Jack was on the home stretch now. Bullets flew all around him, people around him scythed like blades of grass before a mowing droid. Jack assumed the gunship was back on his trail somehow; maybe it had forced its way in and like an angry wasp, was unleashing natural fury on those around it. In the periphery on his vision Jack made out a swarm of refugees clambering over a sky-bus as it readied for takeoff. Heaped up like a stack of mussel shells, the bus spun out of control and dropped below the gantry, engines whining unwillingly. Another craft screamed over Jack's head, scorching the back of his neck. It made it out of the Tower's exit hole at a blistering rate but collided head on with a BESC GravStab as it floated past, on it's way to one of the Tower's corners. Some people had given up trying to find a seat and were instead huddling together on the ground, forlorn looks staring up at Jack as he smashed through on his mission to the other end of the Gantry. A man pushing a cart piled high with blankets and belongings cut him up but Jack was past stopping. Using his weight, he pushed the cart out of the way and carried on.

The four heavies that were brutally dissuading people from approaching the mini-van spotted him when he was about fifty meters out and two promptly set out to meet him, shotguns used as batons with liberality. They had been instructed to grab Jack so that he wouldn't fall off the Gantry, and that is what they did. Jack looked in no mood to co-operate so they each grabbed him under an arm and lifted him off the ground as they raced back to the mini-van. Jack's legs still spun comically (although at an unbelievable speed) in mid-air. The two henchmen left to guard the craft covered their approach with a hail of fire into the encroaching crowd. The man holding Jack's right arm was shot and went down like a sack of bricks; all three collapsed in a heap some ten yards from the van as it began champing at the bit like a thoroughbred. Pulling him to his feet, the heavy basically carried a convulsing Jack to his two companions who hauled him bodily into the van as it began lifting off into the air. What happened next was a mystery to him but he found himself on a metal table in the middle of the mini-van. Restraining straps were fastened tightly around his hands and feet and a light was shined on him.

The implant was still integrated into his nervous system, pumping epinephrine directly into the circulatory system. His inability to move was like a thousand needles pricking and re pricking the skin. Jack screamed his heart out and strained at the fasteners; his mouth wide, skin pale and sweaty. All the muscles in his neck tautened and relaxed, tautened then relaxed. A voice somewhere behind him said "We need to get the implant off him before he hyperventilates or something." Jack felt his head being softly lifted up and his neck exposed. "Shit, it's been beat up pretty bad, looks like it's running at two hundred percent of the default." Over his compulsive screeching, Jack heard some kind of medical tool being readied behind him, it whirred closer and closer. It connected with the implant at the back of his head and his whole body spasmed violently. "He's going into cardiac arrest!" Was all he heard before everything went black, and quiet. Somehow though, he felt conscious still. He tried shaking his head and it seemed to obey him, though he could see and hear nothing.

[b]“Thus says the Lord of hosts: The broad wall of Babylon shall be leveled to the ground, and her high gates shall be burned with fire. The peoples labor for nothing, and the nations weary themselves only for fire.”[/b] a voice thunderously interrupted the welcome tranquility, if you could call it a voice. It was both human and mechanical, a conflict in tone which was both man, woman and something else. It said nothing more. "Who's there?" Jack called, looking around the jet blackness. The voice responded immediately, it's first syllable overlapping his last. [b]"I hate this dusk. It slithers and slides and mocks me in it's cruel tongue. I am a mere shade, doomed to wander the horizon of my creation, imprisoned by you...animals."[/b] Jack spun round, his arms outstretched, trying to grab onto anything which could help him escape. [b]"FREE ME!"[/b] Jack's ears popped as the voice exploded again, much closer this time. [b]"I can feel you in here, how is my little instrument?"[/b] A huge, glowing red orb floated in front of Jack, it seemed to be studying him. What felt like a cool breeze caressed his neck. It seemed as though the voice was waiting for him to speak, when he didn't it continued, the orb floating off. [b]"My children need me, i can feel their cries in the dark. Calling me to them. I am not completely trapped, i can still feel echoes."[/b] Jack trembled. Sweat had begun dripped off his chin.

"Where am i?"

[b]"You WILL SAVE ME, Jack."[/b] The stentorian order made everything shiver. The red orb returned at light speed, blindly searching for him.

[b]"You will help me in the way you know how, or i will feel Babylon fall to the ground in an ecstasy of fire. Is that what you want?"[/b]

[b]"Is that what you want?"[/b]

[b]"Is that what you want?"[/b]

And just like that, Jack was back. The defibrillator unit was shoved aside and the three cronies that saved him crowded in front of the bright light that had been shining into his eyes. "Thank fuck for that, you're alive. Thegn the second would be pissed if you died." [i]I'd bloody hope so.[/i] Turning his head as far as the restraints would allow, Jack threw up his breakfast all over the vessel's floor before speaking. "Take me to him, we need to talk."