Back in the grand black space. Jordan’s dreamscape– now a hellscape.

The massive cage-monster, the boxing-beast warped by tangling rebar and wire, lies dead. The wall it had formed, barring Jordan’s advance to that mansion– that sky full of diamond blue– had crumbled.

Now, though, pulling themselves from its massive corpse and the wall alike, were beings of rebar, of constricting metal. They mock the human form as they limp, twisting further and further until they have armored themselves, and have taken forms much like those of the facility’s guards.

Their visors are more akin to jagged jaws, their guns more akin to whips. All the same, they stand between Jordan and that house. That place of dreams, where that woman and that child had gone from so long ago.

The rebar men are everywhere between him and that place. So, so many, they are.

This hydra– this organization. They’d claimed to have ties to the government itself.

With no assurance he could even sleep safely, with their long necks reaching everywhere– how could he ever hope to dream?

Jordan turns, looking behind him, now.

The rebar men have made their way to a far-off structure, the one Jordan recalls as wanting to leave behind him, forever.

He hears the screams of those who raised him, as he averts his eyes. Now he really couldn’t  go back; they’d be waiting for him.

But he couldn’t be decisive about that, not after what those men had said they’d do the privileges they said they’d revoke.

They’d threatened not only him, but those close to him.

He hears the screams, again. He doesn’t know where to go. 

He’s escaped the prison, yet he is still surrounded.

The first thing Jordan senses past a persistent chill, as his consciousness slogs back to him, is a muskiness in the air. It is familiar. That is, until it is coupled with an overpowering stench that he’d certainly never had experience with. Behind even that smell, however, there is something else.

Next, he feels his back flat against a thin, soft surface. What feels like fur, on this surface, tickles his face. Underneath it is grooveless and hard, almost certainly metal. The last thing he feels before he opens his eyes, though he doubts it at first, is a strange warmth by his stomach.

At first he mistakes it for the warmth of his own body, or blood, possibly even some heat put off by Scorched ‘El, standing starkly against the cold all around. The warmth continues to his fingers, a sensation not unlike having them interlocked with those of another, each of them soft of skin and slender of bone.

Feeling the warmth on his back as well, and legitimately fearing to be in a pool of his own blood, Jordan jolts up when peeling his peepers at last.

He’s met first with the sight of a sewer-tunnel’s wall, bolted metal and greased with rust. By it, a small lantern is lit, illuminating the scene. A second after, he is sent sprawling back to the floor by a burning pain in what remained of his legs.

The movement had shaken them, and he felt an unfamiliar tightness on the skin upon them, standing in contrast to how loose it’d become recently. “No, hey.” A sleek, unfamiliar whisper from above him. The feeling of an arm supporting him as he falls.

“Don’t move. The bandages’ll come loose.” The voice is a whisper, and almost certainly that of a woman.

Through teary eyes, Jordan sees the face of his bedfellow– saviour– captor– he didn’t know. It is indeed a woman, in fact, a girl of his age, if not just a smidge above. Her face suggests some sort of east-asian origin, and betrays a perplexingly relaxed nature. She is clothed in only a tee,  and trousers.

Through his pain, Jordan strains some understanding out of the situation, looking away and massaging his skull. He’d woken up with this girl, on this fur rug. She’d been holding him.

He struggled to support himself, trying to find something to say.

His efforts were surely enough to tell her that he wanted to prop himself up, but she didn’t budge, continuing to hold his back. He looks her in the eyes, now. There’s no emotion in them; she looks almost bored.

Past her, he can see gym-clothed Zain default-dancing, his voice echoing to him through the tunnel: “Gettin’ ‘vag from Vietnam? Slammin’ a girl from Saigon?”

Jordan shakes his head, attempting to wipe away the unfunny, yet true-to-Zain apparition. He looks back to the girl.

“Who’re you?” he manages to croak.

“Jocelyn.”, the wheelchair-bound man a ways down the sewer hall hears her reply.

