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

"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."

Jack nods again, believing him.

And here there are a few things he'd like to ask or to say, grand and great and important things; but above all of them, one that's been nagging at him finally gets its turn:

"Mister Sinclair? I'm hungry."

Sinclair pauses, that nagging suspicion flaring up again. But it's impossible to explain, he really doesn't know how to describe it at all. Conscience is one thing, but gut instinct is another, even if they come from the same place. Something here is...off.

"I can't say I've got the best selection," he tells Jack after just a split second of not being quite sure how to react. "but you're welcome to anything. There's a few things stashed away in that cabinet." He gestures to one on the opposite side of the room.

Jack gets up straight away. Cabinet ho!

...Somebody should teach him to say please and thank you.

He's disappointed when he finds mostly the same stuff he's been scarfing down around Rapture: pep bars and potato chips and a generous number of those little cakes with the cream so fake they had to spell it wrong. But it's better than nothing. As he rummages around, he talks.

"Is this all everyone eats down here -- ham!"

IT IS

IT'S HAM

HOLY BEES IT'S A POT OF HAM

Sinclair sits back and watches Jack eagerly rummage through his meager selection of sort-of food until he finds what appears to be non-perishable gold. He can honestly say he has never seen a man get this excited about potted ham.

"Help yourself," he says, although he doubts Jack is even listening. There's no shortage of that stuff, and it's not exactly a breakfast of champions.

A growing boy needs his protein, Sinclair.

Jack pulls back the tab, peels off the lid, and starts eating ham straight out of the tin with his fingers. Not in an 'oh my god I'm starving and can't wait long enough for cutlery' kind of way; it's just how he do.

"Mmh."

Yeah, it's not like he's on a diet or anything, but a body gets tired of nothing but cake and chips.

I don't know what you're talking about, cake and chips is the Nutrition of Rapture. Maybe if you did your part in pulling the Great Chain, you wouldn't be too broke to buy some tasty tomatoes from the farmer's market, Jack. Gosh.

Sinclair is not one to judge, though. He's not too concerned with manners anyway, especially not considering what Jack has been through since he got to Rapture. Which brings him to another question he's been wondering about vaguely since they started talking.

"Quite a coincidence, your being here," he says over Jack's reasonably noisy chewing. It's a funny thing to say because Sinclair doesn't really believe in coincidence. But he waits for Jack to respond, maybe it'll tell him something.

Jack does not dramatically startle and cut himself on the can or anything silly like that. All he does is stop chewing.

Of course, quiet tells are tells all the same.

"...Here in the room?"

Behold one of the few forms of subterfuge he cares to engage in: playing dumb!

Not so subtle, that one. And it's starting to rub Sinclair the really wrong way. Not in the sense that it's making him angry, but it doesn't help that he's starting to feel like he's got a pretty good reason to be suspicious. He's made his share of shady business deals with equally shady people, but this in particular unsettles him because he can't for the life of him figure out what about Jack is so shady.

And Sinclair likes to think he's an extremely patient person, but playing dumb tends to eat away at that fairly quickly.

"In Rapture," he says. "Funny thing; your plane crashes into the ocean right over the secret city built by none other than your own father." He picks up his glass and finishes the last of it, carefully placing it next to the bottle.

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