I talk too much about Jak & Daxter.

Jak told himself he didn't care. He understood that kind of workload only too well.

But Damas was one of the only people he'd met so far who understood what went on in Jak’s head. And he was the first one to treat the dark form like a weapon in Jak's arsenal and not someone else's. Despite himself, Jak was a bit surly.

"Jak, come on, out of bed." The nurse sounded like Jak felt.

"We have to weigh y-"

"I can do it myself," Jak said irritably.

He hated this part of the daily routine.

Step on a scale. Look at numbers. Watch the nurse scowl again and write on the stupid clipboard.

"I'm sure you can," Becca drawled, "less sure that you actually will."

"Well if you're going to be an asshole about it-" Jak retorted, just shy of threatening.

Leon wasn't in the dormitory today. They both knew that meant if Jak dug in his heels, they were in for a long fight.

"Fine!" The nurse stood back and handed him the clipboard. "Write the number down there. And don't even think about fudging the numbers, kid. We'll know."

"Yeah yeah." Jak snatched the clipboard and stomped into the washroom to use the scale.

The number hadn't gone up since the day before. But Jak supposed on the other hand that it hadn't gone down, either. That wasn't as bad as it could be.

He handed the board to the nurse and sorted through the cubbies by the door for his sandals.

"And you are going...where? Exactly?" she sighed.

"Public armory." Jak slung his headphones around his neck with a bored look. "Cody said he'd help me get an ammunition bag."

"Oh," said Becca, "I see. You want me dead."

Jak rolled his eyes. Becca followed him.

"You want Rezzik to find out you're not resting so he can get the Department of Foundlings and Minors to fine everybody!"

"Well Rezzik doesn't have to know, does he?" Jak said pointedly.

The nurse beeped in dramatic outrage. "Awful!" she gasped, pointing, "Awful child! If I get in trouble for this, I'm not helping you when Leon makes you eat with everybody else."

Jak made a face. He hated the noise of the central mess hall.

"Well he can't make me do that if he can't catch me."

"Don't you dare."

"Later, Becca."

It was a little mean, but he was sick of her and the others barging into his space every day.

At least it wasn't every hour like Ward 2.

He still took the stairs down a little faster than recommended. Just in case Becca ratted him out.

He'd told Cody he was going to be there by seven, and unfortunately the last few months had made him very aware of punctuality.

The lanky warrior was waiting near the stables with a wry grin. Jak ignored him. So he was still in hospital scrubs. What did they want from him?! He didn't have other clothes anymore!

"Okay. Next thing after the armory, we gotta go to the market, kid," Cody laughed, "the Muse Spot print don't flatter you at all."

Jak looked down at the cartoon Muse covering his tunic, then back up.

"If some completely unforeseen and not at all premeditated tragedy were to befall this tunic, I wouldn't be sad about it," he said.

Cody's laugh pitched a little higher.

"Okay okay. I'll see what I can do, junior. C'mon."

The Arena complex still impressed Jak. You wouldn't think from the outside that it could hold so many vital parts of the community. Armory, barracks, proving ground-

Jak very deliberately kept Cody between himself and the junction in the hall that led down to the hospital.

"I get it."

Cody elbowed him.

"Ain't my favorite place, either. Hey, at least Ward Two is usually pretty empty. You didn't have to wait for someone to see ya."

Jak shuddered.

"Yeah I'd take the wait times over being the star lab rat. Had enough of that in Haven."

Cody, mercifully, didn't ask questions.

Jak knew the brass around here still wanted to know what Haven had done to him, if they'd done it to any of Damas’s agents who went missing in the city. But he'd barely gotten through the narration and acceptance portion of working through everything that happened in Sandover. Tam wasn't rushing him. Baby steps were still steps forward, after all.

Jak had gotten as far as the first week in the Program. He needed a break.

"You visited the dorms yet?" Cody asked casually as he steered them through the left of the t-junction — not towards the armory.

"Nah. Doesn't feel like there's much point right now, y'know?"

Jak shrugged.

"The DFM isn't going to let me go any time soon. Especially not now that they've seen me...change."

*-people say you get angry and just...change-"

The Wastelander made a sympathetic grunt.

"For what it's worth," he offered, "Probably half the kids in the foundling barracks live with c-ptsd. Hells, Echo still has days when the memories hit too hard — you know that, you saw some of the screamin' meemies. Trust me, kid: turning into the personification of "hangry" is not the worst way to cope and the DFM knows it."

The words were meant to be encouraging, and Jak could appreciate the intent. But it hurt. The playful nickname sounded so much like something Daxter would've said.

Where are you, Dax? Did you get back to Haven safe? You're smart, you have to find me.

Jak began to suspect that Cody had ulterior motives when he spotted several heavily armed Wastelanders hanging around the halls. Unlike most Spargans, their armor matched almost exactly, and each had their faces obscured with thick paint in alternating black, yellow, and turquoise patterns.

Jak had glimpsed them once when he'd ended up staying upstairs long enough to be sent to the upper mess hall. (Which was much quieter than the one for the middle three floors.)

"Uh." Jak narrowed his eyes. "Something going on?"

Cody waggled his eyebrows idiotically.

"You'll find out."

"Oh that's not ominous at all, is it?" Jak couldn't help grinning back despite the ache in his chest.

"Shh!"

Now Cody held a finger to his lips and took them further up the noticeable detour from the armory to the spectator stands of the Arena.

"Keep your voice down and stay low. If the Ten catch us, we're dead meat."

Jak ducked and followed the man down into one of the lower levels of seats. He wasn't that surprised to find Dex there already. The quadruplets were rarely alone. If one brother was present, it was a good bet at least one other was nearby.

"Are the Ten the ones with the paint?" Jak whispered.

"Honor guard, yeah." Cody pointed slightly to one Jak hadn't even seen.

"Anytime the king's out'n'about, so are the Ten. Usually on the roofs, cos he gets annoyed when they hover. Says it makes him look like he can't fight his own battles."

"I'm pretty sure their job is to protect everybody else more than him half the time," snorted Dex.

He scooted over a bit and waved Jak forward.

"C'mere, biter. You don't wanna miss this."

The Arena was set to the same training course they'd used for Jak's preliminary trial — with one or two differences.

The training dummies had been replaced by living people, all armed.

Gouts of flame now fired off randomly from different walls.

And the person about to step onto the course was Damas.

"Aw Frith, he's doing a Gauntlet run!" Cody whispered.

Jak pointed to the people hiding in the course. "Is he going to kill them?"

Dex stifled a laugh, Cody shook his head.

"Nah, kid, those are Rangers! Takes somethin' closer to a metalpede to take a Ranger down."

"Sh!" Dex elbowed him.

