Chapter 27 #2
Jett felt his throat close. He tried to continue, but choked on the words, sputtered. His heart raced in his chest, blood rushing in his ears.
Eddie whispered, “You don’t have to do this.”
Jett raised Eddie’s hand to his mouth, kissed it. “I do, Ed. You, of all people, deserve to know the truth.”
He settled against Eddie’s warmth and continued.
“The new knife was bigger, shinier. I was able to focus on it. The woman cackled and the man was angry. Then she turned her attention back to me.
“She placed the edge of the blade against my thigh and dragged it down my leg, not deep, more an itch than anything. Then she placed the flat of the blade against my hip and clicked a button. Plasma erupted and I screamed.”
He couldn’t describe the heat, the pain, how he’d felt the wound throbbing as it was cauterized. Just thinking about it made Jett sick to his stomach.
“I passed out from the pain. I woke up to screams somewhere else in the ship. My friends…”
Jett remembered the sheer terror he felt every time the door opened. How he’d vacillated from that terror to anger and back again and again.
“She kept visiting me, taunting me, telling me how long my friends lasted, how they’d begged her to stop.
If I didn’t respond, she’d drug me until I lashed out at her, then she’d cut me up as punishment.
Once she was really pissed off and ripped my eye out.
” He shuddered and pressed his hands to his eyes.
Pushed hard enough to see stars on the inside of his lid.
He could still hear the distant sound of screams deep in the night, could hear the squelch as his eye was ripped out of its socket.
The distant, throbbing pain that settled into his whole body.
“I don’t know how long it went on, but it felt like forever.
Then there were no screams and I was the only one left.
She got nastier after that. Took an even larger knife, chopped up my arm and leg.
After every wound they’d cauterize me, spray me with antiseptic.
They wanted it to last as long as possible. ”
Jett reached the point where he was just reciting, he was no longer feeling the memories. He could see them, see himself, knew he was in pain, was probably close to death. Maybe he’d even died once and they’d brought him back just to torture him some more. But he was numb to it all.
“I woke up and the guy hadn’t closed the restraints properly. When he left the room, I got out.” Jett remembered the way his arm and leg were half useless, hanging by his side.
He placed the back of Eddie’s hand against his cheek, relished the comforting heat, so unlike that of the knife or the drug they’d forced into his system.
“I grabbed the plasma knife and waited by the door, rage keeping me conscious. She entered the room and I stabbed her in the neck. She tried to scream and clawed at my arm. I pushed her into the table and slit her throat so deep her head almost fell off.” There had been a dull thud and a flood of blood when her body slumped onto the floor.
Jett still felt it coating his feet, his hands, splashed across his face and chest.
“I don’t really remember the rest, but I know I killed them all.
I didn’t find my squad’s bodies but I found our gear and the chips they’d pulled out of them once they were dead.
” He didn’t mention that he had the chips still.
Or the feeling of satisfaction when he’d killed the last, before he’d gone into shock from re-opening wounds, from the drugs, from the adrenaline.
“Chips?”
Jett looked back at Eddie. He’d almost forgotten that he was there, he was good at just being present when Jett needed that.
“Yeah, we have chips implanted in our shoulders, in case something happens to us and our bodies are unidentifiable.” He leaned forward and tapped the back of his right shoulder with the tip of the knife.
“Somehow, I had enough of my mind left to call for help. Later I heard that when they got to the ship, they found me sitting in the captain’s chair, staring at the knife, clicking the plasma on and off. ”
“You know the knife I always carry with me?”
“Yes?”
“That is the knife she used to torture me. And the one I used to kill them all.” He stared at the glow for a moment longer, clicked the plasma off, dropped it to the floor. “They didn’t deserve the quick deaths they got.”
Silence filled the room.
Jett didn’t feel any better or worse for having shared his story with Eddie. He didn’t know what he’d expected to feel. Relief? Peace?
Did he deserve either? Did he deserve both?
“I was discharged before I got a bed in the trauma hospital. I was too damaged to do my job anymore, and I’d lost them five valuable assets, including myself.
Maria told me that they considered some sort of punishment, but that was before they saw the extent of my wounds.
Instead, they got me the best cybernetics available, gave me a couple years’ pay, and abandoned me. They took everything away.”
Hot tears burned down Jett’s face. He tried to wipe them away, but he just hit himself with Eddie’s hand.
A moment later he was curled up against Eddie, crying into his chest. He felt Eddie’s warmth beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, felt his arms as they held Jett tight.
Jett hadn’t cried in the decade since the incident, except in his sleep. He never really mourned the loss of his squad, his life, his future; they’d been the best things that happened to him before joining the Neo-Tokyo and meeting Eddie. He cried out those losses.
Time passed and eventually the tears slowed.
“Quasar heard what happened from Maria and they offered me a job when I was out of therapy. But I never really fit in with Corporate, and the nightmares never stopped.”
“What’s the nightmare?” Eddie’s voice was soft. He pressed a kiss to Jett’s temple, ran a hand through his hair, dislodged it from the tear stains.
Jett gasped, choking around his closing throat.
“I’m walking in a hallway and it starts filling up with blood.
I stop, turn around, and I can see the shadow of the woman in a room that wasn’t there before.
Then she laughs and turns on the knife. Sometimes I can pull myself out of it, but normally I can’t… ”
Jett trailed off and buried himself back into Eddie’s chest. They sat there for a while, as Jett’s eyes dried.
“I need a shower, Ed,” Jett sighed. “I feel disgusting.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but you do smell a bit.”
“But I want to stay here just a little longer.”
“Stay as long as you like, love.” Eddie’s voice rumbled against Jett’s skin, warm and comforting.