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

darling it's better down where it's wetter

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

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"Don't leave me down here."

It's halfway between you'd better not, if you know what's good for you, and please, please don't.

'Kid' and 'child', the word in a Georgia or a Brooklyn accent, they're all tiny similarities but he hates them and he wants to be able to trust Sinclair. And he does, he thinks, but he's shaken. And he needs to be able to trust someone.

And with that, any trace of annoyance leaves Sinclair's expression. It becomes more of a sympathetic smile, and he thinks he's figured out at least part of what's going on here. He reaches up to squeeze Jack's shoulder, giving him a sincere look although he's not really sure what to say.

He decides on, "Let's get back to Olympus, chief. This place gives me the creeps."

After all, they need a chance to regroup if they're going to escape. Which they will. Both of them.

The narration is impressed with Sinclair for getting over the grossness of the shoulder in question enough to make such a fatherly gesture. The shoulder he squeezes is tense like a spring, shaking like a body with too much feeling and no clear direction for it.

Jack lowers his head slowly.

That wasn't a yes or a no. But the look and the tone were about right.

"Okay, mister Sinclair."

He doesn't sound miserable or happy, one way or the other. He just sounds agreeable: the one interpersonal skill he can always fall back on.

Jack may be the grosser of the two, but let's face it. They're both pretty gross. The shoulder squeeze was the least he could do, even if it was the most he could think of.

After following the hallway for a few more seconds, they pass through a set of double doors and are emptied out into another room. A sizable room, it looks familiar to Sinclair but not enough to point them in a specific direction.

"Catch a scent yet?"

...

Jack looks at him weirdly, but obediently sniffs the air.

The narration assumes he will be interrupted before getting a chance to report his findings.

"I mean do you know where we are?" Sinclair interrupts, completely unpredictably.

Sometimes he has to wonder if Jack is intentionally playing dumb, but then he remembers that Jack doesn't really have the sense of humor for that. It must be that he just didn't get out much back in Kansas. Or at all. Ever.

"Oh."

He has the decency to look embarrassed. Really quite embarrassed. Capital work not standing out as the freak y'are, boyo.

You know, this does look familiar. At a certain point either terror or tiredness just started to make everything blend together, but he thinks he recognises this.

"Ye-es. I think we can go through Emergency Access," he says, and sets off at a cautious pace. There'll be splicers jumping out at them, for sure. He remembers Med Pavilion being a pretty shit-scary place the first time he was here.

Sinclair follows close behind Jack, picking up on the extra caution being taken. The whole room is tile, the floor, the walls, and a glass ceiling that makes their footsteps echo. He cringes, stopping for a second to listen. Not to be paranoid, but he hasn't had the best luck with avoiding splicers lately.

When he doesn't hear anything, he takes a few broad strides to catch up with Jack again. The closer they get to the Emergency Access, the more Sinclair is sure he knows where they are. Granted, it looks considerably different than the last time he was here.

Jack keeps going, only pausing now and then to get his bearings, and never for long. He feels better when he's moving. Or at least he's preoccupied staying alive, and doesn't give himself time to start thinking again.

Dripping corridors open out into a kind of square lined with vandalised businesses. A little pile of machine-gun ammo lies in the centre, conspicuous as can be; the ceiling is giggling quietly.

Oh c'mon, that has to be, what? The third or fourth time they've tried this?

Jack pauses and looks over the ammo. It's not a question of whether it's a trap; just of whether the free ammo is worth the effort, whether he'll spend more bullets and EVE than he gains. And you know what, he just can't be bothered. He has Sinclair with him; he just wants to get to the safehouse.

As he passes the ammo pile by, the ceiling yells "Spoilsport!" after him.

Splicers are fucking weird.

Sinclair spots the ammo laying out in the middle of nothing, and yeah. It strikes him as odd, even if he hasn't been traversing the more infested parts of Rapture the way Jack has. And then there's a girl, tittering away like it's the funniest thing she's ever seen and someone else shushing her.

They didn't even really try with this one.

He looks to Jack to see what's going to be done, but Jack seems a little less than interested. As they walk away, the second splicer yells after them and Sinclair quickens his step just in case they're irritated enough to follow them. Jack doesn't appear bothered at all though, which is somewhat reassuring.

"When we get back," Sinclair says, once they're a reasonable distance away, "I can figure out something for us to eat. I'm not much of a cook, but it beats starving."

"That sounds good," says Jack, with feeling. He remembers cooking things back in the world, but as far as doing it for real goes, he may well have done little more than use Incinerate on some coffee that'd gone cold. Anything Sinclair can whip up is sure to beat that.

The rusting corridors of Emergency Access are still open. Jack thinks he still has the key somewhere, but searching for it won't be necessary. He leads them through the twisting tunnels, dispatching splicers with the air of someone who's done for the day and can't wait to clock out and go home.

It's not long before they see a bathy station, sign glowing invitingly.

Sinclair sees the sign for the bathysphere just seconds after Jack does, and he sighs, laughing. "We made it, son! Nice work."

And a few yards later, Sinclair plops himself down on the coated leather seating, relaxing back. He's sure he's got blisters at this point, walking around in half-soaked socks and shoes that certainly were not made for walking any kind of distance. That bath is calling to him.

But not as much as it's calling to Jack. Remember how the mattress spoke gently to Sinclair? Luring him to its soft, springy comfort? This bath is screaming at Jack. Screaming desperately.

"I can get something cooking while you get cleaned up, if you want," he offers. Oh so generously.

Jack has too much dirt in his ears to hear the bath scream.

