Chapter 8: You're Mine
The kiss didn’t end; it transformed. It became a language of its own, a desperate, hungry dialogue spoken with lips and tongue and teeth. Jak pulled her into him, one hand tangling in the thick silk of her brown hair, the other splaying across the small of her back, pressing her against the solid wall of his chest. He could feel the frantic beat of her heart against his own, a wild counter-rhythm to the cold, slow pulse of the Eco in his veins.
She met his hunger with her own, her hands sliding from his face down to the hard planes of his shoulders, gripping the worn fabric of his shirt as if he might vanish. A soft, choked sound escaped her, part gasp, part sob, all need. It shattered the last of his restraint.
He walked her backward, never breaking the kiss, until the backs of her thighs met the edge of the bunk’s thin mattress. She let out a small, surprised breath as she sat, pulling him down with her. He followed, covering her body with his, bracing himself on his forearms to keep his weight from crushing her. The worn canvas of the sleeping bag rustled beneath them, a dry, whispering counterpoint to their ragged breathing.
“Jak,” she breathed against his mouth, her voice husky. Her hands were under his shirt now, her palms sliding over the heated skin of his back, tracing the ridges of muscle and scar. She found the raised, vicious lines of the corruption, the cold pathways snaking over his ribs and spine. She didn’t flinch. She traced them, her touch igniting a different kind of fire wherever it landed.
He broke the kiss to bury his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling the clean, lavender scent of her skin, so profoundly human it made his chest ache. He kissed the frantic pulse there, licked a slow path up to her ear. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured, the words rough with want. It was a final offering of control, a thread of sanity he clung to.
Her answer was to arch her hips against his, a deliberate, grinding pressure that made him groan. “Don’t you dare.” Her fingers hooked into the waistband of his pants. “I need you. I need all of you. Not just the parts that are safe.”
Something tight and terrified in his chest snapped. He kissed her again, deep and searching, as his hands found the hem of her tunic. He dragged it up, revealing the smooth skin of her stomach, the gentle swell of her breasts barely constrained by a simple cotton wrap. He sat back on his knees, pulling the tunic over her head in one swift motion. The lamplight painted her in gold and shadow.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, the words tasting unfamiliar, inadequate. He’d never said them to anyone before.
She reached for him, pulling his shirt up. He helped her, yanking it off and tossing it aside. The cool air of the bunkroom hit his skin, but he was burning up. Her blue eyes drank him in, widening at the sight of the Dark Eco’s corruption mapping his torso like some violent, living tattoo. She didn’t look afraid. She looked awed.Possessive.
Her fingers trailed down his chest, over his abdomen, to the fastening of his pants. Her eyes locked with his as she undid them. He kicked free of his boots and the rest of his clothes, his erection springing free, thick and desperate. A faint, shimmering violet energy seemed to kiss the edges of his vision, a product of his own raging blood, not the Eco.Not yet.
He leaned over her again, kissing her deeply as his hands made quick work of her remaining clothes. The cotton wrap fell away, then her leggings. Then there was nothing between them. Skin to skin. The heat of her was a shock, a glorious furnace against the chill he carried within. He slid a hand down the flat plane of her stomach, through the neat thatch of dark hair, and found her wet and open for him.
“Fuck, Milly,” he gasped against her mouth. He circled her clit with his thumb, and she cried out, her hips bucking off the mattress. She was so ready, so slick. The smell of her arousal, musky and sweet, filled the cramped space, overwhelming the scents of dust and metal.
“Now,” she begged, her legs falling open, her heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him closer. “Jak, please. I need you inside me.”
He needed no further urging. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her soaked folds. He pushed in slowly, watching her face, giving her body time to stretch, to accept him. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted on a sharp inhale. He watched every fleeting emotion—the slight sting, the overwhelming fullness, the dawning pleasure—play across her features.
He sank deeper, an inch, then another, until he was fully sheathed, buried to the hilt in her incredible heat. They both went perfectly still, joined, breathing each other’s air. It was more intimate than any kiss. He felt her inner muscles flutter around him, a tight, velvety grip that threatened to undo him right there.
