Jak & Daxter: Faceless City
May. 23rd, 2011 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Faceless City
Series: Jak & Daxter (Jak 2)
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Notes: Headcanon melted my brain. So now I'm trying to melt yours.
Summary: Jak and Torn pull a mission together; Jak is treated to some insights on the Krimzon Guard, which may nearly make up for having to work with Torn.
Jak realised very early on that while Torn is never happy, he’s least unhappy when things operate as they’re meant to. It is the natural order of things that Torn assigns missions to Underground agents, and the agents carry them out. Which is why, when Jak comes back with a mission for Torn, he knows before he even sets foot in the Underground’s dingy headquarters that there is going to be extensive shouting.
“We were too late to pick up the last radio pack,” Jak reports without prelude, and watches Torn’s eyes narrow. “The Krimzon Guard were taking it away when we got there. Said they were taking it to central headquarters.”
Torn slams both hands down on the table, leaning over it to cast a dark shadow on a stained map spread across its surface. The table rattles but doesn’t tip; it’s used to it. “That radio pack is essential to our operations – without it our network can’t communicate. It was your job to pick it up before they got there.”
Jak crosses his arms, and out of the corner of his eye sees Daxter mirror the motion. “Well, we didn’t.”
“That’s right. You didn’t.” Torn has a habit of slowing down rather than speeding up when he’s blood-boiling mad, and he’s doing it now. It always puts Jak, who’s used to dealing with the spit-fire type of rage, just slightly off balance. “Now, thanks to you, our network is in danger of going under. With the old transistors traceable now, these were our only chance of communicating without being detected. Every single component in those packs is contraband. You know how long it took us to arrange their acquisition? Four months. That is four months of work, money and risk you just flushed down the sewers.”
Daxter has been twitching throughout the whole speech, like a rocket with a lit fuse. He blasts off now, gesticulating so elaborately he nearly falls off Jak’s shoulder. “Well maybe if you had given us more than ten minutes’ warning and hadn’t dropped the radios in the middle of busy roads we would have gotten there in time.”
Torn shifts to lean against the table and stares up at them, unimpressed. “Maybe if you did your work seriously instead of like a couple of rookie racers trying to show off, you wouldn’t have screwed it up. The drops were doable. If you had the sense of a lurker.”
“Then why weren’t you out there picking them up, Mr Big-Shot? Too busy fondling your map collection?” Daxter, as usual, can’t stop pushing buttons until he finds the one that causes everything to blow up in his face. Torn’s fingers twitch dangerously towards the pistol at his hip; Jak shifts to move Daxter away even as the Ottsel scurries towards the far end of his shoulder.
“You should be more careful of that mouth of yours, rat.” Torn straightens, face falling into shadow as he rises above the circle of light cast by the overhead lamp. He looks to Jak. “You said they were taking it to central headquarters?”
Jak waits for a beat before answering, refusing to be cowed, eyes hard and arms still crossed. “That’s right.”
“Then you can’t get it on your own. Even if you could get in without getting your face blasted off – unlikely – you’d never find it. The place is a maze. It’s meant to be.”
“So why don’t you go get it, Mr – Torn.” Daxter alters his sentence as Torn’s eyes flash to him, finishing with a smile that projects innocence so saccharine it could melt teeth.
“Because I can’t carry it all the way out of there on my own. Or did you forget we gave you a transport truck to pick them up in?” Torn also has a trick of showing up each and every mistake you make, but this doesn’t bother Jak so much. He grew up around Samos. Silence is the closest thing to praise either of them appears capable of.
“I’ll go,” says Jak, flatly.
“Damn right you will. But the rat stays here – he’d blow us both in a second.”
Daxter begins to protest, but Jak lays a hand on his back. “Fine.”
“Fine,” echoes Torn. “Go out there and find a Guard. Knock him out, and bring him back here. We need a uniform.”
“Just one?”
“You’re going as a civvie. No way you’d pass for a Guard. Don’t worry – they don’t have a description of you, anyway.” His words are disdainful, not reassuring.
Jack shrugs. “I’m not worried.”
----------------------------------------------------------
It’s no trouble to ambush a lone guard and round-house him into an unexpected nap. Carrying him back to the Underground HQ is slightly more difficult, simply because of the bulky armour. By the time Jak drags him down the steep stairs, Torn’s waiting in a pair of dark pants and a dark shirt. He removes the Guard’s uniform with surprising speed, stripping off the boots, gauntlets, breast and back plate, leg guards and helmet to reveal an unexpectedly thin and unimpressive form below. Jak stares down, surprised. Torn catches his glance, and misinterprets it.
“You were expecting someone more menacing?”
“No. Just … bigger.”
“The armour is built to withstand two dark eco blasts,” says Torn flatly, as if that explains it. He picks up one of the spike-toed boots, and pulls it on with a grimace. “Too damn small.” He stomps heavily a couple of times, and then picks up the other one, gesturing at the unconscious guard with it. “Tie him up, gag him, and drop him outside somewhere he won’t be found for a couple of hours. We can’t have him reporting his gear stolen.”
Daxter scrambles down and returns a minute later with some scavenged rope; they bind the Guard and then Jak throws him over his shoulder, remounting the stairs again while Torn suits up in silence behind them. On his other shoulder, Daxter grumbles about the smell.
-------------------------------------------------------------
When they return, Torn is staring down distastefully at the helmet. He’s pulled on the rest of the uniform, and true to its role it has removed his individuality. The red suit looks wrong here, out of place and alarming. Even Torn’s face above it doesn’t cancel Jak’s instinctive tensing, ready to kick or draw his gun. If Torn notices, he doesn’t comment.
“334,” Torn says instead, flattening his hair back with one hand preparatory to putting on the helmet.
“What?” asks Jak, not following the non-sequitur.
“334. It’s his number. The Guard identify themselves by number, not name. You’ll be a civilian advisor; you call me 334. Go change your shirt and leave the gun and goggles. That should do it.”
Jak says nothing, but changes his shirt to a plain white and then slowly pulls off his goggles and slips his blaster from its holster. The shirt he leaves on one of the empty bunks. The goggles he gives to Daxter, who holds them awkwardly in both hands. They call more attention to his size than anything else has in a long time. But Jak’s no stranger to locking away that guilt – he has a whole box of it. The gun he holds onto for a few seconds more – he’s more than competent at hand-to-hand combat, but it’s a sense of security he’s loath to give up. Finally he collapses it on the bed and puts the shirt over it, hiding its lean form.
