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“Ah, Erol’s the best racer I’ve ever seen.” Keira says, looking after Erol with admiration on her face.
The words prickle beneath his skin, buzzing alongside the dark eco that seeing the bastard had brought to the surface. “He’s not what you think.” Jak manages to say.
Keira turns to look at him, the admiration on her face turning to contempt. “And you’re a good judge of character? Ha!” If her praise of Erol had felt like wumpbees beneath his skin, this feels like being stabbed in the heart. Worse, it feels like the dark eco is tagging along with the knife, slithering gleefully into his soul.
She opens her mouth to continue, but Jak cuts her off. “Shut up…” he says through gritted teeth and clenched fists.
“Excuse me?!” Keira asks, affronted and offended. And she doesn’t understand, can’t understand, just how close she is to death.
“I said, SHUT UP!” Jak yells. He feels a trickle of blood crawl down his hand, and it scares him that he doesn’t know whether it’s from the force with which he's clenching his fists, or if his nails have already started to form into claws.
“Oh, no,” Daxter says from his shoulder. He starts frantically running his hands through Jak’s hair, trying to calm him down, but the clear desperation in the gesture is having the opposite effect. “I think you better do what he says, Keira!”
Keira, as ever, doesn’t listen to Daxter. “Well, looks like I get to see the new you firsthand,” Keira says, sweeping her arms out dramatically. “It was just a rumor before, but now I know for sure! You are a completely different person now!” Keira marches forward, jabbing her finger into his heaving chest. “You think you’re hot stuff? Well, you can’t push me arou-OW!”
Keira can’t finish that sentence because Jak has suddenly grabbed her arm tightly. He stares into her wide, panicked eyes for a moment, before he growls “Back OFF!” and pushes her away. He doesn't mean to do it hard, but the dark eco is flowing through him, so it comes out with enough force that she goes flying into the opposite wall.
“Jak, Jak! Stop!” Daxter yells, hopping down to be in his best friend’s line of sight. “Deep breaths, buddy, deep breaths!” he says, making a placating gesture. Jak hunches over, clenching his head as he fights the dark eco. Purple lightning is sparking around his feet, not hitting anything but making itself known all the same.
Jak tries to only focus on Daxter, on the calming nature of the voice everyone else seems to find so annoying. But Keira’s words are tumbling around in his brain, along with Erol’s smug face, and a few memories of the Baron’s torture. He gasps, knowing he won’t be able to stop it from happening. “Dax…” he pants, “Get…away…”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere, pal!” comes the reply, but for once it isn’t what Jak means. He wants Daxter to get Samos and especially Keira out of here, before he can hurt them any worse. He doesn’t have the words for it though, not anymore, so he tries to gesture in their direction instead.
Unfortunately, this causes another bolt of dark eco lightning to shoot from his hand and impact on the wall behind them. Keira lets out a terrified shriek, causing Jak’s head to snap to her. For a brief moment, he sees her as himself. A terrified girl, clutching her arm and favoring one leg, looking at him with horror in her eyes. A person that he cares for, that he has hurt, that now sees him as a monster. And he feels awful for it.
Then, in one terrible moment, his perspective twists. He sees only prey, too injured to run and fully aware of that fact. The sight fills him with sadistic pleasure, and he steps forward and brandishes his claws. “Jak! Snap out of it, Jak!” The orange one is tugging on his legs, trying in vain to stop him. This confuses Jak. Sometimes, the orange one would ask him to spare some of the more inconsequential prey, and Jak likes the orange one enough to oblige. But the orange one had never asked him to spare the ones that had harmed him. And he knows that this one had harmed him, remembers the feeling of her blade through his flesh, so he ignores the orange one and takes another step forward.
There is someone new in front of his target now, an old man with a log on his head. He is holding up a green shield, and Jak almost laughs at the attempt. He slashes the shield once, dark eco splintering from from his claws and dispelling it. A follow up slash sees the old man go down. Jak makes to leap onto the old man and finish him off, but the orange one yells, “No!” and sprints in front of the fallen man. Jak growls in frustration, unsure why the orange one is being so pushy today, before deciding that he can still have the main course for himself.