“Okay?” he managed to rasp.
In answer, she rolled her hips, taking him even deeper. A guttural sound was torn from his throat. He began to move.
It started slow, a deep, rocking rhythm that made the bunk frame creak in protest. But the friction, the sheer blinding rightness of it, quickly stoked the fire into an inferno. The slow, measured thrusts became harder, faster, driven by a base, consuming need.
He fucked her with a raw, unpracticed intensity, each drive of his hips a punctuation to a silent vow. This was his. She was his. Her moans were music, her choked pleas for more, harder, right there a fuel that poured straight into his core. He hooked an arm under her knee, lifting her leg to change the angle, and she screamed, her back bowing off the mattress.“There! God, Jak, right there!”
He pistoned into her, the slap of skin on skin filling the room, a lewd, frantic counterbeat to their gasps. Sweat beaded on his brow, dripped onto her chest. He leaned down to capture a nipple in his mouth, sucking hard, flicking his tongue over the peaked bud. She tangled her hands in his spiky hair, holding him to her, her other hand clawing at his back, surely leaving marks over the dark veins.
The coil in his gut tightened, a hot, urgent pressure. He could feel her own climax building, her body clenching rhythmically around his shaft, her breaths coming in short, sharp cries. The violet at the edges of his vision intensified, pulsing with each thrust. A whisper, the Dark Eco’s voice, slithered through his mind.More.Take. Claim.
He fought it, focusing on her, on the feel of her, the sound of her. “Come with me,” he growled, his voice thick and foreign to his own ears. “I need to feel you come.”
It was all she needed. Her eyes flew open, locking onto his with a wild, desperate intensity. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her orgasm tore through her. Her whole body seized, her inner walls clamping down on him in a series of exquisite, milking spasms that ripped his own control to shreds.
With a final, broken shout, he drove into her one last time and came. It was a white-hot release that felt like being unmade. He spilled deep inside her, each pulse wracking his body, a flood of heat battling the perpetual cold in his bones. For a moment, the dark whisper was silenced, drowned out by pure, obliterating sensation.
He collapsed on top of her, careful to keep his weight on his elbows, his forehead pressed against her damp shoulder. Their hearts hammered against each other, a frantic, slowing drumbeat. The smell of sex, salt, and her lavender perfume hung heavy in the air.
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He just breathed her in, feeling the tremors that still occasionally shook her body. After a long while, she shifted, her hand coming up to stroke his hair, her touch impossibly gentle.
“See?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “You’re still here.”
He lifted his head to look at her. Her hair was a mess, her lips swollen from his kisses, her eyes soft and sated. She had never looked more beautiful. The feral light, the violet tinge, it was gone from his vision. For now.
But as he reluctantly pulled out of her and gathered her against his side, pulling the rough blanket over them, he felt the cold settle back into his marrow. The whisper didn’t return, but the presence was there, a patient, sleeping depth. He held her tightly, this warm, breathing woman who had chosen him, darkness and all.
Outside the thin door, he could hear the distant, mundane sounds of the Resistance base: a muttered conversation, the clang of a metal cup. A world that continued, brutal and unforgiving. Dawn would come. Torn’s training would begin. The tightrope awaited.
But here, in this stolen hour, with Milly’s breath evening out into sleep against his chest, he allowed himself a single, solid truth. However he had to fight, whatever he had to become, this was worth it. This was the anchor. This was the reason.
He closed his eyes, and for the first time in days, slept without dreaming.
The deep, dreamless void didn’t last. A sharp cramp in his leg, the old injury from a metalhead encounter in the Wasteland, jerked him back to consciousness. The room was darker now, a single lantern guttering low. Milly was a warm, solid weight against his side, her breath soft on his collarbone.
Her fingers were splayed over the corrupted veins on his chest, as if holding them at bay. He watched her sleep in the dim light, the way her lashes fanned against her cheeks. A profound, terrifying protectiveness swelled in him, hotter than any eco. He would burn this city to ash before he let anything touch her.
