Chapter Text
> Jane: Wake.
The very first thing you hear, an artificial sleep still weighing down all of your limbs, is a mechanical hiss.
JANE: *cough*
JANE: *sputter* *cough* *wheeze*
The second thing you hear is your own lungs threatening to hack up a <???>'s worth of cryofluid. Augh, ew, gross.
Your lungs take a second to fully recover.
JANE: *wheeze*
JANE: What...
What's the last thing you remember?
JANE: I'm trying to figure that out mys-- *cough, hack, wheeze*
You take another moment to cough. It's pretty gross, all things considered!
By this point, the hiss of pistons has all but ceased, and your cryopod's door has fully unlocked. Your coughing fits have pretty much shaken the sleep out of your body, for better or worse.
You shove open the door, and clamber out to an extremely dismal looking basement. Like nobody's been down here in a hundred years.
JANE: Dad?
No sign. He was the one who helped you get into the cryopod, so that doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing, if he managed to find one of his own.
If...
You decide to stop thinking about your dad.
JANE: John?
JANE: John!?
You call out for your ROBOTIC BROTHER. No doubt he's just upstairs, preparing a nice game of SCRABBLE or YAHTZEE or BLOKUS, and you are just being silly for having a bad feeling about the creepy basement.
Maybe it is a prank! Yes, you are suddenly quite sure of that. With the dark basement lit solely by the lamp from your cryopod, it might LOOK like it was in complete functional disarray, but the piles of debris and scrap metal all around you are probably just props for a prank your ROBOT FRIEND set up! He is such a trickster, that guy.
You start to make your way to the stairs, marvelling at the job they did. Yep. Sure did a great. Job. With these fake signs of a really bad thing having happened when you were out. These piles of junk sure look realist--
JANE: Oof!
You trip on an aforementioned scrap heap and fall to the ground with a thud.
JANE: Ugh...
JANE: This isn't a very good...
JANE: ...prank...
JANE: Oh, no.
JANE: John!!!
JOHN, your ROBOT FRIEND/YOUNGER BROTHER is lying on the ground a few feet away from the stairs. You can't see his condition well in this light, but what you do see isn't good.
JANE: John!!! Wake up, John!!!
JANE: Haha, make believe time is over, John, your prankster's gambit has truly won mine over!!! :B :B :B :B :B :B :B :B :B :B
JANE: This is a very clever ruse, buster, but you are scaring me!!!
JANE: JOHN!!!
JANE: (Oh god, please don't be dead.)
JANE: WAKE UP!
> Locate power switch on robo--
Out of options and desperate for some kind of resolution, you slap the shit out of the face of your kid robobrother.
Just once. Hard. But moving him looks like a bad idea, and you're not a technician, no matter how much your cousin Jake told you that studying basic robot maintenance would be good for John. You always thought there'd be a "later."
A faint hum from deep in John's skull. You want to collapse in relief -- this is his boot-up sequence.
His LED eyes-- no. One eye. His eye flickers, blinking back at you.
You start babbling your relief.
JANE: Oh my goodness, John, you have NO idea how worried I was.
JANE: I thought -- I had no idea -- gosh, what HAPPENED out here?!
JANE: You look as if you've been mauled by a bear! Good gracious, John, you've got to be more careful when I'm not around, not that I'm planning to ever sleep for this long ever again, hoo.
JANE: What about you!!! Gosh, I'm so grateful you've still maintained a charge -- I know we were worried about the reactor giving out, but you seem to be...
He's just. Staring.
JANE: John?
His LED eye panel "blinks."
????: huh? @re you talking t𝜃 me?
JANE: --
JANE: Yes????
JANE: Hell, what's gotten into you?
????: uh...
He looks around the room, almost childlike in the way his remaining blue eye performs a scan. Some part of you is reminded of how he was the day he and J4D3 were taken out of the simulation -- you could've almost seen the gears literally turning in his head, the pair of them terrified and confused. Now, though, John just looks naively curious.
Somehow, this is worse.
????: wow, it sure is d@rk in here! hah@!
JANE: John.
You grab his face and force him to look at you again.
JANE: Answer my question, please!
????: wh@t questi𝜃n?
JANE: What on Earth happened to you!
????: haha what?
JANE: How did you end up damaged and shut down on the floor?! It looks like something tried to kill you! Your side is missing, John!
????: it is?
JANE: YES!!!
JANE: How did it happen?!
It's as if you aren't even there.
JANE: JOHN!!!
He blinks again after you shake him. Then he smiles.
????: hell𝜃!
J0-N3: my n@me is j0-n3!
J0-N3: it'ss̶s̛ssssss҉ss̵s̡s҉s͜sss̕s̀ss̕sss҉s̶s͢s͡s
J0-N3: it's nice t𝜃 meet you!
JANE: Oh, you have got to be kidding me.