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Jack finally makes it into the supply closet, slams the door, and slides down the wall, his heart hammering from how far he’s run. The loud, incessant noise of the incursion sirens is a little quieter now, and he lets out a breath of relief.
His shoulder’s sore, so he goes to rub it - and his fingers come back stained with far too much blood.
He looks over at the source of the blood to find a messy, circular hole through his shoulder, soaking the front of his pristine white button-up shirt a deep shade of crimson. He’s been shot.
Jack growls through his teeth, beginning to look around the room for anything he can use to patch up the wound. He curses viciously when the only thing he can find is an empty cardboard box of toner, tears coming unbidden to his eyes as he realizes what’s about to happen.
He’s going to die, again. The bullet completely destroyed that shoulder artery he faintly remembers learning about in college, and with nothing here to staunch the bleeding, he’s going to die in two to three minutes. And then he’ll come back to life in an instant as if nothing ever happened, blinking himself awake in a new body he won’t fully be able to control, will barely recognize as his own for years.
He hates this, hates dying not because it hurts, (well, maybe because it hurts,) but because every single one of his deaths drives the point further home that he’s just not normal, and never will be again, that he’s just Anomaly #963 on a list of at least twelve thousand others by now. He dearly wishes he could even claim the title of human, but after some researcher or another decided it would be a great idea to put the amulet onto a monkey, he doesn’t think human applies to his particular case.
So where does that leave him? He’s not normal. He’s not human. He’s definitely sapient - capable of complex thought above the level of base needs like food, sleep, or water. But so was 682.
He’s intelligent - he’s got a doctorate in abnormal genetics and can fix a computer as soon as look at it. But so is 079.
He’s capable of carrying on a conversation with normal people as if he were normal himself - but then again, 056 can do that, and it can certainly do it far better than he can.
He’s useful. That’s it. He’s loyal to the Foundation, one of their top members of staff. He’d worked himself to nearly nothing to get to where he is today. He’s respected for his work and maybe sometimes feared for the mystery some see him to be. He’s cooperative, and that’s what sets him apart from the monster that killed him - what gives him his true value.
And he realizes he hates that more than the cold that’s begun to seep into his bones. He hates it more than the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, or the room spinning around him, or the fact that no breath he takes is enough to stop the horrible breathless feeling building up in his chest. He’s useful, he’s a tool that can be used and used and broken and fixed over and over again until the Foundation crumbles or until he does first.
He wonders what it’s like at the Chaos Insurgency - Elias had mentioned something about waking up at five, but he already does that anyway, so what difference would it make somewhere else?
He feels a pang of guilt almost as the thought crosses his mind. He’s not going to defect. That would be unimaginable, the Foundation needs him—
And, he tries to convince himself, he’d just be useful somewhere else. No doubt they’d send his amulet to important political figures or heads of Groups of Interest as a gift, just for him to come straight back to base when they inevitably put it on, or send him on missions with almost no chance of survival only for him to bolt awake back at base to go right back again after the thirty-day window is up.
Maybe the Serpent’s Hand? He’d get to see his mother again, his sister too if she’s still alive. He’d get robes and all the books he could ever read. And the best part? Nobody at the Serpent’s Hand is normal. He’d fit right in.
He’s just about made up his mind when another thought crosses it.
Eli. If he defects, he’ll leave him behind. They’d just gotten married a year ago. He loves him more than words can describe.
That’s it. He can love. He can love when 682 and 079 and 056 can’t. He loves Eli. He loves his friends and his mother, his brothers and Claire and even Sarah, even though he never got to meet her. He loves Star Trek and computers and the inner workings of the human genome. And even though 999 can do that too, it’s the furthest thing from a monster he can possibly imagine.
And as darkness overtakes him, he closes his eyes, for once not worried about what’s going to happen when he opens them.