seemed to move faster than anyone should be able to in microgravity, and there was a wavering about them that he didn’t like.
Sesh was tied completely and gagged, and the line was towing her toward the emergency exit, faster than Jak could swim to her. Their eyes met for just a moment; he could see her terror pleading for rescue, in that bare instant before the rotation shifted again, and he lost his orientation as the netting flew around him, grabbed him in a fierce hug, and spun him in a dizzy whirl.
Her final scream, smothered by the gag, felt to Jak like a kick in the stomach. Sesh was dragged out of his field of view. The net yanked brutally, taking Jak, wrapped in it, up against the outer surface just as the gravity shifted that way. He saw boots touching down all around him. Then there was a flurry of fists, feet, and clubs, fading rapidly into terrible pain and utter darkness.
Chapter 3
You at Least Understand That There Are Two Teams
Jak had enjoyed so many intrigueand-adventure stories whose second or third chapter began with some sentence, image, or experience like “He awoke in a white room” that his first thought, when he awoke in the white room, was that he must be dreaming one of those stories. It seemed likely that he was, actually.
Assuming the rules for that type of story were being followed, almost always, the white room would turn out, on further investigation, to be a hospital room. As Jak adjusted to being awake, he specked that he was in a hospital room.
On the other hand, he couldn’t even remember being in pain at all in a dream, and he was in considerable pain right now. But in the stories, he should have been in pain
He drifted back into dreams that he was sure were dreams.
When his eyes opened again, he saw the same hospital room. At a minimum, this was a recurring dream.
In a story, this is where someone would come by to explain what’s going on, so any moment someone should show up to tell me what happened
after… The thought seemed incomplete, and he tried to finish it for a while, drifting close again to rejoining the for-sure dreams.
After I got wanged.
It all came backSesh, the kidnapping, the fight. Jak really was in a hospital room, flat on his back, after a bad wanging. For a while he had been hearing the flat mechanical voice of a monitor repeating “Brain activity shows that the patient is awake.” A face moved into Jak’s view, and resolved into Uncle Sib.
Still confused and thinking of what happened in stories, Jak asked, “Are you going to say I gave you all a good scare?”
“Actually, you didn’t,” Sibroillo said, smiling. “No. Not at all. By the time they called me, they knew that you were going to make it, so the question was how fast they could get your neuro repaired, and they could tell me right away that you were not in any real danger. Your friend Dujuv Gonzawara has already been up for more than a dayprobably that enhanced healing they build into a panthand you’ll be all done in sixteen hours or so. You’ll recover faster, they say, if you’re conscious now and then, which is why they’re waking you up now, even though the regenerating nerves sting like hell.”
“They do,” Jak agreed.
“We don’t think you’re even going to lose much short-term memory. You have a pretty hard head and your brains don’t rattle around nearly as much as I would have guessed. We could have awakened you two days ago, in fact, but we waited for major tissue regeneration to finish, so that you would only know in the abstract that one of your testicles had been raptured and one of your eyes had been thumbed out, after you were unconscious. Since you now have new ones as good as the originals, it shouldn’t really matter, but”
“It probably shouldn’t,” Jak agreed, “but, toktru, it precesses me all the same. Which eye and which nut?”
“The left, for both. But you’re good as new now.”
“The principle matters,” Jak
Sesh was tied completely and gagged, and the line was towing her toward the emergency exit, faster than Jak could swim to her. Their eyes met for just a moment; he could see her terror pleading for rescue, in that bare instant before the rotation shifted again, and he lost his orientation as the netting flew around him, grabbed him in a fierce hug, and spun him in a dizzy whirl.
Her final scream, smothered by the gag, felt to Jak like a kick in the stomach. Sesh was dragged out of his field of view. The net yanked brutally, taking Jak, wrapped in it, up against the outer surface just as the gravity shifted that way. He saw boots touching down all around him. Then there was a flurry of fists, feet, and clubs, fading rapidly into terrible pain and utter darkness.
Chapter 3
You at Least Understand That There Are Two Teams
Jak had enjoyed so many intrigueand-adventure stories whose second or third chapter began with some sentence, image, or experience like “He awoke in a white room” that his first thought, when he awoke in the white room, was that he must be dreaming one of those stories. It seemed likely that he was, actually.
Assuming the rules for that type of story were being followed, almost always, the white room would turn out, on further investigation, to be a hospital room. As Jak adjusted to being awake, he specked that he was in a hospital room.
On the other hand, he couldn’t even remember being in pain at all in a dream, and he was in considerable pain right now. But in the stories, he should have been in pain
He drifted back into dreams that he was sure were dreams.
When his eyes opened again, he saw the same hospital room. At a minimum, this was a recurring dream.
In a story, this is where someone would come by to explain what’s going on, so any moment someone should show up to tell me what happened
after… The thought seemed incomplete, and he tried to finish it for a while, drifting close again to rejoining the for-sure dreams.
After I got wanged.
It all came backSesh, the kidnapping, the fight. Jak really was in a hospital room, flat on his back, after a bad wanging. For a while he had been hearing the flat mechanical voice of a monitor repeating “Brain activity shows that the patient is awake.” A face moved into Jak’s view, and resolved into Uncle Sib.
Still confused and thinking of what happened in stories, Jak asked, “Are you going to say I gave you all a good scare?”
“Actually, you didn’t,” Sibroillo said, smiling. “No. Not at all. By the time they called me, they knew that you were going to make it, so the question was how fast they could get your neuro repaired, and they could tell me right away that you were not in any real danger. Your friend Dujuv Gonzawara has already been up for more than a dayprobably that enhanced healing they build into a panthand you’ll be all done in sixteen hours or so. You’ll recover faster, they say, if you’re conscious now and then, which is why they’re waking you up now, even though the regenerating nerves sting like hell.”
“They do,” Jak agreed.
“We don’t think you’re even going to lose much short-term memory. You have a pretty hard head and your brains don’t rattle around nearly as much as I would have guessed. We could have awakened you two days ago, in fact, but we waited for major tissue regeneration to finish, so that you would only know in the abstract that one of your testicles had been raptured and one of your eyes had been thumbed out, after you were unconscious. Since you now have new ones as good as the originals, it shouldn’t really matter, but”
“It probably shouldn’t,” Jak agreed, “but, toktru, it precesses me all the same. Which eye and which nut?”
“The left, for both. But you’re good as new now.”
“The principle matters,” Jak
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