“I can feel you staring,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. She didn’t open her eyes.
“Can’t help it.”
She shifted, wincing slightly as she stretched. A dull ache echoed in his own muscles, a pleasant souvenir. “Everything’s… sticky,” she murmured, a faint smile touching her lips.
“My fault.”
“Mostly.” She finally opened her eyes, looking up at him. The blue was almost black in the low light. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I be?”
She propped herself up on an elbow, the blanket falling to her waist. The cool air pebbled her skin. Her gaze traveled over his face, then down to where her hand still rested. “Does it hurt? When it’s… quiet like this?”
“No. It’s just a cold spot. An emptiness that’s full.” He struggled for the words. “Like a silent scream.”
She leaned down and pressed her lips to the darkest line, a kiss over his heart. The simple tenderness of it clawed at something deep inside him. He tangled his hand in her hair, holding her there.
“I’m not afraid of it,” she whispered against his skin.
“You should be.”
“I’m afraid for you. Not of you.” She looked up again, her expression fierce. “Never of you.”
He pulled her up for a proper kiss, slower this time, less frantic. It tasted like sleep and salt and her. His hand slid down the curve of her back, over the swell of her ass, pulling her tight against him. He was already hardening again, a thick, insistent heat against her thigh.
She felt it and let out a soft, knowing hum. Her hand slid between them, wrapping around his length. She gave him a few slow, firm strokes, her thumb smearing the bead of moisture at his tip. “Already?” Her voice was a teasing rasp.
“You’re fucking naked in my arms. What did you expect?” His own hand dipped between her legs, finding her still wet, swollen from their first round. He pushed two fingers inside, and her breath hitched. “You’re not much better.”
She guided him to her entrance, her eyes locked on his. “Then quit talking.”
He rolled her onto her back and sank into her in one smooth, deep thrust. This time was different. It wasn't a frantic race. It was a claiming, a deliberate re-mapping of his own body through the anchoring heat of hers. He set a relentless, grinding rhythm, his pelvis hitting her clit with every inward stroke.
"Right there," she chanted, her head tipping back. "Oh god, right fucking there." Her nails bit into his biceps, her legs locked around his waist, pulling him deeper.
He watched her fall apart beneath him, mesmerized by the flush spreading across her chest, the way her teeth caught her lower lip. The cold inside him retreated further, burned away by the sweat-slick friction, by her tightness, by her hungry, filthy whispers in his ear.
"Give it to me," she demanded, her hips meeting his thrust for thrust. "All of it. I want to feel you lose it."
He fucked her harder, the bunk frame slamming against the stone wall with a rhythmic bang. The sound was obscene. He loved it. He drove into her, over and over, chasing his own release while pushing her toward hers. The pressure built, coiling at the base of his spine.
"Come for me, Milly." His voice was a ragged growl. "Now."
Her climax ripped through her with a choked cry, her body convulsing around him in violent waves. The sheer, pulsing force of it tore his own control to shreds. With a shattered groan, he buried himself to the hilt and emptied into her, a hot, spurting flood that seemed to draw the very tension from his bones.
He collapsed, spent, his face buried in the crook of her neck. They were both slick with sweat, breathing in ragged, broken sync. The room slowly came back into focus: the dying lantern, the distant hum of the base, the smell of sex and lavender now thoroughly mingled.
After a long while, she stirred, drawing the scratchy blanket over them both. Her hand found his under the covers, their fingers lacing together.
"Torn's going to bang on that door at 0600," she said, her voice drowsy.
"Let him."
She laughed softly, a sleepy, contented sound. Her breathing began to even out, deepening. He listened to it, felt the steady thump of her heart under his palm. The cold whisper in his blood was silent, held at bay by her warmth.
He let the sound of her sleep pull him under. This time, there were no dreams. Only a deep, ink-black peace, and the weight of her hand in his.
Only a deep, ink-black peace, and the weight of her hand in his.
