Jumar sat down, looking over the sobbing Abby as he pat her head.
"It's alright now, it's alright…" Jumar tried to calm her down. "I'm not mad anymore, we're friends right?"
Abby sniffled and sobbed like a 9 year old child that got lost in a crowd or something similar, poor girl was not like this before. 2 hours ago, Abby would smile and laugh like any normal woman and smile like an idiot whenever someone told a joke.
Abby might not have been in their circle of friends, but she might as well had been. Abby had been there for both Kaylen and Jumar when Xiu and Sara passed away, she was always looking out for Kaylen when the stupid bitch was drunk on sniffing ethanol fumes and was there to (sometimes) stop Kaylen from fucking one of their coworkers.
'I guess she was too busy with something to notice Kaylen was fucking Ronalds in front of a fucking security camera…' Jumar could only stare at Abby with sad eyes.
"Abby…" Jumar whispered, almost like a prayer.
'What happened to you…' Jumar grit his teeth. 'Why did you have to be like this, just when things were getting good…'
Abby sniffled like a little girl in a corner, one moment she was ready to kill someone, next she was kissing Jumar, and now she was bawling her eyes out. In a span of 2 minutes, her mood did a front flip and a back flip in one jump.
"Hey Abby…" Jumar tried to think of how to calm her down. "Uh…fine, fuck it."
"Mary, had a little lamb~ Little lamb~ Little lamb~" Jumar sang as Abby raised her eyes to stare at him. "Mary had a little lamb and it's fleece was white as snow."
Abby stopped crying and looked at Jumar with pleading eyes, asking him to continue.
'Ah, fuck it.' Jumar decided to improvise. 'I don't even know the next lines…'
"He followed her to butcher one day, butcher one day, butcher one day. He followed her to the butcher's one day, where he never saw the light of day..." Jumar panicked, improvising was harder than it seemed. He did not seem to notice the horror on Abby's face.
"It made the slum children laugh and pay. Laugh and pay, laugh and pay. It made the children laugh and pay to finally eat some food..." Jumar was satisfied with sticking to the tune and looked at Abby, expecting to see her clap or be amazed.
Abby just sat there, 10 meters away from him, wearing an expression of both disgust and horror.
"A-Ah, did I sing it wrong?" Jumar froze, not knowing what he has done.
Jumar didn't know any of those archaic nursery rhymes, neither did he even know what the fuck a Lamb was. He just guessed it was some kind of animal.
And an animal meant food. And food meant livestock. And it calls for a butcher… Jumar's thoughts went on.
He didn't even know what the fuck nursery rhymes were in the first place.
Abby closed her eyes and trembled before laughing and crying at the same time.
"Abby not know if Abby happy or not…" She sniffled while she laughed. "But Abby know Jumar is pathetic."
Jumar just sheepishly smiled as he listened to Abby's pure laughter echo throughout the empty walls.
"Abby…" Jumar came near her and held her hands. "Are you not sad now?"
Abby stopped laughing and stared at Jumar with curious eyes.
"Abby not sad." Abby smiled brightly. "Abby never sad with Jumar."
Jumar felt his heart clench.
'Abby… you poor thing…' Jumar brought her hands to his lips and kissed them lightly.
"Lets get you checked up alright?" Jumar spoke with a quivering voice. "The doctor will get you fixed up in no time."
"Doctor?" Abby tilted her head. "Doctor came to Abby and gave Abby her medicine earlier. Abby need to see doctor again?"
Jumar paused.
"Doctor came to see you?" Jumar furrowed his brows. "Which doctor?"
Abby scratched her head and looked at the ceiling.
"Abby not remember." She shook her head. "Is Abby going stupid?"
"No, of- of course not." Jumar fumbled. "Abby, you're just… tired. I think."
Abby blinked and looked down.
"Is that so…" Abby yawned. "Abby is sleepy now. Will Jumar sleep with Abby?"
