-Jack's Story-

"Some secrets you should never know; and if you know, you should never tell."

-Azazel, "Fallen"

A shadow fell in the darkness and only one set of eyes could see as they followed it up. The figure that owned the shadow collapsed to it's knees dramatically. "Jack..." It rasped and fell faceforward, dead.

Jack slumped down the wall, unable to reach his twin sister. He was tall, about 6'1, and his wiry frame shuddered. Ripples danced over his china plate skin. Jack's hair fell over his face, its loose lavender tendrils reached out from his hip-length braid. Careful eyes of red with sly orange vertical slits swayed back and forth behind his eyelids. Something was happening.

Jack was tired, so very tired. The grimy, moss-covered walls of the dungeon where he'd taken shelter stunk with moisture and had the texture of wet hair. Though disgusted, he couldn't find the strength to move, didn't want to, and even after he'd sneezed his consciousness out, the smell was still there. People lay around him, some he knew, some dead, some both. He couldn't breathe to care.

The room was pitch black from where the torch had burned out of fuel, and the door to the castle was wedged shut. The only one open, was leaking moonlight in one tiny reflection on the puddles of water in the drained cannal. Jill was laying in one of those puddles. Face down. Jack had tried so hard to get her to wake up after she'd appeared from nowhere to save his ass AGAIN, but sometimes the gods are more kind to others. He half resented her for leaving him there, but he still had Kore, at least he thought he did, but she was nowhere in the room.

Jack looked away from the corpse who's white hair was stained pink with dilouted, stagnant water. A deafening scream filled his ears like the ones that had been all night, but this one he couldn't ignore for it penetrated his ears and ripped at his brain. Jack's vision was shredded by blinding white streaks and he curled into a small ball, trying to outscream the din.

======

The smell never changed, and in fact grew stronger as he became more lucid. A violent sneeze jolted his body and he was suddenly aware of the smoothed and shaped stone beneath him. As Jack leaned back, his spine rested comfortably between two medium-sized rounded rocks. A soft "clink, clink, clink" was resounding from somewhere close-by but not in sight. Which brought up an interesting question as he looked around. Where was he?

His body was gently cradled by a statue, but it wasn't the same one from his nightmares. A sorceress reclining and a knight kneeling by her side. A stone court seemed to be crumbling around them, and stairs that led up and down to places he couldn't imagine. Forgetting where he'd been before all this, and unaware if he was in danger now, Jack held his head and cried silently. His emotions regressing to child-like behavior, being overwhelmed by too may confusing and impossible things at once. The sky seemed to echo him, crying from it's eternal gray clouds, and drowning those below without any care but remorse.

As the raindrops grew thicker and faster, the odd noise stopped and Jack heard footsteps receeding to the ascending stairs. He wiped his face and shrunk down behind the frozen knight, peering over his shoulder in curiousity.

A lone and slouched figure with mussed shoulder-length hair carried a crude version of a box up stairs that trailed in all the beautiful colors that existed. The silouhett turned and took the right split up, taking the glimmering rainbows with him. Jack felt he somehow knew this man, and though his better judgement told him to leave, he shivered and followed.

A long series of elevators and less glamorous stairs lay ahead, Jack making sure to trail just enough behind the stranger so he wouldn't be lost in the maze of contraptions. Eventually he was led to a poorly-lit room resembling a cave more than anything. A fire was burning to the side and an enormous chair covered in animal fur were the only things to stand out in the room. Outside were crude pots, catching the water that ran off the stone ledge and red-eyed gargoyle above.

Jack lingered in the doorway, fingering a lock of his hair in a well-practiced nervous habit he'd formed in his early years of school. The mystery man sat rigidly by the fire, studying what he'd brought back from the marble arena.

"Are you coming in or not?" He surprised Jack by speaking. And the clipped, short tone was unmistakable.

Hesitating, out of fear or astonishment he wasn't sure, Jack tripped over his tongue more minutes than he spent trying to think of something to say. Finally, he managed to speak, allbeit shakily. "I... I'm lost."

The long mass of unruly brown hair turned and the same beady eyes that had tortured him for years were staring at him. The teeth that smiled at him were yellow and unclean. "I thought you'd come after me one of these days, I was just counting down the hours. Come and sit by the fire and tell me all about the life you evicted me from. What's it like to have the pressure of supporting everyone and their whims?"

Jack's knees felt weak, and though he wanted to run, leave, and pretend he didn't know who or where he was anymore. Instead he moved forward, collapsing on the slick morter and spitting some orangeish blood to the side. "So you found what you were looking for?"

Doctor Brad Skal sat up into a crouch and moved on all fours to Jack, looking a million times more insane than when the boy had banished him. His hand came up to Jack's chin, some of the nails chipped and some even bleeding, and caressed it gently. "Did you come to kill me, child?"

Jack pulled away, adjusting his body as he no longer had the strength to even sit up. "I don't know. I didn't mean to come here, and I don't know how I did either."

"By accident, I'm sure. That's how everyone finds it: Near dead and exhuasted, merely searching for a place to die." Inching still closer, Brad began to push Jack's shoulder, angling it to the ground.

He was easily wrestled away and Jack smacked at the persistant palm. "Stop. I didn't come here to die."

Again the hand returned, pulling at the torn uniform's sleeve. "Then why did you come? Perhaps if not to kill me then..."

