At first, Jackson hardly notices that Jono is gone. It happens, after all, that in the middle of the night one of them needs to get up at some point for some reason, but he's gone longer than usual and Jackson finds himself getting cold.
Cold, damp, the waste of the overcity used the drain down into the undercity slums in federal sector one, making the whole place stink worse than the usual rot and decay of forgotten human life. They used to call it Earth, but the choke of massive cities and the slow way the once blue (now yellowing) oceans were depleted made it easier to think of the planet as a federal sector rather than something that used to sustain life of its own accord. Nothing grows anymore if it isn't in a lab or in the sprawling levels of factories that stretch across the New Alliance and Europa continents. Plants, animals, human life. Nothing breeds here the way it does elsewhere or did on Old Earth, not even humans. Everything is sterile and life is propped up in a facade with science, as if humanity can fight evolution and their own stupidity with it. The rich turn on holowindows, with scenes of space or growing alien worlds to ignore the way they're slowly killing everything and the poor drink and die slowly in the steel prison basements of the cities, some having been born and lived and died without ever seeing the light of Sol.
His nose is filled with the stench of that unfortunate tour of duty when he wakes to the realization that he's alone, the nightmare of things long past causing his sometimes delicate sense of reality to slide slightly to one side. The bedroom is dark and the faint electronic buzz is nothing compared to the rumble of the barracks he was squeezed into in FS1, but he can't remember where he is. The smells, the feeling of soft sheets beneath him, the regulated temperature and the faint sounds of a comparatively small city beyond the windows.
It doesn't make sense until he reaches up to run a hand over his face and sensation floods through long-deadened nerves. Jono introduced him to Josh not long after he got here, a mutant with a powerful healing factor and a very pretty complexion, and in less than an hour he'd recovered from all the old war wounds and battles scars he'd been waiting for years to have treated at a federal medical facility. All the feeling in his right hand was restored, his limp was gone, he even had a whole ear again. It was ... beautiful.
Sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Jackson stands to hunt around for a pair of boxers to slide into. While he isn't modest by any means, a life in the military has taught him the necessity of clothes and it's a habit living here with Jono hasn't broken him of. Yet. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Jackson pads out of the bedroom in search for a glass of water and stops dead in his tracks when he reaches the living room.
"Jono?" he asks, confusion in his voice despite the rush of adrenaline through his veins. Jackson doesn't even remember where his gun is these days, half thinking it went the way of his uniform, but this situation makes him itch to have it back in his hands.
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Date: 2010-01-29 05:54 pm (UTC)Cold, damp, the waste of the overcity used the drain down into the undercity slums in federal sector one, making the whole place stink worse than the usual rot and decay of forgotten human life. They used to call it Earth, but the choke of massive cities and the slow way the once blue (now yellowing) oceans were depleted made it easier to think of the planet as a federal sector rather than something that used to sustain life of its own accord. Nothing grows anymore if it isn't in a lab or in the sprawling levels of factories that stretch across the New Alliance and Europa continents. Plants, animals, human life. Nothing breeds here the way it does elsewhere or did on Old Earth, not even humans. Everything is sterile and life is propped up in a facade with science, as if humanity can fight evolution and their own stupidity with it. The rich turn on holowindows, with scenes of space or growing alien worlds to ignore the way they're slowly killing everything and the poor drink and die slowly in the steel prison basements of the cities, some having been born and lived and died without ever seeing the light of Sol.
His nose is filled with the stench of that unfortunate tour of duty when he wakes to the realization that he's alone, the nightmare of things long past causing his sometimes delicate sense of reality to slide slightly to one side. The bedroom is dark and the faint electronic buzz is nothing compared to the rumble of the barracks he was squeezed into in FS1, but he can't remember where he is. The smells, the feeling of soft sheets beneath him, the regulated temperature and the faint sounds of a comparatively small city beyond the windows.
It doesn't make sense until he reaches up to run a hand over his face and sensation floods through long-deadened nerves. Jono introduced him to Josh not long after he got here, a mutant with a powerful healing factor and a very pretty complexion, and in less than an hour he'd recovered from all the old war wounds and battles scars he'd been waiting for years to have treated at a federal medical facility. All the feeling in his right hand was restored, his limp was gone, he even had a whole ear again. It was ... beautiful.
Sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Jackson stands to hunt around for a pair of boxers to slide into. While he isn't modest by any means, a life in the military has taught him the necessity of clothes and it's a habit living here with Jono hasn't broken him of. Yet. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Jackson pads out of the bedroom in search for a glass of water and stops dead in his tracks when he reaches the living room.
"Jono?" he asks, confusion in his voice despite the rush of adrenaline through his veins. Jackson doesn't even remember where his gun is these days, half thinking it went the way of his uniform, but this situation makes him itch to have it back in his hands.