Daxter runs up one of the bed poles to stand on the upper bunk, putting him at head height. “You be careful, big guy. I ain’t going out there alone to rescue you again.”
“I won’t let them catch me twice.” Jak fists his hands and opens them deliberately, feeling the unnatural strength there.
“Touching,” says Torn dryly from behind them. “Let’s go before I mist up the mask.” He pulls it on over his face, blast shield slipped up to rest on top of his head, and heads up the stairs. Jak sighs, and follows.
----------------------------------------------------------
It’s late afternoon, the sun just barely hovering above the lower buildings and casting long shadows on the broken road. The transport they used to pick up the other packs is still parked outside, its bulk and sleekness out of place in the slums. Torn heads past it as if he hasn’t seen it.
“Hey.” Jak waits for him to look round, and thumbs at the truck. “Can’t we just take the transport?”
“We don’t have parking clearance. We’ll find a ride when we’ve got the goods,” replies a voice that is most definitely not Torn’s ragged half-whisper. Jak’s heard it before, passing Guards and cruisers on the streets. A low, slightly staticky voice he associates with calls for back-up and complaints about the city. For an instant he wonders if Torn has somehow turned up a Guard scanner built into his uniform. But then he realises that the voice has answered his question.
“Torn?” he asks, cautiously.
“No, Baron Praxis,” responds the same low voice, sarcastically. “Of course it’s me. There’s a voice-changer built into the mouthpiece.” He turns and continues walking. Jak follows more slowly, brow furrowed.
“…Why?”
Torn pauses to wait for him to catch up. Although the mask gives no clue to the expression of the face beneath, Jak knows it will be contemptuous.
“You really haven’t got Praxis figured out, have you?”
“I don’t need to. All I need to do is kill him.”
“And thinking like that’s probably why you’re not a hell of a lot closer to getting there. Why you wouldn’t be any closer without the contacts you’ve made doing the thinking for you.”
They round the corner, Jak gritting his teeth silently, and Torn heads right. They walk on in silence for a minute, passing some pedestrians who hurry by while giving them a wide berth. The roads are already emptying as they near dusk, and after a moment they’re in the clear again. Torn takes a few more steps before speaking again, now in the lecturing tone he uses for mission briefings.
“It’s all about power, and fear. If you’re one man trying to control a whole city, you need help. You need people willing to do anything to anyone and not worry about the consequences. The only way to do that is to guarantee no one will know who’s doing it. He learned that real quick. And he learned that, after a while, people will do almost anything if they know no one will judge them for it. That’s what the voice changers and the masks are for. Anonymity that lets you fire into crowds and evict old grannies and turn off the water supply to whole sectors.”
Jak doesn’t have to ask to know who he is; there is only one man who can put that kind of hatred into residents of Haven City. “I thought they were for the eco blasts,” he says, lamely, taken aback.
“You think we really need masks and blast shields?” Torn indicates the red piece of metal currently sitting uselessly on top of his head. “No. After a few years, almost anyone will do anything if they’re wearing a mask. Especially when you realise that everyone else hates you, and all you’ve got is your reputation in the Corps. That’s the other side of it. Once you’re a Guard, you’re in for life. There’s no quitting. All you’ve got is each other, and that means everyone’s as mean as the worst bastard in the Squad just to keep themselves from being ostracised for being soft.” The voice-changer alters the timbre of Torn’s voice, but nothing could keep the hatred out of it. Seeing that black, dripping loathing coming from someone other than himself shocks him into a momentary silence that he only escapes with difficulty.
“But… you must be able to quit. Or defect, or something.”
“Think harder. I told you, it’s about anonymity. And uniformity.”
That, with Torn’s earlier dismissal of Jak’s ability to pass for a Guard, is enough of a hint. One look at Torn’s ears, the only readily visible skin, is enough to confirm it. “The tattoos.”
“You thought they were for pride?” Torn snorts; it sounds like a staticky sneeze. “They’re brands. Once you’re in you can never leave. You can take off the uniform, but not your face. For the rest of your life, everyone will know what you were. And what you probably did. He turned the Guard on the people, and turned the people on the Guard. Brought out the worst in all of us in one neat circle of hatred and fear.”
“You left,” says Jak, because his stomach is turning and he needs to stop this train of thought now, before it continues on to chains and metal tables in the dark.
“Yeah, I did,” says Torn, flatly.
Jak opens his mouth to ask something more – Then you can? Or So it is possible or maybe just How? – but someone comes hurrying around a corner and nearly slams into Torn.
“Watch it,” he growls, making a sharp threatening gesture and stooping his shoulders so that, even with the mask it’s abundantly clear he’s glaring. It’s flawlessly done – exactly what any Guard Jak’s ever encountered would have done. The civilian pales in terror, apologizing with a sick look on his face before scurrying away.
Even knowing Torn was in the Guard, even with tattoos and now the uniform and the voice, somehow it’s never seemed wholly true – or at least not wholly imaginable.
It’s plain as day now, no imagination required. It makes Jak’s stomach twist.
Beside him, Torn snorts again at the look on his face. “Oh, it gets worse than that. Much worse,” he says, darkly.
Jak stares straight ahead, and doesn’t answer.
----------------------------------------------------
They pass through the slums and into the business sector. It’s nearly dark here, with the taller buildings and motorway blocking out the last of the sunlight. Everything in this sector is metallic and artificial – crackling yellow bulbs in the street lamps and red and blue glowing lights on the buildings. Of all the sectors in Haven City, Jak hates this one the most. There is no trace here of what was – or what should be. Not a single leaf or blade of grass, hardly a sliver of blue sky or starlight.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” he mutters. With Daxter there is nothing to say – their thoughts in this run in parallel without the need for words. But Jak has no idea what vision of the city Torn fights for.
“There’s no point in talking about should,” answers the man, dismissively. “Wishing gets you nowhere.”
“You’ve got some attitude.” Jak ducks a low-flying zoomer.
“Funny.”
“What?”
The metallic mask turns towards him, red eyes gleaming unnaturally in the twilight. “You always struck me as a guy with one pretty narrow focus yourself.”
