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

Sinclair fills the bottom of the second glass and sets it down in front of Jack, taking his seat in front of him. It's worth it, after all that, to take a sip or two before getting back into conversation, but eventually Sinclair leans back and looks at Jack again.

"So what's on the itinerary for you now, kid? Planning on taking up residence in the burgeoning city of Rapture?" It would have been something of a trick question, but knowing now that Jack has full access to the bathyspheres...he does wonder why he bothers staying.

"No," says Jack, quite firmly, as he picks up his glass.

"I'm going back... up there. Out of here."

Just as soon as he finds a submarine that works, or a bathysphere that'll do more than left, right, select your station and wait for arrival. Guess which station is never an option on those things? Clue: it's a lighthouse.

He gazes for a moment at the glass in his hand, just to make sure that he's not swallowing something awful, but it's actually clearer and richer in colour than the stuff he's been finding around. Back it goes, then.

Yes, the whole finger at once. Without even coughing. Sinclair is going to have to teach Jack some things about moderated drinking for pleasure.

Sinclair watches Jack down his entire glass and supresses a laugh, getting up to bring the whole bottle over and place it in front of Jack with an implied "help yourself".

"Can't say I blame you," he says, returning to his own glass. "I'd high tail it out of here myself, if I could. How're you planning on getting back to the surface?"

Jack pours a little of the whiskey very carefully into his glass. He doesn't drink it yet, though; his EVE level's reasonable and he's not got any injuries worth speaking of.

"I don't know," he admits. He's still not sure what Sinclair's after, especially now it turns out he worked with Andrew Ryan, but beyond staying alert he doesn't know what he can do about that.

"If I can't find a submarine that works, I'll try to hack a bathysphere."

Wow, that was a lot of syllables all at once. His fake-memory momma would be proud.

It's the alcohol man, I told you it would make conversation easier. Sinclair knows what he's doing.

"Not a bad idea," he nods. "Any plans for what to do when you get back? I'm sure you could do better than working as a fireman."

And just like that, he looks morose again. NICE GOING AUGUSTUS.

"I don't know."

To be fair, he bucks himself up again, since he's not completely incapable of self-awareness. But it's still... well. Heavy stuff.

"First I'll get there. Then I'll work something out. That's... what I do, I think."

"I suppose you could do that," Sinclair muses into his glass. "A tad messy though, don't you think? Going back up there with no plan, nothing but the shirt on your back and a story no one's gonna believe."

He throws it out there, it's undeniably a hook. Jack wants to ignore it, face the issues as they come along, but there's no harm in offering him a glimpse of what he may or may not be up against.

Well thanks for laying it all out in front of him like that. Really.

"I don't have much of a choice."

Still a slave, then, says a treacherous part of his brain.

...You know what, he is going to knock back that drink now.

"There's always a choice, son," Sinclair smiles. He watches Jack down another glass, which he notices is poured a little more full than the first one he gave him.

He has ideas for himself, slowly forming ideas that come together a little more every time Jack tells him something. If he can piece it together well enough to explain, this could be a very successful relationship.

"You sound like Ryan," grumbles Jack into his glass.

"Well, I'm positively injured," Sinclair laughs with a hand to his chest, feigning an actual wound. "Andrew Ryan might have been an insufferable, overconfident son of a bitch, but he wasn't always wrong."

Jack is not very happy with this answer.

"What's the other choice, then? Stay here?"

Because he has one thing to say to that idea: it has a thousand syllables, the first 999 being "ha" and the final one being "no".

Sinclair shrugs and reaches to pour himself another glass. "I suppose technically that's one of them, but that wasn't what I had in mind. Rapture's a damn mess, I'm sure you've noticed, and I reckon we're on our last leg down here. I'm not too keen on staying any longer than I have to." He stops to take an intentionally timed sip, waiting to see if Jack is starting to catch on.

A little yellow lightbulb pings into life over Jack's head.

By god, I think he's got it.

"...So that's what you're after?"

That's. Actually nice to know, you know, to have an idea of where Sinclair's coming from on this whole thing. Jack doesn't know why he couldn't have just said that from the beginning, but from the people he's met down here, he supposes that being straightforward isn't good for business. (And in a petulant way, that makes him like straightforward things even more.)