The timer buzzed, and Damas was a blur of motion. The only weapon he carried was a simple wooden staff. A Ranger swung up from beneath one platform, carrying two wooden spikes of some kind about the length of a forearm. They impacted on the staff with a crack that could be heard all the way in the stands.

Jak would have thought having two small weapons would be an advantage over one long stick. But Damas moved so fast, countering nearly every blow before sending the Ranger crashing into the wall.

He barely stopped long enough to plant the butt of the staff and launch himself to the next platform.

Jak had never seen anyone move like that -- not even Sig! Part of him was completely in awe as he watched an absolutely brutal sparring match unfold. Those Rangers weren't even in the vicinity of holding back. Each one fought like they had their own dark warrior they were unleashing, leaping between scaffolds as lightly as the birds their face paint was evidently meant to represent.

Thrush. Shrike. Hummingbird. Kestrel. Nightjar. Batfinch. Falcon. The brothers did their best to point out each one as they came into view.

Honestly, Jak only heard every other word. He was spellbound, watching Wastelanders fighting with a strength and speed he'd previously believed only channelers to be capable of. He'd been strong like that once, before Haven. Before the dark eco seeped into his bone marrow. Jak remembered putting enough power in one small punch to explode a scarecrow.

He also remembered using that power on Lurkers, under the Acherons' spell.

Jak didn't want to think about Sandover anymore.

"This is insane," Jak breathed as he watched Damas take on two at once.

"Damas is probably one of the toughest men in the Wastelands," Dex said knowingly. "Rumor has it he's been fightin' since he was twelve years old."

"Well so've I and I'm not that strong yet!" Jak said without thinking.

Dex shared an uneasy glance with his brother. That sounded like a rabbit hole he wasn't prepared to stick his arm into. Still. Was Haven really that bad? Kids started self-defense at eight in Spargus, play weapons at ten, and first training guns at fourteen. There were rules before Atys, reinstated after Atys. Traditions. Structure. Actual combat before even hitting puberty sounded like a recipe for tragedy.

"In your defense," Cody said awkwardly, "You ain't lived near as long as Damas has. You keep training and you might hit that level eventually."

Jak's eyes were still glued to the Arena.

"Rot, these guys could probably take my dark form in a fight. Frith, Damas could beat my dark form in a fight. I wish Daxter could see this."

Daxter would probably be incredibly nervous. Maybe even have some nightmares. But eventually he'd circle around to the admiration Jak felt.

"What do Rangers do?" he whispered.

"Elite Scouts," Dex replied, "If we ain't at war, they're search-and-rescue or search-and-destroy. They go into the caves and volcanoes before anyone else to set up safety barriers for monks. When the Marauders get shirty, though? Every one of the Birds commands a strike team of their own. If Damas needs something recovered, hunted down, or destroyed overnight, he sends the Rangers."

That sounded, to Jak, like a full team of Sigs.

Which was objectively cool.

The air shifted, just the slightest bit. Someone was in the balcony above them. Cody froze, evidently sensing the same thing Jak did. As silently as he could, the man eased out of his seat, followed by his brother.

"Come on," he signed to Jak, "Gotta go before we're caught in here."

"Just a minute!" Jak didn't want to leave yet.

"No time! We gotta get back down to the armory and act natural!"

With one last look at Damas -- still shooting through the course at an almost inhu'men speed -- Jak reluctantly scurried after Dex and Cody. They didn't breathe easy until they were down in the armory, two minutes' walk from the stands.

They'd gotten away with it.

Probably.

"Tell me more about the Rangers," Jak demanded.

He grabbed an unused ammunition pouch at random to clip to his belt, and belatedly realized he didn't have a belt to clip it to.

"What do they do? How strong are they? Are they the only ones who train with Damas, or are there others?"

"Uh. I. Can answer one of those," Cody admitted.

"What about Damas? How many battles has he fought? How fast is he? Oh rot if he finds out I ditched the nurse, he's gonna find out we were here- friiiiiith why's he even bother showing up in C-Ward if he could be doing this?"

Having been accustomed to Jak as either eerily silent or prone to short bursts of rage, neither Dex nor Cody quite knew what to make of the almost starstruck glint in the kid's eyes. It was warranted, in their opinion: Damas was nearly a living legend in Spargus.

It was just funny that the king had popped in periodically to check on the kid personally and Jak was only just now understanding what a big deal that was by the look of things.

"Do you wanna try to get to the market to ditch the scrubs?" Cody asked, "or do we make a break for it and act like nothing happened?"

"Give me two of your Scatter rounds and I'll get you a better tunic, at least," offered Dex.

Jak accepted the trade readily.

"Blue if they got it, white if they don't. No red."

"No red?"

"Ever."

The scarf was pushing it in Haven as it was. But it helped hide his face sometimes, and it was all that kept him and Daxter warm on the nights when they couldn't get to a safe house, so he'd left it alone. Now he didn't have it anymore — it was being kept as "evidence", apparently — and he...kind of didn't want it back.

"Right. Blue. I'll getcha a bandana or something too if I find one."

"Thanks, Dex."

Jak handed him the ammunition.

"Gotta run. I think I've got fifty minutes before they try to make me drink the protein slop."

Cody narrowed his eyes.

"You know Leon's gonna know you went outside," he said, gesturing to the dust on Jak’s scrubs.

"Yeah, but if I'm back inside before weigh-in, he can't do anything about it. Besides. Rezzik made a stink about "age-youth-appropriate therapy" and now Chiron wants me to spend some time in the market this week."

"Oh no," Dex laughed, "Booth duty!"

Jak flashed a grim smile.

"Hey, you take the escapes where you can get 'em."

The brothers glanced at each other again, and Cody let out a slow breath.

Not only was he at least a year too young for this, his recovery team strongly suspected that he was a recovering child soldier. Even Clay was uncomfortable with the idea of tossing him into the middle of a war game without a heads-up, and he was the most fighting-obsessed guard in the Arena.

Before they let him out into the ring, Damas took Jak aside to discuss the trial with him.

"This is just the pre-Trial," he reminded him, "No combat. If you feel like you can handle the actual Trial after this, we can look at our options."

"Cody said people die in these if they don't take it seriously."

Jak fastened a pauldron over his left shoulder and did his best not to dwell on the empty space it represented.

"You make 'em fight each other?"

"Yeah." Damas reached over and refastened the strap more securely. "But they know that going in. And the first one is non-lethal unless you don't avoid the magma."

"What about the other ones?" Jak challenged.

It varied. Second trial meant the cadet was cleared to use Blaster ammunition. Which meant going into live-fire situations beyond the walls. Damas didn't completely support his people going against each other in fights to the death. It sort of contradicted the "survival" part of "strength and survival above all". If there was going to be a dedicated death-fight, it was usually the third trial, and the opponent was someone who had been sentenced to a literal trial by combat. But there was no guarantee of enough Spargans committing serious crimes to allow for that kind of battle trial.

