darling it's better down where it's wetter

[did_unkindly]

It's been a day, it's been a day, it's been a whole damn day -- as near as it's possible to tell in this soggy excuse for a city. It's been a day since he killed Fontaine. And Jack is no closer to getting out. He's still down here. He did everything he was supposed to do and he's still down here.

All he's found is locked-down bathyspheres. Broken submarines. Even the goddamn boats are out of service. Where's Tenenbaum? Where's his fucking rescue?

Jack stares about into the greenish gloom, checks the ammo in his pistol, and then kicks and yanks off the rusting panel of a vending machine. His hands are soon full of little wires and pipes. A few seconds later, he straightens up with a grunt, and the machine gives him a tidy discount on a couple glowing hypos of EVE.

With his visit extended indefinitely, he's begun to wonder how many of them are left.

Now arbitrarily divided into chapters!
Part One: A Scene at the Rapture Adoption Agency ~or~ You Found [Pot of Ham]!
Part Two: Come On-A My House, I'm Gonna Give-A You Candy ~or~ Sinclair? More Like Sin Pantalones!
Part Three: Dream Sequences are a Fresh New Concept in Fiction ~or~ It's My Existential Trauma and I'll Cry if I Want To
Part Four: Southern Education Jokes ~or~ Engineer, Engifar, Engiwherever You Are ~or~ The Grave Escape
Part Five: Golfing Accident Memoirs ~or~ Mom... Dad... I'm Immortal ~or~ How To Make Friends And Immolate People
Part Six: Is It A Pie? Is It A Plane?? ~or~ Two's Company, Three's a Row
Part Seven: Escort Missions! In Rapture! Council's In An Uproar ~or~ Bioshock: Cheesecake Edition
Part Eight: Bread, Milk, BATTLE! ~or~ Pleasant Conversations, How They Bore Me
Part Nine: Choices, Schmoices ~or~ Baby's First Moral Philosophy ~or~ Go Away I Want To Take A Damn Bath
Part Ten: A Man Snoozes; A Slave Delays ~or~ The Four Second Rule Applies To Drugs
Part Eleven: A Hearty Meal ~or~ Skeletons In The-- That's Not A Closet
Part Twelve: We All Live in a Secret Submarine ~or~ Plasmids: Not Even Once
Part Thirteen: Paging Dr Tenenbaum To Surgery ~or~ Bribery And Deduction
Part Fourteen: The Prodigal Son Returns

Comments

[did_unkindly]

And they talk. Information about the city and its possible escape routes is swapped. Cigarettes are smoked to glowing stumps.

Sooner or later, Jack begins to yawn over a bag of potato chips.

It's time to go back to bed.















And then later, it's the morning.

There's a note on the arm of the couch, written on a scrap of paper scavenged from the waste-paper basket. The handwriting is an awkward cursive, very careful, every t crossed and every i dotted with great concentration.

Gud Morning I
am at the
Bathisfear

[modestman]

Sinclair wakes up on the sofa with a crick in his neck and a cold cigarette still hanging between his fingers on the arm rest. It's brighter now, as bright as it can be for the sun to have risen and reach this far down into the ocean.

He sits up, rubs at his aching neck, waits for his vision to clear up . Last night seems distant and strange and he's sure he dreamed parts of it, but it's a new day and there are things he and Jack need to accomplish.

...Speaking of Jack. Where exactly is he?

Sinclair gets to his feet and winces audibly, forgetting his healing leg. "Hey, kid?" he calls out. Nothing, just silence.

He looks around the room, still hazy from sleep, and spots the note on the opposite end of the sofa.

Not much of an education system in Kansas, is there?

Still, at least Jack thought to leave a note. Sinclair feels the panic fizzling away and he limps back to his room to get dressed. The bathyspheres are faster, but after yesterday's events he has no problem with staying as far away from the Olympus Heights docks as possible. It might take longer with a hurt leg, but it'll be considerably safer.

He arrives downstairs at the docks of Persephone and sees Jack at the electrical panel in the back of one of the spheres, intensely focused and fingers working expertly on the tubes and wiring inside.

"Where'd you learn to spell, son?" Sinclair says. Oh, and good morning.

[did_unkindly]

Hey step off, his teacher spoke English as a second language.