Ah, there it is. Sinclair can actually visually detect the moment Jack catches on. His expression opens up a little and he appears to relax some; clearly he anticipated something much more sinister. Fortunately sinister has never really been Sinclair's game. And as far as straightforwardness goes, he's a man of opportunity. Jack could have been useful for any number of things, but as it happens he's most useful for what Sinclair is most interested in.

"What I'm after is making it out of this city before it crashes down around us," he says. "And I'm not talking about empty handed either. Trust me, you don't want to get up there and end up as broke as most of the folks down here. I'm sure you know that."

Well, nobody ever accused Jack of being a closed book. For a moment, his pages read: mild confusion.

"Would Rapture dollars* work up there?"

*this tag brought to you by John Shirley

This time Sinclair actually does laugh, although truthfully Jack's apparent naiveté regarding certain things is starting to tug at Sinclair's suspicious side.

"Well we're not about to try and make a break for the surface with bags full of money, if that's what you're getting at." Not literally, anyway. "I don't know if you've noticed, sport, but Rapture's just brimming with intellectual property that, up there, doesn't belong to anyone. Just a handful of that stuff is worth more than anything you'd be able to scrape up in the rest of your lifetime on your own."

That makes Jack feel like kind of a dumbass, but he keeps at it, because this is really quite interesting. The rest of his life is something he knows he'll have to face, sooner or later, once he's out of danger and there's nothing left to react against. He likes the idea of doing that with money and stuff a good bit more than he does the idea of doing it without.

...But because he's starting to feel like kind of a dumbass, instead of just asking, he nods and tries to guess.

"Property you've got to be smart to invent, right?"

jack no

And now Sinclair is starting to see why Jack probably would have done well as a firefighter, if he were actually telling the truth. Fortunately, in order for this to work, he doesn't have to go into business with Jack. He only needs him to take a little direction here and there, and worst comes to worst he can cut Jack his share and be done with it. But he's still playing it by ear.

"Fortunately that part's already been done for us. All we have to do is get a hold of one of them sea slugs, maybe bring a plasmid or two to show 'em how it works, and you and me are the next Albert Einstein."

wow rude

"A plasmid or two."

He says it with surprise blossoming into are-you-sure-about-this, and looks hard at Sinclair. His vocabulary might not be up to yours, mister hotshot grown-up Georgia businessman, but he's quick to realise what kind of havoc a plasmid or two might wreak on the surface world. They haven't exactly had a subtle effect down here.

"Maybe a couple gene tonics, just to have something to show for everything ADAM can do," Sinclair continues, more to himself. He doesn't take Jack's echo as anything more than just that. It's not that he hasn't considered what plasmids would do to the surface world, and it's entirely possible that they'd be made illegal not too long after they're introduced. But there's no denying that ADAM has properties that every scientist dreams of. They won't stop researching it, and as long as that happens, there's going to be money coming in. That's the important part.

"...It'll do the same thing up there as it did down here."

You know. The horribly mutated wandering murderers. You might have noticed them.

He says it like he's expecting Sinclair to contradict him, though. And not because he's a walking contradiction himself. It's because -- well, people are sensible, right? They do things that are best for them. Living in a world full of splicers doesn't seem to be what's best for Sinclair.

Sinclair sighs. The kid has a conscience, and he supposes that's at least somewhat reassuring in a way. He's got a conscience himself, sure, but there are definite ways to override it. So far, he hasn't found an instance in which making business decisions based on his conscience has landed him in a better place than it would have if he'd listened to his brain.

"They'll be able to refine it," he tells him, hoping it sounds reassuring. "Research down here was messy, they let people have it before it was ready. They'll know better than that up top." And if they don't, they'll figure it out quickly enough. By that point it won't be a problem for either of them anymore. Some poor sap'll buy the rights to the research and whatever happens from that point forward is on somebody else's plate.

"Are you sure?"

He's just sayin'. Jack has had enough of splicers to last him a lifetime.

No. He's not. At all.

But it doesn't matter. Once he's got the money, hell, he could buy a whole island and whatever happens in the rest of the world won't make a bit of difference. They can keep it.

"Positive, son. Once we sell them the ADAM, we'll be home free."

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