The solution was...imperfect at best. But in the Wastelands, it was a better compromise than most. Either Damas used it as a test of nerve, to see whether the scout could stand up against bad orders, or he brought in Marauders.

The Marauders loved battle.

They loved it a little too much.

It made sense: their patron Precursor was the Axemaker, goddess of combat and weapon-making.

The result of this was that despite their deep disdain for the pre-existing Sparga and Thoris cultures, the Marauders would occasionally come to the gates demanding entry into the Arena for one of three reasons.

Either they wanted to earn the right to learn the art of creating gunstaffs, to honor their goddess,

They wanted to win glory in the ring by survival or by death, to honor their goddess,

Or they wanted out of their colony.

The latter fought with twice the ferocity of their brethren. They had nothing to lose and a better life to gain. It took Marauder cadets longer to integrate once adopted into the Spargan people, but they often turned out to be the fiercest protectors of their new home.

Under no circumstances was Damas going to let Jak fight someone from that group when his time came.

"There's usually Marauders in the other trials," Damas finally told Jak. "Once in a while, we're able to catch some metalheads before some idiot blows them to pieces. But it's difficult to guarantee that kind of trial. Because usually some idiot blows them to pieces."

"Fair enough," Jak decided.

He looked, Damas thought, a little apprehensive.

"Nervous?" he asked.

"No!" Jak stiffened. "No. I'm just...I'm not going to be at full strength. Just...wondering what that's going to look like."

It was the little wince when he said it that Damas would later blame. It made him look younger. It reminded Damas too much of Mar.

Before he could second-guess the wisdom of the action, he'd wrapped an arm around Jak’s shoulders.

"Hey," he said gently, "No one here knows what you look like at full strength. The only person who would criticize you about it is yourself, and I know Tam has been on your case about that."

"Unless I completely fail this, and they put me back in Ward 2." Jak shuddered.

"You'll be fine." Damas let go with a playful smack to the arm. "I'll be watching the whole time."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?!"*

Jak gave him a dramatic -- and completely genuine -- expression of dismay.

Nevertheless, he soon found himself on an antigrav platform being lowered to the wooden construct. The magma below sent a wave of heat over him, almost a physical push in its intensity.

If he closed his eyes, just for a moment, he could almost pretend it was Magma Gorge.

Almost pretend his life had never imploded.

That poor, stupid, naive kid in Sandover could never have dreamed that this was where his path would lead.

From cartwheeling across the beach with his best friend, to a lab rat in the depths of hell, and now alone in a city of warriors, trying to prove himself worthy of being one of them.

When he opened his eyes, Jak counted roughly five platforms in the general shape of buildings or scaffolding. There were little points of light within the shapes that he could barely make out. What were those?

"What you are looking at is the Arena training course."

Damas’s amplified voice came from right behind Jak, startling him.

He turned to find that his floating platform was only a few yards from a balcony lit by two braziers. Damas sat between them on an uncomfortable looking stone chair.

"Okay?" Jak called up, "What's the target?"

Damas pointed.

"There are 34 orbs of light eco in the construct. Your job is to find them all before time runs out."

"Wait, seriously?" Jak turned to peer into the structures. "You have light eco just. Out there?"

"It's the Arena of Death, son," Damas replied, accompanied by laughter from the stands, "That sort of requires having a method of resuscitation onhand."*

That seemed perfectly logical to Jak. Also took some of the fear out of a death ring when you knew they planned to pull you back in before your soul could fully eject from your body.

"There are training dummies scattered throughout. You're not required to destroy them, but it does add to your overall score."

Jak shook out his arms and, despite himself, a small grin started to push through the flatness of his normal expression.

He had done nothing worth producing adrenaline in months. He desperately needed to move. To run. And this looked just about adequate to satisfy that need.

"Ready when you are," he called up.

Damas met his grin with a smirk of his own.

"That's the spirit. Your time starts now."

Jak's stamina had suffered from forced inactivity. A year ago, he would have been able to leap straight to the third platform in one jump, no ladder required. But to his everlasting irritation, he knew that if he started out with that, he'd have no strength to continue later.

But on the bright side, the bits of light eco restored his energy.

His muscles burned. They shouldn't have, this was less strenuous than outrunning Krimzon Guards on Haven's streets. Still, he kept moving. He let his mind drift, and instinct took over.

Kick off the wall, catch the edge of the next platform.

Smash through a weak point to collect four hidden orbs.

Swing across the gap.

Moving platform.

Ledge.

There was nothing but adrenaline. He had a clear goal, he had the entire course to himself, and he apparently had an entire 42 seconds left.

The last orb left him buzzing, just shy of unbalanced in his core.

Jak catapulted onto the last moving pad, and up onto the antigrav platform fixed in place before the dais.

He needed to keep moving. If he stopped now, his muscles would have time to cramp and settle.

"Was that it?"

Jak didn't care if he sounded a little disappointed.

Damas actually laughed at this.

"Not bad, kid, you completed the course in a minute and fifteen seconds! What's that face, hm? It wasn't challenging?"

"Well, no, I mean it sort of was," Jak hedged, "It's just..."

He had no idea how to express himself without sounding like a complete lunatic.

"It's just that you're not ready to come in yet, right?"

Ah. Jak had forgotten that this whole city was apparently populated by fellow lunatics.

He did feel a little like a child, begging for just five more minutes to play outside before he had to go in. But maybe if he wore himself out enough, the insomnia wouldn't have time to catch him tonight.

"Can we keep going?"

The king was sympathetic, but not initially supportive.

"I don't know about that. There's a first battle trial happening in five minutes, kid."

Combat. Against other hu'mens.

Jak thought of armor -- blue, crimson, they were all the same -- and his stomach churned.

But the war was always going to find you again anyway, he reasoned, At least you could get a weapon out of this.

"I can do it. It's just scatter rounds, right?"

Damas hesitated. He made a small gesture, and a few people appeared as if from nowhere to whisper with him for a moment. He didn't seem completely happy with the outcome of the brief counsel, but carried on regardless. Standing, he scooped up a modular gun from beside the throne.

Jak's fingers itched to feel the weight of the stock and barrel again.

"Okay, kid. But don't say I didn't warn you."

He tossed the gun across the gap and Jak caught it easily.

The familiar heft grounded him. It was like a missing piece had settled back into place. Maybe that was why Sig always said a morph gun was an extension of its wielder.

"Reset the matter-formers."

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Jak couldn't hold the transformation back this time.

He'd tried, he'd truly tried not to transform. This was supposed to be a non-lethal trial! If he couldn't control his darker half, if they saw what kind of monster he was-!

Jak heard the gasps in the stands. Some screams.

Nononono please c'mon not now-!

From the balcony, Damas seemed to sense his panic. He stood with a jerk, and as Jak's eyes snapped to black, he made one clear sign.

