It takes a minute or so to locate the correct van, as it’s nondescript, and there are more than a few of them kept down here.
Jack doesn’t argue when I go to the driver’s side of the van. He just walks around to the passenger side and climbs in.
I get settled in my seat and put the key in the ignition. Jack remains silent as I start up the van and take us up an incline within the garage, which leads out onto a deserted road. The door at the top of the incline opens when we get close, reacting to the sensor built into the van.
Once we’re out on the main road, I make an attempt to draw Jack into conversation. It seems his natural instinct is to remain quiet when it seems there is nothing pertinent to discuss. I imagine he didn’t get much small talk with whomever he worked with previously.
“Have they been treating you well?” I ask. Jack looks at me inquiringly, so I add, “The other agents. The interrogators. The psyche agents. Whoever it is they’ve had you speak to.”
Jack seems to think about that for a bit, rolling the question around inside his head, considering his answer.
“They’ve treated me better than OI’s people ever did,” he says eventually, an answer that does not reassure me.
Better than OIcould mean a lot of things. It’s a pretty low fucking bar to be matching anything up against.
“Are you really okay with being sent out on missions for FISA?”
That is what I’m most concerned about. Jack has been incarcerated by OI for most of his life. Used and hurt by them in ways I struggle to comprehend. Then he was kept locked up by FISA for months, and now they’ve got him working for them.
It seems unlikely to me Jack would be comfortable, let alone happy, with that turn of events. Getting away from OI can only account for so much.
“They told me I’d get to run my own life outside of missions, as long as I agreed to having you as my partner.” Jack says, flat out, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. There’s nothing soft about this man, but the expression currently adorning his face is about the closest thing I’ve seen to soft so far.
He shrugs, eyes darting away. “It seemed worth it at the time.”
“And now?” I ask after a pause, unsure what answer I should want from him.
Jack studies me for a moment, letting his eyes travel over my seated form. It’s an assessing look. Not quite checking for a threat. Not quite checking me out in general. Something of a mix between the two.
“I’m not sure yet,” Jack replies evenly. “I guess we’ll see how it all works out.”
I have no clue how to respond to that, so I don’t try.
For a handful of minutes, I think conversation time is officially over, but Jack surprises me by turning his head back towards me and asking, “How’s the corgi? He alright?”
It’s so random a question, it takes me a second for my brain to understand what he’s talking about.
“The corgi? You mean King?”
Jack gives a shallow nod.
“The one that parked its arse on top of me.”
A smile pricks at my lips at the memory of King sitting on top of Jack in that bathroom. It shouldn’t be funny, for numerous reasons, but it just kind of is.
“King is okay,” I tell him, oddly touched he would ask about the general well-being of my dog. “I think that night was the most fun he’d had in a long time.”
Jack snorts, mouth curving slightly.
“Is he yours?”
“Yeah. Found him as a puppy when I was out on a mission in Wales. Some weirdo scientist was doing experiments on dogs.”
“Oh yeah? Isn’t Wales the place where Lord Fang started out?”
Lord Fang is a very prominent supervillain. His thing is creating genetically modified monster animals, like twenty-foot dogs with acid saliva and giant red pandas with rage issues.
“Yep,” I confirm. “Same bloke. He was trying to find a way of giving dogs the intelligence level of humans.”