It was a peace so complete it felt stolen, fragile as a spun-sugar sculpture in the rain. For a few precious hours, the cold whispers in his blood were silent, drowned out by the rhythm of her breathing and the shared warmth under the rough blanket. He drifted in that sweet, heavy space where the world beyond the door didn't exist.
The bang was utterly violent.
It wasn’t a knock. It was the flat of a hand or a boot slamming against the thin metal door, which shuddered on its hinges. The sound tore through the quiet like a gunshot.
Jak was upright in an instant, a feral snarl ripping from his throat. His body moved before his mind, one arm snapping out to pin Milly behind him, the other hand already clenched into a fist crackling with a volatile, purple-black energy he hadn’t summoned. The Dark Eco responded to the threat, surging up from that silent depth with a vicious glee.
"Rise and shine, loverboys!And girl! Whatever!" Daxter’s voice, unbearably loud and gratingly cheerful, cut through the fog. "Unless you’re dead in there, which, given the racket last night, I seriously doubt. Sounded like you were trying to kill the damn bed frame."
The adrenaline crash left Jak shaking. He blinked, the corrosive energy flickering and dying around his fingers. Milly was pressed against his back, her heart hammering against his spine. He felt her tense, then sag with a groan of pure, unadulterated annoyance into his shoulder blade.
"Go away, Daxter," she muttered, her voice thick and muffled by his skin.
"Can’t! Boss’s orders."More banging. "Torn’s on the warpath. Says if Jak’s not out here in two minutes, he’s gonna send Kessa in with a bucket of sewer water. Her idea, not mine. Personally, I’d pay to see that."
Jak slowly unclenched his fist. The purple tendrils of energy receded, sinking back beneath his skin with a sullen reluctance, leaving behind that familiar, hollow cold. He took a sharp, steadying breath. The room came back into focus: the gray pre-dawn light seeping under the door, their clothes scattered like casualties across the floor, Milly’s hair a wild cascade over the pillow.
He looked at her. Her blue eyes were wide, alert now, and fixed on his recently-energized hand. There was no fear in them, just a weary exasperation. She reached up and placed her hand over his, gently pushing it down onto the blanket.
"Tell Torn he’ll be out," she called, her tone shifting into a flawless, market-stall briskness. "And that you’re a pest."Message delivered! Mostly." Daxter’s voice faded as he moved away from the door, but they heard his final jab, aimed just loud enough to carry. "Try to put some pants on before you save the world, would ya? It’s dignified."
The silence he left behind was different. It was thin, charged with the abrupt shock of the outside world crashing back in. The warm cocoon was shattered. Jak exhaled, a long, tired stream of air, and let his forehead drop against Milly’s.
"Reality’s a jerk," she whispered.
He gave a single, soft huff that was almost a laugh. "Daxter’s a bigger one." He kissed her, a brief, grounding press of lips. "You should stay here. Rest."
"Not a chance." She was already moving, slipping out from under his arm and the blanket. The cool air made her skin prickle with goosebumps. She leaned over the side of the bunk, fishing for her tunic. "If Torn’s 'on the warpath,' I want to hear it. Besides," she shot him a look over her shoulder, a mischievous glint cutting through the sleep in her eyes, "someone has to be there to stop you from punching Daxter into next week when he makes the inevitable ‘big gun’ joke."
Jak watched her dress, the simple movements anchoring him. The lavender scent on her skin mixed with the smell of damp wool and sex. He swung his legs over the bunk’s edge, his bare feet hitting the cold stone floor. The chill seeped up immediately, a familiar adversary.
He found his pants, tugged them on. The fabric felt abrasive against his skin, which still hummed with the memory of her touch. The peaceful void was gone, replaced by a low, familiar thrum of anticipation.Torn.Training. The tightrope.
Milly fastened her belt, ran her fingers through her tangled hair in a futile gesture, and gave up. She walked over to him, stopping his search for his second boot with a hand on his chest. Her palm was warm over his heart.