Breathe.

The siren went off, giving everyone advance warning of the magma about to rise through the octagonal grate beneath them.

Honestly, if he hadn't been in strictly fight or flight, Jak would have wondered what kind of metal they had that could withstand the heat. Magma was the one thing that could melt Precursor metal! What was this, then?

Dark Jak didn't care about architectural questions at the moment, however.

He crouched on the half-cover wall and slid the gun into the empty holster on his back.

Now he knew why that was part of the pauldron harness.

Not enough ammunition to go around. Fine. He didn't need it.

No killing.

He dragged the intention up over the shouting of his impulsive thoughts.

You are not a weapon. Figure it out yourself.

The magma receded, and the other six combatants eyed him warily.

The four that had already been shot down had been dragged up into the staging area before the magma timer went off.

Dark Jak just had to restrain himself enough to keep from flinging men into the molten rock.

Man on the left raising gun, grip is weak. He's tired. Man behind him has a clear shot, but he's focusing on me instead.

He had enough in him for maybe four hits. Dark Bomb was out of the question.

Jak shot forward almost too quickly to be seen. A swipe of his claws sent the first gunner tumbling across the grate with bloody furrows across his arm and chest.

The shockwave hit Jak hard, throwing him into the side of one of the cover walls.

Something cracked.

Hopefully the wall and not his spine. Because as Dark Jak, he wasn't the best at feeling pain and handling injury.

Shaking his head to clear away the momentary dizziness, he barely had time to catch someone else's wrists. It had been bold to charge him. This close to the magma it would be the work of a moment to-

No!

The magma was right there-

No. Killing.

Dark Jak snarled. He swung his attacker bodily over the edge of the platform for just an instant before using the momentum to fling him across the octagon and into the escape ladder with a crash. Just enough to let him understand how close to death he'd been.

The one who shot him had just fired two rounds at the other three remaining candidates. He was priming the gun for another shot at Jak.

This time Jak was ready.

Unfortunately, his darker side was still running the show, which meant decidedly less impulse control.

When the shockwave burst across the Arena, he held out both hands. The force jammed his wrists, bent several fingers further back than they were intended to go. But. The red eco in the shot sank into his skin to join the bubbling cocktail of colors that made up dark eco.

Heedless of his broken fingers, Dark Jak snarled and flung the energy straight back in one catastrophic smash of a blow.

The shooter tumbled off the edge.

Frith-!

The dark eco was pulling back into his core. Pain radiated across his arms and chest. But Jak ignored it to use the last of his dark eco to dive forward and catch his opponent by the back of the neck seconds before he hit the lava.

He was barely able to haul the both of them back up, and once he had, he collapsed.

"Sor- sorry," he huffed, patting the downed man's shoulder.

Then he'd swung himself back up to his feet and pulled the gun back out again.

His muscles burned. Using the dark form expanded too much stamina without other eco onhand to replenish it. Pulling the trigger with a fractured finger was a problem of its own, but he ignored it.

Just three more people, unless they called the match there.

The remaining minutes were a blur.

It was easy to fall back on his experience from Haven. A little too easy, in his opinion.

That sat strangely on his brain as he pulled himself up onto the cover wall to wait out the magma again.

He was a soldier. Not willingly, but it was the mold they had broken and crushed him up to fit into, and he couldn't escape it. And combat was so much a part of daily life for these people that job orientation doubled as entertainment. But all the same, he didn't like how natural it felt to move between blocks, exchanging fire and taking cover.

It's not lethal if I only fire once. I won't kill them if I only fire once.

He repeated it in his mind until it drowned out even the pain in his hands.

And then it was over. Two people besides Jak were still standing. Everyone else had been dragged off the field and up the ladders. The cover walls sank back into the grating, and a loud buzzer sounded. It was almost inaudible over the deafening roar of the crowd.

"Well look at that, no fatalities this month!"

Damas had to raise his voice to be heard, even with the amplification.

"With three left standing, no less! I'm impressed, gentlemen."

The floating platforms lowered to bring Jak and the two candidates up to the edge of the balcony once more. All three were somewhat the worse for wear, and completely exhausted. Damas stood and moved to the edge of the balcony to face them.

"These," he said, holding up three pieces of curved metal, "Are war amulets. Proof that you took your first Trial and emerged victorious. If you earn two more, you will be granted full citizenship in Spargus."

He leaned dangerously far over the gap to toss the amulets to each of them.

"Within the city census, you are now counted as cadets. Probationary citizens, in a sense. You can't vote yet, or choose the work you're assigned, but you are both subject to the same laws and entitled to the same protections as full citizens."

Something shifted in Jak’s periphery and he got the uncanny feeling that he was being watched. He turned his head and locked eyes with a face not much older than his own. They stood in a small alcove just below the king's balcony, glaring from behind dramatic face paint.

In an instant, a sharp pain lanced through Jak’s skull. He gripped his temple, grimacing, until the ringing in his ears subsided.

Damas was looking at him with concern. He cleared his throat and continued.

"Here, also, is a gate pass. You are free to come and go as you wish. But be warned that the Arena is only a small, controlled example of what lies in the Wastelands. Beyond the walls, there is no true shelter between us and the canyons."

Jak was honestly a bit surprised that he got a gate pass as well. He'd figured the doctors would've vetoed anything that might let him escape. Even if it was just for a day.

"Get some eco, rest up before you start trying to take on jobs," Damas advised, "Your second trial won't be for at least a month -- except for you, Jak. This was a one-time special dispensation for you. You get to wait until you're eighteen to take your next one."

"Oof," remarked the thin, scarred young man beside Jak. "Long time to wait, huh, animal-man?"

Jak stiffened.

Animal?

Bile crept up his throat. His pulse thundered in his ears as blood rushed to his head.

He wasn't an animal.

He wasn't some...mindless beast, no matter what the KG propaganda reels said. No matter what they called him in the prison.

I'm a person. I'm a person.

Damas’s interruption was quick enough to seem almost like he was replying to Moln.

"It takes courage to channel dark eco willingly. To have such a grasp of the eco of change that you can metamorphose yourself is no less impressive."

He wouldn't say that if he knew how that dark eco had come to be part of Jak's core. He wouldn't say that if he knew how many people Jak had killed with his bare hands.

The three victors were ushered into one of the same exit tunnels the wounded had been taken through. There were medpacks and clean bandages waiting, just enough to serve as first aid.

Dr. Petros was also waiting. And he did not look happy.

"Aw balls," Jak muttered under his breath.

They were still no closer to finding out the truth behind how much Praxis had been doing in his prison labs, nor whether any of the agents that never reported back from Haven had been present in that terrible place. The Guard — who was no closer to being ready for the Arena and seemed to be making use of that fact — claimed ignorance at every turn. It was all "the Council doesn't tell us about Praxis's classified projects" and "I didn't know he'd made an eco freak until he started slaughtering Guards in the streets".