“I think we need a vision,” says Jak cautiously, looking at the cold, artificial world around him. “I just don’t think I’m the guy to come up with it.”
“How humble.”
Jak’s eyebrow twitches. “You and Samos must really get along,” he mutters.
“The Sh – Samos?” Torn laughs, a short burst of genuine humour. “He can’t stand me,” says Torn wryly when he’s finished.
“But you’re – you practically run the place for him.”
“He needs me. He knows I’m good – and he doesn’t have a lot of time for strategy or logistics. But what he’s fighting for – it’s not just a cause, it’s a way of life. A vision of what we’re meant to be: free, out in the green under the sun.” Torn’s always respectful when he talks about The Shadow, but there’s something more in his voice now. Something more like reverence, mixed with wistfulness. Then he shrugs, and it disappears to be replaced by his usual matter-of-factness. “That’s not what I signed up for – it’s too big for me. He thinks I’m ignoring what’s really important for the sake of violence and revenge. I won’t say he’s wrong.”
Jak doesn’t point out the distinction between refusing to disagree and agreeing. “It’s none of my business,” he says instead.
“No,” agrees Torn, marching on. “It’s not.
----------------------------------------------------
The central Krimzon Guard headquarters is near the Baron’s palace, both for security and its central location. Torn, leading the way to the main entrance, tells Jak to follow him and keep his mouth shut. It’s not hard; being in the centre of so many red uniforms is making Jak tense so tightly that he can hardly move his jaw.
At the doorway, Torn produces a card from a pouch at his side to be scanned. “334 and mechanic on an 8-80,” he tells the gatekeeper blandly. “He’s here to check on the showers.”
“About damn time,” says the Guard, and lets them through.
“How’d you know they were broken?” whispers Jak when they’re into the main hall.
“Nothing in the locker rooms ever works,” Torn answers simply. A group of Guards marches towards them, and he shoves Jak out of the way with sudden and unnecessary sternness. “Move.”
Torn leads the way down the hall and to a musty-smelling stairwell with metal steps that disappear far down into the earth. There are footsteps descending from above as well, the metallic thumps echoing. Torn heads downwards.
They get out two flights down, in what is obviously a storage level. The hall is lined with a series of metal doors with tempered glass windows, and lit by ceiling lamps in wire cages. There are a few guards walking down the long hall, but also civilians in work clothes. Some are carrying equipment and supplies. It’s all somehow much more mundane than Jak had expected.
“This way,” says Torn, walking down the long corridor and turning a corner. They come to a second, smaller, stairwell and enter. There are no sounds of footsteps here. They head up.
“If they’ve brought it back here, it’ll be in the high-security evidence lock-up. The whole floor’s a high traffic area, but we’ll come out right next to the lock-up door. There’s a washing station right outside, in case of any accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“There’s a lot of black eco locked up there. Sometimes it leaks.”
Jak winces.
“Wait for a few seconds after I leave, then come up and fiddle with the sinks. If anyone asks, say you’ve been sent to check that they don’t need repairs. I’ll get the pack and meet you at the stairs.”
“Right.”
Torn leaves the stairwell, door clicking shut behind him. Jak steps into the lee of the door, and begins to count. At fifteen, he steps out.
A high-traffic area, Torn had said. He hadn’t exaggerated. There are Krimzon Guards swarming down this corridor. Most of them appear to be going or coming from somewhere far in the distance, passing the large chain doors with the sign reading “Evidence Lock-Up 4” without sparing it a glance. Many are carrying weapons – mostly tasers but some blasters as well. Jak swallows and turns his attention to the pair of sinks set into a shallow alcove across from the lock-up door. Trying to look thoughtful and attentive, he turns on first one faucet and then the other, then pulls up the plug to block the drain. The water fills the dirty basin slowly, and then drains away when he depresses the plug. He gets down on one knee preparatory to checking out the maze of pipes beneath the counter, and freezes at the voice from behind him.
“Hey, you.”
Jak turns, and as he stares at the Guard sitting behind a desk at the door to the evidence lock-up realises that he has no way to tell Torn apart from the rest of them.
“What’re you doing?”
“Just… testing. For repairs. You know. Checking for leaks.” He barely swallows the and stuff that tries to slip out. The Guard stares at him from behind his blank mask for several heartbeats while Jak sweats, then shrugs.
“Fine. Don’t block the corridor. And when you’re done, check out the south-east bathrooms; they’ve been blocked up for a week.”
“Right, sure.” Jak smiles what he hopes is a winning smile, and ducks down to peer intently into the darkness under the sink.
He’s only been down there for a minute when he hears heavy steps shuffling somewhere behind him, and then the generic voice. “This is it. I’m bringing it up to the Captain’s office.”
Jak turns to glance out of the corner of his eye at the scene on the other side of the wire evidence-room door. Torn, presumably, has set the radio pack on the gate guard’s desk and is leaning on it. The seated guard picks up the tag attached to the bulky case and reads it.
“This just came in an hour ago. He needs it already?”
“High priority case. Something to do with those scum in the Underground.”
The Guard makes a noncommittal noise. “Authorization code?”
Torn hesitates for an instant – or maybe it just seems that way to Jak, waiting poised to spring from the shadows. Then, “Haven Alpha Zero,” says Torn, in a flat voice. The Guard keys it into a pad, and nods.
“Alright. You’ve got it for an hour – if you need it longer you’ll have to call down with a confirmation code.”
“Yeah, sure.” Torn picks up the pack with a grunt, and waits for the Guard to buzz the door open. It rattles to one side, and Torn steps out into the hall just as Jak rises from his mock inspection.
Maybe Torn’s watching Jak, or maybe he’s just not adjusted to the limited field of vision the flat goggles must force, or maybe he’s just not watching. But either way, a pair of Guards storming down the hall at a near run slam right into his blind spot, knocking him roughly out of the way. Put off his balance by the heavy weight in his arms, Torn stumbles and Jak leaps up to help catch the pack at the same time that one of the Guards swivels back and reaches out to catch his shoulder to steady him.
He misses Torn’s shoulder, but catches the side of his mask instead.
For an instant time seems to slow, and Jak has the sense that he’s become precognitive. And then time snaps back like an elastic band, and the future rolls out in front of him.
The mask flies off, landing on the cement floor with a clatter, revealing Torn’s face and red dreads.
