The next week was very different from what Jace was used to. They were different in that they were the same every single day. Growing up on the streets meant you never knew what was gonna happen or even if you were gonna live through the day. Here on the slavers' ship, there was a stable routine, food, and he slept in the same place every night. Jace found the experience surprisingly relieving. It was the best life he had experienced yet. Even though he wasn't able to talk and his every moment was controlled and watched, he was safe. No gangs were gonna hurt him here, there was no pain as long as he stayed in line. He saw a couple of people break and attempt to revolt against their captors, but they were quickly subdued and taken away, never to be seen again.
He was quite surprised to see the redheaded woman wasn't one of the rebellious, she had a fire in her eyes, sure, but she docilely followed everyone else in their daily food and walks. He still did his best to avoid her though, since he figured it was only a matter of time. Everyone else seemed to feel the same way, and there was always a ring of space around her. But she didn't seem to care. She completely ignored the people around her and kept her head up. She was planning something, Jace just knew it.
He thoroughly enjoyed his time with Stryker though. Stryker didn't always talk to him, but when he did, Jace felt extra peaceful and a little protected. It was surprising how little Jace learned considering how much the man talked. He seemed to be very skilled and saying a lot of nothing. Jace didn't care though, Skyler seemed to like him, and he liked Skyler. He started to look up to him as a long lacking, though desired, father figure.
At one point, Skyler spoke up (as much as one can when speaking in a not-even-a-whisper), "So Jace, it's nice to have a listening ear, but I'm gonna start needing some responses."
The thought of trying to learn Skyler whisper talk filled him with terror when he thought about the pain inflicted on him last time he tried to speak. Skyler couldn't see him because of the dark but seemed to read his mind.
"I'm gonna teach you tap-talk. That way we can talk without having to go through learning to talk like I do."
Jace's relief was quickly followed by confusion. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘱-𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬? He thought. Turns out the twitching and tapping he had been seeing in the mess hall wasn't just a way to relieve stress or a sign of impending madness. It was a method of communication. They communicated through the tapping of their fingers. As Jace heard this, he realized that - even quieter than Strykers talking - he could hear tapping and scratching going on all around him, quiet enough that he wouldn't have heard it if he didn't know it was there.
Stryker began to teach him the basics, and with nothing else to fill his time, Jace picked up quickly. Once he had learned how to marginally communicate, he realized that there was a whole world in those scraping and tapping sounds. He began to communicate with the other slaves, and he began to learn their names and backgrounds. The blackness that had been surrounding him with only Strykers voice to fill it was suddenly enveloped in color. The person laying down the room from him was Patricia(Pat), the person beneath him was Blumond, above him was Spike. Pat hated cats, Blumond loved liver, and Spike was an amateur wrestler.
Looking at them from under the light of their lunchtime, Pat was lanky and skinny, probably mid-thirties. Blumond was tall, but not overly so, and you could tell from his baggy jumpsuit that he used to be much thicker before he was introduced to his new diet, he was probably late teens early twenties. Spike, living up to his name, had blond hair that shot everywhere. It was long enough that Jace was surprised when wasn't falling to his shoulders but stood up rigidly like some cartoon character he was the youngest looking, about 12.
When he was comfortable enough to be able to communicate easily, Pat spoke up. "Finally kid, it's taken you so long! It's felt like there's just a black hole up there! Now I actually have someone to talk to besides these jackalopes!
"Umm… I probably won't have much more to say than before…" Jace responded.
The sliding sound that represented laughter came from Pat's hole. "trust me, kid, when you spend all your days staring at a metal ceiling and eating slop, you find things to talk about."
As Jace talked with them, he uncovered a little of their histories. Pat was from near the beginning of the voyage and had been aboard almost a year. "It's startin' to get to me" she would say. "only the thought that we're almost where we're going keeps me holding on."
Blumond was a few stops after her, and he'd been on the ship for about six months. "I'm just hoping there's better food where we're going," he said. "this slop tastes terrible." Jace supposed no flavor was terrible compared to someone who'd enjoyed food before his imprisonment.
Spike was the most recent arrival among them after Jace. He was an absolute ball of energy. He'd often talk for the sake of talking and interrupt whatever was being said to provide his input without really listening to what the original topic was. He was almost as crazy as Patricia, though in a different way. "there's too much sitting around here! I wanna go waste a munch of energy!!!"
Jace noticed that as he got to know his comrades better, Stryker became more silent, taking a more stand-offish, overviewer approach. Jace asked Pat about it. She was silent for a sec.
"He's like that. Once you've found your crowd, he steps back and just watches us like he's the hen-mother and we're his little chicks. It's not like he doesn't like you anymore or anything, he is just satisfied with how you're being taken care of. He's got his own thoughts to think, y'know, he's not just your entertainment system." So Jace left Stryker alone when he was in his quiet moods.
But that didn't mean Stryker and him never talked. Now that Jace could respond, their conversations got a little more involved.
"You ever actually seen space, kid?" Stryker asked him one day. Jace's city had so much pollution – both noise and otherwise – that he had never actually seen the night sky before. He tapped in the negative.
"It's kinda ironic isn't it? We're flying through space, yet so many of us have never even seen it before. Lemme tell you, kid, it's absolutely gorgeous. It's so open and free, when you look at it you feel like your soul is gonna escape your body and go roam around among the stars. One thing is for sure, it's a place where one can find himself, a place filled to the brim with adventure and learning opportunities."
This is often where their conversations would turn, and the more they spoke of it, the more Jace's craving for it would grow. However, he never entertained the thought of going out there himself. He was comfortable where he was at and was afraid that if he tried anything different, or new, that everything would be taken from him and things would go back to how they used to be.
As time went on, Jace began to learn a little bit about the ship around him. He learned that the reason they would go on the walks was to prevent their muscles from deteriorating too bad when they reached their destination. He learned that the people who rebelled weren't actually killed as he had assumed, but just taken and cryofroze until they reached their destination, where they would be "re-educated". Didn't want to waste good product.
He tried to find out more about the redheaded woman, but nobody knew anything. Nobody dared approach her. Stryker had tried to talk to her during their food break, but she just sent him off with a glare. "some people are wondering if she's a captured princess or something" Spike piped up when Patricia was explaining it to him.
"I heard she was from a former merchant family that sold her off to pay debts" Blumond scratched.
"That's a bunch of poppycock," Pat said. "I'm sure she's just a normal woman, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, just like the rest of us." Jace doubted it though, looking at her proud, rebellious eyes and unbending posture, He was more willing to believe her a princess than some nobody.
Several months after his arrival, just as he was getting used to his new home, Chaos struck the ship, and everything changed.