And then... the next several hours are searching. Lengthy, fruitless searching, while machinery boils and buzzes above and around them, and splicers cackle and sing to themselves -- not always from a distance. Jack is some definition of tireless, dispatching them when they come too close and leaving no cake or pep-bar uneaten. But he moves more heavily and answers more shortly than he did a day or two before. Even after they find and rescue another little sister.

So far today, from several hours and two Bouncer fights, he's spliced nearly what he would from a single harvest. Yesterday, half of that. The day before that was just a single harvest, and he can't believe how much it's dropped from his first couple of days when he was running around half-mad from ten harvests or more. He can't believe how quickly he got used to that.

It's kind of scary. Scratch that, it's really scary, and that just makes his mood worse. He wishes he'd never realised it.

Sinclair asked about doors, huh? There are plenty of those. Doors leading to hallways leading to rooms, but none of them leading to a dock or a place that might hide a submarine. The lower levels exhausted, their search moves gradually back upstairs, until eventually they find...

...themselves back in the trophy room, surrounded by Ryan's congregation of worms.