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Sometimes, Jake gets this weird sense of deja vu. He’ll be fighting some bloody, awful battle and hear Rachel let out a harsh bout of laughter and it’ll just hit him like a freight train. It’s like he’s done this before, and he recognizes every moment of it. The fight itself isn’t anything special, and he tries to tell himself that that must be why he feels like this. He’s fought the same kind of battle a hundred times before. He knows, deep down, that that’s not it. Its the /exact same/ battle. But then a hork-bajir’s blade comes just a little too close to severing his arm and the moment is gone, and he’s back to fighting for his life without knowing whether or not he’ll get out with his life or whether this will be the battle that costs the lives of his friends. In the end, they escape and he doesn’t think about that weird feeling again until the next time it happens.
Rachel gets weird dreams sometimes. They’re not nightmares (and really, those don’t just happen ‘sometimes’) but she doesn’t know how else she might explain them. She knows things, in these dreams. Things that she shouldn’t know, and really wouldn’t want to. She sees realities that are not her own, worlds in which she kills in the open and revels in how it makes her feel, instead of hiding it in the shadows and being terrified every time she thinks about how her heart isn’t pounding with fear during battles anymore. She lives while Cassie is executed, and Marco dies a bloody death, screaming in anguish. She goes on when Tobias’s body is found, barely recognizable anymore, and she barely spares him a thought. Jake is always there with her, and she is almost scared of him in these dreams. Sometimes he kills her, and other times she destroys him. When she sleeps, Rachel knows exactly why she is Crayak’s favorite.
He is scared and confused, and Crayak knows it. Rachel is somewhere outside his line of vision, screaming profanities and threats. A part of Jake wants to tell her to shut up, but the more prevalent part is proud of her. He wishes that he were as brave as his cousin now, as this monstrosity inspires feelings of gut-wrenching terror. He hates how scared he is, but this is so very /wrong/ and there is nothing he can do to fix it. A sudden sense of foreboding hits him as he realizes that Rachel is the only one he can hear. He tries to turn his head, only to learn that he’s held down. He struggles, muscles that shouldn’t be there bulging and straining against the restraints. He manages to find a shred of bravery and speaks to the air, knowing that Crayak is listening.
"Where are they? What do you want this time?" He wants to continue, to try and reason. This goes against the Game, doesn’t it? Crayak always wants something, to make some deal or pull some strings to watch them dance. Maybe, if he can figure it out he can get everyone out of this alive and relatively unscathed. (His mind whispers that nothing he can say will count for shit if they’re already dead. But they’ve come back before, haven’t they? When Ellimist and Crayak are involved, it’s possible, right?) When he tries to force the words out, it’s like his tongue twists around itself and swells and suddenly he’s choking on it. He gags, tries to draw a breath, but it’s useless. Just as quickly as it starts, it’s over and he’s gasping and his eyes are watering. Bile rises in his throat and he can’t even turn his head and there’s vomit spilling onto his cheeks and then the process of choking starts all over again. He hears laughter.
Tears stream down his cheeks and his head is resting in a puddle of vomit and everything is wrong.
He tries to remember how it is they got there, but he’s drawing a blank. In fact, it’s like things are being slowly erased from his head, scribbled out like the wrong answer on a test. It hits him that Rachel shouldn’t be here; she was dead, wasn’t she? He suddenly can’t remember what color his eyes are or what kind of an animal Tobias had been trapped as or what Marco’s smile looks like or how Cassie’s hand felt when he held it or Ax’s full name. He’s shaking now, trying desperately to remember all the little things and his panic mounting as he realizes he can’t. He stays silent, refusing to show Crayak the effect this is having, despite the sinking feeling he gets about the fact that Crayak is behind this and already knows what he’s feeling.
When a figure appears over him, he jolts with shock. It isn’t Crayak, thank God, but it’s awful just the same. When he tries to look at its face, he finds himself going nearly cross-eyed. He thinks that its features might be what it’s like to be blind and the thought makes him shiver. It reaches to touch him, hands deathly cold and slippery and rough as it prods and pulls. He feels a sharp sting and glances to find another one of the things at his side, formless fingers holding a needle that slides easily through his flesh. He watches blood dripping upwards, going against gravity and the thing gathers it into a small jar and departs, leaving Jake’s blood to congeal and hang above his head. Rachel was yelling now, furious and scared and it left Jake feeling empty. The faceless things were all around him, and for a long time (or maybe no time at all) he let them work and listened for any sign of the others and tried to recall the memories that had been taken from him.
HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING
His breath caught in his throat. Rachel went quiet. His voice shook as he yelled, “What were we supposed to have learned?” The faceless masses had frozen where they were. One still had its fingers curled in his hair, and Jake wanted nothing more than to lash out at it. He wanted to morph and rip its head from its shoulders. The impulse made his freeze up, as well, a sick feeling boiling in his stomach. Memories were coming to him again, these ones new and sharp as knives. Images flashed before his eyes, timelines with the others again and again and he was always there with Rachel and they were both killers in one form or another and it was like he could feel Crayak’s glee at how horrified it made him feel. Even with all of this, even with the strange sense of knowing, Jake couldn’t grasp the answer. It slipped away like smoke, leaving him groping in its wake, clumsy and desperate. He hears Rachel’s breaths coming in unsteady pants, and he realizes with a detached sort of shock that she’s hyperventilating. He wonders offhandedly which one of her memories had set that off.
WE WILL TRY AGAIN
And he screams, begs, knowing that it surmounts to nothing in the grand scheme of things. He’s been here a hundred times before but he feels like he must have had answers at some point but he can’t remember what the question was anymore. He’s choking again, and he can hear Rachel doing the same. It’s painful, like dying, and he wishes that things could be that easy.
Just like that, he can see her. For the briefest of moments, things are calm and blissfully numb and the universe is empty and bare. She’s there, shapeless and blank, but he can feel that this is Rachel. She’s starting to form again, just like he is, blonde hair fanning around her head in the weightless, empty expanse they’re passing through. They’ve been here before. He knows what’s coming.
"This time." she gurgles between forming vocal cords and lungs, mouth just a slit in her featureless face.
He nods, his own voice coming out garbled and painful. “This time.” he agrees. “We wi-“
CHAPTER 1
Marco and I had run out of quarters for the games, right when he was ahead by a lot of points. Mostly, we’re equally good at games. I have Sega at home so I get lots of practice time in, but Marco has this amazing ability to analyze games and figure out all the little tricks. So sometimes he beats me.
Well, anyway, we were out of money and getting ready to head home when we ran into Tobias. Tobias was … I mean, I guess he still kind of a strange guy. He was new at school, and he wasn’t the toughest kid around, so he got picked on a lot.
We were heading for the exit when I spotted Rachel and Cassie.
So, there we were. The five of us - Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and me. Five normal mall rats heading home.