And the boy simply refused to talk about it.

Tam insisted he wouldn't be ready for trauma narration and acceptance for at minimum another week.

Damas stood in the ward hall, just out of sight of the occupants of C-Ward's dormitory. He watched Jak endure a heel-stick -- one of the accommodations by Leon to avoid the ptsd triggers -- with eyes squeezed shut and headphones clamped to his ears. Nothing about the vulnerable posture even suggested the monster the guard had claimed he was. Damas may have sensed hints of dark eco building back up around him now and then, but nothing he couldn't balance out with regular exposure to light eco.

Even having seen Jak partially transformed, the boy was hardly what Damas would have classified as an "eco freak".

It was a thought unworthy of a good Wastelander, but Damas found himself hoping that when Macon was released, he didn't make it through his first Arena trial. He had no desire to deal with such an unpleasant person.

He didn't think Jak wanted to see him again, either.

The nurse set down another of the protein mixtures that the boy hated so much and sternly warned him not to leave half of it behind this time. As if that wasn't going to just make him more stubborn!

Jak, naturally, pretended not to hear Becca.

Damas intervened when he heard Becca becoming audibly frustrated. He cleared his throat and gestured towards the door in a polite dismissal.

"I'll take it from here, thank you."

Jak wasn't impressed. He still had little thought for kings and thrones. Pointedly ignoring Damas’s presence, Jak rested folded arms on his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes. If Damas strained his ears, he could just barely make out Jak humming under his breath. He'd almost memorized that entire guitar sonata. An impressive feat in and of itself. Even so-

"We can probably find you some other music chips if you get tired of that one."

"I like this one," Jak grunted after a moment.

Well, he was answering today. That was a good sign.

Damas pushed the hated pink drink towards him somewhat unceremoniously.

"I know, no one likes these. But you need to keep the electrolytes and glucose balanced, and you need the protein."

"Rather eat shoe leather."

It would have been counterproductive to laugh, but Damas was sorely tempted.

"Well if you've ever had to eat the trail rations Sig makes, you probably already know what that tastes like."

Jak actually cracked a smile at that.

"It's not great," he admitted. "Usually he just stole pub food for us. Also not great, but at least you could chew it."

Damas was surprised that the boy was willingly talking to him about Sig. Thus far he'd been tight-lipped and tighter-fisted about anything to do with the beacon and how he'd gotten to the desert. Damas decided not to call attention to it, lest Jak clam up again.

"Well," he said, taking on an air of nonchalance, "You'll never get to see what the matter-formers in the Arena are capable of if you can't get up to a healthy weight."

Jak narrowed his eyes.

"What matter-formers?"

The king flashed a sharp grin. "What, did you think I made everyone do trials on flat sand? Bunch of gladiator battles?"

Jak waved a hand from side to side. So-so. He'd somewhat assumed the quadruplets were just talking up a plain old gladiator ring.

"No no no, think more creatively," Damas scoffed. "Wasteland terrain is only flat in the badlands. Moving platforms -- not as soft as sand dunes, but close enough -- obstacle courses, lava-"

Jak's head shot up. "Lava?!"

"Mhm." Damas folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "If you keep up with your nutrition plan enough to get out of here and earn a gate pass, lava is going to be an issue more often than you'd think. Tends to happen when your island formed over a volcano."

The boy looked...a little too interested.

"Is it active?"

"No, thankfully. The monks hundreds of years ago built structures inside to alleviate pressure and halt eruptions. But that magma didn't go anywhere -- except through underground passages to a few calderas."

"Probably more self-contained than flying over a magma gorge then," Jak mused, missing Damas’s jolt. "Sounds like a Babak village."

Every word out of this kid's mouth just added to the riddles to untangle. How did he know what a Babak village looked like? And he'd called them by their proper name, not Lurkers.

"And you've been to one of those villages, have you?" Damas asked.

Jak barely nodded. "Sure, couple times. Me and Daxter, we're not registered members of the Bluefeather band, but they act like we are."

Well. There was another reason Haven probably wanted him dead. Damas studied him in silence, chin propped on his fist. The weight of his gaze left the boy fidgety and uncomfortable. Finally he met the stare head-on.

"What."

"You're part of the abolitionist movement."

It was not said as an accusation, nor as a question. Damas said it as a simple statement of fact.

The bewildered face the boy pulled was nearly comical in its elasticity.

"How'd you figure?"

Damas shifted his weight comfortably and raised his eyebrows.

"The Babak do not share their clan names with hu'mens -- drink your protein, Jak, you're stalling -- and they certainly don't take them to their villages. Not unless that person has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they can be trusted. For a hu'men to earn that distinction, you'd have to accomplish some great work on their behalf. Hence my suspicion."

Jak gave him a look of equal scrutiny as he begrudgingly swallowed some of the artificially flavored liquid. He made a face and shuddered.

"Gah. They couldn't put this stuff in coffee or something?"

"I suspect they fear the idea of you on caffeine."

Jak almost cracked a grin. "They should."

Then he raised a hand to point at Damas.

"You helped them too."

"Hm?"

"The Babak." Jak gave him a shrewd, knowing stare. "You helped them too, or you wouldn't know any of that."

The grin was out before he could even consider being serious. Damas smiled down at Jak ruefully.

"It was never enough, but I did what I could when I was your age. Cleared out some roads out of the city from under the north agricultural sector. You could see me coming and going from the stadium, so how the Guard didn't catch me in the act I'll never know unless there were some choosing to look the other way."

"I actually used some of those!"

"Did you!"

Damas couldn't help feeling a little pride.

"Then I am glad my work was of some use to you."

Jak's enthusiasm popped like a balloon when Dr. Leon entered the dormitory and laid eyes on the single most infuriating patient he'd dealt with in all his years: Damas of Spargus.

"You."

"He has diplomatic immunity," Jak said flatly.

By his bewildered expression, Leon could tell Damas didn't know what that meant any more than he did.

"Yeah, I question that immunity since he's a month late on vaccinations."

"I've been busy," Damas grumbled.

"Very convenient for you."

Jak held up the bottle threateningly.

"If the needle comes out, the bottle goes in the trash."

Both men's eyes widened.

Damas leaned down, harshly whispering,

"Are you seriously trying to blackmail the doctor, kid?"

Leon did not negotiate with blackmailers.

"If you drop below sixth percentile again, you'll wind up right back in Ward 2 again," he said calmly.

"And who do you think Nurse Tansy is going to blame for it?" Jak countered.

...Leon negotiated with some blackmailers.

"Counteroffer," he said archly, "The shot-dodger in chief reports to the clinic for the white flu vaccine by no later than tomorrow evening, and you can skip the shakes for one day."

