come back,” she whispered back, her breath warm against his lips. “You come back, or I swear I’ll go into that hellhole and drag you out myself.”

He believed her. That was the most terrifying thing of all.

A shrill whistle cut through the hideout. Torn’s signal. Time was up.

Jak pulled away. The space between them turned instantly cold. He shouldered his pack, gave her one last look—memorizing the set of her jaw, the fire in her blue eyes—then turned and walked toward the grinding sound of the opening gate.

Daxter was already perched on his shoulder, uncharacteristically quiet. “So,” the ottsel finally muttered as they stepped out into the acid-tinged night air of the industrial sector. “The creepy glow-in-the-dark suicide mission. My favorite.”

Jak didn’t reply. He touched the inner pocket of his vest, now empty of yellow cloth. In its place was a hollow, yearning chill. He focused on the memory of her touch instead, the ghost of her warmth on his skin, building the first levee against the dark symphony already beginning to whisper from the direction of the Dead Factory.