Infinity: A Jenlisa AU

Chapter 16

They're back inside the box, drinking ampoule 54, 53 and 52.

Jisoo starts the timer on her watch, kills the lantern to preserve the batteries, and as they sit beside each other in the frigid dark, waiting for the drug to hit, she says, "Never thought I'd be glad to see our shitty little lifeboat again."

"Right?" Rosé laughs.

They leans their heads against Jennie's shoulder.

"Thank you, Jennie." Jisoo whispers.

"For what?"

"Not letting me freeze to death out there."

Jennie let out a chuckle. "You should thank Rosé for that"

"She already did" Rosé informs.

"Does this mean we're all even?" Jennie asks.

Jisoo and Rosé laughs. "Not even close. I mean, let's not forget, this is still all your fault."

It's a strange exercise in sensory deprivation to sit in the total darkness and silence of the box. The only physical sensations are the chill of the metal bleeding through their clothes.

"You're different than her," Jisoo says.

"Who?"

"My Jennie." Jisoo whispers.

"How so?"

"Softer. She had a real hard edge when you got down to it. The most driven human being I've ever met."

Rosé asks, "Were you her therapist?"

"Sometimes."

"Was she happy?" Both Jennie and Rosé curiously asked.

They sensed Jisoo pondering their question in the dark.

"What?" Jennie says. "Am I putting you in a doctor-patient confidentiality quandary?"

"Technically, you two are the same person. It's new territory for sure. But no. I wouldn't say she was happy. She lived an intellectually stimulating but ultimately one-dimensional life. All she did was work. In the last five years, she didn't have a life outside the lab. She practically lived there."

"You know your Jennie is the one who did this to me. I'm here right now because several nights ago, someone abducted me at gunpoint while I was walking home. She took me to an abandoned power plant, drugged me, asked me a bunch of questions about my life and the choices I'd made. If I was happy. If I would've done things differently. The memories are back now. Then I woke up in your lab. In your world. I think your Jennie did this to me."

They were all quiet for a while.

Few seconds later, Rosé speaks, "You're suggesting that she went into the box, somehow found your world, your life, and switched places with you?"

"Do you think she was capable?" Jisoo adds.

Jennie thought carefully before answering, "Who else would've done this to me?"

"Jennie was obsessed with the path not taken. She talked about it all the time." Jisoo confessed.

Now Jennie feels the anger coming back.

She says, "There's still a part of me that doesn't want to believe it. I mean, if she wanted my life, she could've just killed me. But she went to the trouble of injecting me, not only with an ampoule, but ketamine, which rendered me unconscious and blurred my memories of the box and what she'd done. Then she actually brought me back to her world. Why?"

Jisoo ponders, "It actually makes a lot of sense."

Rosé, shocked, asks Jisoo, "You think?"

Jisoo nods, "She wasn't a monster. If she did this to you, she would have rationalized it somehow. That's how decent people justify bad behavior. In your world, are you a renowned physicist?"