Very distinctly, Jak hears someone in the distance say, “Oh shit.” And then Torn’s dropped the radio pack into Jak’s arms and grabbed a blaster from the Guard nearest him. He takes out three Guards before any of them have a chance to react, clearing a way to the stairwell door, which he opens right into the head of a fourth. As the unconscious Guard slumps to the ground, he turns past Jak and starts firing. Jak doesn’t wait for direction; he hefts the box and pounds down the stairs.
Jak knows they need to go up to get out, but he doesn’t know that route and so heads down instead. Behind him he hears a heavy metallic clank, and turns to see Torn jamming the door shut with the stolen blaster.
Jak slams out of the stairwell on the floor below, intending to back-track the route they took to get here.
“No, right,” shouts Torn behind him, and Jak stumbles mid-step to change direction. They pass one janitor, who stares at them in shock, and then round a corner into a pair of Guards. One moves aside; the other points and begins to say something. Torn jams a violent elbow into his windpipe and he crumbles, tripping up his less astute colleague.
“Next door on the left,” he says, catching hold of the other side of the radio pack to help Jak with its weight. Together they enter the door: another stairwell. There are footsteps racing down from above, but they go up all the same. It’s just one flight, and then out onto the main floor.
There is chaos here in the wide hallway, and that’s good because where there’s chaos Jak can always make more. He unceremoniously drops the entire weight of the pack on Torn and kicks out forwards, twisting into a leaping roundhouse and dropping two guards at once. Another two go down as he lands, sweeping their legs out from under them.
The hall splits into two narrower corridors further down, and Torn’s already moving towards the left-hand one, balancing the radio on one hip momentarily to knock a Guard down with a fierce right cross as Jak watches. Then he’s swinging it back into both arms and hurrying forward at the best pace he can manage. Jak whips around to knock out the Guard trying to sneak up on him, and runs after Torn.
The narrower hallway is lined with dusty doors decorated with plain number plates. No one comes out of them as they jog past; he thinks he hears a lock turn in one.
“There’s a back exit into an alleyway just ahead. Down the stairs and head right. I’ll be right behind you.”
“What?” Jak looks at him; Torn nods over their shoulders, just as the first rifle blast shoots by to sear a dark mark into the wall ahead of them.
“I told you, the armour’s built to take a couple of eco blasts.” They reach the corner and Torn drops his side of the pack; Jak stumbles to catch his balance and then loses it again as Torn shoves him unceremoniously out of the line of fire. As Torn said, there’s a rusted door here with an old chain across it. Jak kicks it open without trouble; the chain snaps and the hinges squeal as the door peels outwards. As he leaves, he catches sight of Torn kneeling with a hand blaster, returning fire with his left gauntlet raised to shield his face.
The alley is small and dark, with poor lighting. The tiny slice of the sky he can see above is completely black now. Jak leaves the radio pack tucked in against the stairs and runs out into the main road. As always there’s still a steady, if somewhat reduced, stream of traffic. Jak waits for a flyer to pull out of traffic towards him, and kneels to leap. It’s hardly any effort to knock the driver out and then drop him a ways away from the back alley – no need to get him involved in this.
Torn’s tripping down the stairs when he returns, shedding armour as he goes. In the poor light all Jak can see of him is the rusty colour of his hair and his pale face and hands as the gauntlets disappear.
“You have the radio?” he demands as Jak puts the flyer in low gear to hover a foot off the ground.
“It’s there.” He points, watching Torn pick it up with some difficulty and shove it into the passenger seat. He climbs up after it, perching awkwardly around it like a broody pelican.
“Would’ve been too easy to grab a cruiser, would it?” he mutters. Behind them comes the sound of distant shouting. Jak shifts gears and hits the gas.
-------------------------------------------------------
“So,” Jak says after a few blocks of silence. Torn is staring fixedly at the traffic ahead of them like a man determinedly thinking about something far from the present, wincing at Jak’s sharper turns. “That went well.”
“Do us all a favour and leave the sarcasm to your rat.”
Jak brakes more sharply than necessary, and sees the answering wince. “I couldn’t help but notice that our cover got blown surprisingly fast there. The Guard can’t find their asses with both hands, but they all knew your face. And you knew the layout of that place like the back of your hand. And their codes.”
Torn doesn’t look at him. “I was a Captain. It’s not a secret.”
“So?”
“You really don’t pay attention, do you? Captains aren’t grunts; they’re personally responsible for their failures.” And then, with the first sign of reluctance, “They don’t wear masks.”
“It’s another trap, isn’t it?” Out of the corner of his eye, Jak sees Torn turn to look at him for the first time since they got out of the building. “You’re the top of the food chain – you order all the crimes, all the maliciousness that takes place under you, or at least take responsibility for it. Captains must want to get out of there pretty quick.”
“Some of them like it. The power. Seeing people flinch when they walk into a room even though they’re unarmed and outnumbered.” Torn shrugs. “They’re the ones that end up with a hole in their backs, sooner than later.”
“Even if they don’t, they’re dead as soon as they take the job, aren’t they? Either you die in uniform, or you leave, and everyone knows your face and what you did.” Jak shakes his head. Hot, burning hatred he understands, and the desperate obsessive need for power is something he can at least imagine. But this kind of cold, calculating maliciousness, murdering your own men with mind-games… Everyone’s hatred is their own unique thing, but Jak knows he’s suddenly a lot closer to understanding Torn’s.
“I told you, one neat circle. The Guard’ll kill you for deserting, and everyone else will for being there in the first place,” says Torn. “You never leave the Guard, or you never leave your house again and hope you can trust at least one person to bring you what you need to survive. Your choice.”
“You left,” says Jak, for the second time that night. “Why?”
Torn shrugs. For a minute Jak doesn’t think he’s going to answer, and they cut quietly through the cool night air. When he does speak, he’s staring straight ahead again as if talking to himself. “I already knew about the Underground; knew they’d take me in. Even then, I’d seen too much to dream their dreams. A new life? Return to the forest? I ran out of that kind of idealism a long time ago. All I want is for this city to be free to be as good or evil as we make it, not as that bastard twists it to be.” He shifts his weight, still crouched low over the radio pack, animal-like.
“It’s still a dream,” says Jak quietly.
Torn snorts, but treats his reply to a rare silence.
