Welcome to Gaia! ::

Survival mode kicked in again as he scanned: Color, coat, branches, short hair, blond, teal eyes, woman. (Division assistant? Last he checked, that was a man though. Maybe that guy died.) Unrecognized. No initial hostility. No weapon, no blood, no whispers. Delicate. Curious about something. (There goes V's hand. V's dead. He's not, somehow.)

End conclusion: Jack was content to stay on the ground, gazing up at the woman. He'd had worse hallucinations and certainly uglier ones visit him before.

"What's it say?" he asked in a dry, hoarse voice. "The carvings."

Clarice. He knew that name from somewhere, it was on the tip of his tongue, but his thoughts weren't cooperating: the immediate present and nothing else mattered right now.

Groaning, he eased himself into a sitting position. "Don't think so, no. Jack," he replied, wary of the kindly expression on instinct; the Sahara didn't hold anything gentle, and after nearly two months abroad his impulse for self-defense was sharp. Especially around someone from his division.

(He had yet to meet anyone in Life that didn't have some part of a shark in them, Oliver notwithstanding.)

Slowly, carefully, he pushed himself to his feet, his eyes flickering between Clarice and V. "Who's 'she' and what's the code for?"

Logically it was bound to happen—the mission had basically been a welcome to die sort of thing—and hell, he wanted out the second he knew their presence wouldn't matter at all. But Jack still became offended learning he was left behind. What, did they assume surviving a horseman's examination table before meant he wouldn't get so lucky next time? Was Spiderman going to swoop in and remind him everybody gets one? <******** 'em," he muttered.

Jack turned his attention to the corpse, studying the skin and Clarice's manipulations as the cogs in his head began to whir. "Your work," he echoed, a niggling thought rising at the back of his head. "Something before I came here...something with...the golems?" Jack guessed. The rumors and news from a year ago were as nothing now in his memory, but he did recall an increased interest in golems for a while.

But wait, if he survived the "process", then...He frowned deeply in thought.

"Before I blacked out, I saw those...things. Blank bodies stealing my face." He glanced at her. "Are you saying they—Nest cloned me?"

Seven was a peculiar number. He remembered seven doors waiting in the tower, seven legacies stirring, and Owain's deep longing towards one in particular. His mother and grandmother had been obsessed with the number because it was lucky in Korean culture. Seven presents, seven knocks, seven kisses when they used to love him. And now seven new jackasses to wrangle all by himself to make this trip worth it.

Lucky him.

"Why?" he asked, peering at the footprints to distinguish them from the floor. Then he cautiously began to follow them. If this was a hallucination, distance wouldn't matter in their conversation. "Why seven? What are they being used for?"

He stopped and looked into those strange eyes. Only now did it begin to dawn on him that hallucinations couldn't give him information like this.

"For whatever they are most useful in and more. To understand," he replied. "To have control."

The laughter didn't sting. This was someone or something he could barely scratch the surface of, if at all. Instead, Jack felt strangely humbled in her presence.

"Let me learn, then. Let me expand that vision. Show me," he pleaded.