"No!" Jack kicked him away, but lost his shirt in the process. He rubbed his arms and moved closer to the heat. "I don't know why I'm here yet. I'm just a little lost." He ignored the old man as he came back this time, the dirty but strong hands running over his back and arms like ghosts. When the hands tried to reach the front of his pants, he elbowed his father in the sternum and crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest. Jack stared into the fire, talking softly to himself for comfort.

"It's not like I've never wanted to kill you, or that I couldn't now. Everyone expects me to just bug out and paint the walls with blood. I just don't feel that way. I..."

Dr. Skal properly injected "mhmm" and "uhuh" as he fondled the scrap of his son's shirt. "I'll tell you a secret, my boy." He grinned mischeviously up from the fabric he clutched and continued when he was sure he had Jack's attention. "I never liked women. That's why I always left your sister alone and played with you. Your mother was an experiment. Just a project for breakthrough work, you see. I was never interested in doing the right thing, just doing something new. I always wanted to learn new things everyday, but there's only so much a textbook can say."

Jack searched through this information carefully, debating whether it was legitable or just the excuses of an old fool. "What do you mean by experiment?"

The old man laughed and rubbed his cheek softly against the inside of the shirt. "Just that, just that. A good scientist could never let their personal life interefere with work. But what if your life WAS work? Eh? I got tired of being tempted by all the perfect altercations you could make to an imperfect human, so I decided to make THE perfect human. I didn't intend for you to have a sister. Everything from there is chemicals and mixing that you wouldn't understand."

"Did mom know?" Jack didn't care if it was true or not, the story seemed to be making sense for now.

"Only what I told her. When I worked on you in-utero, I lied and said I was just making sure you didn't turn out strange because of all the different chemicals I had been exposed to. Really though, I was changing you physically; your eyes, hair, and skin. In case you ever wondered about that you know, it's not because of recessive genes."

He pulled his knees up to his bare chest, sickened by the logic filling in the holes. "Why? What could make you do something so horrible? It had to be more than just fun."

"Full of questions tonight, aren't you? I don't think we've ever talked this long before." Brad began to absently play with his hair in the same fashion that Jack had earlier. The other thought it terribly endearing until he got his fingers stuck in the knotted mass.

Jack pulled the last Remedy from his item inventory and pulled his father close, beginning work on cleaning him up. "Right, not before I was old enough to hold an attention span. And after that we never did because you raped me."

"Still calling it 'rape', huh? Perhaps if you listen to the rest of my secret you'll change your mind." He sat still, except for the occasional twitch of pain as his hair was pulled or a sore spot on his gum was touched.

"I doubt it, but go on, I'm listening. Tell me why you did this to all of us." Jack had given up on Brad's hair and was cutting it short with his butterfly knife.

"I had a personal goal for this, too, you know. I'm not just some crazy scientist like you think. If I was driven mad it was by my personal failures. I wanted a companion. I wanted a companion worthy of my work and my needs as a brillant revoluntionary. And what better way to put my work to use?"

They had to pause as Jack brushed his teeth for him with the rainwater a toothbrush he would never use again. The doctor continued a little clearer. Jack had some inane urge to call him Hojo.

"But I overestimated the paitence of the human will. It was seven years since I'd began with the same ambition and fevor I had that day. But with the ambition I carried pride, hope, and frustration. Before I could harness my wanting, I had ruined it. I had ruined all that I'd worked for; broken it beyond repair. I had a taste for the sweet and innocent destruction, so I continued to taint all of your lives."

Brad held absolutely still as his chin and throat were shorn of hair. The rest of his skin remained smooth and bare without reason. He looked clean now, and somehow the lecherousness was in the dirty water the bowl contained. The very reflection of the fire seemed to leer up from it.

Jack sat back and removed his clothing to his boxers. Using one of the two remaining containers, he scrubbed his wounds, casting a few Fires to cauterize them. Brad seemed to watch this ritual with distant curiosity. How many times had his son been forced to clean the pains -HE- had caused?

"Is that it?' Jack tore his pants into strips and used them as bandages.

"I'm afraid it is. The experiment was perfect, but it never had the chance to fully develop it's purpose. Instead, it went off to satisfy others for profit and revolted it's creator. I don't know what happened after that but I can guess." Brad picked up Jack's shirt from where he'd accidently dropped it and looked closer at the insignia.

"He went to the Garden to use the fighting skills his father had taught him. After a few tradgeties and many affairs, he made SeeD, ranking two off the test, but later testing up to six. He could've gone higher, but didn't want the responsibility or the money. His appetite for sex and abuse was insaitable. "One day the SeeDs were sent to war against one of the most powerful Sorceresses of all time. While thousands of young lives fought in the time compressed world, a small elite battle raged in the east tower throne room. "When it was over, the dead disappeared and the surviving mixed time and thought, strewn about their history randomly. And then..." Jack finished.

"...And then?"Brad asked, raising a thin, dark eyebrow. After a continued silence he revealed more. "His appetite was insaitable because he was only made to be with one person. However, since the experiences were so traumatic, he denied ever wanting them."

Looking up with sad eyes, Jack wished for a mirror to see how old he really was. "He doesn't know when or where he is. He knows he should be afraid before the man that tortured him for years, but all he can find inside is a strange gnawing want. It's like he's in limbo, waiting for someone to tell him he's evil."

The old man considered this silently for a moment, then reguarded Jack with taunting curiosity. "How does it feel to be created for sin?"

"Empty."

-Beginning of Decay-

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