"Hey." She waited until he met her gaze. "You’re here."
He covered her hand with his own, feeling the steady, resilient beat under both their palms. He nodded, once. It was enough.
Another, much sharper rap came at the door. Not Daxter this time. It was the concise, impatient knock of someone who counted seconds."Jak." Torn’s voice, stripped of all humor."Now."
Milly squeezed his hand and let go. Jak pulled on his boot, grabbed his shirt, and stood. He looked at the rumpled bunk, the indentation where their bodies had been, then back at her. A last, fleeting echo of that ink-black peace.
He opened the door.
Torn stood framed in the corridor’s grim light, his expression carved from the same weathered stone as the walls. His eyes, flat and assessing, scanned Jak from spiky hair to bootlaces, lingering on the still-unbuttoned shirt and the glimpse of darkened veins beneath. “Enjoy your beauty sleep?” he asked, his voice devoid of inflection.
Jak met his gaze, saying nothing. The cold inside him shifted, a slow coil unwinding.
“Move.” Torn turned and walked, not waiting to see if Jak followed.
Milly slipped out behind him, falling into step at Jak’s side. Her shoulder brushed his arm, a silent touchstone. The common area was a haze of dust motes in the gray dawn light, smelling of stale coffee and sour anticipation. A few early-rising Resistance fighters glanced up, their eyes tracking Jak with a mix of curiosity and wariness.
“He’s in a mood,” Daxter whispered, materializing from behind a stack of crates to scamper up Jak’s leg and perch on his shoulder. “Practically chewed the head off a scout for having muddy boots. I think someone’s jealous.”
“Shut up, Daxter,” Jak muttered, his focus on Torn’s retreating back.
“Just sayin’. Not all of us get a private send-off from the prettiest seamstress in the—” Daxter yelped as Jak’s hand, moving faster than thought, plucked him from his perch and held him at arm’s length. The movement was fluid, unnaturally quick. A faint wisp of violet energy snaked around Jak’s wrist before dissipating.
“I said shut up.”
Daxter went still, his wide eyes fixed on Jak’s. The usual sarcasm drained from his face, replaced by a flicker of genuine caution. “Okay.Yeah. Message received, chief.”
Jak set him down on a crate. Daxter adjusted his pants, uncharacteristically quiet.
Torn led them not to the main training yard but to a sealed, windowless sub-chamber deep in the mill’s foundations. The air here was older, colder, smelling of ozone and rust. In the center of the room sat a single, worn metal chair, surrounded by a ring of archaic-looking Eco conduits and monitoring equipment. Corman was there, fiddling with a console that sparked with blue energy.
“Sit,” Torn said, gesturing to the chair.
Jak eyed the setup, the restraints on the chair’s arms. “What is this?”
“A controlled environment. You’re a live wire, kid. We need to see if you can ground yourself.” Torn crossed his arms. “Or if you’ll fry everyone in the room.”
Milly stepped forward. “Torn, maybe—”
“He needs to learn control,” Torn cut her off, his voice final. “Not coddling. That ends now. Sit.”
Jak walked to the chair. The metal was ice-cold through his pants. He sat, placing his hands on the armrests. The dark veins stood out starkly against his skin.
Corman approached with a hesitant syringe filled with a shimmering blue liquid. “This is a concentrated trace of Blue Eco. Purity. It will react with the corruption. We need to measure the resonance.”
“Will it hurt?” Milly asked from the doorway, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“Yes,” Corman said simply.
The needle pricked Jak’s inner arm. The Blue Eco entered his bloodstream like a lightning bolt of pure, scouring clarity. It was acid and ice, a shockwave of wrongness that slammed into the dormant Dark Eco. Jak’s back arched off the chair, a guttural roar tearing from his throat. The monitors around him shrieked, needles whipping into the red.
Violet energy erupted from him in a violent aura, crackling against the Blue Eco’s invasion. The conflict raged inside his cells, a silent, brutal war. He saw images—flashes of the Precursor city, of swirling dark vortices, of a laugh that was all metal and malice. The chair’s metal groaned under his grip, denting beneath his fingers.
