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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"Do not kill them," she says. Duh. "Cure them, send them to me. Then you will prove to me I can trust you."

Or at least show her that she might be able to. Because believe you her, she wants to be able to.

"Then I promise you will have your talk."

Well that's.

A turn of events.

He keeps to himself, but listens closely. So Jack saved a Sister! That's good news, in the context of his own conversation with Tenenbaum. His inner twelve year-old is sticking his tongue out at her, singing I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO.

But on the other hand, without harvesting Little Sisters, Jack's withdrawal's only gonna get worse. Whatever ADAM he can scrounge up from other sources isn't going to give him the boost he's used to. And Sinclair really doesn't want to have think about what he's going to do if Jack's cravings get out of hand.

Whether he likes it or not, he's going to have to have a way out in mind. And it's not that he didn't know what he was getting himself into; Jack Ryan's got a trail of bodies in his wake, each one showing evidence of a different kind of extremely unnatural death. He's been splicing since he got here, that's not a secret. But knowing he can't die throws something of a wrench in the Quick Exit gears.

And for what it's worth, he likes the kid. He's not terrible company, especially considering the type of company Sinclair would usually have to pick from. The whole scenario is unpleasant.

Maybe he'll have to talk to Tenenbaum again, figure out a better way to keep him on this side of sane.

Jack's thoughts have taken a similar line as Sinclair's -- though in his case, it's more from an angle of shit now where is he going to get ADAM? There's some when he rescues a Sister, sure, but that's some and he's used to hitting upwards of a hundred and fifty at a time, several times a day. Or at least he got used to it, during his first couple days here -- it's dropped off to almost nothing since then. Maybe that really is why he feels like shit.

That's why he gives Sinclair a kind of horrified look.

...Oh great. And Jack knows it too.

Sinclair gives him a nod. Go on. It's his choice, after all, and Sinclair's going to work with whatever Jack decides.

He really is quite set on talking to Tenenbaum. He's decided that they'll talk, after all. There are questions only she can answer. Stuff in his head only she can understand. When he lets himself think about it, she's the closest thing he has to a mother.

But this is a steep-ass price.

Believe it or not, Jack carefully filed away that advice Sinclair gave him before, treated it as gospel as any other items in his quest log. And so he's silent for several moments more. Because he is trying, very hard, not to yell into the radio.

...

"Okay," he says at last, but it comes out a bit strangled.

Wow, don't be overenthusiastic.

Tenenbaum closes her eyes briefly, puts a hand across her face. Disappointed. She really suspects that he did not intend to turn over a new leaf at all, and so once again she is disappointed.

But she wronged him horribly, and maybe it's not up to her to decide when she's repaid that debt. Ugh. She'll give him this chance to prove himself, and hope for nothing, so that whatever happens can't be worse. The alternative is giving the child up for lost. Just accepting that he's no more than what she and Suchong and Fontaine fed into him.

He's agreed to try.

"Thank you," she says, sincerely.

Then she turns the radio off, and lights a cigarette, and takes a deep, steadying breath.

The silence hangs over both Sinclair and Jack for several long seconds. Sinclair's trying to figure out what the prevailing emotion is, but it looks like Jack himself isn't really even sure.

But he did see that Jack took his advice. He saw the effort it took to hold back everything he might have been thinking or feeling, and that's worth acknowledging.

"Nicely handled, son," Sinclair says quietly, earnestly. "If this is what you want, saving the Sisters, we'll find you an alternative." Then, just to double check, make sure there's nothing he's missing here, "...Is this what you want?"

"I want to talk to her."

Jack half-lowers, half-drops the radio. It bounces on its strap at his side. His face is stormy, and hey, she ended the call, so he is no longer taking the care to keep his voice down. Forget about keeping him on this side of sanity -- it might be more profitable at the moment to keep him on this side of a looming temper tantrum.

Here is something he was trying not to say while on the radio.

"Everything dies all the time! What makes them special?"

Jack's sudden temper doesn't startle Sinclair. He was kind of expecting it, after Jack keeping it all together for as long as he did. It's not something you just master all at once.

"You don't die," he points out, keeping his tone as quiet as it was before.

"I die all the time," says Jack angrily. Death to him is a moment in time, sometimes longer or shorter or more or less painful -- he doesn't really think about what happens next for people who don't wake up in a Vita Chamber.