Series: Jak & Daxter (Jak 2)
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Notes: Headcanon melted my brain. So now I'm trying to melt yours.
Summary: Jak and Torn pull a mission together; Jak is treated to some insights on the Krimzon Guard, which may nearly make up for having to work with Torn.
Jak realised very early on that while Torn is never happy, he’s least unhappy when things operate as they’re meant to. It is the natural order of things that Torn assigns missions to Underground agents, and the agents carry them out. Which is why, when Jak comes back with a mission for Torn, he knows before he even sets foot in the Underground’s dingy headquarters that there is going to be extensive shouting.
“We were too late to pick up the last radio pack,” Jak reports without prelude, and watches Torn’s eyes narrow. “The Krimzon Guard were taking it away when we got there. Said they were taking it to central headquarters.”
Torn slams both hands down on the table, leaning over it to cast a dark shadow on a stained map spread across its surface. The table rattles but doesn’t tip; it’s used to it. “That radio pack is essential to our operations – without it our network can’t communicate. It was your job to pick it up before they got there.”
Jak crosses his arms, and out of the corner of his eye sees Daxter mirror the motion. “Well, we didn’t.”
“That’s right. You didn’t.” Torn has a habit of slowing down rather than speeding up when he’s blood-boiling mad, and he’s doing it now. It always puts Jak, who’s used to dealing with the spit-fire type of rage, just slightly off balance. “Now, thanks to you, our network is in danger of going under. With the old transistors traceable now, these were our only chance of communicating without being detected. Every single component in those packs is contraband. You know how long it took us to arrange their acquisition? Four months. That is four months of work, money and risk you just flushed down the sewers.”
Daxter has been twitching throughout the whole speech, like a rocket with a lit fuse. He blasts off now, gesticulating so elaborately he nearly falls off Jak’s shoulder. “Well maybe if you had given us more than ten minutes’ warning and hadn’t dropped the radios in the middle of busy roads we would have gotten there in time.”
Torn shifts to lean against the table and stares up at them, unimpressed. “Maybe if you did your work seriously instead of like a couple of rookie racers trying to show off, you wouldn’t have screwed it up. The drops were doable. If you had the sense of a lurker.”
“Then why weren’t you out there picking them up, Mr Big-Shot? Too busy fondling your map collection?” Daxter, as usual, can’t stop pushing buttons until he finds the one that causes everything to blow up in his face. Torn’s fingers twitch dangerously towards the pistol at his hip; Jak shifts to move Daxter away even as the Ottsel scurries towards the far end of his shoulder.
“You should be more careful of that mouth of yours, rat.” Torn straightens, face falling into shadow as he rises above the circle of light cast by the overhead lamp. He looks to Jak. “You said they were taking it to central headquarters?”
Jak waits for a beat before answering, refusing to be cowed, eyes hard and arms still crossed. “That’s right.”
“Then you can’t get it on your own. Even if you could get in without getting your face blasted off – unlikely – you’d never find it. The place is a maze. It’s meant to be.”
“So why don’t you go get it, Mr – Torn.” Daxter alters his sentence as Torn’s eyes flash to him, finishing with a smile that projects innocence so saccharine it could melt teeth.
“Because I can’t carry it all the way out of there on my own. Or did you forget we gave you a transport truck to pick them up in?” Torn also has a trick of showing up each and every mistake you make, but this doesn’t bother Jak so much. He grew up around Samos. Silence is the closest thing to praise either of them appears capable of.
“I’ll go,” says Jak, flatly.
“Damn right you will. But the rat stays here – he’d blow us both in a second.”
Daxter begins to protest, but Jak lays a hand on his back. “Fine.”
“Fine,” echoes Torn. “Go out there and find a Guard. Knock him out, and bring him back here. We need a uniform.”
“Just one?”
“You’re going as a civvie. No way you’d pass for a Guard. Don’t worry – they don’t have a description of you, anyway.” His words are disdainful, not reassuring.
Jack shrugs. “I’m not worried.”
----------------------------------------------------------
It’s no trouble to ambush a lone guard and round-house him into an unexpected nap. Carrying him back to the Underground HQ is slightly more difficult, simply because of the bulky armour. By the time Jak drags him down the steep stairs, Torn’s waiting in a pair of dark pants and a dark shirt. He removes the Guard’s uniform with surprising speed, stripping off the boots, gauntlets, breast and back plate, leg guards and helmet to reveal an unexpectedly thin and unimpressive form below. Jak stares down, surprised. Torn catches his glance, and misinterprets it.
“You were expecting someone more menacing?”
“No. Just … bigger.”
“The armour is built to withstand two dark eco blasts,” says Torn flatly, as if that explains it. He picks up one of the spike-toed boots, and pulls it on with a grimace. “Too damn small.” He stomps heavily a couple of times, and then picks up the other one, gesturing at the unconscious guard with it. “Tie him up, gag him, and drop him outside somewhere he won’t be found for a couple of hours. We can’t have him reporting his gear stolen.”
Daxter scrambles down and returns a minute later with some scavenged rope; they bind the Guard and then Jak throws him over his shoulder, remounting the stairs again while Torn suits up in silence behind them. On his other shoulder, Daxter grumbles about the smell.
-------------------------------------------------------------
When they return, Torn is staring down distastefully at the helmet. He’s pulled on the rest of the uniform, and true to its role it has removed his individuality. The red suit looks wrong here, out of place and alarming. Even Torn’s face above it doesn’t cancel Jak’s instinctive tensing, ready to kick or draw his gun. If Torn notices, he doesn’t comment.
“334,” Torn says instead, flattening his hair back with one hand preparatory to putting on the helmet.
“What?” asks Jak, not following the non-sequitur.
“334. It’s his number. The Guard identify themselves by number, not name. You’ll be a civilian advisor; you call me 334. Go change your shirt and leave the gun and goggles. That should do it.”
Jak says nothing, but changes his shirt to a plain white and then slowly pulls off his goggles and slips his blaster from its holster. The shirt he leaves on one of the empty bunks. The goggles he gives to Daxter, who holds them awkwardly in both hands. They call more attention to his size than anything else has in a long time. But Jak’s no stranger to locking away that guilt – he has a whole box of it. The gun he holds onto for a few seconds more – he’s more than competent at hand-to-hand combat, but it’s a sense of security he’s loath to give up. Finally he collapses it on the bed and puts the shirt over it, hiding its lean form.