"So do I get a say in this?" Damas asked, "or-?"

"No."

"Not really."

"Ah." Damas wrinkled his nose. "Lovely."

"What is white flu, actually?" Jak asked, "Why's he need a shot for it?"

The doctor looked at him with a muted exasperation. He pointed to a poster near the door -- an enlarged copy of a handwritten notice.

"It's right there, you didn't read it?"

In the span of a single second, Jak's entire face went blank.

Not the reaction either man had anticipated.

It was a carefully controlled non-reaction, like he was trying to feel nothing.

Rot.

The doctor sighed in a very put-upon manner.

"It's the handwriting, isn't it? Rot, my wife is going to be absolutely insufferable when I have to pay for an actual print."

The handwriting was large. Clear block glyphs, no ligature-writing or slants. In fact, it was more legible than Damas’s own writing, and he was responsible for keeping the minutes in senate meetings!

He knew it, and Leon knew it.

But Jak didn't.

What kind of life had he led before Praxis had him kidnapped? Could he read at all?

Leon cleared his throat. "Rather than wait for replacement posters: white flu is a viral infection of the nose, throat, and lungs. It is extremely contagious. And if you've never had the vaccine, it can be deadly. You had yours administered upon entry to the hospital, all newcomers do. King Damas, on the other hand, was supposed to voluntarily get his last month."

The boy was still closed-off. Damas needed a way through that wall he'd put up.

He'd given up pretending he didn't monitor the boy's recovery closely. Jak was still A Political Situation to some of his government, given that his story was thus far inextricable from intel the Gilas had been gathering on Haven. But Damas’s investment had become rather more personal. The kid was technically under his roof, anyway. Perhaps he could try -- just try, and see if Jak responded well -- to take a little more active of a role in his recovery and integration into the city.

"Alright, alright," he said begrudgingly. "I'll do the shot tomorrow. The kid can skip the liquid chalk."

"Or you could get it over with now."

Well, at least it wasn't interrupting his schedule if he did it now. He hated taking time out of his work to go get checkups. He had too much to do!

"Fine, fine," Damas sighed, "Get it over with, then."

Leon nodded sharply. "Wise choice. I'll be back."

Jak relaxed just barely when the man left. Damas pushed a curtain aside to take a seat on the unoccupied bed adjacent to Jak's. The kid was looking at the poster with the same face he wore when he was trying not to show emotions he considered too vulnerable.

"Which language are you used to?"

Jak jumped and looked at him a little nervously. Damas wasn't even slightly bothered.

"You sign, fluently. SparSign has a completely different grammar system than Curiash. I was just wondering which one was your first language."

"I can read!" Jak responded hotly.

Damas raised his hands. "Well I didn't say you couldn't! I just asked what language you usually read in!"

For three awkward minutes, Jak refused to answer. He put the headphones back on and glared at the floor.

One step forward, two steps back.

"Shorthand," he said abruptly.

"You read Curiash shorthand?"

"Curian shorthand. The really old glyphs."

Despite the situation, Damas was a little impressed. Nobody taught shorthand these days.

"Been a while since I met anyone who could do that."

Deciding that it couldn't hurt to feed the kid's bruised ego just a little, he added, "I suppose, to be fair, that I don't know many people who can memorize a sonata in only two weeks, either."

When Leon returned with the vaccine, Damas took it without reaction. Given Jak's scars, it was better not to make a big deal out of shots.

"You know, if you wanted to pick up writing in some other languages, I can think of a few people who enjoy teaching," Damas remarked.

Jak grimaced. "They wouldn't enjoy teaching me."

"Bold assumption, but alright." Damas shook out his right arm, rolled his eyes, and dutifully presented his left for one of the other vaccines he'd forgotten about. This hadn't been part of the deal, Leon was striking while the iron was hot.

"Still going to need to get someone to teach you though. You're still in the age range for compulsory education in Spargus and I really don't think you'd appreciate getting dropped in a class full of unhinged teenage Wastelanders in the middle of the school year."

"What kind of "compulsory education"?"

Jak was tensed again.

Leon answered in Damas’s place.

"Mathematics, history, very basic science and technology, and language arts, primarily. The sorts of things that keep a Wastelander from getting swindled out on jobs."

Jak's cringe deepened. Damas guessed the kid had been swindled a time or two.

"There are arts too," he grumbled at Leon, "We're not barbarians."

"Arts fall under the history classes."

"That doesn't make any sense at all. It's a subject of its own!"

The doctor waved a dismissive hand.

"Well what am I supposed to do about that? I'm a doctor, not the department of education!"

"Oh who asked you," Damas huffed.

______________________________________

Finding a tutor for the boy was not as simple as process as Damas had hoped. Pick someone impatient or sarcastic, and they could lose any progress they'd made with Jak. Pick someone shy, and it might seem like they didn't know what they were talking about. Leilani had a roster of candidates for Damas to look through -- and the Bureau had a few too many questions about his involvement -- to sort through. Damas hadn't even known Spargus had that many remedial tutors.

Ultimately, Damas chose someone from the division that handled children and adolescents rescued from Marauder labor camps. While the circumstances weren't exactly the same, that department of Leilani's staff at least knew how to handle complex trauma.

By all accounts, Chiron made an...okay first impression on Jak. He hadn't gotten more than a couple words out of the kid, but his fluency in SparSign had at least piqued Jak’s interest a little.

That was another enigma about the boy.

He spoke a Wastelander dialect, but behaved as though he knew nothing about Spargus.

The initial assessment wasn't as dismal as Damas had been afraid of.

The boy could barely read Curiash, he couldn't write at all. As expected, he knew nothing of Spargan history. But neither did he know much about mainland history. On the other hand, his grasp of math wasn't behind his peers at all. It might not have been in the same branch of mathematics other teens were usually learning in his year group -- geometry and cartography over calculus -- but he was quick with his answers.

"He's had terrible teachers," Chiron reported. "Absolute incompetents gave him a terrible perfectionist streak. Kid thinks he's stupid because he can't immediately understand something he's never studied."

More uphill battles.

Well, Damas was already in too deep. The kid had at least one more month in C-Ward before the Bureau would consider him for a barracks placement. That made him more Damas’s responsibility than anyone else's.

"Alright. Let me know what he needs and I'll try to get it to you."

Chiron nodded.

"We'll start small. Kids' books. The Glub in the Tub is a decent reading primer."

More than just a "decent" primer, evidently.

Jak had a reasonable grasp of sight words by the end of the week. Grammar? That was going to take a while. But he seemed to respond well to encouragement.

Within the month, he was reading on his own. It wasn't perfect, but he was self-motivated.

Chiron started asking for harder materials.

Geography. Children's history books. World maps.

His test scores were still abysmally low, but Damas didn't understand how that could be when the kid seemed to have a near photographic memory. What were they missing?

