weathertop | darling it's better down where it's wetter

Concern flashes across Sinclair's face, but standing around isn't going to do anything. He leaves the banister and ventures into the next room.

It's looks like a reception area, and there are three doors lined up on the wall behind a rather large desk. One thing at a time though, Sinclair searches the desk thoroughly but finds nothing other than a few dollars and a couple creme cakes. He pockets the money and makes a note to come back for the creme cakes; Jack will probably be interested in those.

By the time he reaches door number one, he can hear Jack's splicer downstairs, but he can't really make out what's going on once he steps inside.

There's a bed close to the far wall. Sinclair opens up a cabinet and digs through it. Towels, towels, sheets, pillows, a bedpan. Lovely. There's a tray of surgical tools next to the bed, and if Sinclair squats down to look under the bed he'll find a med kit and two EVE hypos. Jack will definitely be wanting those. He picks them up and takes them back out to the desk in the main room.

On to door number two!

All that fancy finagling to get Sinclair upstairs unharmed leaves Jack feeling a bit more drained than he expected to, but he's still armed and ready to engage the splicer when it arrives. Electricity crackles across his knuckles.

As usual, the splicer's voice precedes him.

"Down five dollars," he's muttering, "down five dollars, Ryan Industries down f-four dollars twenty cents, Securis up a tenth of a percent t-to ten... to ten..."

You know what, Jack isn't interested in listening to a living stock ticker. He sneaks closer, homing in on the door he thinks the splicer'll come from.

"Still got the little nest-egg, just gotta... just gotta invest it right, yeah. Just gotta get back in... back in. 'S not too late, you're a, you're a young man yet."

wow boring get to the fight

Jack is tapping his foot out here, he's thinking of just giving up his advantage and rushing the room. Get on with it, man.

Then the splicer goes silent.

Oh. Shit. Maybe he really was tapping his foot. Jack goes still, listening.

Then: a quiet rush of air.

Jack wouldn't notice it at all, if it wasn't so familiar. Fuck Houdinis fuck Houdinis forever--

There's a scream of "COME BACK TO GLOAT, HAVE YOU?!" and Jack spins to the side as ice thwacks into the wall where he was standing. Well, he got his fight all right.

The next room is very much identical to the room before it, only this one is empty of anything useful at all, Towels, sheets, surgical tools, a bedpan, more sheets and towels and a broom in the corner.

He's striking out here, and honestly he's not entirely sure where in a surgery wing he would find a rope anyway. But it just seems like there should be something he can use.

When Sinclair walks back out into main room, he hears the deranged shouting of the splicer going after Jack and debates sticking his head out to make sure things are working out in their favor. But with his luck, he'd be spotted in the process, so really all he can do is cross his fingers. This one seems to be taking Jack longer than usual, though. At least for being only one splicer.

The third door is locked.

Great. Excellent, perfect. There's nothing up here at all. All of that work for nothing. Now what are they supposed to do, tie a bunch of sheets together and--

wait a minute.

Jack hasn't even stopped dodging before he throws a bolt of lightning at the splicer. For a couple of seconds the splicer is prone, shaking and making a garbled noise, and Jack fires his gun. But he's a little too keen to kill the guy before he teleports again. He sacrifices aim for speed, and the distant splicer vanishes in a cloud of blue.

Ha ha ha god damnit.

Finger twitching on his gun, Jack keeps his back to the wall and stares around for the telltale clump of blue frost.

Or, you know, the splicer could scream "PUT ME OUT OF BUSINESS, WOULD YOU?!" and completely give himself away.

Jack throws fire this time, going for damage in case he misses again. At the same time, the splicer throws ice.

The fireball fizzles and dies out, but the ice keeps coming.

Fuck, what the fuck was that?

Okay wait he can figure it out later because right now he haS TO DODGE REALLY QUICKLY. He spins to the left, and more ice follows him. He dodges again, getting tired of this shit pretty quick, and fires off another shot more or less blind.

