"One more, Charlie," Jack said from underneath the Stetson. He rarely talked, and even more rarely looked up, and Charlie was glad for it. Old Jack had grown on him, but there was still something eerie about his deep gruff voice and his piercing blue eyes that were as pale as a guppy's. When the bar was busy Charlie could generally shrug it off, but on quiet nights like this he couldn't help but wonder what had happened in Jack's life to get him to this point.
"One for me, too, Chal," said another familiar voice. Thomas had come in and propped himself up in the seat next to Jack. Charlie chuckled.
"You got it, Tom. Two for the duo."
Thomas smiled and glanced at Jack, but Jack tipped his head the other way and only grunted. 'The Duo' was something Thomas called himself and Jack, though he knew Jack wasn't amused. He was the only one who could elicit any kind of conversation out of Jack, even if it usually consisted of one-word answers and guttural noises while he did most of the talking.
"Last one already, Jack? It's still a little early for you yet," Thomas noted. He could always count on Jack being there from 4PM to Midnight. Every day.
Jack grunted in response as he reached a hand out for his fresh drink. He was such a permanent fixture in the bar that Thomas had to wonder what Jack had been doing for a living. He once tried asking Jack outright with no luck, and even the old men could only say that they thought he once worked in law enforcement. No one could even tell him exactly how old Jack was.
When regular conversation didn’t work, Thomas resorted to pushing all the buttons he had discovered in the two months he had known Jack on the Hashmark.
“That can’t be your last, Jack, it’s not quite ten yet, they haven’t shut off the lights. Don’t tell me you’re gonna nurse it for two hours, or are you suddenly afraid of the dark?”
This drew another grunt from the old man, but this time he turned his head and trained his pale eyes on the dark-haired youth.
“You know nothing of the dark.” His words were so low that Thomas almost didn’t catch them at all. Thomas held his breath as Jack slowly pushed his chair back and stood up with a creak. Like everything Jack did, it was with an unhurried purpose. He left his half-finished drink on the bar, set down the credits he owed for the night, and deftly strode out, the door clanging behind him.
Almost imperceptibly, the other patrons in the bar momentarily turned their attention to what had happened. Thomas skimmed the room, then shrugged, as baffled by Jack’s actions as the rest were.
“I probably shouldn’t follow him,” Thomas commented to Charlie, after gulping down his drink.
“Probably not,” Charlie agreed, but the look in both their faces said otherwise. Normally, neither would have thought twice about following Jack, but abnormal behavior makes one think abnormal thoughts.
Jack walked down the hall, his hands deep inside his jacket’s pockets. He had spent the last quarter of his life tracking down a renegade alien and, thanks to many well-served years on the Galactic Force, had finally found her residing on the Hashmark, the most outdated colony still in existence. It didn’t really surprise him. Living in an orbiting station around Jupiter had once been an outrageously posh thing to do back in the 23rd Century, but giant advancements in space technology left the Hashmark almost completely abandoned only a short century later. Now it served more as a waypoint for lost souls, degenerates, and those having nothing else to live for, than as an upscale mining community.
The rusted bolts in the walls were just one more reminder for Jack of how long he had actually spent looking for the elusive Ru'anite. The last time he had frequented the Hashmark, everything was shining with the brilliance of new beginnings for the human race and he was a newly appointed undercover agent for the Galactic Force, solving alien kidnapping cases.
Jack strode his usual path to the Level 34C Docking Bay. He entered through the large double doors, the mechanisms that open them screeching and whining against the years of disrepair. He calmly took the hundred paces toward the edge of the dock, no longer amazed at the radiant view of Jupiter out the panoramic space-glass paneling. Jack pulled a cigarette from the inside pocket of his jacket, and a lighter from the back pocket of his pants. He lit the cigarette and took a long drag.
This had been his ritual every day for the last four years. It didn't bother him. It had taken him twenty three years to finally get there, so a few more didn't make much difference. Ru'anites were reclusive, not travelling often, or very far, from their homeworld, but all that he managed to catch up with told him the same thing: That Lina'i was the one he needed to see. They were kind and wanted to help, but for some reason the process was impossible to reverse in humans unless attended by the same Ru'anite that had caused the disconnection. The last one he had spoken to told him he was very lucky that Lina'i was still travelling. She had lived a long life, and once she went back to Ru'an, she would want to reconnect and give up existence. Jack always figured he was also lucky that all Ru'anites were so sensitive on the subject of souls, and for that fact only Lina'i was willing to help him.
The clanging and scraping of the double doors startled Jack out of his nightly reverie. He spun around, quicker than he had moved in a long time. He spotted Thomas, frozen in the doorway, probably startled that it had made so much noise.
"What's your business, boy?" Jack called out to him, none to kindly. He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, threw it to the ground and pressed it with the toe of his boot before striding angrily toward his intruder. He didn't take his eyes off Thomas, and perhaps that was why Thomas didn't just turn around and run. He felt trapped, unable to break away from that pale gaze. Before his muscles could obey his mind, Thomas felt Jack's hand grab the front of his shirt, push him out into the hall and up against the wall.
"You been spittin' nonsense to me for two months, boy. What do you think you're gonna get outta me? Huh?" Jack accompanied his questions with a few rough jerks, Thomas' head banging against the wall behind him. Thomas tried to wait out Jack's anger, but his training kicked in. One foot rose swiftly and hit Jack in the groin, effectively doubling him over. One hand shoved Jack back while the other drew a hidden sidearm from inside his jacket and trained it at Jack's head.