Brother Tam was the one to figure it out.

He'd been working through Jak’s story, little by little. Jak was reticent. The only things he was willing to talk about were his experiences in Haven, and even then it was clear that he was holding information back. Tam was confident that he'd come to a place eventually where he felt safe enough to talk about it, and so he never pried.

It helped Jak trust him. The kid actually looked forward to his rambling walks through the tower with Tam in the evenings.

"Oof, these stairs are always colder than I'm expecting," Tam had remarked on one of the evenings.

"It's 'cause the water," Jak had responded unexpectedly.

"Oh? How's that?"

And Jak had seemed so unbothered as he skipped a few steps.

"Throne room's up there, pipes are in the walls. Water's a better thermal conductor than air."

He hadn't been thinking about it, he'd just repeated what he'd read. It had given Tam an idea. As he followed Jak between levels, he'd started periodically asking questions.

"How does that work, anyway?"

"Do you know how many years it took to carve the citadel into the cliff?"

"How much water do you suppose gets filtered through the throne room water wheels a day?"

And Jak had answered every single one. His answers weren't always fully correct, but he was relaxed, and even a little confident.

Jak needed verbal tests. Not written ones.

The revelation had been a bit of a game changer for Chiron. Jak's assessments took an almost overnight leap from 50% accuracy to 85% accuracy. And all they'd needed to do that whole time was adjust the method to suit the student better.

Jak, for his part, appreciated the distraction from his situation.

He couldn't leave. He didn't know where any of his friends were. He had lost muscle mass. But when Chiron showed up with more of those flimsy books, he could pretend he was somewhere else for a while.

He'd always been told to stick to fighting. To leave the thinking to people like Samos. That he was all muscle and no brain. And yet here he was, actually learning. And the people here actually believed he was capable of learning!*

And Jak...

Jak actually liked knowing new things.

Sure, he was no genius, and he never would be. But he liked learning. And he was good at memorizing things. It had been a survival tactic in Haven. He'd never expected it to apply to something that normal people got to do.

He didn't like all the tests. A quiz every other day felt superfluous. (Chiron's own fault for teaching Jak that word, he was absolutely using it against his teacher whenever possible.) And not every day was a good day.

Sometimes the memories were too close for other subjects to distract him.

Sometimes his hands hurt and he didn't want to practice writing.

Sometimes he was just...angry. Without a real reason or trigger.

He knew he was risking that foundling bureau keeping him longer if they thought he wasn't complying with the mandatory counseling. But he couldn't just turn that anger off like a switch.

He knew six weeks in that he'd been pushing it a little too often when Damas showed up with Chiron.

"Chiron told me you've been having a rough time with the nurses today," the king said calmly.

"Chiron needs to mind his own business," Jak retorted.

Damas was not impressed.

"He is, hotshot. You're his student."

When Jak didn't respond, he folded his arms.

"And, as much as you hate it, it's the nurses' business too."

Jak scowled and, ignoring protests, stood up on the cot to hoist himself up into the windowsill several feet above him.

"Yeah? For what?"

"Excuse me?"

Frustrated, Jak glared out the window.

"What's your end game here? Can't fight for anybody if I'm locked up here. So unless you people are running tests I don't know about-"

"You know rotting well no one is permitted to run tests without your permission."

"Permission?"

Jak scoffed.

"Why bother? It's not like I'm ever getting out of here. Can't fight back, there's nowhere to go."

Ah. One of those days.

Damas supposed he could've taken the boy to task over his attitude. Or he could've just let him sit with it. But he was not without sympathy for the frustration Jak had to be feeling.

"You will need some physical therapy before they release you at this rate," he acknowledged. "We should probably find out where your strength level is right now, shouldn't we."

Jak looked down from the window and narrowed his eyes.

"I don't trust that," he said, pointing. "What do you want?"

Oh, Dr. Goad was going to murder him for this. Ironically, Leon would probably be the only one in Damas’s corner this time.

"I'm offering a deal," he said. "You cooperate with the recovery plan as best you can this week, and in exchange, I'll let you do a pre-Trial assessment in the Arena."

"You'll what?!"

Chiron fairly trumpeted his outrage. "You can't just-! He's too young for that! The Bureau will have our heads!"

"I can make a one-time exception," Damas said, hiding his own second-guessing well. "Consider it an executive decision. Most of his peers have their own gate passes, or will by the end of the year. Look, if we want him to get outside occasionally, we're going to have to make some compromises."

Dr. Goad was going to murder him. Entirely possible that Dr. Petros would help.

He'd figured at first that they barely registered his presence. Just some glaring problem patient they could tune out.

But then the oldest of the quadruplets asked if he wanted any of the extra food they brought their brothers, "to piss off old Sawbones".

He'd accepted hesitantly, and that seemed to open a door.

They didn't have conversations, not directly, but the four spoke so that Jak could hear them. They indirectly included him in small ways — Jak was beginning to wonder if that food really had been "extra", or if it had been brought deliberately out of some kind of solidarity.

Solidarity. Yes, that's what it was.

It felt like the occasions when members of the Underground actually treated him like one of them and not a disposable weapon.

He wouldn't have called the brothers friends, but he was growing to appreciate their company.

Apparently, they didn't hate him, either, considering what they'd just given him.

Headphones.

Jak looked down at the cheap plastic and metal in his hands. The shiny blue paint would scratch off easily. And it wasn't likely to work outside of a certain distance from the talk-box. But it was a gift. A true gift, not an investment with strings attached for once. The brothers had given it to him because they could.

"Hey, easy, li'l biter," Cody said kindly, "If you start cryin' again, Dex here is gonna start blubberin, and when he cries he sounds like a beached whale!"

Dex punched Cody in the side. Echo helped.

Fox ignored all of them to hold out a small chip to Jak.

"It's not the best quality, but you stick that in your talk-box and then it plays music over the headphones. I think it's all guitar and harp, but there might be some flute on there. It wasn't labeled at the market."

When Jak had first gotten to know Sig, he'd assumed that the man was a singular individual. That his kindness in a city like Haven was a one-off. A fluke that couldn't be duplicated in other individuals. The world was hard, and cold, and mean. Innocence was hard to come by and harder to keep. Even if he had never left Sandover, Jak had already been past the point of a fully clean conscience. But Sig, Sig lived like he was a law unto himself. He functioned by a code, and by gods he'd tried his best to impart that code to Jak and Daxter.

At every turn, the city of Haven confirmed Jak's beliefs. Wretched souls at the bottom of the pit, clawing and grasping for the means to just survive the day while the privileged few looked down on them from the top of the heap like vultures. Jak broke the rules: Jak climbed out of the pit. And once he'd started gaining notoriety, the other wretches down below began to realize that escape was possible. They could assert themselves. There were more of them than the Council.