He sits opposite Sinclair, and fiddles with his hands, suddenly antsy now that he has some waiting to do. Checks and reloads his gun, half just for something to do. Inactivity doesn't come naturally to Jack and it's twice as bad when there are thoughts he's trying to avoid.

"Does the water work in your house?"

Most all the working taps he's found poured water so thick and brown it'd just make him dirtier. He actually ended up washing off the worst of the Big Daddy scent in seawater*. But, you know. It's worth asking.

*maybe with hindsight he should've tried the ones in Fontaine's place before smashing them to pieces.

Sinclair nods, watching Jack fidget. "Most places in Olympus Heights have their own sets of pipes and water heaters to keep anyone from running out the hot water for everyone. If there's a leak, keeps it a little more contained too. Most of Raptures plumbers are either dead or too spliced up to work, but there're still one or two to be found. They keep up Persephone, if I ever spring a leak I imagine I could hire one to fix it for me."

And Jack fiddles the entire time, it actually makes Sinclair a little uncomfortable. But he's plenty familiar with the need to stay occupied.

"See if you can spot Hephaestus from here, sport," he says, gesturing out the window. "If you can, maybe you can catch a glimpse of a place Ryan might've been able to dock a submarine."

He turns towards the window obediently, glad to have a job. Shifts across his seat to get closer, get more of a view.

At the beginning of the voyage, he would've been close enough to the Welcome Center to spot the fuselage, maybe some of the unfortunate souls still trapped in and around it. It's... probably for the best that they waited, all things considered.

"I see glowing," he reports. He's not 100% on their bearings relative to the place, but glowing means power means Hephaestus, right? Low to the sea floor, some kind of frantic activity going on through the windows... The angle's all wrong to make much out, of course.

"Not much else, though."

"Ah well," Sinclair shrugs. "We'll find it, don't worry about that."

Never mind that he has no idea how they're going to find it. They will. They will because they have to. They don't have a choice.

The bathysphere goes dark for a few seconds before rising to the surface again in the Olympus Heights dock.

...He really doesn't want to go through the same shit they went through last time they were here. But he looks at Jack, waiting for his judgment.

Jack's had the same idea. He hops quickly out of the bathysphere, keen to not let Sinclair down twice in a row.

"I'll go first." He pulls the gross and gory wrench out of his belt. Honestly any splicer not killed outright will probably die of infections anyway. "Clear it out."

Sinclair stops himself from asking Jack if he's sure; the kid can't die, there's nothing particularly at risk by him going first. So Sinclair lets him.

He closes the bathysphere door after him all but a crack, ready to seal it if the splicers come out again, and he waits.

Jack lopes away, out of the station and out of sight.

Sinclair now has an opportunity to appreciate the unique soundscape of a fight to the death. At least three or four splicers are screaming and swearing, yelling and accusing all kinds of things, as they do. One goes quiet mid-way through "Give her back to me, I won't let you--". Another goes from a shriek of anger to a scream of agony and doesn't stop for a long time.

Jack is habitually silent, or at least doesn't make any noises -- besides crunching and gunfire -- which carry as far as the bathy.

Except for once -- he does cry out once, towards the middle of the fight, loud and very much in pain. But then that stops and the fight goes on, so presumably he survived.

Then everyone is dead, and there's a little more crunching and squishing, loud in the silence. Jack doesn't reappear immediately, though.

Well that's...worrisome, but Sinclair reminds himself again and another time that Jack can't die. So really worrying is useless. Unless for some reason Jack was injured in a way that it would take him a long time to bleed out, in which case he could be waiting for a while. And that's also a really gruesome way to go, promise of respawning or not. He wouldn't exactly wish that on anyone he was remotely fond of.

But it sounds like he's coming back, though there's no way to know for sure until he sees him. To be on the safe side, he stays in the bathysphere.

And closes it all the way, just to be safe.

And Jack reappears at the station entrance. I'd like to say his clothes and so on are bloodier, but the only way that could happen at this point would be for Jack to literally bathe in the stuff. He's not moving like he's injured, for what it's worth.

"Mister Sinclair?" he calls. "You can come out."

Sinclair lets out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding and unlatches the bathysphere door, stepping out with his good leg first.

"Some fight," he comments, gesturing for Jack to lead the way. He knows where it is now, he can continue to go first.

"It was normal," says Jack. I mean it's not the first time they've ganged up on him by far.

...At some point in his life he should start wondering if maybe his splicer attack experience is a little more, uh, dramatic than Sinclair's. But today is not that day.

He leads the way out towards the door, still keeping an eye out for any latecomers. Outside the bathy station is a nice little scene of carnage -- four splicers, one fresh from the burn ward, two shot, one hard to determine because he's been opened like a box. His broken ribs point upwards to the ceiling and inside is a torn-up mess.

Probably best not to ask.

Jack carries on, as casually as he ever does when he's on patrol, and doesn't even look at the bodies.

To be fair, Sinclair should probably realize by now that this sort of thing is completely normal for Jack. He's like a splicer killing machine, which is definitely an incentive to keep him on his side.

Sinclair laughs to himself as he punches in the code and lets them in. This time, the turrets sit back, friendly as ever. They like you, Jack. They really like you.

And now for the first order of business. "There's towels and robes in the linen closet, son. Help yourself."

"You have towels?"

Holy shit. This is five-star treatment.

"And robes?"

I mean it's not like he's never used them before in his life (hahaha it is but let's pretend), but, well, he wasn't expecting those kinds of luxuries in Rapture. He's half expecting Sinclair to turn around and say that lol j/k the robe is on fire and he's been using the towel to mop bloodstains for five years.

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