He keeps snapping his fingers as he goes, trying to reignite the pilot light, but nope. Apparently he's out of EVE. Motherfucker, how much does that upgraded plasmid have to cost per use?

More ice hits the wall beside his head and shatters into obscuring mist. He ducks hurriedly and fires another shot. He's rewarded with a pained yell, more by luck than judgement.

This is actually really embarrassing. Between the zero visibility, the lack of EVE and the unrelenting Winter Blasts, he has actually been cornered by a splicer. God he hopes Sinclair isn't watching this.

And to make things even more fun, he has two shots left till he has to reload.

G r e a t.

Jack holds his breath and squints through the free-floating ice. Then he realises: the ice has stopped coming.

A hesitant step forward -- the floor is slippery now -- and he can see enough to confirm that yep, the splicer is gone.

Then there's a chilly rush and a voice grates right in his ear:

"I'm putting you in the ground, Fontaine!"

As a combination of things he did not fucking expect, this kind of takes the cake. Jack spins and shoots, and definitely does not yelp like a little girl, and then there are two thuds of bodies hitting the ground.

The splicer is dead, most of his face blown away at point blank range.

And Jack is breathing hard, flat on his arse on a floor of slowly melting ice.

Sinclair busies himself tying the sheets together, end to end, pulling tight to make sure they'll hold. But there's a shot and a yelp and then silence and that is mildly alarming.

He drops the sheets and places himself on one side of the door frame, sticking his head out to check that the coast is clear. But he can't see anything beyond that damn balcony, and after a few more seconds of hearing nothing he decides to risk it and go straight for the banister.

There's a dead splicer on the ground, right next to Jack. Who's sitting up, thankfully, but that's still odd.

"You alright, kid?" he calls down.

Oh shit, Sinclair is watching.

Jack stares up at the guy and scrambles to his feet, trying to look totally cool and unruffled and un-just-got-pinned-with-ice.

Speaking of ice, though, it's still all over the floor right under his feet. You see where this is going.

Jack starts to say that yeah, he's fine, but it turns into definitely not another unmanly squeak as his feet go out from under him and he lands on his rear again.

Sinclair can't help but snort laughter as he watches Jack attempting to get to his feet and failing hilariously.

Jack is okay, that's what he came out to determine.

"No rope up here," he says, still laughing. "But I think I worked out an alternative."

Jack gives up on the standing thing, and carefully starts to scoot himself over to frictional dry land. His cheeks are bright red and it's not just from the cold.

"What is it?"

"Plenty of sheets up here," Sinclair says, gesturing back at the room. "I figure we can tie them together and haul you up that way. I'm just about done."

He disappears through the doorway for a moment and reappears with three knotted sheets in his arms. One more ought to make it long enough.

"Oh!" he adds, kneeling down to finish the project, "and I found a couple other things up here that might interest you, a med kit, one or two hypos of EVE." And the creme cakes, but that can be a bonus once he gets Jack up here.

"Good," Jack says, "I'm out."

Of EVE, that is. He lifts his left hand to demonstrate, if Sinclair can see it from all the way up there; it's red and cracked but lacks the actual flames that make Incinerate useful.

What the splicer called him is going around in his head.

It was coincidence, he tells himself, it's gotta be coincidence, like with Sinclair -- but coincidence or not, hearing Fontaine's name everywhere is starting to knock him about. It's as if the man is still alive, laughing at him through other people's voices. Jack ever so kindly handed over the city to him, and he isn't leaving it easily.

The thought worries him now and then. Fontaine had the key, he had scientists, and Jack doesn't know how this shit works -- maybe he could've done something to the Vita Chambers, or...

...No, now he's starting to sound like the crazy guy in the freezers, the one who thought Jack was working for Fontaine.

You know, the guy who turned out to be right.

Fuck this. He's going to reload his gun.

Okay, one more knot and...voila, the greatest makeshift rope to ever see the light of. Uh. Reflections under the ocean.

He gives one of the banister columns a hefty kick to make sure it's not going anywhere and sets to tying the sheets around it. A few seconds later, he tosses the length of it down to Jack.