“He’s spiking!” Corman yelled, frantically adjusting dials.
“Jak!” Milly’s voice cut through the storm in his head.
He focused on it, a single point of warmth in the glacial firefight. He pictured her hand on his chest in the dark, her voice saying ‘You’re still here.’ He clenched his jaw until it felt like it would splinter, and forced a breath. He didn’t fight the Dark Eco. He didn’t embrace the Blue. He imagined a channel, a narrow, desperate pathway between the two raging currents.
The violet aura flickered, withdrew, condensing around his limbs like armor instead of a wildfire. The screeching of the monitors dropped to a frantic beep. Sweat dripped from his chin, sizzling where it hit the energy field around his hands. He was breathing in ragged, sawing gasps, but he was present.
Torn watched, his expression unreadable. “Again.”
They ran the test three more times. Each was a fresh descent into agony. By the fourth, Jak could direct the reaction. He could let the Dark Eco rise to the Blue’s provocation, feel its vicious desire to consume and corrupt, and then force it back down a defined path—into his fist, down his spine, contained. It was like holding a live serpent by its throat, feeling it thrash against his grip.
“Enough,” Torn said finally, his voice cutting through the hum of equipment. Jak slumped in the chair, drenched in sweat and trembling with exhaustion. The phantom smell of ozone and burned sugar clung to him. “You can direct it. That’s something. It’s not control.It’s containment. A dam can still break.”
Milly was at his side instantly, a canteen of water in her hand. He drank greedily, his hands shaking so badly she had to help him guide it. Her touch was steadying, an anchor in the receding tide of pain.
“He needs rest,” she said, glaring at Torn.
“What he needs,” Torn said, gathering a worn canvas bag, “is to learn to function. Follow me.”
The next hours were a different kind of torture. Torn led him to a derelict warehouse district on the edge of the resistance sector, a skeletal landscape of corroded metal and shattered concrete. The assignment was simple: reconnaissance. Identify patrol patterns of the Baron’s KG Death Bots in Sector 7.
It was mundanity undercut with constant peril. The cold exhaustion from the testing made his muscles feel like lead. Every hidden movement, every tense wait behind a crumbling wall as metallic feet clanked past, was a battle against the lethargy dragging at his bones. The Dark Eco within him was quiet, but it was a watchful, hungry quiet. It whispered that he could simply step out, unleash a fraction of that power, and turn the patrols to scrap. The ease of it was a palpable temptation.
He didn’t. He watched, he noted, he crept. He felt Milly’s worried gaze from a hidden vantage point where Torn had stationed her as a lookout. He saw Daxter, uncharacteristically serious, scouting ahead through rusted pipes.
During a long lull, crouched in the acidic drip from a broken conduit, Daxter dropped down beside him. “You look like hell warmed over, buddy.”
“Feel worse.”
Daxter was quiet for a moment, watching a scavenger bird pick at something in the distance. “You kinda scared me back there. In the bunk room.” He picked at a thread on his pants. “Not the, you know, the amorous stuff. The other thing. Your eyes got… shiny. In a bad way.”
Jak let out a long breath, fogging in the chill air. “It’s always there, Dax. Pushing.”
“Yeah, well.” Daxter nudged him with an elbow. “Just don’t let it push you somewhere I can’t follow. Who else is gonna make fun of your hair?”
A ghost of a smile touched Jak’s lips. It faded as a new, heavier footfall echoed—not the precise clip of KG bots, but something more organic. Two of the Baron’s brute-class enforcers, hulking figures in fortified armor, rounded a corner. They were laughing, a crude, loud sound about some atrocity they’d committed in the market square.
One held up a small, torn piece of floral-patterned fabric—a child’s hair ribbon, smudged with dirt. “Little rat tried to bite me. Had to persuade her otherwise.”
A cold different from the Eco’s settled in Jak’s gut. It was pure, clean fury. The Dark Eco stirred, liking this new flavor. It offered its strength, a swell of power that promised he could break them like kindling.