She isn’t looking at him, her eyes transfixed on the fallen man, and that annoys Jak. She needs to see her death coming, to know it is her own fault, so he brings his claws up and buries them in the wall above her head, before dragging them slowly down. She flinches away from the screech of tearing metal, but he shoves her back against the wall with his other hand, watching her face as he carves down the wall toward her shoulder. She is panting, sweating, pupils so dilated they’re almost as black as his. The sight fills him with joy, and he grins at her, showing off his fangs. When his claws are level with her neck, he pauses, readying the final blow. He can hear the orange one behind him, begging him to stop, but it is too late for that. Before he slashes sideways and separates her head from her body, though, she lets out a single word.
“Jak…”
The word is tinged with pain, fear, and desperation, and suddenly everything is confusing. Because suddenly, Jak wants to protect this girl, and that is not what he does. He is a destroyer, not a protector. The leader of the red ones had seen to that. And yet, memories are rising within him. A younger version of the girl, pointing at something far off the coast, or hunching over a machine, a look of concentration on her face. Jak growls, trying to push the memories away, to do what he was designed to do. But then he remembers something that makes him recoil. A moment when, flush with victory, he leans in and tries to…
Jak runs, ignoring both the girl’s and the orange one’s cries of his name. He runs until he encounters a red one. It summons more, of course, but Jak welcomes it. It would be a nice, uncomplicated hunt, where he doesn’t have to think about anything for a little while.
“Jak!” both Keira and Daxter yell out at the same time, but only Daxter runs after him. Keira can’t bring herself to do anything but stand there, panting as the adrenaline and fear slowly drains out of her. After a moment, Daxter returns. “He’s already gone,” Daxter announces, moving to rummage through her cabinets. “I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s damn fast when he’s all juiced up like that. It’s why I like to make sure I’m nice and secure before he goes crazy. Hey,” he calls over his shoulder, “where d’ya keep the green stuff in this place?”
“What?” Keira asks.
Daxter facepalms. “The green eco! In case ya hadn’t noticed, your pops is down and needs some!”
That registers like a jolt through her. “Oh, shoot!” Keira says, stumbling forward. She rummages through one of the top shelves. Daxter mutters something that sounds like it includes “top shelf,” but Keira just keeps looking. “It’s, uh, here!” She pulls out a small green eco pack.
Daxter crosses his arms and follows as she walks toward her father. “Well, it’s a good thing I did come back! Not that I care much about Ol’ Log Head, but dyin’ with eco five feet away ain’t no way to go!”
Keira begins channeling the green eco. She’s nowhere near as skilled as her father, but she knows more than the average Haven citizen. She lets it settle over her fingers, before coaxing it into her father’s wounds. Dark eco always made things tricky, but they aren’t too bad, considering…what had caused them. Keira shudders, losing control over the eco, and a few drops splash uselessly against the floor.
“Daxter,” she says, trying not to let her voice tremble. “What was that thing?”
Daxter grimaces. “That was Jak. I’m pretty sure I mentioned how our good friend the Baron pumped him full o’ dark eco?” Keira nods, and he continues, “That’s what happens when Jak gets pissed off, now. The eco takes over, and Jak…well. Even he can’t say how much of him is still in there when he’s all dark, but he seems to remember me well enough. And now we know he remembers you, too, so that’s good.”
It says a lot that Daxter is so subdued giving that speech, and Keira doesn’t know how to process it. She is silent while tending to her father, and after a few minutes Daxter starts talking again. Not really about anything, this time, he does it just to fill the silence. He’s always done that, and the normalcy of the moment literally bowls her over. Her father is as healed as she can manage, anyway, so she allows herself to fall over with a gasp. She buries her face in her hands, hyperventilating. Her thoughts start going by faster than she can react to them. He tried to kill me, but he didn’t, but he tried, but it wasn’t his fault, but he’d hurt her and her father, but he’s a victim, but so is she, but-
“Hey, hey,” Daxter says. He’s rubbing her back, she notices, and she leans into the touch. “Deep breaths,” he says, which was the same thing he’d said to Jak earlier. She tries to follow his advice, and it seems to work. After a few minutes, she wipes her eyes. She doesn’t remember crying, but the evidence is there on her face. A part of her hates that, because she hasn’t cried since her first night in Haven.
She sniffs, and says, “When did you get so good at this?”
