[s]Seven[/s] Twelve Days Later

[Ash]

Jakob Volkov.

He was… Someone?

His mind was muddy. To the point of barely registering who he was. In the shadows of death, like a mosquito net wrapped around him, he could see the endless and flawless white. He could tell you that this was the Nexus, and this bug net-like thing was the death shroud he had cast away a dozen times already. In fact, his mind had never seemed more clear than when he was in the death shroud. He almost had all the answers.

Almost.

Jakob couldn’t rightfully tell you who he was or what he was while in the shroud.

When it came to individualizing himself, anything at all it was difficult, but especially now. Voices echoed around him, and he couldn’t tell you if they were the ghosts of his past or the secondaries that tended to mill about in the Nexus. Did they wait about for Primes to spawn or re-spawn because they were hoping their own Primes would appear?

Did he have a secondary waiting for him?

On second thought, that was rather impossible. He didn’t know himself, but he managed to know that he knew no one outside of himself. For anyone to wait patiently or impatiently for him to rise from the ashes was fantasy and pointless hope. He wasn’t even sure he was capable of hope anymore. Did he desire someone to wait for him? No… This was a mere passing thought that he imagined most Primes had when respawning.

He should try to remember this stuff…

It would be highly suspicious if someone was waiting for him at the fountain. Especially after a death like the one he experienced. What was that hole? He feels like he’s seen it before. Whatever it was, it felt like a shotgun to the gut. Somehow better, and in some ways worse. It felt a great deal like 6 bullets from a handgun. If only because they were individual shots. And he could feel each one split through the muscle of his body and pierce his flesh. Clear his mind…

Maybe he just needed to get a gun in order to remember this stuff?

-

After it felt like he had been laying there for five more days than normal, Jakob decided it was best to cast the shroud aside like a comfortable quilt and embrace the new round with his usual approach.

Jakob Volkov laid across an unusually nice couch. It had three back cushions and three removable bottom cushions. Instinctively he knew there was a bed folded up under him. If he took the time to pull out each cushion he’d find a bar in the center if he gave that a hardy tug two-thirds of a bed would instantly be exposed. After that, it would be a matter of lowering the last third and making the bed. Or, that would be the last step for any sensible person. This was Jakob after all.

The couch was a dark brownish-maroon with small detailing across it. Bead-like knobs lined the front of the armrests and the lower frame of the couch. In short, it was simple. However, to the slightly soberer than he desired Prime, it tasted like familiarity. It cradled him like a crib; As if he’d slept on the couch for nearly two years while someone else slept in the bed. Only to be nudged awake by someone in the early hours in a generous gesture to get him to move to the bed.

Almost instantly after that, Jakob felt the pain in his leg flare up and he instinctively reached into the pockets of his pants and pulled out his last dose of Bliss. Even as he jabbed the pen-like injector carelessly into the half existing leg he knew he needed more. Somewhere in his mind, he knew he could just make more, but like his leg pain, the thought faded away almost instantly. Jakob sighed heavily with relief. 

The next moment he glanced over at his right shoulder, only to find his arm was gone. Again.

He deflated by sinking deeper into the leather cushions.

Where had it gone now?

“Ishchete eto?” A blonde woman said from the edge of his space, perfect dialect. She also held his red robotic arm by the shoulder connection, but he admittedly wasn’t looking at that. It was obvious to anyone else she was using it as a way to talk to him.

“Da.” He said, robotically himself.

“Da?” She repeated, trying to hold back a giggle.

“Da.” He repeated. “Dat is my arm. I need it for arm things.” He said, twisting on the couch so he is sitting on it properly, looking up at her. Not stareing, yet, but she was pretty attractive. He was more mesmerized that she was even talking to him.

“Oh?”

“Da.”

The blond woman cracked a smile and shook her head. “As I recall, it's really difficult to do it by yourself. Let me at least help.”

“Okay,” Jakob said without hesitation. Anyone else would have stopped to wonder how she ‘recalled’ anything. Or even question if she knew how to properly reconnect the complex machinery back onto its owner.

But none of this crossed the drug-filled mind of his. Bliss has always numbed the reflexes and the reaction to things, and it would seem that using it over the years has left Jakob with a permanent lapse in judgment. His words were always slow. He’s gotten away with it in English, but his Russian never had any urgency in it either. Which was contradictory to most of his comrades. It was an angry language, but Jakob managed to slow and calm it.

Correction. Bliss had managed it. Through Jakob.

She sat down beside him on a couch that only existed in a studio apartment with a slight rise on one part of it to define the kitchen more, a couch that Jakob had been headed for before it happened. Now Jakob knew neither the couch nor himself. “Screwdriver?” She asked. Instinctively he reached into one of the cushions and pulled one out. She thanked him and went to work.

The Russian watched with only the barest hints of curiosity and concern as she began the process of attaching his prosthetic. She was about a third through when he realized she wasn’t fumbling with it like most - including himself - did. She barely needed to look at the pieces to question their connectivity, and if she did it was semi-instant when she went straight back into it. In a matter of a minute at most he had his arm back.

Jakob flexed the ruby metallic colored limb and turned the wrist over. It reacted to his every thought like it was supposed to. He was very happy to have it back, smiled even. But then he turned to her, still smiling, and said. “Dat was fast, are you a Pretty Lady doctor, too?” Jakob asked, an image of a woman coming to his slow reacting mind, and realization crossed his face. For a moment there was hope. “Like Anja!?”