“Jak,” Milly’s voice whispered in his earpiece, a tense thread of warning. “Don’t. They’ll call reinforcements. Just mark them and move.”
He watched the brutes pass, their laughter fading. He marked their path on his mental map. He didn’t move.
When they were out of sight, he stood. His body still ached, but the fury had burned away the fatigue. He looked toward Milly’s hiding spot, then to Daxter. “Go back with Torn. Now.”
“What are you gonna do?” Daxter asked, his voice small.
“Something containment isn’t for.”
He didn’t run.He walked. A deliberate, steady pace toward the alley the brutes had entered. The decision was a quiet click in his mind, a door closing. He wasn’t Jak the refugee, not right now. He was the consequence.
Torn’s voice crackled in his earpiece, sharp.“Jak, fall back. That’s an order. This is not the objective.”
Jak reached up and crushed the tiny device between his thumb and forefinger. The static died. The silence that followed was filled only with the distant whine of a ventilation fan and the pounding of his own heart, a drumbeat syncing with the rising tide in his veins.
He found them in a dead-end courtyard, smoking. They turned at his approach, their dull eyes registering first confusion, then cruel amusement.
“Lost, pretty boy?” the one with the ribbon tucked in his belt sneered.
Jak didn’t answer. He let them see his eyes. The green was almost entirely swallowed by the burning violet ring now, a corona of contained violence. He saw the amusement freeze, then shatter into primal fear. They fumbled for their weapons.
He didn’t give them the chance.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a statement. The Dark Eco didn’t roar; it hummed, a high, deadly frequency only he could hear. It flowed into his movements, making them a blur. He didn’t brawl.He dismantled. A precise strike shattered a kneecap with a wet crack. A diverted energy blast from their own rifle took the second brute in the shoulder, spinning him like a ragdoll.
He saved the one with the ribbon for last. The man was scrambling backward, firing wild, panic-stricken shots that went wide. Jak closed the distance, his hand closing around the man’s wrist. He squeezed. Bone splintered. The scream was cut short as Jak drove his other fist, wrapped in a crackling sheath of dark energy, into the man’s gut. The air left him in a whoosh, his eyes bulging.
Jak leaned close, his voice a low, distorted rasp that didn’t quite sound like his own. “Where’s the girl?”
The brute whimpered, pointing a trembling finger toward a rusted dumpster. Jak shoved him aside. Behind it, a small girl, no more than six, huddled in a torn yellow dress, her face streaked with dirt and tears. She stared at him, terrified, at the man wreathed in whispering violet shadows.
The fury in him banked, replaced by a different, colder hollow. He knelt, careful to keep his distance. The energy around his hands flickered and died. He reached slowly for the ribbon, still tucked in the unconscious brute’s belt, and held it out to her.
She didn’t take it. She just stared at his eyes.
Footsteps pounded behind him. He turned to see Torn and Milly skid into the courtyard, weapons drawn. Torn took in the scene—the two broken enforcers, the terrified child, Jak kneeling amid the wreckage. His face was granite.
Milly’s gaze went from the child to Jak. Her expression wasn’t fear. It was a profound, weary sadness.
Jak stood, the ribbon dangling from his fingers. He looked at his hands, then at the results of their work. The dam hadn’t broken. He’d opened the floodgates, just a crack. It had been efficient. It had been effective. The hollow inside him yawned wider.
Torn strode forward, his voice a blade. “The objective was reconnaissance.Not vengeance. You compromised the mission. You compromised us.”
Jak said nothing. He just looked past Torn, to where Daxter now hovered at the alley’s mouth, his usual bravado absent, replaced by a look of stunned silence.
The little girl finally moved. She scrambled up and ran, darting past them all, her small feet slapping on the wet pavement until the sound faded away. She never looked back.
Milly walked toward him, stopping a few feet away. She looked at the ribbon in his hand, then up at his corrupted eyes. She didn’t flinch.