Sinclair sighs. It's probably a bad time to start arguing philosophy.

"They're special because the doctor cares about them, sport. If something's important to you, aren't you gonna take a special interest in it?"

"Yeah, but..."

He glares, face scrunched up, as he searches for a reason why that totally shouldn't be a good answer.

"And she doesn't care about me?"

...which would probably be a more compelling dilemma if Sinclair had more of Jack and Tenenbaum's backstory, but like hell is Jack actually going to fill him in on that.

It's true that without all the back story, it's hard for Sinclair to give him a reason why she might not, harder still to understand why Jack thinks she should.

"I don't know that she doesn't," he says. Improvising. If you say vague enough things, eventually you'll be led in a clearer direction. "Maybe she did at some point, but she's having a little trouble trusting you. But she's giving you a way to fix it, and I don't believe she would bother if she didn't care at all."

"She'd better care."

Or else, says his tone. Or else... he doesn't know what.

Jack's breathing raggedly.

"I want to go find one," he says. Find a Sister and get this mission started. And get a little bit of ADAM now, since he can no longer get a lot later.

If anything, Sinclair knows an empty threat when he hears one. He just wishes he had the full story here, maybe he could understand what exactly is making Jack so angry. How it happened.

But he nods in agreement, although he doesn't particularly trust this place to have a safe spot for him to wait out Jack's Big Daddy battle. But he's got a chemical thrower now! Burn everything that comes too close! Reminding himself of that, he follows close behind Jack, listening for the mournful groans of the nearest metal man.

He'll hear them eventually. Jack has already taken a chunk out of Rapture's Daddy and Sister population, but in a city this large, that population is pretty huge.

The groans are angry and the drill is already whirring. There are shouts as well, and screaming. The girl's shrill voice shouting encouragement to her Daddy. Sounds like a few splicers have gotten brave -- and when Jack and Sinclair round the next corner, they'll be able to see the last one dying, slammed into a wall and shaking, then spinning, then dropping, smashed in half by the enormous drill.

Jack doesn't waste much time. He fishes in his pockets for a moment, counting EVE needles and health kits -- then jams a new canister into the chemical thrower and coats the Bouncer in a stream of electric gel.

Sinclair ducks behind a corner, poking his head around to watch the fight unfold. The Sister dances around behind her Big Daddy, screaming something about stars and parties. He can really only imagine what she thinks is happening right here.

He can see the Bouncer gearing up to charge Jack, but he stops suddenly, almost stuck mid-stride. A nice strategic move on Jack's part, this fight probably won't last long.

It's kind of a cheat, but Jack isn't in a patient mood and he has enough electric gel to take the Bouncer two thirds of the way to its grave in one go. Sinclair wasn't planning on using that ammo, right?

When the stream of zapping gel peters out, he drops the thrower and swings his shotgun into place*. The standard practice of zap-shoot-dodge commences -- but it's shorter than Sinclair might remember, because the shotgun and its electric buck are considerably more powerful than the pistol, punching holes in the Daddy's armour that leak blood and other less wholesome fluids.

The Bouncer slams the ground with its drill, making the whole room shake -- dust falls from the ceiling -- and Jack stumbles, stunned for a moment. The Bouncer begins another charge and Jack recovers just in time to leap out of the way--

--mostly. He falls and the Bouncer straight up thunders over his leg, and he screams, over a very audible cracking and crunching noise.

The Sister cheers triumphantly. The Bouncer slows and turns around for another charge. Jack screams through his teeth and fumbles for a med kit. Two shots of Electrobolt -- one goes wide, one keeps the Bouncer in place for a couple more seconds. A couple of seconds for him to stick the med syringe into his hip. There's a furious itch that overtakes the pain.

Thankfully a med syringe is more specialised than pure ADAM, so the fragments of bone and muscle line up roughly where they're supposed to go before they fuse in place. He's not going to have to re-break anything.

The ground thunders with the Bouncer's charge. This time Jack flings himself to his feet, really does make it out of the way.

"Oh no," shouts the Sister. "Hurt him, Mister B! Hurt him!!"

Jack uses the wall to break his momentum, spins round and keeps moving and shooting and zapping and moving. After the beating it took from the electric gel, it doesn't take too much longer for the Bouncer to let out a final agonised moan and drop to the floor. Jack stops running and slumps over for a moment, breathing hard.