"Hope you learned how to climb back at the old Kansas fire department," he grins.

Hahaha yeah! The good old fire department! Where he worked! Haha, ha, ha...

Jack tugs on the world's greatest makeshift rope, and it seems to hold fine. Well then, he'll trust to Sinclair's knots. And if he kinda... grabs onto the thing like this, and if he clamps onto the bottom with his soles like this...

(going off vague memories of climbing rope in gym class, let's all laugh, more laughter, ha, ha, ha)

Okay good, he's got this, he's climbing and

then a knot slips and comes undone.

Jack's eyes go wide for a second, like those of a coyote who's just run off the edge of a cliff, and then he lets out his third and loudest unmanly yelp of the morning.

And gains his third and easily most painful butt bruise.

Sinclair learned how to tie knots at the same place Jack learned how to climb, isn't that funny?

We can laugh some more, if Jack's butt bruise isn't dampening his sense of humor.

"Whoa--" Sinclair says, wincing sympathetically. "...Sorry, sport. Thought I tied them a little tighter than that."

"Ow," says Jack, wincing descriptively.

No, he didn't need that tailbone, thanks for asking.

He starts to roll very stiffly onto his front, so it's evident that he hasn't broken his spine or anything so dramatic. But still, it was a jarring and painful shock. And furthermore ow.

Jack opts to grit his teeth and avoid making any more pained noises.

That's really the only reason he's not calling Sinclair a collection of names that would give his fake mother the vapors.

Come on now, you're young, walk it off.

"You gonna make it?" Sinclair asks, mostly joking but still slightly concerned. And a tad guilty. Just a little. But really, it must be that the sheets are too smooth, can't hold a knot. It's got nothing to do with Sinclair's knot-tying abilities. In case you were wondering.

Oh, for sure. Jack has absolute faith that that's the case. Doesn't blame you in the slightest, mister Sinclair.

"Now my back hurts," he complains, at some point during the painful journey to upright. Man, no splicers better come find him while his butt is this bruised.

...that wasn't an invitation, by the way.

Sinclair sighs audibly and brings back both creme cakes, tossing them down by Jack's feet.

"Maybe that'll help," he says.

It's not like he's above bribing Jack to quit guilting him.

Jack blinks at the cakes as they land on the tiles. (He's working his way back up to fast movement, shut up.)

Oh! A peace offering!

Since telekinesis is a no-go without EVE, he crouches down with a grunt to collect them. Roughly three seconds later there is absolutely no trace of creme cake existence.

Jack straightens with a bit more ease. That took care of the fall damage, if maybe not his injured pride.

"Better," he says informatively.

Okay mister Sinclair, you're off the hook for now. He rubs the small of his back to get out the rest of the ache.

"...What now?"

"Well tie it back," Sinclair says. Duh, that's the obvious choice. It was one faulty knot, the rest are solid as a 9 iron.

What, they are. He swears it.

Even from two storeys down, Jack is able to give Sinclair a very eloquent 'are you serious' kind of look.

"I don't want to break my back."

Exasperated sigh.

"Well what do you suggest then, I'm all out of ideas."

"Find a real rope."

He says it like it's obvious.

"There's nothing else up here, kid," he tells him, slightly frustrated. The sheets rope thing was a good idea, in theory. And it's annoying that they just went through all of that, again for nothing.

This is not a pattern Sinclair particularly likes.

Yeah well, a Laissez-faire city under the sea sounded like a great idea to someone or other, and look where that one ended up.

"Then I'll look down here."

He makes as if to move, but holds up, waiting for Sinclair's response.

"I'll just wait here then," he says, tone not entirely void of indignation.

They could have probably looked while they were still down there, that might have been a good plan. But then again, it's not as if plans have served them well so far. Everything's been a little hit-or-miss, no matter what they do. And it's aggravating, for someone who usually knows exactly what he's doing, and doesn't usually fail.

There's been a lot of failure so far. Too much. And he's sure it's not over yet.

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