Daxter runs up one of the bed poles to stand on the upper bunk, putting him at head height. “You be careful, big guy. I ain’t going out there alone to rescue you again.”
“I won’t let them catch me twice.” Jak fists his hands and opens them deliberately, feeling the unnatural strength there.
“Touching,” says Torn dryly from behind them. “Let’s go before I mist up the mask.” He pulls it on over his face, blast shield slipped up to rest on top of his head, and heads up the stairs. Jak sighs, and follows.
----------------------------------------------------------
It’s late afternoon, the sun just barely hovering above the lower buildings and casting long shadows on the broken road. The transport they used to pick up the other packs is still parked outside, its bulk and sleekness out of place in the slums. Torn heads past it as if he hasn’t seen it.
“Hey.” Jak waits for him to look round, and thumbs at the truck. “Can’t we just take the transport?”
“We don’t have parking clearance. We’ll find a ride when we’ve got the goods,” replies a voice that is most definitely not Torn’s ragged half-whisper. Jak’s heard it before, passing Guards and cruisers on the streets. A low, slightly staticky voice he associates with calls for back-up and complaints about the city. For an instant he wonders if Torn has somehow turned up a Guard scanner built into his uniform. But then he realises that the voice has answered his question.
“Torn?” he asks, cautiously.
“No, Baron Praxis,” responds the same low voice, sarcastically. “Of course it’s me. There’s a voice-changer built into the mouthpiece.” He turns and continues walking. Jak follows more slowly, brow furrowed.
“…Why?”
Torn pauses to wait for him to catch up. Although the mask gives no clue to the expression of the face beneath, Jak knows it will be contemptuous.
“You really haven’t got Praxis figured out, have you?”
“I don’t need to. All I need to do is kill him.”
“And thinking like that’s probably why you’re not a hell of a lot closer to getting there. Why you wouldn’t be any closer without the contacts you’ve made doing the thinking for you.”
They round the corner, Jak gritting his teeth silently, and Torn heads right. They walk on in silence for a minute, passing some pedestrians who hurry by while giving them a wide berth. The roads are already emptying as they near dusk, and after a moment they’re in the clear again. Torn takes a few more steps before speaking again, now in the lecturing tone he uses for mission briefings.
“It’s all about power, and fear. If you’re one man trying to control a whole city, you need help. You need people willing to do anything to anyone and not worry about the consequences. The only way to do that is to guarantee no one will know who’s doing it. He learned that real quick. And he learned that, after a while, people will do almost anything if they know no one will judge them for it. That’s what the voice changers and the masks are for. Anonymity that lets you fire into crowds and evict old grannies and turn off the water supply to whole sectors.”
Jak doesn’t have to ask to know who he is; there is only one man who can put that kind of hatred into residents of Haven City. “I thought they were for the eco blasts,” he says, lamely, taken aback.
“You think we really need masks and blast shields?” Torn indicates the red piece of metal currently sitting uselessly on top of his head. “No. After a few years, almost anyone will do anything if they’re wearing a mask. Especially when you realise that everyone else hates you, and all you’ve got is your reputation in the Corps. That’s the other side of it. Once you’re a Guard, you’re in for life. There’s no quitting. All you’ve got is each other, and that means everyone’s as mean as the worst bastard in the Squad just to keep themselves from being ostracised for being soft.” The voice-changer alters the timbre of Torn’s voice, but nothing could keep the hatred out of it. Seeing that black, dripping loathing coming from someone other than himself shocks him into a momentary silence that he only escapes with difficulty.
“But… you must be able to quit. Or defect, or something.”
“Think harder. I told you, it’s about anonymity. And uniformity.”
That, with Torn’s earlier dismissal of Jak’s ability to pass for a Guard, is enough of a hint. One look at Torn’s ears, the only readily visible skin, is enough to confirm it. “The tattoos.”
“You thought they were for pride?” Torn snorts; it sounds like a staticky sneeze. “They’re brands. Once you’re in you can never leave. You can take off the uniform, but not your face. For the rest of your life, everyone will know what you were. And what you probably did. He turned the Guard on the people, and turned the people on the Guard. Brought out the worst in all of us in one neat circle of hatred and fear.”
“You left,” says Jak, because his stomach is turning and he needs to stop this train of thought now, before it continues on to chains and metal tables in the dark.
“Yeah, I did,” says Torn, flatly.
Jak opens his mouth to ask something more – Then you can? Or So it is possible or maybe just How? – but someone comes hurrying around a corner and nearly slams into Torn.
“Watch it,” he growls, making a sharp threatening gesture and stooping his shoulders so that, even with the mask it’s abundantly clear he’s glaring. It’s flawlessly done – exactly what any Guard Jak’s ever encountered would have done. The civilian pales in terror, apologizing with a sick look on his face before scurrying away.
Even knowing Torn was in the Guard, even with tattoos and now the uniform and the voice, somehow it’s never seemed wholly true – or at least not wholly imaginable.
It’s plain as day now, no imagination required. It makes Jak’s stomach twist.
Beside him, Torn snorts again at the look on his face. “Oh, it gets worse than that. Much worse,” he says, darkly.
Jak stares straight ahead, and doesn’t answer.
----------------------------------------------------
They pass through the slums and into the business sector. It’s nearly dark here, with the taller buildings and motorway blocking out the last of the sunlight. Everything in this sector is metallic and artificial – crackling yellow bulbs in the street lamps and red and blue glowing lights on the buildings. Of all the sectors in Haven City, Jak hates this one the most. There is no trace here of what was – or what should be. Not a single leaf or blade of grass, hardly a sliver of blue sky or starlight.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” he mutters. With Daxter there is nothing to say – their thoughts in this run in parallel without the need for words. But Jak has no idea what vision of the city Torn fights for.
“There’s no point in talking about should,” answers the man, dismissively. “Wishing gets you nowhere.”
“You’ve got some attitude.” Jak ducks a low-flying zoomer.
“Funny.”
“What?”
The metallic mask turns towards him, red eyes gleaming unnaturally in the twilight. “You always struck me as a guy with one pretty narrow focus yourself.”
“I think we need a vision,” says Jak cautiously, looking at the cold, artificial world around him. “I just don’t think I’m the guy to come up with it.”