*which I have to say is not loaded with pistol ammo, even though I'm probably the only person who even remembers or cares that I made that mistake

It does feel something like a sporting event, the Sister cheering on her protector and Sinclair silently praying it doesn't kill Jack and decide to come after him next. But in the end, Jack prevails. Of course he does. He's an expert by now.

Sinclair steps out from his hiding spot and approaches Jack and the Sister, who is wailing pathetically by the Big Daddy's side.

"Your call, chief," he says to Jack. Although it looks already like Jack has made up his mind. Somewhat reluctantly, but the choice has still already been made. Sinclair's just reminding him that he's got one.

Jack gives him a dead sort of look. He still doesn't always know how to handle things being his call, even when he's sure that they are.

Then he squats down, quirks a hand and drags the Sister towards him with telekinesis.

She wails in fear and struggles, but the plasmid is strong as I'm sure Sinclair can attest, and a moment later Jack has a none too gentle hand around her arm. He stares at her horrible face, already feeling sick, the kind of sick that happens when you miss too many meals. Already he's anticipating the boost that usually comes next. And he's not going to get it. And it's going to be awful.

"Shut up," he says sulkily. "I'm not killing you."

Then he calls up yet another plasmid, and his veins begin to glow a pure white.

Well that's a plasmid Sinclair's never seen before.

He watches the Sister fight him for a couple moments more before she relaxes and quiets.

When Jack sets her down again, her eyes are clear and there's color in her cheeks.

She's healed. Sinclair's not sure what he expected when Jack said he was going to start helping Doctor Tenenbaum rescue Little Sisters, but it sure wasn't a plasmid that does all the work for him. That woman doesn't get half the credit she deserves, if she's the one who invented this.

As the unnatural light fades from her eyes, leaving them a rather more ordinary and frightened-looking brown, the girl blanches and claps a hand over her mouth. The ADAM in her body is leaving it and it only knows one way to go.

Jack wishes he'd brought a bucket.

He shifts out of the way, and the no-longer-Sister puts a hand on his knee and vomits green stuff onto the floor.

Nice.

Jack starts to search his pockets. The ADAM smells kind of chemically pungent and he's sure there are splicers who can smell it. So, here -- okay good, he has an empty syringe. There's no way this is leading to a bad place, right? Nope, this is a great idea.

And now commences the quickest and least sanitary filling of a syringe in recorded history.

"Mister?" says the girl, less nervous now. Her voice is normal now as well, and she's wiping her mouth with a small hand. "Mister, are you hurt?"

"Go away," says Jack, who is not feeling very charitable. He's still fumbling away with the small puddle and the syringe. "There's a hole over there."

Sinclair makes a conscious effort not to laugh at the brazen way Jack speaks to the girl. She doesn't appear to understand what's happened or what's happening, and she just ejected the diluted contentes of her stomach onto the floor.

Which Jack is.

Collecting.

In a syringe.

Well. Sinclair has seen less hygienic things in his time, and ADAM probably can't harbor bacteria. Right? Sure. We're gonna go with that.

Carry on, Jack.

Fun fact: Jack sees absolutely no problem with his plan, medically speaking. He has figured out by now that he can stick whatever the hell he finds lying around right into his veins without danger. Totally safe. God made ADAM and EVE, not ADAM and AIDS.

Wow. This puddle is piddling compared to what he'd get from a slug, even before you take into account what he's not going to be able to get off the floor.

He's still annoyed at the girl, as if all this is her fault, and a few moments later she takes the hint and runs off to her hidey-hole. And none too soon. A voice sounds down the tunnel behind them -- a man's voice, rough and slurred from long-time plasmid abuse.

"Little fish, little fish, let me come in," he calls, his voice echoing off the glass.

Jack looks up sharply. Shit. Called it.

Then he rises to his feet, hanging onto the syringe, and ignites his free hand. If this guy thinks he's getting away from here with anything better than fourth degree burns, he's got another thing coming.

"Little fish, what've you got theeeeere?"

"Mister Sinclair, you should move."

The Little Sister's not the only one who can take a hint. Without another word, Sinclair returns to where he was when Jack fought the Big Daddy. But this time he takes the chemical thrower with him.

It's just one splicer though, he'll be dead in a matter of seconds at Jack's hands.

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