Daxter snorts. “When my best friend started goin’ murder-crazy every time he gets worked up.”
At that moment, the loudspeaker crackles to life. “Apologies for the delay, but the Class 2 races will begin shortly,” it says.
“No rest for the wicked,” Keira says with a half-hysterical chuckle, struggling to her feet with a wince. Her arm no longer hurts where Jak had grabbed her, but her leg is still throbbing from when he’d thrown her.
“What?” Daxter says in confusion, “In case you forgot, our driver’s outta commission!”
“You’ll just have to drive for the team, Daxter,” Keira says, looking over at her team's zoomer. It’ll need some adjustments to fit an ottsel, but she should be able to cobble something together before the race begins. And if she's doing that, she's not thinking about the boy she once knew so well, or the monster that had come from him.
Jak trudges back toward the garage, guilt and shame weighing him down. As far as he knows, after leaving the garage he'd only hurt KG soldiers. It’s hard to say, everything from his time transformed is blurry, but it really doesn't matter. Whatever he did afterward, he knows for certain he hurt Keira and Samos, and he doesn't know how he's going to face them. But Daxter's there, and as selfish as it is, he can't handle anything without his best friend. So one way or another, he has to.
Approaching the garage, he can hear Daxter loudly bragging about how he back seat drives for the duo all the time. Jak pauses, he'd completely forgotten about the Class 2 races, but he doggedly pushes on. Rounding the corner, it's Daxter who sees him first. He cuts himself off mid sentence to hop down and walk toward Jak. “Hey there, big guy,” he says awkwardly, “We, uh, sure showed those Class 2 losers, huh?”
Jak can feel a pair of eyes on him from the corner, but he ignores it for now, kneeling down in front of Daxter and saying, “I was a little too…preoccupied to watch, but I'm sure you did great.” That's what his mouth says, but with his eyes he says, I'm sorry.
Daxter sees, and nods slightly in acknowledgement. After so many years with Jak as a mute, he can read body language perfectly. Jak nudges Daxter's shoulder. “I'm proud of you, Dax,” he says. But his expression tells Daxter, Thanks for having my back.
Daxter grins, hopping up on Jak's shoulder. “Of course you are!” Daxter says, “Let's not forget who's the hero and who's the sidekick in this relationship.” The message is clear, No problem, I always got you.
Jak allows himself a small smile, but it quickly fades as he turns to the corner he ignored. He sees Keira, standing beside a couch that her father is laying on. She's still favoring one leg, leaning against the wall, but she's tense as she stares at him. Jak can't quite make out the expression on her face, so he looks at Samos instead, asking. “Is he alright?”
“He'll live,” Keira said. Her tone is as hard to place as her expression, trying to be detached but wavering with some kind of emotion. “Luckily, I had some green eco on hand,” she continues, “but it's hard to use on dark eco wounds.”
Jak grimaces, taking a step forward and saying, “Keira, I-”
“Stay back!” She exclaims, flinching into herself a little. Jak freezes, and after a moment she asks, “What happened to you?”
Jak takes a moment to respond, trying to find the words. “It was Erol,” he eventually says, looking away. She deserves the truth, even if he can't bear to look at her while he gives it. “He was the one who oversaw the dark eco experiments. On the Baron's orders, sure, but he was the one who pulled the lever.”
Keira is silent, so he continues. “Seeing him so suddenly, then hearing you praise him? It was too much, especially when you got in my face.” Jak squeezes his eyes shut, “I can't control it, I can't undo what he did to me, and I hurt you.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I'm a monster now, just a weapon he made. But for what it's worth, I'm sorry.”
Keira still doesn't speak, and he doesn't know if that's because she's horrified, or because she agrees with him. Either way, the garage is suddenly stifling, and he half-runs to the door. “If you still want me around for the Class 1 race, call me,” he manages to say as he flees the room. Part of him hopes she'll chase after him, reassure him that she doesn't hate him as much as he hates himself, but the hall remains silent and empty.
Daxter doesn't do silent for long, though, so eventually he says, “Let's go see if Torn has another crappy suicide mission for us, eh?”
The fact he's suggesting that says that Daxter has no idea how to handle this situation. But hell if Jak does, so he just eyes a nearby zoomer and says, “Sure, Dax. Let's go.”