So obviously, Jak had to die. And the city shut its eyes and returned to its pit because the world was cold. The one exception to that world was Sig, and Haven made sure he and Daxter couldn't save Jak.

And yet.

And yet here in one of the harshest environments on this side of the world, there was kindness. Generosity. Jak didn't understand.

These people, even the elders, were warriors. Soldiers. A military class, in a brutally pragmatic city, ruled by a warlord who did not suffer fools gladly. And despite their clear superiority in training and combat, despite the power every single one of them had over Jak, they chose compassion.

It wasn't soft. Sometimes it wasn't kind. Often it was very unpleasant so far. But they'd scraped him off the ground and decided that they were going to put him back together come hell or high water. And now these visits from Brother Tam, and the things his "roommates" did-

Echo bringing more food than Cody and Dex needed and pretending it was an accident so that Jak had something other than the chalky protein drinks.

Dex interrupting a panic attack by teaching Jak new curse words in sign.

Someone changing the sheets on his cot every time he left to wander.

"I- you- why did you do this?"

Sometimes it reminded him of Sandover, when they'd still treated him like a child and not a tool for procuring orbs. But more often it reminded him of Sig. These were Wastelanders, like Sig. Was this desert community where he had learned that code? Even with how ready to kill these people were?

Jak looked up from the headphones.

"You don't even know me."

"And our stay's almost up," Cody added. He scratched his stubbly head and shrugged. "Sometimes the quiet's worse. When there's others, you can at least pretend you're in the youth barracks. But once we leave- well, we thought you could use something to drown out the silence."

"I mean, we kind of know you," Fox answered idly, "You been here two weeks with our idiots."

"I don't know what youth barracks are. Just that some bureau says I can't live there until Tam clears me."

It wasn't the first time someone had mentioned youth barracks. Did this city take kids to live and train as soldiers? He couldn't tell if that was at odds with what he'd experienced so far or not.

Cody blinked, and Dex held out a hand.

Echo rolled his eyes. "Youth barracks are just where kids old enough for training squads live one or two weeks out of the month. Well, except the ones without family to go back to, or whose families suck, they're there year-round."

"Pay up. Told you he was new."

That was likely where Jak would end up. If they ever let him leave this tower, anyway.

The four brothers exchanged glances, then looked back at him.

"Who are you fighting?"

Stiff and uncomfortable, Jak gestured to Echo's armor.

"What, like, right now? What do you mean?"

"All the soldiers. Training kids. Barracks. Who are you at war with?"

There was an awkward silence, as though Jak had asked something incredibly strange. The quadruplets poked at each other by turns as if trying to foist the burden of explaining off onto another. Cody seemed to come out on the losing end.

"Uh...the desert, I guess?"

The thin man made a face. "Yop. After Damas overthrew the bloody scumbag who had the Arena built, he changed the rules to give it a purpose."

"The desert."

"A purpose besides bloodsport," Fox grumbled.

"Well, there's a little bloodsport."

"Bloodsport is killin' without a purpose!" Fox argued.

"It's four different sports, people end up losing some blood, that's a blood-sport!" Cody retorted.

"Can't," Cody answered smugly, "You ain't got no hairs to split."

"Don't split hairs," Fox huffed.

Dex reached over to knock the pair's heads together without expression.

"That...makes sense, I guess," Jak allowed, if a little grudgingly.

"Short version," he sighed, "when it's not being used for Raidball, Asocc, or community events, the Arena simulates the main dangers you run into outside the walls. If newcomers want to get gate passes -- or jobs around here -- first they have to prove to the king that they can survive out there. No safety nets: if you slip up, you get injured or you die. So citizens start training early."

but I'm not a citizen. I'm a charity case at best and a prisoner at worst. Will they make me enter this Arena?

Jak slid the headphones over his ears and tuned out the brothers as they began to playfully bicker again. The padded circles weren't the most comfortable, but that was a small matter.

It was far more elaborate than the simple tunes he'd grown up hearing. Long, difficult measures meant to showcase the skill of the person playing some kind of stringed instrument -- if it was a guitar, it wasn't like the screeching things Jak heard on the saloon radio.

It did take some doing to get the chip into the rudimentary talk-box. It had been assigned to him as soon as Dr. Leon realized Jak was going to wander whether he liked it or not, and it was clearly a bare-minimum kind of device. But once it was in, a muffled melody crackled through the headphones and into his ears.

Spellbound, Jak sat at the end of his cot, hands over the earpieces. It sounded like-

The slopes on the way to the mountain temple came to mind. The song had no words, nothing to even hint at mountains. So why did it form a picture in his head? Had music ever done that for him before?

What did it sound like? Not something he'd heard before, but something it made him think of.

Jak blinked startled.

Jak was still sitting there, wide-eyed and silent, when they brought the protein shake. He barely acknowledged the nurse's presence at all. When Brother Tam made his afternoon visit, Jak was in his own little world. He rolled the protein bottle back and forth between his palms -- it was actually half empty.

"Oh. Hello, friend!" Tam smiled at him. "What's that you've got?"

Self-conscious now, Jak slid the headphones off and shifted his weight. He looked down at the protein bottle and made a face.

"Um. Uh it's-"

"Ugh, gross."

Tam stifled a chuckle. "It's quite a texture, isn't it? You know, It's funny that they've never found a way to take the chalkiness out. They tasted like that when I was a boy too."

"S'like prison food," Jak grumbled. "Less lumpy. Still chalk."

Jak gave him a dirty look.

The former monk's brows lifted. "Oh dear. Would you like me to have a word with Dr. Leon about other options?"

"Well now you sound like the king," Tam chuckled. "Leon is a strict man, yes. But he has to deal with Wastelanders, friend. The most obstinate people on the planet. But he doesn't go out of his way to make people miserable, I promise."

"No. He'll make up something worse."

Jak rolled his eyes.

But he was in a better mood than usual. He didn't immediately remind Tam that all his experience suggested that adults were never that trustworthy. He forced another sip down and shuddered.

Jak shrugged noncommittally. He wouldn't get his hopes up.

"Maybe we should try foods with high protein in them," Tam suggested. "I'll bring some next time."

The boy's eyes darted to the men at the other end of the room.

"What are those?" Tam asked, gesturing again to the headphones.

"They um. Gave them to me. For when it's too loud in my head."

"Oh!" The man's eyes crinkled at the corners with warmth.

He looked up, meeting Cody's eyes.

Cody shrugged with half a smile.

Thank you, he mouthed.

This, this was what Jak needed. Random acts of kindness from people with nothing to gain from it, just to remind the boy that he too was hu'men, that he too deserved more than just base survival.

It was a pity the brothers would be leaving soon. Tam wondered if he could convince them to visit Jak after their release. They were neither staff nor authority figures, after all. Jak was, even if just incrementally, a little more open with them.