“How humble.”
Jak’s eyebrow twitches. “You and Samos must really get along,” he mutters.
“The Sh – Samos?” Torn laughs, a short burst of genuine humour. “He can’t stand me,” says Torn wryly when he’s finished.
“But you’re – you practically run the place for him.”
“He needs me. He knows I’m good – and he doesn’t have a lot of time for strategy or logistics. But what he’s fighting for – it’s not just a cause, it’s a way of life. A vision of what we’re meant to be: free, out in the green under the sun.” Torn’s always respectful when he talks about The Shadow, but there’s something more in his voice now. Something more like reverence, mixed with wistfulness. Then he shrugs, and it disappears to be replaced by his usual matter-of-factness. “That’s not what I signed up for – it’s too big for me. He thinks I’m ignoring what’s really important for the sake of violence and revenge. I won’t say he’s wrong.”
Jak doesn’t point out the distinction between refusing to disagree and agreeing. “It’s none of my business,” he says instead.
“No,” agrees Torn, marching on. “It’s not.
----------------------------------------------------
The central Krimzon Guard headquarters is near the Baron’s palace, both for security and its central location. Torn, leading the way to the main entrance, tells Jak to follow him and keep his mouth shut. It’s not hard; being in the centre of so many red uniforms is making Jak tense so tightly that he can hardly move his jaw.
At the doorway, Torn produces a card from a pouch at his side to be scanned. “334 and mechanic on an 8-80,” he tells the gatekeeper blandly. “He’s here to check on the showers.”
“About damn time,” says the Guard, and lets them through.
“How’d you know they were broken?” whispers Jak when they’re into the main hall.
“Nothing in the locker rooms ever works,” Torn answers simply. A group of Guards marches towards them, and he shoves Jak out of the way with sudden and unnecessary sternness. “Move.”
Torn leads the way down the hall and to a musty-smelling stairwell with metal steps that disappear far down into the earth. There are footsteps descending from above as well, the metallic thumps echoing. Torn heads downwards.
They get out two flights down, in what is obviously a storage level. The hall is lined with a series of metal doors with tempered glass windows, and lit by ceiling lamps in wire cages. There are a few guards walking down the long hall, but also civilians in work clothes. Some are carrying equipment and supplies. It’s all somehow much more mundane than Jak had expected.
“This way,” says Torn, walking down the long corridor and turning a corner. They come to a second, smaller, stairwell and enter. There are no sounds of footsteps here. They head up.
“If they’ve brought it back here, it’ll be in the high-security evidence lock-up. The whole floor’s a high traffic area, but we’ll come out right next to the lock-up door. There’s a washing station right outside, in case of any accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“There’s a lot of black eco locked up there. Sometimes it leaks.”
Jak winces.
“Wait for a few seconds after I leave, then come up and fiddle with the sinks. If anyone asks, say you’ve been sent to check that they don’t need repairs. I’ll get the pack and meet you at the stairs.”
“Right.”
Torn leaves the stairwell, door clicking shut behind him. Jak steps into the lee of the door, and begins to count. At fifteen, he steps out.
A high-traffic area, Torn had said. He hadn’t exaggerated. There are Krimzon Guards swarming down this corridor. Most of them appear to be going or coming from somewhere far in the distance, passing the large chain doors with the sign reading “Evidence Lock-Up 4” without sparing it a glance. Many are carrying weapons – mostly tasers but some blasters as well. Jak swallows and turns his attention to the pair of sinks set into a shallow alcove across from the lock-up door. Trying to look thoughtful and attentive, he turns on first one faucet and then the other, then pulls up the plug to block the drain. The water fills the dirty basin slowly, and then drains away when he depresses the plug. He gets down on one knee preparatory to checking out the maze of pipes beneath the counter, and freezes at the voice from behind him.
“Hey, you.”
Jak turns, and as he stares at the Guard sitting behind a desk at the door to the evidence lock-up realises that he has no way to tell Torn apart from the rest of them.
“What’re you doing?”
“Just… testing. For repairs. You know. Checking for leaks.” He barely swallows the and stuff that tries to slip out. The Guard stares at him from behind his blank mask for several heartbeats while Jak sweats, then shrugs.
“Fine. Don’t block the corridor. And when you’re done, check out the south-east bathrooms; they’ve been blocked up for a week.”
“Right, sure.” Jak smiles what he hopes is a winning smile, and ducks down to peer intently into the darkness under the sink.
He’s only been down there for a minute when he hears heavy steps shuffling somewhere behind him, and then the generic voice. “This is it. I’m bringing it up to the Captain’s office.”
Jak turns to glance out of the corner of his eye at the scene on the other side of the wire evidence-room door. Torn, presumably, has set the radio pack on the gate guard’s desk and is leaning on it. The seated guard picks up the tag attached to the bulky case and reads it.
“This just came in an hour ago. He needs it already?”
“High priority case. Something to do with those scum in the Underground.”
The Guard makes a noncommittal noise. “Authorization code?”
Torn hesitates for an instant – or maybe it just seems that way to Jak, waiting poised to spring from the shadows. Then, “Haven Alpha Zero,” says Torn, in a flat voice. The Guard keys it into a pad, and nods.
“Alright. You’ve got it for an hour – if you need it longer you’ll have to call down with a confirmation code.”
“Yeah, sure.” Torn picks up the pack with a grunt, and waits for the Guard to buzz the door open. It rattles to one side, and Torn steps out into the hall just as Jak rises from his mock inspection.
Maybe Torn’s watching Jak, or maybe he’s just not adjusted to the limited field of vision the flat goggles must force, or maybe he’s just not watching. But either way, a pair of Guards storming down the hall at a near run slam right into his blind spot, knocking him roughly out of the way. Put off his balance by the heavy weight in his arms, Torn stumbles and Jak leaps up to help catch the pack at the same time that one of the Guards swivels back and reaches out to catch his shoulder to steady him.
He misses Torn’s shoulder, but catches the side of his mask instead.
For an instant time seems to slow, and Jak has the sense that he’s become precognitive. And then time snaps back like an elastic band, and the future rolls out in front of him.
The mask flies off, landing on the cement floor with a clatter, revealing Torn’s face and red dreads.