'No.' Jumar wanted to say, but Abby's beaming eyes made it too hard to say no.
"Yes." Jumar caved in. "But we need to go to the doctors alright?"
"Mokeh~" Abby smiled. "Jumar will take care of Abby forever right?"
Jumar choked on his saliva.
'No, no. She's not in the right mind Jumar…' He thought. 'Don't get your hopes up. You're trash, like the rest of your kind. No way is she going to say that when she's in the right mind…'
Jumar clenched his teeth.
'But how the fuck do I respond to that question?!' Jumar felt the sweat dripping from his face.
"Jumar?"
"Ah, yeah. Yeah, sure." Jumar stuttered. 'Ah, shit. Now I've done it.'
Abby giggled, somehow satisfied of his answer.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
"She's got a really bad case of brain damage." Dr. Rutherford slowly spoke. "She's been drugged with a really bid dose that ended up in her brain getting fried up. It was good that you brought here, or else it could have went worse…"
"She said something about a doctor giving her some medicine, she doesn't remember who." Jumar felt the weight of the words the doctor spoke. Abby was in danger.
"Whoever that person is obviously not a doctor because whatever that man gave her was more of a poison cocktail than medicine." Dr. Rutherford spoke. "There had been cases of kidnappings lately, done by drugged up personnel… I wonder if…"
Jumar felt his heart clench, remembering the butchered remains of one of the personnel that Abby was trying to stuff into a panel.
"I- I'm sure she-"
"You don't have to be wary, we aren't holding her any responsibility." Rutherford put a hand on Jumar's shoulder. "They've been drugged to submit to a voice being transmitted by their IRIS implants, which has been hacked and given precoded instructions."
"What?" Jumar found this stupid. "So someone is deliberately doing this?"
"Yes." Rutherford sighed. "The concoction of the drug is definitely sloppy but got the job done right. Anyone under it's influence would suffer from inexplicable brain trauma from stimulation for an hour before obeying orders sent by the IRIS, remaining functional for about half an hour…"
"And, what happens after one hour…?"
Rutherford looked at the stasis chamber that Abby was inside of.
"The mind starts tearing itself apart, slowly leading to mental degradation, retardation until the person ultimately turns into vegetable."
Jumar remembered Abby's broken English and childish manner.
"Is she going to recover?"
"Yes, as long as they are not yet in a vegetative state, our neurologist could patch her brain up with a few neurografts and given time, she'll slowly regain consciousness. Though she will suffer from amnesia, I think that that's the least of our worries."
Jumar sighed. Indeed, it was the least of their problems. An Abby with no past is better that an Abby in a coffin.
Happy has no past, so they say.
Jumar heaved a sigh of relief.
Jumar left the room with a heavy heart as he leaned on a railing to try and think about what the fuck was happening.
'Dammit, where is Kaylen. Where could they have taken her…'Jumar opened his IRIS.
[Administrator, there has been some feedback from the backdoor application installed in {Idiot's IRIS}.]
Jumar raised a brow.
'Wait, Kaylen did not know how to use system backdoor features, much less retrace it back to me through the system footprints.' Jumar furrowed his brows.
"Scan."
[Administrator, I have found the following results]
[Viruses : False]
[Compressed files: False]
[Resource files : True]
[Malware : True]
'Why the fuck would Kaylen send me malware…'
Jumar prompted IRIS to execute a software scan and Isolate the malware from the resource file.
Jumar was surprised to find out that the message was only 4 lines long, yet horrified by the lack of context.
The message read:
I have her, she is mine now.
Leave my Kaylen alone.
She will soon join us. All of us.
And you will be alone.
Jumar immediately closed it and did not hesitate to release a metric ton of viruses to the wireless system, allowing him to gain override controls for half a second before the Antivirus took down all the viruses that were screwing with the jammers.
He sent two messages of three words to two people he could think of.
One read "They took Kaylen."
The other was…
"I'm coming, nincomfuck."