Jack looks up at Sinclair in surprise, and so do two turrets, blinking madly as they try to figure out whether he's friend or foe. They settle on the former, though it's worth mentioning that not all of the corpses in the area are long dead.

How on earth did Sinclair get here alive, what with his gammy leg and all? Surely Jack isn't just accustomed to a disproportionate number of splicer attacks?

"School?" he says, which is a completely honest answer to what he assumes is a completely honest question.

[modestman]

How very thoughtful of you to leave without him and then wonder how he made it alive, that's really nice.

Sinclair laughs and drops it, that was rhetorical Jack gosh. "Made any progress?" he asks, stepping up behind Jack to look over his shoulder. He never was much good at the technical stuff himself, though then again he never really tried to get very good at it. Not a lot of interest in working with his hands, that was always a nice way of saying you're too dumb to get a real job. Or too poor.

Now he wishes he'd taken the time to learn a little of it here and there; he doesn't like to be completely dependent on another person like this. If Jack can't hack this bathysphere, that cuts their chances of a clean escape down at least 60%. This would definitely make it a lot easier.

[did_unkindly]

Rheto-whatical?

"A bit," says Jack. He blasts another cone of frost at the machinery, from a hand covered in gore and icicles. The liquid inside the little pipes is practically crystallised.

"It's... ow."

He jumps as a shorted bit of wiring zaps his hand. Then he deftly swaps it with another piece and -- damnit, isn't there anything whole in here to work with? C'mon.

A few industrious seconds crawl past.

"...slow," he admits, finishing his sentence at last.

[modestman]

Or maybe it's better that Jack works on this after all.

"Anything I can do to help?" he offers, still watching Jack's work. At least one of them knows what he's doing.

[did_unkindly]

He thinks about it. Quickly, because hacking takes concentration and isn't really something you can pause once you've started.

"...Chips?"

He's gotten zapped a fair few times, over here. Could use a health pick-me-up.

Also he hasn't eaten anything off the floor in at least ten minutes.

[modestman]

Chips. An open ended question, he could have asked for anything and he asks for chips. No one can ever say that Jack's a needy guy.

"I can do you one better," Sinclair says, tearing his eyes away at last from Jack's tireless fingers. "I'll be back in two shakes. ...You sure that's all you want?"

[did_unkindly]

Jack nods, eyes glued on the slowly trickling pipes. He gets his fingers under some sheet metal and yanks it back to see what other pipes are underneath.

...Contraband Jesus, this is going to take a while.

[modestman]

Sinclair shrugs. Suit yourself.

A couple floors up, Sinclair unlocks a storage room for the Persephone cafeteria. He grabs a box full of chips and dumps it into another box, taking a few things off the shelf and dropping them inside. Potted ham, beans, instant coffee, along with a few of the nicer things for inmates who purchased the room upgrades: tinned tuna, Hop-Up Cola and a pack of bubblegum.

And a bag of chips, why the hell not.

With a box full of delicious variety, Sinclair heads back down to the dock and makes a mental note not to get his fingers in the way.

[did_unkindly]

Jack is no longer crouched next to the bathysphere. While Sinclair's been out scavenging, he's moved sideways across the room and now he's rummaging around in a trashcan with his left hand. His freshly-bloody right sleeves are rolled up to the shoulder, and the arm on that side looks like it's been mauled by a lightning bolt.

Occupational hazard of hacking machinery.

He's keeping a watchful eye on the entrance, of course. When Sinclair appears there with his gift box, Jack straightens up and makes a beeline for him. His face is tight, but he's not afraid. He's shrugged off worse than this a hundred times before.

(The turrets jostle around in the background, but still remember that Sinclair's a friend. Amazing the intelligence you can coax out of copper and steam.)

[modestman]

"Hope you're hungr--" Sinclair starts, setting the box down next to Jack as he notices the damage he's apparently taken. "...Maybe you oughta take a break, son. You're not looking too good."

[did_unkindly]

Jack shakes his head, two creme cakes already unwrapped and shoved into his mouth with Olympic record-setting speed. Ahhh, sweet sugary hit-point bonuses.

"Mrmrmmmphhmph," he explains. Crumbs fly everywhere.