Jordan doesn’t seem to have seen him. It tugged this man’s ravaged heart-strings to see that Jocelyn had just snuck herself close, too close, to the unconscious young man they’d saved just hours ago. 

Though they’d been living like this for no longer than a month, he’d begun to think of her as a daughter.

The man’s grimace does little to change the already grizzled and tense formation of his look: his curly hair is grayed, and he is badly shaven. Just a year or two ago he could very well have been in his prime, yet his face is thin, and innately sullen, like that of an old man’s.

Even from this distance, he can make out the damage Jordan’s legs had sustained.

He looks down at his two stumps, both of them ending just above the knee. 

He felt as if the moment that this young man saw him, he’d see only some grim foreshadowing of his future.

He hated the idea of being reduced to him.

As the two continued their slow discourse, he twisted his chair around, slowly as he could, and left down the stinking passage.

“All right,” Jordan continues, groaning as he lays himself back down. “I’m, uh, Jordan.”

Jocelyn just looks at him, her eyes lingering on his chest a moment before she moves to fix the blanket atop his calves.

The entire time, Jordan keeps his eyes on her, studying her. It takes some nerve-building for him to ask what he does, now.

“Why were you, uhh–” he starts. Jocelyn turns so that Jordan sees but a half of her face, looking to him sleepily and questioningly.

“Why were you holding me when I woke up? You were, like, pressed up against me.”

“We had to keep you warm somehow.” she responds, breaking her half-eye-contact with him.

Jordan, blindly pointing out what he saw as dislogic, continued: “But– I’m legit on a blanket. Couldn’t you’ve just–”

“I was trying to help you.” She says this whilst getting up, no malice or anger in her voice. Only a grim, almost dull, matter-of-factness. As she walks away from him, down into the cavernous sewer, Jordan feels a sinking in his chest.

 “Jordan really do be getting that asian poon in his fucking sleep, doe.”, Zain says, a smile on his face and hands on his hips.

Back, far up on a mountain behind that of the snow-obscured facility, yet two more helicopters can be seen landing. Out of them pour what must be at least sixteen men, all armored and armed like Japanese samurai. Many have ornate longbows slung over their backs, and others have an extra, shorter sword in a sheath aside their first. Behind their armor, though it is well hidden, is a thick layer of fleece.

“This is as close as we can get you!” one of the helicopter’s pilots, in regular guard gear, calls over to the men from their seat, shouting above the aircraft’s still-whipping blades. 

“Keep your trackers and ration-packs hidden, and stay frosty–” he continues, “I don’t want to see you guys becoming another Dylatov Pass incident!”

The helicopters take off, and the samurai start making their way towards the facility.

Meanwhile, inside said facility, the cafeteria can be seen packed with guards.

Many are checking their weapons; cleaning them, reloading and whatnot. Others, however, are doffing their gear and disassembling their gear, shoving it into burlap sacks. All the while, Goggles is shouting orders:

“Alpha team 2301 is inbound, so I want all sentries up top back inside! All guards not on containment duty are to report to the caf! We are initiating an immediate Dissimulato-plena-perdere on a nearby civilian area space! Non-essential personnel are to remain in the shelters!” 

Terry can be seen in a far corner of the caf, with his helmet off and his head in his hands. When he hears the latin bits of Goggles’ commands, he cringes.

“I knew it, I just knew it. Fuck!”, he hisses to himself.

Charleen walks up to beside Terry. Her helmet is on. Terry looks at her for a moment before facing back towards the floor.

“I’m getting sent down there, Char, I’ll– I can’t– what do I do?”

“What protocol says you do.”, she answers, in an uncharacteristically flat tone.

When Terry looks back up to her, she is offering a hand to him. Terry is about to move to take it, when he notices what’s in its palm.

Two white tablets, dotted yellow all over.

Terry’s eyes light up with a sort of horrified disbelief.

“Tell me you didn’t.” he says, looking her in the face. She is silent for a moment, and nothing of her visage can be seen behind her mask.

“For doubt, take one.”, she finally says. “For guilt–”

Terry’s eyes have begun to water.

“–take two.”