Jack coughed and groaned, looking up, thoroughly surprised at the young man, and the barrel of the gun. "What are…"
"Galactic Force, Jack," Thomas said steadily, his unarmed hand flipping open a billfold displaying the gold seal of the Galactic Force. Jack bowed his head and held up his hands, palms outward, admitting defeat. Thomas deftly put his gun away and offered his hand, which Jack took and stood up.
"All this time, you.." Jack started, but Thomas stopped him.
"I don't know everything, Jack," Thomas said. "But I know enough. Enough to have tracked you here and enough to know what to try and get you to say. But you didn't. You're a lot tougher than Admiral Jenkins made you out to be." Jack growled and turned his back to the boy. Thomas followed him back to the edge of the dock where Jack lit another cigarette, as calmly as he had the first time.
"I guess I'm getting' sloppy in my old age, if they sent an upstart like you after me," Jack said, glancing at Thomas.
"I actually didn't expect your age to show so much," Thomas conceded. "You were what, twenty-six, twenty-seven when it happened?"
"Twenty-nine."
"So that would make you…"
"Hundred and seven," Jack muttered, "but who's counting?"
Thomas gave a low whistle. "And you don't look a day over sixty five," he said, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work, so Thomas got to the point. "Why are you here, Jack? Since you obviously don't look like you're twenty-nine now, does that mean you're not," he paused before finishing, because the idea still seemed so ludicrous to him, even though he had read all the research that Sector 4 had given him, "immortal anymore?"
Jack took one last drag and then flicked the cigarette butt out over the dock. "Humans should never mess with alien voodoo," Jack said in answer. "I'm tired of talkin'. If you want to know more, come with me."
Jack strode alongside the dock, Thomas close on his heels, toward a large warehouse area. On the far wall of the storage space there was a door that probably once led to an office of some sort. When Jack stopped outside of it, he gave a series of short knocks, waited a moment, then he pushed the door open. The inside was dark, hot, and humid. Thomas had to guess that a separate climate control device had been installed to achieve such a radical difference from the rest of the station. There were puddles on the floor underneath where the moisture was dripping off the walls. At the very back of the room, on a small stainless steel table, a light inside a glass vial illuminated the only other occupant.
"Jack, you brought company," the figure said as it stood up. Thomas gasped at the humanoid alien's height, towering over them by at least two feet. Its skin was waxy and pale, a grayish-blue, and it wasn't clothed except for a sash around its chest and a loin cloth. What startled Thomas the most, even after looking at countless pictures of Ru'anites, was the face. The eyes were shaped like human eyes, but they were much too large, taking up half of the face area, and completely black. No whites, no iris, no pupil. The nose was merely a small bump below the eyes, and the mouth was no more than a two inch wide slit.
"I apologize, Lina'i," Jack said. He walked toward the alien and sat in the only other piece of furniture in the room, a small chair draped with a plastic cover. Lina'i sat, leaving Thomas to stand. "It looks like they finally found us," he said.
Lina'i nodded and turned her eyes on Thomas, looking him over before turning back to the light on the table. Thomas looked closer at it and started to put two and two together.
"Is that?..."
"What you think it is?" Lina'i finished his thought. "Yes. It is Jack's soul. I have been trying night after night to reconnect them. Humans are exceedingly difficult to work with." She did not look at Thomas as she spoke, but at Jack instead, who was slumped, defeated, in the chair. Thomas slowly drew his gun, but wasn't sure where to point it first.
Jack spoke, his eyes on his own brilliant soul. "Humans are greedy and spiteful, jealous of the Ru'anites' ritual of soul splitting, and resulting immortality. But the problem is that they live peaceful lives, and we like to kill each other."
Thomas' grip on his gun tightened. He knew the story by heart. Jack had been assigned to uncover a rash of alien kidnapping cases, all involving Ru'anites. What they discovered was that the soul splitting ritual could be performed on other species. Instead of shutting it down, the Galactic Force kidnapped their own Ru'anite and forced her to tear soul from body to create a legion of immortal warriors. What they didn't understand was that immortal is not synonymous with invincible. Instead of fixing the problem, they destroyed the evidence, like any good human government agency did.
Jack had been the only one to escape with the Ru'anite.
"It took years to recover my soul," Jack explained. "Then it took me twice as long to find Lina'i. When the body dies without the soul, the soul is lost forever. It can't find its way to the afterlife without the aid of the body."
"I have postponed my own journey to help Jack," Lina'i continued for him. "We merely have to touch our soul for it to reconnect, but to give Jack a peaceful end is much harder. Not having a soul is harder for a human, too," she commented. "The body still ages, but at a much slower pace."
Jack looked up at Thomas finally, his eyes pleading. He knew what Thomas had come to the Hashmark to do. "Why'd you wait so long to do this?" Jack asked honestly.
Thomas saw that the hardness he had seen in Jack's eyes the past two months was just a cover. He looked now and saw emptiness, a darkness that would never recede.
"Because I kinda like you, Jack." Thomas hesitated for a moment. "But I can't disobey orders."
Jack and Lina'i looked to each other, and both closed their eyes, resigned to their fate. If it wasn't Thomas, it would be someone else before long.
"I'm sorry, Jack…"
No one was close enough to hear the two gunshots. Thomas left the bodies there, lit by a single soul lost in the darkness.
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