[modestman]

Ah yes, Rapture nutrition at its finest. Sinclair takes a courtesy step back and decides he'll pick over whatever's left once Jack gets through. If there's anything, of course. The chances are looking rather slim right now.

"I see," he says in response to Jack's commentary. "I take it this means we're not having too much luck."

[did_unkindly]

More head-shaking. But on the bright side, as he gulps down the cakes, he feels his smarting and bloody arm begin to itch. NOW THE HEALING CAN BEGIN

"Shorted out," he says, sheer moments before yanking with his teeth at the tab of a can of tuna. Hey, when you're working one-handed, you've sometimes gotta do things that would annoy your dentist.

[modestman]

Sinclair winces sympathetically. "I wonder if there's any way to shut the power off in those things," he says, daring to reach in the box for whatever he can grab. Which just so happens to be the bag of chips, but at this rate he hopes doubts Jack will even notice. "Think that'd help?"

[did_unkindly]

Jack watches the chips find liberation and then further despair in Sinclair's hands, but with his mouth full of tuna he doesn't feel the need to intercede. Yet. But don't get too cocky with those eats, buster.

Speech is currently impeded, so he shrugs eloquently instead. It's sort of a shrug and a nod, a mute double signal that he's not certain but sure, maybe. Worth a try.

He'd be more enthusiastic, probably, but at the moment he's thinking about his arm. The pain is leaving it in fits and starts and already, he can feel the deep sting of muscle knitting back together.

tuna tuna beans

(there is no spoon, so he drinks the beans like thick beany soda, straight from the can)

(ryan family table manners)

[modestman]

"Hey, where's the fire, chief?" Sinclair says, laughing as he watches Jack drop one can on the ground to move in for the next. "You're gonna choke yourself son, slow down."

Meanwhile, he tears into his own bag of chips and pulls one out, eats it, reaches in for another one. See, Jack. It doesn't have to be a race. It's just food, calm down.

[did_unkindly]

Jack pauses with bean juice on his cheeks, and nods towards his injured arm. Maybe Sinclair missed the part where he was mauled by a lightning bolt. Or maybe he's just not familiar with the healing properties of creme cakes... not much of an education system in Georgia, is there?

Heck, maybe Jack should have suggested a midnight feast to heal up Sinclair's leg, but the guy seemed so dead set on using bandages.

[modestman]

Wow no need to get uncivil, narration. Tone it down there, Sinclair doesn't need your attitude.

He shakes his head and reaches in the box, pulling out a bottle of cola and tossing it to Jack. "Here, at least wash it down with something."

Really though, you're making him ill just watching you.

[did_unkindly]

Jack catches the cola with his right hand. The palm and fingers have healed up just enough to make this a practical rather than a hilariously painful endeavour.

He swallows the last mouthful of beans and smiles very slightly.

[modestman]

The burns on Jack's arm are fading as Sinclair watches, but if another incident like that happens he's probably going to have to make a second trip to the Persephone pantry. ...They'll get more in, they won't miss all this food. Besides, with any luck it won't be Sinclair's problem anymore anyway.

He finishes his bag of chips and gets up to look over the bathysphere. There's got to be some way to turn the power in this thing off, but with the way things have been going lately he wouldn't be surprised if it were on the very bottom of the sphere.

"Hey, kid," he calls over his shoulder. "Where do you reckon the off switch is?"

[did_unkindly]

"They turn off if you break them," he offers, flexing his arm to see how much -- ow -- damage is left.

...Although on further consideration this is probably not a useful observation for their purposes.

[modestman]

"Thanks for the input, sport," Sinclair says, pulling the door open and stepping inside to investigate further. He drops to his hands and knees to feel around the floor for anything that might push up or slide away. Nothing.

He stands up again and brushes off his pants. "There's got to be some way of cutting this thing off from its power supply... how does this thing stay running anyway?" Because if they can find that, they'll at least have a trail to follow.

[did_unkindly]

Wow ungrateful.

Jack gives the issue further thought, while he swigs the cola with a little more restraint than he showed the food. He doubts he's a trained mechanic, but there are at least a few things he knows or has worked out while hacking everything in sight.

"There's an engine. Under the floor, I think." He's felt it rumbling often enough, and the pipes he was trying to hack all had a general floorwards trend.

"Once I turned the power off by putting too much electricity in."

It worked before, it could work again!