Very distinctly, Jak hears someone in the distance say, “Oh shit.” And then Torn’s dropped the radio pack into Jak’s arms and grabbed a blaster from the Guard nearest him. He takes out three Guards before any of them have a chance to react, clearing a way to the stairwell door, which he opens right into the head of a fourth. As the unconscious Guard slumps to the ground, he turns past Jak and starts firing. Jak doesn’t wait for direction; he hefts the box and pounds down the stairs.
Jak knows they need to go up to get out, but he doesn’t know that route and so heads down instead. Behind him he hears a heavy metallic clank, and turns to see Torn jamming the door shut with the stolen blaster.
Jak slams out of the stairwell on the floor below, intending to back-track the route they took to get here.
“No, right,” shouts Torn behind him, and Jak stumbles mid-step to change direction. They pass one janitor, who stares at them in shock, and then round a corner into a pair of Guards. One moves aside; the other points and begins to say something. Torn jams a violent elbow into his windpipe and he crumbles, tripping up his less astute colleague.
“Next door on the left,” he says, catching hold of the other side of the radio pack to help Jak with its weight. Together they enter the door: another stairwell. There are footsteps racing down from above, but they go up all the same. It’s just one flight, and then out onto the main floor.
There is chaos here in the wide hallway, and that’s good because where there’s chaos Jak can always make more. He unceremoniously drops the entire weight of the pack on Torn and kicks out forwards, twisting into a leaping roundhouse and dropping two guards at once. Another two go down as he lands, sweeping their legs out from under them.
The hall splits into two narrower corridors further down, and Torn’s already moving towards the left-hand one, balancing the radio on one hip momentarily to knock a Guard down with a fierce right cross as Jak watches. Then he’s swinging it back into both arms and hurrying forward at the best pace he can manage. Jak whips around to knock out the Guard trying to sneak up on him, and runs after Torn.
The narrower hallway is lined with dusty doors decorated with plain number plates. No one comes out of them as they jog past; he thinks he hears a lock turn in one.
“There’s a back exit into an alleyway just ahead. Down the stairs and head right. I’ll be right behind you.”
“What?” Jak looks at him; Torn nods over their shoulders, just as the first rifle blast shoots by to sear a dark mark into the wall ahead of them.
“I told you, the armour’s built to take a couple of eco blasts.” They reach the corner and Torn drops his side of the pack; Jak stumbles to catch his balance and then loses it again as Torn shoves him unceremoniously out of the line of fire. As Torn said, there’s a rusted door here with an old chain across it. Jak kicks it open without trouble; the chain snaps and the hinges squeal as the door peels outwards. As he leaves, he catches sight of Torn kneeling with a hand blaster, returning fire with his left gauntlet raised to shield his face.
The alley is small and dark, with poor lighting. The tiny slice of the sky he can see above is completely black now. Jak leaves the radio pack tucked in against the stairs and runs out into the main road. As always there’s still a steady, if somewhat reduced, stream of traffic. Jak waits for a flyer to pull out of traffic towards him, and kneels to leap. It’s hardly any effort to knock the driver out and then drop him a ways away from the back alley – no need to get him involved in this.
Torn’s tripping down the stairs when he returns, shedding armour as he goes. In the poor light all Jak can see of him is the rusty colour of his hair and his pale face and hands as the gauntlets disappear.
“You have the radio?” he demands as Jak puts the flyer in low gear to hover a foot off the ground.
“It’s there.” He points, watching Torn pick it up with some difficulty and shove it into the passenger seat. He climbs up after it, perching awkwardly around it like a broody pelican.
“Would’ve been too easy to grab a cruiser, would it?” he mutters. Behind them comes the sound of distant shouting. Jak shifts gears and hits the gas.
-------------------------------------------------------
“So,” Jak says after a few blocks of silence. Torn is staring fixedly at the traffic ahead of them like a man determinedly thinking about something far from the present, wincing at Jak’s sharper turns. “That went well.”
“Do us all a favour and leave the sarcasm to your rat.”
Jak brakes more sharply than necessary, and sees the answering wince. “I couldn’t help but notice that our cover got blown surprisingly fast there. The Guard can’t find their asses with both hands, but they all knew your face. And you knew the layout of that place like the back of your hand. And their codes.”
Torn doesn’t look at him. “I was a Captain. It’s not a secret.”
“So?”
“You really don’t pay attention, do you? Captains aren’t grunts; they’re personally responsible for their failures.” And then, with the first sign of reluctance, “They don’t wear masks.”
“It’s another trap, isn’t it?” Out of the corner of his eye, Jak sees Torn turn to look at him for the first time since they got out of the building. “You’re the top of the food chain – you order all the crimes, all the maliciousness that takes place under you, or at least take responsibility for it. Captains must want to get out of there pretty quick.”
“Some of them like it. The power. Seeing people flinch when they walk into a room even though they’re unarmed and outnumbered.” Torn shrugs. “They’re the ones that end up with a hole in their backs, sooner than later.”
“Even if they don’t, they’re dead as soon as they take the job, aren’t they? Either you die in uniform, or you leave, and everyone knows your face and what you did.” Jak shakes his head. Hot, burning hatred he understands, and the desperate obsessive need for power is something he can at least imagine. But this kind of cold, calculating maliciousness, murdering your own men with mind-games… Everyone’s hatred is their own unique thing, but Jak knows he’s suddenly a lot closer to understanding Torn’s.
“I told you, one neat circle. The Guard’ll kill you for deserting, and everyone else will for being there in the first place,” says Torn. “You never leave the Guard, or you never leave your house again and hope you can trust at least one person to bring you what you need to survive. Your choice.”
“You left,” says Jak, for the second time that night. “Why?”
Torn shrugs. For a minute Jak doesn’t think he’s going to answer, and they cut quietly through the cool night air. When he does speak, he’s staring straight ahead again as if talking to himself. “I already knew about the Underground; knew they’d take me in. Even then, I’d seen too much to dream their dreams. A new life? Return to the forest? I ran out of that kind of idealism a long time ago. All I want is for this city to be free to be as good or evil as we make it, not as that bastard twists it to be.” He shifts his weight, still crouched low over the radio pack, animal-like.
“It’s still a dream,” says Jak quietly.
Torn snorts, but treats his reply to a rare silence.
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Never enough Jak fic!
Date: 2011-05-24 11:53 pm (UTC)